Page 43 of Death on the Rocks

“No, but someone in the pub mentioned it.”

“I saw a few women make similar remarks,” Katie said. “Alanna must have been monitoring it because the comments would disappear. But I messaged one of them before Alanna could hide the comment.” She swivelled the laptop in Lily’s direction. “We’ve been messaging, and she told me how Vinny had done exactly the same to her about a year ago.”

“Wow.” Lily’s eyes scanned the emotionally charged exchange between the two women.

“She says she wanted to go to the police but was worried about her job. She was worried it would look bad if it came out that she’d posed naked for money.”

“I wonder how many times he did it,” Lily mused.

“Probably a lot,” Katie said, her eyes fixed on Lily. “I know it’s stupid, but it makes me feel better that it wasn’t just me. I felt like such an idiot for believing what he told me, but now it kind of feels as though it wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” Lily said. “He was a sicko and he exploited you.”

“I should never have agreed to him taking my photos, no matter how badly I wanted the money.”

“What you agreed to do for the money and what happened were two different things,” Lily pointed out. “How did you meet him, anyway?”

“Alanna was doing a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago, over on Tresco. I went with a few friends to hang out and see if we could get a photo with her.” She shrugged. “Alanna was sweet in a fake kind of way. She seemed to like that she had peoplecoming to watch her. She made a bit of a fuss of us and chatted to us for a while.”

Her eyes misted over. “I got chatting to Vinny and he said I had great looks for modelling. It sounds stupid now, but he seemed genuine. He told me he was working on a project that he thought I’d be perfect for. He had this folder with examples of the other photo shoots he’d done. At first I was surprised that the models were naked, but like I said, it all looked really classy and artful. I wasn’t going to agree to it, but then he mentioned the money. Also, the way he talked about the models and the nudity made me feel at ease with it all.”

“Where did you do the photo shoot?” Lily asked.

“He was staying in a holiday cottage on Tresco. I went over there.” Her lips twitched. “I was a complete idiot.”

“No.” Lily shook her head. “He’s the problem, not you.”

“He’s not really a problem, any more,” Oscar pointed out.

“The police didn’t listen to me when I told them about the photos,” Lily said. “But I’m sure they’d listen to you. Especially now that you’ve found someone else with the same experience.”

Katie’s eyes widened. “You went to the police?”

“I didn’t know the photos were of you,” she said. “I didn’t look closely and I’d only seen you once anyway. But it seemed like something the police should know about.”

“And they didn’t listen?”

Lily thought back on PC Grainger’s initial reaction. Hehadlistened. He’d believed her. But in a few hours he’d changed his tune considerably.

“They need proof,” she said, choosing to believe that was the only issue. “That’s all. I didn’t have the memory card, and without that, there wasn’t much to investigate. Especially since I didn’t know who the photos were of.”

“I can’t go to the police,” Katie said, looking desperately at Oscar. “Ican’t.And he’s dead now, so there isn’t even any point.”

Oscar shrugged in noncommittal agreement.

Part of Lily wanted to agree. Clearly, Katie wanted to put the whole thing behind her, and a police investigation was the opposite of that. But…

“There’s a chance Vinny was just taking the photos for his own sick entertainment,” she said slowly. “But what if there was more to it?”

“Like he was selling them?” Katie asked.

“Yes.”

“He can’t sell photos of me when he’s dead, can he?”

Lily bobbed her head ambiguously. “There are also the other women he’s done this to.”

“But he’ll already have sold any photos he was going to. Exposing him won’t stop that now. I really don’t see the point. It won’t help anything; it’ll just cause a lot of problems for me.”

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