said Maria Goldman, holding open the door of her office.
Catherine Reed entered, glancing around the small, immaculately tidy room. She accepted the chair offered to her and sat down opposite Maria.
The journalist afforded herself a brief glance around the office. She spotted a small television set and a video, set up in one corner, the clock on the video flashing constantly. The walls were a mass of filing cabinets and shelves and what spare space there was seemed to be covered with a collection of posters and leaflets.
‘Have you finished with them all yet?’ Cath enquired.
Maria nodded.
Cath reached into her pocket and pulled out a small notepad.
‘You don’t mind if I use this, do you? I’ve got a lousy memory.’ She smiled.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘Thank you. No sugar.’
Maria got to her feet and headed for the office door.
‘The machine’s just down the corridor,’ she explained. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
As she disappeared, closing the door behind her, Cath sat motionless for a moment, then crossed to the door and peered through the tiny crack between frame and partition. She could see Maria standing in front of the vending machine, feeding coins into it.
Cath hurried back to the desk, stepping around Maria’s side, glancing over the
stacks of papers arranged there.
She saw a large book that looked like a ledger of some description.
Cath flipped it open, scanning it for anything which resembled a list of names.
Nothing.
She pulled open the top drawer of Maria’s desk.
Manila files but no names.
In the next drawer there was a framed photo of a man in his early thirties.
Smart, good looking.
She was about to open the next drawer when she heard footsteps heading back up the corridor.
Cath scuttled around to the chair and sat down, sucking in a deep breath, picking up her pen and drawing rambling circles on the top of the page.
Maria entered carrying two styrofoam cups of coffee. She pushed the door shut with her backside and handed one of the cups to Cath.
‘Now, what can I do for you, Miss Reed?’
‘Call me Cath, please’ she said, sipping her coffee. ‘I wondered if you’d finished interviewing all the children that were brought in.’
‘Yes, we have.’
‘And from what you’ve heard, are you satisfied that there is child abuse involved?’
‘Unfortunately yes.’
‘In every case? There were seventeen children seized, weren’t there?’
‘Seized sounds a bit melodramatic,’ Maria said, smiling.
‘Well, dawn raids are pretty melodramatic, aren’t they? You obviously felt the need to go through with them.’
‘We felt that there were children at risk.’
‘Why were those particular homes targeted?’
‘They were random, apart from two. We had received reports …’
‘Was one of those houses the O’Brian house?’
Maria looked stunned.
‘My brother was the teacher at St Michael’s who made the initial report,’ Cath explained. ‘I know that the O’Brian boy was one of the children taken into care.’
‘How much more do you know?’ Maria asked, cupping both hands around the styrofoam container.
‘Not enough. There are too many loose ends already, things going on which may or may not be linked to this child abuse ring.’
‘I didn’t say it was an abuse ring,’ Maria interjected.
‘You said abuse was involved, though.’
‘Not all of the seventeen children we brought in had been abused, at least not physically.’
‘How many had?’
‘Nine.’
‘Including the O’Brian boy?’
Maria nodded slowly.
‘Do you think it was the parents?’
‘That’s not for me to say, Miss Reed. You’ll have to ask the police.’
‘Have they been informed of the physical abuse?’
‘They’ve seen the medical reports. Whatever further action is taken, and who it’s taken against, is up to them.’
Cath sipped her coffee, glancing around the office again.
‘What’s the video for?’ she asked.
‘In certain cases, like this one, evidence is recorded on audio and videotape, as well as written statements being taken.’
‘But video evidence isn’t permissible in court, is it?’
‘It’s mainly to help our people here, to make sure we get all the facts, everything the children tell us.’
‘Did any of them mention graveyards?’
The question was unexpected and Maria couldn’t disguise her surprise. For a
long time she merely gazed at Cath.
‘Why do you ask?’ she said, quietly.
Cath sighed.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said. ‘But the O’Brians lost a baby a little while ago, it was buried in Croydon Cemetery. I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’ve been… desecrations, for want of a better word, going on there for the past few weeks. Graves dug up, headstones wrecked, stuff written on them. Even the church itself there has been vandalised. The grave of the O’Brian baby was one of those dug up. I just wondered if any of the other children might have mentioned graveyards in their statements.’
‘What kind of vandalism?’ Maria wanted to know.
‘As I said, mainly the smashing of headstones, and graves being disturbed, but there was an incident with a cat. Some sicko nailed a cat to the church door.’
‘And cut its head off,’ Maria added.
It was Cath’s turn to be shocked. She nodded slowly.
Maria reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out some pieces of paper which she laid before Cath on the desk top.
Cath noticed that some of the drawings were done in crayon. Some in pencil. A number were rough, almost impossible to distinguish, but others, in their crude way, were easily recognisable.
One was of an animal spreadeagled. From the long tail she guessed it was meant to be a cat. There was a great scrawl of red crayon beneath it then a round object with two slits for eyes and a couple of ears. The long whiskers made it obvious the artist intended it to be recognised as a cat. The head was also surrounded by red.
‘That was drawn by a six-year-old’ said Maria.
Cath looked carefully at the other drawings.
She recognised a pentagram, drawn with remarkable dexterity.
There were more pictures of animals, usually headless.
Another pentagram.
Then some writing.
At first it looked like meaningless scrawl, then Cath looked more closely. She swallowed hard. I’ve seen this before’ she whispered, looking at the roughly drawn letters.
‘We couldn’t make it out’ Maria said.
Cath reached into her handbag and pulled out a small make-up mirror then she held up the piece of paper, turning it towards Maria.
‘How old was the child who wrote this?’ the journalist asked.
‘Eleven,’ Maria told her, trying to pick out the letters in the mirror.
She studied each one carefully, the words running into each other.
‘I still can’t see what it says’ she said, quietly.
‘I saw this in the crypt of the church at Croydon’ Cath explained, pointing out the reversed words. ‘“The power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.”’
‘The Lord’s prayer.’
‘Written backwards.’
She lowered the mirror and the piece of paper.
‘Is that reversed too’ Cath asked, pointing at more words written on a piece of paper below a large grey block that had been carefully shaded in.
Maria shook her head.
‘No’ she said. ‘It’s Latin. Written by a seven-year-old. The grammar’s probably wrong but we managed to work out the meaning. “Deus mihi mortuus.” It means “God is dead to me.” Now where the hell would a seven-year-old learn that?’