by Rachel Green
“Yeah. I was surprised.” Jimmy picked up the pot. “There must be over three hundred films in there. Are we sure my brother had a partner? If he watched all those his right arm should be the size of an elephant’s leg.”
“And if he did have a partner it wouldn’t be his arm getting the exercise.” Meinwen took the other cup, declining sugar. “Good news, though. I found his laptop in the kitchen. Bad news is it wants a password. I know a guy who can crack it. An absolute whizz with computers, he is.
“Really?” Jimmy frowned. “Perhaps I’ll be able to guess it. I did know him quite well.”
“It’s certainly be worth a try. Backdoor Harry doesn’t come cheap.”
Jimmy spurted tea out of his nose and started coughing. Meinwen relieved him of the cup before it went all over the rug and whacked him on the back a few times. When his face had lost its overtones of puce he sat back. “You know Backdoor Harry?”
“Yes. We were introduced by a mutual friend. Where do you know him from?”
“We were at school together. Techie Speccy, we called him then. Hey! You know why he’s called Backdoor Harry, don’t you?”
“Because he’s gay?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not very funny, is it? Mind you. It makes a good starting point. There’s a better than average chance he knew your brother, isn’t there?”
“How do you figure that out?”
“It stands to reason. Laverstone is a smallish town on the chalk. It’s not like Brighton or even Torquay, is it? There must be a far smaller pool of gay men here than in most towns. I bet they know each other well, socially if not intimately. Where are the gay bars in Laverstone?”
“How should I know? I’ve been away for the past ten years.”
“Harry will know. Or Jennifer.”
“Jennifer?”
“She’s a friend of mine. A writer. She knows everything that goes on in town.” Meinwen reached across and touched his knee. “As luck would have it, I’m seeing her tomorrow.”
“That’s good.” Jimmy picked up his tea again and took a cautious sip. “And she’ll know where all the gay people hang out, will she?”
“If she doesn’t, she’ll know someone who does. Anyway, I can always ask Harry.”
“He’s a good friend, is he?”
“Not exactly. He’s mended a computer or two for me and when my desktop crashed he recovered my files from the hard drive. Saved years of work, he did. Now I pay him fifty quid a year to back up all my documents and pictures in case I have a fire or something and lose them all.”
“Fifty quid? That sounds like a lot.”
“For the piece of mind? No.” Meinwen smiled to herself. “Anyway, did you find anything in here or up in the bedroom?”
Jimmy grinned. “It depends what you mean by ‘find.’ There are more cupboards up there filled with sex toys and whatnot. All sorts of leather and rubber clothes and...other things. I found his proper clothes, too. Ordinary clothes, I mean. Suits and ties and trousers that don’t have holes in the back. All in one size.”
“There was only one toothbrush in the bathroom, too. One razor. One set of towels. I’d have to say he lived alone.”
“Yeah, me too.” Jimmy opened a drawer under the bookcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I found all his important documents, look. House insurance, mortgage, life assurance, bank statements. Even the TV license.”
“Any clue who his solicitor was?”
“Yeah.” He rifled through the papers. “Here it is. ‘Isaacs and Du Point.’ I remember Isaacs. He read mam’s will when she died but I don’t know the Du Point bloke. Sounds foreign to me.”
“It’s a woman. I know her. She lives up at the manor.”
“Laverstone Manor?” Jimmy laughed. “I didn’t think anybody lived up there. The place is falling down.”
Meinwen shook her head, unable to keep the smile from showing. “You’ve been away too long. It’s been renovated now. Already was when I came here, actually. The new owner spent a small fortune doing it up.”
“Rather him than me.” Jimmy shuddered. “We always thought the place was haunted as kids. We used to go through the wood at the back and creep into the garden, then dare each other to lob stones at the windows.” He swallowed. “We never saw the old git who lived there though I swear I saw a ghost once, and all the windows would be whole again the next time we went.”
“A ghost? Fascinating.” Meinwen hunched forward. “What can you tell me about it? In the summer I do walking tours of Haunted Laverstone. Did you know there are more ghost stories in this town than there are in the whole of Cornwall put together?”
“No, I didn’t know that. I can’t say I believe in them myself.”
“But you just said you saw a ghost when you were little.”
“Aye, but it probably wasn’t a ghost. Not a real one. Probably the old git who lived there dressed up in a sheet. There were loads of sheets. Whole rooms covered in them.”
“Pity.” Meinwen sat back. “I can contact the solicitor later, if you like. Get things rolling with the dispersal of your brother’s estate.”
“I suppose.” John looked around the room. “There’s really nothing to prove he didn’t kill himself, is there? I mean. There are oddities, but nothing we can go to the police with and say categorically he was murdered.”
“Not so far.” Meinwen poured herself a second cup of tea, the dark liquid now strong enough to coat the sides of the cup with tannin. There might be something on his laptop, if you want to have a stab at that.”
“Aye.” Jimmy winked. “I like a good stabbing.”
Meinwen left Jimmy to figure out his brother’s password in the kitchen while she sat with her cup of tea in the living room. On a whim she picked up her phone, finding the name and dialing the number before she had a chance to talk herself out of it. Her palms felt sweaty as it rang at the other end, the pressure of her teeth making indentations in her upper lip.
“Peters.”
“Hello, Sergeant. It’s Meinwen again. Have you got a minute?”
She heard him sigh. “I suppose so. Is this about John Fenstone again?”
“Yes. Look you, I’m in John’s flat at the moment. Not the house in Ashgate Road but the luxury penthouse flat in Chervil Court.”
“Luxury penthouse flat? Is that a euphemism? A luxury flat round there is one that hasn’t had the windows boarded up.” He paused. “Yet.”
“Be that as it may, I’m sitting in a penthouse apartment right now. The other house he was doing up for his brother, obviously.”
“The brother who just got out of prison for taking and driving away?”
“Yes.” Meinwen faltered. “He told me it was receiving stolen goods.”
“If you count goods as cars and receiving them as relieving someone else of their use, yes. Your man was lucky. If he’d had any prior charges, he’d have been looking at twenty to life.”
“Taking and driving away doesn’t sound so bad. It’s like when Enydd nicked her mam’s car and drove all the way to Cardiff because Tom Jones was on at the Palladium.”
“Not really, love. Jimmy Fenstone’s idea of taking and driving away was nicking a Beamer and stripping it down to the last nut, then packing it in crates and shipping it to the continent.”
“Oh.” Meinwen swallowed, glancing down the passage toward the kitchen. “I didn’t know that. He’s not dangerous, is he?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got his rap sheet here. I pulled it when he turned up asking about his brother. He was never violent when he was arrested and he kept his nose clean while he was inside. You should be fine.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Was that all, then, or did you ring for another reason?”
“Yes, there was, really. I don’t think John killed himself at all.”
“Not that again. I told you, I have my doubts but without some decent evidence there’s nothing I can do.”
“How much do yo
u need to reopen the case as a murder?”
“Five hundred quid in used tenners?” Peters laughed. “Look, Meinwen. There would have to be a pretty big reason to open a murder investigation. They cost a fortune and the departments on a bit of a budget freeze. They won’t even pay for the petrol if you use your own car, now, so of course we’re all using squad cars instead.”
“I didn’t think Laverstone had that many squad cars.”
“They don’t. We’ve requisitioned them from Uniform, so they’re back to pounding the pavements and not very happy about it, let me tell you.”
“I bet they aren’t.” Meinwen grinned. “You could always put forward an ecological policy for the department and request bicycles.”
“Not on your bloody life!”
She laughed. “About this case, then...”
“All right. What have you got? Anything concrete?”
“Sort of. First, he hanged himself in his mother’s house.”
“Stands to reason. Going back to the womb. Childhood. Somewhere he was happy, all that psychology guff. That won’t hold up as a reason to reopen the case. Next?”
“Can I ask you what his supposed suicide note said?”
“Usual stuff. ‘I can’t go on. Nobody loves me. There’s no point in living a lie. Sorry James.’ Nothing that would give us pause for thought.”
“Okay.” Meinwen got out a pen and her address book, turning to the section marked Notes. “Would you tell me again?” She wrote it down this time, staring at it for a moment, the top of the biro brushing her lip. “James. He said, ‘James.’ What do you make of that? Jimmy calls himself ‘Jimmy.’”
“The brother was a bit posher, wasn’t he? An estate agent. Probably thought the name ‘Jimmy’ was a bit common.”
“Maybe.” She dropped the pen into the crease of the book and put it to one side. “What was it written on?”
“Come again?”
“Well...was it on a sheet of paper? The back of an envelope? Lilac-scented Basildon Bond? What?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to mislead you. It was done on a computer and printed out on a laser printer.”
“He didn’t have a laser printer, though. No printer at all, as far as I’m aware. He could have gone to a copy shop, I suppose. Lots of people do.”
“To print a suicide note? Nah.” Meinwen could imagine Peters shaking his head in that diagonal way of his. No one but Peters shook their head like that. “There was a laser printer at the estate agents. He could easily have done it there.”
“It doesn’t seem very likely, though, does it? He prints off a suicide note at work several hours before he tops himself. I could understand it if he’d written several pages but for a dozen or so words? It seems a bit odd to me. Do you get many suicides who write a note hours beforehand?”
“Well, no, but we don’t get a great many suicides, to be fair. Even at Christmas we only get a couple. It’s Happy Town, is Laverstone.”
“Does that mean we can put a mark in the maybe-it-was-murder category?”
“I suppose. What else have you got?”
“The woman at the estate agents said he was really well adjusted and happy. She couldn’t understand why he’d done it.”
“Again, all too common in suicides. It’s usually the people who know them best who never had any inkling.”
“What about the champagne in the fridge and the half-decorated house. He was obviously looking forward to his brother coming home.”
“Not something we can take into account either. You just don’t know with some people.” Peters sighed again. “Anything else? Because to be honest, you’re not convincing me.”
“There was a notebook, but we don’t know what it means. Hang on.” Meinwen fished it out of her bag. “Lots of entries of money coming in. In hundreds and multiples of a hundred, more often than not then taken out again when the amount his a thousand, or five hundred in some cases.”
“Money coming in and out of where? Where did it go?” Where does it come from?”
“That’s the problem really. I don’t know.”
“Then there’s nothing I can do to tie it into probable cause. Look, Meinwen, I’m sorry, but this is how it goes. I can’t reopen a suicide because the family thinks it was unlikely their loved one topped themselves, can I? Tell you what, I’ll keep the file on my desk and if you come across anything else let me know. The source of that money might swing the balance if you can trace it. An estate agent doesn’t come into cash like that in a hurry. Maybe he was getting backhanders from somewhere.”
“Okay. Thank you, Sergeant. The more I find out about this John Fenstone the less I know. He’s a real mystery man. Perhaps after I’ve talked to his solicitor.”
“Good luck with that. They stonewalled us when we tried to get information about him. Client-solicitor privilege.”
“I’ve got his brother, though. As the heir to the estate they can’t not divulge everything.”
“Let’s hope so. Was there anything else at all?”
“Not unless you want to invite me for dinner.”
“Ah. I’d love to, but the wife frowns on extramarital affairs, particularly when they’re not hers.”
Meinwen laughed. “I don’t blame her. Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Right. Look after yourself, particularly if you come across anything shady.”
Meinwen disconnected, putting the phone away then leafing through the notebook again. What was most worrying was round numbers. Exactly a hundred pounds, exactly three hundred. What legal business dealt in exact amounts?
She put the book away and hauled herself upright, gathering the tea things and carrying the tray back to the kitchen where Jimmy was browsing the contents of the laptop. “You got into it then?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t too hard.” Jimmy smile brightened the whole room. “I wondered what I’d use for a password if I was John. It took me four tries to guess.”
“What was it?” Meinwen put the tray on the work surface next to the sink and turned, leaning against the cupboard with her hip thrust out and forward.
“Elizabeth. That was our mam’s name. Something that would never change throughout his life.”
“That’s sweet. He must have really loved her.”
“We both did.” Jimmy frowned. “I’ve found his Facespace and Tweeter feeds. He didn’t have that many friends.” He pulled up the relevant pages. “Er...they seem to be a little rude.”
Meinwen reached over and used the touchpad to scan John friends list. She flicked through the messages and status updates, too. “He certainly knew some fit young men, didn’t he?”
“I should say so. “ Jimmy tapped a finger on a piece of paper he’d set out next to him. “He had an account on ‘leatherfap dot com’ too but I can’t work out his password on that. The same with his online bank pages. I did get into his email but there’s nothing there. Some information about this place but that’s about all.”
“What about his email provider? They often keep a copy of the mail on their system so you can access it from somewhere else if you’re not at home.”
“No joy. I thought of that. I asked for a password hint but it asks a security question I can’t answer.”
“What was it?”
“‘Peter’s piercing.’ Who the hell is Peter?”
“A boyfriend, maybe? Did you try the obvious ones?”
“Prince Albert and belly button? Yeah.”
“There are all sorts of piercings. I can’t even remember the names of all of them, though I would have done a few years ago.”
“I’m too out of it. I haven’t a clue. All I know was that a single earring meant you were gay.”
“Which is fine if everyone knew which ear it was.” Meinwen grinned. “I was at school in the nineties. And there was a distinct difference of opinion.”
“Which is it, then?”
“These days it doesn’t matter. In those days it was the left.” She winked. “For bottom
s, anyway.”
“There’s a folder of pictures of this place, too. Before and after pictures as he did it up. It’s fascinating really. I must have another look in the bedroom area, because there’s a door onto the roof up there.”
“Onto the roof? Is that safe?”
“It’s a fire escape for the two top floor flats but John was in the habit of tanning up there.”
“Brilliant. You’ve landed of your feet here.” Meinwen scanned through the Tweeter messages. “What’s this ‘Mill Street’ he keeps going on about?”
“I don’t know. It comes up a few times in his Facespace, too.”
Meinwen pulled the laptop round and typed “Mill Street” into the desktop search. As well as the expected mapping applications it showed several folders buried in subdirectories. She opened one. Inside was a series of documents, each with a name. Mistress Gold, Mistress Black, Mistress Venom and several others. “Well!” She opened one at random and scanned the file. “It looks like your brother was running a dungeon on the side. That would certainly explain the income of several hundred pounds a day.”
“A dungeon? Do you mean a brothel? That doesn’t sound like something John would do.”
“Not a brothel. Dungeons offer sexual services that don’t include penetration. They generally tread a fine line between prostitution and the law, staying firmly on the latter side if they can help it.”
“Leather and bondage and whips?”
“Oh my.” Meinwen sat back. “We’re not in Kansas any more.”
Chapter 9
“Okay.” Meinwen busied herself brewing another cup of tea to give herself time to think. “We don’t actually know if he ran the dungeon. He could be someone who worked there. Perhaps he went there himself.”
“Then he’d be paying money out, surely? Not receiving it by the wallet load.”
“I suppose.” Meinwen set the kettle to boil and opened the file again, bent at the waist to flick through the portraits.
“What are you looking for?” Jimmy craned his neck to watch the screen. “Tempted to go yourself? You seem to like being spanked all right.” He patted her bottom.