‘I mean, I can’t work, can I? Too dangerous. And I can’t even sleep under my own roof. That’s not right, is it? You guys are going to have to sort this out. And I gotta ’ave protection, haven’t I?’
‘Just tell me all you know, Charlie,’ instructed Rose, still battling to suppress her excitement. She had a feeling the lad might provide the key to it all if she handled him right. ‘Everything. You help us and we’ll help you.’
Charlie did so. It took a long time. At one point Rose had to ask him to stop while a new pair of tapes were slotted into the recording machine. Charlie was a good talker. He told them all about Avon Escorts, his years working for them, the kind of clients he had, and how good it had always been for him. He even explained how the system worked. The money he earned and how he split it with Avon. He told them over and over about the lifestyle he had enjoyed and about how threatened he now felt.
And, of course, he told them everything he knew about Mrs Pattinson, her likes and dislikes, how she always asked for him, the games she liked to play. And repeatedly he told them how sure he had been from the start that Marty Morris had been killed by mistake instead of him.
‘It should have been me there, you see. I was her special. Not Marty.’
Charlie’s hands on the table before him were trembling. He was obviously in shock. The thought occurred to Rose that this rather extraordinary young man really had seen no special dangers in his way of life before and had genuinely considered his trade not to be so different to any other. Only now, for the first time, was he experiencing any doubts or fears.
‘Where do Avon find all these young men they have on their books?’ she asked, genuinely curious as much as anything else.
Charlie shrugged. ‘We get all sorts,’ he said. ‘Not many are full-time pros like me. A lot of them work at something else during the day.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘It can be quite fashionable in certain quarters, you know. Something you dare your mates to do. You’d be surprised at some of the lads we get. Down the uni they reckon it’s a great lark.’ He affected what he considered to be a posh accent for the last few words.
Rose was getting a fresh insight into an old world. She didn’t think there was much left that life could throw at her that would cause her too many surprises. But Charlie Collins was dead right, she reckoned. She would probably be surprised by a great number of the employees of Avon Escorts, as indeed she had been by Charlie. Charlie, with his mobile phone, his Armani suit and his Gucci brogues, was breaking the mould. Rose didn’t reckon she would have guessed what he did for a living in a million years. He gave the impression of being quite sophisticated and very successful. He had a winning smile and an easy manner which even his obvious stress did not totally conceal. He was of a whole new breed, and so were the rest of them, it appeared. Students out to make what they obviously regarded as easy money and have fun into the bargain with a bit of luck. Charlie had apparently had fun with Mrs Pattinson, you could tell by his body language alone when he talked about her. Mrs Pattinson. Her shadow was everywhere.
Rose leaned back in her seat. ‘Why do you think Mrs Pattinson would want to kill you?’ she asked.
Charlie shrugged. ‘That’s the big problem, I just can’t think of a reason.’
He had intelligent eyes, thought Rose. He was streetwise. Probably nobody could give her a better insight into the mysterious Mrs P than Charlie Collins.
‘We had good times together, over more than two years, don’t forget,’ he continued.
He had no problems talking about his business. He might have been discussing a business associate with whom he occasionally had lunch. Rose was beginning to gain the impression that that was in any case much the way Charlie Collins saw his relationships with his clients.
‘You lot’ll probably ’ave a laugh, but I always thought she liked me,’ Charlie went on. ‘Not just for sex. And certainly nothing to do with paying for it. I can’t imagine her wanting to hurt me or any of the lads, but it’s got to be her, hasn’t it? It really has to be her.’
Rose wished it was even that straightforward. There was even still a small chance that Peter Mellor’s theory about Jonathon Lee might yet prove correct. She wasn’t convinced. Nonetheless, while she had no intention of answering Charlie’s question directly, she did have more questions for him concerning Mrs Pattinson.
‘What if Mrs Pattinson killed because she was being blackmailed?’ she asked obliquely. ‘What if she killed because she was being threatened with having her secret life exposed?’
Charlie grasped what she was getting at immediately. He looked quite indignant.
‘No way!’ he said. ‘Don’t even think about it. Not me. Not any of the lads. Working boys and girls don’t do blackmail. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
The interview lasted almost two hours and at the end of it Rose felt she had learned more about the murky world in which both her two victims and her prime suspect had moved than throughout the entire murder investigation so far.
Thanks to Charlie, Rose now believed she was beginning to build up some kind of picture of Mrs Pattinson. But the one thing she had not learned was anything which could help her find the woman. Charlie could give her absolutely no information which could in any way lead to revealing the true identity of Mrs Pattinson. He had had sex ‘with her once a month for over two years and yet she had never at any time said anything which had given him the smallest clue.
‘Of course, I wasn’t trying to find out who she was or anything, but usually they can’t help talking about themselves in the end,’ he told Rose. ‘It’s amazing what they tell you, sometimes. Things they never tell the old man, if they got one, that’s for sure. But she never said a word about herself. Never.’
It was a blow, but Rose had to accept it. Ultimately Charlie Collins seemed to be no more help in unveiling the real Mrs Pattinson than anyone else.
Avon Escorts continued to insist, although increasingly ineffectually as more and more evidence began to present itself concerning the true activities of its employees, that it was both ‘reputable and respectable’. Certainly it kept surprisingly businesslike records, although Rose had little doubt that not all transactions were recorded and she also assumed, quite rightly, that the sums of money listed were not always the full amounts paid.
The more Avon Escorts was investigated, the more Rose came to realise that this was big, big business. Certainly a real money spinner. Even the figures which went through the books alone indicated a healthy turnover and Rose reckoned that was just the tip of the iceberg. Avon supplied both male and female escorts, but specialised in young men.
‘Well, you gotta move with the times,’ Paolo told her honestly. ‘There’s a whole new market out there, you know. Women want what men want, nowadays.’
Rose murmured something noncommittal and thought to herself that women had probably always wanted what men wanted. They had just never dared to act out their fantasies before, even if they had them. And, certainly until confronted so explicitly with the extensive activities of Avon, Rose would have assumed that was still so. As in the majority of cases it almost certainly was, she thought.
Nonetheless, Rose was learning that this was a complex game and she wondered just how many Mrs Pattinsons there were out there, leading some kind of double life.
Paolo, who had plenty of practice at being economical with the truth, needed to be pushed to give more than he had already. But, under pressure, he provided a list of at least twelve young men who had escorted Mrs Pattinson. Unfortunately many of them were known to Avon simply by a Christian name which was often false. He also confirmed what Rose already knew about the wide catchment area for recruitment which Avon enjoyed, and how so many of their escorts had respectable day jobs and merely moonlighted with the agency occasionally.