‘WHAT IS THIS, a movie trailer?’ Latimer leans closer to Sunday’s laptop. At the windows, Liz is pulling down blinds so that the four officers can better see the frozen image that has appeared on the screen. ‘A home movie?’ There is something about the photography, maybe the lack of light, the positioning of the furniture in the room, that has an amateurish feel to it.
‘We found the videotape under her bath in the en suite,’ says Sunday. ‘Given that we were there, at her invitation, investigating a trespass, it should be admissible. I copied it there and then, which wasn’t easy, but I managed to get the right equipment biked over. The cover is a copy too, but pretty close to the original. Once I got back to the station, I transferred it on to our hard drive.’
Latimer lifts the fake video cassette that Sunday has mocked up. It is plain, the sort bought in multi-packs to store home movies. The date on it is 15 January 1996. A title has been handwritten.
Daisy in Chains.
‘Where’s the original?’ Latimer asks.
‘Back under the bath,’ Pete tells him.
‘So, how did she get hold of it?’ Latimer says.
‘Just what we asked ourselves,’ Pete says. ‘One possibility is that Wolfe told her where to find it.’
‘Except Hamish has always insisted there was only ever one copy made,’ says Liz, ‘and that Daisy took it with her when she left Oxford.’
‘He’s a liar, we know that already,’ says Latimer, but his face says he is less sure of himself. ‘Play it,’ he says.
Sunday clicks on the Play arrow and Latimer, Pete, Sunday and Liz are looking at a small, simply furnished room. The desk and computer, the books on the shelves, the single bed, all suggest a student bedroom. The lights are kept low, but there must be a dozen or more candles dotted around the room. The counterpane on the bed is dark red, speckled with something white. Petals. There are flowers in the room, several vases of them, all containing the same flower.
In the centre of the picture stand a man and a woman, kissing. The woman’s hands are on the man’s shoulders, one drifts lower to rest on the small of his back. The man is wearing jeans and has his back to the camera. He appears tall, broad shouldered, with dark hair that curls down past the nape of his neck. He holds the woman by the head, his hands tangling in long, dark hair. The woman is naked.
‘That’s Wolfe,’ whispers Latimer.
Wolfe, a much younger Wolfe, has moved behind the woman now. A good head taller, he nuzzles the side of her hair as he runs his hands the length of her ample body, over her large breasts, her pillow of a stomach.
‘And Daisy Baron,’ says Pete. ‘We found her in yearbook photographs of Hamish and his Magdalen set.’
‘He’s positioning her for the camera,’ Latimer says.
Pete nods. The woman – Daisy – a girl really, hardly more than eighteen, doesn’t know the camera is there. There is no hint of self-consciousness about the way she leans into her boyfriend, parts her thighs to let him touch her.
‘What’s she got on her head?’ Latimer asks.
‘Flowers,’ says Liz, whose face is looking pinched. ‘He’s made her a daisy chain.’
Pete can see the thought process taking place in Latimer’s head, the same that went through his own when he first saw the video. Daisy in Chains. Daisy chains.
‘Shit,’ Latimer says. He looks at his watch. ‘We haven’t time for this. Fast-forward it.’
As the computer flicks through the frames, the four officers see an odd, speeded-up version of a couple having sex. It reminds Pete of ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines on the pier when he was a kid. Cards attached to a circular frame, shown quickly to give the impression of movement. They watch Wolfe put a garland of flowers, another frigging daisy chain, around the girl’s neck, see him leading her to the bed, bending over her, lying on top of her. They see her plump thighs wrap around his waist.
The footage, run at normal speed, might last twenty-five, thirty minutes. This is no fervent, soon-over student fumbling, Wolfe is putting on a show for the camera. The team flick through it in five minutes.
It’s over. Wolfe lies flat on the narrow bed, Daisy by his side, cuddled up against him. The flowers, crumpled and bruised, are on Wolfe’s head. He’s grinning, one arm flung up over the pillow, the other around his girlfriend.
‘Not what we’ve been led to believe,’ says Latimer.
‘Nope,’ says Pete. ‘No chains. No S & M. Nobody dies. Just a young couple in love.’
‘You’d be very pissed off, though, if you thought your boyfriend had shared it with the world,’ says Liz. ‘If you thought he’d just been using you.’
Latimer nods his head. ‘OK, what else?’
Chapter 98
MAGGIE WANDERS FROM room to room, checking door and window locks, thinking of the signs that precede a great storm. The swell on the ocean gets higher, the waves more rapid. At the same time, clouds flee from the sky, barometers hold steady and the wind drops.
Nothing has happened for hours now. This is the calm before.