‘You’re a model agency.’
Holden nodded. He sat at his desk, gestured for her to take a chair and turned a book towards her. ‘Our portfolio.’
She leafed through it and saw what the manager at Zebedee Juice had meant. These were nothing like the feral, challenging creatures on the morphing screen. These were pretty, sexy and well fed. Lorne would fit well in this portfolio. ‘Some of them are topless.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what we do. Everything from swimsuits to lingerie to page three. This year we’ve had two girls in the Pirelli calendar and we’ve had page three eighteen times. The West Country produces some of the best-looking girls in the land. It’s the warmth and the rain.’ He winked. ‘And the clotted cream. You know – all that fat.’
‘These girls, these models, do they go further than topless?’
‘Of course. The human body is a great instrument for artistic expression. If a girl is liberated, comfortable being naked, then she can get a lot of satisfaction from this sort of work. Most of them love it – really love it.’
‘Do you believe that? Or, rather, do you expect me to believe that? I mean, really they’re in it for the money.’
He was silent. Only his jaw showed agitation: it moved, very slightly, from side to side, as if he was working a piece of food out from his teeth. At last he raised his hands. ‘You’re not stupid and neither am I. Of course not. They do it for the money. And most of the time it’s not cos they have to – it’s not cos they were trafficked, or cos they’re having to put food in the mouths of their disabled babies or their dying mothers or whatever. Not even to feed their drug addiction, because most of them are clean. No – in my experience most of the time they’re doing it cos it’s easier than standing behind a till at Top Shop for eight hours a day. Quicker and easier – and, honestly, you get more respect from the photographer than you do from your average shopper. And I say hats off to them. Not that I’ve ever, in my ten years in the business, ever seen a girl do something sensible with the money. No investing it or anything like that. They spend it on clothes and, frankly, tit jobs. So they can – what? Go on doing modelling. A bit of a mindless cycle, if you think about it – men getting what they think they want from women, women getting what they think they want from men.’
Actually, Mr Holden, Zoë thought, not all of them spend their money on clothes and tit jobs. Some of them spend it on escaping something. Buying their freedom. ‘Have you been watching the news? The local news? There was a murder in Bath the other day.’
‘I know. Young girl. Pretty. Lorraine, was it? Lorraine someone.’
‘Lorne. Lorne Wood. The name doesn’t ring a bell?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t remember her coming to you?’
‘She was a schoolgirl, I thought.’
‘Yes, but she wanted to model. And she might not have used her real name.’
She pulled from her satchel a laminated set of pictures that the reprographics unit had produced. A set of photos of Lorne. The billions poured into developing facial-recognition technology had done little more than raise an important issue: the human face is so multi-faceted that it can vary wildly just from the smallest change in angle and lighting. The chief constable had picked up on this and now the force was inclined to use a selection of photographs for identification purposes. On this sheet many of the photos collected from Lorne’s wall had been collaged. Zoë leaned half out of her chair and placed the sheet under Holden’s nose.
He looked at them. Frowned. Shook his head slowly. ‘Don’t think so. I get scores of photos from girls who think they’re going to be on page three, or the cover of FHM. The faces, I’ll be honest, merge into one eventually, but I don’t think I remember her.’
She took the sheet back and sat for a moment, eyes on Lorne’s Hollywood smile. None of these looked anything like the photos on the camera chip. They were in a totally different mood. She reached into her pocket for her iPhone, to which she’d transferred all the photos from Lorne’s chip, and brought up one of Lorne in underwear on the bed. Not the topless one. She’d protect Lorne from that at least. ‘How about that?’
This time Holden’s face changed. ‘OK,’ he said quietly. ‘That alters things. I do recognize her.’ He went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a folder, riffled through the photos and printed pages in it. ‘I would never have recognized her from the other photos – but seeing that, I remember.’ He pulled out a photo and held it up. It was one of the topless ones from the camera chip, printed out. ‘She emailed it to me – didn’t use that name, though. Called herself –’ he checked on the back ‘– Cherie. Cherie Garnett.’
Zoë’s whole body felt tired. She wasn’t glad she’d been right, just enormously depressed. ‘And? What did you say?’
‘Nah. I thought there was something a bit suspicious about it, to be honest. I thought right away she was younger than she said she was.’
‘That stopped you, did it?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a serious offence. You really can’t be too careful. I told her I’d keep her on file.’
‘So you told her no. Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
She looked at him, trying to get the measure of him. She thought he was telling the truth. ‘Do you think she’d have gone somewhere else when you turned her down?’
He was silent for a moment. Then he got to his feet and opened a filing cabinet. He took out a written list and handed it to her. ‘Listen,’ he said seriously, ‘I don’t know you and you don’t owe me a thing. But if you tell any of them who put you in touch and it comes out it’s me – well, I’m just saying.’
Zoë scanned the sheet. It had about fifty names printed on it with contact details. A lot of them seemed to be agents around the West Country, but several were lap-dance clubs. ‘Did you give her this list?’
‘I didn’t. I give you my word on that. But I’m not the only show in town. Someone else may have.’
She folded the page of addresses, put it into her pocket and got to her feet. ‘Just one last thing,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘If you have any more thoughts on this don’t call the police station. None of the others are working on this lead so you need to speak to me direct.’ She pulled a business card out of her pocket and laid it on his desk. ‘And don’t leave any messages except on my personal voicemail. If you do that for me …’
‘Yes?’
‘Your name won’t be mentioned to anyone on this list.’
Chapter 36
Sally found herself staring at David Goldrab as she cleaned his house that day. She kept trying to catch glimpses of him as he wandered around after his visit to the stables, opening a bottle of champagne, tapping his whip on his calf as if keeping rhythm with some song he was humming. She stood at the sink opposite him, in her rubber gloves, wiping the surface over and over, not looking at it but at him – his skin, his hands, his arms. The moving parts of him that made him living. Someone wanted him dead. Actually dead. Not pretend dead. Really.
She finished her cleaning chores and went to the office to start entering the household expenses into the database. She’d been there for about ten minutes when she heard him go upstairs to the gym, which faced out over the front of the property. Soon she heard the familiar whirr of the treadmill, then the thud-thud-thud of him running. Her eyes drifted to the bank of computers on the other desk. His ‘business’ section. She thought about what Steve had said. Porn. But nasty porn. Something dark and enveloping. She bit her lip and tried to concentrate on the column of figures. Earlier she’d noticed a light on the other computer. It meant it was on standby – not actually switched off.
After a while she couldn’t stop her attention wandering to it. She stood up and, tongue between her teeth, leaned over and touched the mouse. The computer whirred and began to come to life. Suddenly scared, she got up and went to the open door, looking up at the ceiling. Bang-bang-bang, came the noise from the treadmill.