It was starting to feel like one of those Agatha Christie stories. I had assembled everyone in the reception room, and I was addressing them.
"I ask you all to help us. I know that you want to be away from here as soon as possible. We just need to take your details, quickly check your identities, and we will let you go."
Some of those listening did not welcome my message.
"Don't worry. What we have here is a lot more important than a few girls giving massage. We cannot absolutely promise confidentiality. But please be assured that it is very unlikely that you will have to be interviewed later. We won't be telling your wives and girlfriends."
At least this raised a hint of a laugh.
I whispered into one of the women's ears. She nodded.
"And help yourselves to coffee and things."
It took about an hour before we had finished. Three men and five women. I was thankful that the women were all British, I was not going to have to get involved in a trafficking enquiry.
I waited until the forensic crew had finished and the corpse had been taken to the morgue. Then I drove home.
"The Prof's dead." I told my wife.
"I heard. What was it?"
"A huge stroke, they think. They will have to check. Had he seemed to be out of sorts lately?
"No, not really. He's always been a bit odd of course. A bit more secretive perhaps, but he seemed to be quite happy."
"You know where it happened?"
"No. Where?"
"Down in xxxxxxx. In a brothel."
"Business or pleasure?"
"According to the tart, it was very much for pleasure."
"What a way to go!"
I poured out a couple of generous whiskies. We both raised our glasses.
"The Prof."
We clinked and sipped.
When the report landed on my desk a couple of days later it was confirmed that he had had a huge haemorrhagic stroke. He had, in the old terms, burst a blood vessel while orgasming. The only curious thing in the report was that his penis seemed abnormal. The pathologist was going to have to do more investigation of this.
In the same envelope as the report was a handwritten slip of paper, suggesting that I ought to speak to one of my colleagues.
She, my colleague that is, was investigating a series of deaths of prostitutes in the area.
Again, it seemed that death has been due to natural causes, but there were too many of them to be a coincidence. And in each case, their sexual parts had appeared to be a bit abnormal. In one case her nipples, in others, their vulva and/or clitoris. I showed her the photographs of the Prof's penis.
"Yes, very similar. A bit like a dark cobweb over the sensitive skin."
She showed me her case photos, and I agreed.
"Can I take a copy of this and ask around a bit?"
She took one of the pictures of the living Prof.
When I saw her again a couple of days later she had shown the picture to some of the other working girls, and they confirmed that the Prof may well have been a customer of the dead girls.
At home my wife was upset.
She and I had been to the same university, and though not at the same time had attended several of the Prof's courses. He had inspired both of us to take up our careers. She was now a senior researcher in the Prof's forensic science laboratory. I had been fascinated by forensics, and had joined the police.
My wife was upset because she was now having to be the Boss at work. In the Prof's absence, morale was at rock bottom. She was having to nag, encourage, explain, negotiate, and scheme. All she really wanted to do was her own work, she did not want to be a manager, but she was stuck with it. She was also trying to make sense of the Prof's personal research projects. She was bringing home piles of his notebooks – highly irregular, the notebooks were supposed to never leave the laboratory. But she had found that she could make little sense of them at work, there were just too many interruptions.
At least I could help her. (Again irregular, but what the hell.) The Prof's writing was not easy to read. We were transcribing the notes onto our computer. She would read, I would type. Often it made little sense, but we could then stare at the scribble in order to guess where we had misread it. Slowly we got the hang of it, and we were able to speed up the transcription.
We had started with the most recent book. It was soon clear that we needed to go further back.
We worked late. In the morning, it was a day we both had off work, we did what we usually did on such mornings, and we did it slowly, luxuriously, and lovingly. Then, again as we usually did, we both went back to sleep.
I awoke with an idea. I waited until she surfaced again.
"You know you said that he had been more secretive lately."
