‘What happened then?’ Kate kept her tone soft.
‘I distracted him. He slapped me about for a bit – he even got hold of the whip at one point – but when I started stripping, he let me take over. Then there was more of the usual stuff: pulling at my clothes, biting me – my tits were killing me after. Look, I’ve bruises everywhere, the wanker.’ She pulled up a sleeve to show a bruised arm. ‘When he got into the swing of things, it meant I could get out of there faster.’
‘What then?’ Lynch asked.
‘After he came off, I told him to have a shower. I said the wet would add to the turn-on when he came back. The egotistical bastard actually thought I was enjoying myself. When he went to the bathroom, I checked under the bed and the pillows. That’s where they usually hide the knives.’
‘Find any?’ Lynch leaned in closer again.
‘No, but it didn’t stop him wanting it. He said he would pay me a hundred euros extra if I did the cutting on him. He brought out a shaver blade – desperate to see blood, he was, but I wasn’t having any of it.’ She shuddered.
Kate looked at Lynch and wondered briefly if Annabel’s distaste gave him pleasure.
‘Well, Annabel,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘Rick’s got plenty of blood on him now – not that it’s capable of giving him a hard-on.’
He was enjoying the power struggle, Kate noted. The more vulnerable the girl became, the more pleasure he got out of it. If Annabel defied him, he came across the heavy, putting her where it suited him best: inferior to him.
It surprised her when Annabel went to the victim’s defence: ‘The guy wasn’t the worst – I mean, he didn’t deserve to die.’
‘So when his time was up with you, what happened then?’ Kate kept her tone measured.
Annabel lowered her voice. ‘Like most of them, he wanted rid of me as fast as he could, as if I reminded him of shit.’ Then her tone sharpened: ‘Nothing new there.’
‘Had he booked you before?’ Kate pressed her.
‘It was the first time.’
‘What about ropes?’ Kate continued. ‘Did Rick Shevlin have any, or did you bring any with you?’
‘No, there was nothing like that.’
Kate smiled then, hoping to put her at ease. ‘What’s your real name, Annabel?’
‘Victoria.’
‘Meaning “to conquer” or “conqueror”.’ Kate’s response was gentle.
‘I don’t like them using it – the punters, that is.’
‘I can understand that.’ She gave the girl a reassuring look.
Lynch interjected, ‘You’re wearing a very distinctive pink lipstick. Do you ever wear red?’
‘Sure.’
‘We’ll be confiscating your lipsticks along with the whip.’
‘What? All of them?’
‘It’s a murder investigation.’ He smiled.
If he heard Annabel mutter, ‘Wanker,’ he chose to ignore it. Stopping the recording and closing the interview, he said to her, ‘Wait here until I send in your escort.’
When they stepped outside, he asked Kate, ‘What do you think of her?’
‘I think she’s telling us the truth. Rick Shevlin wasn’t a novice in this area. He behaved like someone who’d hired escorts before. If the toxicology tests tell us sedation was used, drugs and poisons aren’t unusual where a female killer is concerned.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Sometimes because it’s less messy?’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Are you serious?’ He didn’t attempt to hide his surprise.
‘I said sometimes, but not always. Also, some women prefer not to be around when their victim dies, but, obviously, neither is part of the MO here. Most likely if we find sedatives in his system, it will be because the killer wanted him weakened, and they may also have wanted him conscious when the wounds were inflicted. Assuming Rick Shevlin doesn’t swing both ways, I doubt a man tied his naked body up like that.’ She could tell he had reservations about it being a female killer, but she continued, ‘I would press the madam on whether or not Rick had hired any of her other girls. Maybe someone else was happy to give him what he wanted, and sought revenge. Either way, we now know the reasons for the smaller incisions on the victim’s body. If someone else was prepared to experiment in the cutting department, they could have been emotionally closer to Rick Shevlin than Annabel – I mean Victoria.’
‘Emotionally?’ Lynch sounded sceptical.
‘Contrary to common belief, there’s a whole host of reasons why men use escorts, and I’m not talking dinner guests. The physical violence here, the whipping, but especially the desire for cutting, to see blood, tells us a lot about him.’
‘That he was a perv?’
‘There was certainly a control and power element to his preferences, but the real answers are not always obvious. If someone had got close to Rick Shevlin emotionally, we might have the first key.’