Chapter 20
‘We think it’s a tattoo,’ Poe said.
‘On the sole of her foot?’ Buckby shook his head. ‘Are you winding me up? You can’t tattoo the sole of the foot; it won’t stay on. Your socks’ll rub it off. Be easier tattooing your eyeball.’
‘My client seems very sure.’
His client was also a fifteen-year-old girl with anger-management issues, a mouth like a pirate with Tourette’s and a hand she wasn’t always in control of.
It didn’t mean she was lying, of course.
It didn’t even mean she was mistaken. But it did mean Poe was treating the tattoo the same way he’d treat any untested information – trust but verify.
Buckby zoomed in. ‘Nah, that ain’t a tattoo, Mr Poe; it’s a film stamp.’
Poe leaned in too. ‘A stamp?’
‘Like the ones you get on the back of your hand when you go to a club. Takes a couple of days to come off. It’s kind of a calling card for some companies. Means that even if – and I should say when these days – the film’s pirated, the company logo is still on the screen. Clever really.’
Poe agreed it was. It seemed easier than saying that stamping a woman was the same as stamping a health mark on a side of beef in the slaughterhouse.
He thought that to some men, women and beef were just different varieties of meat.
There to be consumed. Sometimes it was hard to be a man.
There was a lot of associated guilt. Then he realised that ‘it’s hard to be a man’ was exactly the kind of thing that was best left unsaid.
Estelle would scrape her heels all down his shin if he voiced something stupid like that in front of her.
‘A production stamp that blurry won’t help you find her, though,’ Buckby said, stroking his chin. ‘The clip wasn’t up-loaded in HD, so it don’t matter if it’s a smudged stamp or an out-of-focus tattoo.’
He watched a bit more of the clip. He seemed to know his way around computers and Bradshaw was content to let him touch her laptop.
Or maybe she was planning to throw it in the Thames as soon as they’d left the pub.
Each time the woman’s foot made an appearance, Buckby paused and zoomed in, before pressing play again.
The start of the clip was just the woman, a bunch of sex toys and a bored expression.
Lots of moaning, no heart. The middle section was a close-up of the woman and the middle-aged man.
The one Esmerée had described as a lardass.
The woman was perfunctory, like she just wanted to get it over with.
The man groaned at the right times; she looked at the camera at the right times.
She had blue eyes, but the top half of her face was hidden by the Venetian mask she wore.
At the nine-minute point, the camera zoomed out so the viewer could see the whole picture.
The man’s eyes were in the back of his head. That was how much fun he was having.
Buckby immediately paused the movie. Pointed at the man. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I know him.’