Readers Wives 3

This is part 3 of the story. For the whole story click here 
This story does contain scenes of a sexual nature. Please do not read if you are easily offended.

‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Jones,’ said Griffiths ‘it’s not his fists he tormented her with. Come with me.’

Griffiths marched back into the interview room this time carrying a doll that he had picked up in the office. Just before they entered he whispered to Jones not to say a word.

He turned the video back on and announced their arrival. He then put the doll on the table in front of Meryl and sat quietly in the chair.

After a few minutes she picked up the toy and played with it, almost childlike in her movements, moving the arms and legs. Making the doll sit and stand.

Griffiths watched her for a while before he spoke.

‘Meryl do you know why we use that doll?’

She shook her head, still enchanted by the figure.

‘We usually give it to children,  we ask them to point to where their attacker hurt them. Where did your husband hurt you Meryl?’ Griffiths didn’t know it at the time but he had his voice tone exactly right.

Meryl put the doll down and stared at it, then after a few moments she picked it up again with her right hand and with left she pointed to the head.

Out of the corner of his eye Griffiths could sense Jones was desperate to say something. The DI moved his hand just slightly to let his colleague know he should keep stum.

‘There,’ she said it so quietly that Griffiths couldn’t be 100% sure she spoke.

‘There, every day, every week, every month, relentlessly, there, there, there.’ Her finger was stabbing the doll's head her voice still quiet but the words clearly enunciated.

‘It started out as fun, he liked me, wanted to take photos, just for us he said, he bought me underwear and made me feel sexy. God it was so long ago we used to have to go to a ‘special’ place to get the films developed. Then he wanted to send them into the stupid magazines. I didn’t want to but I said yes to make him happy. We won, £50, he used it to buy new underwear for me. But then it became an obsession for him, an obsession for him but a trap for me. I didn’t want to do it anymore but he insisted. He told me he’d show my friends the snaps, threatened to post a magazine through my mum’s letterbox. He had me.’ He voice was getting stronger. Griffiths had expected tears but there were none.

‘I knew he was showing his mates, they’d come round leering at me, making crude remarks like I was some kind of animal in a sex zoo but then came the insults, subtle at first,  things like oh this used to fit you but then, then he just came out and told me I was fat, fat and ugly. He’d dress me up like a whore and then call me names. If I tried to wear those clothes out in public, then I was sleazy, a slut. I wasn’t a human to him anymore, just a toy, like this fucking doll.’ She threw the doll on the table.

Jones’s mouth hung open. Griffiths tried to smile an encouraging, sympathetic smile. She picked the doll back up.

‘Recently he’d been on about making porn, I mean real porn - movies, him and me on film for one of them amateur websites. Being spread eagled in a magazine every other month was bad enough; I couldn’t walk down the street without being convinced people were whispering about me -there she goes, the slut from Fiesta. But video? On the internet? No way was I going to let him get me doing that.’

Meryl paused and took a swig of water.

‘Today he said that he was going to get the video camera, that today was the day. I said no but he did his usual shit, tell your friends, tell your mum, show the people in my work. I couldn’t take it. I said no but he just smiled at me, an evil, sinister, rapist’s smile. I snapped, he’s dead, send me to prison.’

Griffiths announced the interview was over and turned off the video. He had all he wanted, all her solicitor would need for her defence. The women’s libbers might still see him as public enemy number one but he’d sleep at night.