The Doll's House

by Tania Carver

  91

  ‘

  C

  ome in,’ called Anni, ‘it’s open. Living room.’

  Phil stepped over the threshold of Hugo Gwilym’s house once again. This time it couldn’t have felt more different.

  He had been stunned, Anni’s call completely unexpected. Even more so when she told him that she was in Birmingham and that he should come and meet her. He told her he was in the middle of a case and couldn’t really spare the time. She told him that this was important, and he would have to make time. It was to do with Marina. He started to ask questions, but she told him everything would be answered when he got there. But he needed to get there right away.

  And then she told him where to meet…

  He walked down the hall into the living room. Anni was sitting in an armchair. She jumped up when he entered and crossed the room to him, made to hug him, stopped. Phil gave a small smile. He had thought of doing the same thing and had also stopped himself. Because he was still, technically, her boss. They settled for awkwardly shaking hands, both of them having the good grace to look embarrassed about it.

  ‘Anni,’ said Phil, once formalities had been dispensed with, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘It’s about Marina,’ said Anni.

  ‘You said.’

  ‘And him.’ Anni jerked a thumb at the sofa. Hugo Gwilym sat in his dressing gown, his hair matted with blood, a tea towel full of melting ice held to his head. Anni looked back at Phil.

  ‘Is he all right?’ asked Phil.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said Anni, ‘unfortunately. Now, where shall I start?’

  Phil shrugged. Felt that familiar tightening in his chest. ‘Wherever you like.’

  ‘Sit down, then. I think it’s better if you sit down.’

  Phil sat in the armchair Anni had recently vacated. Anni sat on the sofa with Gwilym. Careful not to touch him.

  ‘Marina’s been a bit off lately,’ said Phil, before Anni could speak. ‘Withdrawn, pulling away from me. Does this have anything to do with that?’

  ‘You could say,’ said Anni. She leaned forward, cutting out Gwilym from her focus. Like it was just her and Phil in the room. ‘She… thought she had been raped.’ Anni said nothing more, waited for Phil to process the statement.

  ‘She… what? Raped? Who by?’

  Anni jerked a thumb at Gwilym. He had his head down, avoiding Phil’s stare.

  ‘Him? He raped my wife?’ Phil was on his feet, crossing over to Gwilym, who held the tea towel in front of him like a soggy shield. ‘He actually raped my wife…’

  ‘No, don’t, don’t hit me…’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Anni. ‘It’s OK.’

  Phil stood there staring. Eyes never leaving Gwilym. ‘Did you? Rape my wife?’

  Gwilym shook his head. Slowly. He winced from the pain. ‘No. I… I didn’t.’ His voice was small, broken. Like a shattered ornament dropped from a great height. It could be repaired, but it would never be the same again.

  ‘Then why would she think that?’ Phil and Anni both stared at Gwilym.

  ‘Because I… I maybe let her think it.’

  ‘Maybe let her think it?’

  ‘All right…’ Gwilym held up his hands as if surrendering. ‘I did. I… let her think I… that we’d had sex.’

  ‘Why would you do that, Hugo?’ said Anni, her voice dangerously calm.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Phil, more overtly angry, ‘why?’

  ‘Because I… I was jealous of her…’

  Phil and Anni shared a look. ‘Jealous?’ said Phil. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she… I wanted to wind her up. Get her to, to work with me. On my book.’

  ‘Your book?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve only ever written about deviants. Studied them. She had… Well. She’s confronted them. Faced them. First hand. And yes. I was jealous.’ His face twisted as his words became more bitter. ‘She came into the department and it was like she was a star. Yes, a star. The real deal. And I was just…’

  ‘A fake?’ suggested Anni.

  ‘That’s what she made me feel, yes. Fake. So I thought, right. Right, you bitch. I’ll have you.’

  Phil felt unsteady. His vision was wavering, turning red-tinged. His anger was rising. ‘And did you?’ he asked. ‘Have her?’

  Gwilym looked down. Shook his head once more. ‘No. I… I couldn’t.’

  ‘What stopped you?’ asked Anni.

  ‘She… she’d borne a child. Another man’s child. Not mine. And I… I couldn’t do that. Not when… No.’ His face twisted once more, in disgust this time.

  Anni looked at Phil. Her face was as blank as her voice was calm. Both dangerous signs, he knew. ‘Hugo has been explaining his little hobby to me while I was waiting for you to get here,’ she said.

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘He likes to groom a student, preferably an impressionable one, and have sex with her. Forcibly, if he has to. That’s why Marina contacted me. She stole a glass from his kitchen. I had it analysed. Flunitrazepam. Rohypnol, to the layman. He likes to get a girl out of it and rape her. And if she gets pregnant, that’s a bonus. Then he forces her to have an abortion. Then…’ Anni shrugged, ‘he drops her. Seduces, rapes, manipulates, impregnates, then abandons. All because he can. What a charmer.’

  ‘When you say it like that,’ said Gwilym, tea towel back to his head again, ‘it sounds horrible.’

  ‘Whichever way you say it it sounds horrible,’ said Phil. He moved across the floor so that he stood directly over Gwilym. ‘You’ve never seen a deviant, is that what you said?’

  Gwilym nodded once more. Winced.

  ‘You never looked in a fucking mirror, then?’

  Phil grabbed him so hard and so fast that he dropped the tea towel, ice bouncing all over the floor.

  ‘Phil, don’t…’

  He grasped the front of Gwilym’s dressing gown, screwed it so tight he had trouble breathing.

  ‘It all makes sense now,’ said Phil, to himself as much as to Gwilym. ‘Everything makes sense. The way she’s been recently. How she didn’t want to be touched. By a man. By me. Because she thought she had been raped by a piece of shit like you…’

  He twisted the dressing gown even tighter. Something ripped. Gwilym whimpered.

  ‘Phil, boss, please…’

  Anni’s hands were on him, trying to pull him away from Gwilym’s neck. Phil blinked and, as if seeing her for the first time, took his hands away. He pushed Gwilym back down on to the sofa. Gwilym shouted out in pain as his head hit the back of it.

  ‘So,’ said Phil, once he had regained control of himself, ‘what’s happened? Where is Marina? And why am I here?’

  ‘I… I don’t know where she is,’ said Gwilym. He went on to tell him about Maddy and her boyfriend and how they’d taken his research material and his book. He seemed to be more upset by that, thought Phil, than anything else.

  ‘And where’s Marina?’ he asked again.

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly…’

  ‘She said she was on her way here, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Following those two. They do that to him’ – she pointed at Gwilym’s head – ‘then disappear. And Marina’s car is outside. Not good.’

  ‘No,’ said Phil. ‘Not good.’

  He took his phone out, called her number.

  ‘I tried that,’ said Anni. ‘No reply.’

  It went to voicemail. He left a message. Turned back to Gwilym. ‘So who are these people? You said Maddy?’

  ‘Maddy Mingella. My…’

  ‘Your ex,’ said Anni.

  He nodded. ‘Yes. My ex. And her new boyfriend, I presume.’

  ‘D’you know him? Recognise him?’

  ‘He was a student. I’d seen him before. He said he’d worked on the book. One of the researchers.’

  ‘Name?’

  Gwilym made a useless gesture. ‘I… I can’t… I don’t know.’

  ‘Who will know?’

  ‘Joy Henry. Departmental administra
tor. The records should be in the department.’

  ‘Then why are we still here?’ said Phil, moving fast towards the door.

  92

  T

  he Lost and Found on Bennetts Hill was just a short walk from where Khan had met Parsons. It was an imposing Victorian building, in an area that had once been Birmingham’s financial district. The buildings had all been sold off to developers, and most of them had been turned into pubs and restaurants. This one was no exception.

  It was divided up like a Victorian house. A conservatory, parlour, dining room-cum-library, complete with fake bookshelf wallpaper. The place was doing a brisk pre-Christmas, post-shopping trade. Sperring flashed his warrant card, told the waitress they needed somewhere a little more private.

  She opened a massive wooden door with ‘The Boardroom’ stencilled on it in gold lettering. Inside was a long table made of highly polished wood with leather armchairs around it. A huge Victorian map dominated one wall. There were paintings and reclaimed knick-knacks around, giving the room an ‘ironic’ Victorian style.

  Sperring waving away the waitress’s offer of refreshments. He told Parsons’s bodyguard to wait outside, told Parsons to sit down. He did so. Sperring sat opposite him. Khan, who hadn’t spoken or been spoken to on the journey there, sat one seat away from Sperring.

  ‘So,’ said Sperring when they were settled, ‘you were going to tell me about Ben.’

  Parsons looked like a defeated man. A flash of desperation shot across his eyes as he briefly considered trying to lie his way out, but Sperring spotted it, stared him down. Parsons began talking.

  ‘Ben,’ he said, ‘was my son.’

  ‘You had two, as I remember,’ said Sperring.

  ‘Yeah, and now I’ve got one.’ He sighed. Looked and sounded genuinely grief-stricken. ‘Ben died. Murdered.’ He looked up, anger back in his eyes. ‘And none of you lot did a fucking thing about it.’

  Sperring frowned. ‘Wait a minute… Did I hear something about this? Yeah, think I did. Few years ago now?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Parsons.

  ‘Yeah.’ Sperring nodded. ‘Remember now. Wannabe gangster. Threw his weight around. Got knifed. The thug life claims another one.’

  Parsons slammed the table. ‘He was my son! And my heir. I was grooming him. He was going to take over everything from me. Make his old man proud, he was.’

  ‘You mean everything that was left of your bent empire,’ said Sperring. ‘I presume you’re not talking about the letting agency. Or maybe you are. Maybe that’s all you’ve got left.’

  Parsons opened his mouth, ready to argue, but changed his mind. Looked down at the table instead. ‘I had two sons,’ he said, voice low and confessional. ‘Ben and Grant. Ben was the loud one, everybody’s mate, well loved…’ He drifted off in a reverie for a few seconds, then came back. ‘Grant, he’s… quieter.’ It was clear from the expression on his face that he didn’t view his other son in the same way. ‘Quiet, yeah. But clever, you know? University and that.’ He spoke the word like it was as distant and foreign to him as Burkina Faso.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Sperring.

  ‘Birmingham. Didn’t want to go far from his family.’

  ‘So what happened to Ben?’ asked Sperring, with an expression that said he knew the story but was waiting to hear Parsons’s version of it.

  ‘He made somebody angry. There was a falling-out.’

  ‘Way I heard it, he stiffed someone on a drugs deal.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Parsons, anger simmering once more. ‘It was a business deal that went wrong. I told him to make it up, put it right, be friends, be big enough to say sorry and move on, but he wouldn’t. He was a… very proud boy.’ Admiration shone in Parsons’s eyes.

  ‘And?’ said Sperring, prompting.

  ‘He was killed,’ said Parsons, the words bringing an end to the wistfulness. ‘Machete.’ He stared across the table, finger pointing. ‘And you did nothing about it. None of you.’

  ‘And I’m sure you co-operated fully with the police. I’m sure you were a model citizen, trying to help us do our job. Told us everything you knew. Gave us every encouragement.’

  Parsons fell silent.

  ‘So this other son,’ said Sperring, keeping the conversation going, ‘what happened to him?’

  93

  M

  arina sat on the floor, exhausted. She didn’t know how long she had been in the room. No one had come to see them, or if they had done they had been very quiet about it. And she was still trying to get Maddy’s restraints off her.

  Her nails had broken and her fingers felt raw from trying to work the thick leather strap free. But she had kept going until eventually she had to stop.

  ‘Need a rest…’

  They had taken it in turns, tried everything. Back to back; one sitting, one standing; one lying, one crouching on top. Anything and everything that might help. And nothing had. They were no further forward.

  Marina was starting to feel as desperate as Maddy now. She wanted to scream, shout, kick out. But she had swallowed all that, tamped it down. For Maddy’s sake. If she lost it, the girl would fall to pieces. And that was the last thing either of them needed.

  Marina sighed. ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘I’ve had an idea.’

  Maddy didn’t answer. Marina assumed she was listening, so continued.

  ‘We’ve been doing this all wrong. Ben didn’t take my phone off me. It’s still in my jeans pocket.’

  ‘So?’ said Maddy, her voice holding no hope at all. ‘You can’t reach it. Can’t see to call. You may as well not have it.’

  ‘Can’t see at the moment. But these blindfolds feel different to the wrist restraints. I think we might be able to get them off.’

  ‘How?’

  Marina caught the desperate note of hope in the girl’s voice. Hoped she could back up her words with actions.

  ‘Well, let’s think about this. If I lie on the floor and you sit with your back to me and your hands level with my head… Let’s try it.’

  Marina lay on the floor. It felt cold, smelled musty, unpleasant. If I could see it, she thought, I probably wouldn’t do this. She felt Maddy shuffle along the floor next to her, hands working their way up her body until they reached her face.

  ‘You there yet?’

  ‘Nearly… Yes. I can feel the blindfold.’

  ‘What’s it made of? Is it leather? Something like that?’

  Marina felt hands probing her face. ‘No, it’s… some kind of cloth.’ Working their way round the back of her head. ‘Tight, though. He’s tied it tight.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marina, ‘I know. Can you get it off?’

  More probing. ‘The knot, it’s… I don’t think so. It’s too tight. I can’t get my fingers in to undo it.’ A sigh of exasperation. ‘If I could see it…’

  ‘Well you can’t. Just get hold of it as best you can and pull it upwards. Over my head.’

  ‘But… won’t that hurt?’

  ‘Yes, Maddy, it will. But lying here tied up in the dark, I think it’s the lesser of two evils. Just dig your fingers underneath, hard as you can, and pull.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  Marina felt the girl’s fingers jab roughly against her skin.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Snapped a nail. It hurts.’

  ‘It’ll grow back. Just get the blindfold off.’

  The fingers were back again. Scratching and clawing at the side of her head. Pulling, tearing. Maddy was grunting with the effort, pulling as hard as she could. It felt to Marina like someone had twisted her hair up and was trying to pull it out from the roots. She tried not to scream.

  More grunting from Maddy. More twisting.

  Then Marina felt the blindfold begin to move.

  ‘That’s it, keep going. It’s moving, it’s moving…’

  Her words encouraged the girl. She worked with renewed strength. It felt
like Marina’s head was being pulled apart. She could feel it in her eye sockets and closed her eyes as tight as she could so her eyeballs weren’t pulled out too.

  ‘Keep going,’ she managed to gasp. ‘That’s it…’

  With a final surge of strength, Maddy managed to pull the blindfold clear of Marina’s head. The force of it knocked her face forward on to the floor.

  ‘You did it! You did it! Well done…’

  Marina was gasping, sucking in great lungfuls of air, eyes screwed tight shut, willing the pain to go. It did eventually. And once it had, she slowly opened her eyes.

  It took a while for her to acclimatise, but once she did, she saw that they were in what seemed to be a cellar. It was dark, no overhead light. Stairs leading down towards them. The outline of a rectangle of light at the top.

  ‘What… Where are we?’ asked Maddy. ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Some kind of basement, I think,’ she said. ‘Let’s just hope we have a signal.’

  Maddy made her way back to Marina, who guided her into removing the phone from her jeans pocket.

  ‘Well done,’ she said, once she had managed it. ‘We’ll make the call first, then I’ll get your blindfold off.’

  It wasn’t easy. Maddy knelt down with the phone in her hands behind her. Marina gave her instructions on how to open it; whereabouts to touch on the screen, which numbers to press, what they would activate. One good thing, she noticed: there was a signal.

  There were two missed calls. One from Anni, one from Phil.

  ‘Right,’ said Marina . ‘Let’s return this…’

  94

  ‘

  H

  e took it bad,’ said Parsons. He’d always been a bit… sensitive. But this sent him over the edge. Gave him a breakdown. Had to leave university. Couldn’t cope. But we looked after him. Cheryl, she was good to him.’

  Parsons spoke about his other son without warmth or conviction. Sperring could imagine what it must have been like for the boy. Ron Parsons was the kind of man who regarded a breakdown as a sign of weakness. The same with sensitivity, he reckoned. If the kid had been like that, his upbringing with a father like Ron Parsons would have been hell.