I had never paid for sex, although I'd bought quite a few expensive dinners in my time, which was tantamount to the same thing. On this occasion, however, my mother had been paying two thousand pounds a week for the past seven months. I hoped it was going to be worth it.
Julie appeared in the doorway carrying two champagne flutes in her left hand and wearing a flimsy housecoat that she allowed to fall open, revealing her nakedness beneath.
"Now, just how naughty have you been?" she asked, swinging a leather riding whip into view.
"Very," I said, opening the champagne with a loud pop.
"Oh, goodie," she replied.
It wasn't quite what I had in mind, but I went along with her little game for a while as she became more and more excited.
"Just a minute," I said, getting off the bed.
"What?" she gasped. "Get back here now!"
"Just a minute," I repeated. "I need the bathroom."
She was lying on her back, half sitting up, resting on her elbows with the whip in her right hand, her knees drawn up, and her legs spread wide apart. She threw her head back. "I just don't believe it," she cried. "You get back here right now or you'll really be in trouble."
I ignored her, went into the bathroom and put on my boxer shorts. I then took my new camera from the cupboard under the sink where I had placed it when I arrived, and checked that it was switched on. The champagne hadn't been the only thing in the plastic bag.
"Hurry up, you naughty boy," she shouted.
"Coming," I shouted back.
I came out of the bathroom taking shot after shot of her naked body as she lay on the bed, still in the same compromising position. She'd had her eyes closed, and it was a few seconds before she realized what I was doing.
"What the fuck's going on?" she screamed, throwing the whip at me and grabbing the duvet to cover herself.
"Just taking some photos," I said calmly.
"What the fuck for?" she shouted angrily.
"Blackmail," I replied.
"Blackmail!" she shrieked.
"Yes," I said. "Do you want to see?"
I held the camera towards her so she could see the screen on the back of it. But the photograph I showed her wasn't one of those I'd just taken; it was the one with her face in profile from yesterday, the one with her hand reaching into mailbox number 116 to collect the package of money.
She cried a lot.
We were still in her guest bedroom. I had thrown her the housecoat when I'd gone into the bathroom to put on my shirt and trousers, and when I'd reemerged, she had been sitting up in bed, wearing the coat, with the duvet pulled right up. Somehow she didn't look like someone up to their neck in a criminal conspiracy. She had even straightened her hair.
"It was only a game," she said.
"Murder is never a game," I said, standing at the end of the bed.
"Murder?" She went very pale. "What murder?"
My murder, I thought. Hanging on a wall in Greystone Stables.
"Who was murdered?" she demanded.
"Someone called Roderick Ward," I said, even though I had no evidence that it was true.
"No," she wailed. "Roderick wasn't murdered; he died in a car crash."
So she knew of Roderick Ward.
"That's what it was meant to look like," I said. "Who killed him?"
"I didn't kill anybody," she shouted.
"Someone did," I said. "Was it Ewen?"
"Ewen?" She almost laughed. "The only thing Ewen is interested in is bloody horses. That and whisky. Horses all day and whisky all night."
Perhaps that explained her sexually flirtatious nature-she couldn't get any satisfaction in the marital bed, so she had looked elsewhere.
"So who killed Roderick Ward?" I asked her again.
"No one," she said. "I told you. He died in a car crash."
"Who says so?" I asked. She didn't respond. I looked down at her. "Do you know what the sentence is for being an accessory to murder?" There was still no response. "Life in prison," I said. "That's a very long time for someone as young as you."
"I told you, I didn't murder anyone." She was now crying again.
"But do you think a jury will believe you once they've convicted you for blackmail?" She went on crying, the tears smudging her mascara and dripping black marks onto the white bed linens. "So tell me, who did kill Roderick Ward?" I asked.
She didn't say anything; she just buried her face in a pillow and sobbed.
"You will tell me," I said. "Eventually. Are you aware that the maximum sentence for blackmail is fourteen years?"
That brought her head back up. "No." It was almost a plea.
"Oh yes," I said. "And the same for conspiracy to blackmail."
I knew. I'd looked it up on the Internet.
"Where's the money?" I asked, changing direction.
"What money?" she said.
"The money you collected yesterday from Newbury."
"In my handbag," she whimpered.
"And how about the rest of it?"
"The rest?" she said.
"Yes, all the packages you've been collecting each week for the past seven months. Where's all that money?"
"I don't have it," she said.
"So who has?"
She still didn't want to tell me.
"Julie," I said. "You are leaving me no alternative but to give the picture of you in Newbury yesterday to the police."
"No," she wailed again.
"But I can only help you if you will help me," I said softly. "Otherwise, I will also have to send the other photos to Ewen." Both of us knew what the other photos showed. Set a thief to catch a thief, or, as in this case, set a blackmailer to catch a blackmailer.
"No, please." She was begging.
"Then tell me who has the money."
"Can't I pay you back in a different way?" she asked, pulling down the duvet and opening her housecoat to reveal her left breast.
"No," I said emphatically. "You cannot."
She covered herself up again.
"Julie," I said in my voice-of-command, "this is your last chance. Either you tell me now who's got the money or I will call the police." She wasn't to know that I had absolutely no intention of doing that.
"I can't tell you," she said forlornly.
"What are you frightened of?" I asked.
"Nothing."
"But you claimed it was only a game," I said."Was it him who told you that?" I paused. She gave no answer. "Did he just ask you to collect something for him from a mailbox each week?" I paused again. Again there was no answer, but she began to cry once more. "Did he tell you that you wouldn't get caught?" She nodded slightly."Only now you have been." She nodded again, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. "And you're not going to tell me who it was. That's not very clever, you know. You'll end up taking all the blame."
"I don't want to go to prison," she sobbed, echoing my mother.
"You don't have to," I said. "If you tell me who you give the money to, I am sure the courts won't send you to prison." Not for long anyway, I thought. Certainly not for the maximum fourteen years.
I could see that she still didn't want to say. Was it fear, I wondered, or some misguided sense of loyalty.
"Do you love him?" I asked her.
She looked up at me, still sobbing. But she nodded.
"Then why are you doing this?" I waved my arm at her, at the bed, and at the riding whip that still lay on the floor where she had thrown it. She had hardly acted as if she was deeply in love with someone.
"Habit, I suppose," she said quietly.
Some habit, I thought.
"Does he love you?" I asked.
"He says so," she said, but I detected some hesitancy in her voice.