Page 20 of Nothing But the Night (Basic Instincts 2)

“I didn’t know the first thing about private detectives,” Marc said. “I did an internet search for agencies in Blyham, and you came out top.”

“That’s because we’re the best.” They both laughed. “You know, I’m going to have to hand over your case to Ryman in the morning. He won’t let me continue when he finds out about this.”

Marc’s smile faded. “Who’s going to tell him?”

“I’ll have to. This breaks all the rules. I can’t continue after tonight.”

“I want you to. I don’t want Ryman. You know the case. You’ve done all the work. I want you to keep going with it. Ryman won’t understand all the things my brother was into. He’ll likely freak out.”

“He’s more open-minded than you’d think. And has a lot of empathy.”

“I freaked out about a lot of this stuff myself. Trust me, he’s not going to get it the way you do.” Marc moved closer. “Don’t tell him. Please.”

Jason was uneasy. Trust was at the forefront of their working relationship. Ryman might never trust him again if he learnt about this later. And yet, he didn’t want to let go of the case. He hadn’t been all that keen on taking it to begin with, but he was one hundred percent invested in it now. Even more so now that another young man had died. Jason didn’t believe in crackpot conspiracy theories about the MP and a cover-up, but there were too many coincidences to ignore.

“All right, I’ll stay on it. But we can’t do this again. Not if I’m going to pretend to Ryman that nothing happened.”

Marc rolled onto his back. He put his hand behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “All right,” he said at last.

It hurt to feel him pull away and withdraw, but it was exactly what Jason had just asked him to do. He flipped onto his own back, staring at the shadows above. “Tell me more about Theo.”

“Like what? You probably know him better than I do now. I didn’t have nerve to go through any of his online stuff.”

“The adult content is all Hart Stone,” Jason corrected. “That’s not the real Theo. Tell me about your brother.”

Marc sucked his breath through his teeth. “I still don’t think I ever knew him. We were so many years apart. When he was little, I thought he was a bratty kid. Then when he was a teenager, he thought I was a boring old fart. The only time he ever took an interest in what I did was when I was onThe Partnership. Reality TV was everything to Theo, so me being on the telly for a couple of months made me hot stuff. But afterwards, he hated me for it. He applied to go on different shows and kept getting rejected. He once had a rant and asked me ‘What the fuck have you got that I don’t?’ Maybe if we’d been closer in age, we would have got on a lot better. I’d have looked after him, kept his feet in the ground and out of the clouds.”

“I’ve only been investigating a few days, but from what I’ve discovered so far, I don’t think Theo was unhappy. What he did for a living might seem unconventional to some, but he appeared to enjoy it. And he was good at it.”

Marc’s brow furrowed.

“I mean it,” Jason said. “There’s a professionalism to Theo’s videos that I don’t see in many of the others. I’ve had to look into the accounts of the men he worked with, and the majority of it is bargain basements stuff,filmed on a phone. On the whole, Theo used a cameraman, and his stuff is well lit and thought out. The other guys, well, the stuff they shot with Theo is by far their best work.”

“It’s still porn though, however well made.”

He wondered what Marc’s problem really was. He’d just proved that it wasn’t sex. So, why was he so against sex work? Was it just because it was his brother?

“Theo had a lot more subscribers than the other guys. Six or seven times more than some of them. A lot of people haven’t even cancelled their subscriptions, despite the fact there is no new content.”

Marc lurched up. “What the fuck? You mean people are still tossing off over him, even though he’s dead?”

Jason spoke calmly. It wouldn’t help to get Marc riled up now. “I’ve submitted requests to all the sites he had an active profile with to have his accounts closed. I’m not sure how long that’s gonna take. The ones that involve a paid subscription, I imagine will be soon. And I found the passwords for his social media accounts in the notebook you gave me, so they’re already gone. But there’s no way to remove it all. People download and share things. Some of it is going to stay on the internet forever.”

“Ah, shit.” Marc got into a sitting position and raised his knees. He put his head in his hands. “What have I done? Poking around is only going to make it worse. If the press makes a connection between Dan and Theo, it’s going to encourage people to go searching for it all over again.”

“Not necessarily. This sounds harsh, but a young man murdered in an inner-city gym is not going to gather that much interest. I’ll be surprised if Dan’s death gets more than a few paragraphs in the local papers.Look at what happened with the Blyham Strangler. No one gave a shit until the sixth man was killed.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Of course it doesn’t. What I mean is, I don’t think anyone is going to make the connection to Theo. Blyham police are so shit I doubt they’d bother investigating even if they did.”

Marc’s breath quickened. He flung back the covers and got out of bed. He paced the floor, running his hands through his hair, before searching for his clothes.

Jason got up and went to him. “You don’t have to go,” he said, and tried to put his arms around him. Marc stepped aside and retrieved his underwear, stepping into them.

“I can’t breathe. I can’t think.” His trousers hung over the back of a chair. He pulled them off and put them on.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said. “I’ve upset you. I shouldn’t have said—”

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