It took Martha a while to move. She had been sitting still for more than ten minutes, ten minutes of paralysis both in thought and deed. Then she shook herself. This was no good. She had a job to do and she would do it. She needed to pass on the details of these photographs. The police needed to know. Would they be able to prosecute the man in the pictures or the person who had photographed the session or even the person who had sent the images to her?
She doubted it.
What she didn’t expect was that someone would approach her.
She couldn’t know that at that very moment in a murky corner of a beautiful town there was a coffee bar. Not one of the chains, not a Starbucks or a Costa, but somewhere privately owned, up a tiny, narrow cobbled side street to the side of Waterstones known, tellingly, as Grope Lane where plots had been hatched for centuries. Sitting in the corner, even with his clothes on the man in the photograph would have been easily recognizable. Tall, muscular, handsome in a ballsy, dissolute sort of way. And the man speaking to him? Recognizable too. ‘Put these pictures in the right place and we’ve got enough to compromise her.’
Martha would have recognized the pictures, known exactly when and where they had been taken. But what she would not have known was that they had been Photoshopped. Only a touch, only a tinge, a matter of an inch or so, but it looked as though she and Alex Randall were practically welded to each other. His lips were a hair’s breadth from her cheek. But what they needn’t have Photoshopped or done anything else with was the look they were exchanging. They had been in a public place – the quarry. It had been a hot day and they had shared a picnic. This was no bedroom and they were not panting to rip each other’s clothes off, but looks can speak more eloquently than a thousand words and the look was unmistakable. But while she was a widow DI Randall had, at the time, been a married man. And this picture had been taken before his wife had died in suspicious circumstances.
This photograph would not help his career or the investigation into Erica’s death. It would compromise her too. That was the way they were thinking.
But for now, in the steamy little coffee bar, both men were simply enjoying the power these pictures gave them. Victor Stanley was a minor thief. He’d also been accused of rape – quite unfounded from his point of view; the girl had been gagging for it. And, with a bit of persuasion, had withdrawn her allegation anyway. She’d nearly got into trouble for wasting police time. Stanley’s speciality was hanging around rich women, compromising and blackmailing them with the help of alcohol and sometimes a bit of chemical help. There’s plenty of stuff out there. With his good looks and deceitful manner it was an easy and lucrative business. He tanned easily, was athletic and strong, a good swimmer and fit. Women always noticed him as he noticed them. He wasn’t too fussy, which helped his cause, and he was perfectly capable of seducing them with practically a hundred per cent success. He was what you might call an actor – both a romantic lead and a minor villain. Don’t women just love a bad guy? He played all parts to perfection. Trouble was no one, least of all the women who were his target, realized it was all an act.
Underneath Stanley was mean-spirited, emotionally frigid, narcissistic, vain and self-absorbed. But boy, could he put on an act. And he could produce an erection practically to order.
That helped.
Equally at home in a tux or a diving suit, casual chinos or smart, navy business suit, his age also worked for him. He was forty-six, but he could look thirty-six or fifty-six. He was a chameleon – that was what Ivor Donaldson called him, The Chameleon. With Donaldson’s access to the wealthy, the lonely, the frustrated and the bored, he would form the introductions and The Chameleon would play his part. It was a lucrative business. Between them they would extract money as easily as squeezing juice from a lemon – with the right equipment – and Victor Stanley had that all right. In fact, he had all the gifts nature could bestow and looked after them with some hefty workouts at the gym.
To help matters along Victor Stanley had a little issue with the coroner. Years ago she had directed the police towards a finding of vehicular homicide. And the person who had been subsequently convicted had been a friend named Harris. OK, she had not actually convicted him and sentenced him to a nasty long stretch in a prison built for villains in the Victorian era, but his mate, Harris, had just been a car mechanic and the bloody thing that he’d worked on had crashed. On the A49. OK, the brakes had failed. OK, a few other people had died and a couple had been hurt. But Martha had come down on him like a ton of bricks at the inquests. She had well and truly pointed the finger at the person who had knowingly or carelessly fitted substandard brakes forgetting, as his mate had said, that they were half the price. But his mate had ended up going to prison – poor defence, useless lawyer. He’d got her already. In prison his mate, Harris, had died of drug-related hepatitis which was, in his mind, very unlucky. But his mate had been clean before he’d gone to prison. The coroner, he believed, had executed him. So he owed her one. Little red-haired cow.
Look out, Coroner Gunn. I’m coming for you.
He was a guy who liked to settle his scores.
And he always had a grudge against the police. And lawyers.
Two birds with one stone was the way he looked at it when he’d seen the pictures snapped of the pair of them, sitting together. Always worth having someone with a camera keeping an eye on people, particularly detectives off their guard – and in this case the coroner. They should have been more careful. You never knew who was watching. Nice warm sunny day, she in a sleeveless dress, he in a short-sleeved shirt. Sometimes these schemes worked better than others. But one needed apprentices to train up and since Jack was in prison he’d sort of taken the two lads under his wing. It helped that Jodi Silver was a looker. Bloody gorgeous and canny too. And lonely without her husband. So he’d taken it on himself to coach Warren and Sean in ‘life sciences’ – teach them how to make someone hurl themselves off a bridge rather than face continuing torment. The only thing that had gone ever so slightly wrong had been that silly trip out to the coroner’s office and scratching the message on the car. But Sean had insisted. And maybe learning a bit about the business or perhaps because they were, underneath, a chip off the old block, when they’d heard he intended to give the coroner a warning both boys had wheedled Stanley. ‘Go on, let us have a go.’ And when he hadn’t obliged they’d tried a threat. ‘Take us out with you. Otherwise we could be telling our dad on our next visit that you’re bonking his wife.’
He’d given in. What harm could it do? Though what they could have had against the coroner was beyond him. Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just a trip for the fun of it.