‘Yes.’
‘You must have been angry that day as well, Charles. It doesn’t do anything for a man’s confidence to find out he’s been sharing his fiance?e with every Tom, Dick and Harry in town.’ He paused,
waiting for an answer. ‘Did you rape Jen that day as well?’
‘No.’
‘Too shell-shocked to do anything? Couldn’t believe you’d been so gullible?’
Silence.
‘So you went back two weeks later and punished her with the roughest sex you could think of. It doesn’t work that way, Charles. Prostitutes have rights, too, you know.’
‘Not when they take your money and refuse to honour the contract they don’t.’
‘How does telling you to go ahead and do your worst constitute refusal?’
‘She wasn’t planning to go through with it.’
Jones looked enquiringly at DI Beale. ‘Are you following any of this?’
‘I think the lieutenant’s saying there were two different agendas operating. His and Ms Morley’s. For whatever reason, he was willing to pay for a sex act . . . and, for whatever reason, she thought she could pocket the money without obliging him. I’m guessing, because of the relationship they’d had, she believed she knew him well enough to assume he wouldn’t demand his rights as a client.’
‘Is that correct, Charles?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Why did she think she could get away with it?’
‘She thought she knew me.’
The superintendent’s frown deepened. ‘What were you doing in her flat that day? Was your only intention to have sex?’
‘No. I went to collect my stuff before I went to Iraq. She wasn’t supposed to be there. I still had a key.’
‘So she broke her word twice?’
‘Three times. There was nothing to collect. She’d destroyed most of it.’
‘And that made you angry?’
‘Everything about her made me angry. I hated her . . . she repulsed me.’ Acland spoke with real loathing. ‘I didn’t even want to touch her. I sure as hell didn’t want her touching me.’
Jones was less perplexed by the ambiguity behind this statement than some of the others Acland had made. The line between love and hate was a thin one. ‘So you decided to punish her instead . . . and paid for the right to do it?’
‘Only to show her how it feels to be treated like a laboratory rat.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘If you press the right button you get a reward . . . if you press the wrong one you get an electric shock.’
*
Jackson stooped to pull the duffel bag upright. It was softer than it looked, made of hemp rather than canvas, and the contents were heavier than she was expecting. If there was a bottle inside, it was full. She untied the strings at the top and pulled the opening wide to disclose a plastic carrier bag loosely wrapped around a rigid object about twelve inches long. With belated caution, she swivelled the hemp bag to allow the object to lean against the back of the driver’s seat in order to retrieve some medical gloves from her case, but as she let go of the opening, the hemp fabric, unsupported, fell in folds over further objects at the bottom, at least one of which was visible. At first glance, she thought it was a mobile telephone, until she noticed the two strips of embossed metal at the top and knew she was looking at a stun gun.
*
Beale felt instinctively that his boss had taken the wrong route when Jones chose to ask Acland how Jen had rewarded him. There was a slight relaxation of the lieutenant’s stiff posture when the
superintendent homed in on sex as a currency within the relationship. ‘Did you have to negotiate for intimacy? Did Jen only sleep with you when you behaved the way she wanted?’
‘More or less.’
‘Most men would find that demeaning.’ He watched Acland for a moment. ‘More so if she had to get high just to go through the motions.’
No response.
‘We saw her outside the pub earlier. She had a client waiting in a taxi and we think she was on her way back from her dealer.’ Jones pulled what passed for a sympathetic smile. ‘It’s not easy to get excited about sex when you’re only doing it to feed a habit, Charles. You shouldn’t have taken Jen’s lack of enthusiasm to heart.’
It was a deliberate needle but Acland met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘I didn’t. I got out.’
‘You punished her.’
‘Not as much as I wanted to. You asked me the other day why I travelled so light . . . well, that’s why. There was nothing left after she slashed my clothes and trashed the rest. I had a new laptop. It was in pieces on the floor.’
