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tell Tom? Would Susan be capable of calling her son and telling him that his father was dead? Would the police take care of that if she couldn’t? Would I have to do it? And then the funeral arrangements. Who would
–
    Julie stopped herself, ashamed. Her best friend’s husband of nearly forty years was very possibly dead. Barry Frobisher. They’d all known each other since they were kids. True, Julie and Boring Barry had never been one another’s favourite people but she’d have to be there for Susan.
    The car was stopping. The policemen were getting out and opening the rear doors for them. There was a police van and another car parked in front of them. Two constables stood on the street in front of the house. Neighbours were leaning from casement windows and standing staring on doorsteps.
    Julie was on the pavement side. She got out and looked up: a crumbling Edwardian town house loomed above them in the street light. Once grand, the place had long since been subdivided into flats and bedsits. Julie had lived in a fair few places like this herself over the years. Her current place wasn’t much grander. And for a moment she allowed herself to think what Susan had thought when they headed into the estate: this is a mistake. A stupid mistake. What on earth would Barry Frobisher, Chartered Accountant, be doing around here?
    ‘This way please,’ Sergeant Black was saying, opening the gate that led down some steps to a basement entrance. He turned and blocked their path momentarily. ‘Now, I have to warn you. This is going to be very difficult for you. It’s not a pretty scene …’
    Susan clutched at Julie’s arm again as they went down the few steps, towards an open basement door and into a hallway, an eerie soft blue light seeming to glow at the end of it.
    They followed the huge, black back of the sergeant down towards that blue light, the blue being displaced suddenly by a phosphorescent sheet of white and the raaap and whine of a camera. Someone was taking photographs. Susan glanced to her left into what was presumably the living room: old furniture and every available surface covered in boxes and crates with files spilling out of them, stacks of papers everywhere.
    Sergeant Black stopped in the doorway in front of them and, yes, just like in the movies, lifted up the yellow-and-black tape stamped with ‘POLICE, CRIME SCENE, DO NOT CROSS’. He lowered his gaze as first Julie, then Susan went under the tape and into the room.
    Julie’s first reaction was:
Is this all the pornography in the world?
Because the walls were just
covered
in the stuff. And the ceiling. All five available flat surfaces. She caught a few random images, you couldn’t help it, there was nowhere else to look. And this was strong stuff. This was not petrol-station issue. A man dressed as a Nazi taking what looked like a nun from behind. A … was that an Alsatian? Yes. An Alsatian with a woman dressed as a cheerleader. Another woman strung in a harness beneath a horse. And what were all those things on the shelves? Around the walls? Were those …? Christ. She’d never seen so many dildos. A forest of dildos.
    Susan straightened up and stuffed a knuckle into her mouth to stifle a scream.
    There he was, kind of kneeling on a table, partially suspended from the ceiling.
    Barry.
    Naked.
    Dead.
    Behind him was the source of that eerie blue lighting, the word ‘RAPIST’ in three-foot-high neon tubing, like it was the name of a bar, or a nightclub.
    Someone, a man in plain clothes, was coming towards them out of the blue-tinted semi-darkness. He was saying, ‘Mrs Frobisher, is this your husband.?’
    Susan was nodding, her mouth hanging open. There seemed to be something … behind Barry. Sticking out of him. His head was dangling down and to the side but you could clearly see his face – the eyes bulging, staring, the teeth bared in a mad snarl, his hair matted to his forehead with sweat. His arms still lashed to the ceiling.
Someone must