A Passion So Deadly

Twenty-Two

Constance Lange looked pale and ill.

‘There was a game I liked to play...’ she began.

Her voice was very quiet. Rose had to remind her that the interview was being recorded.

‘I’m going to have to ask you to speak up, Constance,’ she prompted her gently.

Constance carried on as if she had not been interrupted, but she raised her voice very slightly.

‘When I confessed I thought that would be the end of it all. I thought it would be over. I never dreamed there would be another murder. Charlie should not have died.’

Constance stopped abruptly then, as if she did not know what to say next. Her solicitor was with her in the interview room at Eastwood Park. He seemed content to let his client have her say, at least at this stage.

Rose prompted her again. ‘Just start at the beginning,’ she instructed.

Constance sighed. ‘There were a lot of games I liked to play. And there was one in particular. My favourite, I suppose. It was all about having sex with a stranger. Usually Charlie was involved. I specially liked Charlie, you see...’

She paused, staring straight ahead of her at the blank wall, perhaps remembering Charlie, perhaps seeing something the others with her there in the room could not. This time Rose let her take her own time. She did not think Constance would stop now, not when she had got this far.

‘First I would have sex with Charlie,’ Constance continued almost expressionlessly. ‘Then he would leave and I would remain lying on the bed, face down, the room lit only by candles. A second man — the stranger — would then enter the room. I was always...’ She paused again. ‘...ready. The stranger would start to have intercourse with me at once. I would not even turn to look at him. He would not see my face, nor me his — that was the most important rule of the game. There would be no foreplay — and no dialogue until after it was over.’

Constance’s eyes were quite blank, her words curiously precise. She could have been reciting from the telephone directory.

‘I used to find it very exciting,’ she said, and with a dry humourless laugh added, ‘So did they, I think.’

Rose could imagine it so vividly. Constance lying there naked in the dimly lit room, with the blonde hair of her wig spread out, her face buried in the pillow. Wanting sex at its most basic. Excited. Expectant. The young men eager, aroused by something different, relishing the game nearly as much as she did.

Constance’s voice came to the Detective Chief Inspector from the distance when she continued to talk, jerking Rose out of her brief reverie, back to the present. Back to the truth behind it all at last.

‘The last time, the very last time I hired Charlie, it went horribly wrong. In fact... in fact, it turned into an unbelievable nightmare. The stranger Charlie brought with him was good, very good, perhaps particularly good. I can still remember the pleasure, in spite of everything, and that makes it even more awful. I can remember, too, being aware of just how much he had seemed to be enjoying himself, even though he was being paid for it. When it was over and we were both fighting to get our breath, he spoke for the first time. I shall never forget what he said.’ She paused. ‘“God, that was amazing.”’

Constance gripped the edge of the table in front of her. She almost spat out the last four words.

‘“God, that was amazing,”’ she repeated, her voice cracking this time. ‘And I shall never quite be able to explain how I felt when I heard his voice. I was overcome by horror, no, more than that, by fear. I had to turn around and look at him. But I didn’t want to, because I knew what I was going to see. Knew, without doubt. My... the...’

Constance seemed to be physically gritting her teeth now. Rose noticed that she had closed her eyes, seeing it all again, reliving it, the policewoman realised.

‘The young man was grinning broadly, pleased with himself, I suppose. But when he saw my face, when he recognised me, the grin seemed to freeze.’

Constance looked around the room, almost as if she were seeing Rose, DS Mellor and her own solicitor for the first time, and was challenging them to react.

‘I had just had sex with my son,’ she said.

She sounded quite detached, as if she were telling a story about somebody else.

She stopped then, for a while. The enormity of what she had revealed was just too much.

‘Could I have some coffee?’ she asked, and she attacked it thirstily, drinking deeply from the steaming liquid as if it contained some magic elixir which might revive her.

Rose did not push her, instead waiting for Constance to speak in her own time. Sergeant Mellor cleared his throat and the silence was such in the room that the rasping sound he made seemed very loud and was somehow almost as shocking as the story Constance Lange was telling.

Rose glanced at him. Mellor was virtually open-mouthed with amazement. She noticed that he even appeared to have forgotten to arrange his stunned features into the expression of disdain which seemed to have become customary for him when confronted with behaviour of which he disapproved.

Then Constance began to speak again, and instantly nobody in the interview room had eyes or ears for anyone but her. She was a naturally articulate woman and now, telling the whole truth at last, her words came fluently, almost pouring from her.

‘I tried to explain to William. But how could I explain? What could I say? That I liked sex, raunchy illicit sex? That I had never wanted to hurt anybody — least of all him? That it had all been a ghastly accident, a shocking coincidence, that we should both forget about it and carry on being a normal caring mother and son? That it didn’t matter? There was nothing I could say.

‘William screamed. It was a terrible haunting anguished cry. He rushed into the bathroom and turned on the shower full pelt. Then he dressed, pulling on his clothes. He was weeping and shaking uncontrollably, yet I could not comfort him because he would not let me near him. He would not look at me. He would not talk to me. And afterwards he totally refused to discuss the incident with me. He would never talk about it. Not when the murders started. Not when Freddie died. He just shut me and all of it out.’

Constance picked up her coffee mug and drained it.

‘Could I have some more?’ she asked.

Rose gestured to Mellor who left the room briefly and returned with a refill. Only then did the interview continue. Rose stared at Constance.

‘And you, how did you feel?’

Constance shook her head. ‘I didn’t matter, did I? I already didn’t matter.’

‘But how did you feel, Constance?’ Rose persisted.

The other woman seemed to crumple in her chair.

‘I suppose I went into total shock. I stayed at the Crescent much later than I usually did. I know that I began to cry, and once I had started I couldn’t stop. I was physically sick, then and later. It took me several hours to completely stop crying, to clean myself up, to regain any kind of self-control. I made up a story about breaking down on the motorway and having flat batteries in my mobile phone. It didn’t sound very believable to me, but I think Freddie believed it then. He trusted me, you see.’

Her voice cracked again. Her eyes were full of tears now, Rose noticed. The policewoman forced herself to be businesslike, to be professional.

‘What was William’s motivation for getting involved with Avon Escorts?’ Rose asked. ‘Presumably he didn’t need the money.’

‘No,’ agreed Constance. ‘His father provided him with more than enough. I could only assume that he found that kind of sex exciting — as I did, that he too had liked the idea of games.’

She held her head in her hands. ‘Well, I know he liked the game I enjoyed most, don’t I? And that, liking it, me knowing that, made the whole sordid thing worse for him.’

‘Do you want to talk about the murders, Constance?’ asked Peter Mellor.

Rose guessed that Mellor couldn’t cope with much more discussion about sex games and was not surprised by the interruption which, in any case, came at an opportune moment.

‘Why don’t you tell us the truth about them, too, Constance?’ she joined in.

Constance nodded and half shook herself as if returning reluctantly to reality. Her eyes lost the faraway look and at last she focused on the Detective Chief Inspector who was continuing to stare at her earnestly.

‘You’ve known, you’ve always known, haven’t you?’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know how, but you have.’

Rose shrugged. ‘I was never totally convinced that your confession was a true one,’ she agreed. ‘I’m not sure about knowing exactly. I’d like to hear the truth from you.’

Constance nodded again. ‘I’m no murderer. I’m innocent of that at least. I’ve never killed anybody. I didn’t kill Marty, or Colin, or Wayne. I had no reason to, either. There was no blackmail, and I wasn’t angry with them. Only ever with myself.

‘My confession was entirely false. You were right, Chief Inspector Piper. I was trying, you see, to cover up...’ she hesitated again, ‘...to cover up what I believed to be the truth.’

‘Come on, Constance, what is the truth?’

Constance began to tremble. The last vestiges of elegant sophistication crumbled.

‘You know, you know...’ she said.

‘You have to tell us, Constance, on the record you have to tell us.’ Rose leaned forward across the table, willing the other woman to go on, to put an end to it once and for all.

It was as if a dam had broken. The tears began to pour down Constance Lange’s face. She made several attempts to speak again before eventually seeming to force the words out, looking almost as if it caused her physical pain to do so.

‘My son did it. William killed them. All of them. I’m sure of it.’

Constance’s sobbing became louder and more uncontrolled. Rose was aware of Peter Mellor tensing beside her. Even Constance’s solicitor could not stop himself giving a small involuntary gasp.

She didn’t lose eye contact with Constance, she didn’t dare.

‘How do you know that, Constance?’

Rose saw Constance battle to gain control of herself again. Eventually the sobbing eased and she managed to speak once more.

‘As soon as Marty Morris was murdered and the Mrs Pattinson connection was all over the papers I began to wonder about William. I didn’t know right away, I didn’t want to believe it anyway. But I did wonder. You see William has always been impulsive, a bit wild, but so aware of his family, so proud of his ancestry, so proud of his mother.’

She seemed to choke on the last words. Her lips were trembling quite violently. She took several deep breaths before she continued.

‘He’d always been stubborn too, liked to get his own way, a bit spoilt really. I was the one who spoiled him most, actually. I could believe him becoming obsessed with revenge. He wanted revenge against me and he wanted revenge against the boys I went with. I’d been degraded, you see, that was how he saw it, I know.

‘Then when the other two were killed I was quite sure, really. It all pointed to William if you knew what I knew. And the second time, the night that Colin Parker was murdered — well, I’d gone to see William, to confront him, to see if there was any hope for us — still kidding myself about all that had happened, I suppose. I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t at his digs. Nobody knew where he was.

‘I waited and waited. Freddie was away at an NFU conference. I waited until the early hours. I saw William return, eventually, but I didn’t approach him. He got out of his car carrying a bundle which he put in the boot. He looked so strange. There was something about him — I didn’t dare go near him. Then when I got home... well, the next day I learned about Colin Parker’s murder.’ She broke down again.

‘Go on, don’t stop now,’ prompted Rose quite softly.

Curiously, Constance managed a weak smile through her tears.

‘The most frightening thing of all was that William always seemed so cool, so calm and in control,’ she continued as instructed. ‘Yet, who else would have pretended to be Mrs Pattinson? Who else would have hand-picked the victims? It had to be William. I kept telling myself it couldn’t be him, I kept kidding myself, I suppose, and yet I also kept looking for clues.’

There was another period of silence, this time broken by Peter Mellor.

‘And did you find any clues?’ he asked, ever the complete policeman, already thinking ahead to the need for hard evidence. ‘Did you find any proof to back up your suspicion?’

Constance nodded, but did not answer directly.

‘I looked in William’s room at the farm,’ Constance continued, once more in a voice so small that Rose had to gently prompt her to speak up again. ‘I looked in the office, in the milking shed, in the stables. I didn’t know what I was looking for and I certainly didn’t want to find anything. But I kept looking.

‘On the Sunday after Wayne Thompson died William left his car keys on the kitchen table, and I searched his car. I looked in the boot and couldn’t see anything at first. Then I found it all stowed away in the spare wheel compartment.’

She stopped then as if she meant it. As if she had no more to say. But Rose knew that she had not finished, that she could not let her finish.

‘Found what?’ Rose demanded.

Constance sucked in a huge breath of air. She closed her eyes as if trying to shut out the dreadful reality now surrounding her. But when she spoke again this time her voice was quite clear and somehow completely resigned.

‘His Timberland boots, a raincoat, a pair of gloves and... and... a butcher’s knife. All wrapped up in a bundle. There were some stains, blood stains, I thought, on the coat and the boots. One thing I told you was true — I drove out to the cliffs by Porlock and threw them all in the sea. I still wanted to protect him, you see.’

‘Did he know, did he know you’d taken the stuff?’ Mellor again, always checking, always one to look for the facts of a case.

Constance shrugged. ‘I suppose he must have done. He didn’t say, but then he never said anything. It was like he was leading two lives, and he’d shut one out of his head.’

She gave a little strangled laugh, even more humourless than before. ‘I should know about that, shouldn’t I?’

‘Did you ever feel in danger from him?’ Rose asked. ‘You were living with someone you believed to be a murderer, someone who gave every indication that he hated you? Weren’t you frightened?’

Constance looked surprised, as if she’d never thought of that. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I never even considered that he might hurt me physically.’

‘And the confession, that was just to protect William?’

‘I wanted to save him. Yes. I thought I could do it. And I wanted to put a stop to it all. I thought I would do that by confessing. I suppose I thought, in a way, it would satisfy him. It would give him his revenge on me. I didn’t even mind very much. It was all my fault after all. My life was over, anyway. And I thought there would be no more deaths, I really did...’

‘But Paolo was so certain that it was Mrs Pattinson who phoned on the night of the first murder,’ Peter Mellor interrupted, sounding puzzled, and it was typical of the man’s attention to detail that he had so quickly picked up on that, Rose thought. ‘Paolo was quite sure he had recognised Mrs Pattinson’s voice.’

‘Yes,’ responded Constance quietly. ‘That was one of the things that first made me think of William. You see, he was always a good mimic. And he had my voice off perfectly. He could even fool his father on the telephone.’