It’s Julianne. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I heard you talking to someone.’
‘Myself.’
She tries to peer under my arm to the desk. I block her view. ‘Why is the door locked?’
‘There are things I don’t want the girls to see.’
Her eyes suddenly narrow. ‘You’re doing it, aren’t you. You’re bringing this poison into our house.’
‘It’s just for tonight.’
She shakes her head. Her voice is flat. ‘I hate secrets. I know most people have them, but I hate them.’
She turns away. I see her bare feet beneath her dressing gown, disappearing along the hall. What about your secrets, I feel like saying, but she’s gone and the question remains unspoken. Closing the door, I turn the key.
The second box contains crime scene photographs, beginning with long distance shots and narrowing down to the minutia of individual body parts. Halfway through the albums my constitution fails. I get up, recheck the door, and stand at the window, looking through the bare branches of the cherry trees to the churchyard.
I have two hours before the courier arrives. Taking a notebook, I place a photograph of Christine Wheeler and Sylvia Furness side-by-side on my desk. Not an image of them naked, but a normal, head and shoulders shot. Then I create a more confronting collage, using images from each crime scene.
Those of Sylvia stand out more because of the hood covering her head. Her feet could barely touch the ground. She had to stand on her tiptoes. Within minutes her legs must have been in agony. As she grew exhausted, her heels dropped and her handcuffed wrist took the full weight of her body. More pain.
The hood, nakedness and stress position are elements redolent of torture or execution. The more I stare at the photographs, the more familiar they seem. These are images from a different sort of theatreone of conflict and war.
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became synonymous with torture and physical abuse. Pictures were beamed around the world of hooded prisoners, naked and leashed, being taunted and humiliated. Some were kept in stress positions, standing on tiptoes with arms outstretched, or pulled painfully behind them. Sleep deprivation, humiliation, extreme heat or cold, hunger and thirst, these are the hallmarks of interrogation and torture.
It took six hours to break Christine Wheeler. How long did he have with Sylvia Furness? She went missing on Monday afternoon; she was found on Wednesday morning- a window of thirty-six hours. She was dead for two- thirds of that time. Normally, it takes days to brainwash a person, to pick apart their defences. Whoever did this, managed to break Sylvia within twelve hours. That’s incredible.
This wasn’t bloodlust. He didn’t lash out with his fists or his feet. He didn’t batter these women into submission. There were no marks on their bodies that indicated beatings or violence or any sort of physical assault. He used words. Where does a person gain this type of skill? It takes practice. Rehearsal. Training.
Dividing the page of a notebook, I write the heading Things I Know and begin writing points.
These were deliberate, relaxed, almost euphoric crimes, expressions of a corrupt lust. He chose what each victim wore and didn’t wear. He knew what they each had in their wardrobe. What make-up they wore. When they’d be home alone. The shoes were important to him.
I think out loud again. ‘Why these women? What did they do to you? Did they ignore you? Laugh at you? Leave you behind?
‘Sylvia Furness would not have submitted easily. She was no innocent. You must have worn her down, marched her to the tree, your voice in her ear, saying what? It takes enormous skill to control somebody to this degree- to unlock a woman’s mind. You’ve done this before.
‘I have met minds like yours. I have seen what sexual sadists can do. These women represented something or someone you despised. They were symbolic as well as precise targets- that’s why they were so unalike. They were actors, cast in your drama because they had a particular look or were the right age or because of some other factor.
‘What are the elements of your fantasy? Public humiliation is a feature. You wanted them to be found. You made these women strip naked and parade. Sylvia’s body was hung like a piece of meat. Christine scrawled “slut” on her stomach.
‘The first crime scene didn’t make sense. It was too public and exposed. Why didn’t you choose somewhere private- an empty house or isolated farm building? You wanted Christine to be seen. It was part of the deviant theatre.
‘You did this for gratification. It might not have begun as your motive, but that’s what it’s become. At some point in your fantasy, sexual desire has become messed with anger and the need to dominate. You have learned to eroticise pain and torture. You have fantasised about it- taken women in your dreams and humiliated, punished, and broken them. Degraded. Devalued. Destroyed.
‘You are fastidious. You take notes. You find out everything you can about them by watching their houses and their movements. You know when they leave for work, when they get home, when the lights go off at night.
‘I don’t know the exact details of your planning, therefore I don’t know how closely you followed the strategy, but you were willing to take risks. What if Christine Wheeler had been rescued on the bridge or if Sylvia Furness had been found before the cold stopped her heart, they could have identified you.
‘It doesn’t make sense… unless… unless. They never saw your face! You whispered in their ears, you told them what to do and they obeyed, but they didn’t see your face.’
Pushing the notebook aside, I lean back and close my eyes, drained, tired, trembling.
It is late. The house is silent. Above my head, the light fitting has captured dead moths in the bowl of frosted glass. Inside there is a light bulb, a fragile glass shell, and inside that is a glowing filament. People often use light bulbs to represent ideas. Not me. My ideas begin as pencil marks on a white page, soft abstract outlines. Slowly the lines grow clearer and acquire light and shade, depth and clarity.
I have never met the man who killed Christine Wheeler and Sylvia Furness, but suddenly I feel as though he has sprung from within my mind, flesh and blood, with a voice that echoes in my ears. He is no longer a figment, no longer a mystery, no longer part of my imagining. I have seen his mind.
30
The door barely opens. His grizzled face is peering at me.
‘You’re late.’
‘I had a job.’
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘I still have to work.’
He turns and shuffles a few paces down the hall, broken slippers flapping at his heels.
‘What sort of job?’
‘I had to change some locks.’
‘Get paid?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘I need some money.’
‘What about your pension?’
‘Gone.’
‘What do you spend it on?’
‘Champagne and fucking caviar.’
He’s wearing a pyjama shirt, threadbare at the elbows and tucked into high waisted trousers that bulge over his stomach and have no room at all at his crotch. Maybe your penis drops off when you reach a certain age.
We’re in the living room. The place smells of old farts and cooking fat. The only two pieces of furniture that matter are an armchair and the television.
I take out my wallet. He tries to look over my hands to see how much I’m carrying. I give him forty quid.
Hitching up his trousers, he sinks into the chair, filling the depressions that are moulded to the shape of his arse. His head cocks forward, chin to chest, and his eyes focus on the television, his life support system.
