The child was tied to the chair, and there could be no doubt about just how well she was tied. Her thin arms were secured round the back of the chair with wrists crossed and bound with a cinch, ropes pinning her upper arms and elbows to the chair. As the small girl was naked, the ropes were creasing her flesh rather than clothes: enough to show she was tightly bound. The handheld camera tracked round to the front of the child, showing how the same ropes that pinned her arms in back were across her chest, her small nipples prominent between the strands of rope. The camera pulled back slightly to show that the child was bound at her waists and with ropes across her lap. Legs apart, so the camera could show where the waist rope conducted between her open legs was pressing against her little slit.

And all the time, the voice over was Grace herself, saying: "This is me all tied up. You can see how well they have tied me and I can't move at all. I'm used to being tied up now, so I don't mind. In fact I quite like it, mommy and daddy. Mr Black and Mrs White tie me up very well." The voice was relaxed, even happy. "I like being tied up now, I really do. I am a bondage poppet."

Poppet. That was what Mrs and Mrs Walton called their daughter Grace. Or used to, before she was kidnapped and these movies of her started arriving, six months after she was gone.

The camera was pulling back up towards the bound child's head. Even with the blindfold and the gag -- a somewhat severe ball gag that stretched the nine-year old's jaws wide apart, causing her to drool down her bound front -- it was obviously Grace Walton. The girl wasn't struggling against her bonds. Just sat, motionless, just a new drool of saliva falling from her gagged mouth, the slow rise and fall of her bound chest, the occasional and almost imperceptible movement of her head. The voice over, saying "Mr Black and Mrs White like me to be gagged and blindfolded, so I sit there and I can't see anything or say anything. I just have to be very still. But I like being gagged, now I've got used to it. Please don't worry about me, mommy and daddy. I really am very well looked after and I don't mid being tied up and gagged. Really I don't." The camera cuts to a long shot. The child sits motionless, legs tied to the front of the chair, even though her feet can't quite reach the floor, but well tied at ankles and knees anyway. The light has changed in the room, but there is a clock visible. It shows 3.30. When it was visible, briefly earlier, it showed 12.15.

Over three hours bound and gagged, a large puddle of drool on the chair seat. "When I get home, mommy and daddy, I hope you will tie me up as well as Mr Black and Mrs White tie me up. I do hope so. Please say you will." The voice was over a long shot of the heavily bound child held for ten seconds, then faded out.

"And will you?" Police Officer Lee Thomson, appointed as liaison to the family in this trying time, looked at Kathy Walton where she was sat body pressed tight to the cop.

"I don't know," said Kathy, her throat dry. "I watch these tapes and I think, I can't. But then I think of her being back here with me and, uh... I'd give anything." The woman looked at the young officer sat next to her, faces so close they were almost touching. "Sometimes... Sometimes I have to do something to myself, as I watch them."

"I know," smiled Lee. "I would too."

"I shouldn't," said Kathy. "I shouldn't feel like this." She sounded guilty, but already her hand had gone to her open legs, skirt hitched back. "But seeing her like that... I can't help it."

"Let me," said Lee, reaching down and putting her own hand where the mother's was, on the wet crotch of her panties, replacing it. "You play with your nipples while I do this," whispered the cop as her finger began to trace small circles on the damp fabric where it stretched over the woman's puffy sex. "The next part starts soon."

The image on the TV jumped from black to show the child stretched out on a single bed, arms tied above her head, legs bound apart. Naked and open. She wasn't gagged and this time there was no need for a voice over. She was smiling up at the camera as it closed in on her pretty face. "Hi," the girl was saying. "I'm all ready for bed now. I like sleeping like this, all spread out." The camera moved down her body, over her flat chest and ribs and sunken little belly to that bald slit between her legs. The camera held there as the child was saying: "I'm so comfortable here, tied out like this. Mr Black and Mrs White always make sure I'm comfortable and ready for a good night's sleep. I love being tied up at night, mommy and daddy. I hope when I get home I'll have a bed like this and I can be bound like I am here."

Kathy moaned as the cop rubbed harder, working her strong fingers into the woman's slit through the sopping wet fabric, while the woman's own fingers had found her hard nipples under her sweater. On screen the camera tracked back up the girl's naked figure, just as she was saying. "Goodnight, mommy and daddy. Time for me to sleep now. Love you lots," and a figure in white -- a woman's body, though her face was hidden -- was placing something over the child's mouth. A large adhesive tape, and smoothing it over Grace's lips to silence her. The woman moved away, the tape-gagged girl looked happy, the screen faded to black.

"Shit," moaned Kathy. "I'm gonna cum," she gasped.

"Wait," said the cop, breathing heavily herself. "There's more."

On screen the image flickered, a new scene. Grace standing, naked in a shower, heavily tied with ropes round her body and arms and legs, a rope from her waist pressing up into her slit, another at her neck tied to the shower-head to keep her upright. There was no water, yet, just a naked child waiting patiently to be showered. No gag, but that state didn't last long. A woman's body, in white intervened between the camera and the child. You couldn't see anything of the woman, but enough to tell she was a young woman by her figure, though the only part of her visible was her hands. No rings on her fingers, so nothing to help identify her. Mrs White, of course, plain and simple.

Kathy was wriggling and moaning, consumed equally by guilt and arousal, at what was on screen. The cop rubbed her clit harder, the woman in white on the screen had finished gagging the child in the shower (a simple tape over the lower face, waterproof no doubt) and Grace's sweet voice over saying: "Mr Black and Mrs White keep me nice and clean. I like being tied up in the shower, though I don't like the cold shower. That's what I'm having today." There was perhaps a slight sadness in the child's voice, but it disappeared as she continued: "I know being kept clean is good for me. I hope you'll keep me clean like this when I get home, mommy and daddy." The woman in white reached in to the cubicle (the camera zoomed in to show Grace's taped up face so you could see nothing of the woman at all but a blur of white) and the shower started. A muffled sound from behind the tape gag, Grace screwing up her face in the downpour, soaking her head in seconds. The camera pulled back. The child was wriggling against he ropes, snorting into her gag. The camera sound was on and the torrent of water - cold water - seemed loud.

Kathy came as she watched, and Lee clutching her tightly.

* * * * *

"I shouldn't do it," said the mother bitterly as she had a cigarette, hands shaking. "Why do I have to play with myself, let you play with me and make me cum, when I see my daughter all tied up and used?"

The police officer shrugged. "Because, Kathy, it's what you want."

"And what about you?" There was a hint of anger in the woman's voice. "You come here and watch them with me. Shouldn't you be out finding these people?" She nodded at the pile of video cassettes by the television. Twenty four in all, just about one arriving every week since Grace had disappeared. Twenty four tapes, of varying lengths, showing the young child being tied up, gagged and even spanked. These weren't however the original tapes. They were being gone over carefully by the police in the hope -- the vain hope so far -- of finding a clue as to where the kidnapped child was being held. These were copies. Edited, so Mr and Mrs Walton didn't see everything.

The officer didn't answer. What she wanted she was getting.

Kathy went on: "Or do I have to wait for the next tape to arrive? The next edition of the Grace show, hoping my daughter's okay this week."

Lee had weathered this sort of storm before, from other people under stress. And from Grace's mother over the six months she had been close to her. "You know I am here as your support officer," she said quietly. Then she added: "But if you want me to leave, Mrs Walton, then I will." The cop turned to the door.

"No, wait," sighed Kathy with a sigh. She stubbed the cigarette out. "I'm sorry. It's just that I guess I'm kinda stressed. I don't want you to go."

Lee nodded. She came back and put her arms round the mother, nuzzling her face into the woman and kissing her gently. "I don't want to go either."

"I'm sorry," whispered Kathy. "I don't want to lose you." They kissed again, and when they broke, Lee smiled at the woman.

"You want me to lick you out while you watch another one?"

"Yes," said the mother, with a gulp. "Can we watch the one where the man gags Grace with those old panties, and then the woman spanks her, please?"

"I like that one too," said Lee, guiding the woman back to the couch in front of the big television. The cop found the video tape quickly, but then she knew them all so well. She put the video tape in the player, and the two women would watch together as the little girl was tied up, gagged with Mrs White's revoltingly stained panties and then the detail shown in close up. There would be more, when the little girl was spanked by the woman and she wriggled in her ropes and cried into her gag as the hard blows rained down on her sore looking ass cheeks.

Punishment without end, delivered brutally by the unknown woman in white, carefully filmed by the man in black. But long before the video finished and the weeping, hurt girl was tied tightly back on the chair so she would have to sit on the uncomfortably hard seat with her butt burning, the girl's mother and the police officer would be lapping at each other's counts in a 69, not watching the TV at all.

They could however hear the voice over on the tape, the voice of Grace saying how much she loved being tied up and punished and mommy, will you do this to me when I get home. Please, mommy?