“Please, Francesca, I have to know whether Felix harmed you—it’s for my peace of mind. I’m trying to figure out if Tilda’s better off now that she’s free of him.”
“Stop it. . . . It’s disrespectful. Felix was demanding, yes. But he never harmed me. Our relationship wasn’t like that.” She was speaking quietly now, and I couldn’t tell whether she was being truthful, or whether she was simply protecting Felix’s memory.
“I was worried that he might be seeing someone else, someone called Charlotte . . . for violent sex.”
“That’s enough. It’s ridiculous, you should stop making allegations.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.” There was another pause on the line, and I thought she was going to say good night. Instead I heard:
“It’s possible . . . just about. I once caught him accessing a website called illicithookups.com. But that’s all. He was never violent with me. Never.”
40
Twenty-ninth of October—the day before I was supposed to kill Luke Stone—and late, just as I was going to bed, Scarlet emailed her address in Manchester and reminded me of our “nice chat that day at Kenwood House.” There was no longer any need for me to humor her, so I replied:
Our chat was disgusting and I won’t be following up on it.
A few minutes later:
You must follow up. It was agreed. Remember what I’ve done for you, at your bidding, and return the favor. You have no choice, actually. You’re implicated.
I was nauseated and didn’t reply. But I’d had a bad night, lying awake and worrying. I thought maybe I should, after all, go to Manchester in the morning, to Scarlet’s flat. If I found Luke in a comatose state then I’d be able to phone Melody Sykes. Luke could be revived, and Scarlet charged with drugging him. But the more I thought about it—the more doubtful I felt. Melody would probably suspect me, given that she seemed to think I was unstable. And I needed to concentrate on proving that Scarlet murdered Felix—her sick games with Luke were not my priority.
In the morning, I went to work, although it was a Monday. I think I just wanted Daphne’s company. She was in a buoyant mood because Douglas was treating her to a holiday in Siena. “I’d just mentioned to him that it’s one of my favorite places—and he found us the most charming little hotel to stay in, and they’re putting a table by the window, so I’ll be able to write while I’m looking at the terra-cotta roofs and the winter sun. And I’ll take breaks for us to walk the streets, exploring, stopping in cafés and bars. Oh, it’s blissful.”
“I read in a magazine that your first holiday together can make or break your relationship,” I said. I didn’t want to be negative, but I was aching from the contrast between her good fortune and my turbulent life.
“I reckon you’re right.” She was untroubled by my sharpness, confident in Douglas, and she went back to pounding her keyboard, absorbed in The Lady Connoisseurs of Crime.
I had my laptop on the payments counter and I typed illicithookups.com into the address bar, then said I was looking for a man and hundreds came up instantly. Men who posted pictures of Brad Pitt and David Beckham instead of themselves, men who posted pictures of their hairy bellies, showing that their trousers were unzipped, men posting pictures of themselves in mirrors in grotty, dirty bathrooms, men in a variety of role-play costumes—babies, dolls, dogs, hangmen. You name it. A sizable minority, though, was hiding behind the stock photograph for the site—a suave City gent in a dinner jacket, with a cocktail in his hand. There’d be no way of finding Felix in this lot—so I tried being a man looking for an illicit woman, and in no time at all I was scrolling through pictures of women in lacy bras and thongs, stockings and stilettoes. Most of the images were like Fifty Shades of Grey—black fluffy handcuffs; leather whips pressed into rolling cleavage and buttocks and thighs. Anything more explicit, apparently, was available only if you paid ￡120 a month, a fee that would also allow you to message “your fantasy girl,” with a view to meeting her in the flesh.
I clicked on a skinny woman calling herself Playful Pandora lying across a bed. The picture showed a sprawling, barely clad body, straining ribs, flung-back neck, but not a face, and I thought for a second that it could be Scarlet. But then I saw that she’d posted: “Naughty nights with masterful sex god sought by luscious lovely forty-two-year-old.” I harrumphed with laughter, and Daphne looked pointedly at me. I read more, learning that Pandora really liked “bondage, S and M, all exotic requests considered.” When I clicked on other profiles—Sexy-sexy, Betsy Bootylicious, Mistress Millie (alliteration was practically mandatory)—I found women on all fours, their bottoms in the air, doing little ootsy-cutesy-me faces at the camera, and others that were the opposite, stern dominatrices in tight black rubber or leather, brandishing so many different sorts of torture instruments that I wondered whether you could buy them on eBay. All the ads I saw were on the same theme—women touting sexual adventures involving pain and domination.
I opened up the dossier and typed out hypothetical situations. Maybe Scarlet had learned from me that Felix was violent in the bedroom and had gone looking for him on Illicit Hookups—which was evidently the go-to site for rough sex. That was just about conceivable, if she paid the ￡120 interaction fee. Or was it the other way round? Did Scarlet meet Felix on Illicit Hookups a while ago—then go to Controlling Men to see if he was on there as a predator? Of course I quickly realized that that wouldn’t work since I had simply referred to Felix as X in the beginning, made him anonymous. I returned to Illicit Hookups, scanning the profiles, trying to find Scarlet, and I spotted a few possibilities, but nothing that was truly convincing.
? ? ?
When I got home from work I phoned Wilf. It was my first attempt to contact him since he’d walked out of our lunch in the Albany, angry that I’d turned out to be insane. He didn’t answer, and the phone went to voice mail, but I didn’t leave a message. Five minutes later, he called back.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Am I forgiven?”
“What for?”
“Walking out . . . I’ve been wanting to call you. I was knocked sideways by those things you said, Callie. But I want to know more. I mean, it sounds like you’ve been dragged into some horrible mire by unscrupulous people on the internet, like you could do with a friend by your side.”
I almost broke down. “That’s exactly what’s happened! I’m finding it difficult to know what’s real and what isn’t.”
“Would it help if I came round and threw you on the bed and made love to you?”
“I think that would help. It’s certainly worth a try.” I was smiling—really, truly smiling—for the first time in ages. “Come here—I’m at home.”
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