by P. D. Viner
‘But not everything is quick and easy.’
‘No, no it isn’t.’ The flash of anger dies away in Chief Superintendent Drake’s eyes. For a second he looks human. ‘Your girl, Danielle, the murderer was never found.’
Tom shakes his head in reply.
‘I appreciate the way you work, the way you think, I just don’t have room for it here. A detective inspector should be like a shark – he needs to constantly move forward, needs to be ruthless. Needs—’
‘Drop the case off the rota. Allocate all the resources back out, move on. I see you need to do that. Just leave me on it, just me alone. One man. Please, for a few days?’
‘No.’
‘Sir.’ Tom can’t believe it. ‘The force has invested twelve years in me. You said it yourself: I’m the best FLO around. Give me three days on this case and I will crack it and then go back to being a FLO. If you don’t agree, I’ll quit and the investment in me is a waste.’
‘And what will you do instead?’
‘Be a florist.’
Drake walks around his desk and looks directly into Tom’s eyes. ‘I don’t like having a gun put to my head.’
‘Think of it as a water pistol.’
Drake narrows his eyes. The two men stand unblinking for a few more seconds and then slowly Drake draws away.
‘I am going to give you three days, compassionate leave. Unpaid. At the end of that time you will return to your former duties as family liaison officer. Am I clear?’
‘Why compassionate leave?’
‘To get over your fucking girlfriend’s death. Forget about doing right by her, or honouring her memory or any of that shit. You understand?’
‘And if I find Charlie Brindley-Black’s killer?’
‘Then you to get to act like a smug fucker for a few minutes and then go back to being the best FLO in the force.’
Tom is still for a second, and then bows his head. ‘I understand.’
And Tom does, he fully understands what he must do.
Eight
Saturday 16 October 1999
He wears black jeans and a chunky fisherman’s jumper with a leather jacket over the top. Without his uniform he feels almost naked. He gets off the tube at Piccadilly Circus and threads his way through the throng of tourists – each one taking photos where they appear to be shot by an arrow from the statue of Eros, Greek god of love. Tom notes the laughter, the colours – the buzz of being in one of the world’s most beautiful and entertaining cities.
He heads away from the crowds into London’s red-light district, Soho.
It’s half-past one in the afternoon. Sunny, but chilly. The colours seem to fade as Tom heads into the smaller greyer streets. He avoids rubbish and sticky congealed gobs of chewing gum. At night the area blazes but now red lights are unlit and neon signs do not shine or flash, they look drab in the afternoon light though they still offer LIVE GIRLS, SEX SHOWS and FULL NUDITY. Tom ignores it all – even the many open doors with smiling women – little more than girls, most of them. Some call out to him, others sway slowly to music only they can hear, fingers beckon. Most of them are lovely looking, even those who shiver half naked in the cold. Tom looks ahead, not catching their eyes – he knows how it works. These are the new girls, for some it is their first week. They are the draw – acting like brightly coloured flowers, pulling the drones into the doorway. When the men go upstairs they will be serviced by older, less lovely women – those who have been doing this for years and have lost their lustre. It makes his heart shrivel in his chest.
‘It’s awful, can’t you help them?’ Dani-in-his-head asks.
‘No. Turn over any rock here and all you find is this kind of sadness, this kind of abuse. I can’t help.’ He strides on, getting faster.
‘I wish you hadn’t joined the police.’
‘If wishes were kisses …’
He turns into Walker’s Court and past the Raymond Revue bar. Two men lie in sleeping bags in the doorway, a small dog between them. Above them a poster announces: GLAMOUR! Tom marches on. Walker’s Court is a thin pedestrian alleyway, an arcade of pornography that spills out into Berwick Street market. Everywhere there are breasts and penises – blown-up in photos or posable in rubber. He pauses before the small door to a shop called Pornucopia. Stuck on the widow, lopsided, is a small printed sign – MADE-TO-ORDER SEX TOYS HERE. Tom walks inside.
At the front of the shop are racks of books, they are old and dog-eared but none of them pornographic. Mostly they are kids’ books. It is a strange Westminster bylaw that says bookshops can carry a certain amount of hard-core pornographic magazines. So dirty magazine shops carry piles and piles of regular books – nobody buys them, nobody comes in to read them – but they are there. He sees a copy of Black Beauty at the front of a stack. At the back of the shop there is a pile of magazines full of photos of women fellating horses. It is an irony not lost on Tom Bevans.
There are no customers in the shop, just a single sales assistant sitting on a stool behind the counter, reading. He has a large bald head and wears a T-shirt two sizes too small. He reminds Tom of a giant baby. Surrounding the counter are boxes of sex dolls – most are moulded on porn-star bodies and are pneumatically well endowed. Others hold just heads with huge mouths – they look incredibly startled – or vaginas in boxes.
‘I’m looking for Finn.’ Tom doesn’t pull out his warrant card, which makes him feel self-conscious.
The giant baby doesn’t even look up from his magazine. ‘No idea,’ he gurgles.
Tom opens his wallet and takes out a ten-pound note that he slides across the counter and under the magazine. The assistant looks over the mag.
‘Please tell Finn I’m looking for something … special. If you get my drift.’ And Tom gives him the best leer he can muster.
‘Hang on.’ He heaves himself off his stool and disappears through a door at the back of the shop. Tom looks down at the magazine he was reading – Chicks with Dicks XXXI.
After a minute the assistant lumbers back through the door. ‘He’s coming.’
Tom waits a few minutes before a grinning Cheshire cat of a man emerges. He sees Tom and his smile is replaced with a scowl.
‘Hello, Finn.’
‘Blast from the past. Long time, PC Bevans.’
‘At least six years. And it’s DI Bevans now – and I’ve got nothing to do with vice.’
‘Nor me.’ Finn says it with such a straight face Tom can’t help but laugh. It is the first time he has laughed in a while.
‘I’m not here to cause trouble. I need information.’
‘Giving you information is the most trouble I could get into, Detective Inspector.’
‘It’s murder, Finn.’
‘It’ll be that millennium bug – gonna get us all.’
‘A girl was murdered.’
‘That ain’t news, not round here. This street alone is full of a hundred girls beggin’ to get done in. This is a fucking toilet. They come and go so fast—’
‘This girl had her stomach split open, and she was bled dry’
The big baby almost falls off his chair. ‘Holy shit-suckers.’
Finn narrows his eyes. ‘I don’t understand. What has this got to do with me?’
‘Nothing. But I think you might be able to help find the killer. You can do a good deed.’
He looks blank for a second then turns to the other man. ‘Go for a walk, Dave.’
‘Don’t wanna,’ Dave says, too interested in the murder.
‘Then go to the toilet for ten minutes.’
‘But—’
‘Go, now!’
‘Okay,’ he says annoyed and shifts off the chair. ‘Can I take this with me?’ He waves the magazine.
‘Christ, Dave. Okay, but keep it clean – we gotta sell that afterwards.’
‘Okay.’ And he leaves through the back door. Finn walks to the front of the shop and turns the key in the door.
‘I’m all ears, Detective Inspector.’<
br />
Tom nods. ‘The sign on your door – made to order sex dolls. I want to know about them.’
Finn opens his arms. ‘Look around, blow-up bags you can fuck. Generally they’re for men who are triple ugly or just have no social skills and are desperate. The dolls don’t need to be wined, dined or talked to. There are a few men who actually like the feel of latex on their manhood – a few.’
‘But these are just—’
‘Hold your horses, I’m getting there.’ Finn lights a cigarette. ‘The better quality dolls are silicone gel – a moulding process that was specifically invented for sex toys.’
‘Your industry’s contribution to science?’
‘I like to think so. The dolls are generally moulded from porn stars’ bodies, so most have big T&A. There are also your chunky dolls and some made to look like pop stars, you got your Britney for your lovers of dirty white teens, you got your Mariah for the busty Latino and we got your Janet for the connoisseurs of dark love.’
‘But these are all mass-produced dolls aren’t they? Your sign says “made to order”, how does that work? How personalised can they be? Can you choose hair colour and style, height and body shape – can you add a particular tattoo …?’
‘That is more than we offer.’
‘But does somebody?’
‘Sure, if you pay. In America and Japan you can get just what you want. Real dolls they call them. Men treat them like girlfriends, take them on holiday, buy them clothes and all that shit.’
‘And you can make them look like anyone you want?’
‘Not the most reputable companies – they have their own styles, but there are others. Smaller companies, the niche end of the market. You send in a photo and they make her for you. Or him.’
Tom thinks for a second. ‘What about here, in Europe?’
‘Not any more. Technology took over from technique.’
‘But what about before that? Was there somebody in the past – say early eighties?’
Finn thinks for a second, then his face lights up. ‘Oh yeah, there was the silicone king – what was his real name … anyway he was a pioneer, an innovator. He used silicone and latex together for the first time. Made realistic-feeling skin. He was as much scientist and chemist as porno innovator – amazing. I mean, I never met him myself, but the guy’s a legend.’
‘For creating a realistic feel?’
‘Yeah, but the other trick was that you had to go for a fitting.’
‘And?’
‘He measured your – you know …’ He points down to his crotch. ‘He made sure Mr Happy was decidedly happy. Bespoke really meant bespoke with him.’
Tom feels himself blush.
‘The story went that he used to work for Madame Tussauds, was the best in the business for getting the likeness of a celebrity, a genuine craftsman. Then one night, security found him fucking one of the waxworks – it might have been Grace Kelly, I don’t remember the details. When they checked the female waxworks they found he’d given half of them silicone and latex sex parts and would come in at night and screw them. They sacked him there and then, he left and started his own business.’
‘Making sex dolls?’
‘Making celebrity dolls who never say no. He was ahead of his time.’
‘Where was he based?’
‘Amsterdam – right in the heart of the red-light district.’
‘In the eighties?’
‘Yes.’
Tom feels the skin on the back of his neck tighten. ‘I need a name.’
‘He’s probably dead.’
‘I need a name.’
‘I’ll call my dad.’
Tom’s eyebrow rises.
‘This is a family business – he’ll remember his name, might even have a number. But how does this help find a killer here and now in London?’
‘Please get the name.’
Finn calls his father and they get a name – Maarten Meyer.
The day has almost died. Tom sits in his living room and waits. It is probably too late now, too late to get the call. The officer at Interpol had been very helpful. She promised she would get back to Tom as soon as Maarten Meyer, the silicone sex-doll king, was found, but that would be tomorrow now. If they found him, if he was alive, if—
‘A lot of ifs.’ Dani-in-his-head says.
‘A lot, but …’ tiredness leaves the line unfinished.
He goes through his thinking once more. Is this a credible chain of events, or just wishful thinking? He opens the case files again and looks at the sections he’s underlined. The three cases that Interpol dug up from 1980–1981. The first was from September 1980 and took place in Brussels: Dominique Duchelle, who was well known to the police as a dominatrix and had her own dungeon. She was found tied to what the police on the scene described as a crucifix – though from crime-scene photos Tom thinks it was the sexual apparatus that she used to tie men to and whip them. She had been lashed to it and a lark’s head knot carved into her chest while she was conscious. Blood splatter showed this. Then she was stabbed. The knife entered the left side of her abdomen and then was pulled right, slicing the belly and leading to fatal blood loss. It would have been quick. The blood then ran from the wound and pooled on the floor. Under analysis it was found to have been mixed with semen. Presumably the killer’s, though she had not been sexually abused. This led the police to decide the killer masturbated while the woman died. As an after-thought the notes add that she was wearing a silver wig that none of her friends had ever seen before.
Case two was a month later. Again she was a known prostitute, Gretta Sussmann, aged twenty-three. She was killed in the flat she used for business. This time she was found tied to the floor. Again she wore a silver wig, and again the wound to the belly was a deep horizontal cut. This time both facts were written up in the main notes and it was linked to the killing the previous month. The lark’s head pattern was carved post-mortem. No trace of semen was found near the body – but a plastic apron and underpants with semen on them were found in a public rubbish bin on the corner of the street.
Tom feels sick. He can see that despite so many avenues of investigation, the police did almost nothing to find the man who killed these three women. These three prostitutes… hardly worth the effort, he imagines the police thought back then. It makes him so angry. A tear run down his cheeks. There is nobody to champion the dead girls – except him. He will find the man who did this.
‘For me?’ Dani asks.
‘For you, for them, but mostly …’
‘For yourself.’
The final case was April 1981 and was in Amsterdam. The scenario was basically the same, a prostitute, name unknown, was killed by a knife wound to the stomach and bled to death. The difference here was that her hair was silver white. It was assessed to have been dyed like that for many months prior to death. The knot symbol had been carved into her post-mortem. No semen was discovered at the site but…
‘The contents of her flat. The list said: silicone adhesive and latex/silicone lubricant – that was why you went to see Finn?’ Dani asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Because you had considered …’
‘You know what I thought, Dani, you’re in my head.’
‘I don’t peek. Your thoughts are your own.’
Tom laughs wryly. It was exactly these two items that sent him to see Finn. ‘I thought he might have used a rubber vagina. It was a natural progression from masturbating into his underpants.’
‘A hunch? Or …’
The truth is that he already knew about ‘real dolls’, he had seen a short film and visited the website. Once, in the wee small hours of a lonely morning, he had thought they could make him Dani. A Dani he could touch, caress – he had imagined kissing her and making love to her – so desperately wanting her to be real. He shudders at the thought now.
‘Lonely?’ she asks.
He sighs. ‘So lonely.’
The phone rings. It is almost midnight.
‘Detective Inspector Tom Bevans.’
‘I said I would call you back when we found him.’ The Interpol officer sounds tired but elated.
‘He’s alive?’
‘Oh yes. He’s in prison for fraud – has been for the last seven years. I have the telephone number of the prison for you.’
Nine
Sunday 17 October 1999
Tom has to wait until after church to speak to the prison governor, who is a god-fearing man. While he waits he calls British Airways and checks flights to Schiphol airport. He books one for 6 a.m. the next morning with a return at 8 p.m. the same day. He has no idea if Drake will pay for the ticket but he knows he needs to go. Finally he speaks to the governor, who sounds like he is chewing a sandwich, but he agrees to let Tom talk to Meyer the next day.
‘I want to ask him about a man he may have met in 1980 or ’81. Is there any chance Mr Meyer might recall that far back?’ Tom asks, trying to keep the desperation from his voice.
‘Detective Inspector Bevans. If Maarten Meyer met a man in connection with his work, he will remember him. His memory is astonishing.’
Tom sees the day stretch out before him. He has never liked Sundays, they were always so boring when he was a child. Usually he would wake at six and know his parents would sleep until noon at least – both with dreadful hangovers. The living room was normally dark and full of empty bottles and ashtrays that stank. TV was not allowed until his parents were up and he was not allowed to leave the flat until then. He would read, that was his way to escape. At about 2 p.m. when at least his mum was awake, they would walk over to his grandmother’s for lunch. It would be roast chicken or roast pork. Either way the meat was dry, the potatoes like bullets and the vegetables had been boiling since Tuesday. Only the gravy was edible. Sometimes he dreamt of that gravy. After lunch everyone but him would fall asleep and he would have to watch the television, which was mostly boring except The High Chaparral. He drew the line at Last of the Summer Wine and would rather sit in the kitchen, at his nan’s Formica table reading the local newspaper. At about 7 p.m. they would have tea. He would make a grilled sandwich of tinned sardines, cold baked beans and cheese. Then they’d go home and his parents would start to drink again. Sunday bloody Sunday.