them up and the most they charge is eight hundred pounds, and that’s for a horse.’
‘Did you have a lot of horses to dispose of?’ Derwent asked. ‘Over that weekend? You could have got rid of the whole field for the Grand National at that price.’
‘I don’t know what that was for,’ Hooper managed.
‘If we go and ask them what the two payments of ten thousand pounds were – and we will – what do you think they’re going to say? Do you think your name might come up?’ Derwent asked softly.
Hooper swallowed, his expression grim.
‘If I was in your shoes, I’d want to get my story in first. Especially given what we found upstairs,’ I said.
‘What did you find upstairs?’ Una Burt was looking highly entertained.
‘Well, Kev found it really. Did you know there are nine bathrooms in this house?’
‘Nine? My goodness.’
‘I don’t think they use all of them. This one was locked.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Someone had made an awful mess of the bath,’ Derwent said flatly. ‘The surface was badly damaged. Cut marks, Kev said. As if someone was using heavy tools to cut through something dense and difficult, like a body.’
‘You don’t know when that happened,’ Hooper ground out. ‘Or how.’
‘Do you know the answer to either of those questions? Would you like to tell us?’ I asked. ‘It could have been two years ago when Iliana went missing. Or it could have been more recent than that. It could have been when Paige Hargreaves started asking questions.’
‘Kev sprayed it with luminol. Do you know what luminol is, Mr Hooper?’ Derwent asked. ‘It’s a chemical that detects blood. Lights it up like a Christmas tree. The bath upstairs, those scratches, they glowed for us. The only thing we need to know is whose blood it is.’
‘You’ve got the wrong idea,’ Hooper muttered.
‘What idea would that be?’
‘The cremations, the cuts on the bath – that all happened around the same time. There were two bodies.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, in the moment it seemed like the right thing to do.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Disposed of the bodies ourselves. It was an accident that they died. That’s the first thing. That’s what you have to understand.’ He chopped his hand down, emphasising his words. ‘No one wanted anyone to die.’
‘Who died?’
‘The girl – Iliana. But she was the second one.’
‘Who was the first?’
‘A young man who told us his name was Jonas Powell, but it was a pseudonym. I was never able to trace his family and he was never reported missing. No one seemed to miss him. I did try to find out who he was.’
Derwent frowned. ‘Why would he lie about who he was?’
‘Because of what he was doing for a living. He was a rent boy. A drug addict, too, though I wouldn’t have hired him if I’d known. He said he was clean. He had a whole panel of tests at a sexual health clinic – AIDS, the works. He was healthy. So we hired him for a party.’
‘What kind of party?’
‘An after-party,’ Hooper said tiredly. ‘Following on from the big celebration of Sir Marcus’s presidency. We took some of the young members down to a house near Swindon and turned them loose. We do that from time to time, in various venues, and take pictures of what they get up to. It’s part of the club’s ethos. It’s how it survives – we ensure total commitment from the members. No one was forced to do anything, and no one was supposed to get hurt.’
‘But two people died,’ I said. ‘That’s not an accident.’
‘It was two accidents, one after the other.’
‘Rubbish,’ Derwent snapped and anger flared in Hooper’s eyes.
‘I’m telling the truth and if you give me the chance, I can prove it.’
32
‘Carl Hooper is the sort of man who likes to have an insurance policy in his back pocket, in case things don’t work out quite the way he planned.’ I looked around the conference room, seeing total concentration on all of their faces: Una Burt, Derwent, Liv, Pettifer, Pete Belcott who was still snuffling with his cold, a pale-faced Georgia and Colin Vale, our resident technical expert. ‘He was fully committed to doing exactly what was required of him by his bosses at the Chiron Club, but he was also concerned that if it ever came to light, he wasn’t going to take the fall. They didn’t pay him enough for that, apparently.’
‘I bet he got paid more than we do,’ Belcott said.
‘Oh, undoubtedly.