Be My Girl

by Tony Hutchinson

  Old Mrs Thompson waved at him from the downstairs window of her neat, detached house. His Sunday-morning routine was so set in stone, he reckoned people would be more likely to remember a Sunday when they didn’t see him. Routine was good. Routine was akin to being invisible. People were so used to seeing him, he could disappear in plain sight.

  The allotment was just over 100 feet long. The piece of land was divided into 12 allotments and surrounded on three sides by houses and by a tennis court on the other. His ‘patch’ bordered on to the tennis court, not any houses. A communal entry gate was up a small alley. Striding across the frozen ground, he unlocked his shed and turned on the small Primus stove.

  ‘No self-respecting allotment owner would be without a kettle, son,’ his father used to say. At least his mother had kept the allotment after his dad had died.

  He filled the kettle from a bottle of water in his bag. On the shelf in the shed was an eclectic mix of small hand tools, seed trays, gloves, and plant pots. The peeling paint on the wooden walls reminded him of the day when, as a young boy, he helped his father give the shed a fresh coat, their hands and shoes streaked in green gloss. The laughing had stopped when she tore into them back at home. His eyes narrowed and his face con torted at the memory.

  Sitting on the small stool, he exhaled loudly and picked up the tin of paraffin. A quick shake and he knew there was sufficient for his purposes.

  The smoke wouldn’t be a concern. Nobody was playing tennis and he was too far from the empty gardens of the houses.

  Swinging the pickaxe into the frozen ground, his fingers stiffened and the vibrations reverberated through his arms. This would be so much easier in the months to come, once the ground softened.

  The cup of tea provided some welcome warmth.

  With no sign of the weak winter sun defrosting the ground, it took him another 30 minutes to finish the task. Dropping the plastic bag into the hole, he doused it in paraffin.

  What was unusual about a fire on an allotment? Hands in pockets, he watched the yellow flames, dancing like Ecstasy-fuelled clubbers, destroy any forensic evidence.

  Fascinated with forensic science ever since reading the Sherlock Holmes novels as a youngster, his interest had never gone away. Books, TV, newspapers, the Internet… all were sources of information. No need to let librarians, and anyone who asked, know what books you were reading. What had Edmond Locard said? ‘Every contact leaves a trace’? Locard, dubbed the Sherlock Holmes of France and a true pioneer of forensic science, had identified the ‘Exchange Principle’, the theory that someone committing a crime will bring something to the crime scene and take away something from it. What they inadvertently leave behind or carry away is evidence.

  How many times had he read the newspaper or watched the news where forensics had led to some careless fool's arrest? Idiots! But thinkers like him were in a different league. He knew his Locard. He knew scientific examinations could yield a huge amount of evidence.

  He would have left fibres on her, on the bedding, in the house, but the police would need his clothing for comparison. His clothing would have brought fibres from her, or her house, out with him. So what? The clothing was burnt and so was any scientific evidence.

  He may have left footprint impressions but, with the shoes up in smoke, the trainers couldn’t incriminate him.

  His semen had left the house with him and as he hadn’t taken his gloves off, other than to put on a condom, there were no fingerprints. The mask not only hid his identity but covered his mouth, ensuring he couldn’t have sprayed saliva for subsequent DNA comparison.

  Fuck you, Mrs Bloody Roberts! Home free.

  Kicking the soil over the dying embers, he started to whistle his dad’s favourite tune – Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.

  Ed and Sam spent two hours reading the file on the previous rape.

  The victim, Kelly Jones, 26, had woken in her home to find a masked man standing at the side of her bed, dressed in a dark tracksuit and gloves. He rammed his hand down across her mouth and pushed her head into the pillow. Her eyes had been glued on the knife that was swinging like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, millimetres above her face.

  ‘Do what I say and I won’t hurt you.’ He had spoken quietly, almost softly. Instinctively, she had pulled the duvet up below her chin. He had leaned closer towards her, his voice still quiet and calm.

  ‘Please push the covers off. I want to look at you.’

  Tightening her fingers around the duvet, Kelly had yelped as his right hand slapped her in the face.

  His voice had not needed to be loud to convey its menace.

  ‘I fuckin’ told you, do as you’re told and I won’t hurt you.’

  The stinging sensation in her cheek coupled with the taste of blood had caused her to loosen her grip. The attacker had grabbed the duvet, pulled it away from her and asked her to turn on the bedside light.

  He had stroked Kelly’s face as he lay next and whispered into her ear: ‘Take your nightie off for me. You know you’re my babe.’

  Cold hatred burned in Ed’s eyes as he read through Kelly’s witness statement, her unimaginable fear.

  Sick bastard!

  Kelly had closed her eyes and done as she was told, the man touching her breasts and whispering ‘you’re beautiful’. She had refused to get on her hands and knees until she felt the knife sticking into her neck.

  Each hand had been tied with a single piece of rope to the farthest pole on the headboard. Kelly heard him pull his tracksuit bottoms down and something like a wrapper being torn open. The bed had creaked as he forced himself inside her. When it was over, Kelly was aware of the man doing something to himself, perhaps removing a condom. Still wearing the gloves and mask, he had untied her hands and put the ropes in his pocket. He lay next to her again and she could see the knife in his hand. The words were almost as bad as the attack. ‘Did you enjoy that, babe? Was I better than your boyfriend?’ Kelly had nodded furiously. ‘I’m pleased about that,’ the man had said. ‘I really enjoyed it as well.’

  He had then asked for her purse, which she took from the drawer of the bedside table and handed over. Holding her driving licence, he had stroked her cheek.

  ‘I hope I haven’t hurt you, Kelly?’

  Hearing him speak her name had almost been too much, but Kelly felt if she could just hold it together, he would leave her alive.

  Then he had asked for her mobile. She picked it up off the bedside table and handed it to him. Having pressed a few buttons, he gave it back to her.

  ‘On second thoughts, I won’t take your mobile,’ he had said. ‘Don’t ring the police. Don’t do anything for 20 minutes. My friend is watching you.’

  Kelly Jones believed her attacker had been in her house for over an hour. The police control-room tape showed she called them from her mobile at 4.45am.

  Sam and Ed were silent, letting the words in Kelly’s statement become a movie reel in their minds, reliving her ordeal.

  ‘In no rush to leave, was he?’ Ed said finally. ‘He must have known she lived alone. How did he know that?’

  ‘We need to find out,’ Sam said. ‘What about his voice? Is there anything distinguishing about it?’

  Sam picked up the statement again and flicked back through the pages.

  ‘Here it is. Local accent. Nothing unusual. She doesn’t say anything about the tone, the pitch.’

  ‘Understandable,’ Ed said. ‘The bastard’s wearing a mask and he’s got a knife. That said, if she were to hear it again, I reckon she’d know it was him.’

  Sam made a mental note to press Kelly on the voice when they went to speak to her again.

  Ed had turned to another detail, a small specific that might play a bigger part in the hunt.

  ‘He tells her to wait 20 minutes and not call the police,’ Ed said. ‘Why 20 minutes and not 10, or 30? He says an accomplice is watching her.’

  ‘Probably a lie,’ Sam slowly shook her head.

  ‘
Yep, more than likely. But 20 minutes?’

  Sam followed Ed’s train of thought, running scenarios through her own head.

  ‘Does it take that long to get home or to his place of safety? Is that just a number he’s conjured up? Does he want us to believe he lives 20 minutes away? Maybe it was the first number that came into his head?’

  ‘She does say that after he left there was a spicy smell in the bedroom. Whoever took this statement was on the ball, by the way.’

  ‘Spicy? Curry maybe?’ Sam wondered out loud. ‘Is he maybe Asian? Or is this just someone who likes spicy food?’

  Ed looked up, a small smile on his face.

  ‘So that’s most of the population then. Isn’t curry our national dish now?’

  ‘Probably. I love it,’ Sam said. ‘Kelly, on the other hand, says she can’t stand spicy food. That’s why she she’s clear about the smell.’

  The language of the initial police report was staccato and impersonal.

  Victim lived in a two-bedroom semi-detached house on Bamburgh Way…point of entry believed to be a broken kitchen window… broken window discovered when victim returned from work.

  Sam dropped the papers on to her desk and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Kelly says she contacted her landlord that evening,’ Sam said, eyes closed in concentration. ‘He said he’d get the window repaired on Saturday morning. He asked her if she’d like him to put a board up for the night but she said she didn’t want to spoil his Friday night and that it would wait.’

  ‘Are you thinking what I am?’ Ed pushed his chair backwards, stood up, and put his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘The broken window? It might not be a coincidence?’

  ‘I don’t like coincidences anymore more than the next detective,’ Sam said.

  She felt a shiver run through her as she tried to imagine how she would have felt waking to find a stranger in her room.

  ‘You okay, Sam?’

  Ed’s concerned voice snapped her back to the present.

  ‘I’m fine, Ed. Thanks. Just trying to put myself in Kelly’s shoes.’

  In reality, Sam knew she’d have to put herself in the shoes of the rapist.

  Chapter Six

  Bamburgh Way, a huge road over a mile in length and with over 300 houses, was part of the sprawling Gull Estate on the north side of Seaton St George. Building had started there just over 10 years ago and houses were still being put up. There were thousands of homes, as varied as the area was vast.

  To the south of Gull was the Conifer Estate, which now bordered on to it. If you didn’t know otherwise, you would think it was all one estate.

  ‘The forensics from Kelly’s house all look up to scratch,’ Sam said. ‘Numerous fingerprint lifts…some fibres on the bedding that don’t match any of the clothes Kelly was wearing.’

  ‘Let’s hope he took his gloves off,’ Ed said.

  ‘Yeah. And he’s still got the clothes he was wearing.’

  Both Sam and Ed were acutely aware that every two-bit crook was much more forensically savvy these days. The ever-increasing police dramas on television and the media coverage of all aspects of forensic science had seen to that.

  They remained by the desk reading and re-reading the material in front of them, the silence broken only when they had something new to discuss. Other than that, the only sound was the wall-mounted clock ticking away, seconds turning into minutes.

  Talking to neighbours had thrown up no investigative leads. No one had seen or heard anything suspicious at the time of the attack. Nobody had seen any unfamiliar vehicles hanging around on the days before. Nothing. A total blank.

  An examination of the closed-circuit TV cameras in the area between the hours of 2am and 6am had shown there were very few people or cars to be seen. As usual the quality was poor and those people and vehicles couldn’t be identified and subsequently traced.

  There had been a media appeal, which had been reported in the local evening newspaper, the Seaton Post. The police had released the fact an intruder had entered the home of a 26-year-old female and sexually assaulted her. The Press wasn’t told the man was masked, had a knife, wore gloves, or that he tied up the victim. They weren’t told how he entered the house, and it wasn’t confirmed the victim knew the attacker.

  A media strategy was important. Releasing too much information to the Press might mean hard-won confessions being denied in court, with the accused saying he made up the admission based on what he had read in the papers or seen on the news.

  The victim’s name and address, of course, hadn’t been released to protect her identity, but the area where she lived had been made public. That was necessary for the police witness appeal to be effective. Nobody had come forward so far and no police officers on duty had seen anyone or anything suspicious.

  There was potentially more positive news from an examination of Kelly’s mobile, with confirmation a call had been made during the time of the attack.

  ‘I reckon that he’s called his mobile to get her number,’ Sam said. ‘Kelly is sure he pressed a few buttons on her phone before he told her he wouldn’t take it. Her number would show up on his phone as a missed call.’

  Open-mouthed, Sam suddenly stopped talking and re-read the paragraph.

  ‘Bloody hell! Look at this!’

  She pushed a piece of paper towards Ed and her voice quickened.

  ‘A man claiming he was the rapist called Kelly on the Tuesday after the attack.’

  ‘Number?’ Ed asked as he hurriedly scanned the document.

  ‘Whoever it was didn’t withhold the number,’ Sam said. ‘It’s the same number her attacker called from her phone.’

  ‘Looks like it’s him then,’ Ed said. ‘What did he say?’

  Rummaging through the papers, Sam found Kelly’s second statement.

  ‘Here, let’s have a look.’

  Sam’s eyes flashed through the paragraphs.

  ‘Okay. Kelly rang the police immediately after she got the call. It was 7pm on the Tuesday and she was at home with her mother. Kelly couldn’t bear to be alone in the house so her mum had temporarily moved in with her after the attack.’

  ‘She could be there for a long time,’ Ed interrupted.

  Both had interviewed many victims of rape over the years. Most had eventually, outwardly at least, put their attacks behind them but would forever carry the mental scars. Many would never be the same person again.

  The woman who had been attacked in the street at night would never again be alone outside in the dark; those who had been assaulted in a multi-storey car park would never use one again; a victim targeted in a park may never be able to take her children there to play. The memory of rape was permanent. It may be locked away in the back of their mind, but it never went away.

  ‘The caller told her he was sorry and hoped he’d not hurt her,’ Sam Said. ‘Kelly said she was fighting every sinew in her body to hang up, but something inside her was telling her to keep listening. He told her she was beautiful and that he hoped she’d enjoyed their time together as much as he had.’

  Ed shook his head. ‘What a sick bastard! What else?’

  ‘He said something along the lines of how he hoped they could have gone out together somewhere, but that it was out of the question now she had gone to the police. He said he had seen it in the Press. Kelly remembers he asked her ‘why did you do that?’ before he hung up.’

  Sam paused, thinking about the call and silently saluting Kelly’s courage.

  ‘He never raised his voice,’ Sam continued. ‘He was calm throughout. Kelly thought he had even sounded a little sad when he asked her why she had gone to the police.’

  Ed scowled, jaw muscles tensing.

  ‘Sad? He’ll be sad alright when we get our hands on him.’

  Ed’s face reddened and they both fell silent, each thinking through the new information, before the ringing telephone made them jump.

  ‘Jesus,’ Ed said.

  Sam picked up the receiver. �
�Sam Parker.’

  She listened and ended the call with a ‘thank you’.

  Sam replaced the receiver, picked up a pen, and tapped it repeatedly on the desk.

  ‘Ed, we need an interviewer and a level-5 interview adviser. We’ll be running this job by tomorrow.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘That was an update from Seaton CID. The crime-scene boys at Danielle’s have found a broken kitchen window.’

  ‘So? He had to get in somehow.’

  ‘There are pieces of newspaper stuck to the window frame, some kind of temporary repair. No way Danielle did that after the attack.’

  ‘Coincidence? Forget it. We’ve got a serial rapist. I’ll call them out.’

  Sam nodded. ‘And Danielle’s okay for interview. You make the calls. I’ll stick the kettle back on. Oh, and see if you can get hold of Dave Johnson. He can sort out the room.’

  He drove to an out-of-town retail park intending to buy identical clothes to the ones he had burnt. If the police ever suspected him, a witness or an image from a CCTV camera could identify his clothing. The new clothes would pass any forensic test – he hadn’t been at the scene in them. They were exactly the same clothes, but not the clothes.

  A self-satisfied smile spread across his face. It was inspired.

  He got cash from a machine within walking distance of his house. A future investigation could put him at the retail park that day if he made a withdrawal there. Bank cards, like mobiles, left a forensic trail. From there it would simply be a case of them following the evidence. The CCTV, which seemed to be all over the park, might pick him up going into a sports shop, and the cameras inside might put him at the till buying the identical tracksuit. In no time the police would be building a case, not because they were brilliant detectives, but because of his own carelessness. Likewise, there was no danger of him buying anything on a credit or debit card. Strictly cash only.

  The hand movements of the man standing opposite in sweatshirt and joggers were a blur as he pushed and pulled the hangers before taking a black shiny tracksuit from the tubular rack. They looked at each other briefly with an air of recognition, the type where you know the face but can’t place it.