“For God’s sake, Helena,” I chided myself. “You’re supposed to be a professional. Focus on the job. When VI Warshawski or Kinsey Milhone are on a case, they concentrate on what the client’s saying. They don’t sit there wondering what it would be like to be across his knee.”

           The client in question was Jonathan Morley. He was in his late 30s, tall, well-built, with short light brown curls, large, tear-filled grey eyes, and big hands (right now, I was into noticing hands). His wife Cate had been missing for two months. She’d exited his life one sticky, windy February morning, leaving their five-month-old baby daughter with Jonathan’s mother and saying she was off to her weekly, get-my-figure-back-fast work-out at the local gym. Only she’d never turned up at the gym, never came back for her daughter, and had never been seen since.

           “Was she suffering from post-natal depression?” I asked him.

           Jonathan shook his head, miserably. “Not that I was aware of. She was thrilled with Cordelia. I’d never seen her happier, in fact. We’d been trying for more than two years to have a baby. She was 37 when she conceived.” 

           “And everything was good between the two of you?”

           This time he nodded, still miserably. “It was the happiest we’d been in ages.”

           I took contact details from him for Cate’s parents, for his mother, for Cate’s friends and work colleagues, and for the gym she’d been attending following Cordelia’s birth. The police, when he’d reported her disappearance, hadn’t investigated. She was an adult; free to do what she liked.

I asked Morley about Cate’s other interests.

           “She was writing a crime novel,” he told me. “It was something she’d been wanting to do for years—write a book. She used to write when Cordelia was sleeping.”

           “How did she do the research for it?” I asked.

           “Over the internet, I think,” he answered. “She’d been spending a lot of time online.”

           I asked if I could look at her bookmarks and emails, and he showed me into Cate’s study. A computer and printer squatted atop an old-fashioned writing desk.  Floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves heaved with crime fiction. Cate appeared to own every crime novel from Enid Blyton’s The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage to the latest Val McDermid.

           “She read nothing but crime,” Jonathan told me, starting up the computer. “She said she wanted to be Australia’s PD James or Ruth Rendell.”

           Cate’s bookmarks revealed nothing more than innocuous websites like The Age, home pages for various crime writers, and urls for police and forensic science departments. I skimmed through her emails; they were mainly to and from friends, discussing her early days of motherhood—going well, by the sound of it. I noticed Yahoo was bookmarked, and asked whether she had a Yahoo email account.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

The clock on Cate’s computer told me it was nearly five o’clock. Time to go, I thought, happily. I’d got everything I needed, and if I hadn’t, I could always ring back tomorrow.

 

                                               *

Jonathan Morley and his missing wife slid to the back of my mind the minute I left their Croydon home and started driving to Warrandyte, where I lived. I’d moved to Warrandyte two years ago, not long after I’d started working for the Outer Eastern Detective Agency in Ringwood. Warrandyte offered everything I wanted: a beautiful bush setting, a trendy main street lined with cafés and interesting craft shops, and proximity to work and to the city. These days, though, the attractions of Warrandyte meant nothing. I spent every available minute online, corresponding with Tom.

I’d known Tom for three weeks now, and was obsessed with him. We’d met through the WSU—or the Women Sitting Uncomfortably forum, to give its full name. I’d discovered WSU one night not long after I’d finally got the internet at home, and typed ‘spanking’ into the search engine. The results revealed a multitude of sites, covering everything from quick-thrill spanking fiction, through online paddle sellers to rustic-sounding rectal cropping forums, but in the midst of it all I found WSU. For hours I lurked, absorbed in copious posts by several women, and one or two men, who called people like me ‘spankos’, people who weren’t into spanking ‘vanillas’, and practised what they called ‘DD’—domestic discipline. In practice this meant that they lived my fantasy—of having their partner lovingly correct them for transgressions.

After a couple of weeks, I delurked. I set up a Hotmail account and became a member of WSU, choosing the nickname Bumbrushed (coming from ‘bumbrush’, an old English term meaning ‘to beat soundly, to inflict school discipline’. Bumbrushed—yeah, I wished.). I posted a bare-all message about how I’d always fantasised about spanking, but had never told anyone about it, not even my best friend or any of the three serious boyfriends I’d had, because I feared being laughed at or thought sordid or stupid. I confessed my difficulty in reconciling my feminism and independence with this desire to be spanked by a man. I explained I wasn’t interested in attending a fetish club, but hoped I would one day be in a loving relationship with a man who understood my conflicting needs. When I checked my Hotmail account the next day, I’d expected every pervert and his dog to have written offering to spank me. But there was only one message; from Tom—or Whipping Tom, to give his full title.

Tom had written a short, polite message, saying he had read my member profile on WSU, and that he, like me, lived in Australia—in country Victoria. He was forty-two, didn’t have a partner, but was still hoping to meet the right person. He was willing to meet and spank me, if that was what I wanted. He suggested we email each other for a couple of weeks, to get to know each other better and then meet in a public place for a couple of times to talk. After that, I could decide whether I trusted him enough to spank me.

We emailed each other daily, and I found myself living for our correspondence. I told him about the things I did ‘wrong’ every day—from being unable to concentrate on work through to not bothering to eat proper meals. He would then tell me how he would respond to these admissions if we met in person. Just thinking about his threats had me constantly horny;  I was singlehandedly keeping pantyliner shareholders rich.

Tonight, when I got home, there was a message from Tom. He asked me if I’d like to meet up the following week, in a café in the Dandenongs. I beat back my customary caution by telling myself firmly that I was forty years old and it was time I got over my reticence about my secret fetish and actually tried it. If I didn’t like it, I need never see Tom again. He didn’t know who I really was.

                                               *

Over the next two days, I worked through the list of contact names that Jonathan Morley had given me, and drew an absolute blank. Nobody, but nobody, seemed to have a clue as to where Cate had gone or why. About the only thing I got out of the interviews was complete surprise from a couple of her friends that she had joined a gym. Apparently, she had never been into fitness or bothered about her weight. Her gym instructor said she had told him she was keen to get back in shape post-baby, but that she hadn’t really seemed all that motivated in the two work-out sessions she had attended. He hadn’t been surprised when she’d failed to turn up for the third one.

           I went back to the office to tell the boss. Elsie (so named after his initials, L.C. Penrose) wasn’t happy with my findings. “S…somebody knows where she is,” he grumbled, mole-like eyes glowering at me. “People don’t just d…disappear without anybody knowing wh…where they’re going. If she was running away from s…some kind of trouble, she’d have told somebody. You’re just not asking the right questions. Have a go at her m…mother again.” I sighed and wished, as I did one hundred times a week, that I had the financial security to tell him to s…stick his job right up his arse.

           I visited Cate’s mother in Ringwood for a second time, got sweet FA, then drove home happily. Fifteen minutes later I was inside and online.

           But Tom hadn’t written.

           Deflated, I visited WSU. I had spent less time there lately. Initially it had provided hours of entertainment with two years of archived messages. But now I had to make do with daily messages, which numbered on average about ten. I grabbed a Pepsi and read through today’s offerings. A continued dialogue between a couple of Christian posters about whether wife-spanking was ordained by God. “Dickheads,” I muttered, moving to the next thread. In my weeks of reading, I’d realised that DD lifestylers fell into two camps: couples who were affluent, intellectual and sophisticated; and couples where the male was chauvinistic and the woman naïve. I had no time for the latter and longed to be among the former.  “Where’s Ruth?” was the title of the next thread. I read the couple of posts there, just for something spanking-related to do.

           To: All

From: Little Ms Sore Bum

Does anyone know what has happened to Ruth James? She used to be a frequent poster on WSU, but she hasn’t been around for a while. I remember that there had been some major problems with DD in her marriage, and she was going to see an outside disciplinarian. Has anyone heard from her offline or seen her on another forum? I miss her posts.

           There was one response, from the forum owner.

To: Little Ms Sore Bum

From: Benthic

Hi LMSB, I just checked and Ruth hasn’t posted or visited since 10 February. You’re right—the DD in her marriage hadn’t worked, in fact it had become violent, and she had been writing to a man who she was going to meet up with on the day she wrote. A few people reacted badly to the idea of her seeing someone behind her husband’s back, so maybe she didn’t feel like posting here again.

           10 February, I thought.

           The date Cate Morley had disappeared.

           It was coincidence, I told myself. Lots of people disappeared daily, all over the world. No doubt Ruth James was an American, like most WSU members. I used the WSU search facility to find one of Ruth’s posts, and clicked on her name to find her profile.

           Name: Ruth James

           Home: Australia

           Age: 38

           Cate was 38, I thought, checking my notes. Then I remembered her husband’s comment about Cate wanting to be Australia’s Ruth Rendell or PD James. Ruth James. I keyed in the url for Yahoo, and wondered what someone calling herself Ruth James might have used as a password. What were their detectives called? I tried ‘Wexford’, ‘Cordelia’ (Ah! That was why her daughter was called Cordelia), then ‘Dalgliesh’. To my surprise and delight, Yahoo blinked into action and I was looking at ‘Ruth James’s’ inbox.

           The last message was dated 9 February, and the sender was Whipping Tom.

 

                                                           *

Rapidly, I read through Tom’s messages. He’d used the same modus operandi as he had with me. She had posted a message on WSU saying that she and her husband had tried DD a year ago, but that it hadn’t worked for them. The spankings she’d persuaded her husband to give her had felt more abusive than loving, and then she’d fallen pregnant and they had stopped practising DD. Now she had had the baby, she wanted to try DD again, but she knew her husband wouldn’t want to, because he’d hated it before. Did anyone have any advice? Tom had responded privately, saying he’d seen from her WSU profile that she lived in Australia, so did he, he wasn’t in a relationship right now, they should email each other for a while, then meet up in a public place, blah de blah.

           The only difference was that their meeting at the Olinda café had been planned for much longer, some four weeks before it was due to take place. That, I realised, had given Cate time to use the gym as a cover for her tryst.

           I printed out Tom’s emails, logged out of Ruth’s account, and checked my own. Nothing from Tom. I came offline, and, mind racing—had I been corresponding with a serial killer who lurked on spanking forums?—I locked up the house, jumped in the car and drove to Jonathan Morley’s.

           Jonathan showed me into the living room. A log fire was blazing in the Coonara. A blonde baby lay on her tummy on a crimson rug in front of the fire, clutching a fluffy duck in her tiny fist. I settled into one of the fireside armchairs.

           “I have something a bit awkward to ask,” I told him. Awkward for me to talk about, I meant. “Was Cate into spanking?” I could feel myself flushing; I hoped he would think my embarrassment was due to questioning him about their personal life, and not a reflection of my own interest.

           He flushed too, but with anger. “Not that again!” he exclaimed. “I thought all that crap was over!”

           “All what?” I prompted.

           He sank into the opposite armchair, looking downcast. “It all started at the beginning of last year,” he began quietly. “Cate told me she had this fantasy, about being punished if she did something wrong. She wanted me to spank her. I didn’t want to, but she pushed. Pushed and pushed.”

           “What do you mean?” I asked.

           “Well, she’d do the craziest things. She’d keep nagging me over stupid little things. Then we’d start arguing, and she’d throw things at me, or throw things around. She’d just act out like a child. It was all to make me hit her.”

           “And you did?”

           “Yes,” he sighed. “I smacked her on the bottom, like she said she wanted. But then she yelled at me, told me I was a bastard. Within hours, the same thing would happen. I’d get so angry and frustrated with her … sometimes I hit her harder than I meant to.” He paused, frowning. “Anyway, eventually I said I wasn’t doing it again. I should have refused from the start, but she wanted it so much, I was worried she’d leave me if I didn’t go along with it.  Then she got pregnant, and seemed to forget about it. How did you know about it?” he asked, curiously.

           I told him I’d found out that she had arranged to meet an email correspondent who called himself Whipping Tom on the day she disappeared. “I don’t know if she actually did meet him or who he is,” I ended, gently.

           Jonathan was crying. “The stupid girl,” he sobbed. “What did she have to do something like that for? We were happy. We’d just had a beautiful little girl. The stupid, stupid girl.”

           

                                                           *

The discovery that Cate Morley had been due to meet a stranger from a spanking forum on the day she died left me with two major dilemmas.

           One was that in a few days’ time, I was due to meet that same stranger, a guy I’d had a major crush on for three weeks. The realisation that the spanko of my dreams could be a serial killer left me feeling horrified and hollow.

           The second problem was how to tell Elsie what I’d uncovered without him realising that I was a secret signed-up member of WSU. If he ever knew that, I’d not only have to leave my job, but—knowing what a small-minded gossip Elsie was—probably the country, if I was to preserve any dignity.

           So the next morning I told him that I’d managed to hack into Cate’s Yahoo mail and had discovered her correspondence with Whipping Tom. I added that Jonathan had admitted that they’d experimented with spanking and it had turned violent.

           “So if he found out she was going to meet this b…bloke, he might well have k…killed her?” Elsie suggested, after he’d made a few only-to-be-expected jokes about spanking.

           “Possibly,” I said, “but I don’t think so. He seemed genuinely shaken by the news last night. By the way, I looked up the term Whipping Tom on Google,” I added. “He seems to have named himself after a phantom spanker from 17^th-century London. This bloke used to lurk in dark corners, grab a passing wench, toss up her petticoats, then run off when she cried for help.” Lucky girl, I thought. “Whoopee,” said Elsie.

           “How do you plan to find out who he r…really is?” asked Elsie.

           “I had a look at the forum Cate belonged to last night,” I answered, “and there is one guy who posts under his own name, and fortunately for us lives in Australia.” This was David Ormsby, who fell into the chauvinistic DD camp. He wouldn’t allow his wife Kathleen to look at WSU any more, in case she was corrupted by the more assertive female posters. “He has a link to his own website, and that has his home phone number and address on it. He may well know other Australians on the forum, including Tom or Cate.”

           Elsie nodded. “Arrange to see him,” he told me.

           “He lives in Merrimbula,” I pointed out.

           Elsie shrugged. “Morley’s p…paying expenses.”

            I went back to my own poky little office and dialled Ormsby’s number.

                                                           *

The Ormsbys lived in a weatherboard house in Merrimbula. It was on the hill, but what should have been a breathtaking view over the water was obscured by trees. Kathleen, a grey-haired woman in her late sixties, clad in floral blouse, flowing blue skirt and sandals, busied herself making cups of tea and proffering home-made cake. David, her fierce-faced, grey-bearded, seventy-something husband, motioned me to an armchair and asked if I’d ever seen An Unsuitable Job for a Woman on television.

           “You get a lot of nutters hanging around spanking forums,” was his comment after I’d told him a suspected serial killer was lurking on WSU. This was good coming from him.

           “Do you know the real names of any of the people on the forum?” I asked him.

           “No,” he replied. “They don’t like people knowing their real names. I don’t know why. They don’t have anything to be ashamed of. The man should be head of the household—it’s what the Bible says.”

           I glanced across at Kathleen, perched on the edge of her chair, sipping tea. I had a mental image of her across David’s knee, and hastily turned my attention to the photograph on the mantlepiece above her chair. It showed a dark-haired man of about my own age, arms around two curly-haired young boys. “Is that your son?” I asked.

           “Yes, that’s Daniel,” David answered, proudly. “And our grandsons, Luke and Mark.”

           “They’re good-looking boys,” I commented. “Do they live locally?” I wondered whether woman-hating David might conceivably be Tom; perhaps Melburnian grandchildren necessitated occasional trips down south.

           “Yes,” David replied, “but we never see them. Sarah, our daughter-in-law—well, ex-daughter-in-law now—won’t let us see them.”

“That’s a shame,” I lied. “Does she let your son see them?”

           “The courts insist she gives him access, so when he’s in Merrimbula she allows him a couple of hours at a contact centre,” David answered scornfully. “Can you believe, the courts said that he couldn’t have the children at home alone because of his history of what they called his ‘violence’ to Sarah. Violence!” he snorted.

           “Doesn’t your son live round here, then?” I asked.

           “No, he’s an engineer. Works all over the place,” David answered. “He’s been in Melbourne for the past few months.”

 

                                                           *

Fortunately, Sarah Ormsby hadn’t changed her surname after her divorce, and I found her in the phone book. The next morning I met her at a beachside café. She had wavy blonde hair and looked much younger than her ex-husband, perhaps late twenties.

           “I was his second wife,” she told me. “The first one divorced him for the same reasons, but they didn’t have children. It’s awkward with the children. He’s fond of them, and I know he wouldn’t hurt them, because they’re boys. But I don’t want them brought up with the chauvinistic outlook and disrespect for women that he inherited.”

           “Do you think he might actively seek out women from spanking forums?” I asked her.

           “Possibly. I think he would welcome a woman in his life who accepted her husband’s right to spank her,” Sarah replied. “Kathleen always accepted that David had some God-given right to discipline her, and didn’t even question the fact that David allowed Daniel to discipline Judith when they were teenagers.”

           “I didn’t know they had a daughter,” I commented.

           “In their eyes, they don’t,” Sarah replied. “Judith walked out on them years ago, the minute she turned eighteen. She must have had a dreadful home life. Imagine being seventeen and being spanked by your fifteen-year-old brother every time you did or said something he didn’t like. Jeez, that family is screwed.”

           “Do you ever see her?” I asked.

           “No, I’ve never met her. Apparently she came into a lot of money, when Kathleen’s parents died. They cut Kathleen and Daniel out of their will and left everything to Judith. Good for them.”

           

                                                                      *

On the flight home, between fantasies involving humiliation at the hands of a younger brother, I worked out a cover story for my upcoming rendezvous with Tom. Back in Ringwood, I told Elsie that I’d managed to make contact, via WSU, with another Melburnian woman who had been corresponding with Tom and was planning to meet him for the first time on Wednesday. I told him she’d agreed to my taking her place at their meeting, but did not want her true identity known to me or anyone else.

           “That’s fair enough, I g…guess,” nodded Elsie. “I’ll c…come up to the café as well, H…helena. I can w…watch this fellow while you’re talking to him, get his registration number and so on. I f…fancy a drive to the Dandenongs.”

           I was dubious—but that changed when I visited the café later that day. It stood alone, partly obscured by ferns and stands of mountain ash, about half a kilometre away from Olinda’s main stretch of cafés and antique shops. The road sign pointing to its presence said there was parking at the back. I turned into a dirt road, and then into the virtually empty car park. I suddenly decided I’d be glad of Elsie’s watchful eye.

           I slipped into the café and showed the waitress a recent photograph of Cate. She couldn’t recall having seen her, but then there was nothing about Cate that particularly stood out—shoulder-length straight dark hair, glasses, not fat, not thin. I comforted myself with the thought that if I’d unwittingly met up with a serial killer in a few days’ time, then the waitress would probably have remembered seeing a five-foot-nothing redhead wearing Doc Martens and a leather jacket, and perhaps be able to describe the man I was with.

 

                                                           *

Wednesday.

           I drove up the twisting, mountain ash-lined road to Olinda, stomach knotted, half-hoping I’d got everything wrong, that Tom was a genuine, nice guy who had indeed arranged to meet a woman calling herself Ruth James, who for some reason had never shown up. I’d emailed him a couple of times in the past few days, after he had written to remark upon my lack of contact, and wondered whether perhaps I was having second thoughts about meeting. I’d told him I’d been really very busy with work, and was sorry I hadn’t had time to write, but that I was definitely coming to the café and was looking forward to it. In our following email exchange, we told each other what we looked like. He had dark hair, he said, and would be wearing a black top and cream pants. I told him I had red hair and what I’d be wearing.

           At just before eleven o’clock, I turned into the car park. Only a couple of cars were  parked there; I recognised Elsie’s blue Pajero. I got out of my car, locked the doors and started to walk towards the track that led to the café.

           “Excuse me,” said a hesitant voice. “Would you mind … ?”

           It was a dark-haired woman of about my own age, carrying a baby in her arms. “I’ve left something in my car,” she told me. “Would you mind holding her for just a second while I get it?”

           I nodded and reached for the child. It felt cold and hard. I looked down and saw that wrapped up in the bundle of bunny rugs was a doll.

           I then felt something hard and cold in my side. “Get into your car, Bumbrushed,” said the woman. Dark hair, my mind registered. Cream pants. A black top. A gun. My god.

           Terror-stricken, I walked back to my car, opened the passenger door for her, then let myself in on the driver’s side. “Drive off,” she ordered. “Go up to the main road and turn right.” As I drove past the café, I hoped and prayed that Elsie would spot my car, and follow me.

           “Are you scared?” the woman asked me.

           I nodded.

           “Then now you know what it’s like, don’t you?  I felt afraid every day of my life till the day I left home. I wonder if you’d like that, really. Always being afraid of being hurt.”

           “I’m not who you think I am,” I told her, desperately. “I’m not the woman you planned to meet. I’m a private detective, trying to track down a woman who called herself Ruth James. Bumbrushed told me you were planning to meet today, and I’ve taken her place because I wanted to ask you if you met Ruth.”

           She laughed. “Oh, you might be telling the truth about that silly bitch Ruth, for all I know. But you’re definitely Bumbrushed. You see, every email you sent showed up your computer number. It’s been the same number on every single email.”

           “I wrote from her house,” I told her.

           “Of course you did,” she chuckled. “Your own house. Go towards Monbulk,” she snapped, as we reached a fork in the road. I checked my mirror. Elsie’s car was nowhere in sight.

           “Where are we going?” I asked her.

           “Back to my home in Emerald,” she answered. “To your last home.” I felt chilled.

           “You’re not as bad as Ruth,” the woman told me. She sat back in her seat, gun resting on her lap. “At least you’re single. The things Ruth used to tell me about the way she treated her husband. He was kind and caring, and all she wanted from him was discipline! Stupid cow!” She snorted. “It’s women like you and Ruth who allow men like my father to get away with ruining people’s lives the way they do. Oh, you might all criticise him on that damn forum when he says things like the number of children a wife has should be the husband’s decision. But you all reject normal, decent men in favour of authoritarian father-figures.”

           “You’re probably right, Judith,” I said. I glanced sideways, and noticed she looked startled by the fact I knew her name. “But I really am a private detective. I came to find out what happened to Ruth.”

           “She’s in the bottom of my dam,” Judith answered, “where you’ll be joining her later. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll give you what you came for before I get rid of you. I think you should die having experienced spanking, don’t you?”

           We were approaching a roundabout. There was traffic ahead of us, waiting to turn. From somewhere I remembered an article saying that if you were abducted and forced to drive, the best thing to do was crash your car. I accelerated, and bounced out and back into my seat as I cannoned into the car in front. In those strange, long seconds, I found myself thinking that the noise was too loud, not right for a car crash, and it was only when the car was finally motionless that I saw blood splattered on the windscreen and on my clothes and realised Judith Ormsby had shot herself.

 

                                               *

Someone from a Monbulk café had given me a cup of sweet, strong tea. I stood on the side of the road, sipping it and shivering. Judith Ormsby’s body had been driven away. The police had spoken to me, but wanted me to go back to the station for a statement. I’d also given my details to the annoyed guy whose car I’d crashed into.

           “I’ll c…come with you to the s…station,” promised Elsie. He slipped his jacket around my shoulders, his round face full of concern. I’d phoned him after the crash. He’d taken the time to settle his bill when he’d seen my car leave the café, then hadn’t known which way I’d gone. “Then it’ll all b…be over.”

           I hoped so. I’d told the police about the body in Judith Ormsby’s dam, and detectives were apparently making their way over there. No doubt Jonathan Morley would be called up to identify his wife’s body. Poor Jonathan, I thought.

           “G…good job we investigated,” said Elsie. “Otherwise that g…girl who was going to meet him would be d…dead as well.”

           She would be. I shivered, gulped my tea, and hoped that when the story made the news, that the press wouldn’t try too hard to track down the spanko who’d had such a lucky escape.