Little though Strike wanted to meet Ryan Murphy for a drink, the Met’s lack of action on the matter of the Franks’ stalking had underlined the usefulness of personal contacts if you wanted swift action taken on a matter the overstretched police might not consider of immediate importance. As nobody on the force was likely to have a greater interest in establishing whether or not there were guns at Chapman Farm than Murphy, Strike had swallowed his increasing antipathy towards the man. A few days after first contacting him, Strike arrived at St Stephen’s Tavern in Westminster to hear what the CID officer had managed to find out.
The last time Strike had entered this particular pub had been with Robin, and as Murphy hadn’t yet arrived, he took his pint to the same corner table he and his detective partner had previously sat at, half-aware of a vaguely territorial instinct. The green leather benches echoed those in the House of Commons a short distance away and Strike sat down beneath one of the etched mirrors, resisting the urge to read the menu, because his target weight remained unreached and pub food was one of the things he’d reluctantly decided to forgo.
If he wasn’t particularly pleased to see the handsome Murphy, he was glad to see a folder under the man’s arm, because this suggested he had research to share that Strike himself was unable to undertake.
‘Evening,’ said Murphy, having procured for himself a pint of what the eagle-eyed Strike noted with disappointment was alcohol-free beer. The policeman sat down opposite Strike, laid the folder on the table between them and said,
‘Had to make quite a few phone calls to get hold of this lot.’
‘Norfolk constabulary handled it, presumably?’ said Strike, who was only too happy to dispense with personal chat.
‘Initially, but Vice Squad got called in once they realised what they were dealing with. It was the biggest paedophile ring broken up in the UK at that point. There were men from up and down the country visiting.’
Murphy extracted a few pages of photocopied photos and handed them to Strike.
‘As you can see there, they found plenty of nasty stuff: restraints, gags, sex toys, whips, paddles…’
These objects would all have been present, Strike thought, when he, Lucy and Leda had been at the farm, and against his will, a series of fragmented memories forced themselves upon him as he turned the pages: Leda, enthralled by firelight as Malcom Crowther talked of social revolution; the woods where the children ran free, sometimes with the portly Gerald chasing them, sweating and laughing, tickling them until they couldn’t breathe if he caught them; and – oh fuck – that small girl curled up and sobbing in the long grass while other, older children asked her what was wrong, and she refused to say… he’d been bored by her… he just wanted to leave the squalid, creepy place…
‘… look at page five, though.’
Strike did as he was told and found himself looking at a picture of a black gun.
‘Looks like it shoots out a banner saying “Bang”.’
‘It did,’ said Murphy. ‘It was in with a load of magic props one of the Crowther brothers had his house.’
‘That’ll be Gerald,’ said Strike. ‘He worked as a kids’ entertainer before committing full time to paedophilia.’
‘Right. Well, they bagged up everything he had in his house to test it for kids’ fingerprints, because he was claiming he’d never had children in there with him.’
‘I don’t think my source could’ve confused a prop for the real thing,’ said Strike, looking down at the picture of the unconvincing plastic gun. ‘She knew Gerald Crowther did magic tricks. What about Rust Andersen, did you get anything on him?’
‘Yeah,’ said Murphy, extracting another piece of paper from the file, ‘he was pulled in and interviewed in ’86, same as all the other adults. His house – I say house, but it was more like a glorified shed – was clean. No sex tapes or toys.’
‘I don’t think he was ever part of the Aylmerton Community proper,’ said Strike, casting an eye down Rust Andersen’s witness statement.
‘That tallies with what’s in here,’ said Murphy, tapping the folder. ‘None of the kids implicated him in the abuse and a couple of them didn’t even know who he was.’
‘Born in Michigan,’ said Strike, skim-reading, ‘drafted into the army at eighteen…’
‘After he got out he went travelling in Europe and never returned to the States. But he can’t have brought guns into the UK with the IRA active at the time and tight security at airports. ’Course, there’s nothing to say someone at the farm didn’t have a permit for a hunting rifle.’
‘That occurred to me, too, although my information was “guns”, plural.’
‘Well, if they were there, they were bloody well hidden, because the Vice Squad virtually tore the place apart.’
‘I knew it was a pretty thin thread to hang a raid on,’ said Strike, handing Murphy back the papers. ‘The mention of guns could’ve been said for threatening effect.’
Both men drank some beer. A definite air of constraint hung over the table.
