Rachel

Rachel invited Detective Mani and his junior associate to sit on the couch, so it was easier to include Sean in the discussion. Her brother-in-law was lying on the chaise with a few strategically placed icepacks and a pained expression.

‘Tea, coffee, something stronger?’

‘No, thank you.’ Detective Mani was weary and terse. ‘Mr Sullivan, can you tell us, in as much detail as you can remember, what occurred?’

Sean outlined the events, the knock on the door, the forced entry, the violence. Mani pressed for specifics. What was the intruder wearing? Physique. Height. Hair colour. Was there a getaway car waiting outside?

Then Rachel was asked for her version, which was the same bar a few details. The intruder was stocky, about five ten, and had fair hair. The bat was not blue and white, as Sean had indicated, but purple and white.

Mani addressed the junior detective. ‘Do a doorknock up and down the street. Check if the neighbours noticed anything. Find out if they have security cameras. See if the bat has been discarded in any of the gardens.’

Once the door had closed behind the junior detective, Mani started to question Sean about what had happened earlier in the day, at Cabrera’s house.

Sean was both honest and unrepentant. Rachel winced as he detailed how he had got inside the house and what he had seen: nothing to indicate that his fifteen-year-old niece was being held there. The only saving grace was that he stressed that Rory had tried to stop him.

‘Am I going to be charged for this?’ he asked in a resigned tone.

‘Depends on Mr Cabrera. If he decides to press charges, I’ll request a formal statement and you might want to consider exercising your right to silence. But for now, this is off the record.’

Quite strategic of Mani to despatch his junior colleague to doorknock the neighbours. Rachel felt reassured by the fact that he was prepared to go off record, to bend the rules so they didn’t lose sight of their priority: Bridie.

‘Can you bring Cabrera in for questioning?’ she asked.

Mani didn’t answer straight away. He seemed to be weighing something up. ‘Cabrera is an open line of inquiry,’ he said slowly, ‘but we have others who are higher up the order.’

‘But Cabrera directly threatened my husband and the rest of us!’

He shrugged. ‘Men like Cabrera issue threats every time they open their mouth. It doesn’t always mean something.’

Surely what happened tonight showed that Cabrera did carry out his threats? ‘So who are you focusing on?’ she pressed. ‘AJ?’

Once again her question wasn’t immediately answered. The detective was clearly deciding how much to reveal. ‘Yes, AJ,’ he said eventually. ‘And Fitz Johnson. Both were messaging Bridie immediately before her disappearance. In fact, Fitz appears to have sent an SMS asking her to meet him at the bathrooms.’

‘He told you this?’

Mani shook his head. ‘We accessed the text through Bridie’s telco.’

Rachel’s head was spinning. She’d lost focus on Fitz. Now he was back in the mix, back on the chilling carousel of potential perpetrators. Had he met Bridie as arranged? Was Fitz culpable, or was he covering for Bridie in some way?

‘Can I see the dark-web videos?’ she asked, going off on a completely different tangent. ‘I might be able to recognise whose phone they originated from.’

The videos had been nagging at her from the start. Which parts of them were real and which fake. The clothes Bridie wore. Other details that might help establish a place and time.

‘I need to think about that,’ he said, his dark eyes veering between her and Sean. ‘Bridie is in her school uniform, younger than her current age in some of them. We’re of the opinion that the clips with a naked body have been photoshopped with her head, but that doesn’t change the fact that seeing child pornography, even with fake elements, is very confronting.’

How had these videos fallen into the hands of the scum circulating child pornography on the dark web? Had someone knowingly handed them over or was it a case of stolen data? What kind of people viewed or paid for this vile content?

The detective spoke again. ‘My point is that you, Rachel … and Sean here … and Rory … need to trust us to do our job. We get to decide what information to prioritise or share, not you. Every time you go off on your own crusade, it derails what we are doing.’ He stood up, straightening his gingham shirt. ‘I’m keeping this warning off the record. Next time I won’t.’