Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(93)

“I found out that she’d been seeing him as well. I thought I was the only one. I had a huge fight with Caitlyn, and I got my father to have her fired. I then confronted Paul about it. I think he was shocked at how angry I was . . . He invited me for another picnic the next day, and he said he wanted to make it up to me. This time we went out to the woods, to Jepson’s Wood, which was different to where we’d been before. He said it was this magical place, his favorite place, and that he wanted to ask me something.”

“A proposal?” asked Kate.

“That’s what he hinted at . . .” Victoria shook her head again. She took a deep breath. “He’d packed a beautiful picnic, and he’d brought wine . . . But I don’t remember him having much. He kept topping up my glass, and then I started to feel really strange, disconnected . . . Like I was floating out of my body. The rest of the afternoon is like a blur. Another man was suddenly there, and I just remember them talking to me, and I couldn’t hear, and then they were naked . . . and I remember putting my hand down to my legs and feeling that my shorts and my underwear were gone . . .” She broke down now, her head in her hands, sobbing. Kate went to her and took her in her arms.

“I don’t remember much else. The next time I was lucid, I was at home in the bath, and I was bleeding, you know, down there,” she said.

“Where were your parents?” asked Kate.

“They were out that day, and they didn’t get home until late that night, when I had cleaned myself up . . . The next morning, Paul rang me and said he wanted to talk. He wanted to meet at the chemist’s, and that’s when he showed me the photos. All the things they had done to me and photographed. He said if I ever spoke about it, he would send these photos to my parents, and he would send them to the readers’ wives section in all the porno magazines. This was before the internet, and so many blokes would look at the readers’ wives; even my dad did. If he’d seen me there . . .”

“Oh, Victoria, I’m sorry.”

“Just knowing he’s had them . . .”

“Do you want to see the photos?” asked Kate.

“No. I saw them once. They are disgusting and explicit . . . I’ve never been able to enjoy sex since.”

“Did you know when Caitlyn met them? I have a similar set of photos where Caitlyn is with the same two men.”

“I don’t know. After we rowed and she left the video shop, I never saw her again . . .”

“You must have thought about her going missing?”

“You don’t think I feel guilty? You don’t think this has hung over me? The fear of what he might do one day with those photos? And then as the years pass, you just start to think in terms of survival. I’ve survived this long, everyone has forgotten, I’ll just bury it away, and it will never be talked about again . . .”

“Was the other man in the photos Peter Conway?” asked Kate.

“I don’t know. Over the years, I’ve had memories come back, but I see them from where I lay on the ground, and they have the sun behind their heads, blurring their faces . . . I do have something, though,” she said.

She wiped her eyes and got up from the chair. She turned her back to Kate and started to lift her long jumper and the corner of a T-shirt underneath. “It’s stretched over the years, as I’ve got bigger, but this is where one of them bit me.”

There was a scar in the shape of a bite mark. The skin was puckered around a clear impression of teeth.

“Peter Conway,” said Kate.

Victoria turned and sat again.

“But I never saw his face . . . I had bruising around my neck, afterward, and I think they tried to strangle me.”

“Yes, the photos show that,” said Kate softly.

“What happens now?” she said, suddenly starting to panic. “Does he know you have the photos?”

Kate explained how she got the photos, and she told Victoria that she would call the police, and she must let them take a full statement, with the photos as evidence.

“We have the originals and the negatives,” said Kate. “Please talk to the police about this. Put it on record.”



It was late afternoon when Kate and Tristan left Victoria’s house. Kate had contacted Varia, who had a team of officers working on the case come and talk to Victoria and take a statement. Victoria’s story was another shocking revelation for Kate.

“What happens now?” asked Tristan.

“I hope that they talk to Paul Adler. It makes me wish we were police officers. I’d love to be the one to knock on his door and haul him in for questioning.”

As they drove, Kate felt torn, and the guilt came back. She wanted to continue with their investigations, but Jake was coming, and she wanted nothing more than to spend time with him.

Kate dropped Tristan home at his flat.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything,” she said. “I’ve got to go and clean my house and get ready for Jake.”

“Okay, keep in touch,” he said.

Kate then went shopping at the supermarket and loaded up on food for Jake’s stay. As she drove back to her house, she glanced in her rearview mirror a few times. There was a car, two cars back, she was sure had been behind her on the way to the supermarket, but then again, she hadn’t been watching closely. Was this a manifestation of her anxiety? Or was she being watched?