Read Someone Out There for Free Online

hold of the number and used it. Credit card fraud is very widespread.’
    Barnes turned dark, confident eyes on him, ‘That’s why we’re checking Mr Pelham’s computers. To see what’s on the hard drives.’ He managed to make it sound both polite and threatening.
    ‘There’s nothing on the fucking hard drives. How many times do I have to tell you that?’ Harry leaned towards Barnes and banged down his fist hard on the table.
    Barnes looked at him, ‘Are you a violent man, Mr Pelham?’
    ‘Can we keep to the point, Detective Inspector,’ Ronnie intervened before Harry could react.
    The policeman had brought with him a large brown envelope and now he took out of it a set of photographs, spreading them on the table in front of Harry. They were pictures of children. Hard core child pornography.
    ‘Have you seen these before, Mr Pelham?’
    ‘Jesus Christ.’
    ‘Does that mean you have seen them before or you haven’t seen them before, sir?’
    ‘No, no, no. Of course I haven’t seen them before.’
    Harry felt nauseous and his legs were shaking. He opened his mouth to drag in air. Really, there was no oxygen left in this room, he could hardly breathe at all now. He saw Barnes watching him, and for a moment, just before he fell to the floor, was suddenly aware of his own open mouth, the nervous licking of his lips, the sweat marks left by his hands on the table. His body language was shouting out a message, a message that the detective had surely heard loud and clear, that Harry Pelham was indeed a thoroughly guilty man.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘It’s like the end of everything for me because Ahmed’s my whole world. I’m just devastated. I think I always knew it would happen but that doesn’t help, you know, when it does.’
    Mary Hakimi, tears rolling slowly down her face, went on to explain to Laura what it felt like to have her son snatched away. She wasn’t ranting; she was just terribly sad which made it all so much worse. She was thirty four, the same age as Laura, but her face was strained and careworn with lines of worry already carved between her eyes.
    ‘It’s been the worst two weeks of my life. I can’t even face going into his bedroom. When the news came – that he was in Tunisia – I suppose I should have been relieved that he was alive, but for me it was my worst fear come true; the fact that he was there and then knowing that I won’t be able to get him back.’
    Laura glanced at her brother. Clive Walters listened, scowling, simmering, occasionally grunting or puffing air into his cheeks.
    ‘I was always worried about it,’ Mary Hakimi repeated, ‘That’s why I came to you. And I thought once I had the order from the court that a passport couldn’t be issued, then Ahmed was safe. That’s what I thought. It was all I had.’ She sounded dazed at how stupid she’d been to rely on such fragile protection. As if she’d had a choice.

    Laura nodded, tried to say some words of comfort but they sounded wholly inadequate.
    ‘And to find out that you just forgot to renew it, well, it’s beyond belief and I don’t know how you can make that kind of mistake because it’s people’s lives you’re ruining. My son should have been protected by the law and now he’s been taken away.’
    An angry rumble of agreement came from Clive Walters. His fleshy face, with its heavy jowls, looked increasingly belligerent.
    ‘And don’t try telling us it’s not your fault,’ he said, ‘You won’t get away with that one. I’ve been on to your boss and he says there’s no doubt that Mary would have been sent a letter about renewing the order. That’s crap and you know it. She never got sent any letter.’
    Mary Hakimi seemed not to have heard what her brother had said; she was still in that dazed world of her own.
    ‘You have to understand, it’s my family that’s gone. Have you got children?’ she asked.
    Laura shook her head.
    ‘Then maybe you won’t understand how this has torn my life