Without Consent (2 page)

‘She wanted love.'

‘She had love, the silly little bitch. She wanted attention.'

Helen took a sip of coffee. One bottle of wine in an evening was enough. He could continue, since it never seemed to affect him; she would not. There was a level of control in her he both admired and resented. She was a beautiful woman, after her own fashion. The kindest he had ever met, easily the most imaginative, the most elusive, the most measured. He wondered if she had agreed to marry him for the same hormonal reasons which had affected his wife. Helen was in her late thirties, about a decade his junior.

‘Her parents are howling for blood. They insist she was
raped,' he said. ‘Someone must hang, they say, namely the boy with whom she left. Spotty little oik, who says he tried to kiss her, but she shoved him and ran off. He says she had other fish to fry. Someone she was meeting; someone older.'

‘No case,' Helen said. ‘Not even if she swore it was him. She could be a victim; she could be a cock-tease. Unless, of course, he caused the scratches. But I'd bet she did them herself.'

‘Right. Her own skin beneath her fingernails.'

‘And tomorrow, how come
you
have to explain to mum and dad why the evidence is insufficient?'

‘I don't. Ryan does. He asked my advice on diplomacy.'

She made a mocking gesture, using two fingers to point a gun at her head, and pulled a sympathetic face.

The lovely Ryan was not always her favourite man. Bailey's bag carrier when first they had met, progressing since then, onward and upward. Capable of being outrageous and treated by Bailey as the son he never had. There was a fidelity between the two of them she accepted, because she had no choice. Personally, she doubted Ryan deserved it but there it was: a mutual devotion without rhyme or reason just like any other kind of love.

‘Ah well, early night, then.'

Bailey moved to sit beside her, put his arm round her shoulder and felt her rest against him, willingly. They were easier together since their decision to marry; she joked it had probably caused the ulcer, but it had altered something, although he was not sure how. In a moment, he would clear the last of the glasses and papers from the table. In Helen's flat, litter remained at least until morning,
perhaps the same weekday of the following week. One thing they had proved: compatibility need not involve a common domestic attitude.

‘Tell me, love, do you always regard this subject with such a bold and jaundiced eye?'

‘Do you mean sex cases? Rape? My current, almost exclusive stock-in-trade? Yes. But drunken teenagers don't raise my heartbeat. Oh, I'm sorry for a kid like that; something happened to her, but you can't make a case out of
naïveté
betrayed.'

Would they make love tonight or not? The idea rarely lost its appeal, except when she was tired to her bones. Perhaps she would let it happen, perhaps not. If she did, would that be rape? The idea was laughable. Rape was the exertion of force; Bailey had enough power over her already, although she did her best not to let him know.

H
e was sound asleep by the time she reached him.

The night light was a pale darkness, glowing through the window. Bailey lived so high above the ground, there was no need for the curtains he despised. From the front windows of her basement flat, Helen could see the feet of people walking past, sometimes peering down, but at the back, there was nothing but the garden. She missed her home, especially the solitude of her garden, and then, when she was in it, she missed the light of Bailey's vast attic. When they were married, they would live in exactly the same way.

His sleep made her perversely sleepless. He would wake if she touched him and his sleep was the unfeigned unconsciousness of the just, the result perhaps of a pragmatism
she could not share. He believed in fate, and telling himself that you could only do the best possible with what you were given. No ‘if onlys' for Bailey. You did what you did, apologized if necessary, and then you slept. Soundly. Did he really want this marriage, or was it his version of courtesy? In Bailey's eyes, a relationship as long as theirs would have to be honoured somehow. Loving Bailey was one of the best things to happen in her life, but she had a mortal dread of being owned and knew she could still throw it all away. Out of fear.

Failing to sleep opened the floodgates of all those things left undone or badly done. Cases swimming before her eyes. Visions of her previous married life, plus visions of all those odd and brutal couplings she read about on paper and which filled her waking hours with speculation, making her feel like a voyeur.

They should not have been talking about rape before going to bed.

Something had happened to that little girl. She wondered what it might have been.

‘A
ll right,' Aemon Connor said, in tones which combined both aggression and resignation. ‘That's fine. That's absolutely fine. If you don't want to, that's fine by me. You frigid little cow. Was a time you couldn't have enough of it. Don't worry about it. I can always get someone else.'

Brigid whimpered in the darkness. He was refusing to hear it; he had listened long enough and conversation never cured anything. She complained it hurt; so, if it hurt, why couldn't she use her imagination? He could tell her what hurt, all right, and that was a mammoth state of
arousal with nowhere to go. She was his woman, remember; his wife, even; what a joke, when she just wouldn't do it any more.

He lay on his side, him fuming and her still snuffling, opening his mouth to speak. He could not stop talking.

‘I could get someone else tomorrow. And then where would you be?'

There was a long silence, until he felt her fingers moving timidly to touch the back of his head.

‘Changed your mind, have you?' he muttered. ‘Thought you would.' Forcing himself inside was difficult enough, even without listening to the sounds she made or noticing the passive resistance which seemed second nature. The process was brief and noisy. He held her down by the shoulder and in the aftermath of climax fell into a deep and suffocating sleep. Later, having eased herself from under the bulk of his huge drowsy body, she felt for the marks of his hands and wished herself dead.

The bathroom to which she tiptoed was splendid. There was a power shower among the black marble tiles and a bidet with gold-coloured taps which she used religiously, especially at times like these, to wash away all traces of him.

She had no idea how to live outside this house. It was her home and her prison, and living in such a place represented the pinnacle of all achievement. She liked this bathroom best; she had made it her own, and she could hide behind the door after doing her duty as a good Catholic wife. She could also sit and lie here too long in contemplation of avoiding it. Praying to God and occupying the bidet at the same time seemed faintly obscene, but
Brigid imagined God would forgive her that, at least, since he demanded so much of her otherwise, and was supposed to forgive a great deal more than her husband. Dedicating the act of sex as a penance for the holy souls also seemed indecent, but might ensure a blessing in advance. Maybe Aemon was right and she should have been a nun.

You used to love it, he'd said. He said that every time, taunting her. There was a muffled shouting from outside, her name called, ‘Brigid, Brigid … where are you?' sounding as if he was lost. God help us, he was awake again after insufficient drink to anaesthetize. She touched the lips of her vagina, swollen like cocktail sausages, almost screamed, reached for the lubricant from the cupboard and answered him.

‘I'm here, I'm here, in a minute.'

He hated to wake up and find himself alone. It was an insult to his manhood: it gave him nightmares.

Aemon and Brigid, happily married.

I
n a neat little terraced house, light showed from every window, as if the occupant owned shares in London Electricity, or could not stand the dark. Around three a.m., a solid form could be seen, balanced on a ladder, silhouetted against the window to the left of the door, painting the ceiling of the living room. Anna was in a sweat. The radio played softly only because she was a considerate neighbour. What she really wanted was a house pulsing with vapid, heavy-beat noise, amplified to fill her head. Anything to block thinking and aid the manic activity which had continued since early afternoon.

Ceiling, two coats, a small area, quickly covered; the
whole place a bit of a doll's house. Walls could be finished in an hour, possibly tomorrow. The washing machine hummed in the kitchen; third load today. Curtains hung damply; she would paint round them. The carpet had already been shampooed. She was doing things out of order, but perfect décor, logically created, was not the object of this exercise. The achievement of cleanliness was.

The ladder wobbled; Anna clutched, swore, saved herself from falling, and watched the paint tray fall to the floor, face down. Scraping the white ooze from the ruined pile with desultory energy, she realized that bending over made her dizzy and she could not see straight. All that white, glimmering against the unsteady light of the naked bulb which swung from the ceiling; her eyes were no longer able to comprehend colour. Or the fact that there might be someone outside, looking in.

She might as well paint the carpet, too, and be finished with it; the thought made her smile. All this work had done the trick; she was so tired she could scarcely put one foot in front of the other, and at last the place smelt of nothing but emulsion.

Anna held one hand in front of her face, watched its tremor, and delivered the now-familiar lecture. You can cope, girl, you can cope; it's all the rest who can't. Talking to herself, out loud; that was another thing to be cured, but not yet. The hand trembled; the burn marks on her arms were fading; her legs had the substance of jelly. She could sleep now.

A
s Anna tried to ignore the spots in front of her eyes while sticking the paint roller in a bucket of water which
suddenly seemed red instead of white, the phone by Superintendent Bailey's bed bleeped without apology. He did not need to look at his watch to know that it was shortly after three; he always knew the time.

‘Bailey. What do you want?'

It had been a joke on regular squads that Bailey always sounded as if he had a woman with him. Probably had too; the man had been a bachelor a long, long time. Going out and staying in with a lawyer from the Crown Prosecution Service was seen as another lascivious eccentricity which went with his good suits. The wearing of the one on his back and the other on his arm bordered on some undefined treachery. The men who claimed to know him longest were placing bets on this marriage. Ten to one, it would not take place at all, five to three it wouldn't last a year. They had different kinds of faith in Bailey. The existence of Helen West did not exactly do him any favours.

The voice on the other end of the line appeared to hide an element of amusement. Sometimes, in the comparative regularity of his newish role, Bailey forgot that working for Complaints and Discipline was still, potentially, a twenty-four-hour shift.

‘Islington. Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we've got a problem. Allegation of rape.'

‘Against whom?'

The officer sounded as if he was reciting from a reading primer for under fives, spelling the sounds as he spoke.

‘Detective Sergeant Ryan, sir.'

Bailey paused for a moment's palpable shock.

‘I can't investigate allegations against Ryan,' he said. ‘I know him.'

The voice coughed. ‘That's the problem, sir. We've tried everyone else on the complaints rota, but everyone knows Ryan.' He paused for effect. ‘Everyone.'

Bailey knew what he should do if he were going straight by the book. Get up, look up all other available numbers, tell this sergeant who did not yet have a name to continue his exploration down the list, because yes, he knew Ryan. Far too well. Knew him as a man of flawed intelligence, deliberate blindness, sexual fecklessness, indiscretions of all kinds. A man lacking in imagination, dogged in loyalty, but finally, in the last two years, emerging from a chrysalis, abandoning frustrated youth in favour of some degree of wisdom. Bailey had tutored him, forgiven him, covered up for him, believed in him, right up until that recent point where the belief was justified and Ryan had suddenly taken off and learnt to think, wonder, take responsibility and ask real questions. He had grown, shed his juvenile prejudices like unwanted skin, and learnt the art of patience, the way Bailey had always hoped he would. Looking at Ryan as he was was like looking at the man Bailey himself had once been. What retrograde nonsense was this? Stupid, stupid bastard.

The pause was long enough for the sergeant to cough again. ‘Sir?'

‘On my way.'

Bailey was precise. In the same way that he knew the time, he knew where to find his clothes. Helen stirred, listening. Bailey knew she couldn't quite fathom his absurd loyalty to Ryan any more than he could himself, and felt a flash of annoyance that the phone call should make him peculiarly, defensively embarrassed, as if she could guess
that this was more than his paid duty. He touched her shoulder and left without a word of goodbye. Singing in his head as he went for the car, not Ryan, not Ryan, please. Not just as he was making good. Not Ryan and rape.

With that good-looking boy there would never be the need.

B
ailey made himself drive slowly, although the instinct was to race and the sheer emptiness of the streets was an invitation to speed. Emptiness was a relative concept in London. There were always people. In these Godforsaken early hours there were simply fewer, plying the night-time trades, some of them innocent, some not. The factory making dresses for tomorrow's market, the loading of goods, the post-midnight clearing out, the parties which never stopped and the increasing numbers of those sleeping rough. He regretted that his duties no longer really included this twilight zone of all-night pit stops: conspiracy, danger, chat, street light. The night isolated people, made them more truthful. You poor old man, he thought to himself ruefully, they'll make a gardener of you yet. Set you to trimming roses in distant suburban police stations, or polishing the commander's shoes. Instead of this loathsome business of pruning, examining the varied complaints against officers of his own kind.