‘Hey, Kelly, I’m glad you made it. You want to see this! Christ, this place is a shrine to fun, fun, fun,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ Kelly asked her.

‘It’s like my son’s university halls but twenty times bigger, and I know he’d hate for his mother to know what he gets up to, but I can’t leave my job at the door when I’m allowed to visit. This place is set up to entertain, and I mean entertain. We’ve got booze, cameras, music decks, film-making equipment, dress-up stuff, games and so on. Now there’s nothing illegal in that, I don’t have to tell you that, but there are a few images that we’ve found that might be concerning. Upstairs, there are seven master suites, and each of them has a collection of items that are quite obviously used for bondage games. Now, the disturbing and possibly illegal bit is that there’s a lot of schoolgirl garb up there. Now, when you come across a scene like this, that’s standard; these pervs love schoolgirl shit, but this is predominant. Also we’ve taken several computers – we won’t know what’s on them until they’re properly examined, including the master control for the CCTV cameras, but we found stacks of old-fashioned Polaroids – school-theme heavy – and plenty of them are of girls who look underage. Then there’s the drugs swabs – actually too many to give you a figure just yet, it’s everywhere. Whoever had the job of cleaning this place, they did a crap job, or they never thought they’d be caught, or they were just stupid and didn’t realise what they were doing. There are bags of rubbish everywhere. It’s as if somebody was in the middle of tidying up and just gave up.’

Kelly took it all in and looked towards the house lived in by Nellie Lowther. She’d told Dan and Emma that she was responsible for the entire upkeep of the place. In her investigative brain, none of it proved anything, just that there were private kinky parties here, in all likelihood with the owner’s consent, but if no money changed hands, then they were frankly legitimate and on private property. Except if the school paraphernalia wasn’t just fantasy. Depending on the outcome of the drug swabs, they could have the drug squad brought in and bring charges for that.

‘Show me the Polaroids,’ she asked.

The forensic officer took her to an evidence bag and handed it to Kelly, who, with gloves on, carefully opened it and looked through the contents. There were plenty of girls in various stages of dress, but it was difficult to tell their ages because of all the make-up and props. She stopped at one of the photographs, and stared at it.