Naked Corpse

"You've reminded me," Valerie said. "I think I need to talk to Andrea, Tim's sister, again. I seem to remember her mentioning that Tim had been excited at the idea of having sex with two women at the same time, Becky and Jackie. He didn't say a word afterwards. Maybe he regretted that encounter. It was years ago before either of the women were married."

"Where's Tim now?" I asked.

There were several shaking heads.

"His family?" I asked again.

"His father died about three years ago," Valerie said. "Andrea asked me to go to the funeral. I couldn't. I was covering her shift at the hospital. Tim and Angela's parents were still living in the old butcher's shop, actually the accommodation behind what had been the shop. I suppose Tim might have been at that funeral."

As she spoke Valerie was searching on her tablet.

"Ah. Yes. The funeral notice was..." She stopped. "That's a coincidence. The notice of Mr Butcher's death is on the same page as the announcement of the birth of Alan and Jackie Smith's son."

She scrolled through the results.

"The obituary... Blah, blah etc. The funeral at the Parish Church. Yes. Andrea and Tim were there with their mother. Back to the results about the Butcher family. Andrea's engagement... Tim's promotion to be a deputy manager in charge of butchery counters at several supermarkets... Andrea's marriage to a doctor from London... More recent... I thought so. Mrs Butcher's death a month ago in a hospice near where Tim works. Funeral? Two weeks ago at a church near that hospice. Family flowers only; donations to the hospice... Local paper says final end of Butcher family connection to the village and picture of the butcher's shop when it was still operating. It shows rabbits and pigs hanging outside. Must be 1920s. Butcher's shop had slaughterhouse and cold store..."

"Cold store!" Helen almost shouted. "What did Inspector Rogers say about Becky and Jackie's bodies? They had died or been stored somewhere cold. The butcher's cold store would have been large enough for two or more bodies. My house had a cold store too as part of the greengrocers. That's where my garage is now but the Butcher family had only demolished the shop front. Their yard and outbuildings are untouched."

Rose walked over to the room's window and looked across the road to the old butcher's shop.

"There's a For Sale sign on the butcher's shop. It wasn't there when we arrived."

"Estate agent's name?" Valerie asked.

She searched.

"New instruction. Vacant Possession. No chain. Details to follow," she announced.

"I think we need to contact Inspector Rogers now," I said.

All of us were stunned at the implication of that cold store.

I rang Inspector Rogers on my mobile. He arrived a quarter of an hour later.

+++

That ended our involvement. The police obtained the keys from the Estate Agent. The arrest of Tim Butcher followed within hours.

The extended trial gave the details. Part way through the trial Tim changed his plea to guilty. We know more from his confession than from the actual evidence presented.

Tim had met Becky and Jackie again when he came back to the village shortly before his mother's death to sort out some of her belongings. After his mother's death he returned several times to clear the building, taking furniture to the auction house in the town. A couple of weeks before the murders Becky had persuaded Tim to have sex again in secret in the empty house. When she had made him helpless Jackie joined her. They both abused Tim, had hurt him physically and humiliated him mercilessly.

Before he left the village Tim had persuaded both women to have more femdom sex in the old house 'for old times' sake' on the Sunday evening of his next visit. He had spiked their drinks with a modern version of a Mickey Finn. When they were unconscious he carried them into the cold store, put them in the stainless steel troughs used for cutting up meat carcasses, shut the door and discharged several CO2 extinguishers into the cold store through a vent he closed afterwards.

The women died, already unconscious, from CO2 poisoning. He stripped them naked, washed them in a bath of dilute bleach, and put them into makeshift body bags. He had used new bags normally used for wrapping carcases in transit between slaughterhouse and butchers. From the time they were dead until their placement in the ditch he wore the disposable gloves he used as a butcher. The used extinguishers and some of the gloves were found in a rubbish sack. The gloves had his DNA inside and traces of the women's DNA on the outside. He was going to take that sack to the tip on his next visit. He had disposed of sacks with the women's clothing but had thought the last sack was normal rubbish from the house clearing.

Why place the bodies for me to find?

Tim had met Alan Smith some time ago at a large WW2 re-enactment event. Over a few beers they started moaning about Becky and Jackie. Alan had told Tim that when he beat up Jackie to try to find out who the real father of the baby boy was, Jackie had said it was me, perhaps the first name she could think of between Alan's punches.

Alan was a key witness at Tim's trial. He detailed conversations in which Tim expressed furious anger at the way Becky and Jackie had humiliated him. Although Alan resented Jackie and the child that wasn't his, Alan had moved on. He had a new girlfriend that he hoped to marry when his divorce from Jackie happened.

DNA established that Jackie's baby was actually Tim's. One evening after Tim had visited his mother in the village Becky persuaded Tim to have sex. When Becky had tied Tim up she let Jackie into the room to do whatever she wanted. Jackie had told Tim he didn't need to have a condom, and that she was on the pill. She wasn't. She had been unsuccessfully trying to have a baby by her husband. Even though Tim objected verbally until Jackie gagged him into silence she rode him to emission. Jackie went home to her husband leaving Tim as Becky's victim for the rest of the night.

Jackie had been blackmailing Tim into giving her money 'for the baby' even though Alan was paying maintenance. Alan knew he wasn't the father, not through blood type or DNA but because he had recently been to a specialist at the local hospital. Alan was temporarily infertile because of a bladder infection. He hadn't told Jackie before she announced that she was pregnant.

+++

Tim admitted that he had been staying in his parents' former butcher shop. He had brought his vintage Army vehicle to a re-enactment event on Sunday. It was a small WW2 six-wheeler with a crane. It was too large to pass beside the house to the centre of the village so he had been using the back access across the carter's field. He realised that probably no one could see his comings and goings with the bodies. They might have heard him but his truck sounded like the tractors around the village.

On the two nights he dumped the women's naked bodies he had driven it up the farm track past the electricity substation. Each body was concealed by the high sides of the truck but there was only enough space for one at a time if he was going to operate the hand-cranked crane. The women had been in body bags. He had used the crane to swing the body bag over the ditch before slicing the bottom of the bag to let the naked body fall into the ditch. He had driven back down the farm track.

Tim thought, because Jackie had told Alan that I was the father of the baby, it was common knowledge in the village and I would be suspected of the murders. If I was the person to find the bodies that would make me more suspicious. He didn't know that Jackie had just said the first name she could think of to stop Alan beating her up. She hadn't said to anyone else that Alan wasn't the father even though the village knew that was what had caused Alan to leave.

The ball gags had been bought in a ten-pack by Becky earlier in her relationship with Tim. She had left them in Tim's bedroom after finding they were ineffective in silencing him. She had bought and used harder ball gags. Tim had put a ball gag in each woman's mouths as revenge for Becky and Jackie's lies and a symbol of the bondage they had inflicted on him, particularly the recent time when they had gone far beyond femdom to torture.

Tim was sentenced to life imprisonment.

+++

Helen and I kept in touch with the four younger women. None of us were involved in Tim's trial except as spectators. I thought of the four as additional daughters. They didn't act like daughters. Whenever I met one of more of them I was hugged and kissed almost as if I was a boyfriend. I enjoyed that. Helen was amused.

Helen had been amused by my helplessness when tied with Valerie's pantyhose. The evening after our meeting in the pub she asked me first before using her own pantyhose to make me her victim in her bed. She enjoyed teasing me when I couldn't touch her.

The night after Tim's sentence was announced Helen tried, with my agreement, to replicate a version of Becky's complete bondage. She stood at the end of the bed watching my futile struggles before crawling up my body and impaling herself on my insistent erection. I enjoyed that but not the half hour it took Helen to release me after she had satisfied herself.

Later that night I had my revenge. I tied Helen up with pantyhose before riding her. Mutual, consensual bondage with agreed safe words or signals is much more enjoyable than enforced imprisonment by women who have no mercy and few limits.

We'll continue bedroom play as long as it is done with love. Sometimes just wrapping our bodies around each other is enough.

Bedroom bondage can be enjoyable as long as there are rules and consent. What Becky and Jackie did went beyond enjoyment into sadism.