Outstripped (6 page)

Jody
hadn’t taken a scrap of clothing off yet, but she had them captivated,
mesmerized, drooling and waiting, impatiently, for the next thrilling
installment.

Tantalizingly
she undid the press-studs on the front of her nurse’s tunic. When they were all
undone, she paused, waited, waited some more,
then
flung open the garment to the beat. She stood there, with a dirty,
dirrrty
smile on her face, her long slim legs apart, red
high heels towering, white coat of authority held wide and beckoning, and a
high cut, see through, red teddy screaming “Fuck me! Fuck me, here and now!”

The boss
put his hands up. “That’s all. Seen enough. Off you go,” and with that Jody put
her hands on her hips pinning the tunic back brazenly for and at them all. She
grinned a small triumphant grin, nodded her head almost indiscernibly then
swung round and contentedly marched off.

During
the trial, Luke had asked Graham to hire a private investigator to dig up as
much information on his co-conspirators as possible. Although technically he
knew them all, or rather, he
had
known them all (many years before) he’d neither seen nor been in touch with any
of them for years.

All four
of them were at ‘Mary Magdalene Grammar School’ in the sixth form when he had
‘known’ them, (including in the biblical sense). Clearly he didn’t attend a girl’s
grammar, he wasn’t even at school at the time, but he somehow ended up hanging
around with them, and well, one thing led to another. “A really good time was
had by all,” he recalled.

What he
still couldn’t get his head around, though, was how all the evidence put
forward in the trial suggested, no, demonstrated them having social, sexual and
business dealings together as though they were all still friends.

“How the
hell was that possible? And the kid, surely you need to have sex with someone
for that to happen? She
wasn’t a ‘bad
shag’, but not
even Monica Lewinski could have saved ‘man-juice’ for that long. It must have
been around 1999 or 2000 the last time we did it. There’s just no way it could
possibly still work. It must be someone else’s. The DNA’s
gotta
be wrong. It can’t be mine.”

Luke got
to thinking about Suzanne. According to the prosecution she was in Amsterdam
sometime in December 2001 at the same time he was. They stayed at different
hotels and, according to them, must have got together for sex at some time. She
denied it in court, as did Luke, but somehow she couldn’t remember
whether
or
exactly who
she did have sex with on that occasion, though the
hotel staff were adamant she’d hosted a number of male and female visitors.

“Even if
I’d known she was in town I wouldn’t have contacted her. She’d moved on. I’d
moved on. What would’ve been the point?”

“Anyway
she was getting broody, what with her new boyfriend, or rather fiancé. God
knows what she saw in him. Twat! Surely the Baby’s his. And she would've been a
risk. No sex without bloody condoms
an'
all that. No
thanks."

Luke
went over the seemingly insurmountable yet impossible evidence in his head
again. He started by trying to work out where the photos had come from.

During
the trial he recalled how the police had found a large framed photo of him and
the four girls all together on their graduation night. The school had decided
to throw a dance that year since they didn't have Prom Nights and the girls had
invited him along as their guest. He faintly remembered posing for a ‘Charlie’s
Angels’ style photo with them all. Anyway, they were a bit pissed after
'loading up' before the 'Big Gig' and sneaking more booze in with them for
top-ups. The Gestapo Nuns were on the prowl all night but somehow they still
got away with it.

He never
did get to see a copy of the picture (until the trial) and yet each of the
girls had a large framed one in their houses aptly engraved with the words
“Wicked Alliance In Formal Attire”.

"According
to the prosecutor, just because the typed message on the back of the frames alluded
to them being from me, that means they
had
to be from me. Bollocks! Anyone could have sent them, and stuffed all that crap
inside."

Luke's
problem, regardless of how hard he protested with himself, and everyone else on
the planet for that matter, was that all four of the photo frames had his fingerprints
on them. The photos, though copies, did have his 'reproduced' signature on
them, and there was further evidence of "incredible magnitude", as
the judge put it, inside each one.

Suzanne's
picture frame had an unopened envelope in it dated 18th December 2001. It was
posted in Amsterdam and just
happened to be ‘branded
’
stationery from Suzanne’s hotel. Inside was a pair of her particularly scanty
pink knickers, which, together with a few pubes, had been positively
DNA
tested as hers. Also inside the very same envelope was
Luke's flight itinerary sheet with some hurried and almost illegible hand
written notes on the reverse. They read "Thanks S” and, “You forgot
these."

Luke
still refuted ever going to her hotel or meeting her, or writing to her, or
having sex with her. "Where did all this shit come from?" he thought,
"Never mind the baby for a minute. It's not possible to do all this when
you’re pissed. I would have remembered something."

“And
then what’s the deal with Carmel? I don’t have a fuckin’ clue what she’s been
doing since University or where she’s been. How the hell would I be getting her
to launder money when she’s on the other side of the bloody world?”

Carmel,
as it came out in court, had finished at University with her accounting
qualifications, and, since ‘Daddy knew people, who knew people’ she managed to
land a pretty neat job as a trainee Ship’s Purser for one of the bigger cruise
lines. Most candidates for the job need a few years Front Desk experience
first, rather than the pathetic amount of ‘Job Placement’ time that Carmel had
managed to notch up during her studies. Never the less she got the job.

Over the
years she progressed well and finally got her promotion to full blown Purser.
According to the prosecution, Carmel must have been liaising with Charlie on a
regular basis.

Now,
Charlie (another one of the girls) had secured a position as an Airline
Stewardess, subsequent to doing a few years travelling and holiday repping. The
wilder, more free-spirited member of the quartet, was meant to have been
transporting ‘dirty’ currency to Carmel, who would then use her privileged
position as ‘Ship’s Foreign Exchange Officer’ to convert these notes into U.S.
dollars. The now ‘clean’ and high denomination ‘Greenbacks’ would then be
deposited into a shared international account, at any old ‘Banana Republic’
bank, whenever either of them could arrange it.

International
personnel, it seemed, definitely had their hidden talents in the
‘under-the-counter world’.

Luke
remembered the girls’ faces as each of their framed photos was brought in as
evidence. There were emotional “gurning” performances (face pulling) from all
of them, full of shock, surprise, horror and complete incredulity.

Carmel’s
Photo frame concealed an unopened envelope with a CD/DVD inside. A message
typed onto the disc sleeve read, “Thought you should have this before it gets
into the wrong hands.” The disc contained a catalogue of video evidence showing
a great number of Carmel’s sexual encounters aboard ship.

Unfortunately
for Luke the envelope had a partial impression of his handwriting and signature
on it and the disc would seem to have been burnt on one of his company’s computers,
since identifiable ‘encryption’ and ‘read me’ files had been inadvertently
copied along with the videos.

Charlie’s
version of the now infamous photo frames contained a ‘wad’ of Dutch Guilders
from many years ago. And, according to the prosecution, Guilders went out of
circulation on December 31st 2001 in favour of the newly introduced Euro. It
was impossible to hand them in for exchange after 27th January 2002.

One of
the notes had been ripped and Sellotape'd back together. The Sellotape had
Luke's fingerprints on it. The conclusion arrived at by the prosecution
suggested that Luke passed the notes on to Charlie in Amsterdam in Dec 2001,
for ‘shipment’, and she had either forgotten about them or had held them too
long, waiting for the right opportunity to meet up with Carmel, until
eventually they were no longer legal tender.

Charlie
was coincidentally staying at the same hotel as Suzanne at that time, or rather
the other way round, since Suzanne used to travel on the cheap with Charlie
whenever there was room on the plane. This particular ‘wad’ was neatly stashed
in another of the hotel’s envelopes, just compounding the evidence and
confirming for all, the date, time and location of transaction.

There
was one more photo frame that Luke was still struggling to comprehend.
Maddy’s.

Inside
her
beveled box of incrimination was the
tiniest evidential shred of all. A key. Not just any key. This was a padlock
key to a lock-up.
Luke’s Lock-up.

Of
course it wasn’t the key itself that bore so much significance to his overall
weighting of innocence or guilt. It was the sheer mass and depth of material
found inside.

There
were bank statements going way back showing all the transactions for an account
that Maddy supposedly set up for his operation years before.

There
were two mobile phones with private numbers taken out in their respective names
together with accompanying monthly bills and call logs detailing his and
Maddy’s texts and calls to each other.

There
was a truckload of sex toys that had apparently been bought with some of the
proceeds of their illicit laundering activities, which, not only helped to legitimize
and further cleanse the money, but also, thanks to Charlie’s very embarrassing
arrest, allegedly and greatly assisted the trafficking itself.

Then, there
was the veritable ‘hoard’ of additional evidence, together with some extremely
personal and graphic photos of their many and varied, sometimes-bizarre sexual encounters,
which just capped off the discovery for the authorities. The trial lawyers
suggested these had been taken on the mobile phones and printed privately for
posterity and kinky reminders.

“Just
how do you counter all that? It’s all a fucking lie.” Luke tightened his fists
in anger to accompany his un-answerable thoughts.

He
calmed himself down and got a grip of things again, eventually, then got round
to thinking about the ‘Toys’.

“Yes”,
he had decided to expand on the rubber products field of his father’s business,
and “yes”, he had decided to get into sex toys, or marital aids as the more prudish
of the populous knew them. “There’s a huge market for sex aids, sex toys,
dildos, vibrators, butt plugs and beads and so on. It made good financial
sense,” he re-affirmed himself.

“It’s
all main stream stuff now. They’re even on the high streets. One company alone
was selling literally thousands of these every week just through party
planning. Now if that isn’t worth a punt then what is?”

“According
to the
fucking Prosecution
the
‘Spanish’ or ‘American’, or whatever he is, ‘Charmer’ sold me all this
extra
stock, or rather, sold this
fictitious company, I’ve never heard of, all this
extra
stock. And it’s supposed to be custom made. I’ve never heard
of ‘Wishful And Intimate Female Aids.’ I never set the company up and I haven’t
made or spent any money with it.”

Luke had
started dealing with ‘Vincente Moreno’ years before and had been buying sex
toys from him in reasonable numbers for wholesale distribution. Most of his
customers were sex shops and a few party-plan operators. It paid well and was a
fairly low risk investment since the stock was non-returnable except if faulty.
Even then, most customers didn’t want to go through the process, for fear of
embarrassment. It worked out to be a pretty smart venture overall and his
father didn’t mind him moving with the times and diversifying a little.

Banner Products Ltd (BPL) had been set up by Luke’s father
in 1978. It was a specialist company and they made condoms, colostomy
bags and a host of other surgical rubber and plastic products. He’d built a
successful little empire for himself in niche products that were in high
demand. Although dildos and vibrators weren’t what you could call ‘niche’ any
more, they were in high demand, and there weren’t too many suppliers around
with the respect and credibility of B.P.L.

Graham’s
private investigator came up with ‘nothing’. Other than what the police had put
forward, he couldn’t find anything in their lives or backgrounds to suggest ill
placed acts, deeds or morale’s. And nor could he find anything to corroborate
the accusations, evidence, materials etc., used against the girls as part of
this whole episode.

It would
seem that all four of them had been ‘stitched up’ as part of the same sting
Luke had been caught up in.

Unless
of course it was
all true
! A thought which had crossed
the investigator’s mind on a number of occasions, regardless of Graham’s
sympathy and continued protestation of their innocence.

Although
Graham had run out of ideas, Luke hadn’t resigned himself just yet to a stint
behind bars and a criminal record to go with it.