No Way Home

by Jack Slater

  ‘You sure, boss? She is still a victim here. A victim’s widow, at least.’

  ‘Yes. But said victim was a serial rapist and she must have known at least something about that. Which, in my book, makes her an accessory.’ He ended the call and dialled another number. ‘Naz,’ he said when it was answered. ‘Are you with Mrs Singh?’

  ‘Not at this moment, Sarge. I’m on the way there, though. Why?’

  ‘Because I’m on the way there too.’

  ‘Uh… you don’t sound like you’re in a particularly sympathetic mood, Sarge. What’s up?’

  ‘She’s been protecting a serial rapist, that’s what. And his memory. And we need the truth out of her.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Mrs Singh, I’m not condoning or excusing what happened to your husband. Not for a second. We won’t stop looking for whoever killed him until we find them. But the fact is, he was a serial rapist. Wasn’t he?’

  Distraught, she looked from Pete to Naz and back again, seeking support, understanding, any way out of this latest horror, But there was none. Pete kept his gaze fixed on her, unrelenting. As far as he was concerned, she was as guilty as her husband – of every rape he’d committed since the first one she’d learned of. And in his book, there was no adequate excuse.

  ‘Do you know how it feels to be raped, Mrs Singh? Was he violent or abusive to you?’

  Her face crumpled and she began to cry. Tears dripped from her cheeks. She hung her head, wiping at them with her hands.

  ‘You knew he’d raped your sister,’ Pete went on relentlessly. ‘Didn’t you? You told her to go home and not speak of it. Your own sister, Mrs Singh. Where was your sympathy and understanding for her? Was she the first one you knew about? She certainly wasn’t the last, was she? You knew what he was doing. When he’d done it. Did it take some of the pressure off you, afterwards? Is that why you allowed him to carry on?’

  ‘Sarge?’

  Naz put a hand to his leg, urging him to ease up. To stop.

  ‘No, Naz. This is rape we’re talking about. Innocent young women, including her own sister, abused, hurt and terrified. Maybe even threatened with death afterwards. Even if he didn’t say the words, they must have feared it. And she could have stopped it. That makes her as guilty as he was in my book. She can sit there and cry crocodile tears all she likes: it won’t make any difference. I’ve got a wife and young daughter. Either of them could have ended up being victims of the man she was protecting. As far as I’m concerned, she’s another Rose West, only without the guts, and if she doesn’t start talking to us, I’m inclined to charge her as such.’ He turned back to the weeping woman. ‘So, come on, Mrs Singh. What’s it to be? Are you going to talk to us or are we going to take you to jail?’

  He waited a beat, but her only response was more tears.

  ‘I can’t even imagine what a prison full of women will do to someone who’s in there for aiding and abetting a rapist. Myra Hindley was in solitary for decades, for her own protection. Is that what you want, Mrs Singh? Day after day, year after year, sitting alone in a cell, knowing that anyone you meet might be the one to slip a knife between your ribs or knock you down and kick you to death?’

  ‘That’s enough, Sergeant Gayle,’ Naz protested. ‘This isn’t an interrogation; it’s a torture session, only without the electrodes. I’m going to call the Super.’ She stood up and headed for the door.

  Pete turned back to the woman sitting opposite him. ‘Last chance, Mrs Singh,’ he said as Naz shut the door behind her. ‘Once she makes that call, I won’t have a choice any more. I’ll have to charge you.’ He reached out to her, but she snatched her arm away from his touch. ‘Were you a victim as well? Did he abuse you too? Rape you? Threaten you? It’s still rape if a man forces you to have sex against your will within a marriage, you know. If that’s what happened, then we can help you. Even now. There are major differences between the way things are done in India and the way they’re done in England. We have a system that’s sympathetic to victims. That’s set up to help and protect them.’

  She looked up at him finally, her face a mess, eyes almost wild. ‘You cannot protect a person from what’s in their own head, Sergeant Gayle. I do not know who Rose West is. Or Myra Hindley. But yes, I am guilty of terrible things against the women my husband attacked. Even my sister. Especially my sister. I love her dearly, but what could I do? I was his wife. It was my duty to protect and support him above all else. Even myself. Yes, he was harsh. He beat me. He took me when I didn’t want him to. But he gave me a roof over my head and food in my stomach. There is a price for everything in life, Sergeant Gayle, and that was the price he charged me for my life as I lived it. You think I am frightened of being killed? I would welcome it! I am so ashamed, it would be a blessing: my payment for all the wrong he did to those other women.’

  Now Pete was in a quandary. He’d painted himself into a corner. After all he’d just said, he couldn’t now turn sympathetic. ‘Naz,’ he called.

  There was a pause. The sitting-room door opened and Naz poked her head through the gap. ‘Sarge?’

  He stood up. ‘Mrs Singh would like to talk to us. Perhaps you could take her statement?’

  She held his gaze for a long beat before pushing the door open and stepping inside. ‘Sarge.’

  ‘A full and detailed statement, Naz. Dates, names – everything she can remember.’ He passed her and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him as he headed for the small, cluttered kitchen at the back of the house. He hadn’t enjoyed pushing the woman so hard. It was not a technique he normally employed. But she couldn’t be allowed to stay quiet, as had clearly been her intention.

  He found the kettle, checked it was full and switched it on before starting to hunt for cups or mugs.

  Of course there were cultural differences between him and the woman he’d just been interrogating, but they didn’t alter what was right or wrong, he thought, as he set out three mugs and started looking for tea and sugar. And the overriding fact was that both the woman and her husband were British citizens living in England and, as such, subject to English law, regardless of their cultural history. Yes, he had sympathy for her plight. But his greater sympathy went to the other victims of the man she’d been protecting all this time.

  *

  He had just passed the end of Okehampton Street and driven out onto the Alphington Street bridge when his phone rang in his pocket. He tapped the Bluetooth connection icon on the car’s screen.

  ‘DS Gayle.’

  ‘Boss, it’s Jane. It’s about Tommy.’

  What? You haven’t been to see him already? I didn’t…’

  ‘No, I’ve been too busy here up to now. But I just took a call from Archways.’ Her voice changed. Got quieter and at the same time more hollow, as if she were covering her mouth. ‘The resident psychiatrist there, a Dr Brian Letterman. He’s been talking to Tommy. Standard procedure. Every new in… resident… gets interviewed by him and another professional to assess their mental state, their specific needs and so on. He’s spent most of the morning with Tommy.’

  Pete checked the time on the dashboard. It was almost one in the afternoon. ‘Good grief. I didn’t realise the time had got on like that. So, what did he have to say about Tommy?’

  ‘Well… nothing good, boss.’ Her voice had returned to normal. ‘Are you on your way back in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get here then.’

  ‘Jane…’

  ‘Tell you what – I’ll meet you downstairs. We can go straight back out.’

  ‘What?’

  But she had ended the call. The open tone rang hollowly from the speakers.

  Women! Why couldn’t they be straightforward and easy to deal with, for God’s sake? Why did everything have to be so bloody complicated? It looked like he was going from one difficult situation straight into another.

  At least Naz hadn’t followed through on her threat. She had been moments aw
ay from it, she’d told him afterwards. But listening at the door to see if he was continuing in the same vein, she’d heard the change in both his attitude and Mrs Singh’s. She had taken a statement from the woman, given it to him and stayed behind when he’d left a few minutes ago.

  And now, here he was heading towards another situation that was being hampered by female sensitivities. Which was completely unlike Jane.

  He drew a long breath. What could be so damned bad that she insisted on keeping it from the rest of the team? Surely Tommy hadn’t got into trouble again already? If so, what kind of shambolic mess were they running at Archways? The whole point of places like that was that there was a high staff-to-youth ratio so that trouble was avoided and the young folk got all the attention they needed to put them back on the right track before they were released. It was a policy he knew cut the rate of reoffending by a huge percentage, compared with other methods.

  The only trouble with it, in this day and age, was that it was relatively expensive in the short-term – and the short-term was all that modern, media-led politics was concerned with. They didn’t care what kind of mess they left the Opposition to deal with when they got kicked out of power at the end of their term. Give it few months and the spin doctors would turn it all around and blame the incumbents anyway.

  The really sad thing was that people were daft enough that, for the most part, it actually worked.

  He swung around the roundabout at the bottom of Heavitree Road and headed up to the station even more depressed than he had been when he’d left the taxi driver’s widow.

  Jane was waiting outside the back door of the station. She stepped away from the building as she saw him pass the rear corner. He swung into a parking space and switched off the engine as she walked purposefully towards him. He waited until she’d opened the door and sat in the car. With the door closed, isolating them from the world, she turned to face him.

  ‘So, what’s all the secrecy in aid of?’

  ‘Like I said, Dr Letterman, who insists on being called Brian, wants to speak to you urgently. He didn’t go into detail. Confidentiality. I’m not family, after all. But he wants to speak to you about his findings. Well, it’s not going to be good, is it? So, I thought you’d be best talking to him from out here, rather than at your desk.’

  ‘And you couldn’t tell me that over the phone and save time?’

  ‘Well, I could have, yes. But you know as well as I do who’d have been listening.’

  Dick and Dave, for sure. Possibly Ben and Jill. And a couple of Mark Bridgman’s team, as well as possibly whoever had put the call through to Jane. ‘OK. I wasn’t criticising. I’ve just had a rough morning, that’s all. Have you got the number?’

  She took a slip of paper from her pocket and passed it to him, her other hand settling on the door handle. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Pete made the call as she walked back across the car park, her short ginger hair glowing in the sun. It was picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Archways Secure Children’s Home. Vincent speaking. How can I help?’

  ‘Vincent, this is DS Peter Gayle of Exeter CID. I’m told a Dr Brian Letterman’s been trying to reach me.’

  ‘Right. Hold on a moment. I’ll transfer you to Brian’s office.’

  Again, the call was picked up promptly. ‘Brian speaking.’

  ‘Brian. Pete Gayle. Tommy’s father. I’m told you want to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Can I call you Pete?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve spent most of this morning with Tommy, Pete – interviewing him, getting to know him. I do the same with all our young guests. It’s part of the process. I have to say, Pete, Tommy’s an extremely troubled young man.’

  ‘Well, we knew that much. From personal experience as well as the investigation into his disappearance last year.’

  ‘Yes, well… I’d hope, as a father, you’d be aware of his issues, at least to some extent. As should his teachers have been. But I’m not talking about normal teenage angst. Tommy’s problems are far more serious than that.’

  ‘He spent five months living with a paedophile, followed by another five living rough. What do you expect?’

  ‘Unfortunately, what I’m talking about goes far deeper and much further back into his childhood than that.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  The psychiatrist sighed audibly. ‘He’s suffering from deep-seated abandonment issues, Pete. Very deep-seated. From way back in his youth. These are things that crop up in a small way quite often in eldest children. Their only-child status is abruptly removed by the arrival of a younger sibling. But usually they cope and adapt perfectly well. Tommy didn’t. And his feelings were exacerbated by the fact that both his parents had demanding careers. Long hours, variable shifts and so on, leading to irregular parental contact when he needed it most. Not that it would necessarily have helped, of course. I’m afraid, as much as we like to think we know about the human mind, there are things we still don’t have all the answers to, and Tommy seems to be suffering from just such a condition.’

  Why the hell could these people never talk straight? ‘Which is…?’

  ‘I’m afraid Tommy shows all the signs of suffering from a psycho-dissociative disorder, Pete.’

  ‘A what? Are you saying he’s schizophrenic?’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. It’s more of an inability to empathise, combined with a lack of inhibitive functions.’

  Impatience and resentment flared into annoyance. ‘So he’s psychopath.’

  ‘He’s…’

  Pete could hear the other man struggling to express himself adequately. ‘He’s what, Brian? Straight answer to a straight question. What, in your opinion, is wrong with my son?’

  ‘Basically, there’s a wiring problem in his brain, the causes of which we don’t fully understand. It could be genetic, it could be caused by something in his environment, or lacking from it, during his formative years, or it could be a combination of the two. We don’t know. What we do know is that there is a wide spectrum of severity of such issues. The vast majority of people with these types of disorder live perfectly normal, productive and fully functional lives. The few at the extreme end of the spectrum are too damaged to be able to do that reliably and safely. Again, there is a range of severity. Some people live normal lives until they’re triggered by what’s termed a “stresser” into displaying symptoms of the disorder. Others seem to simply grow into it. And still others have problems from a very young age. Tommy seems to lie somewhere between the last two categories, as far as we can tell. Is there anything you can remember from his younger years that gave cause for concern?’

  Pete closed his eyes, his teeth clamped together as he struggled not to yell at the man. He drew a breath. It didn’t work. He tried again, fighting to calm himself. ‘I asked a straight question, requiring a straight answer, Brian,’ he said. ‘When this conversation started I told you not just my name but my job title, in case you didn’t already know it. Part of that job entails interviewing suspects and assessing their reactions and responses. So, bearing that in mind, along with the fact that we’re talking about my son, do you imagine for one second that I’m going to accept you acting like a politician?’

  ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention at all. I simply wanted to make it clear what we’re dealing with here.’

  ‘And in that you’ve failed miserably. Let me put it to you this way: is Tommy Gayle a psychopath? Yes or no?’

  ‘Well, that’s not a description we like to…’

  ‘I don’t care what terminology you prefer this week,’ Pete snapped, anger masking his fear of the truth. ‘Yes or no? Is he or isn’t he?’

  ‘In the sense that you’re using the expression, I have to say that, in my opinion and that of my colleague, Adrian Stewart, who is a highly respected psychologist and national expert in his field – yes, Thomas Gayle does suffer from what you call psychopathy. But I also have t
o say, it’s not an easy diagnosis to make and it is treatable, with a high degree of success in younger subjects.’

  ‘Treatable how?’ Pete was imagining brain surgery, shock therapy and heavy-dose drugs that reduced people to little more than vegetables.

  ‘It depends on the specifics of the individual case. Some require drug therapies for concurrent disorders, but for the antisocial behaviour issue itself, behavioural therapies are, for the moment, the only reliable treatment.’

  ‘Behavioural therapies?’

  ‘Professionally led group sessions, individual psychotherapy sessions. It varies from case to case.’

  Pete remembered the police psychologist he’d had to see a number of times at Middlemoor for several weeks after his return to work. He had gone into their sessions expecting them to be a thorough waste of valuable time, but by the time they’d concluded his fourth and final one, he had felt a lot better about both the psychologist herself and the process. And yet, he knew they had been shown to be a waste of time for adult psychopaths. ‘And you say these sessions have been proved to be useful?’

  ‘In younger subjects, yes. There’s been shown to be up to an eighty per cent success rate.’

  ‘And how long does that take?’

  ‘Again, there are variables, but it’s not a quick process. The brain is a delicate instrument. You can’t go at it with a hammer and tongs.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to suggest you could, Brian. What I had in mind was that Tommy’s not going to be there that long.’ It was a bloody good thing this conversation wasn’t happening face to face, Pete thought. He’d have beaten the bloody idiot to a pulp by now.

  ‘That’s true. As it is with the majority of the young people I see here. But, I do work beyond these walls and a large part of that involves people I’ve met within them. The same applies with Adrian.’

  ‘And you firmly believe you can help my son?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘But you need permission from my wife and myself.’