“I’ll ask him tomorrow.” She patted the wooden frame of the bunk beds, imagining the brothers as boys. “Yours was the bottom bunk?”
“That’s right. How did you guess?”
“Women’s intuition.” She winked at him, reluctant to mention that dominants almost always went on top, though if John had been involved with Richard Godwin at The Larches he was probably a bottom outside of the relationship with his brother. She looked at the walls still covered with blu-tac and the corners of posters. “What were you into then?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were a boy. Your brother liked comics and bodybuilders. What did you like?”
Jimmy shrugged. “The usual. Motorbikes. Girls. Films. I liked reading too. Science fiction mostly.” He looked at the tags on several of the boxes until he came across one that said James’s books. He ran his thumb under the flaps, splitting the tape to open it. “I remember these.” He pulled out a few paperbacks to show her. Alan Dean Foster. John Norman. Star Trek. “I used to love these. You daren’t read this stuff in the nick. Not if you don’t want your head flushed down the toilet.”
“No. The pages would get soggy.” Meinwen laughed at his expression as she walked out of the room. “Master bedroom?”
“Aye.” Jimmy stuffed the books back in the box and hurried after her. “Just to your left, there.”
It was light enough in here without the electric bulb. The bed was pristine, the curtains swagged back and held with ties. She was reminded of Jennie’s comment about John “knowing his curtains.” Perhaps that was a modern idiom for being gay, but in John’s case it was certainly true. She opened one of the wardrobes and was confronted by a whole rail of suits with matching shirts and ties. She lifted one out and held it up against Jimmy’s frame. “He certainly had an eye for style.”
“Did he?” Jimmy shrugged. “Makes sense if he was gay. They’re always well dressed, aren’t they? Gays and toffs.”
“I wouldn’t make that a definitive statement.” Meinwen replaced the suit. “But as a general rule of thumb I’m inclined to agree.” She switched her torch on to look at the floor. “Hullo. What’s this?”
“What?”
She bent to retrieve something and held it up. Five rings connected by a strap, the largest two inches or so in diameter, the rest reducing in size to half an inch.
Jimmy frowned and took them off her. “What are these?”
She smiled. “They’re called ‘The Gates of Hell.’ You put them on while you’re flaccid then as you come erect they constrict the blood flow until the head of the penis is thoroughly engorged. The bottom one goes over the scrotum.” Meinwen smiled. “Fabulous if you’re recepting a cock bound in one of these.” She gave a contented sigh, then mock-coughed. “Ahem. So I’m told, anyway.”
“Recepting?”
She chuckled. “A feminine-positive way of looking at sex. The world would be a kinder place if instead of men fucking, women elected to be receptive of cocks.”
“If you say so.” Jimmy handed it back to her. “Here. You can keep it.”
“For later use?” Meinwen raised her eyebrows. “It tells us one thing, anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“Your brother brought his friends here.”
Meinwen tucked the sex toy in the voluminous pocket of her cardigan. She walked down the hall looking at the framed pictures of relatives Jimmy couldn’t even remember all the names and kept saying “Mam’s side of the family” or “Dad’s brothers, I think.”
“Sergeant Peters told me there were some pictures obviously missing. Do you know where they are?”
Jimmy shook his head. “I haven’t seen them.”
“Very funny. I should spank you for that.” Meinwen gave him a sidelong glance. “Or not spank you. I meant where are they missing from?”
“The bedroom, I expect. There are no pictures in there and you’d expect some really, wouldn’t you? Go to sleep with a loved one watching over you.”
“I generally prefer a mug of cocoa.” Meinwen returned to the bedroom. On the night stand there were two lines in the dust indicating there had indeed been pictures there. “Do you think the killer might have taken them?”
“To avoid incriminating himself? Maybe.” Jimmy shrugged. “That or John took it with him to his other place.”
“In which case there’d be no mark. I don’t think your brother was the type to leave dust on the furniture.”
Jimmy ran his finger across the lines, lifting it to inspect the amount of dust and frowning as if he expected to see angels. “You’re probably right. So...find the pictures find the killer?”
“Maybe.” Meinwen took another glance around the room. “Did you sleep in this bed last night?”
“No. I couldn’t face it. After the coppers left I finished off all the beer in the fridge and went to sleep on the sofa in front of the telly. I nearly drank the champagne, too.”
“Champagne?”
“Yeah. There’s a bottle in the fridge. Pink champagne! I mean, who drinks pink champagne? Girls and–”
“Brothers?”
Jimmy grinned and nodded. “Yeah. Right.” He sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly. “Want to try it?”
Meinwen ran her tongue across her teeth. She’d like nothing better than to get into bed with this muscled ex-con, but where would that lead their relationship? She’d hardly remain the dominant if she acquiesced to every little suggestion. “Not really.”
“It’s quite comfortable.” Jimmy fell backward, his feet still touching the floor, so that he was sprawled perpendicular across the duvet. “Very firm.”
Meinwen looked away from the tent in his trousers. “Some other time. I don’t even want to imagine the stains on the mattress.” She bent to lift the valence. The bed wasn’t a divan as she’d originally thought but a top-range wooden framed model, made with solid pine the thickness of railway-sleepers. Eyelets were screwed all around the edge at two-inch intervals. “Look here.”
“What?” Jimmy did a perfect sit-up, the stomach muscles taut against his shirt as he came upright. “What am I looking at? Eyelets? What are they for?”
“Bondage.” Meinwen resisted the temptation to lick her lips, though she couldn’t help salivating and just hoped he didn’t notice. “All sorts of bondage. You could tie off wrists and ankles to individual eyelets, attach hooks or clips to them or lace the lot with a truck load of rope and bind someone to the bed with corset lacings.” She looked up. “Look! There’s a recently filled hole in the ceiling. I bet there was a winch in the loft when your brother lived here.”
“A winch?” Jimmy held out a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
Meinwen stared hard at the walls. “There are plastered-over holes, too. I bet he had fetish gear all over the place.”
“Fetish gear?”
“Whips, restraints, crosses. That sort of thing.”
“The mind boggles.”
“Not just the mind.” Meinwen closed her eyes, imagining the room decked out as a sado-masochist’s wet dream. “I bet his other place is out of this world.”
Jimmy stood up and crossed to the door. “Are we done here then?”
“I