Without Consent

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘You know very well what time it is. Early. Far too early for work.’

  He was always like this, wanting to talk and wanting someone to force him to do it. Sometimes she had to take advantage of him in the early mornings.

  ‘Ryan had a file,’ Bailey said. ‘If we’d searched his house, we might have found the duplicate, but we didn’t, although Todd will sure as hell search his house now. The file’s on the disk anyway. It was all no-hope fantasists who came in with weird stories about men they wouldn’t, couldn’t name, plus witnesses who couldn’t help. I thought our Ryan might be keeping a book of screwball women who might not mind being screwed and could never give reliable information afterwards. There’s a central register. You’re only allowed so many spurious rape allegations before someone puts a question mark against your name. He was never fussy about type, Ryan; liked ’em all, in his way, but I didn’t think he’d be so desperate. Although you never know. You never really know anyone.’

  He slid in beside her and pulled the duvet up to his chest.

  ‘But, if he was keeping the file for that, why keep the complaints of two women who died soon after he saw them? Unknown causes; heart attacks. Both pregnant. As indeed, it seems, was little Shelley Pelmore. Todd’s flummoxed; and furious, which is why he phones me all day. Why I’ve got to help him nail the bastard.’

  ‘Which bastard?’

  ‘Ryan, the fool. For playing this so close to his chest. For fantasizing himself. Oh, I know he got his fingers burnt for even suggesting there might be a link between a few scared, confused, guilt-ridden women, where the method of attack described has no common denominator at all except for a total lack of forensic evidence on their persons. No semen, no fibres. He’s either in their homes by some kind of invitation, in which case he brings flowers and chocolates, or, in the case of the younger three, showing a penchant for the great outdoors, or his car, also by invitation. No injury. A man they already know? Met in a club, says one kid; came to my house, says another. And the last recipient of chocolates and flowers says he has fine eyes. Well, according to fiction and anyone old enough for James Bond movies, creepy villains with great sexual potency and black cats always have mesmeric eyes. Personally, I think Sally Smythe has gone mad, too. And to think this was a man I trained.’

  ‘Trained, not only in the systematic forms of investigation, but also the empirical,’ Helen said.

  ‘Not that empirical. You can bounce things off a wall, but only if you’ve got something to throw. Yes, I could kill him and I know he could have killed her; Shelley, I mean. He’s capable of violence. More than one kind.’

  He swung himself off the bed.

  ‘Which is why I want to find him. I’m his best chance. The preliminaries show that Shelley, too, died of unknown causes. There was pressure on the neck, but it didn’t kill her. Oddly enough, old Ryan had been asking a pathologist about how to cause death without trace, but that’s neither here nor there. There’s nothing forensic to connect him, nothing else either, if only he’ll show his face and say where the hell he was, they’ll have to drop the rape. The witness is dead; long live the witness! I hope he was out on a bender.’

  He sounded gleeful, Helen hated him. Hated that flash of triumph in him which came from a death. A girl dead, and him smiling about it, thinking of nothing but a grand reunion.

  ‘The witness dead. No evidence. Ryan being discharged. That’s all you care about,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Not quite.’ He dropped a kiss on her forehead. It felt like ice.

  ‘Your mate, getting away with it. At the risk of a cliché, what about truth?’

  ‘Oh, that?’ he said, putting on a shirt without further indecision, scarcely pausing about the business of socks, underpants, trousers; always able to dress with speed. ‘That can wait.’

  ‘What about the fact that Ryan could be a rapist, a murderer?’

  ‘That can wait, too,’ he said, equally flat, his movements slowing down, less decisive. ‘Truth often has to wait.’

  ‘You detested that girl without knowing anything about her, and now you behave as if you’d dance on her grave.’

  ‘That’s an exaggeration.’

  ‘What about compassion, then? Can you spell it these days?’ she taunted, furious. This was her bridegroom, date fixed for the wedding, tomorrow, behaving like an alien with alien loyalties, underlining all her own doubts and fears. Bailey was all at once both defensive and apologetic.

  ‘There’s an order to things, that’s all,’ he began, then looked at her and decided not to continue, shrugged instead. They both knew she would not listen. Helen crept back inside herself and watched him go. The day was not only dull, but suddenly cold.

  White was a cold colour. White flowers reminded Anna of snow and Christmas roses, and white daisies in a white living-room were just a shade clinical, even with the curtains closed. Anna was about the work of creation; playing around in there with the curtains open, of course, because it seemed sinful to close them just yet, but trying at the same time to imagine the place after dark. She could wait until nine, she supposed, when the light slipped away, but that was too complicated. Greenery with the daisies and a light behind them would soften the effect, so would the colour of the curtains and the rich throws she had arranged over her old chairs, and the high polish of the table …

  It had to be envisaged by night, because it was by night he would be there. She thought of how the evenings were becoming shorter and regretted the fact that she had painted the walls white at all. She could have made a cosy little snug of this room. Gone hunting for cheap secondhand curtains; velvet, perhaps, from that man in the market who had them sometimes. She could have had deep-green drapes. Suddenly she resented her own imagination and its shallow priorities. She had relinquished her vocation for the sake of this house and there were many days when she had thought she would sell her soul for the sake of going to a big department store and buying exactly what she wanted to beautify it, like Helen West had done, instead of the endless thrift required to achieve harmony. She chided herself for that ambition, too; having more money and choice would make no difference and would diminish the pride she had taken in her bargain hunting. Why would more money make any difference? The vast increase in her salary which had come from working in a private clinic had not made her happy either. As a substitute for a lover and a child, her obsession with this little house and large mortgage did not work. It was simply hiding a vacuum.

  No, not daisies. Too cheerful and no scent. Something more fragrant was needed.

  She had been smiling at him recently, exchanging the odd wry remark, and he had been reciprocating, convinced, of course, that all was forgiven and forgotten. If she sidled up to him and said, look, I’m cooking dinner tonight, why don’t you come and share it? she was fairly sure he would say yes. He liked to be liked; he would want his reacceptance into the circle of her approval confirmed; he might not dare say no. Of course, a simpler form of revenge might be to poison his food, or indeed try to undermine his reputation, but she knew she was far too small fry to do that without her attempts being counterproductive. He would sail away and she would be sacked and branded as spiteful. No, this was the only way. It was not enough to injure him. He had to be humiliated and exposed and put on record. Anna’s conscience was clear on that front; after all, the advice had come from a lawyer. The only way you’ll get your own back, Helen West had said laughingly, is to make him do it again.

  Roses then, in that corner; deep-red blooms if she could get them. And she would not promise seafood, although he had told her he liked it, because the cooking of fish made such a smell.

  Anna shook herself. She had become used to lying.

  She remembered the ice, the worst aspect of all; ice touching neck of cervix and being welcomed as if to douse the heat. That was the humiliation which cried out for revenge, because that was what he did. He made the body lose control and take convulsive pleasure in itse
lf, whatever the mind did.

  And a nagging concern, which may have been jealousy, because the last name she had seen him extract from the records was gorgeous little Rose.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘If the intercourse was with a woman of weak intellect, incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, and the jury found she was incapable of giving consent, or of exercising any judgement upon the matter, and that (though she made no resistance) the defendant had sexual intercourse with her by force and without her consent, that is a rape … however, it was afterwards held that the mere fact of intercourse with an idiot girl, who was a fully developed woman, who was capable of recognizing and describing the defendant, and who, notwithstanding her imbecile condition, might have strong instincts, was not sufficient evidence of rape to be left to a jury …’

  ‘None of them have intellect! None of us has the kind of intellect which can prevail above need!’

  He wrote on paper, the screen abandoned, knowing he should throw away this paper afterwards. His long slender fingers, unusual for an artist or surgeon, touched the vase by the desk and he did not know whether he was exhilarated or sad.

  ‘Girls who are afraid of getting pregnant will nevertheless do a number of bizarre things in search of thrills,’ he wrote.

  ‘They are very willing to experiment, especially if they feel their experience leaves them behind their peers. So are those whose knowledge of sexual congress is nothing but a selfish coupling designed for the emission of seed and restoration of relative good humour of the male, usually an inarticulate young man who has never studied anatomy or physiology and considers that his greatest suffering to date is an unalleviated erection in tight trousers. Such a boy does not know the good fortune involved in this kind of discomfort. He does not know what real pain is.’

  This was not part of the history he was writing, but he wrote it anyway.

  ‘Despite disappointment,’ he wrote, ‘all young and youngish women are best approached in their secretory phase – immediately after ovulation – when they produce progesterone and, under the influence of this aggressive hormone, also a delicate watery mucus from the cervical glands. Progesterone production prevails for the first three months of pregnancy …’

  He put down the pen, flushed with pity.

  What chance has human nature against a cycle as relentless as this? Progesterone makes for imbeciles. The balance of the mind is disturbed; the body fair aching with desire, most easily pleasured. What price is free will to an empty womb which does not know it is empty for a purpose?

  Sadness prevailed over exhilaration. It was the first time he had killed with such effortless proficiency, but there was no pride in it. Numbness and horror; more when he felt in his pockets and could not find the syringe, and then there was a moment of sheer panic.

  There it was again: the wrong fear of the wrong kind of retribution, and then the old and crippling desire to be loved, coming back with a force so strong he took the empty vase and threw it.

  He was weary of this game. Sick of it.

  Even if there was another candidate waiting in the wings. Sweet little Rose Darvey, marrying a clod of a policeman with whom she already quarrelled, soon, no doubt, to reach a stage of bitter discontent; as slender as Shelley; as sexual. With a background devoid of love.

  And also, Anna. Who forgave him, although there was nothing to forgive. She accepted what he was.

  Maybe, after all this, there was redemption.

  I used to believe in the redeeming power of love, Helen West told herself, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s only suitable for those capable of redemption.

  First undertones of autumn. A smattering of leaves on the window-ledge, desiccated by the dry heat, carried a long distance, looking burnt and almost tropical. An ominous strength in the warm breeze.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to encourage Bailey to speak his mind if she was going to so dislike the result. Honesty was often death to harmony. He had been so disgustingly jubilant, a boy let off the hook of anxiety because his little friend was not going to get smacked. Going out of the house wearing a loud tie which suggested premature celebration, perhaps limbering up to the prospect of an interview which could be fixed. She could imagine how it would go. Where were you, the night before last, DS Ryan? Out finding a new way of making a witness have a heart attack by a little playful strangulation? What every boy does from time to time? No, sir; nothing of the kind. I was out and about in the business of my own defence against this heinous charge. Taking a break in order to get drunk with A, B and C, all of whom will stand alibi to squash any suggestion that I might rape or terrorize some poor little wench who once trusted me. Happens all the time, sir. Honestly, all I did was breach the conditions of my bail. Slap my wrist.

  Helen could not concentrate. She looked at today’s set of papers. A case with the usual qualified hope of whatever it was they called success, as if imprisonment was success. The best level of success in a rape case was the victim being believed; and then believed to the extent that there was no room for the jury to be distracted by sympathy for the accused. She was sick of this kind of Russian roulette. One sought a confirmation in the mind of the victim that she had not deserved this violation, without the whole process of law making the nightmare worse. ‘Any penetration is sufficient…’ At the moment, Helen felt that a kiss from Bailey would feel like a bruise. Intimacy with a stranger she was supposed to marry tomorrow, who did not care about truth, only about his brutal little friend.

  In the present case, as Redwood would say, the evidence was sound. With injuries like that, there was no question of consent and that was all which need concern her. Mary and John, whoever they were; their careers; their future life, were not hers to record. She judged the lives of others on the episodes she read; on evidence of misspent passion; love, turning first to disapproval, then to hate. She only evaluated them on a reasonable prospect of conviction.

  Helen loved Bailey with reservations. Bailey loved Ryan to the extinction of conscience. Yes, she preferred to know people only on paper. And she knew this angry litany of accusations against Bailey was unfair. He was not the only one tainted with hypocrisy. She was fuelling her own cowardice by blaming him for something. Anything would have done to excuse the fact that when she thought of marriage her feet were cold.

  ‘I do not judge the living, I simply dissect the dead,’ Dr Webb told them. ‘But I liked your Mr Ryan. He said he was writing a thesis. Such a need for certainty.’

  ‘The hell he was writing a thesis.’

  Todd’s ruddy complexion was pale with irritation. There was a sheen to his skin which might have been sweat or the rain, a half-hearted drizzle which dampened the hair and clung to clothes. They stood outside the mortuary, Bailey smoking, apparently nonchalant, impervious to the damp which the brown grass of the park drank greedily. If he looked at the grass long enough, he was sure he would see it change colour.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Todd. ‘Absolutely bloody amazing that he should be asking you about how to kill women without trace and then one of them’s found dead, on your doorstep, of a bloody heart attack.’

  ‘Complete cardiac and respiratory failure. That was the cause. There is nothing to indicate that this death had anything to do with Mr Ryan’s research. It’s unusual, sure, for a healthy woman to die with such spontaneity, but not unknown. Strange things happen in pregnancy.’

  ‘But he tried to throttle her,’ Todd snapped.

  ‘Someone tried, but not very hard. And, as far as I can tell at this stage, she was already dead. Too late for the skin to bruise; she was already turning white and blue; she hadn’t tried to defend herself. No, she just lay down in the park and went to sleep. No level on drink or drugs yet, maybe she took some pills. If there was a combination, well, who knows? Death by misadventure. I don’t know about fibres and other stuff; nothing I could see.’

  ‘He had to do it,’ Todd fumed, talking to himself. Dr Webb stood back from him, Bailey noticed, l
ooking at him as if he was a specimen on a slab, her posture revealing a mild dislike, but then Todd had this way of standing too close. An habitual invader of private space, as if he wanted everyone to share his flowery aftershave, worn as a precaution against mortuary smells.

  ‘He knew all about it,’ Todd said stubbornly.

  ‘All about what? About an air embolism being fatal?’ She was becoming irritated, felt that both men had her standing out here in order to make her accuse on evidence not yet gathered, purely to give them some sense of direction where there was none. They weren’t even the officers investigating the death which she had not even called homicide.

  ‘Look, an air embolism is fatal, but I do not know if one existed. And what do you think he would have to do to create it? Put a straw up her nose? A long blow-job?’

  Todd sniggered. Nerves and embarrassment.

  ‘Getting a quantity of air into a woman isn’t easy. It has to get into her bloodstream. An injection would be best. Giving an injection isn’t easy, either. How would your nice Mr Ryan know how to do that without leaving a needle mark?’

  Bailey was silent; Todd sulky.

  ‘But the fact he asked you …’ he began, wagging his finger, hectoring, so that she stepped back even further.

  ‘Means what? He first asked me about his thesis four months ago. Someone he knew, someone who’d complained of an attack, died mysteriously. Set him off thinking, he said, but he was slow to learn. Needed everything repeating.’ Like you, she might have added, but refrained.

  ‘Where is he?’ Todd muttered darkly. ‘Where the hell is he?’

  Bailey thought of the Rape House and held his tongue. The rain fell harder as he looked downhill towards the traffic. He saw a man huddled by a gravestone, pulling his sweater up round his ears.

  Ryan could live like that; Ryan could live in a phone booth. Ryan could be the perfect chameleon, changing colour with the landscape.

  I never knew you, Bailey thought to himself. I never really knew you at all. He turned to Dr Webb, smiling his cadaverous smile.