Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [246]
“Did you?”
“Well… Yes and no. I was more of a breast man, frankly. Their artful presentation and all that. But times do change, eh?”
“And then?”
“Well, I met my first girlfriend when I was young enough for this to be— ”
“Freddie, dear, I’m talking about the computer. Is there something more? You said it starts out mild.”
“Oh. Yes. But then it goes on to men and women engaged… Well, you know.”
“Still normal curiosity, perhaps?”
“I’d say. But then it changes to men with men.”
“Because of Ian and Kaveh? Perhaps because of his own doubts?”
“Always a possibility. A likelihood, even. Tim would have wanted to understand. Himself, them, whatever.” But Freddie sounded so sombre when he said all this that Manette knew there was more.
She said, “And then what, Freddie?”
“Well, then it switches from photographs to film. Live action. And the actors— or whoever they are— change as well.” He rubbed at his chin and she could hear the scritch of his palm against the whiskers on his flesh and it came to her how comforting a sound that was, although she couldn’t have told him why.
She said, “Do I want to know how the actors change?”
“Men and boys,” he said. “Young boys, Manette. They look round ten to twelve years old. And the films themselves…” Freddie hesitated before he looked at her squarely, his dark eyes reflecting the depth of his concern. “Young boys ‘performing’ on older men, sometimes alone but more often in groups. I mean, it’s always just one young boy but sometimes there’s more than one man. There’s even… well, it’s a mockery of the Last Supper except it isn’t feet-washing that ‘Jesus’ is engaged in and ‘Jesus’ looks round nine years old.”
“Dear God.” Manette tried to put it together: why Tim’s interest would have gone from naked women displaying their genitals to male/female sex to male/male sex and then eventually to man/young boy sex. She didn’t know enough about young adolescent males to understand if this was natural curiosity or something more sinister. She feared the latter. Who wouldn’t? she thought. She said, “What d’you think we should…?” but had no way to frame the rest of the question because she didn’t know what the next step was beyond handing it all over to the police and a child psychologist and hoping for the best from there. She said, “I mean, for him to be searching this stuff out… We’ll have to tell Niamh, at the very least. But of course, what good will that do?”
Freddie shook his head. “He’s not been searching, Manette.”
“I don’t understand. You just said— ”
“Aside from the pictures of women and men and the male/male sex, which we might be able to attribute to his confusion about his father and Kaveh, he’s not been searching at all.”
“Then…?” She twigged. “He’s been sent this stuff?”
“There’s a trail of e-mails from someone calling himself Toy4You. They lead all the way back to a chat room for photography. I should guess that various routes through that chat room lead on to types of photography or photographic models or quirky photography or nude photography or any number of potential subjects from which users can then go into more-private chat rooms for more-private chats. The Web is called the Web for a reason. Threads lead everywhere. You just have to follow them.”
“What does this Toy4You have to say?”
“What you’d expect of a slow seduction. ‘Bit of harmless fun,’ ‘shows affection,’ ‘between consenting adults, of course,’ ‘must be of age,’ and then the switch to ‘Have a look at this and tell me what you think,’ ‘would you ever consider,’ et cetera.”
“Freddie, what’s Tim saying in reply?”
Freddie tapped his fingers on the desk. He appeared to be trying to formulate an answer. Either that or he was attempting to put together the pieces. Manette prompted him by saying his name again. He finally said, “Tim actually appears to be striking a bargain with this person.”
“With Toy4You?”
“Hmm. Yes. The bloke— I assume it’s a bloke— says in the last one, ‘You do something like this