To Kill a Man - Maggie Costello Series 05 (2020)

by Bourne, Sam

  . . . a man was reported to be lying in the gutter in a state of what police are calling ‘severe distress’. They say he had suffered ‘extreme, aggravated sexual assault’, with some details that are too graphic to share on this network.

  Too graphic. Now her mind was turning over at double speed. She quickly checked the New York Times website and read their account of the same incident. There was no extra detail she could see that had not been reported on CNN, but there was a reference to ‘circumstances so disturbing’, police sources were reluctant to divulge them on the record. She thumbed out a text to Jake Haynes at the Times bureau. Time to cash in the remaining credit left on her account in the favour bank.

  Quick chat?

  Thank the Lord himself for Haynes’s hunger for news. He called back straight away.

  ‘Hey, Jake. You got two minutes?’

  ‘For Maggie Costello, I got three.’

  ‘So this is not strictly speaking a DC story. But it might feed into a DC story.’

  ‘Feed in?’

  ‘Eventually.’

  ‘This about Winthrop?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Not sure? OK. But when you are sure—’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know.’

  ‘Sounds good. OK, shoot.’

  ‘I need to ask something about a Times story written out of Chicago.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s the story about the rapist dumped on the street. Apparently there were some details that were “too graphic” to be published.’

  ‘We said that? “Too graphic”?’

  ‘CNN said it. You said something about “circumstances so disturbing”.’

  ‘Sounds like us. So you want me to find out what those extra details were, and then tell you.’

  ‘You’re a doll.’

  ‘Byline on the story?’

  Maggie told him the name that had appeared on the Times report, hung up and paced. It was only a hunch, she told herself, as she paced some more. Only a hunch. Only a hunch.

  After ten minutes, the phone rang again. On the screen, the name she wanted to see: Jake Haynes. Her index finger trembled over the ‘Accept’ button. She was still so exhausted.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, how are you?’

  ‘Sorry, Jake. Go on.’

  ‘So this took me a while. The newsroom in New York is up to their eyes in a big story, but I finally got what you need. Are you near a bathroom, because you may want to throw up. First, the guy was found bound and gagged, with one of those red gimp-ball things in his mouth. You know, leather strap around his head.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Second, his genitals had been, like, totally abused. Balls pulled and twisted, penis really damaged. And the main thing was, he had been . . . I don’t know if this is quite the right term, but . . . he’d been anally raped.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll spare you the details, because, believe me, they are gross. But the point is, it involved, you know, objects.’

  ‘Objects?’

  ‘Heavy objects. Thick, heavy objects.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘“Severe and lasting damage”, apparently.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘So that’s why we didn’t put it in the paper. And neither did anyone else. Police shared those details on background only. Kind of see why.’

  ‘Yep.’ Maggie was still pacing. ‘All right. Jake, I owe you.’

  ‘No, I think officially I still owe you. That was the story of the year.’

  ‘Story of the decade, you said last time.’

  ‘Ah, but maybe this will be the story of the decade. Lead to it, I mean.’

  ‘We live in hope. Thanks, Jake.’

  ‘And you’ll let me know, right?’

  ‘If there’s a story, you’ll get it first.’

  She hung up and went back to the computer, to that Reuters piece. It was still there, that crucial line, saying the dead man had been ‘violently sodomized’. And the report was explicit: he had been violated by means of ‘objects that had caused serious injury’.

  Now she opened a fresh tab and did a Google search that made her shake her head in disbelief. Had it really come to this? She typed in the words, ‘Chicago rapist abducted anal’.

  Plenty of stories appeared that included the first three search terms but not the fourth. The ones that offered a match for all four related to stories from long ago or, in one case, to a review of a movie shown only in a single arts cinema in Brooklyn.

  The rest of the results page linked to accounts of the incident in Chicago and she skim-read them all: no reference to anal rape or sodomy or anything of the kind. She did word searches for every possible term. Nothing. She closed down the tabs and pushed away the machine, satisfied that no one besides her, a handful of reporters and the Chicago Police Department knew precisely what pain had been inflicted on that man.

  Which left a question. If the Bangalore attack was a copycat inspired by what had happened in Chicago, replicating most of the key details – down to the masks, the colour of the van, the modus operandi – how come the vigilantes of India had copied an element they couldn’t possibly have known about, an element that had never been made public? What if the one episode was not a mere copy of the other, one day apart, but something very different?

  Maggie got up, paced around, walked into the kitchen, eyed up the bottle of Ardbeg, walked back into the living room, then back into the kitchen. At one point, she kneeled on the floor to pull open the bottom drawer, almost unconsciously rummaging through it before she realized what she was doing: looking for a packet of cigarettes she had hidden from herself months ago, around the time she promised Uri that she had given up, once and for all. No joy.

  She went back to the table and her laptop. That too, she knew, was displacement activity, if of a slightly more rarefied kind. She needed to think through the question that was turning over in her mind. The two episodes – Chicago and Bangalore – were more similar than the public accounts of each let on: how come?

  By way of procrastination, she checked Twitter. It was obsessing about some celebrity story that had just broken, involving a major network TV executive accused of sexually coercing a junior employee. The primetime news anchor of that same network had posted a single emoji – showing a green face, poised to vomit in disgust – above a link to the story.

  This was not helping. She wanted more information on what had happened in India and on the streets of Chicago. She needed more detail, however ‘graphic’, that might shed light on whether the echoes between these two incidents were coincidence or—

  Hold on.

  Was this TV thing the breaking New York Times story Jake had mentioned? Maggie went back to the puke emoji tweet, then clicked on the article and, sure enough, it was time-stamped as posted a matter of minutes ago. She skimmed the first few paragraphs.

  Album is said to have grabbed, groped, harassed and assaulted female employees for decades. One source, speaking on condition of anonymity to safeguard her own position at the network, said: “Marty regards women in the news division as his own personal all-you-can-eat buffet. He’s had the same MO for years: the invitation to do ‘extra work’ for him at his summer house, outside regular hours. Then, before you know it, he’s in the shower, butt-naked, asking you to join him. Or he’s in his bathrobe, expecting you to take care of business. Pretty much every woman in news has been through it. It’s kind of an initiation rite.”

  The Times has learned that disciplinary proceedings have been launched twice against Mr Album in recent years, only to be abandoned on both occasions due to lack of evidence. Documents from the second of those two inquiries, seen by the Times, include a letter from Mr Album’s attorney urging that the complaints be dismissed as “a
classic case of he-said, she-said to which there can never be any resolution”.

  These latest revelations seem set to have a different impact, chiefly because they come accompanied by video evidence. In the recording seen by the Times, Mr Album can be seen grabbing an employee, more than forty-one years his junior, by the hair and forcing her into a sex act. He can also be heard pressuring the employee, a recently-hired subordinate within the news division. At one point, the woman is heard crying as she explains to Mr Album that she “was just here doing my work”. He replies, “Don’t cry, baby” before he is seen pulling her head by the hair towards his private parts. She can be heard letting out a yelp.

  The Times has spoken to the employee, and confirmed that she is the woman in the video. She has corroborated the video, which she says she recorded herself, through covert use of her smartphone. She co-operated with this investigation on condition of anonymity.

  Jesus Christ. Everywhere you looked, if you could bear to look, it was there. How many men were like this Marty Album, regarding women as an ‘all-you-can-eat buffet’? Lots, it seemed. More than Maggie had realized. She remembered what Natasha had said, that night on the Cape. How rape was, in effect, no longer a crime. If society essentially shrugs its shoulders at a certain act, then it is signalling that it has made a decision. And the decision in our society is that, most of the time, a man is permitted to force a woman to have sex with him. It is tolerated. Like smoking weed at home. Or hitting eighty on the interstate. Technically a crime, but not really.

  At the foot of the New York Times report, there was a link to ‘Related Stories’. Maggie wanted to click away from the page; she wasn’t sure how much more of this her spirits could take, without plummeting. But some part of her brain, not wholly obvious to her, was whirring now. She clicked on the most recent item, a report out of London from just a few days ago.

  It told how a top restaurant chef, an emerging celebrity in Britain, had been accused of sexual assault. A UK newspaper had revealed a pattern of bullying behaviour: he had engaged in ‘constant harassment and cruelty’; on one occasion, he had asked a pregnant colleague to allow him to drink her breast milk. The chef had now been suspended from his own restaurant, after his financial backers pulled the plug. ‘The key development came this week, when a lawyer for an unnamed kitchen assistant sent investors a video which showed the chef forcing himself on the young employee. The video has been confirmed as genuine, a secret recording made by the victim of the assault.’

  Her brain was still in a haze – from lack of sleep, mainly, from the jolt of being surrounded by those men outside her front door, by the fact that her own home no longer felt safe – but somehow, through the blur, an idea was taking shape. Less than an idea, fuzzier than that. It was an intimation of an idea, an inkling.

  She forced herself to go back to where this started. She knew the dangers of a descent into an online rabbit-hole, especially when you were all but tripping with fatigue. First move, climb out of the rabbit-hole and come back to the surface. Next, remember how you got there. Which for Maggie meant recalling the question that had seemed so sharp in her mind a matter of moments ago.

  Through the fog, she dragged it back to visibility. It was the curiously similar tortures inflicted on the rapists of Chicago and Bangalore, alike in ways that were never made public, in ways that made it almost impossible for one to be a copycat of the other. How had that happened?

  Drained as she was, desperate for a proper sleep as she was, Maggie knew there was only one person who could settle that question. She grabbed her bag and her keys and headed out the door and into the night.

  Chapter 44

  Washington, DC

  ‘We need to get out in front on these rape stories.’

  ‘I don’t think we want to use the word “rape”.’

  Dan Benson sighed, turning to Ellen Stone, the one woman in the room and the one woman on the team. Christ, if karma wasn’t paying them back for being so testosterone-heavy. After the sisterhood crashed and burned so badly with the first female nominee, it became tacitly acceptable within the party to ‘appoint whoever was best qualified for the job’ – which was understood by the consultant class as, ‘Go back to hiring men’. The stigma had gone out of it. Like, We tried it, it didn’t work, let’s go back to winning elections.

  But boy, right now, did that look like a mistake. Again and again, Senator Tom Harrison was being cast as the sexist dinosaur, a clumsy, clunky, goofy dad or even granddad who was perennially on the wrong side of history. Natasha Winthrop was behind bars, for Christ’s sake, and still she managed to seem more in touch, more in tune with the times, than him. And now this.

  ‘All right, OK. Let’s call it “sexual assault” if that makes you more comfortable.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what makes me feel comfortable, Dan,’ Doug Teller said, his voice split between octaves of irritation and condescension. The only thing missing was a hint of apology for dragging them in here on a Saturday night. ‘It’s what message we want to convey to voters. We call it the estate tax, our opponents call it the death tax; our opponents win. Given the candidate has been a close personal friend of Marty Album’s for the last thirty years, I don’t think we want to say that that close personal friend is guilty of rape. It’s all in the framing: estate tax, death tax. How you feel about it depends on what you call it. We know this. We have the data that proves this.’

  ‘You talking about the Imperial Analytica thing?’

  Teller glared at him, part reprimand but also part surprise, a look that said, How the hell do you know about that?

  ‘It’s OK, Doug,’ Benson said. ‘The Digital Director gave me and Ellen a briefing. It’s in the vault, don’t worry. But good to know we’ve got state-of-the-art software on our side. Not that it can help us out of this particular situation.’

  Teller was looking down, rubbing an eyebrow between thumb and middle finger. Whether his despair was over the breach of secrecy relating to the campaign’s hiring of the Imperial Analytica data-mining company or because of the Album issue was not clear.

  Benson carried on. ‘So, Doug, what would you have the senator say? “I’m saddened to hear that my long-standing friend has paid unwanted attention to his colleagues”?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that.’

  Ellen jumped in. ‘“My friend has been accused of inappropriate conduct towards his co-workers.”’

  ‘I like “accused”. That could work.’

  ‘“Inappropriate”? Are you kidding me? “Inappropriate” is wearing a tie at a barbecue. “Inappropriate” is checking out your girlfriend’s mom.’ He felt himself getting a look from his right. ‘Sorry, Ellen. Holding the intern’s head and forcing her to suck your cock is not “inappropriate”. It’s sexual assault.’

  ‘But not rape all of a sudden?’

  ‘OK, that isn’t, Doug. But the rest is! Have you seen what’s in the Times? I mean, have you actually read through the detail of these allegations?’

  ‘Allegations. That’s the key word in that sentence, Dan. The only thing they have evidence for is the blowj—’ Now Doug shot a guilty glance at Ellen. ‘The oral sex act.’

  ‘No, Doug. That’s the only thing they have video of. There’s plenty of evidence. Sworn testimony from dozens of women.’

  ‘Which he denies.’

  ‘Listen, seriously. Between these four walls. Our phones are outside. Is your worry that this story will somehow implicate the senator?’

  ‘Let’s not do this here.’

  ‘We’re the senior staff of the campaign, Doug. If not here, where? Is the senator implicated in this story?’

  ‘I’m not going to answer that.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Except to say, Harrison and Album have been friends for a long time. Weekends, summer homes, trips to the Caribbean.’

  ‘The whole
nine yards.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you are worried?’

  ‘There will be some who will try to drag his name into this story.’

  ‘And will they have reason to?’

  ‘The point is, people can allege what they like. Doesn’t mean there’ll be evidence. But: they were friends. They vacationed together. If Album gets a bucket of shit poured over his head, some of it will splash onto Harrison’s shoes.’

  Ellen furrowed her brow and then said, ‘Which might be all the more reason for him to get out in front of it. Distance himself from it. “I’ve known Marty Album—”’

  ‘Martin. Or Mr Album. Don’t make it pally.’

  ‘Dan’s right, Ellen. Mr Album.’

  ‘All right. “I’ve known Mr Album a long time, and yet he kept this dark side hidden from me, as he did from so many others.”’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Bullshit, but good.’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘“I naturally condemn some of the appalling behaviour we’ve read about in recent days. I won’t prejudice any legal proceedings that might ensue by saying any more. But above all, my heart goes out to the women who are hurting. Be strong. Have courage”.’

  Dan smiled. ‘That’s great. We should get that written up. He’s doing a sit-down today with the Des Moines Register, isn’t he? He can do it there.’

  Ellen, smiling at the praise, said, ‘We want video, don’t we? Maybe save it for Morning Joe tomorrow?’

  Now Doug came in, breaking up the party. ‘I like it too, Ellen. Definitely worth working up. My only note is that it could be a little . . . strong.’

  ‘Strong?’

  ‘That language. You know: condemn, appalling, hurting. Little strong, is all.’

  ‘Doug, is there something you’re not telling us?’

  ‘Just that the senator is a loyal friend. I’m not sure he wants to be the guy who kicks a man when he’s down.’

  There was a pause. Dan and Ellen exchanged looks, before Dan theatrically placed his hand over his mouth, like a child who’s accidentally given away a family secret.