15 Days
Copyright© 2020 by Jack Green
Chapter 22: For the Greater Good
Drama Sex Story: Chapter 22: For the Greater Good - A dejected detective encounters love, loss and lechery as he investigates the disappearance of five young women in East Anglia. Although there is some sex in this story much of the lechery is off camera and thus should not frighten the horses or any reader with a nervous disposition. Having an appreciation of Seventies music, a school boy sense of humour, and a geographical knowledge of Suffolk would be an advantage but not a requirement for enjoying this story.
Caution: This Drama Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Romantic Heterosexual Fiction Crime Oral Sex
1630 hrs. Thursday 11th March 2019. Thurston Hall
DAY 11
I wandered back to the CID room in something of a daze. I wondered about Eloise’s story. It was convoluted and confusing. How much was truth and how much was contingency planning? The only solid evidence we had was a dead, embalmed, Betty Smith --- embalmed! Why was Betty embalmed? I recalled Eloise telling me how a corpse was prepared for shipping banknotes to Poland. First, the body was exsanguinated then cut open, the intestines removed and the space stuffed with banknotes in plastic bags before being sewn up and the body then embalmed. Was Betty’s corpse dumped stuffed with banknotes ready to ship to Poland? If so where was the money that would have been secreted in her body? I returned to the custody suite and asked to re-interview Eloise.
The sergeant on duty was not Sergeant Lewis or helpful. “She’s already spent hours being questioned. If I allow you to interview her again I could be accused of harassment. Sorry, but you will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Can I write her note and wait for an answer?” I begged.
“If Donizetti agrees I suppose that will be OK.”
I scribbled a hasty note. ‘How was it that Betty Smith had been embalmed when her body was discovered at the building site?’
I waited impatiently for the return note from Eloise, although it told me little.
‘I will tell you tomorrow, but it has to do with Health and Safety.’
I shrugged; well at least she didn’t pretend not to know about the embalmment.
The CID room was empty other than for Bill Clark, who was staring intently out of the window overlooking the parkland of Thurston Hall and never noticed my entrance. I was practically on him before he started and turned to face me.
“Bruno Beddoes and the DI are at it. Look!” He pointed to a couple walking through a copse of lime trees with their arms around each other’s waists. Even from a distance, I recognised Fliss Warren and Bruno Beddoes. “They’ve been in the summer house part hidden in that stand of trees,” Bill said. “I glimpsed them going into the building about a half-hour ago and can guess what they have been doing. Over the years I’ve had a few assignations in there myself.” As he was talking, the pair broke close contact and put a ‘colleagues discussing business’ distance between them. Other couples were walking about and I realised it was afternoon break time and the inhabitants of Thurston Hall were taking advantage of the mild, early spring weather, although it seemed Fliss and Bruno had also been taking advantage of each other. Even from the distance Bill and I were from the pair we could see the smiles on their faces, and their body language spoke volumes.
“Well, well, well,” said Bill. “I knew Bruno had the hots for the DI from years back, but now it seems his ardour has been returned. She must have finally given her cheating husband the elbow. Good for her, and even better for Bruno.”
We watched the couple disappear behind some bushes and Bill returned to his desk. “Anyway, back to reality. How did the interview go, Sarge?”
“Confusing, to say the least,” I said, and gave him a potted account of the proceedings.
“So let me get this straight,” Bill said when I had finished talking. “Kate Hodge, a self-employed beautician, arrives at Fowler’s Funeral Home to beautify a corpse and catches Ashby Fowler, the owner of the business, shagging a female corpse. Kate takes some happy snaps. Wouldn’t the flash alert him to an audience?”
“According to Eloise once Ashby puts his mind, or any other part of his anatomy, to something he is oblivious to the rest of the world.”
“OK. Kate then blackmails Donizetti, wanting ten grand to keep schtum. Donizetti pays up, but decides to bump Kate Hodge off. Kate informs her there is a letter and photos in a solicitor’s office with orders to hand it over to the police if anything untoward should happen to her. Donizetti discovers the location of the letter and pics,” Bill paused. “That Ashby character seems to have several specialised skills besides necrophilia. Being able to recognise the number being keyed on a mobile phone by the tone emitted he could have been a top musician rather than an embalmer.”
“Being autistic is not being stupid. Many autistic people have IQs well above the national average and Ashby is one of them,” I said.
“Anyway, Donizetti seduces the solicitor’s clerk, Betty Smith, who hands over the incriminating letter and photos. Didn’t she want to know why Donizetti wanted the letter?”
“Eloise spun her some yarn, playing on Betty Smith’s misandry, her hatred of men. Eloise can charm a dead man back to life and Betty was infatuated and did whatever Eloise wanted. She, Eloise, made it clear to me when I first interviewed her that she was available for sex, and I was sorely tempted to sink my teeth into her juicy apple. Fortunately, I hooked up with Molly else I might now be Eloise’s poodle, and in fact, she might think I already am, that being the reason why she would only speak to me.”
“So why didn’t Donizetti junk the blackmail information? With no evidence there is no crime.”
“She was concerned the police might stumble on the connection between Kate Hodge and Betty Smith and come calling at the Funeral Home. Both girls lived in Ipswich and they might have been acquaintances, which could have been the reason Kate lodged her blackmail evidence with Betty’s employers. Eloise has an MBA and was a top-notch business-woman specialising in contingency planning, looking ahead and making plans to counteract any perceived problem arising. That is why, in case things went tits up, she had Ashby forge another ‘blackmail’ letter accusing Fowler’s of the much less serious crime of smuggling currency.”
“Fair enough. But then Donizetti has to silence Kate and Betty, and to make the water even muddier than it already is she picks three girls at random...”
“Not at random,” I interrupted. “The three girls had each insulted Eloise, which was the main reason they were chosen although they were all a similar build and hair and eye colouring as Kate. Eloise hadn’t realised Kate was at least ten years older than she looked, and Betty Smith didn’t look like any of the other girls. It was these two outliers on Drab Rampley’s list that took my attention. Eloise thought Betty would be viewed as just another missing person and not connected with the other four girls, but Eloise hadn’t factored in Drab Rampley, who for reasons best known to himself connected Betty with Kate, Mel, Linda, and Dawn.” I sighed, “Poor Drab, he should be the one getting the plaudits for solving the mystery of the missing five girls. But getting back to Eloise Donizetti. She saw it as a business opportunity to use the bodies of the murdered girls to transport currency to Poland. Up until now she had been paying top dollar for street peoples’ corpses sourced from the money smuggling gang. The murdered girls would enable her to make a tidy profit on the currency shipments.”
“So Donizetti has Ashby kidnap and kill the girls, one every fortnight. Does Ashby get his kicks by killing the girls while shagging them?” Bill asked, and I could see the anger on his face.
“According to Eloise Ashby breaks their necks as soon as they are in the van, but he probably did what he does to them as their body temperature falls, and also did what he does when they are on the mortuary slab.”
“The sick bastard!”
“I’m sure I’m missing something,” I said, thinking over all that Eloise Donizetti had told me. “Eloise says she is prepared to confess to being an accessory to five murders and will give the NCA vital information if I destroy Kate’s blackmail letter and photographs and replace them with the forged letter.”
“Why would she do that?” Bill said.
“That was a question I asked Eloise and her answer has some merit. She hopes one day her granddaughter Sophia will be the owner of Fowler’s Funeral Home. If the blackmail letter is made public Fowler’s would be struck off the register of the Association of Funeral Directors and be no more.”
“Necrophilia at the Funeral Home would lead to the demise of the firm but smuggling money in coffins would not?” Bill sounded surprised.
“The firm could be fined by the Association for smuggling, and Donizetti will do porridge. Fowler’s would probably lose a lot of business but it would not be the catastrophe of being owned by a necrophiliac.”
“And Eloise Donizetti is willing to go to jail to save Fowler’s?”
“She’s going to jail whichever letter is produced as evidence but thinks she will broker a better deal for less prison time with the NCA rather than with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).”
“What are you going to do, Sarge? Concealing evidence and providing false evidence are criminal offences. You could end up in jail.”
“And don’t I know it. But consider this, Bill. After Linda was murdered by having her neck broken there are two versions of what happened next. The first version, the true account, is that her blood was drained from her body, then she was slit open and her intestines removed and replaced by plastic bags stuffed full of banknotes. Her poor abused body is then stitched up and embalmed before being flown to Poland where, she is again ripped open and the money bags removed and her remains are then incinerated, the ashes scattered who knows where.” Bill’s eyes had shut in horror as I spoke. “The second, sanitised but false, version is that her body is laid to rest in a casket containing bank notes hidden between the satin lining of the casket and the wooden sides. The casket is flown to Poland where the money is removed from the casket and Linda’s body is reverently cremated and her ashes returned to Fowler’s Funeral Home. Which one of those accounts would you prefer to tell Megan?”
“I wouldn’t want to tell Megan either, but the sanitised version would be less painful to hear and there would be something remaining of the poor girl if only a box of ash.”
“And here’s another thing to take into account. If I destroy the original letter it would mean those families who have had loved ones pass through the funeral home would not be tortured by thoughts that the corpses of their female relatives may have been sexually assaulted by Ashby Fowler.”
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