by Louise Voss
She looked away, blushing scarlet.
‘He tried to tie my hands together with a scarf. I didn’t want him to, but he wasn’t listening. He just kept saying, “This is fun, isn’t it? Let’s have some fun.” But then he got out this riding crop thing, and—’ She stopped, gulping.
‘Did he hit you, Roisin?’
‘I tried to ask when we were going out to dinner and he just laughed and said he wasn’t hungry anymore. He got more and more . . . worked up. It was like he was in a proper frenzy, hitting me all over my body until he . . . you know . . .’
‘Climaxed?’
‘All over me,’ she said, looking as though she was about to throw up. ‘Not in me. I mean, we never actually, you know, did it.’
‘No penetrative or oral sex at all?’
The girl shook her head, mortified. ‘Just kissing, and . . . hitting me.’
‘What happened then, Roisin?’
‘Then he got his driver to take me home. I bashed my face on the door frame, I was in such a hurry to get out of there. I was in a right state, and so these two guys came in the car with me.’
‘Which two guys?’
‘One of them was Mervyn Hammond. He looked, like, completely stressed, and he kept saying “So, you’re all right, aren’t you?” like he was daring me to say I wasn’t, even though I could barely sit down, Shawn hit me so hard. I couldn’t believe it had happened to me. I couldn’t stop crying. I was so humiliated . . .’
What an evil toad that Barrett was, thought Carmella angrily, and Hammond not much better, clearly trying to cover up for his protégé.
‘Who was the other guy, Roisin?’
She shrugged. ‘Someone from the record company. Gordon? Gary?’
Carmella didn’t recall anyone with either of those names.
‘From the Dublin office or the London one?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think I heard him say anything, so I’m not sure if he was English or Irish. He was nice. He put his arm round me in the car – not in a creepy way, just comforting me. . . . Then when the cheque arrived from Mervyn Hammond it was in a big package of OnTarget stuff, you know, CDs and T-shirts and what have you – I mean, like I ever wanted to see Shawn’s face again? You must be kidding, I thought. I threw it all out. Except the cheque. I had to tell my folks about the cheque because I didn’t have my own bank account then and I didn’t know what to do with it. I told them that they’d paid me off ’cos Shawn got drunk and shoved me into the doorway, and they wanted to make sure I wouldn’t tell the press or tweet about it or anything. I did have a big bruise on my cheek. Mam said it served me right for going into his room, and I was lucky nothing worse happened . . . I’ve never told her that it did. If she’d seen the bruises all over the rest of me, she’d have taken me straight to the police.’
Roisin was crying again. They were passing a scrubby little park, so Carmella steered her to a graffitied bench, sat her down and handed her another tissue.
‘I’ve never told anyone this before.’ Roisin sniffed.
‘You’re being really brave. And so helpful. Really. It’s been totally worth me coming all the way over to speak to you – thank you. So you didn’t even tell your friend Scarlett?’
Roisin shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘Never saw her again, or any of my other OnTarget friends. Couldn’t hack it. They think I’m a weirdo, but I don’t care. I don’t think I’ve been out anywhere since; only school and work. If an OnTarget song comes on the radio, I have to switch it off, or leave the room. If I see Shawn on telly, I have to go and actually throw up.’
Carmella wanted to give her a massive hug. She felt unspeakably sorry for her – but then thought that Mrs McGreevy could well have been right: Roisin was lucky nothing worse had happened. She thought of the mutilated bodies of Jessica McMasters and Rose Sharp and wanted to tell the girl that she might well have had a very lucky escape.
‘That Mervyn Hammond . . . he didn’t need to pay me off. I was never going to tell anyone about it anyway.’
‘You shouldn’t feel ashamed—’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s them – the fans. You know I said before, they can be vicious. If it was in the papers that I was accusing their hero of attacking me, they would kill me. Literally kill me. I’m not really scared of Shawn or Mervyn Hammond or anyone else – well, I am, but not nearly as scared as I am of the other OnT fans . . .’ She shivered.
Carmella took a business card out of her bag and handed it to Roisin. ‘Listen. I don’t know if you’ve had any counselling or not, but you ought to. I understand you don’t want your parents to be involved, but I know a few excellent counsellors in Dublin I could put you in touch with directly, now that you’re sixteen.’
‘You’re super nice. I wish more Dublin cops were like you.’ She blushed.
What a lovely kid, thought Carmella. She wanted to help her, make the bad memories go away as completely as the bruises Shawn had inflicted on her. ‘Are they not?’ she said lightly, smiling at her. ‘Anyway, I need to get going back across the water. Don’t want to miss my flight – and you don’t want to be too late for work. Did you want me to talk to your boss so you don’t need to lie about witnessing an accident?’
Roisin shook her head and balled the tissue up small, sticking it into her pocket. She stood up and tucked her hair underneath the Supermac’s baseball cap. ‘Na, you’re all right, thanks. I can handle it.’
Carmella stood too, delving into her bag for a biro. ‘If you’re sure. Just call if you change your mind. Or if you remember anything else about that night, whether it’s about Shawn or Mervyn Hammond, OK? Can you write your mobile number down for me in case I need to ask you any more questions later?’
‘Sure,’ the girl said, taking the biro and writing her number on the back of the second business card Carmella produced. ‘Well. I’m glad I could help.’ For a second she looked as if she was barely out of primary school. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to . . . be with a boy again,’ she said, her lip wobbling.
Carmella wondered if Roisin had somehow sensed that she, Carmella, was gay, and if she were tacitly asking for advice . . . but, much as she liked her, it just wasn’t in her remit to give that sort of help.
‘I meant what I said, about helping you find a counsellor,’ she said instead. ‘You’ve been through a major ordeal. It was lovely to meet you, although I’m sorry about the circumstances. I’ll be in touch, OK?’
Roisin nodded, blushing again. ‘Bye,’ she said, and put her head down against the stiff breeze, striding away towards the burger bar, her sensible trainers making no sound on the pavement. Carmella watched her go, the dejected slope of her shoulders saying almost as much about her as their conversation had. Poor kid, she thought. She wondered if Shawn Barrett had any idea what he’d done to her. It was as if he’d taken the spark out of her and crushed it like a lit cigarette underfoot. Even if she had been a bold little trollop before, too much make-up and slutty clothes, this was surely worse, this awful despondency and world-weariness in a girl who wasn’t yet seventeen.
Sighing, Carmella headed for the nearest bus stop back into O’Connell Street. At least she’d have something to tell Patrick. He’d want to get Barrett in for a chat, for sure – which would be a whole shit storm of media chaos and injunctions up the wazoo, if they weren’t careful. Mervyn Hammond would see to that.
Suddenly, Carmella felt tired and almost as dispirited as Roisin had looked. All she wanted was to be home in Jenny’s arms.
Chapter 28
Day 8 – Patrick
The cab dropped Patrick off outside Shawn Barrett’s apartment block at the same time that a white van pulled up. The van’s driver jumped out, sliding open the side door and emerging with a tower of brown boxes that came up to the bridge of his nose. He wobbled towards the door and was buzzed in, Patrick following, aware that the fifteen or si
xteen paparazzi camped out across the street were watching them closely. The paps looked miserable, huddled together in the cold, smoking and sipping from Starbucks cups. What a life. Patrick bet that each of them would sell his or her grandmother to do what Patrick was about to do: ride the lift up to Shawn’s home for an audience with the most famous – with the possible exception of princes William and Harry – young man in England.
‘What do you mean, he can’t come here?’ Patrick had said to Suzanne after she’d got off the phone to the Met’s press bureau, who had asked to be kept informed of all developments in the case.
She gave Patrick a calming smile. ‘I’ve been told that if Shawn Barrett comes to the station, it will be on the front of every tabloid in the country tomorrow, every celebrity gossip site; there’ll be fans blocking the doorways; photographers sticking their cameras in our faces . . . It will be mayhem. Until we get to the point where we’re actually going to charge him, when we’ve got a rock-solid case against him, we need to go to him. Discreetly. He’s agreed to meet you at his apartment in Chelsea Harbour.’
‘Agreed . . . ?’
‘Patrick, don’t be grumpy. It really doesn’t suit you.’
She came across the office, glancing through the window to check no-one was watching, and laid a hand on Patrick’s arm. He felt the current run from the point where she touched him through his veins into his chest.
‘We don’t have any evidence to prove it’s him,’ she said.
‘Yet.’
‘And until then, I’m afraid we have to play by their rules. Do you really want to be on the front page of The Sun tomorrow?’
So here he was, standing behind the van driver and looking down at the grey, churning Thames through the wall-to-ceiling window outside Barrett’s apartment, on the twelfth floor of a building that was home to a collection of Russian oligarchs, movie stars and bankers. Patrick had looked it up on the way over: a two-bedroom flat at this address cost upwards of £4 million. And this wasn’t Barrett’s only home. He also had places in Los Angeles, Ibiza and Stoke-on-Trent, where he had bought not just the ex-council house that he grew up in, where his mum still lived, but the entire street. According to the news story, Mrs Barrett didn’t want to leave her beloved two-up two-down, so Shawn had bought all the houses around it and was paying for the street to be turned into a kind of country estate, with landscaped lawns, pools full of koi, a sauna house (‘My mum loves her saunas’) and a garage full of Bentleys, slap-bang in the middle of the city. You couldn’t make it up.
The door opened and a man Patrick recognised took the tower of boxes from the van driver. Reggie Rickard, OnTarget’s manager. Rickard spotted Patrick, nodded at the driver and put his finger to his lips. Only when the other man was safely in the descending lift did he say, ‘Lennon.’
‘Detective Inspector Lennon.’
‘Ooh, sorry.’ He smirked. ‘Did any of the paps try to talk to you, ask you why you’re here?’
‘Yes, and I told them that Shawn Barrett is a sex offender who I’m questioning in—’
‘For God’s sake, man. Come inside.’ Rickard ushered Patrick in, flapping his arms and peering up and down the corridor. His eyes nearly popped out of his head, making Patrick think of a squeezed hamster. ‘You didn’t really . . . ?’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
Rickard pointed at him. ‘Ah-hah! A cop with a sense of humour. I like that. Mervyn didn’t mention that.’
I bet he didn’t, Patrick thought.
‘Anyway, come in. Shawn’s looking forward to meeting you, showing you what a lot of nonsense this all is.’
Patrick followed the other man down a short hallway, which opened up into a cavernous living room, flooded with light from the windows that gave a spectacular view across Battersea Park. A huge canvas hung on the opposite wall – a cartoonish scene created by a famous Japanese artist whose name Patrick couldn’t remember. The equally vast TV was on, the sound turned down, a PlayStation 4 plugged into it, with games piled up on the floor, spilling from their cases. And at the far end of the room, perched on a black leather sofa with his legs curled beneath him, sat Shawn Barrett, his floppy hair falling over his eyes, a bored expression on his face. He was staring at his iPhone.
‘Shawn, this is Detective Inspector Lennon.’
The boy-band singer looked up. His eyes seemed glazed, not showing much sign of activity behind them. Was he drunk or stoned? Then Patrick remembered Barrett always looked like this, except on stage or in his videos, when he would adopt a cheeky grin and turn on the charm.
‘I come alive when I’m performing,’ he’d said in an interview Patrick had read online last night; an interview in which every line Barrett uttered came straight out of the Big Book of Pop Star Clichés. This guy was so media trained, Patrick suspected, that the chances of a journalist ever getting him to say anything interesting were somewhere between zero and none.
‘Lennon,’ Barrett muttered. ‘Like that guy . . .’
‘John Lennon,’ Rickard said gently. ‘From The Beatles.’
‘Oh yeah! Love them.’ He squinted at Patrick. ‘Are you related?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh.’ Barrett turned his attention to his manager. ‘Did my deliveries come?’
‘Yeah, Shawn. Hang on a tick.’ Rickard left the room and returned with the pile of boxes, which he set down on the floor in front of the sofa. Barrett began immediately tearing them open like a five-year-old on Christmas morning, scrutinising each video game, DVD or gadget before tossing it aside. Only once did he pause, exclaim ‘Awesome!’ over some PS4 game, before moving on to the next parcel. Soon, the floor was covered with brown cardboard.
‘Do a lot of online shopping?’ Patrick asked, halfway through this display.
Rickard answered. ‘These are from Shawn’s Amazon wish list. He lists whatever he wants and his fans compete to buy the stuff first.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve had to ask Shawn to restrict the amount of stuff he adds to the list. The delivery company can’t cope.’
Patrick noticed that the pop star didn’t bother to read the notes that came with each gift.
After Shawn had tossed aside the last item, he returned to staring at his phone. ‘Tweeting,’ he said. He thumbed the screen, concentrating hard. ‘There you go.’
‘What did it say?’ Rickard said, checking his own phone. Patrick realised the manager was worried Barrett might have tweeted something about his own presence. A look of relief crossed the manager’s face. ‘“Just chillin.” Nice one.’ He winked at Patrick. ‘Bet that gets ten thousand retweets.’
Patrick tried hard not to roll his eyes. He scrutinised the young man before him. Could he really be a savage murderer? It seemed difficult imagining this spaced-out kid gathering the energy to make a sandwich, and it was equally hard to picture him persuading a girl to join him in a sadomasochistic sex session – let alone be powerful and cunning enough to do what the killer of Jess and Rose had done. But he knew for a fact that Barrett engaged in S&M. And Barrett had enough drive to achieve what millions of teenage boys only dreamt of. It couldn’t purely be luck; surely Barrett wasn’t a mere puppet? This slacker puppy act had to be just that: an act.
Patrick sat down in a leather armchair opposite Barrett, with Rickard hovering close by. ‘Shawn, thank you for agreeing to talk to me. I need to—’
Barrett interrupted. ‘What kind of music are you into?’
Patrick decided it wouldn’t do any harm to act friendly. ‘My favourite band are The Cure. Have you heard of them?’
To Patrick’s surprise, Barrett’s eyes lit up. ‘The Cure? Oh yeah, my granddad likes them.’
‘Your granddad?’
Rickard interjected. ‘His grandfather’s about your age. Shawn’s mum had him when she was seventeen. And her parents were teenagers when they had her.’
‘Yeah,’ Shaw
n drawled. ‘He’s into all that eighties stuff. Depeche Mode, The Human League. That miserable bloke – what’s his name? Morrissey, that’s it.’ To Patrick’s even greater surprise, Barrett started singing one of The Smiths’ songs, ‘Panic’. So he really could sing: his voice was bland but tuneful, and Patrick could imagine how horrified Morrissey would be if he heard this rendition of his song.
‘I met the guy from The Cure. He gave me a signed disc . . . Hang on.’
Barrett got up and crossed the room to a shelving unit, fishing out what Patrick knew to be one of the rarest Cure picture discs, an item Patrick had coveted for over twenty years. And it was signed! Barrett looked at it and then shoved it back between the other records on the shelf. ‘I need to get a turntable so I can listen to it.’
It was only when Patrick saw how Rickard was grinning at him that he was able to gather himself and remember what he was there for. He cleared his throat.
‘Shawn, do you know why I’m here?’
Barrett plonked himself down on the sofa again. He seemed more alert now, though he wouldn’t meet Patrick’s eye.
‘Yeah, Mervyn told us. But that girl . . . I thought she was over sixteen. Actually, I thought she was nineteen. That’s what she told me. And she was well up for everything we did.’
‘And what exactly did you do?’ Patrick wanted to see Shawn’s face as he said it, to see if there was anything vicious or gleeful in his expression.
Shawn opened his mouth to speak, but his manager spoke up first. ‘Shawn hasn’t actually admitted to doing anything at all with this girl you’re referring to.’
‘It sounded to me like he just did.’
Rickard shook his head. ‘It doesn’t even come under your jurisdiction. And we know why you really want to talk to Shawn. We know about this nutty idea you have.’
