Kelly emerged from the hut and dived straight into the pool. She did not even take off her jeans. It was a spontaneous action, a sudden need to be
Behind the glass doors the house slept. Jazz, Moon and Sally had not even bothered to rise from the couch.
Even Hamish had finally fallen asleep, but his dreams were troubled and studded with guilt. And when he awoke it was worse. Did she know? Did anybody know? What had the camera seen? Nothing. If they had, then Peeping Tom would have intervened, otherwise they would have been compounding a felony. Surely, no. Hamish felt certain that from the outside nothing would have seemed amiss or, if it had, then nothing had been said. Discovery could only come from within. Did Kelly remember? How could she? She had been asleep. She had
DAY NINETEEN. 8.00 a.m.
Kelly did not go to bed. Having changed out of her wet clothes, she made herself a cup of tea and sat down on the green couch, trying to put from her mind the suspicions with which she had awoken.
It was here that Dervla found her an hour later as she made her way to the shower room. Dervla, like the rest of them, had been up late, but she did not want to sleep in, she never slept in, she always wanted to get to the shower room first. She wanted to look in the mirror.
“Good morning, Kelly,” Dervla said. “Things got a bit close with Hamish there for a bit, didn’t they?”
“What do you mean? We were only having a laugh.”
Kelly’s defensive tone made Dervla smile. Perhaps something had gone on, after all.
“Well, you were both pretty drunk, weren’t you? And he was drooling over you all evening, tongue fair hanging out, so it was. If the poor fella hadn’t have nodded off first I think you’d have had to beat him off with a stick.”
“Nodded off first. Is that what he said happened?”
“That’s what he said… Are you all right, Kelly?”
“Yes! Yes, absolutely fine,” Kelly replied, about twenty times too eagerly, and lapsed into silence.
Dervla headed for the shower room, left Kelly to it. She could hear the camera moving about beyond the glass.
“Morning, Mr Cameraman,” she said as she soaped herself beneath her T-shirt. “I hope you feel better than I do.” She slid a slippery, sudsy hand inside her knickers.
Beyond the glass the camera’s electric motor gave a little hum as it pulled focus. Dervla might have heard it had the shower not been running.
The message was already being written as Dervla approached the basin to brush her teeth. The writer’s tone had changed.
DAY THIRTY-SIX. 11.50 p.m.
Sergeant Hooper was thinking about ringing for a cab. He had had a long and fruitless day on the murder inquiry followed by a pretty monumental amount of beer and curry and it was time to pull the pin.
It had been a decent night out with the lads, but it was about to go boring on him. It wasn’t that he particularly objected to pornography, although he was not a big consumer of it himself, it was just that he had never seen the point of watching it with your mates. As far as he was concerned, the purpose of porn was to stimulate sex, either sex with yourself or sex with a partner. That was what it was for. To be masturbated over or to be watched with a girlfriend as a way of expanding the horizons of your own nocturnal activities. What he was not into doing was sitting bleary-eyed on a friend’s couch holding a kebab in one hand, a can of Stella in the other and drooling over it with a bunch of pissed-up off-duty coppers.
“You lot are sad,” he said. “I’m going to finish me beer and leave you to it. Don’t stain the sofa now.”
“You don’t understand, Hoops,” said Thorpe, a detective constable from Vice. “This isn’t about sex, it’s about quality. We’re critics. Porn is an art form and we are aficionados. Do you know that at the blue movie Oscars in Cannes they have an award for best come shot?”
“I find that very hard to swallow,” said Hooper, unwittingly earning himself about five minutes of hysterical drunken laughter.
“Pornography is a legitimate film genre,” insisted Blair. “Every bit as important as, for instance, the adventure movie or the romantic comedy.”
“Like I said, Blair, you’re sad,” Hooper replied. “Why can’t you just be honest? You watch this stuff because it gives you a hard-on. Well, fair play to you, mate, I can understand that, I just don’t see why you need company.”
“You’re wrong, Hoop, you just don’t understand at all. This is a social thing. We discuss the movies, the acting, the groaning, the relative success of a golden shower, whether the dick you see being slipped actually belongs to the bloke you see slipping it. What we have here is a critics’ forum. You seem to be under the impression that all porn movies are the same.”
“Aren’t they?”
“No more than horror movies are all the same, or westerns. Is
“Thanks for the warning, mate,” said Hooper, draining his beer. “I think I’ll give it a miss. I’ll find a cab on the street.”
“You’re mad. You’re missing out on a classic of its type, a cultural icon. The
Hooper was already heading for the door when the little bell rang in his head. “What series?” he said, turning back.
“
“Is there a
“There certainly is. They’ve made fifteen so far. I can get you them all if you like… What are you looking so pleased with yourself about?”
Hooper was indeed smiling. He believed that he had found out what Kelly had whispered to David in the hot tub. The thing that had made him look so concerned.
DAY THIRTY-EIGHT. 9.00 a.m.
As he removed his coat and hat in the cloakroom Chief Inspector Coleridge was surprised to hear cheering and shouting coming from the incident room. He walked in to see a group of his officers, both male and female, clustered round a video monitor from which strange moans and groans were emanating.
