‘Who is that man, mummy? Why is he wearing a mask?’
‘He’s just a friend of mine…we’re playing dress up. Now go back to sleep my darling, I’ll be back in with you soon.’
Lauren smiled up at her mum and closed her eyes. Beth wiped a second tear away and vowed that she would not cry in front of him again. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her pain. Content that Lauren was now settled again, Beth left the room, closing the door behind her. She then turned and looked at the stranger who had somehow brought such chaos to her life.
‘At your mother’s is she?’ the intruder mocked. ‘You lied to me again, bitch. Looks like you haven’t learned your lesson yet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Beth scowled, hoping that she might be able to reason with him. ‘I was scared. She is so precious to me and I didn’t want you to hurt her as well. Please, can’t you leave us alone? I promise I won’t tell anyone. I won’t speak to the police; it can be our little secret.’
She sensed that he might be softening, so she started to walk slowly towards him.
‘Come on,’ she continued, ‘you seem like a reasonable guy, right? I’m just a single mum, struggling to make ends meet. I know that I lied to you, and I’m sorry for that. Can’t we just put this behind us?’
The intruder continued to watch her and even flinched slightly when Beth extended a hand and gently rubbed his arm.
‘Ooh, you’re really strong,’ she continued, still stroking the man’s bicep. ‘You must impress the ladies, right?’
Beth had never mastered the art of flirting, and was desperately hoping that her attempts now were sufficient to convince him that he didn’t want to hurt her. She knew it wasn’t working when he suddenly reached out and began to squeeze her throat once more. He moved the index finger of his free hand to his lips and beckoned her to be quiet. Rather than lifting her this time, he began to push her down to the floor. He was too strong for her to stop him and even though she was desperately clawing at the hand around her throat, she was making no headway.
‘Unzip it,’ he said when her eyes were level with his groin.
Oh God, she thought, he wants to rape me.
Just thinking the word made her shudder. She could not summon the strength to move her hands to the zip.
‘Unzip it!’ he repeated, this time with a raised voice.
When her hands had still not moved he added, ‘You want me to get your little girl to do it for you?’
She glared back at him, willing God to strike him down where he stood, yet he remained unhurt.
Do it for Lauren, she willed herself.
It seemed to happen in slow motion; her right hand released its grip on his glove and moved forward to the zip on the man’s black trousers. Her trembling fingers fumbled with the small metal latch. Her thumb and index finger eventually grasped the latch and slowly began to pull it down.
‘Listen to me carefully,’ the man said. ‘You have lied to me and shown a lack of respect. You need to be taught a lesson. You’ve got to learn to respect me. Do you understand? I am in charge here; I’m the boss. Nod your head if you understand.’
She attempted to nod, the glove making movement difficult.
‘Good. Now, if you don’t want me to hurt your little girl, you will do exactly what I tell you. Nod again if you understand.’
She attempted to nod again.
‘You should know that I won’t hesitate to drag your daughter out here and kill her in front of your eyes if you don’t do what I tell you. Is that clear? Do what I say and you will live through this. Disobey me and I will kill your daughter before your eyes and then I’ll kill you.’
She felt a pain like nothing she had ever experienced before: it felt like her heart had broken in two.
‘I want you to take my dick out and suck it,’ the man continued. ‘But don’t even think about biting it or I will cut you up with my knife. Are we clear?’
She nodded and when the man didn’t say anything more she lifted her right hand again and moved it into his trousers before carrying out his instructions. It didn’t take very long as he seemed to lose his arousal. She feared that it might have been something she had done and she prepared for a backlash that didn’t materialise.
‘Fuck it!’ she heard him shout as he re-fastened his trousers.
She remained crouched on the floor, no longer under his control, yet paralysed by fear. The man began to pace backwards and forwards as if he was toying with some kind of frustration. She had the opportunity to stand and head for the front door but that would have meant leaving Lauren at his mercy. She was aware of his movement but wasn’t really conscious of anything else going on in the room as she stared blankly into space. She didn’t know if he would kill her or whether he would stay true to his word and leave them alone. Her mind grew sharper when she felt the man’s foot connect with her stomach, knocking the wind out of her. It seemed that her torment was not over yet.
‘Have you got anything to drink?’ he sneered, watching her writhe around on the floor.
She didn’t answer but pointed in the direction of a small cupboard next to the fridge. He walked to where she was pointing and yanked the door open, withdrawing a small bottle of whisky. It was virtually full as Beth had only ever used it when she’d had a cold. She could see him shaking his head while he read the label, clearly dissatisfied with her choice in liquor. He unscrewed the cap, tossing it towards the sink and then started to down the contents. When he stopped for air, Beth could see that he had consumed half the bottle already.
No wonder his breath had smelled so rotten, she thought.
The man drank the rest of the bottle and then started to make his way back to where she was lying. He was a lot less steady on his feet and one of his legs buckled as he drew nearer and suddenly he was on the floor next to her. The bottle in his hand snapped at the neck as he collided with the ground. His eyes looked angry as if he thought she was to blame.
‘I’m going to fuck you so hard,’ he bellowed at her, the whisky clinging to his breath. ‘I’m going to fuck you like the fucking bitch you are.’
She didn’t react. She continued to lie on her side, looking up at him, but in her mind she was in a field of corn, running around with her beautiful daughter. Still holding the shard of glass, the man turned Beth around until she was laid on her back in front of him. He pushed her legs apart and shuffled into the gap on his knees.
‘I bet you like getting fucked hard, don’t you?’ he sneered.
She didn’t answer. She knew what was going to happen next and the thought that if she complied, Lauren would be safe, kept her mouth closed and her actions compliant.
A sharp pain at her neck brought her mind back into the room. He had placed the shard of glass against her throat and in his drunken state had inadvertently cut into her skin. This seemed to give him some amusement and he started to draw criss-cross patterns on Beth’s exposed throat, his eyes widening each time new blood was drawn. When he grew bored of this, he began to draw similar patterns on her arms, but then stopped all of a sudden. She had remained quiet throughout the ordeal but now his sudden silence had her worried.
The man released one of her pinned arms and she felt him literally tear her knickers away before crudely poking his fingers into the exposed area.
‘You’re going to enjoy this!’ he declared, as she heard the zip unfasten once more.
Beth yelped as she felt him enter her. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the pain and hurt of what he was doing. She could feel his body crushing hers against the floor, could smell his warm, stale breath on the nape of her neck.
The assault lasted no more than five minutes but to Beth, it felt like a lifetime. Her body was limp as he clambered from her. He looked down at the contorted mess of blood and bruises on the floor, but didn’t say another word as he turned his back and left.
5
Beth finally willed herself to move half an hour later. At first she had been scared that he
might return and kill her, but after she had heard her front door slam, there had been no further noise. She felt light-headed: a combination of the shock of the assault and the blood loss. She felt unsteady as she moved to the bathroom to examine the damage. The right side of her face was heavily swollen and her neck was littered with dark red scratches and congealed blood.
She very carefully pulled the nightie over her head and allowed it to fall to the floor. She examined each of the yellowing bruises across her chest and down her side. Her whole body ached and the further slashes down her arms were painful. She turned the bath taps on and waited for the tub to fill nearly to the top. She then carefully climbed in, flinching as the warm water made contact with her cuts. She sat back and remained still for several minutes while she tried to blot the ordeal from her mind.
Then very slowly, she lifted each leg into the air, and allowed her back to slide down until her head was beneath the surface of the water. She ignored the sting of the water on her neck wounds. Her feet were now resting on the tiled wall at the tap end of the bath.
How easy it would be just to stay here, she thought.
She could feel her body starting to strain as it searched for oxygen.
I could just slip away now.
A burning sensation was growing in her chest.
It would be so much easier.
Her body started to tense as survival instinct to kicked in. She could feel her body start to fight back, urging her to find oxygen. One word entered her mind and she stopped fighting.
Lauren.
She shot upright and sucked in deep lungful’s of air. As much as she wanted to end her life at that moment, the thought of leaving Lauren alone and helpless in the world, was all she needed to keep living. She started to cry; an uncontrollable sob that lasted until she could cry no more.
Why me?
When the temperature of the water had cooled considerably, she climbed out of the tub and once again surveyed the damage in the mirror. The cuts on her neck and arms didn’t look as bad as earlier as the water had washed away the blood. She ached and her head was full of unanswered questions, but she knew there was no time to feel sorry for herself. Lauren could wake again at any moment and if she saw the state of the living room and her mother’s injuries, she would be very upset.
Beth threw the soiled nightie away in the bin in the kitchen and put her previous evening’s clothes on. She then grabbed a bottle of bleach and began to scrub at the blood stains on the living room carpet. A little after five a.m. she returned to the bedroom and climbed in next to Lauren, hugging her close as she lay there watching her daughter sleep peacefully.
She knew she was lucky to be alive, and, although the pain of what she had experienced would remain with her for the rest of her life, she was grateful that she would be able to watch her daughter grow up. She had been given a second chance and would not allow one evil man to spoil it. While lying in the bed, listening to Lauren breathing, she vowed that she would never speak of the evening’s events to anyone. She hoped that if she didn’t talk about it, she wouldn’t think about it. If only she had known how wrong she was.
MAY 1993
6
TUESDAY
The road outside the court was packed with journalists of all varieties: television reporters, newspaper leads and even the BBC Worldservice. They all had the same intention: get an interview with one of the victims. It had been rumoured that Caterina Jurdentaag would be in court for the whole trial, determined to see justice served against him. There was still no word whether the accused’s first victim, Sarah Hanridge, would show. Although chronologically she had been attacked before the other two victims, she had only come forward, and reluctantly at that, after watching the Crimewatch reconstruction video some fourteen months earlier.
The press would have to wait to speak with Nathan Green, the accused, until after the case had finished, and only if he was cleared of all charges. Green was on remand and would be led up to the court from the cells beneath when it was time. The trial was set to start at ten a.m. that morning, but with all the furore that the case had inevitably caused, ten thirty was more realistic.
Green was born on Christmas Day 1967, a fact that had earned him the nickname The Grinch Rapist in some of the tabloids, after the notorious Dr Seuss character renowned for spoiling the festive season. None of Green’s attacks had occurred during the period but the nickname had remained nonetheless. Green was the youngest son of Tony and Marie Green and had a brother, Matthew who had been born in 1964. Both Matthew and Tony were expected to be in court as well, but Marie had passed away several years earlier, and had fortunately never known of her son’s alleged vicious crimes.
Green was set to stand trial for sexual assaults on two women, Caterina and Sarah, and for the rape and murder of a third victim, Patricia Tropaz. The three cases would be heard simultaneously and the police were confident of securing convictions in all three cases. D.C.I Derek Turnbull, who had overseen each of the investigations, had openly suggested that they believed Green had ‘probably committed more’ and that these three cases were ‘merely the tip of the iceberg.’ The press loved a sensational story and had promised mass coverage of this trial for the duration.
The three victims had all been attacked in Hampshire but the investigation had been supported by the best detectives the Met could provide. The first two victims had described being attacked by a tall, strong man, wearing dark clothes and a balaclava. The attacker had subjected them to physical as well as sexual abuse, punching and kicking them before forcing them to perform a variety of sexual acts on him. They had both described how he had used a small knife to cut at them and that his fingers had been long and perfectly manicured.
Caterina Jurdentaag, Cat to her friends, had come forward following her attack but initially had found the police less than helpful in wanting to hear what had happened to her. It was not that they couldn’t be bothered, but that resources had just not been available to collect the statements and evidence needed in such cases. The successful conviction rate for sexual assault was already at an all-time low, and the single W.P.C. assigned to investigate had been inexperienced and more of a sounding board than a force to be reckoned with.
That had all changed when the body of a third victim, Patricia Tropaz, had been found in a pool of blood on the floor of her flat. The murder had received huge coverage from the local press and this had increased the pressure on the Hampshire Constabulary to locate the perpetrator. A nearby CCTV camera had captured the image of a masked man fleeing the property. When the post mortem confirmed that the victim had been subjected to an extreme sexual assault shortly before death, the detectives on the case began to look for other sexual assaults in the area with a similar modus operandi, notably the balaclava, dark clothes and knife. They stumbled upon Cat’s case and suddenly she received the attention she deserved. Of course it was a little late for fresh samples to be taken, and door to door enquiries, to locate potential witnesses to the crime on Cat, proved fruitless. The police were still keen to secure her personal account of that fateful night, as, if she was attacked by the same man, then she could potentially identify the murderer.
The investigation into Patricia’s murder lasted months, and as the time dragged by, Cat became despondent that the police would ever find the man. It was eventually decided to undertake a nationally televised reconstruction of the two crimes on the BBC’s prime-time Crimewatch show. It was hoped that the short video would trigger the memories of some potential witnesses, but might also encourage further victims of the man’s crimes to come forward. D.C.I. Turnbull had consulted a forensic psychologist about the likely nature of the offender and she had suggested that he would certainly have attempted rape previously.
Sarah Hanridge had not told anybody of the ordeal she had endured, not even her best friends. She had been at her parent’s place when the reconstruction had started. Watching the masked man, following the Caterina-character home had sparked a series of
memories in her mind and she had broken down in tears. Her parents, obviously concerned by this reaction, had asked her what was wrong. She had opened up to them and they had encouraged her to telephone the police and report the ordeal. She had told her story to a detective on the phone but had remained reluctant to attend the station and re-tell the story via a statement. After considerable pressure, she had agreed and attended the station for an interview but had stated she would not be prepared to stand in the witness dock and recall the events in front of strangers, particularly if he was going to be there too.
The police had deliberately not mentioned the perpetrator’s manicured fingers in the reconstruction so that when potential victims came forward they would be able to quickly sift out the real from the false. It had been Sarah’s off-the-cuff remark to the detective on the phone that had made the police so insistent on speaking to her. Extensive statements had been taken, covering as many points of relevance in preparation for a potential trial, even though, at that point, they did not have a suspect in the frame.
It wasn’t until three months after Sarah had come forward that Nathan Green’s name had entered the frame. The police had known they were seeking a tall and well-built man, aged between twenty and fifty, with manicured fingers. They had ruled out most of the known offenders prone to extreme violence in the local vicinity. Limited psychological analysis of the three crimes suggested the perpetrator was a sadistic rapist, a term coined to define the behaviour of this type of assailant. The manner with which he had subjected his two victims to violence and somewhat perverse requests earned him this label. Thankfully such assailants were few and far between, but that did not make it any easier to locate a new face on the block.
Green was an average-looking young man, popular with the women he met on the club scene in Hampshire. The police forensics team had located a partial thumb print at the flat of Patricia Tropaz smeared in the victim’s blood. Other than the large pool of blood that had soaked into the living room carpet, it was the only real sign that anything amiss had occurred in the property. Whoever had carried out the attack on Patricia had scrubbed the flat clean of evidence of the activity, with the exception of the carpet stain. The bloodied thumb print had been spotted by an eagle-eyed member of the team on the edge of one of the taps in the bathroom. It was believed that the accused had used the basin in the small bathroom to wash whatever cleaning materials had been used. The partial print had been compared with prints on record without success but it did mean that if any likely suspects appeared, they would have something for comparison.
Trespass (P.I. Johnson Carmichael Series - Book 2) Page 3