“So his control is absolute?”
Maretsky sighed. “Not absolute, no. He does not control you. You are here without family—at least, only an uncle that even Lu might balk at challenging. If you do not give any hostages to fortune . . .” Maretsky cleared his throat. “He will try to buy you, of course, through his operatives in the force. Through the cabal. Perhaps he has already.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will when the time is right. And you probably do already, even if you won’t admit it to yourself.” He shrugged. “The woman, Medvedev, is trapped, so it is possible that she is not manipulating you; possible, of course, that in a wild moment she toys with the idea of escape, of romance, of being her own woman. But if that is the case, Field, then the dangers for you both are greater still.”
Maretsky sighed deeply, reached over, and took a buff-colored folder from the top drawer of his desk. “Come on.” He held the folder up. “Against my better judgment, I have helped you. Let’s go downstairs to Crime.”
Maretsky had set out the three pictures from the folder on the coffee table in front of Macleod’s desk downstairs. Caprisi had his arm around Field’s shoulder in a gesture of easy comradeship.
Field found the pictures difficult to look at.
The first woman was in a position strikingly similar to Lena Orlov’s. She was handcuffed to a brass bed, the sheet rumpled, her body half-turned. She wore a black garter belt and stockings but was otherwise naked, her breasts and nipples small. Like Natasha, she had strong, well-toned arms, one of which was thrust across her stomach, as though in a last-ditch attempt to shield herself from the knife. There were perhaps ten or fifteen stab wounds in her breasts and belly. This girl’s hair was long, like Natasha’s, her face turned away from the camera.
Natasha. Natasha would look like this. For a moment Field had to fight to prevent himself from being sick.
The second woman had short, straight, black hair. She was completely naked. She wasn’t handcuffed, and her body lay flat on the bed. The last photograph was of Lena Orlov.
“Which do you think was first?”
Neither of them answered, reluctant to turn this into a game.
Maretsky pointed to the one without handcuffs. “This woman. This is Irina. She was, I believe, a prostitute out-and-out, not a tea dancer.” Maretsky paused, a chubby finger to his lips. “Murdered at home, not in the brothel, so an outside arrangement. Neighbors saw and heard nothing. Didn’t know her, never spoke to her, rarely saw her. So they say. That is, so the French detectives say.”
“One of your contacts?” Macleod asked.
Maretsky did not answer.
“The French did not try to solve the murder?” Macleod went on.
“It would appear not,” Maretsky said.
“This girl, the first one, belonged to Lu also?” Caprisi asked.
Maretsky shrugged. “How can we know, when the French do not pursue these things? A grubby apartment— not one of his regular girls, I shouldn’t think, but I’ll talk about this in a minute.” He looked at the photograph. “The second girl, the one with the long hair, was Natalya Simonov, also a prostitute. Like Lena, she was handcuffed. There was more . . . scene setting. What’s the point here?”
“Irina was not dressed up,” Caprisi said. “Not handcuffed.”
“Yes.” He put his finger on Irina’s picture. “Irina was the beginning, I think. It feels—to me, it feels rushed. There is no scene setting, no planning, it is just a sudden, violent act.” Maretsky pointed at the other two photographs. “Afterwards, he gets to Natalya and then Lena, and by now he knows what he wants. Now he is more confident, in control, more able to exactly dictate how he wants the evening to unfold.”
“Why the . . .” Field looked at Maretsky. “Why the stockings and the handcuffs?”
He shook his head. “This is about sexual inadequacy, I think. This is what arouses him, or once did, but he has had a bad experience. He is immature or angry emotionally; he blames others for this inadequacy, which he feels deeply. It is not his fault, but that of the women, and . . .” He gestured at each of the three photographs in turn. “You see, these are not girls, these are women. All are in their twenties, at least, all fully grown, mature.”
“So these are the women he blames?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Maretsky hesitated. “We are outside the realms of modus operandi.”
“So this stuff is a hobby,” Caprisi said. “We know that.”
“Perhaps such theories have no place in a police investigation.”
“Get on with it, Maretsky,” Macleod said with impatient affection.
Maretsky sighed. “I would have to be familiar with the precise nature of his sexual inadequacy to tell you why. All I can say here is that he feels this inadequacy deeply, and an accompanying sense of rage. The way the girls are asked to dress, the handcuffs, that is part of the picture.”
“I think,” Field said, “that Lu Huang may be impotent.”
They all looked at him. Maretsky frowned.
“The Medvedev girl?” Macleod asked.
“Yes. She is summoned to his house in Rue Wagner, then made to wait for up to two hours in the living room on the first floor. Eventually, a housekeeper comes to fetch her and takes her to the bedroom on the second floor. She is required to stand in front of the bed and take off her clothes. Slowly.” Field was trying not to show any
