Daisy in Chains(83)

‘How much money did you make?’

‘Enough. Our student finances became a lot more manageable.’

‘And nobody spotted it? Nobody recognized themselves?’

‘Women tend not to watch porn. And we didn’t exactly promote it around the university. We used shops in other towns to sell them. Most of our viewers probably had no connection with Oxford.’

‘How many tapes featured you?’

His eyes leave her face again. ‘Three, maybe four.’

He is still lying. There were more than four.

‘Was Daisy in any of them?’

‘No. That one was private.’

‘What happened to Ellie Holmes?’

He looks down, washes his hands over his face. When he looks up again she sees creases around his temples. This is how he will look first thing in the morning, she thinks. Tired, a bit crumpled.

‘Death by misadventure,’ he says. ‘The Coroner got that right. She’d drunk a lot over the course of the evening. Warwick encouraged it, of course, it was always a lot easier when they’d had several drinks, but he didn’t know she was taking anything else.’

‘Taking what, exactly?’

‘Ecstasy. A bad dose. Contaminated with methyl diethanolamine. Sent her into primary cardiac arrest. If Warwick had taken her straight from the club to A & E, she’d probably still have died.’

Maggie has read the post-mortem report into Ellie Holmes. This is all true. Just not the whole truth. ‘Go on,’ she tells him.

Hamish takes a deep breath, as though about to dive into a cold swimming pool. ‘When she lost consciousness, Warwick panicked. He tried to resuscitate her and failed. Then he phoned Oliver.’

‘Who phoned Simon, and then went to collect first Chris and then you?’

He examines his fingernails for a second before looking up. ‘I guess James was a lot smarter than we gave him credit for.’

‘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.’