Without Consent (21 page)

Home. The shortest way was through the park, from the top end to the bottom, from the road below the gasometers, downhill to the road home. Gates locked, didn't matter, over the top next to a building with lights on inside; he didn't know why it existed and did not care, because he only remained in this district on his way out of it, like the long-distance lorries, with Shelley. Difficult to explain to his parents, less difficult for hers to understand his longing for a clean modern cul-de-sac. Not like this, a place which could not change, where he was ten a penny and the noise never stopped. The park had seemed larger when he was a child; once upon a time, he could have reached it without risking death by automobile. The dangers posed by humanity in here after dark were surely no worse than those encountered
en route.

Quiet though; too quiet for Derek's urban soul, untuned even to relative silence. Silent and deserted, until he saw him: the man from the pub, bent over a gravestone, looking as if he was taking swimming lessons on a float; arms and legs waving in unco-ordinated movements, thrashing at air rather than water. As Derek looked, he
slipped down the side of the stone and lay belly up, humming at the still branches above his head. As Derek listened, the humming changed to words in a musical singsong.

Derek went across to him, drawn by the antics and the sound. As he got closer, he could hear the words, Oh dear, oh dear, repeated rhythmically. Oh dear, oh dear, oh
dear,
oh dear, oh dear, oh dear … For some reason, it made Derek smile, so reminiscent was it of a puzzled child, and so stupidly innocent the man's spread-eagled pose, waiting for a kick or a command to get up. Derek remembered the empathy at the beginning of the evening. Never mind that the sentiment had been drunken, it had still helped, for a minute. The man looked up at Derek, smiled sweetly. Derek's curiosity was diminished by the smell, it was worse here against the comparative freshness of the grass.

‘Swimming lessons,' the man said and laughed. ‘Every night, my swimming lessons.' Then he stopped abruptly, struggled into a sitting position. ‘Oh dear,' he repeated warily, as if remembering something. ‘Have you come to find her, then?'

‘Find who, old man?'

‘Her, of course.'

He pointed in the direction of the church porch. A sudden light breeze shuffled the leaves in the canopy of branches. The glow from the street lights prevented total darkness. Derek felt his heart contract. The man had begun to shuffle away from him, crab-like, sensing a change of mood. Derek walked uphill again, slowly but certainly.

Shelley lay in a pose which aped that of the vagrant,
only more elegantly because she was incapable of adopting an ugly pose. Her legs were obscenely wide apart, one arm outflung, the other bent across her face, as if to shield it from the dim glow of the single light attached to the church wall. She could have been basking in the sun; she could, more like, have been lying in the way she lay at home in her own bed, after sex, guarding her discontented face from the prospect of the morning. Derek fancied he could smell sex as he squatted beside her peaceful form, catching the scent of perfume, betrayal, the rank odour of what she was: an alley cat. He moved the arm from across her face. Her eyes were open.

‘Help me,' she seemed to whisper. ‘Help me.'

He imagined these words, made them up later, the way he so often imagined Shelley pleading; but no help, not this time. Oh no, not this time. Never again was he going to believe in his little girl lost. There was nothing helpless about her; she was out in a filthy park, in the company of winos and that was what she had chosen. Her clothes were undisturbed; she was stretching, languorously, as though remembering the last man who had fucked her. Round her neck was a gauzy silk scarf; he felt it, recognizing none of the colours in this light, but knowing by the soft and buttery touch that it was expensive; not anything he would have given; not an item she was wearing when she had run from home as soon as his back was turned. The rage, held at bay by anxiety, returned in full force. He wanted to seize her head in both hands and bang it against the ground until it became indistinguishable from the grass; he wanted to fill her mouth with soil. Instead, he took the ends of the scarf which was twisted round her neck and pulled. Her
head jerked; he pulled again. She made no attempt to resist, and, in that second, the rage died. A second or two, then he was loosening the scarf, slapping her gently on one cheek, then the other, saying, ‘Come on, Shell, get a grip, come on girl.' Maybe she was drunk as well.

He got behind her, muttering encouragement, pushed her up so that she sat like a rag doll, supported by his weight.

‘Put your head between your knees, Shell,' he urged.

There was no sound from her, not a single grunt of protest, not a breath. The trees had become silent again, accusing; making him realize she was dead.

He laid her back exactly as he had found her, even curving the arm back over her face. Although he had begun to tremble violently, there was precision in his movements and a certain fussiness in the way he wiped himself down. A trail of saliva ran from her mouth. Derek backed away, stumbled and finally tore his eyes from her face. The anger resurfaced, blinding. After all this time, you bitch, and you do this to me; well, I'm not going to prison for you, Shell, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.

On the way out of the park, he looked for the tramp. The man was sound asleep, exhausted by swimming lessons, lying curled up by the same gravestone, snoring with his thumb in his mouth. Could she have been with him? No, the thought was clearly out of the equation; whoever it was had more power than that and she hated the smell of stale sweat. Somehow the thought of that filthy digit, stuck in the man's mouth with a tongue wrapped round it revolted Derek more than anything else.

W
hen, in the sweet light of dawn, he reported his girlfriend missing, his complaint was met with indifference. Girls go missing all the time; what's a late night stop out between friends? Can't go into every case where a sweetheart fails to phone home. When he explained that Ms Pelmore was a witness in a case against DS Ryan, who had been bothering her recently, the interest increased considerably, but he was still told to wait and see. Some hours later, well into the afternoon and after Shelley Pelmore had been found, conveniently placed for the mortuary, and the glad tidings had been announced on local radio, Todd was also informed that he had lost a major witness. But it was still late at night before anyone called at Ryan's door. Out of the ten-year-old mouth of his favourite babe came the lisping truth, before Mrs Ryan flung herself between the child and the enemy. No, Daddy was not in. He'd been out all last night, too. Silly Daddy, he was supposed to be digging them a pond.

S
ally Smythe went to the Rape House at eight in the morning, scarcely refreshed by a day off in which she had resolutely refused to clean her own house. She resented the fact that, apart from anything else, the duties of dusting and checking supplies seemed to fall to her in the Rape House, these days, or maybe she had simply assumed them in the absence of Ryan, whose domesticity, fussiness, even, was surprising, especially since he confessed to being the opposite at home.

It was one of the things she liked about him, the fact that he did not wait for anyone else to wield the hoover, plump the cushions or make the bloody tea.

The key slipped into the lock with suspicious ease, the front door yielding without any of the customary shoving. Although two of the team were expected shortly with a woman found in the public lavs at St Pancras, claiming indecent assault, to her knowledge, no one had been here for two days. Which was why she was early to air the place; but the familiar smell of summer stuffiness was notable by its absence. Sally stood in the hall with the door closed behind her and listened to the silence. Her footsteps on the dun-coloured carpet of the stairs sounded unfamiliar.

There was a bed slightly disturbed and remade; the immersion-heated water was still warm from recent heating; the bathroom looked as if someone had been busy enough to wipe every surface, leaving a residue of cleanser. None of the cleaners they used on an intermittent basis was ever so thorough. The only sign of neglect was the used tea bags in the kitchen bin. Someone had been here. The place retained the residual warmth of a body. Sally thought of Goldilocks and the three bears. Whoever it was had rearranged the packets of cereal which, along with the packets of soup, was all the sustenance there was.

A couple of the lads from the nick taking refuge after a late night out? She knew there were several duplicates of an easily available, easily copied Yale key. The subject had been discussed when they first got the place and some bright young spark had dossed down here; a repeat performance was forbidden on pain of death. Victims deserved an environment free of stale male germs and beer breath; the Rape House was not a billet for someone who
found himself incapable of driving. And, in any event, Sally did not imagine that any hungover intruders would have been able to cover their tracks so precisely. This trespasser had gone in for overkill: the place was cleaner now than when he found it.

Ryan, she guessed; and even as she tried to shove that thought aside, it became so much a certainty, she almost expected to see a calling card propped by the fridge with apologies for depleting the supply of long-life milk. Why Ryan, she argued? Because the body concerned had oiled the lock and conducted a sort of loving maintenance as he went along; perhaps he had nothing better to do. He had always had a kind of affection for the place which Sally did not share; kept talking about wanting flowers in the backyard.

But even so, this behaviour was a kind of critical disrespect. How dare he? He was either taking her for a fool to assume she would not notice, or he was putting her at risk by assuming she would say nothing. It was an abuse of affectionate loyalty, whichever way she looked at it, as well as an abuse of the purpose of this house. Angrily, she threw up the blinds.

The phone rang. ‘Coming round soon, Sal, OK? No one in a good mood, though. There's a hue and cry out for our Ryan, would you believe. Shelley Pelmore's dead, and he's jumped bail.' Sally stood with her back exposed to the window, gazing intently at the details of the bland river scene on the wall. She could have said something then; she could have put down the phone and got Bailey or Todd or whoever. Instead, she thought of Ryan, running, thought of him with profound sorrow and said, ‘Well
there's a turn-up for the books. Oh, by the way, the front door's finally buggered, I had a devil of a job getting in, I'll get someone to change the lock this morning, OK?'

B
ailey was changing his mind even before getting dressed. This jacket or this shirt? As if anything would make a difference to the weather. It was unlike him to be so indecisive, or rise sooner than he need, or to be so fussy about clothes. Helen never quite knew how it was that Bailey's suits and shirts marshalled themselves into neat ranks inside the hanging space he had built to include an ironing-board flicked up by hand so that a shirt could almost iron itself unaided. Her own wardrobe was a jungle; the choice of clothes made largely on the random basis of which were nearest and which were clean. Rose said clothes hung themselves free of creases automatically on a figure like Helen's and it was just as well. Helen was sitting up in his vast bed, watching him fuss around in the striped towelling robe she had bought him. She preferred its vibrant colours to his suits.

‘Come here,' she said softly. ‘Please.'

He did as he was told, half waiting to be asked, and sat heavily. A grey morning, she noticed. She put her arms round him, her chin on his shoulder.

‘Begin at the beginning,' she said. ‘I do like you an awful lot, you know. Even more when you talk to me.'

‘What time is it?'

‘You know very well what time it is. Early. Far too early for work.'

He was always like this, wanting to talk and wanting someone to force him to do it. Sometimes she had to take advantage of him in the early mornings.

‘Ryan had a file,' Bailey said. ‘If we'd searched his house, we might have found the duplicate, but we didn't, although Todd will sure as hell search his house now. The file's on the disk anyway. It was all no-hope fantasists who came in with weird stories about men they wouldn't, couldn't name, plus witnesses who couldn't help. I thought our Ryan might be keeping a book of screwball women who might not mind being screwed and could never give reliable information afterwards. There's a central register. You're only allowed so many spurious rape allegations before someone puts a question mark against your name. He was never fussy about type, Ryan; liked 'em all, in his way, but I didn't think he'd be so desperate. Although you never know. You never really know anyone.'

He slid in beside her and pulled the duvet up to his chest.

‘But, if he was keeping the file for that, why keep the complaints of two women who died soon after he saw them? Unknown causes; heart attacks. Both pregnant. As indeed, it seems, was little Shelley Pelmore. Todd's flummoxed; and furious, which is why he phones me all day. Why I've got to help him nail the bastard.'

‘Which bastard?'

‘Ryan, the fool. For playing this so close to his chest. For fantasizing himself. Oh, I know he got his fingers burnt for even suggesting there might be a link between a few scared, confused, guilt-ridden women, where the method of attack described has no common denominator at all except for a total lack of forensic evidence on their persons. No semen, no fibres. He's either in their homes by some kind of invitation, in which case he brings flowers
and chocolates, or, in the case of the younger three, showing a penchant for the great outdoors, or his car, also by invitation. No injury. A man they already know? Met in a club, says one kid; came to my house, says another. And the last recipient of chocolates and flowers says he has fine eyes. Well, according to fiction and anyone old enough for James Bond movies, creepy villains with great sexual potency and black cats always have mesmeric eyes. Personally, I think Sally Smythe has gone mad, too. And to think this was a man I trained.'