by Susan Hill
‘No, it’s urgent that I see him today.’
‘I’ll get back to you, Chief Inspector, but I’ll need to know something of what it’s regarding.’
‘Just tell him it’s highly confidential and sensitive.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ the Chief’s secretary said wearily, ‘but I can’t promise – he’s got one hell of a week.’
Rolph was in the Chief’s office at twenty past five, for an appointment at half past, but Kieron Bright was delayed, having been asked to meet a government minister who was visiting the county, and it was well after six before he appeared, briskly apologising.
‘I can’t give you more than ten minutes, I’ve got to go home and change and be straight out to a dinner. But I’m sure you can give me a digest in less than that.’
Austin Rolph had not liked the previous Chief, privately because she was a woman but publicly because he felt she was soft. He had hoped for a senior male figure as her successor, and got Bright, considerably younger than him and, as he had quickly decided, too full of himself. But when Bright had appointed him acting head of Lafferton CID in Serrailler’s absence, he had changed his mind.
He told him about the rape case in succinct detail, waiting for the other man’s startled reaction when Richard Serrailler’s name was mentioned. There was none.
‘We have a delicate problem, as I’m sure you agree, sir.’
‘You could have sent me this stuff by email,’ was all the Chief replied.
‘Well, hardly, sir, with respect … emails aren’t totally confidential.’
‘Mine are, though my secretary sees them, but that’s not my point. Even supposing someone intercepted this one, which is a bit cloak-and-dagger, what precisely is the problem?’
Rolph was caught off guard for a second.
‘With respect –’
‘What you’re thinking is that because the accused happens to be the father of a detective chief superintendent, and also happens to be a prominent local figure and a Freemason, this makes it somehow a special case. Different.’
‘No, but –’
‘Yes. Are you a Mason?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nor am I. But even if we were it would be irrelevant, just as the police connection is irrelevant. I don’t know what you were thinking I would say or do – maybe even hoping – but this case proceeds like any other.’
‘Sir. But ought you not to warn the Chief Super?’
‘If he were around, he would be told, and by you, or by DS Dancer, as a matter of courtesy. But he isn’t. He’ll have to find out when he gets back.’
‘From …?’
‘Time I left. Incidentally, to be clear – I don’t believe in cover-ups and on my watch the phrase “special treatment” isn’t part of the language.’
Thirty
In the market at Cahors they had bought olives, four different cheeses, fresh bread, oil, pâté, salami, farm eggs, fruit, and two small zesty lemon tarts from the patisserie in the side street. Now, they sat at a cafe table watching the throngs around every stall and the groups of old men shaking hands before sitting down to their mid-morning pastis and tiny glasses of rosé. The sun was bright. It would be much hotter by lunchtime.
‘Bliss,’ Judith said.
Richard nodded, and raised his café crème to her. ‘Why put up with an English summer? Shall we just stay as long as we feel like it?’
The South-West, like everywhere else in France, was suffering badly from the recession and a poor spring and early summer which had deterred visitors. The area was half empty, though the morning market looked as busy as ever. The small hotel they had stayed in for a couple of nights on arriving had directed them to a gîte owned by the proprietor’s son. Usually, it was booked solidly between April and October. Now, in June, there had been a rash of cancellations. It was small, airy, white-painted, pale-blue-curtained, with a stretch of garden and a pool, shady trees and a terrace. They had taken it on the spot.
Richard looked across the table. ‘Better here than in the Dordogne. Haven’t seen an English car other than our own.’
‘Everything changes. France was the land of eternal sunshine and cheap property to convert. Cheap food and drink, good restaurants, and every village had a cafe. Now? Expensive food, most villages haven’t a cafe or a shop, restaurants are poor … don’t they know any meat but duck?’
‘And the weather has only just bucked up. Do we still love France?’
‘Of course, but I could never live here.’
‘Expats? No.’ He suddenly patted the pocket of his linen jacket, took out his phone and checked the screen.
‘Is there any signal here?’
‘Not bad. None to speak of at the gîte.’
‘Have you sent a message to Cat? She’d probably like to know where we are and what we’re doing … and that we’re both fine.’
‘Why wouldn’t we both be fine? You’re not likely to suffer any after-effects of that damned bug, you know.’
‘No.’ Judith looked at him for a long moment. But it was all right. It was as if a switch had been thrown and he was again the Richard she had loved and married, occasionally brusque, occasionally silent, but otherwise good company, funny. And loving.
There was no point in wasting a precious holiday in the French sun wondering about the other Richard.
‘Have you brought your phone?’
‘It’s in my bag. Not sure if there’s any battery life though, I do tend to forget about it. Why?’
‘No particular reason. But you’re right – being permanently available is a bad thing. People become surgically joined to these damn things.’
‘Don’t switch yours off as well, Richard. There are always the children.’
‘The children.’
‘Oh, I know – not one of them under forty. Still … you haven’t heard from Simon?’
‘Don’t expect to. Simon never bothers to contact me – and especially not when he’s gone underground.’
He got up and held out his hand to her. ‘Let’s stroll into the covered market and buy one of those fresh pizzas and some salad. Nice simple food and a good bottle of St-Emilion.’
Judith took his hand.
She woke to find the white muslin curtain at the bedroom window blowing gently into the room on a faint breeze. It was half past six and the afternoon had been hot. They had swum, eaten, gone to bed, slept. Now, she was on her own. She went to the window. Richard was sitting in a deckchair in the shade of the terrace reading. His phone was on the small table beside him.
She had not realised how worried he must be about Simon, though she was fully aware that he would never admit to it or show it, but he was clearly anxious for some news, even just a quick ‘I’m fine’.
She made citron pressé with ice and went outside. Richard glanced up and closed his book over his forefinger to keep the place. The gîte had several shelves of paperbacks left by previous visitors, mainly in English, and he had found Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, a novel he had enjoyed greatly the first time round. Cat and Judith had loved it too, Simon had not.
‘Any news darling?’
‘What do you mean, any news? What about?’
‘Sorry, don’t bark at me. I was just wondering.’
‘I don’t like being interrogated.’
‘Richard …’ She handed him the drink. ‘Enjoy this. Don’t let’s spoil the day.’
He frowned but then raised his glass to her. ‘Quite right. I could stay here for a long time.’
‘While the weather lasts. I think I’ll swim again in a little while.’
She closed her eyes and turned her face to the late-afternoon sun. Happy. Yes. Probably. More than for some months, certainly.
Let this last. Let it last.
She shivered slightly.
Thirty-one
Walking to village.
He put the envelope on the kitchen table. It was still early, but the text had come through half an hour ago. Judith
was still asleep and he moved about quietly, without opening the shutters, anxious to be down the slope and away long before she woke.
It would be hot later but now the sky was pale with a haze on the horizon. Richard struck across the track which formed part of the Santiago di Compostela route and saw a party of pilgrims a little way ahead, backpacks, faded shorts, heavy boots, cotton hats. As he neared them, he saw the scallop shell of the pilgrim hanging from each backpack.
‘Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour.’
He passed them, raising his hand, then went off the track into an area of scrub and gorse and stopped beside a single tree. From here he looked out over the fields towards the village, far below. It was the nearest point for a good mobile phone signal.
The text had read: Dr Richard Serrailler, please contact Lafferton Police Station as soon as possible.
Shelley Pendleton had reported him then. It was just conceivable that the text was about Simon and his secrets but he could not risk calling in to find out.
Well, he would simply not reply. He would switch his phone off and ignore it all, though he knew this was not sensible, was the action of a man in a panic and with something to hide.
He checked the time the text had come in. Allowing for slow communications and the hour’s time difference, it was perhaps not too late to send an apparent auto-reply – though he did not know if mobiles, like computers, could be set to do such a thing.
Worth the risk.
Dr Richard Serrailler is abroad on holiday. Messages will not be picked up at this time.
He pressed ‘Send’, then stood looking down the valley. The sun was up now. The little file of pilgrims was wending its way down the track and onwards, onwards, to Santiago de Compostela. He wished he could join them.
Thirty-two
Tim was a good cook. She was a lousy cook. Tim was generous, too, more than happy to get in from a late appointment showing spoiled clients round a mansion thirty miles away, drive back in terrible traffic, and immediately prepare supper including a starter. Tonight, he had made a dish of cold prawns, smoked salmon and gem lettuce with his own recipe French dressing, a chicken breast curry with almonds, and brought out some of the marmalade ice cream he had concocted the previous weekend. Shelley had managed most of the fish, by dint of taking very small pieces into her mouth and washing them down with her wine, but when he had set down the curry, one of her favourite dishes, her throat seemed to have closed and been stitched up and she could not swallow any of it. Tim was easy-going, did not take offence, looked sympathetic.
‘You haven’t picked up that damn tummy bug everyone and his wife have had? Poor Shell – if so, go to bed, I’ll bring you some iced water and you can just try and sleep it off.’
It was not a bug. Her stomach was as it had been for the past nine days – churning, nauseous, unable to digest food, but not because of any virus.
‘I’m sorry – it’s always so delicious. You are good.’
‘Go on – bed.’
‘No … Tim, I haven’t got a bug.’
He put the plates together and took them into the kitchen. Then he sat down at the table again.
‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘You know.’
‘This stuff about Richard Serrailler?’
‘Stuff. Yes, if you like, call it “stuff”. He raped me.’
‘Darling, you know what I –’
‘“Darling, you know what I” … You know what I said, Tim. He raped me. Not possibly, not maybe I was drunk, not perhaps it was consensual sex. Rape!’
Tim reached out and offered to refill her wine glass but she put her hand over it.
‘What’s wrong with you that for some reason you can’t – won’t – believe me? I know there are men who stand up for their mates when the mates have had “a bit of you know what” where they shouldn’t, but you are not that kind of man … I have never, ever said this sort of thing before, have I?’
‘Of course not.’
‘No. So why would I suddenly invent a story about being raped in a hotel cloakroom?’
‘I didn’t say you had.’
‘More or less. You said I was imagining it, you said I’d had too many glasses of wine and maybe invited it … you said …’
‘No, no, Shelley, I didn’t. It’s only that – well, “rape.” … it’s a violent word.’
‘It was a violent act. I felt like a tart in an alleyway and I am not. I am so not. And even if I had been, tarts can be raped too, did you know that?’
‘Of course they can’t.’
‘Tim, they can. They can. Just because of what they do –’
‘Precisely because of what they do.’
‘If you’d heard what …’
‘What? Heard what? When?’
She looked at her hand, moving about on the edge of the table, twitching, not in her control.
‘Shelley, tell me. If you want me to take this seriously, you can’t just sit there.’
She sat there. Tim looked distraught but she felt removed from it, locked in her resolve not to be dismissed, patronised, disbelieved or talked out of what she knew was the truth.
‘Listen, if you say that is what happened then I believe you, of course I do. I’ll have a word with Serrailler – well, obviously –’
‘Excuse me, you will what? “Have a word”? What the hell does that mean? “Listen, old boy, I hear things got a bit out of hand the other night, you know what I mean – Shelley’s a bit upset, to be frank, so I thought I’d have a word, between ourselves, Mason to Mason.”’
‘Don’t joke about it.’
‘Well it sounded like a joke to me. “Have a word.”’
‘Well, what else can I do? It’s over with but he shouldn’t just walk away without getting some sort of reprimand.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, he isn’t going to. He’s not walking anywhere.’
‘What do you mean? Shelley, you mustn’t go to the police. I said this before. You’ll only show yourself up, make yourself look a fool. They’re not very nice to women who cry rape, you know.’
‘Actually, they were very nice. Extremely nice. Sympathetic and understanding and entirely …’
Tim’s eyes widened. ‘Tell me I have this wrong.’
‘You don’t.’
He got up and walked round and round the room, banging his right fist into his left palm. ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t believe it. What am I going to do?’
‘You?’
‘Yes, me. You know this will be all over Lafferton, don’t you?’ He stopped beside her and bent down, leaning his arms on the table, his face close to hers. Have you thought what effect this could have on my career? On Richard’s reputation? Has it crossed your mind in your headlong pursuit of revenge –’
She stood up so fast she knocked the chair over and it caught him on the shin.
‘This has nothing to do with revenge, this has everything to do with a man being brought to book for raping a woman. That’s all and if it gets headlines on the front page not only don’t I care, I’ll be glad, because men like that think they’re immune – you’ll “have a word” and that’s it, “naughty boy, but never mind, it won’t go any further”. But it is going further. It already has.’
Thirty-three
Simon leaned back and closed his eyes. His hands were damp, and he could feel his hair flat with sweat. It was warm – a dozen men packed into a small room and the only window locked. Emotions were always high in the group and he had relied on his own tension at concentrating on his story and on telling it with conviction to make him blend with the others. He had the basis of the legend which he and Jed had worked on so carefully. ‘When you get to it, the detail will take care of itself,’ Jed had said, ‘but the trick will be to remember that detail afterwards. Try not to give so much that it isn’t possible.’
He had told them about Johnno Miles’s attraction to small girls, from the time he was a teenager, and how he had at first been puzzled by it, t
hen perturbed, how he could never talk to anyone at all but had to keep the secret locked up inside himself, which caused him great stress and anxiety. He had told them how he had learned there were thousands of others like him out there, and how he had started to make contact, but very warily. And then the Internet had come to help him, as it had helped them all, and opened an Aladdin’s cave of websites, forums, secret meeting places online. Shared information and assistance had converted him from a solitary, troubled paedophile, into an active, even aggressive one. He had told them that he had begun to believe children could be groomed to enjoy abuse, that sex with children had been a part, often an accepted part, of life in past civilisations and that as long as you stuck to certain rules, there ought to be no shame in it.
He told them how he had joined groups of like-minded men. He told how he had converted thought and desire to action. He told about the first time he had had misgivings, because of the reaction of the child, and from there how he had tried to control his behaviour and failed, how he had started to ask himself if he had to stay as he was, missing out of normal adult relationships and even marriage and a family.
He had told his story so well that he found himself shaking, and having to stop and take deep breaths before going on. He had started to sweat and a couple of times the therapist had suggested he take a break, have a glass of water. Adrian had patted him on the shoulder.
He felt drained and exhausted but he could not relax. He had to be wary, watch himself, remind himself all the time except when he was alone in his room that he was Johnno Miles. He was beginning to understand Johnno’s complex personality, his motivation and, above all, his self-deception.
He felt as if he had sat there with his eyes closed for a very long time. The room had gone quiet as they digested his story and thought out their responses.
‘Did you honestly believe all that about kids enjoying the abuse? Did you? Let’s face it, what we’ve done is bad in every way but pretending it’s OK is like – like pretending women enjoy being raped. I know because that’s what I told myself.’
