‘You were alone at home?’
‘I shared a house with three other guys. They were all there, but they didn’t wake up. Daisy was there too, that night. It was the last time I saw her.’
‘We’ll get back to Daisy. So, the four of you were roused from your beds. What happened?’
‘We went to Warwick’s house. The girl was dead. She was starting to go cold by this time. There was nothing we could do for her.’
‘So you did what you could for yourselves?’
‘I said you wouldn’t like it.’
‘Good call. Go on.’
‘We washed her. Got all traces of Warwick off her body and dressed her again. We put her in the bed, making it look as though she’d passed out from alcohol and Ecstasy. While three of us were doing that, the other two were clearing the room. We took away the camera, Warwick’s various props. And we wiped his computer clean of anything to do with Fat Club or the business. We knew the police might take it away. We had to do it there and then.’
‘This must all have taken some time. Didn’t the medical examiner realize she’d been dead too long?’
A swift headshake. ‘It’s really not that easy to pinpoint time of death. The most anyone can usually do is give a window of a few hours. Warwick claimed he’d been asleep beside her and wasn’t sure what time she’d died.’
‘Warwick called the emergency services?’
‘That’s right. After we left.’
Maggie is silent.
‘I know what you’re thinking. And I don’t necessarily disagree. But we didn’t kill her. Even Warwick had no idea what she’d taken.’
‘He was a medical student. He could have spotted the signs.’
‘There’s not a single symptom of Ecstasy use that can’t be mistaken for inebriation.’
True or not true? She needs time to think. Hamish doesn’t appear to be lying. The girl died, as young people do every year, from a dodgy dose of Ecstasy, and a group of friends conspired to keep their unsavoury behaviour from coming to light. The discovery of a porn business that exploited unknowing subjects would have had them sent down from Oxford, ended their medical careers before they’d even begun. Admission even now might see them struck off. It’s understandable that Pearson, Doggett, Hespe and Easton are concerned.
On the other hand, it doesn’t make them murderers.
‘OK, now tell me what happened to Daisy.’
Hamish yawns, giving her a full view of the fillings in his teeth, the fur on his tongue. ‘I wish I could,’ he says. ‘She was gone when I got home. I went round to her room the next day, but she’d cleared out. Taken most of her stuff and vanished. The university knew nothing about it. They got in touch with her family, who just told them she wouldn’t be returning.’
‘Did you look for her?’
‘I went to see her parents during the Easter break. I hadn’t met them before but I knew where she lived in Leeds. They told me she’d gone travelling. That they weren’t expecting her home for at least a year and then she’d be enrolling in a different medical school. One they weren’t prepared to disclose to me.’ His face clouds over at the unpleasant memory. ‘They weren’t welcoming.’
‘Maybe they knew you’d made their daughter a porn star. Parents tend to frown on that sort of thing.’
‘Daisy wasn’t part of that. Did I not already make that clear? No one saw the tape of me and Daisy. It was private.’
‘Rumour has it, and I quote, it was some weird shit. Bondage, is the best guess. Sadism.’
Hamish pulls a face. ‘Fantasy.’
‘Why was it called Daisy in Chains? Was she? In chains, I mean?’
‘I don’t tie women up.’ He gives her an unpleasant smile. ‘Unless they ask very nicely.’
‘So, why would she just disappear?’
‘My best guess? She heard enough of what we were saying to know something serious had gone down. Then she found the tape of her and me.’
‘You left it lying around?’
‘I’m not a complete fool. I knew she’d found it, though, because it was missing. It wasn’t where it should have been. And I checked my browser history on the computer. In the middle of the night, someone – and it can only have been Daisy – found the folder for the business and looked at several pages. I’m guessing she realized what we’d been up to, saw the tape that she was on, and put two and two together, making a whole bigger number than four.’
‘Daisy thought you’d been using her. That you’d only been seeing her to get salacious video footage. She thought dirty old men the world over had seen the two of you having sex.’