The films Trent saw that night were about half an hour each. They originated from Holland and had been dubbed poorly into English. The quality of the camerawork was shoddy, but the pictures were fairly sharp. The editing was questionable.
Both told much the same story.
One was based around a little boy who looked to be about nine years old.
The other was about a little blonde girl who looked slightly older.
They were both very graphic tales.
Each film began with what appeared to be the abduction off the street of the child. The story carried on with the captivity of the children, both of whom were tied naked to a bed. The story progressed to the sexual abuse of the kids. Sometimes by one person only, more often by a group of people. All men. During these scenes the children screamed and were allowed to do so. This seemed to fire the depraved lust of their captors and tormentors.
The climax of each mm was the rape of the child by one person, who with a noose around the neck of the child reached orgasm at the same time as apparently strangling the child to death. The deaths looked very real. Probably were.
Trent left the viewing room tremendously excited by what he had seen. It had been worth every penny.
He knew he had to go and repeat it.
Less than two miles away was the sea-front hotel on South Shore which belonged to the Lilton family. The hotel was quiet and in darkness. Outwardly it looked peaceful at four in the morning.
Inside was a different matter.
Ruth Lilton was in a deep, coma-like sleep on her bed. She lay on her back, mouth open, snoring. A cocktail of carefully administered alcohol and sleeping tablets had put her there. Virtually nothing could have woken her. Not even the whimpering cries and the deep male groans escaping from under the closed door of her daughter’s room.
Claire cried out in pain and shame each time her stepfather rammed his unprotected self into her. It was almost a blessed relief when he roughly turned her over, adjusted her loose limbs so she was on her hands and knees and carried on from the rear. The pain increased with deeper penetration, but at least she did not have to look up at his face, wasn’t obliged to inhale the intoxicant fumes he breathed all over her, or smell the sweat and body odour of him. She could bury her face in the pillow. It was also a relief because she knew he would finish quicker in this position.
He did. With fearsome, violent strokes.
It was all over. He collapsed exhausted across her, squeezing her young breasts roughly with his big, hard hands.
‘ That was great,’ he breathed.
He got off the bed and leaned towards her ear. ‘Don’t tell your mum, or I’ll fucking kill you,’ he warned her quietly. Then he left the room and returned to his marital bed.
Claire cried for a long, long time.
Finally her sobs subsided. She rolled off the bed and packed her bag. This time she wasn’t going to return.
‘ I thought you were never gonna answer,’ Steve Kruger’s voice boomed down the phone-line.
Mark Tapperman had had a busy day and night and was only an hour into what was going to be, at best, four hours’ sleep. He tried to force open his groggy eyelids. His wife uttered something unrepeatable next to him and dragged the single sheet over her head.
‘ Steve, what the hell do you want?’ Tapperman asked with some difficulty. Two reasons for that: his throat was bone dry (a sure sign he’d been snoring loudly) and it was hard work to coordinate the brain-speech function. ‘It’s… damn, I can’t even open my eyes to see the clock.’
‘ Four in the morning,’ Kruger informed him.
‘ Steve, you asshole, I’m shattered here. I’ve been on the go for twenty-four hours, as have you. In fact, why the hell aren’t you asleep? Anybody with any sense would be.’
‘ Okay, so I’ve woken you. Sorry and all that, but I couldn’t sleep and something came into my mind I needed clarifying.’
Tapperman sighed with reluctance. ‘Fire away.’
‘ You said that English guy, Gilbert, was catching a plane out of Miami. When, exactly?’
Tapperman shuffled his brain cells and sorted through them. ‘Er, gee… five or six o’clock this morning, I think it leaves… I’m not completely sure. Why?’
‘ Thanks for that,’ Kruger said brightly.
‘ Why, Steve?’ the detective insisted.
‘ Gonna pay the bastards a call.’ Kruger hung up.
Tapperman leaned back against the headboard, wondering what the hell that was all about. He closed his eyes as his thoughts evaporated and he fell asleep immediately.
Chapter Nine
Detective Inspector Henry Christie read through the long and detailed message switch which had arrived in the early hours of the morning at Blackpool nick. It concerned the escape from prison of Louis Vernon Trent, a man born and raised in Blackpool. The story had been all over the daily newspaper Henry read before coming to work, but the nitty-gritty detail of what Trent had done in order to effect the escape was spelled out starkly in the police report in front of him. What the media could only guess at was laid out, blow by blow.
To Henry, the rather formal language of the message made Trent’s exploits seem much more callous and evil than the sensationalism of the newspaper articles.
He read the story once more, then picked up a copy of a message received from the Royal Bank of Scotland, informing him that the bank account belonging to the dead ambulance-driver had been plundered twice since his death. The second time — and the time that interested Henry — was at two thirty-five that morning, from their cash-point at the branch on Talbot Square in Blackpool.
Two thirty-five! The bastard had obviously been walking around, bold as brass, through the streets of Blackpool.
Next Henry read a crime report concerning the theft of a purse belonging to an old woman; it had been stolen from her bag whilst she was on the train to Blackpool. The description of the offender fitted that of Trent, who had been seen to get off the train at Poulton-le-Fylde.
He was definitely in town. That much was obvious.
Henry laid the crime report down and looked at the fax next to it from the prison service. It showed a two-year-old photo of Trent. Much of the quality had disappeared during transmission, but Henry could see from the image that the man had a piercing pair of eyes; they made him shiver.
‘ Shit,’ he breathed.
Underneath the fax was a copy of Trent’s previous convictions.
His telephone squawked. He answered it on the second ring.
‘ Henry, I hope you’re looking at the reports I’m looking at, otherwise I’ll have your effin’ guts for shoelaces!’ the voice shouted rudely down the line. The person did not have the courtesy to introduce himself, expecting to be instantly recognised. Henry knew it was the newly promoted Assistant Chief Constable (Operations), Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, known generally as FB and in particular as ‘that Fucking Bastard’.
Although FB’s responsibilities covered the whole range of police operations in Lancashire County, FB’s main love and interest was crime. He’d been a detective for most of his service.
He and Henry went back many years. However, Henry did not like him.
In response to FB’s opening broadside, Henry said, ‘I assume you mean our friend Mr Trent?’
‘ You assume dead-fucking-right. This is very much your pigeon, Henry, so what the hell are you doing about him? I’ve had the press crawlin’ right up my arse already this morning and also the Chief Constable of Staffordshire where the prison is located; she is not a happy woman with seven murders on her patch, I can tell you, and she wants this bastard catching. So, what’re you doing to catch him?’
‘ Actually nothing,’ should have been Henry’s truthful reply. ‘I’ve done bugger all but sit here, scratching my backside and trying to look moderately intelligent while I wonder what the hell to do.’