A Velvet Scream

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Outside. It were really cold and I were shiverin’.’

  Joanna wasn’t even going to ask about a coat. She let the girl continue, halting here and there. ‘He was sort of lookin’ at all the girls in the queue and that’s when I noticed him. He seemed to pick me out.’ A note of pride had entered her voice. ‘He started speakin’ to me, friendly, like, and he said he’d see me inside.’

  ‘Right. Good. You’re doing well so far.’

  Kayleigh paused.

  ‘Did he tell you his name?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did he ask your name?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you told him?’

  She nodded. ‘He said it were a nice name.’

  ‘Was he with anyone?’

  ‘Not as I saw. He were on his own.’

  ‘So you went inside with him. What about the bouncer? Didn’t he realize you were underage?’

  Kayleigh gave a mischievous giggle as she shook her head. Again there was this air of pride. ‘He puts his arm round me and starts snoggin’.’ She couldn’t resist a smile. ‘The guy on the door just starts laughin’ and lets us through.’

  ‘Did he appear to know anyone inside the club?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did you stay together?’

  ‘No. He was sort of playin’ around. I didn’t mind. I was inside. It was warm. I had a drink or two inside of me. That was all I cared about.’

  ‘Was he with any other girls?’

  ‘He had a couple of dances but after a while he came back to me.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We went outside for a smoke a couple of times.’

  ‘He was a smoker?’

  ‘I don’t think he was, really,’ she said perceptively, her eyes screwed up now. ‘He didn’t inhale, just blew it around, tryin’ to look clever. And his clothes. They didn’t smell of smoke, neither.’

  Joanna stored all the facts away. ‘Go on,’ she prompted.

  ‘It got to about two and I knew the club’d be closin’. Most people had already gone with it bein’ a week night and snowin’. I asked him if he’d give me a lift home.’

  Joanna felt her hopes rise. ‘He had a car?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She thought, frowning. ‘I didn’t see one.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We went outside. It was freezin’. Real brass monkey weather.’ She gave a vague smile. ‘I wonder why they say that, about a brass monkey.’

  ‘It’s something to do with cannonballs.’ Korpanski spoke from the doorway, giving Joanna a bland but triumphant smile.

  ‘Oh.’ Kayleigh looked vague and as though she didn’t care anyway.

  ‘Did anyone see you go outside?’

  Kayleigh shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then?’ Joanna prompted.

  ‘I thought we’d go back to Coffin Corner.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Coffin Corner. It’s the name they’ve pinned up on the sort of stand thing where the smokers go since the smoking ban.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But we didn’t.’ Something in the girl’s voice changed. It became, if anything, more certain; her words were spoken quickly, as though she wanted to get the story over with. ‘He pulled me over to where the bins was. I thought he’d just want a snog or something but he puts ’is ’and over me mouth and pulls me skirt down. I was frightened. I kept sayin’ leave it and I want to go ’ome. I felt really ill. Dizzy and very sick. I said I thought I was goin’ to puke. I really thought I would. Then he was on top of me and . . .’

  She put her hands over her face, ashamed.

  Joanna gave her a couple of minutes, then said, ‘And it was this man who assaulted you?’ She baulked at the word rape. It sounded so graphic, so cruel, so descriptive.

  ‘Yeah. No doubt about it. It was the man who’d been so nice to me all evening. And then –’ she covered her face with her hands again and spoke through her fingers – ‘it was snowin’. Great big fluffy flakes driftin’ down. I used to like the snow, Inspector.’ The words had more than a touch of pathos.

  Joanna reached out and touched the girl’s hand. ‘You’ve done very well, Kayleigh. But I need to know what happened then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘I felt him inside me. Pushin’. I was so cold and wet. I was freezin’. I could feel the snowflakes landin’ on my face, and then I don’t remember anything more. It’s as though a piece of black cloth just dropped in front of my eyes. I must have passed out. I don’t remember anything more until . . .’ She squeezed her eyes tight shut. ‘I heard a voice. It was getting light. Then I heard the ambulance screamin’ and I knew it was for me,’ she said, the shock making her face pinched. ‘That’s it. That’s all I remember, Inspector.’

  Joanna touched the girl’s shoulder. ‘You’ve done really well, Kayleigh,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very brave.’ She smiled. ‘Well done. If you remember anything more I want you to tell WPC Critchlow. She’ll stay with you for now and we’ll go and talk to your mum.’

  Kayleigh turned her face to the pillow. ‘Good luck,’ she muttered, now sounding more like a stroppy teenager.

  ‘Is there anything you want her to bring from home?’

  ‘Mobile phone charger, my iPod and some money.’

  ‘Right.’

  As Joanna and Mike left the hospital she turned to him. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘time to visit the mother. What’s her name again?’

  ‘Christine – umm, Bretby. She married a guy called Neil Bretby after divorcing Kayleigh’s dad.’

  Kayleigh and her mother lived in a terraced house whose front door opened right on to the pavement. It was on the southern edge of the town, up a quiet side street with cars parked on both sides, leaving one narrow lane for through traffic. There were plenty of these terraces in Leek, built in the nineteenth century for the mill workers, well before the age of the car. A police vehicle already stood outside number seventeen, telling anyone who saw it that a drama was being played somewhere along this quiet and very average street. As Joanna and Mike pulled up a large woman crossed the street towards them, heavy thighs bumping together in unflattering black leggings.

  ‘What’s goin’ on ’ere,’ she asked and without giving them a chance to answer ploughed on. ‘It’s that bloody Kayleigh again, isn’t it? She’s up to something.’ Her lardy face displayed piggy eyes and yellowed teeth.

  ‘And you are?’ Joanna queried politely.

  ‘Pauline Morrison. I live next door and I’ve had enough of that kid. She’s nothing but trouble.’

  ‘I’m afraid that Kayleigh has had a sort of accident,’ Joanna said calmly. ‘I think she and her mother are going to need all the neighbourly support they can get. I’m sure they can count on you, Ms Morrison?’

  Pauline’s mouth dropped open. This was not what she had expected. She stood with her hands on her wide hips and searched for something to say, finally mumbling. ‘’Course.’ She turned on her heel and opened the front door to what was, presumably, her own house. Joanna gave Mike a tiny smile. ‘Round one to me?’

  His eyes rested on her warmly. ‘It’s something I’ve never quite got used to,’ he mused.

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘The way you use politeness as a weapon.’

  She giggled, then stopped when they spied Pauline watching them through the window, mobile phone pressed to her ear, talking animatedly, waving her free hand in the air.

  The jungle drums were beating.

  Joanna knocked on number seventeen and the door was opened by WPC Bridget Anderton: a small, plump officer who loved dogs and children and, unusually for a policewoman, rarely saw any harm in anyone. She had a difficult home life: three children and a husband who was on long-term sick leave with depression. She gave Joanna a wide smile, showing beautiful teeth. ‘Afternoon, Joanna, Mike,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ve come to speak to Kayleigh’s mum.’ She stood back against
the door, allowing them to enter.

  Christine Bretby was sitting on the sofa, staring ahead of her; a slim woman who looked older than her years. According to their records she was thirty-four but she could have passed for late forties. She looked across wearily as Joanna and Mike filed into the small, square room. It was a little plain and characterless, with beige emulsioned walls. There was little in it apart from a large, flat-screen television, standing in the corner on a smoked-glass unit and a huge framed print of Klimt’s The Kiss over the faux log gas fire. Joanna couldn’t help but focus on the gaudy print.

  Christine followed her gaze and gave it a sentimental look. ‘He gave me that,’ she said. ‘Neil. Lovely, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very nice,’ Joanna responded without meaning it. To her it was one of those paintings whose original meaning and significance had been lost because it had become a cliché. A birthday card, a poster, a cheap print seen everywhere. On mugs, plates, wrapping paper and in shop windows.

  She sat down on the other end of the sofa. ‘Christine,’ she began, ‘do you know what happened to your daughter last night?’

  Christine stared back at her, her eyes angry and her lips tight. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Inspector,’ she said, ‘my daughter is a cunning little liar. Ask anyone who knows her what she’s like. She’s bad news. Don’t you fall for her stories.’

  ‘Kayleigh claimed she was raped last night.’

  Christine’s finger pointed at her. Straight and uncompromising. ‘I’m telling you, don’t get fooled by her. You don’t know her like I do.’

  ‘Mrs Bretby,’ Joanna said, beginning to lose her patience. ‘Whatever the truth your daughter nearly died last night from hypothermia following an assault. I could be picking you up right now to take you to the mortuary instead of to the hospital. Whatever happened last night . . .’

  ‘She’ll have been askin’ for it.’ Christine’s voice was harsh, ragged, unsympathetic. ‘What was she wearin, Inspector? Where was she? I’ll tell you. She was in a tarty little skirt, showing all her bits, in a club what’s meant for over-eighteens.’ Christine’s eyes opened wide and she hunched her shoulders up. ‘She’s fourteen years old. What does she expect? Answer me that. You know what men are like: think women are lined up just for them. Girls like Kayleigh, well, they’re just askin’ for it. And if he left her there, half-dressed in the snow, it was no more or less than she deserved.’

  For a moment Joanna was too stunned to respond. She glanced at Mike for help, but he was wearing his famously wooden expression. No help there, then. She tried again. ‘Mrs Bretby,’ she appealed. ‘Whatever the truth about last night your daughter has had a truly dreadful experience which has very nearly cost her her life. Please—’

  Christine Bretby shifted on her seat to inch a little closer to Joanna. She put her face near enough for Joanna to smell tobacco and wine on her breath; see the bloodshot whites of her eyes and the pores glistening on her skin, which was coarse and aging quickly. ‘How well do you know my daughter, Inspector?’ she demanded. Then, triumphantly: ‘Answer, you don’t. Right, then. Let me tell you.’ There was more finger pointing. ‘Her dad was a nasty, violent blighter not above raisin’ his fists to anyone when he’d a few too many. I was stupid enough to marry him when I was seventeen years old and knew it had been a big mistake before I was eighteen. Got the story so far?’

  ‘Go on,’ Joanna said quietly, suppressing the hostile tone in her voice.

  ‘I divorced him after five years. I’d finally had enough. So there I was, twenty-two years old, on my own, with a kid of two. I can’t earn a lot of money. I never trained to do anything. And let me tell you this. Don’t think it’s a great big exciting bed of roses being single out there, particularly in a small town like Leek where everyone knows everyone else. There’s not loads of fellas queuing up to be the perfect dad to someone else’s ’orrible little kid, wantin’ to shower you with champagne and roses, take you on cruises and stuff. It’s bleedin’ hard out there and even at twenty-two there’s plenty of younger competition. Girls may like older men but men sure as hell don’t like older women – except for a quick screw,’ she finished bitterly. ‘And then, when I was thirty I finally hit lucky. I met Neil Bretby. He was a lovely guy: divorced, quiet, a plumber who worked hard and was decent. Everything.’ Her gaze couldn’t help but drift up towards the Klimt and she gave a great sigh. ‘Of course, little Kayleigh had had me all to herself up until then, but . . .’ Wham! She slapped her hand on the seat between them. ‘All of a sudden this little ten-year-old has to share her mum and she don’t like it. ’Specially when we get married a couple of years later and he moves in.’ Her glance drifted upwards again. ‘He was so romantic, so lovely, so handsome and just a really great bloke. When he asked me to marry him it was the best day of my life. And the same was true of my wedding day. It was how things should be, apart from Miss Sulky Pants who didn’t like her bridesmaid’s dress.’ Her voice, which had turned harsh, softened again. ‘It was nothing short of true love. I had everything I never had with Peter, my first husband, Kayleigh’s dad. It was as though I’d married a real grown-up man. I was happy. But little Miss Sulky Pants didn’t like it. She was jealous so she made up a story about Neil.’ Her eyes clouded. Now she looked more sad than angry. ‘And however much I didn’t believe it the mud was stickin’. When I was on my own I’d find myself startin’ to wonder. What if? What if? What if it was true that he married me just to get at my own daughter?’ She finished on a breathless, wondering note. ‘In the end I ’ad to let ’im go. It was no good any more. The magic had gone. It was all spoilt.’ She eyed the pack of cigarettes on top of the television. ‘So now I’m back on my own. Stuck with ’er. And I can tell you now, it’s even harder this time around. I won’t strike lucky again.’

  Joanna was silent for a minute. She owed the woman this tribute, at least. But . . . ‘Christine,’ Joanna said. ‘Whatever’s gone on before, Kayleigh has had a truly dreadful time. A girl needs a mother at a time like this.’

  Christine’s face twisted then into an ugly sneer. She had given up searching for sympathy for her side of the story. The gloves were off, the fists raised. ‘Does she indeed? Does she really?’ She gave into the craving, crossed quickly to the TV and lit one of the cigarettes, dragging on it so deeply her lips practically disappeared. Then she lifted her index finger in a last didactic gesture. ‘Let me tell you what I think happened, Inspector: my version of the events of last night. She sneaks into the club with some guy probably old enough to be her father. Drinks until she’s blotto. The guy sees she’s three sheets to the wind, drags her outside, maybe slipping her a Mickey Finn or somethin’. He shags her and dumps her.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘Got it? Who’s the criminal here?’

  Behind her Joanna could hear Korpanski shifting his weight on his feet. It sounded like a heavy, rhythmic thud. She knew he hated the ‘Take them, fuck them, leave them’ epithet applied to men sometimes. And he had strong feelings about motherhood, too, which he had expressed before. She gave him a quick, warning glance. Korpanski’s neck had turned red. A sure sign he was about to blow. She shook her head at him, warningly. He met her eyes with a steady gaze and a tightening of his neck muscles. Slowly his neck resumed its normal colour and his breathing slowed. She heaved a quiet sigh of relief. The danger was over.

  Christine seemed not to notice any of this and continued with her story with barely a pause. ‘She passes out and then, when she comes round, she makes up this cock and bull story to explain what’s been going on. Take my word for it, Inspector: that is what happened.’ She lay back on the sofa exhausted. ‘Need a police investigation for that, Inspector?’ she mocked.

  Joanna glanced again at Mike, who was scowling, then at Bridget, who was watching the drama with her lips slightly parted, sitting very still. Joanna couldn’t begin to work out what her response to all this was. Bridget’s life had made her adept at the art of concealing her emotions.

  ‘Would you like WPC Anderto
n to drive you to the hospital to see your daughter?’

  Christine puffed on her cigarette. ‘’Spose I’d better,’ she said reluctantly, stubbing the cigarette out in a small brass ashtray and standing up. ‘It’ll look bad if I don’t.’

  ‘Kayleigh asked if you would bring her mobile phone charger, her iPod and some money.’

  Even this seemed to upset Christine. ‘Oh, she did, did she? Anything else Lady Muck wants?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Joanna could have added so many words, so many sentiments, but wisely she kept her mouth shut and left with her sergeant.

  As she reached the door, she turned. ‘By the way,’ she said. ‘Kayleigh’s father. Where is he now?’

  ‘Scarpered off back to London,’ Christine said. ‘I haven’t seen him in years.’

  ‘Was he a Londoner?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. When we split up he went straight back. Once a Londoner, always a Londoner.’ She gave a cynical smile. ‘Bit like Leek, I s’pose. You never quite leave the moorlands behind.’ She qualified the statement. ‘Not completely anyway.’

  ‘He had a London accent?’

  ‘What on earth has that got to do with this?’

  ‘Kayleigh said that her attacker had a London accent.’

  Christine almost laughed. ‘There’s probably millions of people with a London accent.’

  ‘Not in Leek.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Born and bred there, he was. I’d gone down there to work. You know . . .’ Again Christine Bretby smiled. ‘You know, it’s the kind of the thing you do when you’re in your teens and I was a bit of a tearaway. Bit like Kayleigh, really. Leek wasn’t big enough for me so I worked in a hotel in Leicester Square. That’s when I met ’im. He was a right charmer. We got married. He came back up ’ere with me but I don’t think he could cope with rural life. He missed the “Old Smoke”.’

  ‘Has he ever come back to Leek?’

  Christine shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. He wasn’t ever over keen on the place. Never really settled here. Couldn’t wait to get back to London.’