Chapter 28
‘Welcome to the dark room.’
‘The what?’ I said.
DS Renton closed the door to his ‘office’ behind us. Suddenly, he looked a little embarrassed.
‘The dark room. It’s just what we call it, off the record. No windows, you see, and we always keep the blinds down on the door. Plus, you know, because of what we deal with in here.’
I looked around. ‘Good name.’
It was a small room, probably five metres by three.
The only free wall space was to allow for the single door behind me; the rest was lined with shelves of computer equipment, reference books, files and binders, above a handful of desks and gently humming monitors.
Cables snaked across the fuzzy, buzz-cut carpet.
This was the fabled LG15, then – the dark room – which everyone in the department knew of and hated the idea of visiting. Few ever had need to. It was the home of the specialised ‘live IT’ unit, dedicated to dealing with the murkier end of online investigations.
On the nearest wall there was something that looked like a CD rack, except the slots were slightly larger.
Each one contained a naked metal hard drive with a label scrawled on in ballpoint pen.
All names. Emily. Adam. Sally. Will. Every single one of the names represented a ‘child’ – a false identity, routed separately, that could be used by DS Renton and his small, hand-picked team of officers in chat rooms and online discussions to infiltrate paedophile groups.
There were also rows of disks used to store conversations and – worse – back up the confidential data from investigations: photos and videos. In this room, images of all types were analysed, categorised, catalogued.
Important work, but difficult and hideous – and done down here, behind closed doors, in a basement room without windows. Officers who worked here were screened more strenuously than those licensed to carry automatic weapons, and underwent more frequent psychological reviews.
Renton sat down at a desk and motioned for me to join him on a chair beside him. As I sat, he tapped a few keys and brought the monitor into life.
‘I’ve received the file,’ he said. ‘Not had a chance to view it yet. Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead.’
There didn’t seem to be any point warning him, given the things he must have seen in his time.
He watched the video clip in silence. My own instinct was to look away, but instead, I watched it again, hoping to spot something I’d missed on first viewing. Some clue.
It was marginally easier to watch now I’d seen it once and knew what it contained, but still tough.
What played out on the screen hit you in the heart as much as the head, or perhaps even somewhere deeper.
I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in my time, but I’d never watched someone being killed before.
The act was alien. How could someone do that?
How could someone be so vicious and empty as to cause another human being such suffering?
Do you believe in evil?
Renton, meanwhile, was professional and detached, but even he wasn’t impervious. He was obviously troubled by what he was seeing – maybe the day you aren’t anymore is the day you leave this place for your own sanity.
When the clip finished playing, he leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Okay. Shit. Tell me more.’
‘What we have here is evidence from an on-going investigation. This recording was made a few days ago – or at least that appears to be when the copy was created. We received it, with a letter, through the post. This man is still at large.’
‘This is … the guy?’
‘Yes, this is the guy. At present, we do not know where this location is and we do not know the identities of the six victims shown. Obviously, we very much want to.’
Renton blew out.
‘I can help you with that. Obviously we’ve done this sort of work before. The first thing we’ll do is pull out the helpful frames.’
Renton explained the process. What he and his colleagues would do was scan through the file meticulously, frame by frame, and make sure there was nothing we were missing.
They would get the cleanest shots possible of the victims’ clothes.
Coupled with missing persons data, that should enable us to identify them.
‘What about finding them?’ I said.
‘How much scope have we got?’
He meant money. ‘Given what we’re dealing with here,’ I said, ‘as much as we need.’
‘That’s what I figured. Okay. Well, the obvious stuff we can do is look for landmarks. At first glance, there’s nothing, but there might be something there that helps us pin down the areas to look at. For starters.’
‘And then?’
‘This is the expensive part. We can recreate a map of the terrain from the video. It won’t be perfect, by any means, but you’ll basically end up with an overhead diagram that maps the layout of the trees and the land.
Geographically precise, and possible to cross-check against existing satellite data. ’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Sadly, it’s not an automated process. You’ll need officers doing it by hand. And obviously, with tree cover, it won’t be exact.’
‘It’ll give us an idea, though: maybe rule out some areas at the least.’
‘Yep.’
It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.
I said, ‘I’m also interested in something a bit more … oblique. We have the what, and can work on the who and where. But why?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why make the video?’
‘That’s one for the psychologists, I think.
’ Renton shook his head. ‘I mean, you do occasionally see this kind of thing. That’s a generic “you” by the way, as this is one of the most extreme things I’ve come across in my whole career.
But serial killers, some serial rapists, they do take videos.
To relive it, I guess. And child pornography rings, obviously. ’
To relive it. If his letters were to be believed, that just didn’t seem like our man. He wasn’t interested in the murders themselves so much as using them as a test. Why video them, then? Was it just this one, so he could prove the letters really were from him?
Or was it something more?
I said, ‘Have you ever seen a snuff film?’
‘No.’ Renton was silent for a moment. ‘Not officially anyway. Officially, they don’t exist.’
‘What do you mean, “officially”?’
He gestured at the frozen image on the screen.
‘Well, this is what many people would call a snuff movie. It’s a film of somebody being murdered.
That’s rare but not unheard of. And there are thousands of videos of people dying on film – beheadings, accidents, CCTV footage.
But to be a snuff film “officially”, the footage has to have been filmed for distribution, for financial reasons. ’
‘To be sold for profit?’
‘Yes. And nobody’s ever found one. It’s one of those myths that sounds macabre enough to be true, but obviously isn’t when you think about it.
There’d be too much risk involved: killing somebody on camera and distributing it.
And there’s no need to do it. You could create the same thing with actors and special effects. Hollywood does it all the time.’
‘That’s not real though.’
‘No, but if you want real death on camera, it’s already there, risk-free. You’ve heard of Daniel Pearl? Or the Yellow Man? You just don’t go to the trouble – the vast trouble – of creating something new and trying to find a market for it.’
He was right, of course. Filming a murder is one thing. But how the hell do you then go about selling it? It’s not like you can advertise it in the back of the paper.
‘At the same time,’ Renton said, ‘something about it rings a bell.’
I frowned. ‘Pardon me?’
He frowned, then shook his head.
‘The clip. I don’t know what it is. It reminds me of something. I don’t know what.’
I leaned forward. ‘Another murder?’
‘No, no. Believe me, if I’d seen something like this before I’d remember it. No. It’s something else. I’m not sure what.’
‘A movie?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He shook his head again, as though dismissing the idea, and I leaned back slightly, disappointed.
He sounded faraway. ‘It’ll come to me.’