“Did Marion complain to Graham about what was happening as well?” asked Gus.
“Marion soon learned to hold her tongue,” said Serena. “Dave Francis was a swine, but he never struck me. I saw the bruises Graham left on Marion’s face and body. He was a sadistic devil, but Marion forgave him every time. She knew she should leave, but where could she go? She was trapped, the same as me. Everything I had; Dave had given me. We used to go to one another’s flat, cry our hearts out, and wonder how to escape.”
“Then Marion got pregnant,” said Gus.
“And got another beating,” said Serena. “Graham wanted her to get rid of the baby. How could she go to parties if she was expecting? His reputation relied on delivering an attractive young woman to wherever his group of friends held the next party. By this time, I had had enough of Dave. I discovered he saw other women during the week and shared my body around at the weekend. I rang my mother for the first time in six years, and my father drove to Salisbury within the hour to collect me. They didn’t judge. They dropped everything and took me in without question. Dad helped when I said I wanted to divorce Dave. After the nightmare was over, Dad found me a cottage near Bemerton Heath. I still live there to this day, and after several jobs working with horses and flowers, I came to work here. It took many years to be comfortable among people again. Marion had told me Martyn worked on the ground staff. He remembered me from the old days. Martyn’s slow on the uptake, Mr Freeman, but he’s got a heart of gold.”
“How did Marion escape Graham Street’s clutches?” asked Luke.
“Oh, it wasn’t as difficult after I’d left Dave as we believed,” said Serena, “Graham was ready to move on from Marion too by the time Martyn was two years old. Graham didn’t want his friends knowing he’d fathered a less-than-perfect child.”
“We heard there were other children by different women, is that correct?” asked Gus.
“I don’t know exactly how many,” said Serena. “Three, maybe four. I could make a guess at which women gave birth to one of Graham Street’s children, but don’t hold me to it.”
“What proved the final straw?” asked Gus.
“Marion refused to take part in an extreme sex game Dave had dreamt up one Sunday night, and Graham punched Marion so hard and so often she had to go to the hospital. She called me while she waited for the ambulance, and I looked after Martyn at my place until Marion took him back.”
“We saw no mention of your name in the original investigation,” said Gus. “If you were one of Marion’s best friends, how did the police not interview you?”
“You look an intelligent man, Mr Freeman,” said Serena. “How can you ask such a dumb question?”
“Are you saying a senior police officer was a member of the group of people that Graham Street and Dave Francis called friends?”
“Swingers come from every level of society, Mr Freeman,” said Serena. “The higher you climb, the further you have to fall. There’s no limit to what they might do to prevent that happening.”
Gus could have kissed Serena Campbell. It would have been no hardship; Serena was an attractive woman.
At last, they had uncovered a different aspect to this case. Gus had always hoped to find something in Marion Reeves’s past that contributed to her murder. This could be it.
“What’s Dave Francis doing these days, Ms Campbell?” he asked.
“He’s serving a custodial sentence in HMP Winchester,” said Serena, with a hint of a smile. “Items Dave Francis catalogued as eighteenth-century porcelain from the Qing dynasty were fresh off a container ship from Shanghai. An expert from a TV programme spotted the minute differences between the copies and the genuine article when he viewed them in Dave’s saleroom. My ex-husband sold one vase for three-and-a-half million pounds, which cost him less than two hundred. Men like Dave Francis and Graham Street can never have too much money. Greed drives them to do foolish things.”
“My colleague, DS Sherman, was at Odstock hospital last night, Ms Campbell,” said Gus. “An unidentified female had alerted the emergency services from an address in Salisbury early yesterday morning. Her partner had suffered a heart attack.”
“Where were you between the hours of nine o’clock on Sunday night and four o’clock on Monday morning, Ms Campbell,” asked Luke.
“At home, or in bed, alone, during that time,” said Serena. “Why, what is this?”
“My colleague, DS Davis, sat beside the patient’s bedside until midnight, then I took over,” said Luke. “The patient never regained consciousness, and doctors declared him dead at six-thirty this morning. Graham Street died from a massive heart attack. His mysterious companion was unwilling to explain what Mr Street was doing before he suffered the attack. Indeed, she refused to travel with him in the ambulance and never contacted Odstock for an update on his condition.”
“I won’t shed any tears over that devil’s death,” said Serena. “Street must have been in his early seventies by now. It sounds as if he was still grooming impressionable young women. Even at that age, his money talked.”
“When was the last time you saw
