Chapter 30 #2
Sara nodded. ‘I only saw her briefly, just as she was rushing to a lecture, and she was really happy, really excited about this Tony. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me with Patrick, but I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
You know what she was like when she was excited about something.
And anyway, I was ashamed – wanted no one to know what had happened.
She said she’d had dinner with this man several times.
It was all very hush-hush; she didn’t know his name, she said, apart from calling him Tony…
To be honest I got the idea she knew exactly who he was.
Fliss was pretty smart… I was trying to tell her what had happened to me, that I was no longer working for the agency, and that she must be careful, but she went off in a hurry, promising to catch up when she could. ’
I closed my eyes briefly, felt the tension headache surge.
‘So do you think Patrick and Tony were the same man?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I’m certain they were.
I remember Fliss telling me Tony had a favourite French restaurant in Sheffield – Brasserie Blanc, long since gone now I believe – and Patrick took me there once.
Patrick knew that the girls working for the escort agency were students, from good homes.
He knew that if we went to the police they probably wouldn’t do much.
We were selling our bodies – and remember it was only a couple of years after the whole Yorkshire Ripper case, when the police treated the street workers with utter contempt.
To a lot of misogynistic officers, the girls got what was coming to them. ’
I nodded, knowing some of what she said was true.
‘Look, it’s too late for Fliss now, but I’m here because I want you to help me bring a complaint against him.’
‘On Fliss’s behalf? Twenty years later? Why? And why now?’ I stared. ‘Sara, do you know something about how Fliss died?’
There was a long silence and then she said, ‘Not really, just conjecture.’
‘I’m afraid conjecture, twenty years on, and about a third party won’t hold much sway in a court.’
‘I think she must have been trying to get away from him. Why else would she have been wandering around down by the canal early in the morning?’
‘Oh, you know that much?’
‘Of course! We all knew. I should have gone to the police there and then.’
‘But why didn’t you, Sara? Surely…?’ I felt real anger over the woman’s apparently cavalier attitude.
If she’d reported Patrick there and then, Fliss might still be alive today.
I closed my eyes briefly, trying to calm myself, reminding myself that Sara had been just a young vulnerable girl at the mercy of both the agency and the men she escorted.
‘And have everyone know how I was making money? My parents? Any new – genuine – relationship I might have found myself in? I can just see that, can’t you?
’ She gave another little mirthless laugh.
‘Oh, what do you do in your spare time? A little student job? Yes, I sell my body to wealthy – sometimes perverted – men… Oh and don’t forget, my teaching career would have been totally out the window.
I wanted to be a teacher – had always wanted to teach little ones. ’
‘But…?’
‘And then it was all in the papers, and I read the report of the inquest. Accidental death. Too much to drink and she slipped and fell. If you remember, after that there was a big push on trying to stop students drinking so much, especially during Freshers’ Week when, over the years, and at different unis, more than one student has ended up in a critical way through excessive drinking.
And,’ she went on, ‘eventually I was almost able to push what happened to the back of my mind. I started teaching, loved my job, had a mortgage, met my husband, had my three children. I could have lost every single one of these had it come out that I’d earned money through prostitution. ’
‘I understand all this, Sara.’
‘Ha! Really?’ She gave me a look and shook her head.
I leaned across my desk, took Sara’s hand briefly. ‘Sara, you were a young girl. Vulnerable. Try not to be too hard on yourself. So, do you believe this… what was he called…?’ I scanned my notes. ‘Tony bloke was responsible for Fliss’s death?’
‘Well, he must be, mustn’t he? Who knows what would have happened to me if I hadn’t been so terrified? I sort of went along with it all. If I’d put up a fight, said I was off to the police, it might have been me in that canal.’
‘Hang on, hang on a minute, Sara… Tony?’ My heart raced. ‘Was he about our age at the time? You know, young to be with an escort? Fair hair? Tony? Short for Anthony?’ I underlined the name again and again, my pen digging into the page until it made a hole.
Sweet Jesus, Theo’s full name was Theodore Anthony Patrick Mandeville. And London? A vision of the Holland Park house flashed before me.
‘Fair hair, yes. Lovely plummy voice – he used to tease me about my Lancashire accent – really attractive.’ Sara stared. ‘Do you know who he is?’
When I didn’t say anything, couldn’t bear to say Theo’s name, she went on, ‘But about our age?’ She gave me a look. ‘No, of course not. As far as I know, none of the men on the books were younger than forty. He must have been in his fifties – most of the men we escorted were. Some older.’
I felt the tension in my shoulders drop, felt the slow release of the breath I’d been holding. Oh, thank you, thank you, God. Not Theo then.
Sara looked me straight in the eye. ‘Anna, I know exactly who Patrick is. Probably Tony as well.’ She air-mimed apostrophes round each name.
‘You do?’ I took my pen, poised to write.
‘Hugh Mandeville. Sir Hugh Mandeville of Mandeville Hall in North Yorkshire.’