Verdict Unsafe

by Jill McGown

  “Rob,” she said, almost as soon as he had hit the bottom step, before he had even sat down. “Í want us to stop pretending.”

  “What?” Rob picked up the paper, sat down. Why now, out of the blue, like this? She had her coat on, for God’s sake, You didn’t expect people to have meaningful discussions on their-way out of the door.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Rob! I know about you and Ginny Fredericks. It’s been going on for months, and I won’t pretend anymore!”

  “I—I just …” he began, then abandoned apologies or excuses. “All right,” he said. “So you know.”

  “Drummond raped her, too,” said Carole. “Doesn’t that matter?”

  Maybe. He wasn’t sure that Drummond had raped Ginny. He raped her, technically, every time he had her. She had never agreed to the arrangement; Lennie had, and Ginny’s protests had been silenced by the back of his hand, as ever. And she still thought the sun shone out of his backside. But even if Drummond had raped her, it had never been a problem.

  Rob had waited for Carole to recover from her ordeal, only to find that he was impotent. For over a year, he had thought that Drummond had made him impotent. Until the night that Ginny had got into his cab and he had seen her in the mirror as she crossed her legs in her little short leather skirt, and he had discovered that he wasn’t. He had pulled into a lay-by and had taken her in the back of the cab to prove it. He had had her again when he had got her home.

  He’d had no money for the second time; Lennie had been less than pleased. That was when he had done the deal about the cab, which suited everyone but Ginny. Rob didn’t give a toss about that, or about whether she had been raped. All he wanted with her was to keep proving to himself that Drummond hadn’t damaged him beyond repair.

  “She’s a whore,” he said. “Everyone rapes whores. That’s what they’re for. No—it doesn’t matter, not with her.”

  “But it means you’re all right with someone else,” she said. “So … you could have a proper relationship with someone. Surely you would rather have that?”

  “I’m married,” he said.

  “Rob—we can’t go on like this. I should leave, let you find someone else. We’re finished … our marriage is over. You must see that.”

  “So we should split up? Let that bastard win?”

  “I doubt if he even knows who we are!” she said.

  “He knows, all right. And he’s never going to know the damage he did me. Never. I am not leaving you, and you are not leaving me.”

  “Rob—I think I must.”

  He got up, walked out past her, and turned at the bottom of the stair. “I’d kill you first,” he said. “I swear to God, Carole. I’d kill you first.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CAROLE SAT DOWN ON THE ARM OF THE SOFA AS Rob went upstairs to the bedroom, slamming the door.

  Drummond. That was why she was trapped in this sham marriage. It was because of Drummond that it had become a sham, and it was because of Drummond that she wasn’t allowed to leave it. She had thought that it was because Rob wanted it to work again, because he still loved her, and that had made her feel guilty, because she no longer loved him. But it wasn’t that at all. She had thought that his inability to make love to her was because she had been raped; it wasn’t. It was because Rob had been raped, and he had never got over it.

  And their marriage had disintegrated. So would she, if she couldn’t break free from it. She got up and went to the job that she had no business doing, when she was capable of so much more.

  Drummond wasn’t going to rule her life any longer.

  Freddie cataloged the injuries, depressingly familiar. “… and there has clearly been very violent penetration, but swabs are negative,” he said. “In addition, there are marks on her wrists and ankles which indicate that some sort of adhesive tape was used to restrain her. Death was caused by asphyxia resulting from the restriction of the air passages and pressure on the chest and abdomen, preventing breathing.”

  “Could death have been accidental?”

  “No,” said Freddie, with unusual emphasis. “It was murder, Lloyd. And a particularly cold-blooded murder at that. There’s pressure bruising on either side of her nose, and along her right cheekbone and chin, which corresponds to a hand being held over her mouth with considerable downward pressure, and for some considerable time, at the same time as the nasal passages were being obstructed. The three marks here were made by the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of a right hand, and the ones on the nose presumably by the forefinger and thumb.”

  “Is there the remotest chance of fingerprints?”

  “No. The chances of lifting prints from skin are remote enough at the best of times, but I imagine the assailant was wearing one of these.” He held up his own hand, in its surgical glove. “Or something very like it.” He motioned for the body to be taken away. “Death occurred between ten and eleven,” he added. “But you already knew that.”

  “Is there anything on the body to help us?” Lloyd asked.

  “No. She was washed with something impregnated with a perfumed cleansing agent—the lab will be able to tell you what sort, but that’s all. There’s no saliva, no seminal fluids, no hairs, no fibers—not on the body.”

  Lloyd hadn’t expected to hear anything else. He looked down at his shoes, and sighed.

  “But.”

  Lloyd looked up again, and wondered if other people had to put up with dramatic pathologists.

  “A pubic hair was found on the bedding which does not belong to the deceased, and which had its root intact. We can get a DNA profile from it.”

  Lloyd’s sigh of relief was checked when he remembered about the boyfriend. He had only left the night before, according to Bobbie. They’d have to check it against his. But there was just a possibility, a faint possibility, that it was Drummond’s. “It’s probably her boyfriend’s,” he said. “But if it is Drummond’s, what’s the position about the DNA? I mean, if that’s all the evidence we’ve got? Are they going to say it could have been ten other men this time, too?”

  “Oh, you’d be far better off this time,” said Freddie. “The hair itself can narrow down the possible suspects. That plus a DNA match—which might well be a more definite one this time—would increase the odds against to astronomical levels that no court would overturn.”

  Except that it would be her boyfriend’s, thought Lloyd morosely. “What about his clothing?” he asked. “What sort of state would it be in?”

  “It’s quite likely that her blood would get onto his clothing,” said Freddie. “Particularly anything around his lower body. Trousers, underpants, whatever.”

  As Lloyd was leaving, Freddie made a rare off-the-record remark. “Get him this time, Lloyd,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to see another one like this.”

  It was Judy that Freddie was fearful for; he wasn’t the only one.

  Lloyd drove back to the station, where he had a message to telephone the forensic lab. There were, surprise, surprise, no transferred fibers on the girl’s clothing. There hadn’t been with any of the others, either. And, said the lab, the clothes he had given them bore no signs of sexual activity. And there were no transferred fibers from her clothing, which they would have expected to find if these clothes had been worn during any sort of prolonged close encounter. But they hadn’t been, of course; that was why he’d offered them up for examination.

  Lloyd had asked Essex to trace Marilyn’s boyfriend; now he would have to ask them to get the sample of hair that he needed for comparison with the one Freddie had found. They might be lucky. Surely they were entitled to some luck?

  He had barely formed the thought when he was told that someone had come in wanting to speak to whoever was dealing with the rape. He was in the interview room, a carrier bag on the floor beside him. He lived in one of the houses by the boating lake, where Stansfield had its official bonfire; he had been coming home from an evening out when he had noticed someone there, and had thought that it might b
e vandals going to set it alight before the due day. He had shouted, and the person had run away. Too far away for a description, but wearing dark trousers and a jacket. He had gone down to check that he hadn’t actually started it burning, and had found a carrier bag pushed under the wood.

  He placed the bag he had been carrying on the table. “It’s got clothes in it,” he said. “At the time, I just thought it was a shame to burn good clothes—you’d only need to give them a spin in the washing machine and Oxfam or someone could use them.”

  But then he’d heard about the rape, and had wondered about the clothes, so that was why he was here. Lloyd looked into the bag, and saw black jeans, black sweater, black gloves. The little sod had taken a change of clothing with him. And had intended for them to be burned up in a bonfire. He couldn’t dump them in Malworth’s great bonfire, because of the vigilantes, so he had taken them into Stansfield, and its more run-of-the-mill edifice. That was why he had been in such a hurry that he had almost run someone over.

  Lloyd looked at his informant, and nodded. “This is most useful,” he said. “I don’t suppose you noticed if he had transport of any kind?”

  “Got away in a bloody taxi, of all things,” he said.

  Matt Burbidge had been brought to consciousness by an incessant ringing and knocking that only police officers had the nerve to keep up. He pulled on trousers and a shirt, and went downstairs.

  Judy Hill stood on his doorstep with Tom Finch.

  “Well, if it isn’t the bitch copper from hell,” he said.

  “Can we come in, Matt?” she asked.

  Matt stood aside, and his visitors walked into his tiny hallway. He motioned them through the door to the sitting room, and followed them in, running a hand over his unshaven face. He would have preferred it if he could have been washed and dressed before having to face Judy Hill. As it was, three o’clock in the afternoon was like three in the morning to him.

  “Can you give me the name and address of the friends you were visiting last night?” Tom asked.

  “Not friends, exactly,” Matt said, unsurprised that his vague answer hadn’t been good enough. “And I expect you know the address. I was with Ginny Fredericks from ten o’clock to about twenty-five past, for the usual reason that men are with Ginny Fredericks. You know where I was after that.”

  “I didn’t think you approved of that,” said Tom.

  “My wife’s left me. I work nights. I earn next to nothing. I can’t even afford to ran my car except for journeys I can’t do on foot. It doesn’t exactly do much for your sex life.”

  “You didn’t do the journey from Stansfield to Malworth on foot,” Tom said. “But you were running into the underpass. Where was your car?”

  “I parked on the other side of the bypass,” said Matt. “You can wait fifteen minutes to make the turn off for Parkside. It’s quicker just to leave the car inside the park gates and use the underpass. And I didn’t want my car parked outside that house.”

  “No,” said Tom. “Did you ever go with Rosa?”

  This time Matt was surprised; he hadn’t expected them to home in on that so soon. “No,” he said.

  “But you knew her.”

  Chickens were coming home to roost already, but perhaps they didn’t know too much yet. “Yes, I knew her,” said Matt. “Lennie Fredericks ran her before he took up with Ginny.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone that when the rape team were looking for her pimp?” asked Tom.

  “Why should I? I was suspended from duty.” He smiled. “So who have you been talking to?” he asked.

  “Baz Turner.”

  “Why?”

  “The rape inquiry has been reopened,” Judy Hill said. “And whether she admits it or not, Bobbie Chalmers was raped the night you and Baz stopped Drummond. We wanted to talk to him about that. The other things just came up in the conversation.”

  Matt pushed his hair back from his face and went into the kitchen, picking up the kettle, shaking it, switching it on. “Other things?” he said.

  “I’m interested in what Drummond really said,” she said.

  “And the problem is,” said Tom, “Baz says he didn’t mention the rapes at all.”

  Matt sighed, got a mug from the cupboard, and spooned in coffee and sugar. “Baz reckons I lost him his job,” he said, and turned to look at Judy Hill. “But it’s you he’s got to thank for that.”

  “Are you saying Baz is lying?” asked Tom.

  “No. Baz just didn’t hear him, that’s all.” The kettle boiled; he poured water on the coffee, and carried it back through to the sitting room, passing between his visitors. “He said he heard him to back me up. But he was too far away. He didn’t hear him. And now he’s telling it like it is, because he blames me for what happened.”

  “Baz also said that you went AWOL that night,” Tom said.

  They were both still standing; he hadn’t invited them to sit down, and he wasn’t going to. Baz had been busy putting the boot in, obviously. Because Matt had finally got a job, and he hadn’t.

  “I was on duty over at the football ground,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the window. “I could see Isabelle loading up the car, getting ready to leave me. Yes, I went AWOL. I was trying to stop her going away and taking the kids with her. But I failed.”

  “Where’s your wife how?” asked Tom. “Somewhere in France,” he said. “That’s where she comes from.”

  Finch looked surprised. People always did, as though France wasn’t less than thirty miles away.

  “She came here to teach French,” he explained. “Took up with some guy who left her with two kids. But I married her— and I brought those kids up like they were my own. Just never got around to—you know—adoption. But now she’s back home in La Belle France. Avec les kids. If you find her, let me know.”

  “You don’t know where she is?” said Tom.

  “No. I knew that’s what she was going to do, and I couldn’t stop her. I got back to the car, we chased Drummond, and when he started mouthing off about the rapes, that was the last straw.”

  “What did Drummond say?”

  “I couldn’t catch the rapist if he was standing right in front of me, maybe my wife needed a seeing-to from him—all the stuff I told the court. Nothing we could get him on. Just hints.”

  “He didn’t have time to say much while Baz was walking back to the car,” said Tom. “And that’s the only time he could have been out of earshot.”

  “I maybe embellished it a bit. I was trying to stay out of jail.” He looked up at Judy Hill. “Without success.”

  “Why did you hit him?” she asked.

  “Christ, woman, I’ve just told you why!”

  “No,” she said. “You’ve told me why you should have brought him in for questioning. There’s more to it than that, Why did you hit him?”

  “Was it because you knew Lucy Rogerson?” asked Tom.

  The pincer movement threw him. He masked his discomfort by blowing steam from his coffee, and looked at Tom. “I’d met her,” he said. “I’d worked undercover on her dad’s farm. I worked on a farm for years before I joined the police. Expensive kit was going missing, and they put me in because I knew one end of a tractor from the other. I worked there for a month. Lucy was seventeen—full of life, happy—she was a nice kid. And then I read her statement about what some vicious bastard had done to her. And when Drummond started going on about the rapes, I thought we were never going to get him for them. He didn’t even have to give a blood sample if he didn’t want to— What was the point of bringing him in for questioning? I just saw red—all right?”

  “Why didn’t you tell the court you had known one of the victims?” she asked.

  “Because the last thing I wanted was that kid thinking she was the cause of my going to prison, on top of everything else,” he said. “She didn’t know me. I was just one of the temporary farmhands. She didn’t know my name, didn’t know I was a copper. So there was no reason for her to know it had a
nything to do with her. I wanted to keep it that way.”

  She didn’t believe him; you could see it in her eyes.

  “You don’t have the monopoly on compassion for rape victims!” he shouted.

  She raised her eyebrows a fraction. “It might have kept you out of prison,” she said. “That’s what I call compassion above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “Well, you should know. You’re very hot on duty.”

  “Baz told us something else,” said Tom. “He says a roll of adhesive bandage went missing from the first-aid kit that night and was replaced next morning. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Yes,” said Matt. “I know about that. I cut myself on the little sod’s belt buckle when I punched him in the stomach. I used some of the bandage and forgot to put it back until the next day. What of it?”

  “Would you be prepared to give us a saliva sample for DNA testing?”

  Matt stared at him, then turned his hostile gaze on Judy.

  Judy was sick with disappointment. Matt had cut himself on Drummond’s buckle. The blood on Drummond’s jeans was Mart’s. It was only Mart’s. Her one hope, her one piece of tangible evidence, had vanished.

  “You bitch,” Matt was saying, getting to his feet. “You bitch.”

  “Calm down, Matt,” said Tom, his hands held up in front of him.

  “Calm down? Calm down? Do you think I don’t know what all this is about? She’s not content with grassing me up—now the slag’s accusing me of rape!”

  “I’m not accusing you of rape,” Judy said, unmoved by the description of herself. “These things were brought to our attention, and had to be investigated. You’ve given us an explanation— that’s fine.”

  Matt shook his head. “Oh, you’re so cool, aren’t you, Detective Inspector? So cool and calm and collected that it hurts.” He looked at her with sheer loathing, and walked toward her. “What have I ever done to you?” he said, pushing her, making her stumble backward.

  Tom was there instantly. “No,” said Judy, holding up a hand. “It’s all right.”

  “Well?” Matt repeated, his heavy face close to hers, pushing her again. This time she stood her ground, prepared for it. “What have I ever done to you, that you come here accusing me of rape?”