She's Fallen

by Alex Clare

  The smile lasted longer this time, a crinkling around Dominika’s eyes softening her face. ‘Not too tall. With my heels, less than me.’

  ‘This is very good.’ Robyn nodded to encourage her.

  ‘His hands. His hands had tight grip but were small. Didn’t go round my wrist.’

  The girl was observant, she just needed prompting. Robyn allowed herself to smile. ‘What else?’

  ‘This was odd thing.’ Dominika turned over one palm in front of her. ‘He smell intense.’ She turned over the other. ‘And car smell dirty.’

  ‘What do you mean by intense?’

  The girl shivered. ‘Strong. Like when you use chillies and smell hurt your nose.’

  ‘This is really helpful. You said the car smelled dirty – what sort of dirty?’

  The girl’s eyes drifted over Robyn’s right shoulder. After a couple of seconds, she blinked, her focus returning. ‘Old smell.’ She angled her head to the right. ‘Earth but not country earth. Old places.’

  Robyn nodded again. ‘Can you remember what sort of car it was?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘Had a back door.’ She looked like a child trying to please. ‘He put me in one side and I ran out other.’

  ‘I’m glad you got away. I think a doctor should look at your jaw.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘You going to stop him?’ She pulled her handbag onto the counter.

  ‘I’m going to try.’ Robyn sensed the girl was anxious to be gone. ‘You could still make a formal complaint.’

  Dominika’s face closed in on itself as she zipped up her bag. ‘I go now.’

  ‘Will you take my number?’ Robyn held out a card. ‘If not for this, in case there’s any trouble with your friend or anyone he introduces you to.’

  There was a second while the girl processed this then her eyebrows shot up. Pulling her bag to her, she hurried to the door. She ignored Prentiss in his car and ran across the forecourt in the direction of the lorry park. Robyn followed her outside.

  Prentiss had got out of his car. ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘Just asked again for her to report the attack.’

  ‘What, a girl like her? You know what she is?’ Prentiss had been an expert on vice because it had been an area of work the Dearmans, a local crime family, had specialised in.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you get anything useful?’

  There was something about Prentiss which always made her feel like a junior. Robyn rubbed her forehead; foundation left marks on her fingers. ‘She gave a description.’

  ‘I read a girl was put in hospital by someone last month. D’you think this could be the same guy? Have you got any leads?’ He sounded as if he was enjoying himself.

  ‘A couple of things we’re following up.’ Robyn wanted to scream how she was still clearing up cases Prentiss had just abandoned because they were too hard but she had no energy for a fight. Desperate to end the session, she stuck out her hand. ‘Thanks for bringing Dominika. Do you think she’ll be all right?’

  Prentiss paused for a moment, looking at the coloured nails, before taking her hand. Robyn braced for a bone-crushing grip; instead it was a more delicate touch, his fingers just taking hers with a light squeeze. ‘She’ll be fine. Probably turning a trick for a trucker as we speak.’ He laughed. ‘Right, I’d better get on. Say hi to everyone for me and tell Graham I’ll call him.’

  He crossed to his yellow Nissan sports car, beeped the horn once and pulled away.

  Robyn went back into the garage and picked up a meal-deal lunch as some kind of acknowledgement for the time she had spent there. The man behind the counter gave her a filthy look. As she put her change away, she saw him give the same look to the next person, an inoffensive middle-aged man in a grey suit.

  ‘Hello, Guv. Canteen not cutting it today?’ Graham paused in the doorway, sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead.

  ‘I was meeting someone.’ The cashier gave a loud tut. ‘I’ll explain later. You’ve just missed Prentiss. He asked me to tell you he’d call you.’

  Graham took a quick breath. Before he could respond, the queue cleared and he went to the counter to pay. He and Robyn walked back to the car, Robyn slipping into the back of Graham’s Vauxhall.

  ‘Hi, Ravi. How did the identification go?’

  ‘Oh hello, Guv. Didn’t expect to see you here. It was not good.’ Ravi craned around in his seat. ‘You know where the morgue is, on the edge of the hospital site?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Woah.’ Ravi’s head jerked to one side as Graham accelerated across the roundabout and up the slip road to the police station. ‘Well first of all, we couldn’t get parked anywhere near, so we had to walk about a mile with Jess and the baby and her mother. Her mother is a big lady.’

  ‘And he means big, like a beach ball on legs.’ Graham nosed the car into a space.

  ‘Yeah. So we had to go past the sexual health unit and there was another group of protestors.’ Ravi undid his seatbelt. ‘This time I think it was about men using prostitutes. Anyway, they gave Jess and her mother some abuse as they walked past because they wouldn’t join them. As if they needed any sort of grief on a day like today. Do those people do anything except protest about stuff?’ He led the way across the damp car park.

  ‘It’s what feminists do instead of shaving their armpits.’ Graham swiped his pass on the door reader and they filed into the lobby. ‘So what were you doing talking to Prentiss?’

  The corners of Robyn’s mouth were turning up even though part of her mind said she should be shocked. ‘Now, now. Prentiss wanted me to meet a girl who claims she’s been attacked in town. Because she won’t come forward formally, he brought her along informally.’

  ‘Sounds like Kenny. Always doing his civic duty, especially if it means picking up attractive young ladies.’ Graham’s raucous laugh filled the lift.

  There was a muffled sound of a gunshot. Ravi reached for his mobile and began swiping the screen.

  ‘Really?’ Graham shook his head. ‘They’re only fun in the films.’ He checked his watch. ‘Yikes. OK, Raver. We need to get those details and look sharp, we said we’d be at Gaddesford by two.’

  ‘Did Jess Land identify Newman?’ Robyn sank into her chair.

  ‘Yeah. And no big surprises unfortunately. Raver, you tell the Guv.’

  Ravi looked up from his computer. ‘It was definitely him. We asked about the day.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Jess Land didn’t go to the wedding because she didn’t think they’d welcome the baby. She wasn’t expecting Newman back because he was planning to get drunk with the boys and stay over at the hotel, so she was surprised when he came home …’ He flicked a page of his notebook. ‘… just as Fact or Fiction was finishing on TV, which makes it about nine o’clock.’ Ravi looked up. ‘She described him as drunk and angry. She picked up about the points on his licence, though apparently he wasn’t making a lot of sense. Something bad had happened which he didn’t want to talk about.’ He looked around. ‘She went to bed at ten after watching Ward Nine, leaving him pacing up and down, still agitated. The baby woke her around one o’clock and because Newman wasn’t in bed, she thought he was in the baby’s room. When the crying didn’t stop, she got up and realised he’d left. It took a long time to settle the kid and the next thing she knew, you and Lorraine turned up.’

  ‘There was one thing.’ Graham lowered his voice. ‘She said he seemed to be in pain. He tried to pick the baby up at one point and couldn’t. When she asked him what was wrong, he swore and said he’d been attacked by some mad women.’

  ‘Anything else worth knowing?’

  Ravi shook his head. ‘All very ordinary. He’d always been a plumber, started out on his own about a year ago, doing all right. They seemed happy enough, she said he loved being a father, was proud he was the first of his friends to be a dad. His life was going to work, playing football, taking his son to the park.’ Ravi turned over another page. ‘There was one thing, Guv. Land
said Newman couldn’t have been called out on a job on Saturday night because all his tools were still in the flat. He kept them there overnight after his van was broken into.’

  Robyn wondered why she hadn’t made the connection when she had walked along the crowded hallway.

  ‘So we need to know why he went out.’ Graham tapped his picture on the board. ‘We asked Land if she knew why he might have gone to the Docks estate.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Then she got angry.’

  ‘Angry?’ Robyn looked up from opening the sandwich. ‘Not upset?’

  ‘Nope. An ex of Jake’s lives in Fleet block on the other side of the car park. Land suspects they got back together again for a short time while she was pregnant. When she heard where he was found, she immediately believed the worst. Having a competition with her mother for how many names she could call him.’ He walked towards the door. ‘It’s not a bad theory. Newman has a really awful day, wants a bit of fun. His girlfriend is tired out because of the baby and isn’t in the mood. He goes to see his ex not knowing the ex has a new boyfriend. There’s a fight.’ Graham mimed a big punch. ‘Newman staggers off to his van to go home and the combination of beatings means we’ve got a body.’

  Ravi stood up. ‘What about the argument he had with the other usher, Trudwick? You could build a story there too: they have an argument earlier in the day, Trudwick gets angry because Newman is lecturing him on being sensible and then does a runner, they have a fight and, well, same outcome.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Robyn stretched out her shoulders, relieved the pain was now more of a dull ache. ‘Both are possible and need to be checked out though don’t forget Dr Shepherd said his injuries were superficial. The big question is, did he get into the van himself or did someone put him there? We’ll have to see what the forensic report comes back with. Also, did Newman tell his girlfriend what happened at the wedding?’

  There was silence before Ravi flicked back through his notes. ‘No.’ He looked up, his movements jerky. ‘She didn’t mention anything.’

  ‘Would you tell your girlfriend you’d been pulled in by the police for rape?’ Graham shrugged. ‘I don’t think so.’ He tossed his car keys into the air and caught them one-handed. ‘Right. First, we’re going to see Newman’s father who lives in Gaddesford and then his mother. She and Trudwick both live in Lower Markham so we’ll finish off with a cosy chat with him.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I wonder why Kenny didn’t come in and say hello?’

  Ravi grabbed something off the printer and followed Graham. ‘See you later, Guv.’

  Alone again, Robyn picked up the drink before putting it down again. Although it had come out of the fridge, it was barely cool. She ripped the plastic off the sandwich, wondering what must have been added to the coleslaw to make it so bright. Taking a first bite, with her other hand, she typed ‘assaults on women’ into the computer.

  19

  With printed records of all the unsolved assaults on women in Meresbourne and the villages in the last two years, Robyn arranged the sheets by date across her desk. When she had finished, she had three rows of paper, sitting on top of all the other clutter. Picking up a highlighter pen, she started at the top left, taking the sheet balanced on top of her in-tray and skimmed through the case summary: a teenage girl had been beaten up when she held onto her mobile during a street robbery. The sheet was filed on the floor. The next case was a young woman coming home from a club who had been groped in the street. Robyn marked the sheet with a green ‘1’. She dismissed the case of a woman in Upper Markham who’d been hit with her own fire irons by a burglar and a case where the attacker was related to the victim. When Robyn had skimmed the last sheet, she rearranged what was left into a single row, including her handwritten summary of Dominika’s case. She read through them again. Now, when they were together, there was a clear pattern in the cases: women walking alone late at night had been grabbed then assaulted. As the dates advanced, the violence of the attacks had increased. Robyn rubbed her eyes. She could remember the last case: only eight weeks ago, a clubber had been found battered and half-naked. Tests showed she had taken ecstasy and her last coherent memory was of stumbling out of Quiksilva after arguing with her boyfriend. The street she was found in had no CCTV and, with no witnesses, there had been nothing to go on.

  Robyn asked herself again how she had missed the pattern. One attack had been just a few streets away from her own house in quiet, middle-class Barton. The earliest case in the line-up was just over eighteen months ago, when Robyn had been in charge of the team for six months. Her head sank into her hands. She could not blame this omission on DI Prentiss and his sloppy ways.

  ‘Afternoon, Guv.’

  Robyn jumped a little as Chloe and Lorraine walked in. She glanced at her watch: nearly two hours had gone past. She took a swig from the open cola bottle and grimaced at the sweet, flat liquid. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Not enough to nail Bartholomew.’ Lorraine scrunched a piece of paper on her desk and hurled it towards the waste paper basket. ‘We’ve got more of a picture of Shazia’s life, though. She’s the youngest of three, another sister living at home. No problems, or at least none they were admitting. She and her sister seem to be close and when we were being shown their bedroom, she even mentioned about a potential boyfriend which she didn’t want to say in front of their mother. Nothing suggests Shazia would pick up a stranger at a party. I guess it’s not proof.’

  ‘It all builds the picture. Ravi wasn’t there, was he?’

  ‘No, though I saw him in some of the photos around the place. They look like a close family.’ Lorraine’s hands knotted. ‘Her sister asked what happened to Shazia so I told her it looked as if there had been some form of assault and that might be why she jumped.’

  ‘That was information we shouldn’t have released yet.’ Robyn frowned. ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘She got angry. Angry with whoever did it.’ Lorraine spread her hands, palms up. ‘She asked me directly – I wasn’t going to lie to her.’

  ‘No one’s asking you to lie. You can tell them we are still gathering evidence, which is true. I didn’t want to give them information until we can be more certain.’ Robyn sat down. ‘Well, it’s done. Was there anything from the wedding itself?’

  ‘Again, not much. We’ve seen some more photos of Shazia. She looks like she was having fun.’ Chloe held up a picture of a group of girls, a happy mix of bright silks, gold and smiles. ‘In most of them she had a glass in her hand, so she probably did drink more than she was used to. Surely that means she was in no state to give consent?’ Chloe ran her hand through her hair.

  ‘You’ve got to remember, in cases of sexual assault, things don’t work logically.’ The pencil Robyn was spinning between her fingers hit the desk with a clatter. ‘What you’ve just said confirms Bartholomew’s story. For the rest, it’s still his word against hers, so we need to give the best possible impression of her. We have to convince a jury who will unfortunately judge a woman’s behaviour more harshly than a man’s. For example, how serious was this boyfriend?’

  ‘Not very – they probably weren’t even a formal couple.’ Lorraine sounded weary. ‘According to her sister, there was a boy at college she liked who was a cousin of a cousin, nothing serious and probably her family would approve.’

  ‘Now we’re getting important things.’ Robyn stepped towards the evidence board, then stopped. ‘If we can’t have a board, we need a way to store these facts.’

  Lorraine looked as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Robyn remembered the first rape case she’d worked on and the constant feeling of embarrassment from having to put yourself into someone else’s sexual fantasies. ‘Has the crime scene report come through?’

  ‘Not yet, Guv.’ Chloe scanned through emails. ‘Let’s hope that gives us something to work on.’

  ‘So what’s your plan?’

  Lorraine sighed. ‘We haven’t really got one.’ She gestured at the notebooks. ‘We’ve got a whole load of ev
idence but we’re not trying to prove what happened are we? It’s why, or maybe how?’

  ‘Exactly. Once we’ve got the forensic evidence confirming Bartholomew’s story, I think it’s worth a discussion with the Crown Prosecution Service.’ Robyn knew they might also say there was no chance of getting the case to court. Given the sensitivities, she would be glad to have such responsibility taken from her. ‘The CPS will be able to give you a view of the evidence and tell you what else you need.’

  ‘What other evidence could we get?’ Chloe’s voice had a plaintive note.

  Robyn made sure she sounded positive. ‘You need to think about what you’re trying to prove. Physical evidence will only take you so far – you’ll need psychology to either force him into a more honest confession or paint him so …’ She realised she had been about to say ‘black’. ‘Paint him so bad people will want him locked away whether they believe he’s guilty or not.’ She hoped neither Lorraine or Chloe had noticed as both seemed intent on their screens. Robyn let the pause lengthen. ‘So – what are you going to do next?’

  There was silence for a few more seconds before Lorraine raised her head. ‘We could talk to the couple in 106 again. See if they can give any more details about what they heard.’ Her face screwed up as if she were tasting something bitter.

  ‘Good.’ Robyn smiled. ‘What else?’

  ‘We can trace Bartholomew’s ex-girlfriends.’ Chloe leaned forward. ‘If he’s got any. Then we can find out if he’s been violent or if he likes things rough, even if nothing has been reported?’

  ‘Yes, good scene-setting for the jury. What else?’

  Lorraine looked as if she were holding her breath. ‘What about …’ She stopped, breathed in. ‘We could find out which gyms he’s used, see who he hangs out with. It might be good to see if there have been complaints against him – there may be something in why he trains at home.’