Deadly Dance

by Hilary Bonner

  This was fantasy land, I reminded myself, I could do what I liked here and with whom I liked. I could be whoever I wanted to be whilst I was here.

  I felt almost happy as I approached The Freedom Bar. This was a cool place. A gay cocktail bar with style and panache. I peered through a window. Even the waiters were gorgeous, muscles bulging through tight white shirts. The clientele looked relaxed, at ease. Like any group of people in any bar.

  I’d never been to the bar before. After all, I wasn’t worthy of this sort of place or these sort of people. I was the hole in the corner sort. I didn’t have the courage of my own convictions. Not in anything. How could I ever aspire to be accepted by the likes of them, when I couldn’t even accept myself?

  I had met men like me before. Well, perhaps not quite like me, but men who were not entirely sure of themselves. Decent ordinary men who had another life, one they were not yet ready to share with the world, even in these allegedly enlightened days.

  There was one in particular I hoped I might meet again. Here, in this bar. Not that I could really expect him to have anything to do with me, though, not after the last time.

  There were no empty tables. In any case, I told the greeter, a woman wearing a tuxedo over tights and a bow tie, that I preferred to be at the bar. She escorted me to a vacant stool. I ordered myself a Cosmopolitan. I’d never drunk one before, but I knew it was popular amongst gay men. It was pink after all. I found that I quite liked the drink. It was certainly more to my taste than the beer I usually downed, as part of my straight camouflage. I glanced casually around, in such a way that I did not seem to be looking. Nonchalant. Cool. Or that’s what I hoped, anyway.

  The truth was that I was well aware that I wouldn’t be cool if I lived to be 100. I am the living breathing walking epitome of not cool. Dressed the way I was that night, complete with gelled hair and tattoo, I might almost have looked the part. Amongst those gathered in this bar I may even have overdone the ‘gay look.’ But I wasn’t truly it, and never would be.

  Also, this was all too open, too ordinary. I was not comfortable.

  My spirits fell again. Perhaps I should just go. I didn’t belong here.

  I downed the rest of my Cosmo in one gulp, and was about to stand up and leave when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I heard the voice at the same time.

  ‘Leo,’ he said.

  I turned to him. He was even more gorgeous than I remembered. Fresh-faced and boyish. He made me feel even less confident of my own appearance. But then, he was thirteen years my junior. A little more than that actually, because I’d fibbed, just a bit, about my age. I hoped I didn’t look like some of the older guys I’d seen around Soho, trying so desperately to be hip.

  But at least I was fit, I told myself.

  He had tousled dark blonde hair and gentle brown eyes. The haircut was different to when I’d met him before, even though that was just a few days ago. It was shaven at the sides and spiky on top. I took in the already familiar smattering of freckles on his forehead and along the top of each cheek. His lips twitched into half a smile.

  ‘Tim,’ I responded. ‘I was hoping you might be here.’

  He looked at me quizzically, his head slightly on one side.

  ‘You remembered?’

  ‘Of course. You said you’d heard about this place, that it was hot on Friday nights and that you might try it the next weekend.’

  ‘Only might,’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘I was hoping you would remember too,’ I said.

  His smile broadened, fleetingly. Then his face clouded over and he removed his hand from my shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t understand what happened the last time, though,’ he said. ‘Why did you just go off like that?’

  I stared at him. Unsure what to say. After all, how could I explain? But I so didn’t want to lose him again.

  THREE

  The family lived in a small but clearly well-cared-for terraced house, one in several lines of similar properties forming a modest, residential district on the southern outskirts of Bristol. 16, Carraby Street. Dawn Saslow knew she would remember that house and that address for the rest of her life. Her heart was beating fast as she pulled the patrol car to a halt outside.

  She glanced towards her senior officer. Vogel’s face was impassive as usual. But she noticed he was blinking rapidly behind his thick spectacles. She’d quickly become aware, in the brief time that she had worked with Vogel, that this was what happened if ever he were uncomfortable, ill at ease or nervous. There was rarely any other indication that Vogel was emotionally affected by anything. He was a self-contained man, who sometimes gave the impression of being quite detached from the rest of the world. It had become known within MCIT that Vogel’s principle interests, apart from his work and his family, were compiling crosswords for an undisclosed specialist publication and playing Backgammon. Usually with his computer, Dawn suspected. The DI not infrequently gave the impression he was more comfortable with computers than people. Naturally, he was known as The Geek.

  On the drive Vogel had told Dawn what he knew so far about the dead girl and her family.

  Melanie Cook lived with her mother and stepfather, Sarah and Jim Fisher.

  Vogel, sticking to the facts as usual, passed no comment about that, but Dawn had known he would be thinking what she was thinking. Parents were always going to be among the suspects in a case like this. A stepfather was a far greater one.

  Melanie’s father, Terry Cooke, was a lorry driver. Her stepfather was a jobbing brickie. Her mother worked in Marks and Spencer on the till.

  A younger half-sister, Petra, also lived at Carraby Street.

  Vogel opened the door on his side of his car.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said.

  Dawn nodded. She stepped outside the vehicle and began to follow him to the house. A smattering of tulips, the last of the UK’s spring bulbs to flower every year, were still in bloom in the little front garden, which was surrounded by a manicured privet hedge just two feet or so tall. From the moment the front door was opened the family waiting inside would know. They always did. Nothing would ever be the same for them after that.

  This was not Dawn Saslow’s first death call. Even though she was young, relatively inexperienced and brand new to CID, she’d already had more than her share of them. The women always did. Alleged equality had done nothing to shift the notion that women were best at that sort of thing. And that the bereaved liked having a female officer around. Nobody ever used the term ‘it’s a job for a woman’ any more. But that’s what most of them thought.

  Dawn Saslow wasn’t sure she was any good at all at death calls. Not only were you passing on the worst news in the world, but all too often you were required to treat those to whom you were delivering it as suspects. That was certainly going to be so in this case.

  Dawn hated it, and she already knew that it would never get any easier.

  The woman who opened the door to number 16 looked disconcertingly like an older version of the dead girl, though rather darker skinned. She was small, with glossy black curls framing an unbearably anxious face. Even at this time of unbearable stress, she was as neat as her front garden and the outside of the house. Dawn was pretty sure the inside would be the same, but she wondered if it would stay so well-kept after the news she and Vogel were about to deliver.

  Sarah Fisher raised one hand to her mouth as soon as she saw them standing there. They could have been making a routine follow-up call, surely, concerning the progress of the investigation. A uniformed team had been dispatched to interview the family straight after Sarah had reported her daughter missing. So the family would probably have been expecting another police visit. Yet Sarah Fisher knew. Before either Dawn or Vogel said a word. Just as Dawn had been so certain she would.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so very sorry,’ murmured Vogel.

  It said everything of course. Sarah Fisher took a step backwards, then another. She swa
yed. Her knees buckled. Dawn was afraid the woman might fall. She glanced at Vogel. He was standing very still. Deadpan, as usual. He certainly didn’t look as if he were ready to make a move to assist the woman. Sarah Fisher’s eyes glazed. Dawn was about to push past Vogel to get to the woman, at least to stop her from falling, when a man stepped into the hall behind Mrs Fisher and, after just a moment’s hesitation, wrapped one supportive arm around her.

  He too seemed to know what was happening, but he glanced enquiringly at Vogel.

  ‘Could we come in please?’ asked Vogel.

  The man, who had a world-weary, careworn look about him that Dawn thought was permanent, rather than a result of the terrible news he was now expecting, nodded and stepped backwards. He still held on to the stricken Sarah Fisher, who no longer looked as if she was going to faint at least. Indeed, she suddenly shook herself free of the man and half ran back into the house.

  The man followed. He was a thin, bony individual, probably of above average height, but appearing shorter because he walked with his shoulders slumped, which Dawn thought was also probably a permanent tendency. He was white, with dull, pale eyes and hair of a nondescript brown, flecked with grey, which had been cropped short. In turn, Vogel and Saslow followed the man, entering a small but well-decorated and well-appointed sitting room.

  ‘I’m so very sorry,’ said Vogel again, speaking very deliberately and without expression.

  He looked directly at Sarah Fisher.

  ‘The body of a young woman has been found, Mrs Fisher, and we have reason to believe she may be your daughter.’

  Sarah Fisher sat down with a bump and uttered a small cry of anguish.

  Then she did a sort of double take,‘May?’ she queried, grasping at this tiniest straw of hope. ‘May be my daughter? You mean you are not sure?’

  ‘I cannot be entirely sure until she has been officially identified,’ said Vogel formally. ‘But the victim answers the description you gave us, although she was wearing different clothes at the time of her death. I am afraid I have to tell you that the distinctive pink rucksack you said Melanie had with her, with her name on it, was found by the victim’s side.’

  Mrs Fisher gasped, then uttered a small, low cry, like an animal in pain. Vogel glanced towards the thin man, whose shoulders had drooped even more. Now, he seemed to be in almost as great a state of shock as Sarah was.

  ‘We need someone to do that. Perhaps your husband …’

  ‘This is Terry. My ex. Mel’s dad. I called him last night, when she didn’t come home. He came straight over. Jim, my husband, he’s away working. Over in Kent. He’s on his way back now.’

  Well that, presumably, was one less suspect, thought Dawn Saslow. Not the stepfather after all.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Terry Cooke. ‘I’ll identify her. Maybe it’s not Mel. I’ll do it.’

  For a second Sarah looked as if she were going to protest, but she didn’t.

  Her face was distorted by her anguish. Her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, were shaking. Terry Cooke, meanwhile, was clearly fighting back tears, and seemed to be losing the battle.

  ‘Well, I’ll let you both know as soon as an identification can be arranged,’ said Vogel.

  Vogel didn’t mention what would have to happen first. Dawn knew that was for the best. What indeed was happening at that very moment was the preliminary examination by the home office pathologist. The poking about amongst Mel Cooke’s belongings. The removal of her clothes and anything else that might become evidence. And then the post-mortem examination itself. Something relatives invariably found additionally upsetting.

  ‘Meanwhile I need to ask you both some questions,’ Vogel continued.

  He went over again the chronology of Melanie’s disappearance, asking particularly about the manner and circumstances of her leaving the house.

  Sarah made no protest. She seemed to answer everything quite mechanically. She spoke in the present tense about her daughter and Dawn suspected she may not yet have fully taken everything in.

  ‘Everything was just normal, ordinary. No, I wasn’t a bit suspicious when she said she wanted to go to her friend’s home to do homework. Why would I be? They do that quite often. Sometimes Sally comes here. They’re good girls. They work hard, but it’s less boring for them, I suppose.’

  Sarah Fisher paused before speaking again.

  ‘You think I should have known, don’t you? I should have guessed she was up to something. I should have stopped her, but I didn’t, I didn’t. She’s only 14 …’

  Suddenly reality seemed to hit the woman.

  ‘She was only 14,’ she corrected herself.

  Then she began to weep quietly. Terry Cooke was already in floods. He had said little since offering to identify his daughter, and had ultimately just broken down and wept.

  Dawn noticed that Cooke was peering at his ex-wife through his tears, with what seemed to be distaste. Totally without compassion anyway. He may have stepped forward in the hallway to physically support Sarah, but he blamed her, thought Dawn, that must be what it was. He blamed his ex-wife for what he probably saw as negligence leading to Melanie’s murder.

  It almost certainly wasn’t fair, but perhaps that was what we all did in these situations, tried to find somebody to blame. The mother had custody too. In her father’s eyes that would make her responsible for their daughter’s safety. He probably believed he would have behaved differently, he would have known what was going on and he would have stopped Melanie going out. He would have saved her.

  ‘Mrs Fisher, I know this is going to be a terribly painful time for you and we want to do all we can to help,’ said Vogel gently. ‘I will arrange for a family liaison officer to come over to be with you.’

  A thought occurred to him.

  ‘You have a younger daughter, don’t you, Mrs Fisher? Is she here, in the house?’

  Sarah Fisher shook her head.

  ‘I sent her to school, I didn’t want her upset, her gran’s picking her up later …’

  Her voice tailed off.

  ‘More than anything, Mrs Fisher, I promise you I will find whoever did this,’ said Vogel.

  Sarah Fisher looked at him with blank eyes.

  AL

  They get what they deserve, these young girls in their skimpy skirts and the little shorts they call hot pants. They’re hot all right. Everything about them is hot. Burning hot.

  Surely their mothers must realise they’re asking for it. And their fathers, assuming they have fathers in their lives. So many of them don’t any more. Any father would know what men are like. All men. I have always been quite sure that it really is all men.

  Can there be a man who hasn’t looked longingly at the legs of a schoolgirl in a gymslip? I know they don’t usually wear gymslips any more, unfortunately. But that’s the ultimate fantasy isn’t it? A long-legged girl reaching puberty, the skirt of her gymslip only just covering her pert, little bum and her hidden, secret, as yet untouched, little fanny.

  Any man, any man alive, really alive, who says he doesn’t want to touch that bum – and explore that other hidden, secret place – is a liar, I say.

  However much we try to deny it, that is the truth. My truth, certainly. I have tried to get rid of the urges. God knows, I have tried. Once I even booked a series of therapy sessions. Oh yes, they do exist. But in the end, I cancelled the lot, because I reckoned the therapist was likely to be as mixed up as I was. They would have to be, if they wanted to hear – in gruesome detail – the shameful thoughts which dominated my every waking hour, and my dreams too. What sort of person would want to see into the mind of a pervert?

  Then there was the fear of what might be revealed, even though such sessions are supposed to be confidential. Yes, I was afraid of being exposed. Perhaps I was even more afraid of the inevitable realisation that nothing could be done.

  I’d say I am how God made me, if I believed in God. I don’t, of course. I don’t believe in anything. How could I? I don’t ca
re for or about anybody else, either. Why should I? There’s nobody out there who cares a jot about me.

  Maybe I believe, somewhere deep inside me, in the devil. Because I am surely his creature.

  I tell myself that perhaps we all are. Men if not women. I respect women, truly I do. I just can’t cope with the turmoil they unleash inside me, that’s all. Particularly the young ones, the girls blossoming into puberty.

  I’ve always supposed that most men, who also lust after the fruits of youth, do nothing about it. They look but don’t touch. Recent revelations seem to indicate that I’ve been wrong. Far more men than I ever realised are unable to control their innermost, secret longings and, eventually, allow the monster of their desire to take over.

  It now seems, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Jimmy Savile assaulted hundreds of young girls and also a number of boys, over a 50-year period. Some were under five. Many were disabled, mentally and physically, or in hospital. And yet, for so long, he was feted and lauded to the extent where the world came to regard him as some sort of saint. They even made him a knight of the realm. Sir Jim of ‘Jim’ll Fix It’. He fixed it all right. I heard an interview with one of his victims. She said she reckoned he wore tracksuit bottoms in order to more easily remove his trousers.

  I was shocked by that. Oh yes, I can be shocked.

  As I am indeed shocked by what I do. I really do not mean to hurt anyone.

  I remember, all too clearly, hurting someone by mistake; someone very young. Maybe a second time too, I can barely remember. It was several lifetimes ago. I have come to believe that I’d been too young to know any better, which I honestly think is true.

  I’d got away with it. Scot-free. Nobody even suspected me. Indeed, I’d almost convinced myself that I did not mean to do anything wrong and hadn’t done anything wrong, as if I wasn’t guilty at all.

  Funny how you can do that sometimes, isn’t it?

  I look on the internet of course. There’s so much stuff out there. Child porn, they call it. I don’t. It’s not porn to me. It’s perfectly natural to me. What can be unnatural about looking at beautiful, little bodies? The youngsters appear happy enough in the pictures and videos on the sites I use. Why wouldn’t they? At that age they accept anything, as long as they’re treated kindly.