by Ian Mayfield
Sophia looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘There’s a lot we don’t understand,’ she said gently, noncommittally.
Lucky looked away.
‘Larissa,’ Sophia said, ‘why didn’t you tell anyone?’
It was the question she’d been dreading. She stalled. ‘About what?’
‘You carried on for a fortnight without giving the slightest hint of what you were suffering. Why, Larissa?’
Up until half a minute ago, she’d had an answer to that question. Now she just shook her head.
‘I haven’t been to the office yet,’ Sophia said, ‘but when I get there I fully expect to find a memo from somewhere on high, the AC or Professional Standards, suggesting you return to Gipsy Hill. I know Mr Applewhite would love to have you back. Help him talk down a few more suicides.’
‘Stop it,’ Lucky said.
‘I thought so.’
‘Even without all this shit,’ Lucky said, suddenly angry at her guv’nor, ‘I failed to report a crime, right? What price my career?’
‘I told you the memo would be a suggestion,’ Sophia said. ‘No more than that.’
Lucky stared at her.
‘I had the DI, Helen Wallace and Kim Oliver on the phone one after the other last night. They all know a good copper when they see one, and none of them want to lose you over this. I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get similar feedback from the DCs.’
‘Serious?’
‘Zoltan told me as far as he’s concerned, if you go Prosser’s won,’ Sophia said. ‘He’s been interviewing him.’
Lucky felt faint. ‘I thought you said - ?’
‘DCI Summerfield may be in charge,’ Sophia said, ‘but remember Prosser’s still in the frame for half a dozen other assaults, and if anyone’s going to nail him it’ll be Zoltan.’ Lucky stiffened and Sophia saw it. ‘Do you still want to press charges?’
‘What happens if I don’t?’
‘Then Zoltan’s right.’
She felt light-headed. To her great annoyance, she realised she was crying again. ‘I really thought - ’ She swore and grabbed for a tissue. Sophia waited. ‘It’s not such a big deal now,’ Lucky sighed. ‘But it was my first day. I hadn’t even had a chance to prove myself, and that bastard...’
‘Do you really feel any different?’
‘What about the disciplinary?’ She felt a sudden rush of despair. ‘I was investigating my own rape, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Is that true, though? You honestly didn’t make the connection?’
‘It was the MO.’
‘MOs change,’ Sophia nodded.
‘Don’t I fucking know it?’ Lucky felt like laughing. It was an uncomfortable, frightening feeling. ‘Lesson one in the detective handbook. What a fucking way to learn. I’m swearing too much. Sorry, guv.’
‘It’s your home. Swear all you want.’
‘So...?’
‘No discipline board.’ The DCI smiled. ‘I can promise you that. There are plenty of morons who might think you merit one, but no-one wants to be seen as that much of an arsehole.’
Barely daring to, Lucky looked her in the eyes.
‘If I have to move heaven and earth,’ Sophia said, ‘you’re staying in Special Crime.’
‘Really?’
‘As Zoltan might say,’ she shrugged, ‘“you want it written in blood?”’
Lucky found herself smiling. The guv’nor was human after all. She giggled and wiped the corner of one weeping eye with a fist. ‘Only I think I might be one of the morons.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How can I do the Job when I can’t defend myself?’ Lucky said. ‘Next time it mightn’t be just me. Next time somebody else could get hurt because I froze. It’s very nice of everybody to back me up but I can’t be a passenger and I won’t.’
Sophia looked at her for a long while before answering. ‘Kim told me about when you found Nina, what you did. That wasn’t the act of a passenger.’
‘Oh, I get blood on me so I’m a hero?’
‘Larissa, I didn’t make DCI because of my looks.’ Sophia paused and for a giddy moment Lucky was tempted to put in an appropriate response. ‘And I didn’t appoint you as a trainee for yours.’
‘I was paralytic drunk!’
‘Not so paralytic you didn’t know what you were doing. If you were going to freeze, the alcohol would just have made you do it quicker. But you didn’t. Nor did you freeze at the top of that television transmitter.’
‘I know.’ Why did people keep saying these things? Did they think it helped?
‘You were a copper on both those occasions,’ Sophia said. ‘They were both unsettling, even frightening situations, but you kept your cool and dealt with them. I doubt you even stopped to think about it.’
Lucky hugged herself and shook her head.
‘But up in your room,’ Sophia said softly, ‘the rules were different. You weren’t doing the Job. Prosser wasn’t attacking the uniform. He was attacking you. You were in your own home, a place where you should have been, well, safe as houses. You had a shock - a very personal shock. I’m not sure I would have kept my head.’
Lucky tried to stare at the guv’nor, but more tears were brimming, blurring her vision like hard rain on a windscreen. Which was ironic, because inside, for the first time in two weeks, she could feel the first faint, warm glimmer of sunlight.
Zoltan looked up to see Summerfield crossing the canteen. He carried two mugs of coffee and placed one in front of him.
‘Saw yours was empty,’ he said half apologetically, sitting opposite. He pointed. ‘Funny thing to have for lunch.’
‘What is?’
‘Kippers.’
‘It’s lox,’ Zoltan said.
‘Oh. Course. Forgot. You’re, er...’ The DCI thought better of whatever he’d been about to say. Zoltan took the coffee without thanks and sipped.
‘Will you be sitting in this morning?’
‘Yeah,’ Summerfield said. ‘Got anywhere yet?’
‘He’s still adamant.’
‘What about?’
‘More or less everything,’ Zoltan smiled. ‘Stonewalling like his life depends on it. He knows I’m holding back about Larissa Stephenson, keeps throwing her into the conversation himself, like it’s a big joke.’
‘Will he cough?’
‘Probably not.’ He pushed his half-finished plate of smoked salmon away from him and leaned back. ‘He’s not denying he did any of the rapes. He’s just not saying he did them either. Makes it difficult for us to pin him down to anything.’
‘Bastard thinks he’s clever,’ Summerfield growled.
‘How much longer should we try?’
The DCI looked at his watch. ‘Thirty-six hours is up, when, two? Give it till then, cut our losses and charge the little shit. We’ve got enough to throw at him.’
‘I want to get him for Larissa.’
‘Think I don’t?’ Summerfield glared and for once Zoltan blinked. ‘Just with her statement, the way she handled it, I don’t think we can.’
‘If we can link her to the others...’
‘Yeah, if. Bastard changed his MO so we couldn’t. Just wish I knew why. Why he didn’t take anything this time. And more to the point, I wish I knew how he could be so fucking cocksure she wouldn’t report it.’
‘He did take something.’
‘What?’
‘Same thing he took from Miranda Hargreaves, and Mrs McMinn, and all the others.’ Zoltan took off his glasses and wiped them with a cloth he’d taken from his pocket. ‘He took their spirit.’
Summerfield watched him replace his glasses and waited for him to continue.
‘Miranda Hargreaves’ life was and is music,’ Zoltan went on. ‘Jeff Wetherby’s report, music and musical instruments all over her house. I’ll bet you it was the same back when she received the visit from Bayliss and Pegley. It was obvious what was important to her. Bayliss realised that and took the flute.’
‘Her most valuable musica
l item,’ Summerfield scowled.
‘Mrs McMinn, in a sense, he destroyed her whole life. Didn’t matter that she was ninety, fragile, in her twilight years. He was going to assault her anyway.’
‘And Stephenson?’
‘Uniform,’ Zoltan said. ‘Hanging up in plain sight. Commendations on the wall. He raped her anyway. Wanted her to know her status as an officer of the law mattered nothing to him.’
Summerfield nodded. ‘None of which gets us a conviction.’
‘If only jurors possessed my deep psychoanalytical genius,’ Zoltan said sardonically, and took another gulp of coffee as an indication that he was about to change the subject. ‘How are you getting along with the Albion Street haul?’
‘Twelve complainants going back over six years, we’ve got either a positive ID on the property or a strong possible from photos.’
‘Twelve?’
‘Tip of the iceberg, you ask me.’
‘How much other stuff is there?’
‘Twenty-one bits and pieces from the loft and the garage,’ Summerfield said. ‘Mostly phallic in some way. Chances are there’s more stashed somewhere else.’
‘Tip of the iceberg,’ Zoltan murmured. He knew the same thought was going through Summerfield’s mind. Twenty-one unsolved rapes, minimum, all down to the same man. In this forensics-dominated day and age it was almost inconceivable. He shuddered the thought away. ‘Got an inventory?’
Summerfield thrust a hand into his breast pocket and slapped a folded photocopy down on the table. ‘Prosser’s little trophy cabinet.’
Expressionless behind his glasses, Zoltan read slowly through the list. ‘This last but one thing,’ he remarked. ‘Bit of a stretch to see that as phallic.’
The DCI shrugged. ‘Depends how your mind works.’
Zoltan stroked his beard. ‘How old is Lucky?’
‘Twenty-two,’ Summerfield said, puzzled. ‘But you know that.’
‘I’m being Socrates,’ Zoltan said, unsurprised at Summerfield’s blank look. ‘Youngest of the known victims by a couple of years. Young enough still to be living at home and to have a lot of childhood stuff still knocking around. You may want to direct someone,’ he said, ‘to get her on the phone and find out if she took pottery classes at school.’
This time the blank look faded quickly. Summerfield pointed to the list and said, ‘If she did, can we prove it’s hers?’
‘Quick call to Human Resources should do it.’ Zoltan grinned like a crocodile. ‘And I just can’t wait to hear what his lordship has to say about this.’
Michael Prosser’s legal representative, an articled clerk called Shinners, had been called in only this morning, in his client’s own interests but against his wishes. He was busy boning up on the case as the two policemen came in, and seemed hardly to notice them.
‘A DI and a DCI,’ Prosser said, eyebrows raised as Summerfield identified himself for the tape. ‘I am honoured. You must want summink tasty.’
‘That what you’re sitting on, Michael? Something tasty?’ Zoltan looked at him askance. Clearly he was going to be as talkative this morning as he’d been taciturn yesterday.
‘For you to prove, innit?’
‘We have proof.’
‘I been in here well over twenty-four hours,’ he challenged them. ‘Either charge me or I walk.’
‘You haven’t looked at your PACE code of practice very carefully, have you?’ Summerfield said. ‘Thirty-six, we’ve got you for. After that, if you haven’t given us the goods, we take you to a JP and ask for a remand. Anything up to, say, a week. Seven days’ questioning, Mike. We’ve got a lot to cover. Feeling up to it?’
‘Keep me here seven months if you like,’ Prosser said. ‘I ain’t giving you nothing.’
‘I’m not interested in you giving me things, Michael,’ Summerfield said. ‘You know and I know you raped those women.’
‘They wasn’t raped.’
‘Weren’t they?’
‘What I hear.’
‘It might not be rape in law,’ Summerfield said, ‘but if using those implements the way you did isn’t rape, I’m a Chinaman.’
‘What implements?’
‘Mr Schneider’s been over this with you, Michael,’ Summerfield said. ‘So far we’ve found twenty-one mostly phallic-shaped souvenirs hidden in your house and garage. Some of them have already been identified by their owners.’
Twenty-one terrified women, Zoltan thought, all scarred for life because you couldn’t just burgle. You had to go on a dominance trip.
‘And I know, you know, you can’t prove shit,’ Prosser countered. ‘That stuff’s all just junk. You won’t find my prints on none of it.’
‘No? Bit strange, isn’t it? Found in your loft; you’re the only man in the household. Don’t make your poor old mum go up there, do you?’
Prosser sneered.
‘I doubt it,’ Summerfield said. ‘Because I dare say we won’t find her prints either.’
‘Maybe not. And you sure as fuck won’t find them women’s.’
‘Because you wiped them off.’
‘Shit’s been up there since before we moved in. You can’t prove none of them women even touched them.’
‘We don’t need proof, Michael.’
It was Zoltan who spoke. He’d been brooding, nudging the interview on, letting Summerfield build up a head of steam.
‘There’s a term in law: “beyond reasonable doubt”. Ever heard of that? It means even if the prosecution hasn’t got hard proof, you can still be convicted on circumstantial evidence. For God’s sake, Michael, do you seriously think you can get away with rape just because you didn’t do it in front of a hundred witnesses with your name and address tattooed across your bum? So far we’ve reunited twelve women with items from your collection they say are theirs. You can read their statements. Twelve, so far. More to come, I shouldn’t wonder. No jury,’ Zoltan smiled and shook his head, ‘is going to swallow twelve coincidences.’
‘That little lot,’ Summerfield added, ‘you’re looking at life.’
‘No remission, if we can match up all twenty-one.’
It was unfortunate that the smirk finally disappeared from Michael Prosser’s face at the same moment his legal representative chose to come to life. Shinners told him, ‘Mike, this jury exists inside the officers’ minds and nowhere else. Don’t let them badger you.’
Prosser nodded, his expression thoughtful. ‘Mind you, don’t want me for them ones, do you?’
‘Don’t I now?’ Zoltan savoured the moment. He’d lost count of how often Prosser had tried to goad him. Well, this time...
‘You want me for Stephenson. And you won’t get me ‘cause I was never there. I told you what really happened. I know what a jury’s gonna think, her word against mine.’
‘Fingerprints,’ Zoltan said. Without warning he deposited a polythene-wrapped lump of crudely shaped, glazed brown clay on the table. ‘I don’t think you’ve been formally introduced. Mike, meet Weezle.’
‘You what?’ Prosser peered at the thing with scorn. ‘Think you’re gonna find my prints on that, you’re – ’
‘You remember,’ Zoltan interrupted him chattily. ‘You liked him so much you took him from Larissa Stephenson’s bedroom after you’d raped her. Obviously you weren’t about to cut off your own penis and frame it, so you chose Weezle because you guessed, rightly, he was precious to her.’
‘Get real.’
‘This is real, Michael.’
‘It’s a lump of fucking mud. Could’ve come from anywhere.’
Zoltan picked Weezle up. ‘Larissa Stephenson made this with her own hands when she was twelve years old. It doesn’t matter a toss whether you wiped off every fingermark and every speck of dirt, because her fingerprints are all over this clay where it set hard ten years ago.’ Prosser’s eyes were cast down. ‘Now you can tell us your version of events any way you like. This little chap,’ he brandished Weezle one last time before putting him back under the t
able, ‘is going off to Forensic, and if they find prints that match Larissa Stephenson’s, it puts you in her bedroom, it renders her account of things more believable than yours, and we’ll charge you with raping her.’
He sat back, folding his arms. Prosser didn’t move.
‘Now,’ Summerfield said, ‘how about saving us all some time?’
‘Fuck off,’ Michael Prosser snapped.
It was something HOLMES excelled at, putting two and two together to make five. It was why, as far as Kim Oliver could see, no computer would ever take the place of human detectives on a major enquiry. Real live coppers must use their knowledge, experience and intuition to discern when the electronic sleuth really did have something and when it was in cloud cuckoo land. That said, this particular copper wasn’t sure, at the moment, what HOLMES was telling her.
She stared at the screen, feeling helpless. Like most of the team, she was finding it hard to focus. Lucky’s rape, on top of the attack on Nina, had cast a pall of shock over them all. Rumours of Special Crime being wound up were creeping round the nick. Everyone knew the right body was in the frame but the current whisper was that any charges were far from certain. With AC Parmiter breathing down their necks, they needed a result badly.
Giving up, she clicked print and went to seek higher counsel. Sophia listened patiently while she explained what HOLMES had found. ‘I really, really dunno if it’s anything. This kid two streets over from Ballards Way, coming home from a night out clubbing, says he saw a bloke get in a minicab and ask to go to Ladyhall Road. And we checked and there’s no Ladyhall Road in Greater London so we figured he’d misheard, right? But then Grace Carmichael reported being threatened in Ladywell Road, Lewisham, yeah? And I’ve just had a word with Quaife’s probation officer. This heavy metal band he’s been humping gear for, they’re called Ladywell.’
‘Did the probation officer tell you anything more about the band?’
Kim shrugged. ‘Not even names, guv. Apparently this was just casual work, cash in hand. Till he got summink better, I guess.’
Thoughtful, Sophia examined her fingernails for a moment. ‘Do you know of this... Ladywell?’
‘No, guv.’ Kim was faintly amused that Sophia thought metal might be her bag. ‘Thousands of small-time bands like that.’
