Kevin Matthews’s carrot curls appeared round the door. He looked like a kid who’s been promised a trip to Disneyland. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’ve just had a report from Forensic on the Damien Connolly killing.’
‘Come in and tell us, then,’ Cross invited genially.
Kevin gave an apologetic smile and slid his slim frame round the door. ‘One of the SOCOs found a scrap of torn leather caught on a nail on the gate,’ he said. ‘It’s a secure area, the public can’t just walk in, so we thought it might be significant. Obviously, we had to eliminate the people who work at the pub, and the draymen who deliver there. Anyway, it turns out that the yard was whitewashed and the gates were painted only a month ago, so we didn’t have to chase too many bodies. Bottom line is, no one admitted owning anything made from leather like this, so we sent it off to Forensic and asked them to look at it double urgent. The report’s just come back.’ He proffered the report to Brandon, eager as a Boy Scout.
The relevant passage had been highlighted in yellow. It leapt off the page at Brandon. ‘The fragment of dark-brown leather is extremely unusual. For a start, it appears to be deerskin of some sort. More significantly, analysis indicates that it has been cured in sea water rather than a specialist chemical-curing medium. I know of only one source of such leather: the former Soviet Union. Because regular supplies of the correct chemicals are difficult to come by, many tanners there still use the old method of curing with sea water. I would guess that the fragment has come from a leather jacket that originated in Russia. Leather like this is not available commercially elsewhere, since it does not meet the quality levels required by Western retail outlets.’ Brandon read it, then tossed it across the desk towards Cross.
‘Bloody hell!’ Cross said. ‘You mean we’re looking for an Ivan?’
FROM 3½″ DISK LABELLED: BACKUP.007; FILE LOVE.009
I read somewhere that murder enquiries cost a million pounds a month. When Paul demonstrated he was every bit as stupid and treacherous as Adam, I began to realize the actions I’d been forced to take might start to have a significant impact on local taxes. Not that I minded a few extra pence a year on my council-tax bills; it was a small price to pay for the satisfaction I gained from dealing with their perfidy.
I was devastated by Paul’s defection. Just as I’d set the scene for the triumphant celebration of our love, he turned his back on me and chose another. The night he made his first approach, I don’t know how I got home. I can’t remember a single detail of the journey. I sat in my jeep outside the farm, raging against his shallowness, his failure to recognize that I was the one he truly loved. My anger was so strong I’d lost all physical coordination. I virtually fell out of the driver’s seat and staggered like a drunk towards the haven of my dungeon.
I climbed on to the stone bench and hugged my knees to my chest while the unfamiliar tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed on the raw stone, staining it dark as Adam’s blood. What was wrong with them? Why couldn’t they let themselves have what I knew they wanted?
I wiped my eyes. I owed it to both of us to make the experience as rich and as perfect as possible. It was time for new toys. Adam had been the dress rehearsal. Paul was going to be the first night.
The ploy of the car that wouldn’t start had served me well with Adam, so I used it on Paul. It worked like a dream. Before I was three steps down the hall, he’d even invited me to have a drink while I was waiting for the AA man. But I didn’t fall for his blandishments; he’d had his chance, and it was too late now for me to abort my plans for our union on my terms.
When he came round, he was strapped into a Judas chair. It had taken me a few days to construct it, since I’d had to start from scratch. The Judas chair was one of my San Gimignano discoveries. I’d only ever seen a couple of references to it in my books, none of which made it at all clear how exactly it was constructed. But there in the museum, they had their very own working model. I had taken a couple of photographs to augment the one in the museum catalogue, and equipped with those, I had worked out a practicable design on my computer.
It’s not a machine that inquisitors have used much, though I can’t quite see why. The San Gimignano museum puts forward a theory which frankly seems absurd to me. Coupled with some of the other descriptions on the cards, this daft theory convinces me that the cards have been written by some blinkered, obsessive feminist. The theory goes thus: it was OK to use implements of torture on women such as vaginal pears that shredded the cervix and vagina, so-called ‘Chastity’ belts which ripped their labia to a bloody pulp, implements that chopped nipples as efficiently as a cigar cutter, because women were a separate species from the inquisitors, and indeed were often creatures of the devil. On the other hand, so this demented theory goes, torture instruments used on men tend not to be directed against their sexual organs, in spite of the tenderness of those areas, because – wait for it – the torturers felt subconsciously connected to their victims and therefore any mutilation inflicted on their cocks and balls was unthinkable. Clearly, the caption writer in San Gimignano is far from au fait with the refinements of the Third Reich.
My Judas chair, even if I say so myself, is a masterpiece of the type. It consists of a square frame with a leg at each corner, with arm supports for the forearms and a thick plank up the back. Much like a primitive carving chair, except that there is no seat. Instead, below the gap where the seat should be, there is a sharply barbed conical spike, attached to the chair legs at its base by a cross-brace of strong wooden struts. For the spike, I’d used one of the large cones that cotton yarn used to be wound round on industrial looms. You can pick them up in the souvenir shop of any outpost of the heritage industry. I’d covered it with a thin, flexible sheet of copper, and fastened thin strands of razor wire in a spiral round the outside. I’d added my own refinement to the example in the torture museum: my spike was wired up to the electrical supply via a rheostat, allowing me to apply electric shocks of varying intensity. The whole thing is bolted to the floor to prevent accidents.
While he’d still been unconscious, Paul had been held above the spike by a strong leather strap under his armpits, binding him to the back of the chair. I’d also strapped each ankle to one of the front legs of the chair. As soon as I unfastened the strap, he’d be thrown on his own resources, relying on the muscles in his calves and his shoulders to keep him from the savage spike, carefully sited immediately below his anus. Since the chair was so high that only his toes could reach the floor, I didn’t expect him to hold out too long.
His eyes registered the same panic I’d already seen in Adam. But his situation was entirely of his own making. I told him so before I ripped the tape away from his mouth.
‘I had no idea, no idea,’ he gabbled. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You’ve got to let me make it up to you. Just let me out of this thing, and I promise we can make a fresh start.’
I shook my head. ‘Robert Maxwell got one thing right. He said trust is like virginity; you can only lose it once. You have a treacherous soul, Paul. How can I believe in you?’
His teeth began chattering, though not, I suspect, from cold. ‘I made a mistake,’ he forced out. ‘I know that. Everybody makes mistakes. Please, all I ask is the chance to make it right. I can make it right, I promise.’
‘Show me, then,’ I said. ‘Show me you mean it. Show me you want me.’ I stared at his shrivelled cock, dangling with his balls in the space where the seat should have been. I had looked forward to beauty, but he had failed me there, too.
‘N-not here, not like this. I can’t!’ His voice rose in a pathetic wail.