First he made Charlotte sit. There was not, he thought, any easy way of doing this.
‘Your mother has confessed to a very serious crime,’ the inspector began. ‘She is being questioned as we speak in Bristol.’
Charlotte looked at him in amazement. As soon as she had seen him he knew she had prepared herself for a shock, for bad news — but he was aware that what he was telling her would not only be devastating but also quite beyond her comprehension.
‘What crime?’ she interrupted, her voice incredulous. ‘What on earth are you talking about, inspector?’
He told her then. All that he felt she should know.
‘Murder!’ Charlotte screamed the word. She was suddenly hysterical. ‘Serial killings! The rent boy killings! My God! Are you mad, inspector?’
To his relief, Inspector Barton could see the patrol car which he knew would be carrying the Bristol murder enquiry team draw up outside. Almost simultaneously the kitchen door burst open, and in strode William Lange, obviously alerted by the commotion.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ William demanded. And as he took in the scene before him, his tearful sister and the uniformed police inspector standing stiffly by her side, alarm spread across his handsome features.
Charlotte ran to her brother, threw her arms around him and half-buried her head in his neck so that the inspector could no longer see the younger man’s face.
‘William, William, they say mother’s confessed to murder... tell them they’re mad... tell them... for God’s sake...’
From Charlotte, the words came tumbling out. But William said nothing.
Back in Bristol, whatever Rose and Mellor threw at her, Constance Lange stuck rigidly to her story. Both police officers wanted to be sure the case against Constance would stand up in court. It was vital to ascertain that her confession was watertight, although there was absolutely nothing to suggest that she might have any reason for making a false statement.
‘I’m surprised you could even walk in those size ten boots,’ Rose said. ‘You can’t take more than a seven...’
‘I never had to walk far. I laced them as tightly as I could around the ankles and after the first time I wore a couple of pairs of thick socks. It wasn’t too difficult, Chief Inspector.’
Constance Lange was curiously relaxed in her responses. She was also chillingly convincing — her knowledge of events surrounding the murders formidable. One way and another her questioning was fast becoming merely a procedural formality. She had an answer to every point. And when Constance spoke about her hidden sex life and how it had come about, her frankness was starkly apparent — and to Peter Mellor quite sickening, Rose had no doubt.
Constance talked quite freely. It was, in fact, rather as if when she started to reveal her secrets she didn’t know how to stop.
‘When the children were young this other side of me was in check, most of the time,’ she related, her voice sometimes sounding as if it came from a very long way away. ‘I was very busy, and fulfilled, I suppose. It was still there, though. Every once in a while, even then, I went to London or Bristol, big cities where you can be anonymous, where you can hide away, and allowed myself to be picked up in hotel bars. It all sounds so sordid, doesn’t it? But when I am doing these things all I feel is excitement, nothing else at all. It’s only afterwards that I feel anything else...’
Her voice drifted away and Rose imagined that she was conjuring up half-buried memories of times she would rather forget, of urgent afternoons in forgotten hotel rooms, then dressing hastily and hurrying away down door-lined corridors.
‘Then I would feel guilt, and fear too, I suppose. Anyway, I strayed only a handful of times until about four years ago. My eldest children were more or less grown up, and Helen was away at boarding-school. I had time on my hands. Time to think. Time to fantasise. At first I just tried to make myself busier at home — that’s when I began to take on so many commitments in the village. But nothing worked. I couldn’t ignore my... my...’ She paused once more, seeking the right word. ‘My needs. I really couldn’t. I went on one or two more excursions to hotel bars in order to get picked up. The last man I went with thought I was a hooker, ironic really, and wanted me to do all kinds of things even I wouldn’t do.’
She paused, allowing herself a small, humourless, self-admonishing smile. ‘I left, but as I was going he got very angry and I thought he was going to attack me. It scared me a lot and I vowed I wouldn’t put myself at risk again.
‘Then I read a newspaper article about the growth of male escort agencies for women in London. I still remember the headline. “Safe sex adventures for middle aged matrons.” That wasn’t quite how I saw myself...’ Constance Lange managed a hollow chuckle. Even now, under such extraordinary circumstances, and with all that she was revealing about herself, with the terrible crimes she was confessing to, there was this lurking warmth and humour about her. The woman was one hell of a paradox, that was for sure, Rose thought, as Constance began to speak again.
‘Then I was in Bristol, genuinely shopping one day, and I thought I’d try to find out if there was anything like that there. I went into a phone box and had a look in the Yellow Pages. There was nothing. Avon Escorts are in the phone book now, but they weren’t then. However, one of their cards was stuck to the wall of the box. I called to ask if they provided men as well as women. The rest is history.’
She sighed, gazing into the distance, looking as if she would like to rewrite her entire life story.
‘It was, I thought, the ideal solution. And it always seemed so safe, that is the real irony. It was even Avon who suggested the Crescent when I said I would need to find a discreet room somewhere. It was all so well worked out. Then my aunt died and I simply didn’t tell Freddie. They had never been close, he was always quite happy for me to visit her but certainly never expressed any wish to come with me. In any case I told him she probably wouldn’t even recognise him, which may well have been true when she was still alive. I then had a ready-made alibi for regular absences from home.’
Constance wrapped her arms around her own body, almost hugging herself, reliving the past, a whole double life, a second existence.
‘Avon provided everything that I wanted, everything I dreamed of, all that I fantasised about. Wonderful raunchy exciting imaginative sex with no strings, no price to pay except money. It went smoothly for years, don’t forget. The boys were actually nicer than I had expected — or I thought they were. I told myself that it was fun, and as long as I didn’t hurt anyone it was all OK. In the end I even conquered the guilt. I learned to live, almost without thinking about it any more, with having two distinct sides to my life. And I convinced myself I could keep the two apart.’
Rose listened to Constance Lange for hours and could have gone on listening for hours more. She thought she was one of the most intriguing women she had ever met. So much of what she said made a deep impression on Rose. She wondered how many people, men and women, had not occasionally worried that they might become unable to control their own fantasies. Constance Lange had thought she had found a way to live with hers — perhaps there was no such way. Rose didn’t know.
She did know that she had to charge Constance Lange with murder and she could not quite explain why she had even a niggle of uneasiness about it. There was more behind her almost didactic cross-examining of the woman than merely a desire to be sure of a smooth ride in court.
Her senior officers became impatient.