Rough Justice

Chapter 1

1

Jeff Brelsford poured the last dregs of the coffee from the jug and switched off the hot-plate. The dark liquid steamed from his mug as the bitter aroma assaulted his nostrils.

It was late for coffee, but Jeff wasn’t on Greenwich Mean Time with the rest of Mildenheath; he was running on Pacific Time. His contacts on the California coast would just be finishing their late breakfast or lunch and logging on to the forum.

The adrenaline surged in Jeff’s chest every time he sat down at his laptop, opened TorBrowser and waited for the status bar to tell him the connection to the Tor network had been made and that he was completely protected and cloaked in anonymity.

The Dark Web was where Jeff had been spending most of his time recently. It was a safe haven where he was able to find like-minded people who truly understood how it felt to be like him. He didn’t think he was a bad man. He hadn’t harmed anyone. Not directly, anyway.

It was a confusing place to be, inside a mind conflicted between a burning desire and a sense of injustice at what he saw to be a lack of understanding, stacked up against the knowledge that the rest of the world saw his predilections as vile and despicable. Deep down, he knew they were right. Underneath it all he knew his desires, although under control for now, could easily become dangerous.

He also knew he couldn’t let that happen. He’d already been satisfying his desires to a degree that worried him, even though he was under the relative anonymity of the Dark Web.

By its very nature, the Dark Web was almost completely anonymous. An area of the internet based on hidden protocols, invisible to search engines and general users, the Dark Web was accessible only using the TorBrowser software. It had become home to enormous online drug markets, with websites such as Silk Road openly and brazenly offering illicit narcotics for sale, safe in the knowledge that the very structure of the Dark Web made it very difficult for anyone to find out who ran the sites or who their customers were.

The common currency of the Dark Web, Bitcoin, allowed users to exchange money under the radar without linking it to their bank account or personal identity. In short, anything could be bought on the Dark Web, whether it be guns, fraudulently obtained credit card details or even hired assassins. Compared to that, Jeff had managed to convince himself that looking at photographs of young girls was relatively innocuous.

The forum had been set up a few months previously, unlisted on any Dark Web directories in order to ensure that only those who knew about it and had been personally invited would be able to access it. Jeff had been invited by a member of another forum, Deepest Desires, of which he’d been a member for a couple of years. Being invited to be part of the new, unnamed, forum had left Jeff feeling like the privileged new member of a secret club, heightening the surge of adrenaline he got every time he accessed it.

As Jeff saw it, it was far better that he and the other members of the forum got their kicks sharing pictures and titillating comments than actually going out and acting on their desires. That had got him into trouble before, and he couldn’t go making that mistake again.

He gulped down two mouthfuls of the bitter coffee and licked his lips, catching the rogue droplets before they splashed onto the desk in front of him.

The laptop lid was barely open when the doorbell rang, the harsh, shrill ringing catching him unawares and giving him a sudden start. He wasn’t expecting visitors. He reasoned it was probably someone collecting for charity or trying to sell double-glazing, knocking on doors in the evening assuming that they’d be able to catch people at home.

He unlatched the door and pulled it open. The man who stood on the other side of the door was certainly not who he’d expected.

‘Jeff Brelsford?’ the man said, his hands pushed into the trouser pockets of his dark suit as he c****d his head sideways.

‘Yeah, why?’ Jeff replied, sensing that something wasn’t quite right.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Richard Thomson. Can I come in?’

Jeff faltered for a moment. Had he somehow dropped a bollock on the Dark Web and managed to allow the police to track him down? No, it wasn’t possible.

Then again, it could be to do with the double-yellows he’d parked on a couple of weeks back. It had only been for a couple of minutes and he hadn’t been given a ticket. Or had he? Had it blown off the windscreen and been logged on a system somewhere that he’d ignored it? No, they wouldn’t get CID involved with something like that.

‘Uh, have you got any ID?’ Jeff asked, stalling for time.

‘Certainly,’ the man replied, taking his hands out of his trouser pockets and going to his inside jacket pocket.

Before Jeff could realise what the black and yellow unit in the man’s hand was, his entire body went rigid and he lost all motor skills as twelve-hundred volts seared through his testicles.