by Conrad Jones
“Is there any evidence of the use of Rohypnol, Miss Smythe?” the clerk asked, raising her eyebrows quizzically.
“No. Too much time elapsed between the rape and the reporting of it.”
“Alleged rape,” Margaret Bangor-Jones objected.
“We’re not in court yet!” Carol Smythe retorted.
“Quite, save the legal jousting for the trial, please, Ms Bangor-Jones,” the clerk said, looking over her glasses like a headmistress scolding her class.
“Well, then, I think we must have more robust evidence to include it in the case,” she continued, looked concerned. It seemed the entire allegation hinged on proving that Sarah had been drugged against her will and then abused.
“Bottles of Rohypnol were found in the possession of Malik Shah, Ashwan Pindar and Amir Patel,” the prosecutor pointed out the evidence gathered by the police upon the arrest of the accused boys.
“I see. Okay, we’ll allow it for now,” said the clerk, the thin smile flashing briefly across her lips. “Ms Bangor-Jones, your questions, please.”
Sarah felt a chill run down her spine as the defence lawyer turned half towards her, so that she could address the clerk and Sarah simultaneously. Her face blushed red and she pulled her hands back into her sleeves as a tortoise would its head. Her father put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward protectively.
“How long had you been seeing Malik before you had sex with him?” The defence lawyer asked. Her black hair shone. She smiled warmly at Sarah, disarmingly.
“I can’t remember,” Sarah mumbled.
“I’m sure you can remember, Sarah, if you try.”
“I can’t.”
“Sarah has answered the question twice,” Carol Smythe interrupted.
“Make your point, please,” the clerk said without looking up.
“It was on your first date with him, Sarah.”
“How can you possibly know that?” Mr Bernstein was outraged. He stood up and folded his arms defiantly.
“Mr Bernstein, while I realise that this is difficult to listen to as a parent and guardian of a young girl, you must understand that we are trying to save your daughter the trauma of doing this in open court,” the defence lawyer spoke calmly and with sympathy in her tone.
“Mr Bernstein, my honourable colleague is right, however I do need you to justify that statement, Ms Bangor-Jones,” the clerk said. “How exactly can you know that?”
“I have statements from witnesses who saw Malik Shah coming out of the bedroom waving a used condom over his head and bragging, ‘I took her cherry on the first date, a hole in one!’” Ms Bangor-Jones looked embarrassed as she glanced at Mr Bernstein and his daughter. Mr Bernstein crumpled into his chair, broken and confused. “If I may continue?”
“Please do,” the clerk said, looking down at her notes. Her face had darkened to a scowl. Nobody enjoyed watching a young girl being dissected publicly, but this had to be done.
“Do you remember the night when Malik and Ashwan drove you home after a party?”
Sarah’s head stooped lower. She stared at her fingers and bit her lip. Mr Bernstein could tell by her posture and body language that Sarah knew what was coming.
“Sarah?” the clerk prompted her.
“Yes, I remember,” she whispered.
“They stopped the car near your house and you performed
oral sex on both of them,” Margaret Bangor-Jones spoke calmly. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” Sarah whispered. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her chin sunk to her chest. “Malik told me it was to prove how much I loved him, making his friend feel good. I didn’t want to.”
“Oh my god!” Mr Bernstein took a deep intake of breath as she spoke. He couldn’t get the sickening images out of his mind. Tears of anger leaked from the corners of his eyes and he wiped them away quickly.
“I do not want to make this any more painful than it is already, Sarah, but you had performed sexual acts on all of the boys that you have accused of raping you, at one time or another, prior to this allegation, had you not?”
The prosecution lawyer was aghast, as was the clerk. This revelation had come unexpectedly. Mr Bernstein sat open-mouthed as he digested the information.
“Is this true, Sarah? A simple yes or no will suffice,” the clerk said, removing her glasses. She had heard enough in five short minutes to realise that this case was going nowhere.
“Yes, it’s true, but not that night. They drugged me, and they raped me, all of them did.” Sarah’s voice was monotone, defeated.
The legal representatives looked at each other, and a silent communication passed between them. Raped or not, Sarah would never be believed in a court of law by a jury of ordinary people. The prosecution had to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that guilty was the only verdict. Sarah’s prior behaviour would make that impossible.
“I can see no point in proceeding any further with this. I’ll submit my findings to your offices and the police by finish of work tomorrow. Thank you both for your time, and thank you, Mr Bernstein. This cannot have been easy for you. I would thank your lawyer to recommend some counselling for Sarah, and your family.”
“You don’t believe her, do you?” Mr Bernstein was livid. He wasn’t sure who he was angry at. Sarah? The Crown Prosecution? Himself? How had he allowed this to happen?
“Whether I believe Sarah or not, Mr Bernstein, is irrelevant. I have to assess the evidence from both parties and gauge the probability of gaining a conviction,” the clerk removed her glasses and looked at him with a stern face. He had to face the truth, like it or not. “Sarah has given her evidence, as have the accused. You have heard some of it yourself, Mr Bernstein. If you were on a jury, could you convict beyond all reasonable doubt?”
“These animals put my son in intensive care, they cut him with a knife, and now they have raped my fourteen-year-old daughter. She is fourteen!” Mr Bernstein’s face was purple, and his jowls shook as he spoke. The veins at his temple throbbed angrily. “Are they going to get away with this?”
The room was silent. The lawyers began to pack away their files into briefcases. The clerk shook her head and stood up from her chair. She looked as if she was going to speak again, but then she thought better of it and walked hurriedly towards a door at the back of the chamber. Carol Smythe led Sarah away from the bench towards her father. The young girl looked pallid and drawn. She couldn’t look her father in the eye. Sarah kept her head down and walked past him, heading for the doors. Mr Bernstein followed her with a look of disdain on his face.
“Don’t be too hard on her, Mr Bernstein. For what it’s worth, I believe that she was drugged and abused. If it means anything to you.” Carol Smyth tried to smile.
“Your opinion is of no importance to me. It doesn’t mean anything to me at all, absolutely nothing.” Mr Bernstein turned and walked out of the courtroom. He felt like his daughter had died. He felt like he was a grieving father, pining for his innocent little girl who had somehow been lost. As they left the antechamber, the two detectives turned to face them. Mr Bernstein’s face flushed with anger. His face was like thunder.
“It didn’t go well?” Detective Sergeant Aspel asked sheepishly.
“You knew what evidence they had, contrary to Sarah’s statement?” Mr Bernstein’s voice was hushed, almost a whisper.
“We interviewed the attackers, Mr Bernstein.” Detective Wallace nodded solemnly.
“Then you knew what they would do to her in there, and yet you allowed me to take my daughter into that room, and made me sit there and listen to that?”
The detectives looked at the floor, disappointed, guilty and embarrassed all at the same time. “Mr Bernstein, we interviewed your daughter, and we interviewed her attackers. We believed Sarah’s version of events. That’s why we proceeded.”
“We’re leaving.” Mr Bernstein walked away from them and spoke to his wife. She was holding Sarah in her arms, the young girl sobbing uncontrollably. “We’re leavi
ng, now.”
“Mr Bernstein, this was always going to be difficult—” Detective Sergeant Aspel began, but he was cut short.
“Difficult?” Mr Bernstein turned to face them and his voice boomed across the waiting area. “Difficult?”
The people in close proximity fell silent and all eyes watched the drama unfolding before them. The detectives were fully aware that the eyes of the public were on them. Some of their old criminal adversaries were present, and they sniggered as they watched the officers cringing.
“Mr Bernstein, we acted with Sarah’s best interests at heart.”
“You raped her again in public. You put her in that room knowing full well what would happen.” Mr Bernstein began to shake. His voice cracked with emotion. He pointed a shaking finger towards the courtroom. “You let me take her in there, knowing she would be humiliated in front of me, her father.”
“Mr Bernstein,” Aspel tried to placate him, but he took his wife by the arm and guided his daughter through the watching crowd.
The waiting area remained silent for long minutes as the embarrassed detectives followed them at a distance.
Chapter Twenty
Malik Shah
“Do you think we endear ourselves to the people we do business with?” Malik turned angrily and waved a gloved hand around the hallway as Lana ran up the stairs. She was hysterical.
“Do you think I care?” she screamed. “Get out of my house, you animals, and if Mamood isn’t back here tomorrow, I’m calling the police, and to hell with the both of you!” The bedroom door slammed closed.
“Get changed, Ash. We need to find out who is doing this.”
An hour later, they were driving along the dock road, heading north. To their left were acres of unused dockland, silted-up canals and rusted anchor rings. On the right towered ancient warehouses, once the centre of international trade, now derelict and deserted. Malik indicated and turned his BMW off the main road, steering it between two giant grain stores. The buildings were twelve storeys high, built from chocolate-brown brick. He slowed the vehicle and turned off the headlights. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they saw two Asian men sitting in a Mercedes a few hundred yards away, down an alleyway. The driver flashed the headlights and pulled the vehicle away from the kerb, driving towards them slowly.
“We’ll find out who is fucking with us, and we’ll wipe them off the planet. Do you have the balls to do this, Ash?”
Ash looked at the approaching vehicle and swallowed hard. He recognised the two men inside it. They’d been with them since their school days. They didn’t have the IQ to help run the organisation, but they were loyal to Malik. They used them as hired muscle, stone-cold killers whom they employed when they needed to ‘disappear’ somebody. Ashwan was tired of the killing. He was tired of being on the wrong side of the law, and he was tired of Malik Shah. They were no better than the men that had killed his dealers in the blink of an eye, and kidnapped his son. He had chosen to live in this world, and financially it had been kind to him, but when you worked with vicious animals, it was easy to be bitten. For the first time in his life he wished he’d chosen a different path. Lana would never be the same again, how could she be?
“What are you going to do with Abdul’s body?” Ash was shaking as he replayed the night’s events in his mind. “I cannot involve the police. They said they would kill Mamood if I didn’t do as they said.”
“You know how it works, he’s on his way to feed the fishes tonight,” Malik replied. They disposed of bodies the same way every time. The corpses were strapped to gym weights with duct tape and then wrapped tightly in several rolls of chicken wire. The wire ensured that the weights never dropped off the body, no matter how rotten it became, and it allowed bottom feeders and crustaceans to devour the corpse through the mesh. The body of Abdul Salim would be gone in less than a month.
“You don’t know who has your son, Ashwan. I’m going to find out who they are, and then we’ll get Mamood back.”
“How can we find out who they are?”
“We’ll ask some of your enemies first-hand.” Malik turned to the road. The Mercedes was nearing.
“I don’t know what you have in mind, Malik. I’m so confused, and they said they’ll kill him if we don’t follow their orders. Where do we start? ”
“Shut up, you tart! I follow no one’s orders.” Malik was fuming. This wasn’t the first incident of this kind. Although he hadn’t realised it at the time, some of the trouble that his bookkeeper had experienced had been the beginning of something bigger, but Ashwan didn’t know that yet. Amir Patel had received blackmail demands, death threats, and his haulage company had been attacked. Malik had kept it a closely guarded secret. Any sign of weakness in this business could be fatal. Rival gangs in the city would smell blood from a mile away, and they would circle his empire like vultures, waiting for it to become weak enough to devour. Amir had asked Malik to help him, and he had made some enquiries, but they had drawn a blank. Demands for money had been made, and three tractor units had been torched as a warning. Malik had ordered Amir not to pay any monies under any circumstances. He had been convinced that the blackmailers would make a mistake, sooner or later. A week later Amir and his wife had been blown to bits at the opening day of the mosque. A coincidence? Malik didn’t believe in coincidence. Now Ashwan was being attacked. The level of violence being used was escalating, and they’d kidnapped his son. Someone was playing with fire, and people who played with fire got burnt. Malik was going to burn them himself. “Who was the last person you had an issue with?”
“What do you mean, an issue?”
“Fucking hell, Ash! Who did you last have trouble with?” Malik was becoming frustrated with Ashwan. Over the years, he had been his right-hand man, ever since school. Ash had been handy with a knife as a youth, and was quick to use one if there was trouble. As Ashwan aged however, he had mellowed, and he now avoided violence. He was becoming squeamish, and that made him a liability. Malik, on the other hand, had not tired of the violence.
“I’ve had no trouble for months, what are you getting at, Malik?”
“Listen to me. You repeat this to no one, do you understand?”
“Yes, of course I understand.”
“Amir was being blackmailed.”
“What?”
“He was blackmailed. Someone torched his lorries and demanded money. Then he received death threats, about two weeks before the bombing at the mosque.”
“I thought it was a terrorist attack?” Ashwan was stunned as he tried to process the information.
“I think someone made it look like one, to send a message to us. At least that is what I suspected, until Mamood was kidnapped and Abdul Salim was shot and dumped on your lawn. Now I’m sure that we’re being targeted. Somebody is coming after us, Ash, and they’re very clever people. ”
“I can’t think straight.”
“You need to think, Ash.”
“Nobody comes to mind that would have the audacity to attack Amir, and then kidnap my son.”
“What about that trouble in the Eagle and Child?” Malik was making reference to a minor dealer that had strayed into a pub in Ashwan’s area a few months earlier. Dealing on Ashwan’s turf was a dangerous game. Ash sent his heavies to wait for him. He was given a good beating, robbed of his drugs and his money, and then sent to hospital with his thumbs in his coat pocket. Ash’s men had used a carpet blade to remove his digits.
“Bruce Mann?” Ash said thinking about what Malik had said. “He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t dare.”
“You had his thumbs cut off, Ash. He might be coming after us.”
“He is stupid enough to have a pop at us, but this takes planning and a level of intelligence.” Ashwan whispered to his himself as he thought about it. “Do you think he would be capable of this?”
Malik smirked and shrugged his shoulders. “If you cut my thumbs off, I’d kill your kids and make you watch, just for a starter.”
“He is well connected, and he knows most of the shit that happens in the city,” Ash could see possibilities. Bruce Mann was a freelance gangster, never affiliated to any of the city’s crime families, but always around the periphery. He sold drugs and guns to teenagers: his reputation as a scumbag was well established. If he hooked up with a one of the big families, then it was a possibility that he could be responsible.
“Do you think it’s worth talking to him?” Malik smiled. There was a twinkle in his eye. Ash knew that look; it meant that Malik had a surprise up his sleeve.
“Yes, definitely, it’s worth talking to him.” Ash nodded his head repeatedly. “He may not be involved, but he may have heard who is.”
The black Mercedes pulled up next to them. Malik walked to the boot of the car and opened it. “Let’s ask him then.”
Ash looked inside the trunk at the bloodied, gagged face of Bruce Mann. He was trussed up like a chicken in a roasting tin, and from the state of his face, he had already been asked some questions. “Get in.”
Malik closed the boot and walked around to the rear passenger door. Ashwan followed him and climbed in behind his boss. It seemed obvious that Malik was already one step ahead of the game, for now anyway. Ashwan would have to trust his instincts.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Major Investigation Team – Present Day
Superintendent Alec Ramsay frowned as he headed away from his desk. He checked his appearance in a cracked mirror that clung perilously to the back of the office door. His slate-grey suit was crisp and sharp, two-buttoned with narrow lapels. He wore a fresh grey shirt, open at the neck, and he took a dark silver tie from a hook above the mirror and placed it through the collar before knotting it neatly. There was a rap at the door and he had to step back to avoid being hit in the face as it opened. Detective Inspector Will Naylor poked his handsome head around the door. His short black hair was styled and gelled into spikes.
