she bought citizenship and a villa with a pool. She drank a lot of pina coladas. Lottie got a passport and a new life which she disliked intensely, although you would never have known from her expression.
Andy Bragg’s ‘little black book’, full of incriminating evidence against the magic circle, was sent anonymously to Bronte Finch (although the envelope containing the memory stick was stamped with an Aguila postmark), to be used in evidence against Nicholas Sawyer’s appeal. It did nothing to mitigate Andy Bragg’s case as he died of complete organ failure due to sepsis a week after he was admitted to hospital. ‘Blood poisoning,’ the sister said when she told Rhoda. The cause might well have been the dirt on Maria’s filthy scarf he had staunched his wound with. Reggie like to think so anyway. Justice served.
Thomas Holroyd drowned in the swimming pool at his home. The coroner ruled an open verdict. Mr Holroyd was unable to swim and it was believed that he had slipped into the pool and was unable to get out, but the possibility that he’d died by his own hand was not ruled out.
Darren Bright, forty-one, was caught in a sting by self-appointed ‘paedophile hunter’ group Northern Justice. A spokesman for the group, Jason Kemp, said they had formed the group after there had been an online attempt to groom his daughter. The men posed as an underage girl, Chloe, and arranged to meet Bright, whose online profile was that of a teenage boy called Ewan. Using stock photographs from the internet, Ewan was ‘a very convincing avatar’, the court was told. The encounter was filmed by another member of the group and the video later appeared on YouTube.
After the video was uploaded to the internet, Mr Bright’s home was surrounded by a baying mob shouting ‘Kill the paedo!’ and he had to be rescued by the police.
A police spokesman said, ‘We do not approve of vigilante groups as it is easy to compromise evidence or attack wrongly identified victims, but we are happy that Mr Bright has been brought to justice.’
Vincent Ives is no longer being sought by the police for the murder of his wife, although they would still like to question him about his involvement in the siege at the House of Horrors (not their term). He is believed to have moved abroad.
When Ashley returned home to discover both her mother and her father lost to her, she found a note from her father that read, ‘Sorry about all this. Can you get Sparky back from the police? He needs walking twice a day and likes to sleep with his blue blanket. Love you lots, Dad xxx.’
Sophie Mellors landed on the National Crime Agency’s ‘Most Wanted’ list, and for good measure was also the subject of a European Arrest Warrant, for her involvement in an organization that went by the name of Anderson Price Associates. Anderson Price Associates was a front for a group of criminals, including Mrs Mellors’ husband, Leeds-based solicitor Stephen Mellors, now deceased, that was responsible for trafficking girls into the UK. They brought in innumerable girls under false pretences and the girls were then sold into the sex industry. The three ‘associates’ – Thomas Holroyd, Andrew Bragg and Stephen Mellors – all also had links to the case known as Operation Villette, but none of them were subject to prosecution in either case as they were all deceased.
Neighbours said that they hadn’t seen Sophie Mellors or the couple’s children for several weeks.
Sophie Mellors (‘widow of the murdered House of Horrors gang boss’) was long gone, of course, on a Brittany ferry to Bilbao with her two confused offspring in tow. Ida threw up for the whole of the crossing. When she wasn’t throwing up she was weeping because she had been forced to leave her pony, Buttons, behind, and the promise of a replacement in whatever country they settled in was no comfort whatsoever. There would never be another horse like Buttons, she wailed. (True, as it turned out.) Jamie had long since retreated into silence. He had read everything on the internet about Bassani and Carmody, as well as everything about the trafficking case his parents had spearheaded. He hated them for what they had done and despised them for getting caught.
Sophie had always been sarcastic about Tommy and Andy’s devotion to cash. Stephen’s share of the Anderson Price profits was salted away in a variety of untouchable Swiss accounts. She hadn’t spent years as an