by Jo Bannister
‘Oh, yes,’ growled Shapiro, ‘it was certainly her lucky night.’ He bit back his anger; none of this was the police surgeon’s fault. ‘What’s he done to her?’
‘Raped her,’ Greaves confirmed. ‘It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen. He didn’t beat up on her and he didn’t do anything aberrant to her. The physical evidence is consistent with what she said – that he came up behind her, dragged her into the bushes, pushed her to the ground and raped her. I’ve got a good semen sample: you find him and it’ll nail him.’
They were supposed to be installing a special interview room, something less clinical that could be used for occasions like this. But more urgent demands kept claiming the budget. Shapiro took her to his office, which if not exactly comfortable had never been accused of being clinical. WPC Wilson made coffee, and over it the woman told what happened. Shapiro offered the occasional prompt but hardly had to question her: she was remarkably professional about the whole business, knew what he needed to know and told him.
Her name was Helen Andrews, she was a divorcee and branch manager of a building society. She had a flat in a big Victorian house at the north end of town.
She’d been to a hen-night – one of her assistants was marrying a solicitor’s clerk. They started off in The Ginger Pig and ended up at the bride’s home in Castle Mews. When the party broke up, rather than call a taxi Mrs Andrews thought she’d enjoy the walk. It was only half a mile, it was a pleasant spring night and the road was well-lit all the way. She was not a timorous woman, it had not occurred to her to be afraid to walk the main streets of her own town at night.
At the foot of Castle Mount the road up to the ruins peeled away to the left. There was no traffic as Mrs Andrews went to cross. She heard no footsteps, had no intimation of danger; the first she knew was a hand closing over her mouth from behind, then she was hauled back up the kerb, across the pavement and into the broad sweep of shrubbery where the road circled up to the Mount. She was pushed to the ground and gagged with her own scarf.
‘Did you see his face?’
The street was only a few strides away, lamplight penetrating the shrubbery in jagged fingers; if anyone had been passing she would have seen them though they would probably not have seen her. He had something white tied over his face, the hood of a sweatshirt over his head: all she could say for sure was that he was light-skinned rather than dark. He wasn’t particularly big. He was stronger than her, but most men are stronger than most women. She wouldn’t recognize him if he came to her for a mortgage.
She tried to throw him off but failed; after that she offered no resistance. She didn’t want to be hurt. ‘Was that wrong?’
Shapiro shook his head. ‘There is no right or wrong. You survived. You did fine.’
‘But the evidence. There’d have been more evidence, wouldn’t there, if I’d made him work for it.’
He knew what she was saying. He put his hand on hers on the desk. ‘Mrs Andrews, nobody is going to wonder if you’re telling the truth because you weren’t beaten to a pulp. No judge, no jury is going to wonder if a respectable professional woman walking home from a friend’s house suddenly took it into her head to dive into the bushes with a man she didn’t know and then scream rape.
You behaved very sensibly. Thank God we’re not conducting this interview in Castle General.’
She fixed him with sea-coloured blue-grey eyes, a cool intellectual gaze forcing itself through the shock and the grief. ‘Mr Shapiro, are you saying you believe me?’
Dear God, she’s strong, he thought in boundless admiration. She didn’t have to come here. She was afraid how she’d be treated but she came anyway. She was willing to say all this, and be doubted, not because she has something to gain but because it’s her duty: there’s a dangerous man out there and we need to know about it. ‘Mrs Andrews, I have no reason to doubt a single word you’ve said.’
At that, finally, she began to cry. Shapiro went on holding her hand for a minute. Then he got up, poured her some more coffee, gave WPC Wilson a top-up and sat down again. ‘Can you tell me what happened next?’
She sniffed and nodded, but there was little more to tell. The attack was completed quickly, efficiently, with minimal emotional investment: not so much a sex act as a smash and grab raid. He was finished, on his feet and away in the time it took her to get the scarf out of her mouth. She sat in the shrubbery for half an hour, clasping her knees and gently rocking, before she could bring herself to move.
Shapiro took her home. She lived alone: only a grey cat, indignant at being kept out all night, was waiting on the step. ‘Is there someone I can call to come over?’
Mrs Andrews shook her head. ‘I’d rather be alone.’ The assault, and all that followed, had left her exhausted. Mentally she was numb; probably the morning would be harder than tonight.
Shapiro didn’t like leaving her, but she wasn’t hysterical and she had the right to be alone if she chose. He jotted his home number on her phone-pad. ‘If you change your mind, call me. It doesn’t matter when. I’ll come myself, or send a WPC, or bring you a friend – whatever you want. Just don’t sit here feeling desperate.’ He thought a moment, useless compassion twisting his face. ‘What happened – it wasn’t about you, you know, it was about him. His inadequacies, his hang-ups. You’re the same person you always were. Nothing someone like that could do to you would make you anything less.’
She wasn’t really listening. She thanked him again, edged him towards the door. Reluctantly he went. ‘One more thing. Is there anyone you’d like me to talk to? That you want to know about this and don’t want to tell?’ Telling people who mattered could be the worst part.
Again she shook her head. ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful, Superintendent. I appreciate everything you’ve done. When I’m ready to talk to people I will, but all I want to do now is sleep.’
So he left. There was no option: to press any more help on her would be to chisel away yet more of her autonomy, her freedom of choice, that had been the main casualty of the attack.
She hadn’t been injured, no more than if she’d tripped on a kerb-stone. When she dusted the leaf-mould off her coat no physical signs would remain of what had happened. But that was no measure of the extent to which she had been hurt. What had been stolen from her was fundamental to who and what she was. It wasn’t a vital organ, something she’d die without – the history of slavery proved how far a human being could be stripped of rights and still remain functional. But neither could it be replaced.
With strength and determination she would rebuild her life, but there was no way to excise this night’s work. It was there for good. Her confidence, her self-esteem, would never again be what they were before. She knew now that however valuable she was as a human being – however good a friend, a lover, a businesswoman, however much money she earned, however pleasant the life she made for herself – almost any trash from the gutter, as long as he was a man and so physically stronger than her, could take it away.
It would probably never happen again. Rape was still a rare occurrence, rape by a stranger in a public place rarest of all. But she would always know, from the womb out, what she had previously only acknowledged as a theoretical possibility: that half the population had the potential to reduce her to something of no consequence. That knowledge would shadow all the rest of her days.
Shapiro got home without further incident but he didn’t get inside. There was something waiting on his path, something big and black and shapeless. He studied it from the safety of his car, debating whether he should call for assistance. But it didn’t move, he couldn’t hear it ticking, and he thought he’d investigate further before calling in the Bomb Squad. He wouldn’t be the first policeman to launch a major terrorist alert because the laundry had left next door’s washing in his porch.
Armed with the torch from his glove compartment he approached with caution. It almost could have been next door’s laundry – something bulky bundled up in a bin-liner, the top tied
with a bit of string. He knew better than to give it an experimental kick. Instead he used his penknife to make a nick in one of the folds. Nothing came out but a rather sweet heavy smell, just familiar enough to make his heart sink. He widened the nick and shone his torch inside.
Two minutes later he was on the phone to Queen’s Street. ‘I want SOCO, photographer, pathologist, the works. And screens. I don’t want my neighbours watching while we reconstruct A Student’s Guide to Anatomy with real pieces.
‘No,’ he added irritably, still shaken by what he’d seen, ‘I don’t know who it’s likely to be inside. From the size, I doubt if it’s all of anybody. But I’ve got a bin-bag full of meat sitting on my doorstep, and since my butcher doesn’t do deliveries that makes it a murder inquiry.’
Chapter Six
Within the privacy of a tent erected in Shapiro’s front garden, Dr Crowe slit the black bag open and carefully examined what it contained.
It’s meat, Shapiro told himself when he felt his gorge rising, just meat. Whoever it once was, whatever their story, that’s all it is now. If it was in the butcher’s window I wouldn’t give it a second look. Somehow that thought failed to appease his stomach.
When the forensic pathologist had finished piecing together the grisly jigsaw he straightened up, peeled off his rubber gloves and thrust his hands deep in his pockets. His plump face fell into thoughtful creases. ‘I suppose you want a description.’
Shapiro looked in quiet horror at the shapeless mound on his path. ‘Of that? You can tell me what that looked like?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Dr Crowe, grimly confident; ‘pretty much. But that wasn’t what I meant. I can give you a fair description of the killer too.’
Startled, the superintendent’s eyes flared at him. But though Dr Crowe was still a young man with a rather undergraduate sense of humour he didn’t joke about murder. ‘How?’
Crowe shrugged. ‘It’s my job. Do you want to make notes – for a Wanted poster?’
Impressed, Shapiro rooted for his notebook.
‘All right,’ said Crowe. ‘It’s a male you’re looking for, of course – not very big but very powerful. Huge neck and shoulder muscles, big deep chest. Weight, maybe about eighty pounds. Interesting dentition: undershot jaw, the lower teeth projecting beyond the upper ones. The canine teeth are particularly prominent. Temper, extremely unreliable. Members of the public should not approach; even your officers ought to be armed. I suggest one of those poles with a noose at the end…’
‘Hang on,’ growled Shapiro, doubt turning to suspicion, ‘hang on.’ He hadn’t written anything since the weight. He squinted at Crowe, who remained poker-faced; he looked at the remains on his path. ‘Eighty pounds: what, five and a half stone? Most victims weigh more than that. Before I go on News at Ten appealing for calm and information, do you want to tell me what that – thing – is?’
An amiable grin from the pathologist acknowledged that the game was up. ‘It was a pit-bull terrier.’
Understanding dawned. ‘So the murderer …?’
Crowe nodded. ‘Another pit-bull terrier, bigger or perhaps just meaner.’
Appalled, Shapiro stared at the carcase. ‘A dog did that?’
‘Oh, no,’ Crowe said quickly, ‘no. They fought to the death, the other dog ripped this one’s throat out. Then somebody skinned it. To make it harder to identify.’
‘And what was left he dumped on my path,’ mused Shapiro. ‘Not even at Queen’s Street, but my home. Why?’
‘That’s a bit outside the scope of forensics,’ admitted Crowe. ‘Have you been clamping down on dog-fighting recently?’
‘I wasn’t aware we had any to clamp down on.’ Shapiro’s expression was working through a range of possibilities, from shock to puzzlement to anger to resolution. ‘So now we know better.’
Crowe was packing his gear. The body-bag hadn’t been needed after all. ‘Maybe they’re warning you off.’
‘I imagine they are,’ said the superintendent bleakly. ‘However, Shapiro’s First Law of Getting Away With It advises against warning policemen off investigating things they didn’t know needed investigating until someone warned them off.’
‘The whole bloody town’s gone mad,’ Shapiro said with conviction. They’d gathered in his office at ten on Tuesday morning. He’d had no sleep, and judging from the shadows like bruises under Donovan’s eyes neither had the sergeant. Liz alone seemed unaffected. She hadn’t had as trying a night as the two men; even so, thought Shapiro irritably, she might have the grace to look tired. ‘Ram-raiders,’ he enumerated on thick fingers, ‘train robbers, a rapist and now a dog-fighting ring. Whatever happened to stealing car radios and mugging old ladies on pension day?’
Even at the end of the twentieth century, Castlemere remained a provincial town with essentially provincial criminals. It wasn’t the Vice Capital of anywhere, not even the fens. The local police had had their challenges but they usually came more widely spaced than this.
‘How’s Mrs Andrews?’ asked Liz. She learned of the attack when she came in an hour earlier, still on a high from the success at Mile End. Seeing one of the raiders shot dead in front of her, knowing that her actions would be subject to scrutiny, in no way diminished the satisfaction she felt. But this did: that while she was keeping Brian awake with a blow-by-blow account of how clever she’d been, how clever Donovan had been, how lucky Castlemere was to have them, a decent woman walking home through the centre of town had been dragged under a bush and raped.
Shapiro gave an unhappy shrug. ‘I don’t know. She wasn’t badly hurt; she said she’d be all right; I don’t know how she really felt. I was going to ask you to see her sometime but God knows how you’ll find the time now.’
Liz took his point. On sheer logistics they were going to be under pressure. ‘How do you want to do this?’
‘I don’t want to pass Mrs Andrews on, even to you – she’s had a tough enough time without being messed around now. Will you take the ram-raiders? And as dog-fighting’s the sort of milieu in which DS Donovan will pass virtually unnoticed he can have the pit-bulls. All right so far?’
Liz nodded; Donovan said nothing. Standing by the door he matched Shapiro’s bent-wood coat-stand for height, build and earnest attention to the proceedings. ‘Sergeant?’ the superintendent prompted gently.
Donovan blinked, came back from wherever his mind had wandered. ‘Oh – yeah. The dogs. I’ll get on to it. What about the train?’
‘What about it?’
‘Who’s dealing with that? We’ve two guys in the cells, another in the morgue, we’ve about thirty witness statements to collect – who’s doing all that?’
‘Me,’ Shapiro said glumly. ‘I’ve got Scobie taking statements, and unless the chaps in the cells change their minds they’re not going to waste my time on inconsequential chit-chat. Once we get the all-clear over the shooting we can wrap it up. Yesterday’s news, Donovan,’ he added briskly, ‘time to move on to fresh woods and pastures new.’
For a moment Donovan looked about to say something more; then he changed his mind. ‘Dogs. I’m on it.’
When the door closed behind him Shapiro said, ‘It’s shaken him up, hasn’t it?’
Liz raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re surprised? He was that close’ – her fingers, all but touching. ‘He did a good job there, Frank. I’d like to think those at Division who have him down as a loose cannon might recognize that last night he got a result nobody else here, including you and me, could have. How’s the driver?’
‘He’ll be all right,’ said Shapiro. ‘It was his heart but they got him to intensive care in time.’
‘Also thanks to Donovan.’
Shapiro smiled, the plump cheeks dimpling. ‘Yes, all right, Inspector, I’ve got the message. Now, what about the ram-raiders? Any thoughts on them?’
She considered a moment. ‘Well, they didn’t show up last night and this morning also passed without incident. The Son of God might sanction another hour or two’s
surveillance if you ask nicely.’ The senior officer at Queen’s Street had always been known as God; the recent arrival of a much younger incumbent had somehow called for a new nickname.
Shapiro’s expression was rueful. ‘I tried already – got a very polite flea in my ear. In short, if I want any more stake-outs I can pay the overtime myself.’ He scowled. ‘I don’t get it. They should have gone again by now. What’s the problem, is it somebody’s birthday?’
Liz refrained from repeating her doubts. ‘What we really need is someone on the inside.’
Shapiro raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Do you fancy your chances undercover, Inspector?’
Liz chuckled. ‘If I knew where to find them I’d give it a shot. But I can’t get any word on them. Maybe you’re right, maybe it is the Tynesiders – that would explain the gossips in The Fen Tiger being as much in the dark as we are.’ The hostelry was Castlemere’s villains’pub long before the council gentrified the canal basin where it stood. Now weekend sailors brushed shoulders with the local Mafia and never understood the hush that fell when they used the pub phone to report the theft of their outboard motors.
‘What about Donovan? Some of his snouts keep their ears pretty close to the ground.’
‘Some of Donovan’s snouts keep their entire bodies pretty close to the ground! But nobody seems to know much about this. I don’t know what more we can do but wait for it to happen again and hope we can respond fast enough to catch them.’ Her gaze had dropped disconsolately to the desk-top, lost beneath a week’s worth of unfinished paperwork. Now it rose again; speculative. ‘Unless we can find the chap in the green fedora. Just for the record, Frank, if we did, how would you feel about an undercover operation? If we could set one up?’
Shapiro was tired, but not tired enough to agree without thinking it through. His eyes narrowed. ‘You?’
She shrugged. ‘Whoever. In principle, would you approve?’
While he wrestled with it he pulled faces. He looked at Liz. He looked out of the window. He scratched his chin, missing the comfort of a beard to tug enjoyed by millennia of Shapiro men. Finally he said, ‘I might. If we could do it cleanly so he wasn’t a marked man from day one.’