‘This is a bit of fun, isn’t it?’ Kev Cox put down the crate of equipment he was carrying and looked around the enormous hallway. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever searched a private house this size before.’
‘Fun is not what I would call it.’ I took the lid off another box from the safe that had spilled its contents all around me. The safe was enormous, a walk-in structure lined with shelves that were loaded with boxes, and going through the contents was proving to be a nightmare.
‘This place is like a hotel.’ Kev was revolving on the spot, enchanted. ‘Imagine living here.’
‘Imagine having about six chairs, a desk, a table and no spare loo roll to go in your nine bathrooms and seven bedrooms.’
‘Nine? Seriously? Brilliant.’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Are you going to be this happy in twelve hours’ time when you’re not even halfway through?’
‘Probably.’ He beamed at me. ‘Have you found anything in there?’
‘A lot of cash in various currencies and a few portable hard drives that have gone off to be examined. And a lot of paper.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Anything dodgy.’ I got up from where I’d been kneeling and stretched. ‘One of the staff has been more forthcoming than the rest. He says he hasn’t worked here for very long but he was warned by the other guys that things happened here from time to time that weren’t very nice.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘He went vague on us but he admitted he’d heard things about torture and intimidation and disposing of bodies. This is where they deal with people who step out of line, as I understand it. Including, I hope, my dead journalist from the Thames.’
‘Ah, you think this is where she was killed.’
‘Or where she was cut up. It’s a big house and the neighbours are far away. Half the houses on the street seem to be being rebuilt. They could have used power tools on her and no one would have heard anything.’
Kev nodded happily. ‘I’ll see what we can find.’
Derwent emerged from the study and nodded to Kev, who was marshalling his troops, then scowled at me. ‘Find anything?’
‘I’m working on it. I take it Carl Hooper isn’t being very helpful.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Your sunny demeanour.’
‘He’s a twat. He’s denying everything.’
‘I’m shocked.’
‘He says he left the club because he was worried he’d get arrested, given his record. Bianca left at the same time, but not with him. He says she turned up here on her own and broke in. The lads who were minding the house didn’t know what to do with her and couldn’t get hold of him, so they stuck her in a bedroom. When Sir Marcus Gley finally made contact with Hooper, he’d found out about Bianca and panicked. They decided they should scare her into giving up the idea of writing about the club. That’s what Hooper’s paid for, he says. His job is to protect the club and its members, and that’s all he did. They threatened her and put her in the wine cellar for a couple of hours but they were planning to let her go. They knew about Paige because of what you told them, so they pretended they’d been involved in her murder to scare Bianca.’
‘She didn’t say they brought her here, now that I think about it,’ I said slowly. ‘Maybe he’s telling the truth about that part. We can get Liv to ask Bianca about it at the hospital.’
‘Sounds to me as if she was trying to make it all sound more important than it was.’ Derwent saw me raise my eyebrows. ‘What makes a better story? “I was kidnapped by thugs and tortured” or “I went round to a house that belongs to some rich people and annoyed their security guards”. I know which one I’d want to read. She wants to write something that’ll sell. Of course she’s talking it up.’
‘You just don’t like journalists.’
‘I don’t hate all of them. Most of them, maybe.’
I knelt down again and pushed an unopened box towards him. ‘Have a look through that. All I’ve found so far are membership records and archives. I’m sure it’s fascinating if you’re a fan of the Chiron Club but it’s leaving me cold.’
He took the lid off and tilted his head sideways as he flicked through the contents. ‘Did you look in here already?’
‘No. Don’t tell me I accidentally gave you something interesting.’
‘Hanging files. Alphabetised.’ He was working through them. ‘Here’s Peter Ashington’s file. Ah, there’s a surprise.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘The pictures they sent him. Same images, different prints. The face of the other guy is still blacked out in these. No chance of identifying him from this.’ He took out a small plastic bag filled with something soft and black and turned it over. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh, don’t open that – it could be Antoinette’s tights. She said she left them in the cupboard.’
‘Kept for the DNA, presumably.’ He put it back where he’d found it. ‘That’ll be useful if we get to prosecute. What’s this – Roderick Asquith. That’s your victim, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t tell me they had something on him.’ I shuffled over to see the sheaf of pictures Derwent had taken out of the file, and wished I hadn’t. ‘Oh God. She looks young.’
‘Very young.’ A muscle tightened in Derwent’s jaw as he whipped through the pictures of Roddy lying back in an armchair, his bow tie crooked, while a slim, pale girl performed a lap dance for him. She was completely naked and boyish, her hips narrow, her chest flat. In several of the pictures she was touching him. In the last, his hand was between her legs. ‘And … what a surprise. A copy of her birth certificate and an affidavit to say she was fourteen when she did this.’
‘He probably had no idea.’
‘Doesn’t matter, does it? But I think he did know.’ Derwent looked at me. ‘You knew she was underage the second you saw her. He wasn’t stupid, presumably, or blind. He saw what he wanted to see and he did what he wanted to do.’
‘I liked him,’ I said sadly.
‘He probably wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t supplied the girl and told him to go along with it. But he did it all the same.’ Derwent shook his head. ‘Even nice guys will do horrible things if they think no one’s going to find out.’
The file was mainly photographs – twenty or thirty sets featuring all manner of perverse and illegal behaviour. Humiliation was a popular angle – mortification in a hundred different ways. I thought I would do anything to prevent pictures like that from getting out, if I featured in them.
‘What’s the issue with this one? That’s just sex, isn’t it? They’re both into it.’ Derwent showed me a couple of pictures from the last set: two men photographed in explicit detail. ‘I suppose if you’re homophobic – or your dad is – that would make you do what you were told.’
I glanced at the pictures. ‘Suppose so. Or one of them is married, maybe. I imagine it’s hard to explain that kind of encounter to a wife.’
He dropped the pictures into the file. ‘Persuasive stuff. Did you notice they’re all around the same age? This file is the twenty-something members. There must be files for the older ones too.’
‘I got that from the shelves near the back. Go and see if there’s anything more there.’
He disappeared into the safe and I returned to my very boring pile of papers, leafing through it. There was at least nothing sexual about a stack of invoices. I’d seen enough already. I turned over a page and stopped dead.
‘Guv?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Remember PPCS?’
‘The people with the animal logo?’
‘The very same. I know who they are now, and what they do.’
‘Go on.’
‘Parnassus Pet Cremation Services. They’re in Berkshire. And the Chiron Club are good customers.’
He came out of the safe. ‘Show me?’
I handed him the invoice and he read it, then whistled. ‘Ten grand for a pet cremation? That’s steep, isn’t it?’
‘Check the date.’
‘Twenty-fourth of July two years ago. That’s the day after Ashington drove down to Standen Fitzallen. This is the invoice that goes with the records we found in the club where they were paid in cash.’
‘It sure is. And remember, that’s two days after Iliana Ivanova disappeared.’ I handed him the next invoice. ‘That’s another ten thousand the same day. They were disposing of something else. Or someone else.’
‘Guys, are you busy?’ Kev rustled down the stairs and came into view. ‘Only there’s something you should see.’
I knocked on the study door and put my head into the room. ‘Ma’am, sorry to interrupt. Inspector Derwent and I have found a few interesting things.’
‘Come in and tell us about it.’ Burt had taken Hooper’s place at the desk. He had been relegated to an upright chair from the kitchen. It stood in the middle of the immaculate wooden floor. He lolled on it, looking unimpressed as Derwent and I walked in.
‘Parnassus Pet Cremation Services.’ I laid the invoice on the desk. ‘What do you know about them, Mr Hooper?’
He was as still as if he’d been turned to stone, his expression now nothing short of stark horror. ‘Where did you find that?’
‘In the safe. We found the register of expenses in the club’s offices too.’ I leaned forward and pointed. ‘The dates match, look. So we know you used these pet cremation people for some reason that weekend. I’ve looked them up and the most they charge is eight hundred pounds, and that’s for a horse.’
‘Did you have a lot of horses to dispose of?’ Derwent asked. ‘Over that weekend? You could have got rid of the whole field for the Grand National at that price.’
‘I don’t know what that was for,’ Hooper managed.
‘If we go and ask them what the two payments of ten thousand pounds were – and we will – what do you think they’re going to say? Do you think your name might come up?’ Derwent asked softly.
Hooper swallowed, his expression grim.
‘If I was in your shoes, I’d want to get my story in first. Especially given what we found upstairs,’ I said.
‘What did you find upstairs?’ Una Burt was looking highly entertained.
‘Well, Kev found it really. Did you know there are nine bathrooms in this house?’
‘Nine? My goodness.’
‘I don’t think they use all of them. This one was locked.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Someone had made an awful mess of the bath,’ Derwent said flatly. ‘The surface was badly damaged. Cut marks, Kev said. As if someone was using heavy tools to cut through something dense and difficult, like a body.’
‘You don’t know when that happened,’ Hooper ground out. ‘Or how.’
‘Do you know the answer to either of those questions? Would you like to tell us?’ I asked. ‘It could have been two years ago when Iliana went missing. Or it could have been more recent than that. It could have been when Paige Hargreaves started asking questions.’
‘Kev sprayed it with luminol. Do you know what luminol is, Mr Hooper?’ Derwent asked. ‘It’s a chemical that detects blood. Lights it up like a Christmas tree. The bath upstairs, those scratches, they glowed for us. The only thing we need to know is whose blood it is.’
‘You’ve got the wrong idea,’ Hooper muttered.
‘What idea would that be?’
‘The cremations, the cuts on the bath – that all happened around the same time. There were two bodies.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, in the moment it seemed like the right thing to do.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Disposed of the bodies ourselves. It was an accident that they died. That’s the first thing. That’s what you have to understand.’ He chopped his hand down, emphasising his words. ‘No one wanted anyone to die.’
‘Who died?’
‘The girl – Iliana. But she was the second one.’
‘Who was the first?’
‘A young man who told us his name was Jonas Powell, but it was a pseudonym. I was never able to trace his family and he was never reported missing. No one seemed to miss him. I did try to find out who he was.’
Derwent frowned. ‘Why would he lie about who he was?’
‘Because of what he was doing for a living. He was a rent boy. A drug addict, too, though I wouldn’t have hired him if I’d known. He said he was clean. He had a whole panel of tests at a sexual health clinic – AIDS, the works. He was healthy. So we hired him for a party.’
‘What kind of party?’
‘An after-party,’ Hooper said tiredly. ‘Following on from the big celebration of Sir Marcus’s presidency. We took some of the young members down to a house near Swindon and turned them loose. We do that from time to time, in various venues, and take pictures of what they get up to. It’s part of the club’s ethos. It’s how it survives – we ensure total commitment from the members. No one was forced to do anything, and no one was supposed to get hurt.’
‘But two people died,’ I said. ‘That’s not an accident.’
‘It was two accidents, one after the other.’
‘Rubbish,’ Derwent snapped and anger flared in Hooper’s eyes.
‘I’m telling the truth and if you give me the chance, I can prove it.’