Chapter 14

“Oh Edward, you’re the only investigator who isn’t trying to scam me! The rest are all after my GoFundMe money, or they’re fantasists. Jeff and Samantha vouched for you as well — that’s why I trust you.”

Edward Pembroke sat once again in the Perkins’ house, his eyes drifting across the room to the places only he remembered — where he had stolen underwear, fitted hidden cameras, spiked a teenager’s drinks and, in the end, dragged her gagged and terrified into his van. Now, he was tat girl’s guest, welcomed as a confidant.

“Those shoes they found,” Charlotte stammered, twisting her hands together, “they say they’re Grace’s, but I don’t believe it. I just don’t.”

“And the phone?” she went on. “The police say she was getting messages on some online platform, but they can’t even tell what they said. They’re bloody useless.”

Pembroke forced his face into a mask of concern, resisting the urge to smile. He already knew what the police thought. To them, the search seemed hopeless, it was a suicide, and her body was lost to the sea.

“So a few people have come up to me about this white van,” Charlotte said suddenly.

Pembroke’s heart jolted.

“Really?” he asked, keeping his tone even.

“Maybe it’s nothing. But I told you before — someone was in this house. I know it. I never misplace underwear, and things were moved. I wasn’t imagining it.”

Charlotte leaned closer as she spoke, dressed in a low-cut black blouse and skirt, her lipstick blood-red, her blue eyes wild. She looked like a woman possessed — desperate, grieving, clinging to scraps of hope.

Pembroke’s tongue brushed his lips. He remembered his stolen footage: Charlotte in the shower, Charlotte stretched across her bed, playing with herself.

“The police think it’s a waste of time,” Charlotte continued. “But one of the houses further down the street has one of those motion cameras. He said it sometimes picks up cars driving past. Maybe it caught the van?”

Pembroke’s blood ran cold.

“Have you shown it to the police?” he asked quickly.

“He tried, but they brushed him off. Said they’d get around to it. For fuck sake!” Charlotte’s voice cracked as she grew animated, her chest heaving. “He doesn’t know how to work the thing. But you could look at it, Edward. You could check it for me. Maybe you’d see something the police would actually pay attention to.”

Pembroke swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yes ... I can take a look.”

________________________________________ Twenty minutes later, Pembroke stood in Pete’s garage, hunched over a monitor while Charlotte chattered with the old man in the next room.

The images froze him.

The footage was clearer than he had expected. Weeks of recordings, all neatly stored. And there — midday on the day Grace disappeared — the hired van. Pembroke felt his stomach collapse as he saw himself step from it.

The next clip showed Grace, walking home from school in her uniform. Then another motion trigger: Pembroke again, staggering beneath the weight of a black bag slung over his shoulder.

His blood roared in his ears. The picture was distant, grainy, but it was enough. They could trace the van number plate even if it was fake, to other footage. Maybe identify him from other camera footage or even trace his whole journey to his house.

“Are you getting on all right, Edward?” Charlotte’s voice called from the doorway, brittle with hope.

He steadied himself. “Yes ... just tinkering. Should be able to get it running soon.”

“Fingers crossed,” she said, praying.

Pembroke’s hands shook, but his training took over. A few deft keystrokes, and the three damning clips were gone — deleted, overwritten, erased. He exhaled slowly, relief washing through him.

A few minutes later, he carried the camera into the living room, presenting it with studied casualness.

“All right. Let’s see what we can find.”

Together, they scrolled through various motion captures of ordinary recordings — cars, neighbours, shadows.

“Nothing,” Charlotte whispered at last, her eyes brimming with tears. “Not even her walking home from school.”

“Yes,” Pembroke said quickly, “sometimes these cameras miss pedestrians. It’s the angle, the distance.”

“I’m so sorry, Charlotte,” Pete muttered. “I really thought I could help.”

________________________________________ Later, back at the Perkins’ house, Charlotte clutched at Pembroke like a drowning woman.

“You must investigate those schoolgirls, those bullies, don’t let them get away with it” she begged. “Please don’t abandon me. I’ll pay you — I don’t care how much. I just can’t sit and do nothing.”

“All right,” Pembroke said softly. “I’ll do what I can.”

“It’s just...” Charlotte’s voice broke into sobs. “I could accept it if she were dead. But if my baby girl is locked up somewhere, in some old pervert’s basement—” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God ... it makes me sick.”

Pembroke sighed and reached for her shoulder, his face set in sympathy. But behind the mask, his lips fought to conceal the wicked grin that threatened to break free.

---------- Pembroke had surreptitiously recorded all his meetings with Charlotte, and found great pleasure in playing the footage in the basement in front of Grace, playfully taunting the poor young girl.

Grace was now dressed in a thin orange swimsuit, cut high above the hip bone, the fabric clinging tight, riding up to cut into her buttocks, wedged deep in her ass crack, and pulled snug against the cleft of her vagina. She was perched on Pembroke’s knee, his huge arms around her torso, him sniffing her hair and kissing her neck, as they both watching the screen.