Hidden

by Derick Parsons

  ‘Bitch!’ he hissed furiously, his furious, demented eyes clearly visible to her even in the near total darkness; indeed they seemed to blaze with an inner light of their own. ‘Little cunt! Little whore! You’re going to get it! You’ve been asking for it and now you’re going to fucking well get it!’

  He punched her again, and again, until a steady stream of blows was hammering down onto her bruised and bleeding face and her struggles ceased as she started the slide into unconsciousness. Only when she was fully subdued and barely conscious did he stop hitting her, his mind turning to other things. Even through a dull fog of pain she felt him pull away from her up onto his knees. She felt the duvet being dragged off her but could not move to try and stop him, could not move at all in her shock and fear and confusion. She felt his rough, strong hands tearing at her nightdress, ripping it to shreds and dragging the pieces off her helpless body. And all the time she heard him muttering frenziedly, ‘Little bitch! You want it and you’re going to get it! And you’re going to like it!’

  Don’t do it, Daddy! she thought dazedly, badly concussed and only semi-conscious, Don’t do it. Mummy will hear and it’s wrong! It’s bad and you know it! You know it, you know it, you know it!

  So why do you keep doing it?

  The man was tearing off her underwear, her old bra and the huge, thick underpants that she somehow could not bring herself to throw out and only wore when she knew she was going to sleep alone. His jagged, broken nails and rough hands scraped across her body as he simply tore them asunder, ripping them off her without apparent effort, his nails leaving deep scores on her soft, pale flesh. The night air felt cold on her bare skin and goose bumps instantly rose on every inch of her body, though these were not caused by cold alone; fear too was shocking her flesh.

  Got to get up, she thought in confusion, can’t let him. Have to fight. Fight. But she could not. She could not move at all as his hands mauled her body, roughly crushing her soft breasts before hauling her slim legs apart. She felt him paw at her, hurting and exposing her, and then he rammed his fingers inside her and that really hurt, a foretaste of the far worse pain that was to come. And still she could not move, nor could she lose consciousness though now she desperately wanted to, wanted to be somewhere else, wanted to be lost in the black and away from here. Away from him.

  She felt him ram himself inside her and he felt huge, impossibly huge and rough and hard and it hurt her like she had never been hurt before, and there was slick wetness which she knew to be her own blood. He leaned forward and she felt as well as smelled his hot, foul breath on her face, felt him calling her filthy names as well as heard them, and then his hands were on her throat, throttling her, and she finally, gratefully, began sliding towards the sheltering blackness, knowing that she was about to die and feeling only relief at the thought.

  Kate woke with a start and shot upright in the bed, a scream tearing itself from her fear-constricted throat. She thrashed around desperately but was caught in her bedclothes and was unable to free herself immediately. She was covered in sweat and her mouth was working frantically but after that first scream no other sound came, just as none had come that night. And then she stopped, confused. It was morning, not night, and she could see from the light filtering in through the heavy green velvet curtains that she was alone, that no one was attacking her. Not this time.

  She collapsed back onto the bed, a long, shuddering moan shaking her entire body. Just a dream! It had been just a dream. But of course that was not strictly true. It wasn’t a dream, it was the dream, the same dream that had plagued her every night for months after the incident, and which even now returned every week or two to haunt her. To persecute her. And it was not a dream at all but a memory.

  The man who had attacked her was called Arthur Straub. He was a brutal serial rapist with a history of violent assaults on women, and two years before Kate had helped the Oxford police -who had arrested him with little evidence but absolute certainty of his guilt- to finally convict him for one of his crimes. Kate had been the one who had talked to him endlessly after his arrest, working her way deeper and deeper into his sick world, remorselessly questioning and probing and plaguing him until finally he had revealed something he shouldn’t have known about his latest victim. It was the fact that she had a Chinese character tattooed in the small of her back, and Kate had instantly seized on his slip and used it like a pry bar to open him up. Finally, and with genuine hatred for her, Straub had cracked and screamed out the initial admissions that later led to a full confession. A confession that had sent him to prison for five years for the rape and battery of a pretty teenage girl, a girl who had no longer been pretty when Straub had finished with her. Though confession was a misleading word; when she had finally angered him enough, had pried through his defenses, Straub had boasted to her of his exploits, had reveled in the fear and pain he had inflicted on others. He had wanted to reveal his triumphs to her, the lasting damage he had dealt to innocent women, and the lives he had blighted.

  Kate sighed and slowly pushed back the bed covers. She went out to the bathroom and sat on the cold toilet seat, remembering the night Straub had come after her with a sickening, fearful clarity. When Straub had been interrupted she had been only a minute or so from death. She remembered also, at the time, wishing that she had died. Because oblivion would have been preferable to the fear and shame, to the bottomless hatred and, worst of all, to the strange, unreasonable guilt. And to the dreadful feeling of being defiled that would not go away.

  Chronic overcrowding of the British prison system meant that Straub had only served twenty-five months of his five-year sentence for raping the teenager, and while in prison he had not forgotten Kate. She had almost forgotten him, and if she thought about him at all it was with a certain satisfaction, the warm glow of a job well done. And with every woman’s pleasure at a rapist being jailed, though she considered the sentence far too light in view of the seriousness of his crime. It was ironic really; if Kate had not gotten him to confess, and hence to plead guilty at his arraignment, he might in the end have gotten a longer sentence. But then, of course, without the confession he might not have been jailed at all; during her work with the British police she had seen too many guilty men walk free to be under any illusions about the good guys always winning, or the bad guys always going to prison.

  Straub had remembered her far more clearly, and with a hatred that had grown with every day that had passed and every prison beating he had received, with every time he was spat on or discovered faeces or broken glass in his food. And after his release he had come back to repay her for her part in his conviction. With interest.

  He had located her simply by watching the Thames Valley police headquarters until she turned up there for work, whereupon he had followed her home. As with his previous victims he had watched her for days, finding out where she lived and learning her routines. And savoring the anticipation, the build-up to the final act as he patiently awaited his revenge. And then one night, when Peter was away, he had broken in to her house with the intention of killing her in the most brutal fashion he could devise. He would have succeeded, too, if Peter had not returned unexpectedly from Leicester in the middle of the night, and walked in on Straub even as he was strangling her. He had dragged Straub off Kate with only moments to spare and had given the rapist the beating of his life. Worse even than the punishment Straub had inflicted on her. The only thing that had stopped Peter from killing him with his bare hands was his concern for Kate, his fear that she might die while he battered her attacker. He had stopped hitting Straub only to ring for an ambulance, and in the end both had survived. Though Peter had almost finished Straub off when the paramedics had tried to take them both to hospital in the same ambulance.

  So Peter had saved her life, though in the days following the attack she had not been particularly grateful to him for this service. It was all too much; she had suffered too much in her youth to bear these fresh outrages. The pain of her battered bo
dy had been hard to take but the mental torment had been far worse. The shame and the horror and the fear. The fear that had settled into her soul and become a huge new factor in her life. The fear which, once so dearly bought, no woman ever wholly loses. And in fact she had once or twice caught herself half-wishing that Peter had not returned until Straub had finished his brutal work. But those unworthy, ungrateful thoughts had faded in time, as the healing of her body presaged the healing of her mind. Her nose had healed within a couple of weeks, as a matter of fact, and by some miracle none of her teeth had been broken. The pain from the cracked ribs had seemed to hang on forever but the bruising on her face and body had begun to fade even before her nose had healed. The healing of her mind had taken considerably longer, and even now she sometimes thought it would never be complete.

  Both types of healing had taken place in the quiet little cottage that they had eventually fled to in Dorset, and could not have taken place without Peter, who had been simply wonderful. About giving up his job, his life and his friends, all without a murmur of protest. And, of course, for eschewing sex for a year; for a long time, even after she recovered physically, the mere thought of any man touching her had been enough to trigger a panic attack in Kate. And even after they had resumed their physical relationship it had been months before she had really enjoyed sex again, or wanted it more than occasionally. A lesser man might have lost patience with her but through it all Peter had been so caring and considerate, so thoughtful and understanding, that she had fallen more deeply in love with him than ever, and had valued his love all the more. Eventually she had become first happy again, and then happier than ever until…

  She sighed and got up to wash herself and brush her teeth; there always seemed to be an until. It was the story of her life. She got dressed and made her way into work, refusing to think about the matter any further. And in spite of the alarums of the night before, and her all too realistic nightmare, that day proved one of minor triumph for Kate. It was a Wednesday, the only day of the week on which she had a full University schedule, and usually she found it something of a slog. But not that day. In spite of her restless sleep she felt sharp and alert and clear-headed. She banished all thoughts of Peter, the Riordans, father and daughter, and even her mysterious visitor of the evening before, to concentrate totally on her work.

  Her lectures and tutorials were always meticulously planned, and if somewhat uninspired they were at least comprehensive. But on that day Kate for the first time felt energized by the interaction with her students rather than frustrated. Her usual air of slight impatience was nowhere in evidence, and for once she was able to impart into her lectures her passion for the subject rather than just her knowledge. Moreover, her tutorial pupils, many of whom found her a touch intimidating, all found her far more approachable than usual that day, far more alive, and afterwards found themselves infused with some of her own enthusiasm for helping the emotionally damaged.

  How much of her new rapport with her pupils was due to the fact that she was once more counseling, and consequently had an outlet for the darker, damaged side of her own nature, she neither knew nor cared. The important thing was that she felt completely there, completely herself again, for the first time since the Incident. It was as if having a patient again had opened up her emotions, had freed a part of her she had frozen shut after the attack. So good did Kate feel that when she was leaving for the day and bumped into Julian Symons at the Nassau Street exit she actually smiled at him. And when he responded with an almost frightened glance in her direction she couldn’t help but say, in her most saccharin tone, ‘Why Julian, I haven’t seen you in ages. Been to any good soirees lately?’

  He gave her a tight-lipped little sneer and scuttled off without replying, leaving Kate to assume that she was no longer on his A-list for party invites. Oh well, at least his somewhat timid gaze had been for once aimed at her face rather than the contents of her blouse.

  When she finally got home Kate was tired but content, indeed happier than she had been since returning from England. In a way she felt as if she was finally awakening from a long sleep and actually starting to live again rather than just existing. Almost as soon as she entered her flat hunger pangs struck but she resisted the impulse to order a Chinese –her favorite food but fattening- and instead made do with a large and very dull green salad. Then she turned off her mobile, took the phone off the hook, and settled down on the sofa to go through Grainne Riordan’s file with a fine-tooth comb. The secret, the key to the girl’s breakdown had to be in there somewhere, if she could only find it. Try as she might, she could find nothing revealing and eventually went to bed disappointed and vaguely discontented with herself; was she missing something obvious? On the other hand, she wasn’t burgled or attacked and had no mysterious callers or unpleasant surprises, which these days had to be considered something gained, and she eventually fell asleep feeling better than she had in days.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kate had a tutorial and a lecture on Thursday mornings too, after which she was free for the day. However, the glory of the previous day was forgotten, and that Thursday’s lectures were back to being dull and uninspired. Her newfound empathy with her students had vanished too, and more than once in the course of the morning she found herself wondering if some of them were being deliberately obtuse, or if they were simply stupid. But she struggled through her lectures somehow and at last was finished for the day and could eagerly set off for Deacon House, wondering as she went what mood Grainne would be in that day, wondering indeed which Grainne she would find. She just hoped it wasn’t to soon to see the girl again; her own impulse, her own needs, would push her to see the girl every day but she didn’t want to alienate her by visiting so often she became a pest.

  When she got there Cathy informed her that Trevor was engaged with a patient but had left word that Kate had right of access to Grainne at any time. So, after making sure that she had fresh tapes for her old Sanyo Talkbook, -which she was incongruously carrying in a plastic Tesco shopping bag- she made her way up the great, curving staircase to Grainne’s room. I really must get a new briefcase, she thought as she climbed. But this idea was somehow repugnant to her. Her mother’s black, scarred old case, relic of many a court battle, would always be her real briefcase, and although she told herself it was ridiculous she couldn’t help feeling that buying another would in some way be betraying her mother. A new laptop was another essential, and at least she could buy one of those without a qualm, as soon as she had the time.

  She reached the top of the stairs and turned left along the blue-carpeted corridor until she reached Grainne’s room. She took her customary deep breaths to pump herself up and get the adrenaline flowing before tapping on the door softly. She waited long seconds for a reply, her heart beating faster, but there was nothing. She tapped again and, still receiving no reply, opened the door and popped her head into the room.

  Grainne was there, all right, seated beside the window as before and staring through it. Or not; perhaps her gaze stopped at the glass. Rather than the car park and rolling lawns outside, who knew what visions played before the unfortunate girl’s eyes? Kate looked at her compassionately for several seconds before clearing her throat and saying softly, ‘Grainne? Hi, it’s Kate again. Do you remember me?’

  There was no response, not even the slightest flicker to differentiate the girl from a waxwork doll. After a slight pause Kate stepped inside and closed the door, saying in the same gentle voice, ‘Grainne, could you turn around, please?’

  Still nothing, so Kate brought the chair she had used before over to the window and sat down beside the girl but facing her rather than the window, looking intently at that lovely profile. The face was as blank as on the first occasion, but was there now a shadow in the eyes that had not been there before? Kate thought so, though she was well aware of the dangers of transposing emotions or thoughts onto others. In the same way that pet-owners anthropomorphized their cats and dogs, ascribing human unde
rstanding and feelings to them, so mental health workers could all too easily imagine responses on the blank face of a patient detached from reality. And the more they wanted, or needed, a reaction the greater the danger of them providing one from their own minds.

  It had worked before so Kate tried saying loudly and clearly, ‘Where is Grainne?’

  Nothing. Not that she had expected much, having already pretty well dismissed the idea of a split personality. On her previous visit Kate had felt that Grainne was only separated from her by a thin veil of fantasy, like a layer of fog, but this today they seemed to be separated by a blank, impenetrable wall. Acting solely on instinct Kate reached across and took the girl’s hand, hoping that the warm contact of human flesh would reach across her self-imposed barrier and awaken her. And, in a way, it did.

  Grainne shuddered violently, ripples seeming to run up and down her body, and her face twisted with some strong emotion, her strong white teeth baring in a grimace that was not far from a snarl.

  Although her first, wholly instinctive reaction was to recoil from such an ugly expression on that beautiful face, Kate remained perfectly still and maintained her hold on the girl’s hand. And she said gently, ‘Grainne, can you hear me? Will you talk to me?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Grainne suddenly, in a hopeless, empty voice, still staring off into nothingness, ‘Dead.’

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  No answer. Then, once again going beyond the limits she had mentally imposed on herself at this early stage in their relationship, Kate said softly, and not without trepidation, ‘Are you talking about your mother?’