Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(23)

‘This is where I play,’ he’d said.

The basement was dark, with a low ceiling and bare, stained concrete floors. The air was hot and stank of sweat. There were wooden stocks, a cage and leather restraints. Pornography, cut out from magazines, covered the walls. Joseph wasn’t shocked by the nudity or sex. What chilled him were the faces of the women and men in the pictures who were being dominated. There was genuine fear in their eyes, and some of them were bleeding.

‘Are they real?’ he’d asked.

T had nodded, smoothing his hands over his crotch, and he came towards Joseph.

‘I have to go,’ Joseph had said, making a dash for the door.

‘Stay for one more drink,’ said T, reaching out and grabbing the back of Joseph’s shirt, catching the material in a powerful grip. Joseph, eager not to appear scared, and to diffuse the situation, said yes. That last drink had been spiked, and he’d woken up naked, and tied up. Unable to move.

He didn’t know how long it had lasted. The fear that he was going to die had been bad enough, but looking into the eyes of a person who ignored your screams, who seemed to get excited by your pain, was terrifying. The final image that burned into his mind was of the gas mask. He could still smell it, the filthy sweat mingled in with rubber and amyl nitrate.

He was strangled to the point of unconsciousness several times and woke up as T was reviving him with mouth-to-mouth. He didn’t remember the photos being taken, but he remembered the video… The bright light from the phone camera. He’d got them in an email a day later, with a note:

I have these photos locked away. So long as you keep your mouth shut, they’ll stay that way.

T.





And now the police knew, and if the police knew they would follow it up. Did they have the note too? Would they tell his parents, and who else would find out? Joseph put his hands between his thighs and began to sob and rock himself. Blind terror flashed through his body again and he retched, but there was nothing left to come up, just bile. He reached up to wipe his mouth and his fingers caught on the rip in the left knee of his jeans.

He jumped as the hatch opened and the noise at the end of the corridor became clearer. The lads were still shouting, but now from inside their cells.

‘You alright, lad?’ came the custody sergeant’s voice. Joseph turned on the bed and looked over, making himself nod. The hatch slammed shut again, and the shouting receded a little. Joseph set to work with his fingers, widening the tear in the knee of his trousers and tearing off a long strip of the material.



* * *



The commotion had died down outside the cells, and all the men in custody were locked up when the custody sergeant did his next check on Joseph Pitkin fifteen minutes later. When he opened the hatch, he couldn’t see where he had gone, as the single bed was empty.

‘Son, you alright?’ he asked, shining the torch over the steel toilet and sink in the far corner. The hatch was high up on the door, so when he saw the piece of material hooked into the tiny joint which made up the hinge of the hatch, he panicked. He reached a hand inside and felt the thin line of taut material and then the top of Joseph Pitkin’s head. ‘Shit! Shit!’ he cried. He ran back down the corridor to the desk, and hit the emergency alarm. It rang out, echoing along the corridor as he grabbed the keys and ran back to the door. Once he had it unlocked, he had to push against the weight of the body against it. His colleague, a female officer in her mid-fifties, came running down to help him as he got the door open, then pulled it back. Joseph hung from the back of the door, a couple of feet off the floor, suspended by his neck with a strip of denim. His face was bright purple, and his eyes were wide open and bloodshot. ‘Get him down, quick, get him down!’ he cried. The female officer had thought to grab a pair of scissors, and she cut the improvised noose. The custody sergeant lay Joseph down and loosened the strip of material. His colleague didn’t say anything as he started to perform CPR, continuing for several minutes, pumping Joseph’s chest and blowing into his mouth at intervals.

She knew that he was dead. She had seen it so many times before.





Sixteen





Superintendent Melanie Hudson stood at just over five foot, with short blonde hair and soft grey eyes, but her eyes and elfin frame belied a steely determination.

She was settling down for an afternoon of television and a box of chocolates with her husband and young son when the call came through that a young man had died in custody at her police station.

She drove straight to Lewisham Row, and was able to attend the scene as Joseph Pitkin’s body was taken out. She heard statements from the two custody officers, and then she came up to her office. When she rounded the corner into the corridor, she found Erika waiting on the chair outside.

‘Have you been sitting here in the dark?’ she said, reaching up and flicking on the lights with her elbow.

‘It helps me think.’

She put down her bag and unlocked the office door. Erika followed her inside.

‘Start from the beginning, and tell me everything,’ she said, indicating the seat opposite her desk.

Erika outlined everything that had happened with Joseph, from when she was first on the scene at Coniston Road, discovering him watching the crime scene, and the subsequent arrest when they found the photos and video.