‘Well, he’s kinda shy, y’know? He’s waiting for you in the car. I’m his dad.’

‘Uh huh.’ Daniel said he was shy with girls. He lived alone with his dad, just like she lived alone with her mum. He said that’s what made them soul mates.

‘You got your laptop in there?’ The man asked. He talked a bit funny, some kind of accent, Bianca noticed.

She nodded, the computer bag suddenly feeling like a sack of bricks on her back.

‘Good, Dan’ll be pleased. He’s got a heap of really cool games to show you. And he’s just downloaded another Katy Enigma story, he said you like them.’ He put his hand out as if he wanted to hold hers, but she didn’t take it. She was remembering Zoe’s horrible words at school: You’re ugly, you’re stupid and you’ll never get a boyfriend. And then she thought of Katy Enigma, girl detective, always ready for adventure, flying golden hair, long legs—would Katy go with this man?

‘Look, if you’re not okay with this,’ the man said, ‘Dan’ll understand. To be honest, he’s scared about meeting you.’

The man smiled. He had soft brown eyes and despite the strange nose and his peculiar voice, his face looked kind.

Bianca placed her hand in his and felt him shiver.

She didn’t know why, it wasn’t cold at all.

3

Wednesday

EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 020207

TIMTAM: send me pic?

ANGEL12: ok

TIMTAM: do u have webcam?

ANGEL12: no ... I wish

TIMTAM: tdtm

‘Only on Monday,’ Stevie spoke to the gathered year sixes and sevens in the classroom. ‘My partner and I caught a man who had tricked a young girl into meeting him in Kings Park.’

A girl with pigtails put up her hand. ‘But why would the girl want to meet him in the park anyway?’

‘He knew she was a big fan of a local rock band,’ Stevie said. ‘The man had been talking to her in an Internet chat room, pretending to be a boy her own age. He promised to give her CDs and posters; even a hat like one of the band members wears. You see, these people pretend to be whatever the child wants them to be in order to entrap them.’

Entrap, was that too big a word for these kids? Stevie looked at the faces before her, searching for signs of confusion. She detected boredom in some, giggles in a few, but on the whole most of the children gazed back at her in rapt attention.

At first she’d been slightly anxious when she’d learned that one of her roles in the newly formed Cyber Predator Team was public speaking, but to her surprise she found she was beginning to enjoy it. In fact, educating children about the dangers of the Internet was the most rewarding experience she’d had in her fifteen years with the police.

A girl with round glasses and a thick mane of dark messy hair put up her hand. Her face seemed vaguely familiar. ‘But how did you know the man was planning on doing this?’

‘Our operations room in Central Police headquarters is filled with computers. We take it in turns to watch the kinds of Internet websites we think Perth children might be interested in. I logged into a chat room devoted to a local rock band and called myself Angel12. Pretty soon I began talking to a boy who began asking me all sorts of personal questions.’ Stevie didn’t go into the lurid details. ‘And I got the feeling he wasn’t the boy he was pretending to be. We arranged to meet and it was then that I discovered that he was an older man.’

One of the boys laughed and whispered to the boy sitting next to him. Donna, the school councillor, wagged her finger and shut him up.

The girl with the glasses put up her hand again. She had a pixie face, the tips of her ears visible through her hair. ‘Anyone who gives themselves a name like Angel12 is looking for trouble. The name just calls out, “Hey, I’m a cute girl and I’m only twelve.” No one should give themselves a nickname like that, a predator would know straight away how easily someone like that could be manipulated.’

The boy sitting next to her rolled his eyes, but Stevie was impressed with the girl’s command of language, her confidence and her insight. She nodded. ‘Yes, very good.’ Where the hell had she seen that girl before?

Another boy put up his hand. ‘Yeah, but it’s only girls they’re interested in, yeah?’

‘No, not at all, quite a lot of these men go for boys.’

There was a chorus of gross, yuck and pervert from the group of boys in the back row.

‘But all this doesn’t mean you can’t have fun on the Internet too or use it as a valuable learning tool.’ Stevie nodded to Donna who turned to face the whiteboard. ‘I’m going to give you a list of do’s and don’ts and Miss French is going to write them down for you to copy.’ She had leaflets she could give them, but if they wrote it themselves there was a better chance they’d remember it.

The children rippled like the sea as they sought their writing equipment.

‘First, when you’re on the Internet, don’t ever think you know who you are talking to, no matter what someone might tell you about themselves—people will often lie. Never give out personal information, and never agree to meet anyone unless you can bring a trusted adult with you.

‘Often the predator will try to build up to a trusting relationship with you. He might start in chat rooms, then private chat rooms. Instant messaging and emails would be next because it gives both of you the freedom of not having to be always logged onto the Internet. The more confident predator might even attempt to telephone you. When you hear a voice on the end of the phone, it’s easy for you to think you’re talking to a friend...’

Stevie knew the talk by heart and had to remind herself to slow down. Heads bobbed up and down as the children copied the notes and Donna’s careful printing squeaked upon the whiteboard.

‘Another fine performance, Stevie, thanks for coming.’ Stevie and Donna made their way down the tiled corridor to the staffroom.

‘No worries, all part of the service; I think the message is getting across don’t you? It would be better if we could get more parents involved. I want to talk about the dangers of kids having web cams in their rooms. There are things the parents need to know that aren’t suitable for the kids to hear.’

‘I put a note in last week’s newsletter for the parents’ night you proposed, but so far we’ve only had three responses.’

Stevie sighed. What was it with these people? Child molestation directly resulting from Internet contact was rising daily, but it was a problem many parents seemed happy to ignore. Were they just ignorant of the dangers, or too busy with their own lives? It’s never going to happen to any of my children, she’d heard over and over again. No wonder she wrapped her own child in cotton wool.

In the staffroom Stevie settled into Donna’s cubicle with its window onto the oval. She had twenty minutes to relax before picking up six year-old Izzy from the school car park—luxury. She leant back in the chair and brushed her fingers across the bandaid on her cheek, teasing the minor wound underneath. The itch was a satisfying reminder of Monday’s successful apprehension of Robert Mason.

Donna came in with two mugs of coffee. ‘The kids loved your story about catching that guy in the park,’ she said. ‘One more chalked up to the good guys. I hope they lock him up and throw away the key.’

Stevie pulled a face and dived into her bag. ‘Probably not. From what we can tell so far, the attempted abduction of Angel12 was a first offence—he has no prior convictions of interfering with children. We found kiddie porn on his hard drive and that’s about it. We’ll be lucky if he does two years.’ She pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘This is between us, all right? I shouldn’t be telling you this sort of thing, but hey, there’s no names ... Can I smoke in here?’