by Sarah Hilary
Most of this Noah had picked up from the PC who’d interviewed Julie after the assault. This was the first time he and Marnie had been on the Edmonton estate. A patrol car was parked close to Julie’s house, two uniformed officers inside. In case Vokey made an appearance, and because the press were demanding a police presence, proof that they were taking his escape and the threat to public safety seriously. The two uniformed officers had a flask of tea propped on the dashboard. One of them was reading a newspaper, both looked bored rigid.
Julie answered the door in jeans and trainers, an oversized brown T-shirt. Her hair was cut short and bleached blonde, dark at the roots. Her face was heart-shaped and would have been beautiful but for the scowl. ‘Yeah?’ she said to Noah’s badge. ‘And?’
‘I’m DS Jake, this is DI Rome. Is your Victim Support Officer here?’
‘Told her not to bother.’ Her stare travelled to the patrol car and back. ‘Didn’t see the point. Haven’t seen her in ages, in any case.’
‘Can we come in?’ Marnie asked.
Julie sighed through her teeth. ‘I’ve twenty minutes, then a bus to catch.’
She was going to work, despite the fact her assailant was being hunted by the police. Michael Vokey knew this address. Thirteen months ago he’d seen Julie working in the chippy and followed her home after her shift ended. Even so, she’d refused the offer of a safe house for her and Natalie.
‘Thanks,’ Marnie said. ‘We won’t keep you long.’
They followed Julie to an open-plan room with a kitchen at one end and two black pleather sofas at the other. Khaki curtains were drawn at the window, letting in a little muddy light. Natalie was lying on the floor, drawing with crayons on a pad of paper. She wore denim dungarees over a green T-shirt, her hair bunched in pink plastic bobbles. Noah knew Marnie would have preferred not to talk in front of the child but with no VSO, they had little choice.
Julie cleared space on the sofas and sat. Her eyes went to Natalie then came back to Marnie and Noah. She wore no make-up but her skin, clear and smooth, didn’t need it. Hazel eyes ringed with gold around the irises. Cat’s eyes, Vokey had called them.
He’d sat on her, on the floor where Natalie was lying. Julie’s hair had been long then, honey-blonde, her natural colour. She’d been in shorts and a vest top, her version of pyjamas. The attack took place after dark. Julie’s mum had babysat Nat, but she went home when Julie returned from work. Julie went up to kiss Natalie then settled to watch TV. She’d worked a long shift and was knackered, but she needed to unwind before she could sleep. She’d thought the knock on the door was her mum coming back because she’d forgotten something, she was always forgetting stuff. When she opened the door, Vokey pushed his way inside, shoved her to the floor and sat on her. Julie, terrified of waking Natalie, had concentrated so hard on not screaming that she’d bitten through her tongue. Ten minutes later Natalie woke anyway. She came downstairs to find her mum lying under a man with long, dirty hair tied in a ponytail like a girl. Mum was making a funny noise. Natalie thought she was laughing, but she wasn’t. There wasn’t any blood, but the carpet under Mum’s head was wet from spit and tears. She was making a really funny noise.
‘Have you caught him yet?’ Julie looked at Marnie and then at Noah. ‘Have you?’
‘Not yet,’ Marnie said.
Julie hissed. ‘Knew it.’ She folded her arms.
Natalie looked up at her mum. Her face was round and blank, with pale eyes and a nub of nose. She’d been chewing crayons, yellow wax on her lower lip, drawing a picture of her mum at the seaside, sand under a fiery sky. She returned to her picture, rubbing the yellow crayon on the page.
‘I’ve been yelled at in the street. I’ve had, “Julie, we hear your boyfriend’s out!” The papers’ve been round wanting to know if I feel safe with him out there. Bad enough when I was in court, but that’s what I had to do to put him away, to know we’re safe. Safe. They told me that’s what I had to do.’ She watched her daughter rigidly. ‘This’s what I get for making a spectacle of myself for those cows sat on the steps every day, waiting for me to come out of court. Shouting abuse, asking why I was stupid enough to let him in here, like I’d wanted it. “Got yourself some attention, Julie? Seen you in the papers, how much d’they pay you? Barely even touched you and you’re front page news. Imagine if he’d raped you.” Like I could’ve made more money if he’d left marks instead of just—’ She broke off, twisting her lips shut.
Natalie glanced up, but didn’t speak. Her mum said, ‘Finish your picture, there’s a good girl.’ She fixed her stare on Marnie. ‘So why’re you here if you’ve not got him?’
‘We wanted to let you know we’re doing everything we can to find him—’
‘Yeah? That’s why you’re here? Think he might be hiding under my bed?’ She showed her teeth. ‘About as much use as those two out there in the car, stuffing sandwiches. How’s this finding him? You just want to show your faces so I can’t complain I’m being left alone.’ She drew her knees together, keeping her arms folded, shoulders stiff with hostility. ‘No chance of that. I can’t walk down the street without getting stared at, can’t walk her to school.’ She looked down at her daughter. ‘It’s a joke. “When’s the compensation coming, Julie?” I’ve had boys not much bigger than her offering to get me more compensation. “I’ll do you properly, love, get you the good money.” And you’re round here to make me feel better? It’s a joke.’
‘It’s not a joke to us. We’re taking it very seriously.’ Marnie paused. ‘One of our problems is the mugshot we have isn’t a great likeness. Everyone tells us he doesn’t look like his photo—’
‘He doesn’t look like anyone,’ Julie hissed. ‘Those pictures in the paper? Half of them make him look like a rock star. I told your lot that, spent hours doing the photo fit but it was nothing like him. “We’ve not captured him,” that’s what your expert said. Funny when you think about it. We’ve not captured him. You want to know what happened last week?’ She fixed her eyes on Natalie. ‘A boy in her class offered to sell her a gun. Not even a knife – a gun. He meant it too, little git. “Then you can take care of your mum next time,” like there’s not enough shit in her head already. That’s what it’s like round here in case you didn’t know, that’s what it means that we look after our own. Knives and guns, and throwing a party on the compensation.’
Her anger fizzed in the room. Natalie moved her feet out of the way of it, rubbing harder with her crayon on the page.
‘In your statement,’ Noah said, ‘you spoke about how much he talked. Did he say anything that might suggest a place he could’ve gone, now?’
‘He didn’t talk about places. What, you think we were chatting about his holiday plans? You’d be better off asking those stupid cows where he’s gone. You know what he said because it’s all in my statement, and the court records. Every word of it, what I put myself through, cross-examination and the rest, to put him behind bars. For Nat’s sake as much as anything. I laid it on thick, just like they told me. Cried on cue, made a show of myself. Those questions in court, being made to feel like a bad mum, a stupid slag, and for what?’ She bent to pick up one of Natalie’s crayons, rolling it hard in her hand. ‘My lawyer telling me to go on about how scared I was even though he hadn’t got a knife or a gun and he never touched Nat. I did as I was told, but guess what? He’s out there right now because some snot-nosed kid didn’t do his job, couldn’t figure out what sort of man he was dealing with. I went through all that and for what?’
Her voice shook with tears. Natalie abandoned her colouring and climbed to her feet, coming to her mum’s side. She leaned into Julie, not speaking, her eyes empty and round.
Julie stiffened. ‘Finish your drawing. Gran’ll be here soon.’
Natalie tipped forward, butting her mother’s arm with her head.
‘No.’ Julie moved out of range, hardening her tone. ‘Finish your drawing.’
Natalie didn’t make a sound. She returned to the
same spot on the carpet, sitting cross-legged next to her sketchpad. Noah said, ‘May I see?’ He looked to Julie for confirmation. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Don’t make a fuss,’ Julie told him tightly. ‘That’s when she gets upset, when you make a fuss.’
She wasn’t ignoring her daughter. She was trying to hold it together, her fragile family unit, putting all her energy into holding onto this. She couldn’t go to work if Natalie was upset, and she had to go to work to pay the bills and keep a roof over their heads. Other people had options, people like Ruth Hull and Lara Chorley, but Julie just had this. She had to keep it together.
Noah stayed where he was. He smiled at Natalie, but she stared dead ahead. After a beat she reached for a red crayon and added more colour to her picture.
Keys sounded in the front door, knuckles rapping.
A woman’s voice called out, ‘Just me.’
‘Gran’s here.’ Julie stood, reaching for a blue fleece on the back of the sofa. ‘I can’t be late, I’m the one opening up tonight.’
Her mum walked straight to the kitchen to fill the kettle, not looking at Marnie or Noah. Her face was weathered, sunken at the jaw with a smoker’s deep wrinkles. She wore jeans and a blue fleece like her daughter’s, smelling aggressively of the spray she’d used to disguise the scent of cigarettes.
‘Two things, just quickly,’ Marnie said to Julie. ‘What did you mean when you said Michael Vokey was out because some snot-nosed kid didn’t do his job properly? Which kid?’
‘The prison guard, the one giving that interview. It’s all over the internet what he said about that bastard. What he did in the prison, the eyeballs and the rest of it.’ She pulled on the fleece. ‘Looked about fifteen, acne on his neck, little twat.’ She glanced at Natalie who was busy with her drawing, the tip of her small tongue caught between her teeth.
‘You said you laid it on thick, for the court—’
Julie kept her eyes down, not looking at Marnie. ‘Don’t hold anything back, that’s what they said.’ There was a lick of wariness in her voice. ‘It’s what my lawyer told me to do.’
‘He told you to lay it on thick?’
‘I didn’t mean literally.’ The wariness was in her neck too. ‘Just not to hold back, not to be brave. I had to show the court how much he’d scared me, how bad it was. Because he didn’t leave any marks. There were no photos to show the court. That’s what I meant.’
Noah watched her, seeing all her hostility erased by this new caution. Had she exaggerated the attack in some way? He thought of Vokey’s rampage at the prison, and DCS Ferguson’s contention that Julie had a lucky escape. That might be true, but she was living with the aftermath. The jeers and stares in the street, her child’s strange silence, this endless fight to keep it all together.
‘And the women who might know where he’s gone,’ Marnie said, ‘the ones we’d be better off asking?’
‘Those cows.’ Julie zipped the fleece. ‘You can tell them to stop writing to me, for starters.’
‘They’ve been writing to you?’ Noah met Marnie’s eyes. ‘Do you have their letters?’
‘I tore them up, didn’t want her reading them.’ She kept her eyes on Natalie. ‘She can read now. She can talk too, just doesn’t do a lot of that since it happened. Her therapist reckons it’s normal. What’s not normal is those cows telling me I was lucky—’ She broke off, picking up her bag.
‘Can you remember the names of the women who wrote to you?’ Marnie asked.
‘They didn’t sign their names.’ Julie fished out her keys, looking at her watch, distracted. ‘Three letters, one after another. One of them wasn’t so bad, but then they stopped.’
‘Three letters. From three different women?’
‘Yeah, it was getting mental. I was going to save the next one and report it to you lot, but there’s been nothing new in days so they must’ve got bored.’ She shot a look at her mum who was putting tea bags into two mugs. ‘He’s not coming round. That tea’d better be for you.’
‘It is.’ Her mum shrugged. ‘I’m thirsty. Haven’t had a cuppa all day.’
‘Right. Because I’ll know if he’s been round.’
The two women looked at one another.
‘I’ll know,’ Julie repeated fiercely.
Her mum shrugged. ‘You’ll miss your bus.’
Natalie climbed to her feet, holding up her drawing. Julie passed it to Marnie without looking at it. ‘Here’s your mugshot.’ Her voice was tight with tears. ‘Here’s what he looks like.’
It wasn’t a drawing of sunshine, or the seaside. Natalie had used red and yellow crayon to draw fire. With a black crayon she’d drawn two stick figures, one big, the other small. The big one held the other down inside the fire. The small figure had cropped fair hair and wore a blue fleece.
‘She draws these all the time.’ Julie sounded helpless, hopeless. ‘All the time. You want to know the funny thing? He was pathetic. He pawed at me like— He was pathetic.’
Marnie waited but when Julie stopped speaking she said, ‘Do you mean he was impotent?’
He hadn’t raped her. He hadn’t touched her below the neck. His defence lawyer had made a great play of that in court. As if another man wouldn’t have thought twice about rape.
‘I don’t know what he was.’ Julie’s face closed. ‘But they should’ve kept him locked up. I gave all the evidence they asked for, made a show of myself in court, and for what? They let him walk out of there like he was anybody. You won’t find him because he’s a coward, a pathetic coward. He’ll hide himself away somewhere until he does it all again, because he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. He thinks it’s okay and he loves it. He loves it.’
‘She wasn’t what I expected,’ Noah said when they were back in the car. ‘I thought she’d be more frightened, or angrier at Vokey. She’s angry but at us, not him.’
‘Can you blame her after his escape? But she wasn’t what I was expecting either.’ Marnie checked the car’s mirrors. ‘We need to find this online interview with the prison officer. Can you get Colin to hunt that down? I want a name. Whoever he is, he shouldn’t be giving interviews.’
Noah nodded, texting the request to Colin. ‘These women who wrote to her. You don’t think it’s Lara and Ruth? She said three letters from three different women. “One wasn’t so bad” – that could be Ruth, being the religious one. But who’s the third woman?’
They exited the estate where the patrol car was parked, the uniforms still yawning. Six kids were huddled on the other side of the street, smoking, watching with razor eyes. If Vokey came back here they’d be the ones to spot him, before the patrol car or anyone else. Whether they would do anything helpful about it was another matter.
Noah’s phone rang as they reached the main road. ‘DS Jake.’
‘Vokey’s sister.’ It was DC Debbie Tanner, calling from the station. ‘Alyson.’
‘She’s been in touch?’ Noah switched the call to speaker.
‘She’s in hospital, unconscious. Found at home with a serious head injury.’
‘When?’ Marnie didn’t take her eyes from the road.
‘Earlier today. Forensics are at her house now.’
‘It’s a crime scene?’ Noah’s neck clenched. ‘He attacked her?’
‘It’s not clear. But given who she is and what’s happening with her brother, they wanted to be sure. DS Joe Coen’s on the ground there. I’ll text you his number.’
‘Thanks. What happened, do they know?’
‘She fell downstairs, or she was pushed. That’s what they’re trying to establish.’
‘She lives alone?’ The traffic demanded her full attention, a fusion of swerving cyclists and entitled cabbies, but Noah could hear Marnie’s brain ticking, working this new angle of the case.
‘Yes, but she has friends close by. They saw her for coffee yesterday morning. She was in her nightie when the police found her, so this must’ve happened before bed last night or first thing this
morning. DS Coen thinks it was yesterday, from what he’s seen inside the house. He sounds like someone who doesn’t miss much. Forensics are still at the scene.’
‘Remind me where she lives?’ Marnie asked.
‘Kendal.’
‘Cumbria,’ Noah said, ‘that’s not far from Lara Chorley.’
A pit stop on Vokey’s journey north to see his big sister? Alyson had told police she’d had no recent contact with her brother. Then their mother’s death, the empty house in probate being used by Michael. His hiding place, full of his obsession. He wouldn’t have wanted it seen by anyone else, not even his sister if they’d fallen out over the lack of a will.
‘Less than an hour away by car,’ Debbie said. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Lara, but she’s not answering calls. Local police are paying her a visit. They should be with her soon.’
‘Keswick,’ Marnie said. ‘Is that where she lives?’
‘Near Pooley Bridge. DCS Ferguson’s saying she wants you up there with her, boss. If it’s where Vokey’s gone to ground, she wants us to be the ones who find him.’
Noah could imagine how that would play with DS Coen and Cumbria CID. Ferguson was on a mission to bring Vokey back to a secure cell in HMP Cloverton, wiping clean the Met’s copybook in the process, but this tactic was a tricky one, London detectives turning up to show the locals how it was done. In Marnie’s place, Noah would have run a mile from that scenario.
‘Let’s speak with DS Coen.’ Marnie checked the car’s mirrors. ‘And let’s wait for news of Lara. I don’t want to duplicate effort on the ground if they’ve got it covered, certainly not before we know for certain Michael was involved in his sister’s accident. Call as soon as you hear from the local police. Has Ron been able to get hold of Ruth Hull?’
