by James Nally
The report went on: ‘Although the victim had not been raped or sexually assaulted, the attacker will have gained sexual gratification from the attack. He may well have shortcomings that prevent him having sexual relations with women. As a result, he may despise women. However we shouldn’t rule out that he’s raped women in the past.’
In short then, we were looking for a violent misogynist who was once a rapist but now can’t get it up so he takes it out on random women with a knife. Or possibly not. I couldn’t help thinking that the Prof was covering all the bases.
I decided to start on the ‘unsolved stranger crimes’ already in the computer system: it looked less daunting than the scatter of dusty binders.
I scrolled down through countless unsolved attacks on women, mostly sexual.
London’s rape statistics were one of the few things that stayed with me from my training. Every day, the Metropolitan police force received six reports of rape and twenty-one reports of sexual assault. About ten per cent of these attacks were carried out by someone unknown to the victim: that’s about four stranger rapes per week. Judging by these cases, most ‘stranger’ rapists tried to force anal intercourse on their victim too.
The sheer scale of random, seemingly arbitrary violence scared me: the city is full of men who despise women. Every time I concluded that an unsolved rape/attack on a woman couldn’t be linked to Marion’s murder, I wrestled with more guilt. It felt like I was walking away from their cries for help, leaving them lying in the dirt where they’d been violated.
Yet I knew I had to be brutally selective, or we’d wind up with more suspects than police officers.
Of course, detectives all over London had already been busy making connections. The first serial attacker to catch my eye was the so-called Night Stalker, who operated in South East London. Described as black and in his thirties, this man expertly broke into the homes of old women living alone in the middle of the night. He raped them at knifepoint and stole anything valuable to hand.
Marion was twenty-three. She hadn’t been sexually assaulted. As far as we could tell, her killer hadn’t broken in. Nothing had been stolen from the scene. I ruled him out.
Links had been made between four attacks near train stations in West London. The attacker threatened his victims with a knife, led them to covered wasteland then raped them. Marion’s flat was five minutes’ walk from Clapham Junction train station. Had he been casing out that station, only to discover a complete lack of deserted areas to strike? He noticed Marion. He came back to wait for her again, and again. One day he followed her, found out where she lived, did nothing. He bided his time, confirmed her daily routine over days and weeks, like an assassin. Then one day he waited near her home. Somehow he distracted her as she opened the front door, forcing her at knifepoint to unlock the flat and walk up the stairs. She fought back. He lost it and went berserk, then fled the scene.
I realised that the same case could be made against every stranger rapist in any file. I had to find something more tangible, a connection more damning and evidential. I trawled and trawled that eye-bleeding green text until the end, failing to settle on a single connection.
I printed out the list of ‘Currently Misplaced’ paper case files and cross-referenced it with the folders sprawled across the empty office floor. I realised that one new file had turned up since this stock take. I spotted it immediately – the one not caked in dust. The courier’s packaging confirmed it had been delivered from Plumstead police station in East London that weekend.
As I opened the box file, I felt an icy frisson of fearful anticipation: no one else had seen this ‘unsolved stranger attack’ paperwork. What if he was in here? What if I found him? I told myself to be extra-vigilant. I reminded myself that he liked to use a knife and attack women in their homes. I thought of the messages Marion’s spirit had communicated to me: banging the door, appearing to me on two streets near the crime scene. I pushed it all to the front of my mind, ready to snag on any link or connection in these files.
The first case to catch my eye, because of its name, was the Green Chain Attacks. To my relief, the Green Chain turned out not to be some soothingly-coloured yet gruesome martial arts weapon but a series of connected parkland walks near Plumstead. Over the past four years, a lone male had attacked over seventy women on the Green Chain. His crimes had escalated from beatings, to sexual assaults to rape. He sometimes used a ligature, more often a knife.
Descriptions of the suspect were vague because he always wore a balaclava or a mask. As I’d discovered in most other linked sex attacks, witness estimations of weight and height varied wildly. He’d been described as five foot six and broad, six foot two and slim, and just about everything in between. But DNA evidence proved it was the same man.
I looked at the other odds and ends in the box file. An intelligence report from two months ago caught my attention. A couple with an address at Winn Common – part of the Green Chain expanse – had phoned police describing a man ‘hanging about’ in their neighbour’s back garden, apparently spying on a young blonde woman ‘who often walks around her flat semi-naked’. The husband went out and kept an eye on the suspect until a police patrol arrived.
‘I bet he did,’ I thought.
When police quizzed the loiterer, he insisted he was merely taking a walk and had stopped for a piss. He gave his name and address: Robert Napper, 126 Plumstead High Street. The officer wrote: ‘Subject strange, abnormal. Should be considered a possible rapist, indecency-type suspect.’
I took a deep breath and stopped my mind skidding off in too many directions. Had this man progressed from attacking women on the Common to breaking into their homes? Surely we should at least cross-reference his DNA with the Green Chain victims?
I rifled through the file’s remaining contents. Intelligence reports identified other local weirdos skulking around parks and commons, spying on sunbathers, flashing and wanking behind bushes. Other notes identified couples and gay men and their repeated attempts to initiate ‘stranger sex’ in public. I was beginning to realise that London’s green spaces gave a whole new meaning to the term, ‘Parks and Recreation’.
Then I found a handwritten note. It was dated almost two years ago – October 1989 – but someone clearly believed it deserved attention. ‘At 9.10 a.m., Mrs Maureen Napper of 19 Raglan Road SE18 rang to say that her son, Robert, 26, of basement flat, 126 Plumstead High Street, told her he’d raped a woman “on the Common” two months earlier, in August. The police sergeant on duty checked the records and found no report of an attack or rape on Plumstead Common, or any connected green spaces, during August or the previous two months.’
My hands trembled. It was that man Robert Napper again, who they’d recently found in the garden of a woman’s flat. Allied to this rape confession, his MO surely made him a suspect for the Green Chain attacks, if not Marion’s. I asked Mick what the procedure was for pursuing leads like this: ‘Just ring ’em up,’ he said. Soon I was on the phone to a duty officer at Plumstead. He agreed to check the log book of all recorded crimes for August 1989. He confirmed there had been no reported rapes or sexual assaults on any Commons on their patch that month. He checked July and September: same result.
… on the Common. Did Napper even mean Plumstead Common? He could have struck at another Common: Clapham Common? I checked the A to Z: there are Commons all over London, dozens of them.
It was already after six. As Mick got up to leave, I asked him to run Napper through the police computer. ‘Robert Clive Napper, born February 25, 1966, one criminal conviction: possession of an airgun in a public place, 1986.’
‘Sounds like a menace, at least to the local rabbit population,’ he laughed.
I had a feeling about Napper. But I didn’t want to present it half-cocked at Monday morning’s briefing. I needed to connect Napper to the rape he’d boasted about. If I pinpointed that rape – the rape he’d confessed to his own mum – we could cross-reference it forensically with any DNA and prints found at 2
1 Sangora Road. This new twist made me realise I had to go through all of the remaining paperwork – and back again through the cases on the computer – to cross-reference all rapes on London Commons between June and September ’89.
Before getting stuck in, I called Gabby to say I couldn’t make it over tonight.
‘What a shame,’ she said, ‘it’s so unusual for the house to be empty. And I’ve bought all this lovely food.’
My body groaned.
‘Were there going to be candles?’
‘I can confirm there were going to be candles,’ she giggled, ‘and Shiraz.’
‘I’m truly sorry,’ I said, ‘mostly for me.’
‘You’re missing out, I can assure you of that, Donal,’ she teased, ‘I’d even tidied my room.’
‘Wow, I’ve seen your room. That’s commitment. You must be exhausted?’
‘I’ve got more stamina than that,’ she giggled.
‘Okay, I think under some UN guideline this actually constitutes torture. I can’t take another second.’
‘Wimp!’
‘We’ll see about that, madam,’ I said, realising at that point that I could only fuck this up now, so I added a swift: ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Look forward to it.’
‘Bye,’ I managed, before slamming the handset and my forehead down against the desktop, over and over.
Chapter 21
Archway Tavern, London N19
Sunday, August 11, 1991; 14:00
Next day was one of those glorious mid-summer Saturdays when English people clog coast-bound motorways and Irish folk head to the pub.
The Archway Tavern’s back bar heaved, the big screen boomed and the blinds failed to block out the searing afternoon sunshine. I found Fintan leaning against a ledge nursing two stools and two pints. I took a quick scan: we had a perfect view of a screen and a short, clear path to both the bar and the gents. I marvelled at his attention to detail. He wouldn’t relax until he got exactly what he wanted.
I completed our traditional pre-match preparations by popping two more pints onto the ledge. Today was the most anticipated game of Gaelic football in our lifetimes. This was no longer just a game. This extraordinary encounter between two giants – Dublin and Meath – had come to represent the Titanic struggle between Ireland, new and old.
Dublin had a young team on the rise. They were slick, fast, smart, progressive: the future. Ageing Meath had been All-Ireland winners in ’87 and ’88. They were talented but cynical, dogged, pugnacious. Old Ireland. At least that’s how we read it.
These teams had already played three times and drawn three times – twice after extra time. Dublin had thrown away commanding leads in two of those games. Like New Ireland, the Dubs didn’t quite believe in themselves: not yet.
Before throw-in, Ireland’s trendy new liberal President Mary Robinson (Bright New Ireland) shook hands with both teams. A week earlier, she shook hands with the Dalai Lama against the express orders of the Prime Minister, Charles Haughey (Corrupt Old Ireland). Apparently Haughey – former IRA gunrunner, bribe-taker and friend to Mugabe, Castro, Gaddafi – took a dim view of Mr Lama and his hippie, spread-the-love ways.
Fintan and I were rooting for Dublin and a bright, new Ireland. To our dismay, most of the neutrals wanted the warriors of Meath to put these cocky young Dubs firmly in their place.
The Game not only lived up to the hype but eclipsed the Rocky-style pantomime drama of all that had gone before it. We all got totally sucked in. Dublin led all the way. Mulish Meath launched a typical comeback and, with seconds remaining, sealed a last-gasp, single-point victory. The white flags went up. The pub went up. Mayhem spilled out onto the busy Archway roundabout.
‘Another failed Irish revolution,’ spat Fintan.
The sombre opening notes of U2’s ‘One’ rose from the jukebox, offering succour. The window blinds and big screens rolled up. Thick smoky shafts of sunshine sought us out, grim reality’s merciless searchlights. I felt washed out, dried out, post-cinema depressed.
I looked around. A low evening sun burned hard, silhouetting everyone near the large windows and open doors. Everything else in the pub looked sepia and somehow suspended in time.
A rim-lit figure came striding through the main door, purposeful, confident, entitled. I recognised that gait. I turned to see Fintan’s tired eyes darken. As the silhouette got closer, it slowly morphed into a woman with a dark brown bob, smiling so hard that she couldn’t seem to blink. I felt sure I knew her, but I couldn’t quite place the face.
‘I thought I’d find ye here,’ she said.
I would have walked past her on the street.
‘Jesus, Donal, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ laughed Eve Daly, coming in for a hug.
She didn’t hug Fintan, who just stood there bloodless and open-mouthed, like a dead fish.
‘You were right, Fintan,’ she said, ‘suspended sentence. We got the verdict at the High Court yesterday, in camera. The media doesn’t even know.’
‘That’s great, really great,’ Fintan said, but he seemed rattled.
‘Are you not going to buy me a drink then, after all the exclusives I gave you?’
That snapped him out of it.
‘Of course. Your usual?’
She nodded and I frowned in confusion as he scuttled off. How did he know her ‘usual’? What did she mean: ‘you were right’? What the hell was going on?
‘He’s been my rock,’ said Eve, her cat green eyes glazing slightly, ‘I wouldn’t be standing here now if it wasn’t for him.’
‘What do you think?’ she said, palming her new brown bob in disbelieving hands. ‘No one’s recognised me yet,’ she added, turning to the bar to double check.
I hadn’t the heart to say it sucked the prettiness right out of her. I was too busy trying to work out what had been going on between her and Fintan.
‘I wrote to you, four times …’
‘I know, I’m sorry, Donal, it was just crazy. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I wanted you to get on with your own life. And now I hear you’re a copper. Jesus.’
‘Detective Constable, actually,’ I smiled.
‘Oh my God,’ she laughed, shaking her head at the good of it, ‘why?’
I stopped myself saying: ‘Because of what happened to you.’ Too corny. Too soon.
Fintan almost ran back with drinks. I’d never seen him shaken before. I liked it.
‘Eve here has been telling me how you’ve been her rock,’ I spat bitterly, emboldened by the drink.
He ignored me. So did Eve.
‘I told my legal team to do what you said, Fintan, and it worked a treat.’
Pennies were starting to bounce off my thick skull. Fintan had been pulling the strings for her all along, even from London. No wonder he looked uncomfortable.
‘I wish we’d pushed it further now,’ she went on, ‘I reckon we could have negotiated an acquittal.’
‘I’d no idea you two were still in touch,’ I said, glaring at him. He kept his focus firmly on Eve.
I turned to her: ‘Pushed what?’
She looked at Fintan, who finally spoke: ‘Haven’t you heard? We’re the poster boys of Europe. We’ve agreed to sign the Maastricht Treaty without a referendum. That means single currency for Europe, grants galore for Ireland.’
Eve took up the slack, Bonnie to Fintan’s Clyde: ‘So we threatened to take my case to the European Court. They shat themselves!’
They shared a conspiratorial grin.
‘Another masterstroke,’ she said, raising a glass which he met almost instinctively. Another quiverful of flaming arrows sliced through me.
‘Where are you staying?’ I demanded.
‘Hammersmith, a bail hostel.’
‘Sounds grim.’
‘Are you kidding me? After Mountjoy, a single room in Hammersmith is heaven.’
‘And what brings you over here, Eve?’
‘My barrister thrashed out
a deal, me coming over here and lying low was part of it, at least until the vote goes through parliament and the treaty is signed. When it all blows over, well, let’s see …’
She smiled at me and my skin ignited. Fintan asked if we fancied another. We looked at each other and nodded, smiling.
‘G and Ts please,’ we said as one and laughed. ‘Lime not lemon!’ demanded Eve.
‘No problem,’ said Fintan, gathering up some empties which I’d never seen him do before, ‘you two must have so much to talk about.’
The next round seemed to calm us all down as Eve and Fintan regaled me with every stage of their three-year joint operation to beat her murder rap.
As I learned more about their hilarious law-bending japes, I felt alternating twinges of resentment and confusion. Why had he kept this secret from me? How close had my brother got to the love of my life? Surely they hadn’t …?
As soon as she set off to the loo, finally, I launched into him.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were still in touch?’
‘She asked me not to. She wanted you to get on with your life.’
‘So you’ve been helping her, all along?’
‘She gave me so many stories. I owed her.’
‘Even after you came over here? There were no scoops in it for you then, Fintan. Why did you stay in touch? What was in it for you?’
‘Like I said, I felt like I owed her. And you know what she’s like. She wouldn’t stop calling. Look, she didn’t have a friend in the world, Donal. Her own family fucked off back to New York. Someone had to try and help her.’
‘Why do you always have to hold secrets over people? Is it the only way you can function?’
‘Look, she’s here now isn’t she? If you want to rekindle your relationship, then now’s your chance. She’s nothing to do with me. Go for it.’
I took that as a clear signal: Fintan had no hold over her.
She got back to our silent scowls: ‘Talking about me, were ye?’
I felt a jolt of rage. ‘You know something, Eve, we weren’t fucking talking about you actually, because we’ve all moved on. You’re not the centre of our universe anymore,’ I stopped myself from yelling.