Marcus was carrying on with his story. Jennifer listened carefully. Nobody had troubled him much for some time after Irene’s death; he had been instructed to join the Freemasons, which he did.
Bill Turpin’s friends were always referred to as just that — ‘The Friends’. At first Marcus had taken the innocent-sounding name for what it was, and not realised the extent of the formal structure involved. Only gradually had he learned just how big and influential The Friends were. They had considerable powers. With his move to London came a phone number, and he told her about his abortive attempts to trace it, always ending with an empty room rented to a non-existent company with an accommodation address. Apart from Bill, he only ever talked to disembodied voices, for many years to a voice that came to him through a voice box, so it sounded like a machine — he couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.
But he’d learned that almost everything he wanted he could have, all he had to do was ask.
‘And in return you gave them the power of the Recorder, and the influence of your whole business empire, and now your position as a junior minister,’ she said.
She felt his eyes on her back.
‘It’s easy to moralise,’ he said.
‘I am not moralising,’ she replied. ‘I am stating the facts.
‘I have no doubts at all that the way in which you have behaved is quite usual in the circles in which you move, and that there are always casualties. I don’t have a problem with that. High finance, big business, politics — all spell corruption to me. I’ve come to believe that if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them.
‘I want my slice now.’
She had swung around to face him again as she spoke. She looked slightly flushed, the way she did when she was having sex. She was excited. What a woman, he thought.
How could he ever have let her go?
He smiled his appreciation.
‘You are absolutely right,’ he said. ‘Every government has a hidden agenda. Almost everyone in the government in this country has an ulterior motive for everything that they do.
‘Think of what we pay our politicians and the way most of them live. Doesn’t often add up, does it? They nearly all have a lifestyle way above their income.
‘And think about the great political coups nowadays. The overthrow of Communism in Russia, for example. All about money, wasn’t it? Do you think Gorbachev did it on his own? Do you think he wasn’t backed? And who keeps that man Yeltsin in power — he’s so far up the Western backside it’s embarrassing.
‘Look at the Gulf war. All about money. All about oil. The most powerful governments in the world sent their armed forces into action on the orders of their money men. Everybody knows that — and why Saddam was quite deliberately let off the hook. If he had been wiped out, Iran would have ended up with a virtual oil monopoly. Bad economics, that’s all.
‘Even Bosnia is not what it seems. Europe’s money market has been stood on its head by the disruption there — and that suits certain people very well.
‘There is always a hidden agenda. Always. And I am just a tiny part of it, of course I am, part of the real motivation behind what happens in the corridors of power.’
Jennifer found what he was saying frightening yet impressive, and totally convincing. He was telling the truth. She had no doubts about that.
‘Did you know that twelve per cent of the world’s revenue is now generated by so-called criminal activity? If you pulled the plug, the economy would really collapse.
‘The Friends are simply a group of people, many in very influential positions, all with something to give, who ensure each other’s wealth and futures by securing information and power.’
Jennifer shivered.
‘Surely the Masons wouldn’t go as far as murder, would they?’ she asked.
‘Not as an organisation, of course not,’ Marcus said. ‘The Friends recruit the bad eggs from the Masons and con the good ones.
‘I remember asking Bill how he had got rid of Irene’s body, and how he was so sure my flat was clean. He touched the side of his nose and said not every PC Plod wanted to stay that way. I always assumed that he had called in a couple of tame policemen — and it made sense that they would be Masons.’
Jennifer imagined Todd’s reaction to that little theory. Good, decent Todd, why couldn’t she have stuck with him?
She sat down again at the kitchen table. ‘Do you know who runs The Friends, do you know other people involved?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never known. That’s the way it is... Sometimes I have suspected people, but never got any further. The only Friend I have ever definitely known was Bill Turpin. Other than that, they have always just contacted me over the phone.’
She turned to face him, keeping any expression out of her eyes. ‘And they funded you from the start? Made it possible for you to make even more money?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tell me about the other murders,’ she said.
‘I thought you knew?’
He was unwilling to relive it all. He looked at her appealingly. She was still smiling, quite relaxed, sexy, cool, in control. Her lips were very full and red from the sex. He could smell her. Now that they were talking like this, he found that he wanted her even more than before. He had to make himself listen to her.
He stared at her, fascinated by the change in her.
‘I want you to tell me,’ she said. ‘If we are to be a team from now on, you must tell me how they happened. I need to know the worst as well as the best.’
He took another deep drink of vodka. It had been after the first time she left him, he said, the time she had walked out when he hired the young stud for her. He had been distraught. Devastated. And in those days he really couldn’t live without her sexually. He was desperate for the kind of sexual satisfaction only she could give him. It got out of control.
She kept smiling. He was amazing. He was shifting the blame on to her again. If she had been there to fulfil his sexual needs, whatever it was he was about to tell her would never have happened. That seemed to be the theme.
She knew he liked Oriental women, he went on. There were two of them, just like the night she had interrupted him when he thought she was in Paris. This awful night, these two girls were delivered to his flat. Sisters. They had both been virgins, and he had sex with each one of them again and again, but he could not satisfy himself. His body craved for Jennifer. These were just substitutes on whom he took out his frustration. And eventually it had gone too far.
He began to wallow in his own self-pity. He broke down and began to cry in earnest. She went to his side and put her arms around him and comforted him.
‘It will be all right now there are two of us standing together, sharing the guilt,’ she said.
When he had calmed down she turned away from him once more.
‘Go on,’ she commanded. ‘Tell me what happened.’
It was a re-enactment of the death of poor Irene. He had hammered so harshly into one of the girls that her neck had broken. He only realised it when her sister started screaming at him and pummelling his back with her little fists. Eventually he had rolled off the girl, who was stone dead, her head at an impossible angle. Her sister became hysterical. He had tried to quieten her, that was all.