Without Consent (25 page)

The bathroom was down the hall; the exit door next to the kitchen. She nodded, but he caught the enthusiasm of the nod and shook his head sadly.

‘I'm not going to fall for that one, am I? You don't know where the hell they are. Women without children never do. Have kids, you get used to the sight of blood. Here, don't be a cry-baby.'

‘I'm not a baby. I'm not.'

He grunted, doing a passable job with more paper towel and an elastic band from a dish which held assorted letters, paperclips, vouchers and bills. Then he seemed calmer. Shoved her back into her chair and sat opposite.

‘Now you can get drunk if you like. Here.'

He had found a bottle of the heavy red wine she had been keeping for winter. In other circumstances she would have loved the sound of the cork. She thought of the damage a violent man could do with a corkscrew, such as gouging out an eye, making score-marks in skin. The wine was a warm claret; the first sip sat like a sour sponge on her dry tongue in the damp heat of the early night and yet tasted like nectar. There was more rain on the way; she could feel it gathering; the kitchen was stuffy. As if reading her thoughts, he stood and pulled down the window,
letting in the air. She imagined the front of her flat from the road, unlit and empty; a basement where no one was home. She had reached a state of subdued hysteria, preternaturally calm; the tears had dried to salt on her cheeks and she sipped the next mouthful as if she was someone standing on the edge of a party, trying to make her wine last and look busy at the same time.

‘To what do I owe this pleasure?' she said. ‘I mean a drink among friends is all very well, but I can't remember inviting you.'

‘Must have slipped your mind,' Ryan said. ‘Can't think how. Mind, I've been a touch difficult to find over the last thirty-six hours. Found a bed last night,' he leered. ‘She chucked me out so I thought I'd better find another.'

Waiting in the back garden; getting into her house over the back wall from the playground, she thought; Ryan would know about that. She was hot and sweaty, conscious of her grubby clothes.

‘We travelling rapists, see? We can't be picky, can we?'

She nodded and sipped a little more wine.

‘Do you remember the first time I came in here? No you don't. It was when that mad youth attacked you. I happened to be passing.'

‘I've never forgotten,' she said slowly. ‘I let you in. I leant on that entry-phone buzzer until I passed out.'

‘And never liked me since,' he said.

‘True.'

‘I often wonder if you knew that he was deep dark in love with you, even then. Bailey, I mean. Perhaps you didn't.'

‘No, I didn't. I only knew about my own reaction to him.'

‘And I was taking a long route towards finding out that
maybe my wife was the best woman in the world. Comparative studies, I think they call it.'

‘You've a funny way of showing your feelings. She must be worried sick now.'

‘What do you want me to do? Phone home? Hello, wife, it's good to talk … be back after a rape or three … See ya … Look at me, Miss fucking West. Look at me.'

He seized her shoulders in a grip which would bruise. Calmly, she looked. She had faced men accused of rape, possibly murder, always with a barrage of fences between them. The dock, the courtroom barriers, her own protected space. This was a hard-edged face on a muscular man, handsome in an obvious and sexy way she had never found appealing, like the good looks of a football star. Capable of kindness to children and animals. She made herself think that he had the brown eyes of a cow. In response to the scrutiny he had invited, Ryan blushed. He touched the paper-clad finger and started to speak.

‘No, I don't like you much. Nothing personal; I don't like lawyers much. And I don't like what you do to him. But I thought I'd bust in here, rather than down at Bailey's gaff, because you might believe me. Also, it's the last place he'd look and I don't want him finding me, yet. I don't like you, but you listen. Bailey does, sometimes. Responds to signals, know what I mean? But he's always got something else on his mind. Jumps from one thing to another. Got a mind like a series of traps; comes of doing too many things at once. I know what he'd say. You're off the hook, laddie, if you play it right. What more do you want: justice? Got a cigarette?' For an answer, he rifled her handbag, lit one for both of them.

‘But you,' he said. ‘You listen. You'll take a leap for the fucking truth. Obsessive about it, you are. Or something like it.'

‘I prefer evidence,' she said.

‘So do I, doll, so do fucking I.' And then, to her horror, he began to weep, a controlled weeping which meant that he kept his hand near the knife on the top of the fridge while his eyes filled with fat tears, rolling down his chiselled cheeks and making him look like a clown. Weeping made him dangerous but also ridiculous; she did not like to see him weep, although she could not feel an ounce of pity.

‘I don't want to look like this for my wife, see? I don't want her looking at me and saying I'm crazy. Mad or bad, what's the difference? Only that little Shelley Pelmore; she told me a thing or two. Wife wouldn't believe. Nor would I, except…'

‘I need some more,' Helen said, extending her glass. He sloshed wine.

‘Start from the beginning,' she invited. Let him ramble while she stalled for time.

He took a deep shuddering breath, spoke almost dreamily. ‘It all begins with girls. Women, girls bored with sex or romance. Either with difficult histories, abuse perhaps, or simply unrealistic expectations of the whole thing. Girls who dread pregnancy; disappointed girls; girls afraid of it. Girls who want sensation, not through drugs. Screwed-up girls. Girls like Shelley Pelmore: bored with life, dying for a kick. Or another kind of girl, who can't wait to get rid of innocence … hungry for a man …'

‘Which all girls are, of course, is that it?' Helen asked, attempting to jeer. He looked at her, half amused.

‘In my experience, most of them. Don't interrupt. Girls, women with unfulfilled sexual needs or bad sexual histories, fantasize about it. I've heard a lot of fantasies about men doing amazing things with bottles, with implements, with ice, making them beg … Only then I heard a series of fantasies, like that, but all featuring a bald man with wonderful eyes …'

Helen stared at him.

‘He seduced, he humiliated, he played jokes, he corrupted. He corrupts. That's what he does: he corrupts. And in two cases, two of these confused women died soon after they'd made their confused complaints about a man who visited them at home. We'd listened to them and turned them out. No forensic, they wouldn't give us a name, but they were humiliated. Two died of natural causes – pregnant kids. Then there was Shelley Pelmore's friend, picked out of the gutter; unhurt, apart from what she'd done to herself; half dead with shock. Something happened to her; some sexual trauma, I don't know what.'

He stared into the dark garden.

‘Know what I think? I think the greatest humiliation for a woman is sex they've somehow invited, willingly. They let themselves in for it, innocently, and while they know it's wrong, the body responds. And when the body has responded, then the shame becomes excruciating.' He coughed. Even to his mind, this was extra fanciful and he couldn't explain what he meant.

‘And then there was wee Shelley herself, who wouldn't say anything for the record, but somehow wanted to boast about something or someone. She says I met her twice; in fact I met her more than that. She told me about the
bald-headed man; she actually confirmed his existence; before that, I only had this odd unconvincing dossier on him. Shelley adored him, but she was afraid of him, teased me with bits of information about this demon lover who was, she said, “too good not to share”. Shelley loved a kind of perversion; she'd persuaded a couple of her friends to try … she thought he'd made Becky come round the neck of a bottle. Wouldn't you like to know who he is? she'd say to me, and I'd say, yes I would, and what did he do to you last time? Once I'd got her a bit drunk, she'd tell me. He made me come against a park bench, she'd say. Used his dildo, used an icicle. They were conspirators of a kind, Shelley and him: she was proud of it, but she was afraid of him, too. She set me up for the rape to stop me looking for him. They planned it. I fell into the trap, oh, so neatly.'

He smiled, ashamed of himself. ‘It was easy, you see. All this drink and dirty talk. I fancied her; I let her tease me; I wanted the information; I prolonged the quest for it, even though it was him I was after; I half enjoyed it. And I really did leave her in the pub. I forgot the jacket; I think she hid it behind a chair. And she could see I had fingernails full of soil from the garden. As if I'd been grubbing round in the park.' Helen did not entirely follow, then remembered.

‘You must have hated her for that. If that's what she did.'

‘Hated her? Oh yes. Oh yes. “Hated her” would be the understatement of the year.'

She wanted to ask, Enough to kill her? And if so, how? But it was his mention of the icicle which somehow seemed more important. Ryan was in a world of his own,
continuing without prompting. He seemed to have forgotten the knife.

‘I hated her a bit less after she'd called me at home. She was frightened and wanted to see me. I met her once, but she shilly-shallied about, wouldn't really talk. Then a second time, much the same, in the amusement arcade. Then I lost my temper, wanted to strangle her. She went off in a huff. I followed. That park, by the mortuary …'

‘Where she was found?'

‘Yup.'

‘And?'

‘I left her,' he said bitterly. ‘I was hungry and angry and I left her. I didn't think she'd be meeting him, but then I thought, shit, I bet she is. By the time I'd doubled back she was dead. And I thought, I'd better not go home.'

He paused.

‘Such a pretty girl.'

H
e might think the place was home, decorated for Christmas, there were so many flowers. Anna thought perhaps she had overdone it. Once, twice or three times he had said how much he appreciated flowers; she had brought them to his desk. Snowdrops last winter, daffodils in March, never thinking then that there was something unconventional in a woman courting a man with flowers, as if she was being the male for both of them. She removed the lilies from the living-room: like the daisies they were too white and too much of a contrast to the roses. She wanted the room to have the atmosphere of a study rather than a boudoir; she was excited and he was late, and it was the excitement that bothered her most.
Keep a clear head, she told herself; just one glass of this stuff. The champagne, not quite real; an Australian look-alike, which is what she thought he would expect from her, rather than the far more expensive real thing, sent flutters of trepidation through her abdomen. She felt she was full of air.

Bruises, bodily fluids: evidence. She had a dim idea of how to create the bruises by replicating kitchen accidents she had suffered in the past. If she left the back-cupboard door open and belted it with her hip, that gave a hefty bruise, as she already knew. There was the cabinet in the bathroom; she had once hit her head against the open door when straightening up from brushing her teeth and now always kept it closed. The bruise, complete with a graze in the middle of her forehead, had looked quite dramatic and had given rise to teasing from colleagues. That one would have to be self-inflicted later; she couldn't meet him with a face like a balloon; she was trying to seduce the man, for God's sake. She caught sight of her face in the bathroom mirror. Well, she murmured to herself, that won't do it. A face to launch a million ships? This one wouldn't get a rowing boat out onto the Thames, and why was she so insanely cheerful? When the doorbell rang, she was composed, rehearsing words. Oh do come in, how nice to see you and how good of you to call … the last words made her put her hand across her mouth and stifle a crazy laugh. She couldn't say such a thing, she really couldn't. She should go downstairs to her door and open it with decorum, hoping she didn't look overdressed or even faintly vampish with the extra make-up, but no perfume. The house was full of it, from the flowers.

He rang again, and when, with suitable stateliness, she let him in, she remembered to be casual.

‘Sorry that took so long,' she said, smiling. ‘I was out the back, come and see.' He bowed from the waist, giving her a glimpse of the top of his smooth head. There was nothing better to get a man indoors and unwary than a kind of distracted friendliness. Nothing sinister about his examination of Rose's evergreen window-boxes and a discussion of why, after a downpour, the flowering shrubs grew crooked. Good smells wafted from the kitchen. She chatted like a starling; she knew she was amusing. Hope these clothes are right, she thought. A pretty loose-weave top over an upholstered bosom, multi-coloured skirt almost to the ankles, neat leather pumps. Not particularly sexy in themselves; the pretty clothes of a plump, budget-conscious, working woman, better chosen than most and, only incidentally, easy to remove. He had brought flowers and chocolates. Such clichéd gifts annoyed her; wine would be better; they hardened her resolve, but there was one troubling feature. In some utterly bizarre way, she really was pleased to see him.

‘What a lovely room this is,' he said when they took the second glass of the cold fizz into the living-room. ‘How clever you are.'

It was as if he had never been here before. He moved from object to object, glass in hand, commenting on the watercolour seascape which had been such a delightful bargain, the bright-coloured porcelain of no known make which she had so artfully assembled on the shelves to make it appear striking and valuable, the pastel-patterned throws which made her chairs look inviting. ‘I haven't the knack to
do this,' he was saying; ‘I can't create comfort, I wish I could. I have a living unit rather than a home, and oh, what's this?' holding, gently, the favourite of her few, carefully chosen ornaments. A small clay bird, nestling by the vase of abundant miniature roses.