It was seven in the evening, and the CID office emptied out, by the time Gillard was able to turn his attention fully to the vigilante group. Before taking any claim seriously, it should be verified. Standard police procedure. Gillard looked up the AVENGE website, saw there was a contact form, and filled it out. He was not optimistic about getting a return message. As he scrolled around the poorly designed site the detective got a clear impression of amateurism. The grammar was poor and there were spelling mistakes all over the place. It was certainly not as slick as that of Dark Justice, a group that used online entrapment to find paedophiles and then turn them over to the police. AVENGE seemed to be long on retribution but less focused on which areas it should be applied to. No spokesperson was quoted, but the threat of punishment was made again and again. Undoubtedly, it was operating on the wrong side of the law.

Looking around for bodies, he saw that the research intelligence officer’s desk was unstaffed. Shame. He rang Rob Townsend at home. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Rob, but I need a breakthrough tonight.’

He asked the research intelligence officer to use his technical brain to see if he could find any contact details or addresses hidden within the AVENGE site. Gillard then made a few calls to contacts in the Met, West Mercia police and to the National Crime Agency. He was looking for an insight into the vigilante organisation, to see if it had ever been penetrated by undercover officers and to ask what would be the best way to pin it down.

It was eight by the time he made some progress, a call back from Detective Chief Superintendent Nick D’Angelo of West Mercia. ‘It’s a very amorphous organisation, no obvious leader. We’ve got some passive monitoring of some of the Facebook groups they are connected with, which gives a hint of what they’re up to. I did get a male officer into a meeting in Northampton a few times. However, my impression is that the actual cloak and dagger stuff is done informally by a few individuals acting on their own. The videos on their website are generally of the same three or four blokes, from up here in Birmingham to go by the accents.’

‘Ever had cause to arrest any of them?’ Gillard asked.

D’Angelo chuckled. ‘Yes, once, unsuccessfully. Three of them badly beat up a convicted abuser in a pub in Selly Oak. There were several witnesses, but once they heard on the grapevine who the target was, no one had seen a thing. Even the victim refused to press charges. It was a bit frustrating.’

‘What is your assessment of AVENGE’s effectiveness?’