“But this is something else,” Burgess went on. “It’s not even a matter of someone sticking his tongue down a girl’s throat or squeezing a breast. Believe me, I’ve had enough access to statements that I can say what we’re talking about here is the deliberate, arrogant and systemic abuse of innocent young girls—underage girls—by people who believe they’re above the law. People so blessed and so famous that in the general run of things they probably get more free pussy than they can shake a stick at. And what do they do? They pick on vulnerable thirteen-, fourteen-, fifteen-year-olds, and they assault them and rape them, force them to do vile stuff, and then tell them they ought to be jolly grateful for getting raped by Danny Caxton or whoever. These girls end up so terrified, so fucked up, that often the rest of their lives are blighted. They see themselves as natural victims and that’s what they become. All their lives, people abuse them just the way Caxton or whoever did all those years ago, and they can’t stop it. They can’t even figure out why. But even that’s not the point. The point is that these bastards, and I mean bastards like Danny Caxton, have been getting away with it for years and making us look like the fucking Keystone Cops. They’ve abused these girls and boys, just like those Pakistani grooming gangs in Rochdale and Rotherham, and nobody did a fucking thing about it. Not the parents. Not the social workers. Not us. Well, times have changed, mate, because here comes the cavalry, with a vengeance.”

“I never did think that,” said Banks.

“Think what?”

“That this business is insignificant, that what we’ve been asked to do doesn’t matter. And I’d certainly agree that some very influential people have got away with a lot of serious crimes over the years. Nothing new about that. It’s just so bloody difficult to put a good case together after so long, like I said at the meeting. That’s all. Memories change; evidence gets lost. People become convinced that something happened when it didn’t, or that things happened differently. It’s damn near impossible to sort out who’s right in most cases. All you end up with is a shifting sandstorm of accusations, lies, half-truths, minor transgressions and full-blown felonies. Nobody knows what the truth is, in the end.”

Burgess ran his hand over his unruly hair. “Too true. Too true. But we’re getting better. The CPS are building stronger cases, they’re more willing to prosecute, getting more convictions.”

“So we ride their wave of success?”