She slouched through to the over-crowded sitting room and flopped down onto an armchair.
“So, he’s dead. Good. I don’t see why you’re here though.”
Paolo thought it was strange she hadn’t asked how he died, but decided to leave that question until later. For now, he felt a direct attack about the blackmail would work better than trying to ease a confession from her.
“We’re here, Trudy, because we have evidence you blackmailed Montague Mason over a long period of time. In the end he took his own life because he could no longer afford to pay you.”
He’d been expecting a denial, but she nodded.
“I know,” she whispered. “I never expected that. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I thought he’d find the money from somewhere. He always did.”
“You admit it? You admit blackmail?”
She nodded, her head barely moving, as if she couldn’t be bothered to make any effort.
“What difference does it make now? I’m going to lose everything anyway.”
She opened her mouth to speak again, but Paolo stopped her.
“Trudy, I’m going to read you your rights. I’m also going to switch this on,” he said, showing her the small voice activated recorder he’d taken from his pocket. “Okay? I don’t want you to say another word until I’ve finished. Is that clear?”
She gave the barest hint of a nod, so Paolo went ahead with the prepared words. Afterwards, Paolo asked her if she’d understood what he’d read out to her. Again, her head hardly moved.
“I need you to say it out loud this time, Trudy. Have you understood your rights?”
“Yes,” she said and Paolo thought he’d never heard a more resigned sound.
“You are entitled to legal representation. Would you like to call someone?”
She shook her head.
“Trudy, for the record, you have to say it.”
“I don’t want to call anyone. Can we just get this over with?”
“Of course. Trudy, can you tell me how you came by the information you used to blackmail Montague Mason?”
“I told you when you came here last time. I like to know what’s going on. I poke my nose in where it’s not wanted. I get a thrill from learning everyone’s little secrets.”
“And then you use those secrets to blackmail people?”
She shook her head. “Not people. Just one. Just Montague Mason.”
“Why him?” Paolo asked. “Why not one of the other members?”
She started pulling at a loose thread in the brocade of the armchair. “It started as a crusade in a way. One day I walked into George’s office as he was putting DVDs in his safe. I guessed he didn’t want me to know about them, because he ordered me out and shouted at me to knock before entering in future. That made me curious, so I decided to find out what was on them. I’d long since found the code for the safe, so it was easy enough to go in and take one while he was out.”
She stared into space, as if caught by the memory. Still pulling at the thread as it unravelled the embroidery, she shook her head.
“You have no idea what depravity was on that DVD. Young men, naked as the day they were born, ran here there and everywhere, trying to find safe places to hide. A couple of minutes after the last one disappeared from view, a group of men dressed in red hunting outfits came through from the billiard room. One of them was blowing one of those horns they use for fox hunts and they were all yelling tally-ho and other stupid hunting cries. It didn’t take them long to find one of the young men. They dragged him out from a cupboard. He was screaming. Begging them not to hurt him.”
Tears fell unheeded onto her dressing gown.
“George wasn’t part of the pack, but he appeared from the top of the stairs and called all the others out of hiding. Told them they were safe for this month. They fled upstairs. George told the members to enjoy their prize and he went back to wherever he’d been before they found the boy.”
Paolo didn’t want to know the answer, but had to ask the question.
“What happened next?”
“Can’t you guess? They took it in turns to use him. He was bleeding by the time they’d finished. One of the first in the queue was Montague bloody Mason, the so-called social pioneer who was going to help all the young people in Bradchester to become better citizens.”
She brushed a hand roughly across her face as if her tears offended her.
“So you decided to blackmail him rather than take the DVD to the police? You could have used it to rescue the young men.”
“That’s what I should have done. Do you think I don’t know that?”
Paolo handed her a tissue. “So why didn’t you?”
“Debt. I was up to my eyes in debt. Still am. I thought I’d use the knowledge to get some money, clear my debts and then go to the police.”
She fell silent.
“But?” Paolo prompted.
“I gamble. I have an online account that somehow never seems to be in credit. I borrowed from one of those Pay Day loan companies to get through one month, but then needed to borrow from another one to make the payments on the first one. Before I knew where I was, I owed thousands and couldn’t pay my mortgage on this place.”
The thread she’d been pulling finally came away from the fabric. She looked at it wound round her fingers as if she couldn’t work out where it had come from.
“It didn’t seem fair. I’ve never hurt anyone, not like those revolting men, and I thought, why not make him pay? So that’s what I did.”
“Do you still have the DVD?”
She shook her head. “No, I put it back in the safe the first chance I got. I don’t think George ever noticed it had been missing. There are loads of them in the safe at the club.”
“Weren’t you worried he’d be on to you?”
She shook her head. “Not until you lot came round. After that, I realised it was only a matter of time before he twigged the blackmailer might be me. I knew about his temper, so decided to learn how to protect myself.”
“You had a lesson with April Greychurch.”
She nodded. “Just the one, but it didn’t do me any good. When I came out of the youth centre, George and Chaz were sitting in George’s parked car, waiting for me. He told me I was fired and to follow him to the club in my own car to collect my things. When I got to my office, Chaz went off somewhere, but George locked the door and told me he knew I’d been blackmailing Mason.”
“How did he know it was you?”
“He said it could only be me. No one else could have found out about Montague Mason. He told me he remembered me coming in when he was putting the DVDs away. I denied it all at first, but then he started punching and kicking me, calling me names. The next thing I knew, his hands were round my throat and I couldn’t breathe.” As she took a breath, a look of venom passed across her face. “I’m glad the bastard is dead. I hope he suffered. Did he?”
Paolo ignored the question. “Is that why he gave you such a handsome payoff? So that you wouldn’t file a complaint against him? Surely he must have realised you were in no position to do any such thing considering that would raise the blackmail issue?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t that,” she whispered. “The violence must have got him worked up because…because…”
Paolo watched as her composure crumpled. She began to shake. Her mouth moved soundlessly, as if she wanted to get the words out, but they turned to vapour before she could formulate them.
“Trudy, I’m sorry, I have to ask. What happened?”
She finally got the words out. “He raped me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Paolo stood in front of the board, wiping out the references to Montague Mason’s suicide and blackmail. Over the last few days, Trudy had been charged and released on bail, pending a trial date. He’d taken no joy in charging her, but was pleased to be able to delete at least one of the many puzzles from the board. Montague’s name remained up there, though, becaus
e they still had no idea who’d defaced the plaque.
It had been the catalyst for so much of the violence that followed that he couldn’t simply put it down to a prank and ignore it, even though there were far more serious crimes still unsolved. He turned to his team, who were patiently waiting for a few words of wisdom. Paolo wished he had some to give.
“Okay, we’ve cleared up the blackmail issue, but we’re no nearer to finding out who murdered Derrick Walden. We know George Baron and Chaz were both at the youth centre that night, but we haven’t yet uncovered a connection between them. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, just that if there is, we haven’t found it.”
He glanced over at Andrea.
“What’s the situation with the online searches on the three of them? Any chat room activity? Are they Facebook friends? Members of the same online club or forum?”
Andrea shook her head. “I’ve been through the links on hundreds of search engine pages and found nothing. I’ve only got three pages left to go through. If I don’t find something on one of those, it’s highly unlikely there’s a connection to find.”
Paolo nodded. “Stay with it.”
He looked across the room. “As you all know, the DVDs are the key to being able to charge people over the club activities. If we could find those, Chaz would be back behind bars and the special club members would become likely cellmates. We’ve searched the club and George’s house with no joy.” He sighed. “It’s possible they were destroyed when George discovered Trudy had used the contents to blackmail Montague, but they might still be hidden somewhere. I want you all to dig into every scrap of information you have. Is there anywhere we might have overlooked?”
He half turned to tap on the board.
“And then there’s Baron’s murder. Don’t forget, we have a sadist to find and whoever that is, the killer has to have a link of some kind to George Baron and, probably, other men who have been tortured in a similar fashion. If we can find out what that connection is, we can probably follow the trail back to George Baron’s murderer.”
He noticed a lack of enthusiasm on a couple of faces. It was most marked on the face of Detective Constable Jack Cummings.
“Not keen to find a killer?” Paolo asked.
“It’s not that, sir. It’s hard to feel outrage on behalf of a victim like George Baron.”
Paolo looked hard at the DC. Jack was the one Paolo suspected of leaving those nasty messages on Dave’s desk. He’d never caught him in the act, but knew the man mistakenly saw Dave as a blockage to his own advancement.
“I couldn’t care less who the victim is or was. We can’t pick and choose who we go after and who we don’t. Do you want to live in a country where the government says some people are allowed to get away with murder because they’re only killing off the scum? If that’s the case, you may not be right for this job. If you honestly feel that way, you’re definitely not right for my team. We go after the bad people, regardless of who their victims might be.”
He waited to make sure his words had hit home, pleased to see Jack could no longer look him in the eye.
“Right, I’m off to the PM on George Baron. Dave, I want you with me. The rest of you, keep digging.”
***
As always during a post mortem, Paolo wished he hadn’t elected to attend. It was with some relief he watched Barbara move over to the wash basin to clean up.
“My office?” she said as she turned back towards them.
Paolo nodded and waited with Dave by the door for Barbara to join them. They walked together along the corridor in silence; Paolo forced himself not to ask questions until they were sitting down and Barbara was ready to talk.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Paolo and Dave both nodded.
“Your coffee is wonderful,” Dave said. “Much better than the revolting stuff we get in the machines back at the station.”
Paolo watched as Barbara expertly manipulated her fancy coffee maker. Capsules in one end, delicious coffee out the other. The shorter hairstyle she’d kept since she’d finished chemo suited her. She looked on the road to recovery, he decided. Not yet back to her old self, but fine to people who didn’t know her as well as he did.
As she placed the tray of coffee on her desk, Paolo noticed she was frowning.
“I recognise that look,” he said. “What is it about this victim that’s troubling you?”
“Cause of death,” she said, sitting down and lifting a cup to smell the aroma.
“But isn’t that straightforward? You said he had strangulation marks around his throat. If that didn’t kill him, what did?”
Barbara took a sip, then put her cup down and stared at them across her desk.
“Suffocation,” she said, “probably with a pillow. I won’t know for sure until I send the microscopic piece of feather I found in his bronchial tubes away for analysis, but it seems likely a feather pillow was the murder weapon.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Paolo said. “He’d been burned with the tazer, anally raped, strangled, but what actually killed him was a feather pillow?”
She smiled. “I said probably a feather pillow, but definitely suffocation. The rape is odd as well.”
Paolo raised his arms in surrender. “Everything is odd about this one. Go on; tell me what’s particularly odd about the rape?”
“The direction of the thrusts, for one thing. I’ve been trying to picture the angle in which he must have been held for the wounds to be inflicted and it just doesn’t add up. If I place his body in one position, the angle of damage is wrong, but if I put his body into the right position for the angle of damage I can’t see how the rapist could get himself into the right place for penetration.”
Paolo shook his head. “Sorry, Barbara, you’ve lost me.”
She picked up her phone and opened the cover to form an L shape, then placed it face down on the edge of the desk with the flap hanging straight down towards the floor.
“Let’s say George Baron had been tied to a structure, a table of some sort, which he was, judging by the marks on his wrists and ankles. That would leave him in this position, with his legs hanging down towards the floor like the flap of my phone. With me so far?”
Paolo and Dave both nodded.
“Right, well the angle of damage, the angle of thrust, if you like, should be along this trajectory.” She pointed with her finger in a line level with the back of the phone. “But it isn’t. The angle of damage follows a downward line. The only way to get that line would be to lift his rear end like this.”
She picked up the phone case by the join where it hung over the edge of the table and raised it so that the top of the phone was still touching the desk, but the corner of the L shape was in the air.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible, but how would the rapist achieve that?”
Paolo smiled. “I can hear in your voice you have an alternative suggestion.”
She nodded. “Yes, and it’s consistent with the extensive internal injuries inflicted. I think the main damage was caused by a very large penis-shaped solid object inserted by hand.”
“So no normal penetration?” Paolo asked. “Please note, I’m using the word normal selectively here.”
Barbara shrugged. “Impossible to say. I found traces of lubricant, which implies penile penetration, but obviously no semen to test for DNA.”
Paolo groaned.
“Now comes the good news,” Barbara said. “I was able to lift traces of foreign matter from the depressions on his throat. I’ll send them away for analysis.”
Paolo smiled. “That’s the most positive thing I’ve heard in ages. Can you give us an estimated time of death?”
She nodded. “Judging by the state of decomposition, I’d say he’d been dead approximately a week when we found him.”
Paolo thought about the timing for a moment. “So that would mean he died about three days after the last time anyone saw him. Thanks, Barbara, you’ve been a great help,
as always. And thank you for the coffee.”
As Paolo waited for Dave to carry the tray back to the coffee machine, he had the feeling of being watched. He turned quickly to find Barbara looking at him as if she was sending a silent message.
He waited, but she shook her head and glanced in Dave’s direction. Whatever it was, she obviously wasn’t going to say it in front of an audience.
***
Paolo arrived back at his office still wondering what Barbara had wanted to get across to him. He had a strong suspicion it was to do with what she’d murmured when she was floating in and out of consciousness after her operation the previous year.
As he walked into the main room, Andrea stood up, a look of suppressed excitement on her face.
“I think we might finally have found something, sir.”
Paolo walked over to her desk. “Really? I could do with some good news. What’ve you got for me?”
She turned a printed page towards him. “This blog, Nemesis in Action, is encrypted. I’ve tried everything I know to get into it, but haven’t been able to break the codes. I’ve sent a copy of the details over to Mike. I hope that’s okay?”
Paolo lifted the page. “I don’t mind if it will help us solve the case, but why are you so excited about it? I don’t see anything here that seems related to anything we’re working on.”
“Sorry, sir, I should have explained, but I was so pleased with myself, I’ve told you the wrong way round. You know I was working on the searches? The Nemesis in Action link was the final one that came up when I searched under George Baron’s name, but without any explanatory text. When I clicked on the link, I found I couldn’t get access. It could turn out to be nothing, but in there somewhere must be a mention of George’s name, otherwise why would it come up on a search? Also the title of the site is pretty telling, don’t you think? Sounds to me like someone with a mission.”
Paolo wondered for a moment what she meant, then made the connection. “Nemesis! Ah, you think this is the site of someone dishing out retribution? It could be, but don’t get your hopes up too much. It could equally be some weird bondage club members’ list.”
Looking For A Reason (#4 - D.I. Paolo Storey Crime Series) Page 19