Moorwood had his back right up against the wall. He was so far back that he couldn’t see the distinctive form of Tony Woods looming large in the frosted glass of the back door. Collins knew that if Woods tried the handle or if Moorwood spotted him, it might be enough to push the desperate man over the edge.

She looked down again. Moorwood was holding the blade at a right angle to his wrist, which was the way they always show it happening on television. Collins knew only too well that slit wrists are rarely fatal – to make it effective you have to cut lengthways to expose the artery and then cut across it – but she didn’t want to give Moorwood the chance to hurt himself at all.

She held out both her arms so that her hands were just level with the bottom of her hips and took another step forward. Her palms were facing towards Moorwood, a classic non-threatening pose. She was going to have to call his bluff. And she was going to have to do it fast.

‘No one wants to see you get hurt, Billy,’ she said softly.

‘Back off. Stop right there. Back off.’ Moorwood raised the wrist with the blade next to it, an attempt to show just how serious he was. ‘I’m gonna do it, I’ll fucking do it.’

Collins kept moving forward. She was now over an arm’s length away – just out of reach, just far enough away for Moorwood to believe he was still in control.

‘Please, Billy, I only want to talk to you. I only want to –’

Her right foot flicked out with all the grace and style of a ballerina’s, her toes connecting perfectly with Moorwood’s scrotum, and the young man groaned and sank to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

At that moment Woods burst in through the back door and the two officers with him rushed forward, kicked the knife out of the way and began to clip Moorwood into a pair of handcuffs.

His hands safely clipped behind him, Moorwood was laid back down on the floor and curled up into the foetal position, still moaning softly. She looked down at him and all her mixed feelings about the case came flooding back to her. She hadn’t wanted any of this. She still didn’t.

‘Hey,’ said Woods. ‘Have you seen this?’

Collins turned and saw that Woods was examining the rear wall of the bedroom. Every square inch of space was taken up with newspaper clippings and magazine articles about the abuse that had taken place at the Penvsey School.

To the right of the clippings were three laser-copy photographs. Each had been savagely mutilated – sliced with razors, covered in an illegible scrawl, repeatedly stabbed with the point of a knife. Yet each one was still recognizable to all the members of the inquiry team. Woods recited their names out loud as he pointed to each one: ‘James Gilbert, Roger Wincup, Albert Davidson.’

Below each photograph a scrap of lined paper had been used to record possible sightings, addresses, telephone numbers and places of work. It was, to all intents and purposes, a hit list. The sheets of paper below the pictures of Gilbert and Wincup were almost full, while it appeared that Moorwood’s hunt for Davidson had only just begun.

Her eyes glanced over some of the newspaper clippings. Although Moorwood was never actually named, it was clear that the boy seen in some of the photographs and videos that formed the heart of the court case was him.

Collins looked back from the wall and down at Moorwood, who seemed to be recovering well from the low blow. He looked up at her, his eyes red with a mixture of pain and anger. A wave of guilt washed over her, and she had to turn and walk away.

A few hours later a more thorough search of Moorwood’s home had generated a wealth of material. There was no smoking gun – no blood stains, no body parts, no DNA material and no property belonging to any of the victims, at least not in plain sight. But there was ample evidence that Moorwood had been doing his best to track down some of those responsible for abusing him.

He had befriended several pub landlords and social workers and managed to trick them into giving him details of sex offenders registered in their area. In the case of Davidson he had recently sent a series of anonymous threatening letters promising that the man would suffer a long and painful death.

Anderson arrived soon after the search started, and he and Collins stood in the kitchen discussing their findings. ‘We know there’s a connection to at least one of the victims and there is also strong evidence of both motive and intent,’ he said. ‘I think our next move is an obvious one.’

Collins nodded solemnly. With Anderson following close behind, she made her way back into the bedroom, where Moorwood was now sitting up on the edge of the bed, flanked on either side by uniformed officers.

He looked up and met her gaze. ‘William Moorwood. I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

Moorwood’s face remained impassive as he replied, ‘Do you know what they did to me?’ He nodded towards the photographs on the wall. ‘Do you have any idea what those men put me through? You can’t treat people like that. You can’t do the things they did. They were all so smug. They all thought they were going to get away with it. But I was going to make them pay. I wanted to make them pay. That’s the only way to make it right. Don’t you see? For fuck’s sake, lady, just whose side are you on anyway?’

Collins could see the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes and hear the heartbreak in his voice. She pushed a lump rising in her throat back into her stomach so that she could speak again.

‘Take him away.’

12

They had arranged to meet at 4 p.m. and it was now well past five. He had been there the whole time, anxiously watching and waiting for her to turn up. He would, he decided, wait just fifteen more minutes before giving up. Fifteen minutes and no more. He had already wasted so much time. He really didn’t want to look like an idiot.

Half an hour later he was still there, drumming his fingers on the table and biting his lip to relieve the tension. He was rooted to the spot, too scared even to go to the toilet just in case he missed her. To pass the time he began playing solitaire and, during his third game, his patience was at long last rewarded when a high-pitched chiming sound from his computer’s speakers told him she was finally online.

He reached for the mouse and cleared the cards from the screen to reveal the dialogue box for the chatroom. He felt a ball of excitement rising in his stomach as he read her words. His fingers flashed across the keyboard as he typed his reply.

shygirl351: hello

shygirl351: um … hello

shygirl351: anybody there?

sportsfan52: hi – sorry, didn’t have the right screen up

shygirl351: ahh, thought you were ignoring me

shygirl351: lol

sportsfan52: no – I thought you weren’t coming

shygirl351: I got held up, couldn’t get away early

shygirl351: you been waiting long?

sportsfan52: yeah, but not a problem, I had plenty of stuff to do

shygirl351: maybe I can find a way to make it up to you?

He paused and allowed a smile to creep across his lips. He had been worrying about nothing. It was all going according to plan.

Jason Bevan had first struck up a conversation with shygirl351 four months earlier, pretending he was a fourteen-year-old from Morden named Sally. During that first chat, the pair had bonded over their mutual love of Justin Timberlake, swimming and Girls Aloud. Sally wrote that she felt particularly drawn to shygirl351 because, like her, she was obviously far more mature than most girls of their age.