Episode 15 - The small world

Gary stopped Cleo’s red car in front of a pompous-looking villa on the edge of Middlethumpton. Midas Avenue was clearly nouveau riche. The shapely front lawns looked like artificial turf  and the flower-beds looked as if they contained pre-ordered pots full of plants and flowers that don’t grow outside in temperate climates.

“You have a good gardener,” said Dorothy, as they walked up the long drive to the front door, a carved oak affair at the top of marble steps. “I wonder how they keep the grass so fresh-looking?”

“They come every week to replace the plants, mend the turf and generally tidy up,” said Amy, “but I’m not allowed to talk to them.”

Dorothy thought of the hours she put into the care of her garden and decided she preferred geraniums doing their own thing to orchids lined up in rows and colour-sorted.

It took a while for someone to answer the door.

“Why don’t you just open it with your key?” Dorothy asked Amy.

“I only have a key to the back door and my parents would not want you to go round the back.”

Gary thought Mr and Mrs Campton sounded as nouveau-riche as their ostentatious villa looked, and they turned out to be even worse.

“These are my friends,” Amy said. “They’ve brought me home, Daddy.”

“Home from where?”

“From Dr Gibbons and a cup of tea at Dorothy’s friend, Cleo’s.”

“Well, if you are friends of Amy’s, you’d better come in,” Campton said, looking Gary and Dorothy up and down critically. “I though I don’t quite know why an older person would want to be friendly with a limited person like my daughter,” he said, looking at Dorothy mockingly. His first view of Gary was more positive, making Gary wonder if he was being assessed as a prospective groom or investor.

“So she is your daughter, is she?” he said.

“No relation. Adopted,” said Campton and Dorothy immediately decided that Campton would try to wriggle out of his molestation of Amy by arguing just that.

“You’d better introduce yourself,” said Mr Campton.

He jumped a step backwords when Gary told him he was a C.I.D. Superintendent investigating the illegal activities of a certain medical professional.

Mrs Campton had now joined them and heard most of what Gary had just said.

“I’m sure you aren’t talking about my daughter’s therapist,” she said. “He’s doing a great job. A month ago she did not have any friends and now she has brought some home so her communication skills have definitely improved.”

“They would improve more if you allowed your daughter the freedom she is entitled to,” said Dorothy.

She disliked these people and was anxious to leave, doubting whether they would be influenced in their opinion of Gibbons if they thought his therapy was good for Amy or even if they just thought he would take her off their hands. Gibbons was unmarried, as far as she knew, and Amy would admit and probably even describe sexual relations with him so that the parents could insist on Gibbons marrying her. It had happened before. You didn’t need to be in Asia or Africa to come across such forced nuptials. The women were invariably victims. But you could also argue that the British royal family did all they could to procure heirs for their dynasty. Wasn’t the fate of Princess Diana a glaring example? This was a time when Dorothy was glad she had remained single.

“What are you talking about, woman?” said Campton.

”Abuse, Mr Campton,” said Dorothy.

“I never touched her!” he said.

Gary shivered. The guy had gone on the defence too quickly. They had come to report Gibbons’ planned abuse and it looked as if they had someone in front of them who was no stranger to it himself. Dorothy had been right.

“What do you mean, Mr Campton?”

Amy started to cry. Mrs Campton frowned.

“He isn’t her father,” she said as if that legitimized his behaviour.

“So that makes abuse alright, does it?” said Gary. “A loving family, I see.”

Mr Campton had the decency to look guilty.

“How long has it been going on?” said Gary.

“Shut up,” said Mrs Campton.

Mr Campton said nothing

“Why didn’t you stop it, Mrs Campton?” said Gary. She had given herself away and he was satisfied that she had spared him a lot of questioning.

“I didn’t know about it, until….”

“Shut up, Rose,” Campton shouted.

“I got her an abortion and then it stopped,” Rose Campton continued, looking quite defiant. “The therapy was to help her to get over it.”

“This is awful,” said Dorothy as she put her arm around Amy.

“Where did you meet Mr Gibbons?” Gary said.

“At our showroom.”

“Looking at luxury limousines?”

“Doctors need good cars,” said Campton.

“Sort of like adopted daughters needing abuse, Mr Campton? Is that how you see it?”

“The little slut wanted it,” said Campton.

Gary took out his cell phone and texted to Mia to send a patrol car to Midas Road immediately and to come herself.”

“Five minutes,” replied Mia.

“So what are you saying, Mr Campton? That Amy seduced you?” said Gary. “I’m not fooled for a second. What about you, Mrs Campton. Were you fooled?”

Rose Campton had had her own life to lead, she said. Her husband had taken Amy in like a daughter.

“And treated her as a victim,” said Gary. “I suspect that you knew about the abuse and may even have condoned it.”

“I could not prove it,” said Rose Compton in self-defence. “Amy did not blame her father. She said it was someone at the disco. But she’s not allowed to go there. It was a long time before she said it was him.”

Gary turned to Amy.

“Is that the truth?” he said and Amy nodded.

”I thought the therapy would make her feel better,” said Mrs Campton.

***

Dorothy decided that the fortune-teller in Amy’s dream was actually that awful adoptve father. Did Amy instinctively know that she was heading for the same abuse by Gibbons? Or was she lying and Campton was telling the truth when he said Amy had seduced him? Not that it mattered who initiated the abuse. Victims were either silent or told the truth. Very few resorted to lies. Amy had wrapped herself in a kind of mental cocoon. Her body no longer belonged to her. She regarded the abuse as her fate.

***

The patrol car arrived almost immediately after Mia, who had driven herself in her own car and had brought Len Wolfe with her. She rang the front-door bell.

Gary moved fast, believing that Mia was bound to have difficulties with the Camptons. He was very glad to see Len.

Rose Campton was startled, but had followed Gary to open the front door. Seconds later Len and Mia and the two patrol cops entered. Gary  announced that he was arresting Mr and Mrs Campton for  abusing a dependant. Anything they said could be used in evidence against them. Mr Campton shouted that his lawyer would sort things out. Gary said that he was not taking any chances. They would be held in custody until the public prosecutor had considered the cases.

“Since we have two cars and Sergeant Wolfe here, these two suspects can be transported separately,” said Gary. “They are not to communicate.”

“What about me?” said Amy. “Do I have to stay here?”

***

Amy’s relief was plain to see as she watched her parents being led away. They did not turn round to her, even to say goodbye. It was as if she had never existed now she had in their eyes betrayed them. Gary was reminded of Cleo’s anguish at the knowledge of how much children trusted their parents and went through all sorts of nightmares rather than telling on them, while those evil adults spent their anger and hatred on their own offspring.

Even as a grown young woman, Amy had clearly found it impossible to escape the awfulness of her situation. She was not yet mature enough to get away from her own nightmare except by writing about it in her dream and despite the pseudo therapy being endured at the hands of a pseudo-therapist who was moving in to molest the defenceless young woman.

***

“I don’t think my mother really knew,” said Amy.

“Did you try to tell her?” said Dorothy.

“She said I was making it up. And then the baby started, but she still did not believe me. She got someone here to get rid of it.”

“Horrifying,” said Dorothy. “I think Amy should sleep in my spare room until further notice,” she told Gary.

“Pack a bag, Amy, but I’d rather take you to our cottage because I don’t want Mr Gibbons to see you.”

“I’d forgotten that,” said Dorothy. “You’re right.”

“It’s possible that we can arrest him soon, but how soon depends on the information we can get about him. We can’t prove that he abused Amy because he had not yet done so in a drastic form and we cannot arrest him for considering it. He could deny that he was grooming her for his convenience and we have no conclusive proof.”

“But you think he has a trail of past abuse to his credit, do you?” said Dorothy.

“I’m sure of it.”

“I wonder if he was affiliated to Ronnie Fish’s business,” said Dorothy. “It all seems such a small world.”

“I’ll get Chris and Colin to look through the documents we found at the Fish house. Who knows, we may be in luck.”

“You might also want to find out if Campton specialised in supplying gangsters with smart cars, Gary.”

Amy came down from her bedroom carrying a board-bag.

“Let’s go then,” said Gary. “You can return to the villa as soon as the forensic checks have been made, Amy.”

“I don’t think I’ll want to.”

“Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Dorothy.

***

Colin Peck spent a sleepless night at HQ sifting through databanks to find Gibbons. Chris went home to get a good night’s sleep since he had finished the forensic work on hand and wanted to be well away from HQ before another gruesome find was delivered. He would file his report in the morning.

Since he had skipped work all day Monday, Greg phoned Mia early on Tuesday morning to get the lowdown on what else had been happening over the weekend, thus avoiding a penny lecture from Gary, who was usually laissez-faire, but now genuinely worried about the expansion of the Amy case to include abuse, car-smuggle and money-laundering.

Bearing in mind that luxury cars could be a convenient way of manilulating cash, Gary had no doubt that Campton was up to something more versatile than abusing his daughter. He would also explore the off-shore banking that such traders used.

As for Gibbons, he had cooked his goose as far as Gary was concerned, but there had to be evidence. Would Gary have to wait long for proof that Gibbons had progressed from ghost-hunting to far more sinister pursuits?

***

Amy had moved into Grit’s little guestroom in the twin of the Hurley cottage that was now integrated to make one home for the growing Hurley family. Gary’s twin brother Joe lived with his wife Barbara and their baby son in a bungalow next door to the original Hartley half of the double-cottage. Grit and Roger were glad to welcome Amy. They would have long talks with her – not to replace the parents who had made her life a misery, but to get her away from her dependence on them. Grit had been briefed on the true circumstances by Gary, who had explained the situation to her after Amy had gone to bed. Grit was horrified, of course, as Cleo had been. Roger thought he had come across the name Campton, but had never been to the show-room. It was not even nine o’cclock, but Amy was grateful for the kindness she was getting and might possibly have been able to enjoy an uninterrupted night’s sleep for the first time since she had had reason to fear the unwanted attentions of that beast of a father.

***

The ritual chat in front of the log fire and drinking the coffeepot empty was a late hour Gary looked forward to every day. Cleo was always eager to be brought up to date and was now thinking seriously of re-joining the HQ team as an adviser, not least since it gave her an opportunity to assess the people Gary and his team hauled in on various counts.

Gary’s description of the appalling Campton couple and Amy’s ordeal incensed Cleo. Where were the social services when you need them?

“Amy never complained,” said Gary. “She just wnet along with it long after she was old enough to walk out of that villa.”

“Were social services anxious to avoid confrontations with the rich, or were they being bribed a blind eye?” Cleo said.

Cleo was now on a hobbyhorse of hers, an acutely aware of her own responsibilities as a mother.  Abused kids are not only found in poor families,” she lectured.  Any family could become dysfunctional. The Camptons were entirely disfunctional, after all, but ordinary people were often overawed by affluence. Money is power.

“Thanks for the sermon, my love, bit what should I do with Amy?” Gary said.

“Why don’t you leave that to me, Sweetheart?” said Cleo. “I can always use an extra baby-sitter and it will be good for Amy to be with the kids. She’ll forget what brought her here and she can stay at Grit’s for a few weeks.”

“Or at least until we’ve nailed Gibbons and dealth with her corrupt parents,” said Gary.

***

So when Grit brought Amy to breakfast at the Hurley cottage next morning, Cleo’s plans for the day included calling on Amy’s help with the children, but Amy should not go out for fear she might be seen by Gibbons, Gary insisted. He was sure that by evening or next day he would have enough evidence against that nasty customer to arrest him.

“Monday did not go the way I wanted it to,” said Gary. “Let’s hope I can do better today.”

Amy was grateful for what everyone had done for her, and said so.

“But what will happen to my parents?” was her immediate worry, as if they had ever worried about her.

“Your father will be charged with abuse, Amy, and for that you will have to sign a statement. We need to know more about the luxury car scam your father is running so that we can get him on that. We don’t know yet how deeply your mother is involved, so she may be freed in a day or two. I can’t detain her for being afraid of the consequences of telling on your father’s indecency, but there’s the abortion you were forced into. That is a crime and she will be punished for it. Do you know who the woman was who came to do the abortion?”

“She was an oldish woman and she was a proper midwife, I know that,” said Amy.

“But you didn’t want it to happen, did you?”

“I was drugged with something the woman said would make me feel better.”

“And you drank it all?”

“Yes. I passed out and slept through it all.”

“Did you get the midwife’s name?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Your mother will know,” said Cleo, “assuming she wants to be helpful, which she won’t unless she thinks it will help her.”

PeggySue appeared with her favourite storybook and went straight to Amy.

“I think you already have a job,” said Cleo. “PeggySue wants you to read to her. Will you do that, Amy?”

Amy reacted as if it was the first time anyone had asked her to do anything nice. She nodded and went to sit on the sofa with the little girl. Soon the pages were being turned and PeggySue was echoing every word of the first story.

“She knows them all by memory, Amy,” said Gary. “Don’t make anything up or take shortcuts.”

“I won’t,” she said as PeggySue chivvied her to get on with it. “I could live here forever.”

“You won’t want to when you have your life sorted out,” said Grit. “But you can stay with me until that happens.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s settled then,” said Gary. “I’ll leave the rest to you wonderful ladies.” A round of hugs followed before he finally left for HQ. He shook hands solemnly with Amy. Hugging her would not have been a good idea.

***

Colin Peck was waiting for Gary in his Superintendent office, enjoying the coffee Nigel had offered him.

Colin was lawyer and had joined HQ in the days when he was dating the daughter of Cleo’s ex-husband (but that’s a different story). He had cleaned up the HQ archives, digitalized all the files and made an internal database for local crime. For a lawyer that was small fry and Colin was ambitious. He was half way through an internet course on crime detection outside the forensic laboratory. What he had learnt about unsolved crimes had been an eye-opener. Even if Gary thought he should let sleeping dogs lie, but Colin was determined to analyse the legal reports and make his conclusions known.

“It was all before my time,” Gary had told him. “Roger had to make hard decisions. Things will be different with me in charge, but there’s no need to rub Roger’s nose in his failings.”

Gary felt a stab of conscience that he was sometimes negative about the guy who was now his step-father.

“I’m not planning a hate campaign,” said Colin. “Unsolved cases usually remain unsolved. Look at that dreadful case with Princess Di!”

“Don’t start on that, Colin. Royal houses only survived thanks to their treachery and ruthlessness and the Brit royals are no exception. I suppose they thought they were defending their rights.”

“With murder?”

“Assassination or fratricide. That sounds better, though you can’t rule out matricide and patricide,” said Gary. “There was no proof (at least, none was made public) that Diana’s so-called ‘accidental death’ was m anaged by her husband or the othersin the ‘firm’, so it may just have been an accident after all. There is good reason not to burden a royal house with crime. The loyal public want them clean and above board even if they have to turn two blind eyes to what goes on.”

“I’m not going to discuss that old mystery, but coming back to the present, you’re right, Gary. Gibbons has had a chequered past.”

“Tell me about it!”

“You could read the data I’ve collected.”

“I will, but can you put your finger on anything that could make me haul him in now? I’d like him out of the way.”

“For a start, he embezzled the house he’s living in.”

“It was an old relative’s, wasn’t it? We can’t get him on that without a not of research.”

“The circumstances surrounding the death of that relative are now historic, but an attempt was made to prove he had been murdered.”

“That’s more like it, but it didn’t work out, I assume.”

“Judging by the report I read about the inquest, it should have.”

“But it’s out of date.”

“The word murder only appears once, and not at the inquest, only as a suggestion from a minor cop that was poo-pooed at the time.”

“So Gibbon’s slate is clean on that.”

“Generally speaking, that is unlikely. As far as I can see, he has not actually qualified as anything, though he did study medicine for a few semesters. He left without any kind of qualification.”

“That may be where he gets his bedside manner,” said Gary.

“That is a euphemism if ever there was one;” said Colin. “He went to Spain and spent three years in prison for rape there. He had been practising as a doctor and helped himself to at least one patient. He was extradited after serving the prison sentence.”

“Not before?”

“I don’t suppose the British law system wanted him back. He already had a criminal record for offenses committed when he was a teenager. After that he reformed enough to get into a medical school.”

“Amazing!”

“His application for the medical school was OK. He did get enough academic qualifications for that. Down the years he has used some pseudonyms, but they were modelled on his own name and he went back to it after returning to the UK and, for the one and only time I could trace, actually found a job rather than inventing one.”

“Quite a biography.”

“I doesn’t end there.”

“OK. What was the job?”

“He was a chauffeur.”

“I smell a rat,” said Gary.

“He is one.”

“Who did he chauffeur?”

“Various people – usually those who had drunk and driven and lost their driving licences for a time. The most prominent seems to have been …”

“Don’t say it – a Mr Campton.”

“How on earth could you know that?” said Colin.

“By putting two and two together. I’ll explain.”

“He’s caught the Hartley Agency bug, Colin,” said Nigel who had been making coffe and now seved it. “Gary He ticks on hunches these days.”

“I hate to say it, but Nigel is telling a grain of truth,” Gary admitted.

“So where did you get that name?” said Colin.

“Supposing…”

“Once upon a time…” Nigel chipped in.

“Shut up, Nigel!” said Gary. “Supposing a guy came into your car salon and asked for a job? He had been in prison in Spain and had been thrown out of the country on  release from prison, though he won’t have admitted that. Mr Campton, the manager of the car showroom, had lost his license temporarily – a terrible predicament for someone trying to sell cars. He needed someone to drive clients around who did not want to do their own test drive. So he hired the guy to do that, bought him a uniform, and let him drive around in those smart carsand run him and his mates around when needed.. When our chauffeur-employer he did not need one any more he would have thrown him out, but our guy managed to persuade Mrs Campton that he was really a medical therapist and was about to inherit a house where he could set up a surgery, if only he had a little financial support.”

“So you are talking about Mr Campton, I take it.”

“Exactly,” said Gary.

“It sounds like a story in Crimes Weekly,” said Nigel.

“And that’s where Mrs Campton would come into the story. She was worried about the daughter’s reaction to the abortion the mother had forced the daughter to have after she had been abused by Campton.”

“Ofo course it could just have been blackmail,” said Colin, getting into the spirit of it. “I wonder what Gibbons knew about Campton. He must have hd a hold on him.”

“It may not have been exactly like that,” Gary conceded, “but it is a continuation of the fraud theory concerning Gibbons. We need something to charge him with. We can charge Mrs Campton with her crime because we can prove it by getting the girl medically examined, and even more so if we can find the midwife involved.”

“Name?”

“I’ll have to ask Mrs Campton. She’ll tell me hoping to exonerate herself, but it doesn’t work that way, of course.”

“Campton might have supplied Ronnie Fish with girls,” said Nigel.

“We can’t rule that out,” said Gary.

“There have also been stories about sexual predation, but stories are not charges,” said Colinnow in has role of lawyer. “Judging by his biography, Gibbons is a wily customer and fits in with the preditor profile. He probably also frequents the dark net, Gary. You could get an IT expert to track him and maybe catch a few others helping themselves to illegal photos and videos. The dark net is a bottomless pit.”

“We can confiscate all his computer stuff and deal with tha,” said Gary. “Better make anote of that, Nigel.”

“The dark net is all but impenetrable, isn’t it?” said Nigel, nodding.

“Perhaps not for a serious hacker, and we have one on our books,” said Gary.”Macintosh. Ex-hacker.”

“I hope he’s clean now,” said Colin.

“Governments hire hackers to keep their nets secure and if they are clever, they employ other hackers to double-check. In the end a steady job is more of a draw than risky manoeuvres, cynical though it sounds.”

“Is there no other way of getting at Gibbons?” said Nigel.

“We could send a decoy in.”

“A dangerous game,” said Nigel.

“I thought Mia might be able to handle it.”

“So you want her to get Gibbons to seduce her, do you?” said Nigel.

“I want Mia to get him near enough to handcuff him after she has thrown him with one of her Judo tosses.”

“He’d deny it all,” said Nigel.

“He can’t if his activity is recorded.”

“That’s on wonky legal ground, Gary,” said Colin.

“A girl has to protect herself,” said Gary. “Mia has no partner, so she could be looking for one, couldn’t she?”

“I would have thought her wretched husband Mike had provided her with enough distress.”

“She’ll be bluffing, Nigel, not genuinely looking for a guy.”

“On your head be it!”

“If she knows what the mission is, its legal police work, Nigel,” said Colin.

“Rumpole rides again,” said Nigel. “Or is it Perry Mason?”

“Any more coffee?” said Gary, who could see that Nigel had annoyed Colin with that comment.

***

Gary sent a patrol team to the Campton luxury car salon that morning. They removed all the documentation and Ned, who was an essential part of the team, confiscated all the electronic equipment he could find and was looking forward to cracking some codes.. He was not as much of a hacker as Macintosh was, but Mac would be on hand to get at the data if Ned had problems.

It would not take long to find out if Campton was in contact with Gibbons and Ronnie Fish. A print-out of previous emails would probably say plenty about the activities. Ned was worried about the possibility of them getting into a social network that could not be accessed easily, but the perpetrators of online crime usually worked to a pattern.

Gary could hardly believe that his almost fairy-tale predictions were coming true.

Mia was briefed on the Gibbons case and vowed to get an immediate appointment on the grounds that she was suicidal. The ruse worked. She would go there at 4:30 that afternoon; after surgery hours, apparently.

“He doesn’t have an assistant,” said Gary.

“All the more reason to expect something nasty,” said Mia. “I’ll switch my movie brooch on.”

“I was going to suggest that.”

“I have one with blue-tooth now, Gary, so you can watch the drama unfolding and record it in a streaming mode. I’ll send you the link.”

“I’ll be next door at Dorothy’s Mia. I’ll come to your rescue immediately something happens.”

“I’ll lay him out, Gary, but I can’t run to bracelets.”

“No problem. Good luck.”