Rape crime, particularly rape by gangs of young men and boys, has become a huge problem in south London. Not too long ago, Scotland Yard statistics showed a trebling in the incidence of gang attacks across the city over the past four years. More than a third of the reported victims were under sixteen.
When it comes to rape, of course, reported incidents are the tip of the iceberg.
‘When you arrived at the flat, there was just the three of them?’ I asked, when she didn’t go on. ‘One of them was Miles?’
She nodded.
‘And Miles had phoned to ask you to come round?’
She nodded again. ‘He say come round and watch a DVD. I thought it would be just the two of us.’
‘Miles is your friend, boyfriend …?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘He’s just someone I know.’
A little way to our left the Millennium Bridge was already busy, two steady streams of foot traffic flowing gently along it. Visitors from the north bank crossing to view the Globe or visit the Tate Modern; others walking in the opposite direction, heading for St Paul’s Cathedral or the shops and galleries further north. On the first day of September, London was still in peak tourist season.
‘Had you had sex with him before?’ I asked her. ‘Before that day?’
She nodded, without taking her eyes off the river.
‘What happened when you arrived?’
‘I seen these other two. I didn’t know them but I seen them around. We started to watch a film but it didn’t feel right.’
A passenger boat was heading our way, its bow sending waves across the water. ‘In what way didn’t it feel right?’ I asked her.
‘They was looking at each other, not at the film,’ she said. ‘They wasn’t watching the film. I didn’t like it and I said I had to go. That I was meeting Bethany.’
‘Did you get up to go?’
She nodded. ‘Miles wouldn’t let me,’ she said. ‘He said to come into the bedroom. I didn’t want to, I said I had to go, but he pushed me in and shut the door. I said I had a stomachache, but he pushed me down on the bed. I thought if I let him get it over with I could go.’
She looked up at me again, eyes hard, daring me to blame her, to say it was her fault, she’d let him, she hadn’t even put up a fight.
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘So you had sex?’
She nodded. ‘He was doing it and I heard the door open. I saw the other two standing in the doorway.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I yelled at them to get out. I told Miles to make them get out, but he just put his hand over my mouth and told me to keep quiet. Then he got up and I tried to get up too, but he pushed me back down again and then the other two were on me.’
Rona’s hand was beside me on the bench. I gave it a quick pat, but stopped when she looked surprised. The passenger boat arrived and docked at a small river pier. We watched the crew hook ropes over giant cleats and the passengers begin to disembark.
‘Did they threaten you?’ I asked, when most of the passengers were on dry land.
She gave a little shrug. ‘They just kept saying to keep quiet and they’d let me go,’ she said. ‘To keep quiet and I wouldn’t get hurt.’
The boat was loading up new passengers now. Nothing Rona had told me so far was surprising. I’d heard variations of it several times already from other girls. I’d read countless reports. It was all horribly familiar.
‘What happened next, Rona?’
‘One of them was kneeling on my shoulders. He pulled my bra up round my neck and put his hands on my …’ She stopped. She was looking down at her body.
‘He put his hands on your breasts?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘He was holding me, saying they was the biggest he’d ever seen, he kept repeating it, all the time his mate was doing it to me. It was humiliating, you know what I’m saying?’
‘I know. Did you ask them to stop?’
She looked down at her hands.
‘I understand that you were scared, Rona,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I have to ask you all these questions. I know how hard it must be to answer them. Are you able to go on?’
She nodded.‘When the one who was doing it to me had finished, they swapped. Then, same thing again.’
‘Where was Miles while this was happening?’
‘Sitting in a chair, watching.’
‘Did they let you go, when the third one had raped you?’
She looked at me and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They didn’t let me go. Two more of them arrived.’
10
THE UNDERGROUND SPACE IS VAST AND DARK AND SMELLS of decay, like the cathedral of a city whose inhabitants are long since dead. The day outside was bright and clear, close to noon. Down here, the darkness is all consuming and time has become meaningless. The black-clad figure moves slowly and the huge structure amplifies sound like the inside of a great shell. The echo of each footstep seems to dance away into the distance, as though endlessly repeating itself somewhere out of earshot. The chamber feels like a crypt.
‘Perfect,’ says a voice.
The water, twenty feet below the searching eyes, looks black as moleskin in the light of the torch. It’s shining, giving off the peculiar odour of petrol and salt water that always seems to hover around a river when the tide is heading out. Except this water never moves. This water is still as death.
A sudden sound above. Airborne creatures live in here, whether birds or bats or something new entirely, it’s impossible to tell. A stone or piece of brickwork falls into the water. The sound, like glass breaking, cuts through the silence so sharply the air seems to shimmer around it for a moment. Then all is still again.
As the figure in black moves on, the smell seems to evolve. Humanity, street drugs and paraffin: echoes, all of them. It’s been years since anyone has been down here. Years, probably, since anyone has even remembered it was once a home.
And yet there are traces, as the footsteps move on, of the people this vaulted space once knew. A lantern with a candle stub inside it, a small, upturned calor-gas stove. The people made dens for themselves with boxes, old curtains, even what looks like a hospital screen. They divided up the huge space to give themselves territory, erected walls for privacy, and most of their structures still exist. Along this long, suspended gallery are a dozen or more hiding places.
A discarded sheet of polythene moves in a sudden breeze and it sounds like the rattle of old bones. The polythene marks the way. The figure reaches out and pushes it to one side. Then steps through.
A smaller space. Still cold, damp and dark, but more containable. There is a mattress on the floor, even an old fold-up chair.
‘Perfect,’ whispers the voice again. Then, softer still, ‘Lacey, I’m home.’
11
I TALKED TO RONA FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR. WHEN WE WERE tired of watching the river, we got up and wandered down Bankside. At the bridge we turned back again and joined the crowds admiring the black and white, surprisingly tiny, circular theatre. Everything she told me was off the record. She wasn’t prepared to press charges, just wanted someone to talk to. She told me how two more boys had arrived, the older one she thought was seventeen, the younger, her age – fifteen. The five boys had stripped her naked and then the two new arrivals had taken turns to rape her. Then they’d forced her to kneel at the foot of the bed and perform fellatio on each of them. It was an act, she told me, known as a lineup. When that was over, the oldest of the boys had turned her face-down on the bed and raped her anally. Only when they saw how much she was bleeding did they let her go. Just before she half crawled out of the front door, Miles had given her the money for her bus fare home.
We both knew this case was never coming to court. Rona knew other girls who’d suffered in the same way, she knew the form. If she brought charges against the boys, they’d either deny anything had happened or they’d claim she consented. The fact that she already had a sexual relationship with one o
f the boys and had gone willingly to his flat would be held against her. The boys had used condoms, again implying some level of consent. Even if they were charged, they were young and could well be released on bail and be back in the neighbourhood. They would have friends, who would be only too happy to intimidate potential witnesses. If Rona went public, she wouldn’t be safe.
When she’d finished, it would have been difficult to say which of the two of us was the more exhausted.
‘What can I do for you, Rona?’ I asked. ‘I understand that you don’t feel able to press charges right now, but is there anything I can do? Do you need medical attention? I can probably arrange for you to see a counsellor if you like.’
She shook her head. ‘Can you sort out protection?’ she asked.
‘Protection?’ I repeated. ‘For you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s been talk, at school. Girls say they got their eye on Tia now.’
‘Tia?’ I was lost.
‘My sister. People are saying Miles and the others are coming after Tia next.’ She stopped, and for the first time I thought perhaps she might be close to tears. ‘Miss Flint, you have to do something,’ she said. ‘She only twelve.’
12
I SAID GOODBYE TO RONA AND WALKED BACK TO THE STATION, knowing I was probably as powerless to protect Tia as Rona
The official line from Scotland Yard is that all reported rapes and sexual crimes are taken seriously. Spokesmen point to millions of taxpayers’ money invested in the Sapphire Units. The truth is they are failing and all over London young women and girls are being let down. Because those in a position to address the problem simply dare not confront its true nature.
What the official reports and even most newspaper coverage will not say is that gang rape is endemic among young black communities. It’s not the sort of thing people want to hear, but the number of reported cases goes way beyond what demographics can explain.
The girls themselves believe nothing can be done. They hate the fear they live in daily, but know they are powerless to protect themselves against these boys. And they certainly know that no one, not the police, nor their communities, not even their parents, will act or speak to help them.
And what was I going to do about it? I honestly didn’t know. Yet.
Detectives operate a skeleton staff at weekends and I was expecting to find my room at Southwark police station empty. To my surprise, DC Pete Stenning was there, leaning against my desk, cheeky grin turned up to maximum. Stenning and I worked in the same team for just over a year before he’d finished his training and successfully applied to join the MIT at Lewisham. He wasn’t a friend – I don’t make friends at work – but we were on friendly enough terms. Normally, I wouldn’t be sorry to see him, but I had a feeling this wasn’t a social visit.
‘I was just about to put out a call for you,’ he said, as I walked over. ‘You’re wanted at Lewisham.’
‘Have they identified the victim yet?’ I asked, as Stenning drove us away from the station.
He glanced over. ‘I had very clear instructions not to talk to you about the case,’ he told me. ‘DI Joesbury was at pains to remind me that you’re a witness, not an investigating officer.’
It made sense and there was no reason for me to be pissed off. Except I really hadn’t liked DI Joesbury.
‘He’s still around then?’ I asked, wondering if the real problem had been that DI Joesbury hadn’t seemed to like me.
Stenning must have picked up something in my tone. I saw him smiling to himself. ‘You remember that drug ring we busted a couple of weeks ago?’ he said.
I did. Sixteen million pounds’ worth of heroin taken off the streets and nearly a dozen people arrested and charged. Three of them major players.
‘He was a big part of it for six months,’ said Stenning. ‘Spent nearly a year before that just working his way into the organization. Almost got himself killed when the arrest went down.’
Well, thank heaven we were spared that loss, I thought. ‘So, the victim, who is she?’
Stenning was still smiling. ‘Rearrange this sentence,’ he said. ‘Sealed. Lips. My. Are.’
‘Don’t make me read it in the papers,’ I pleaded.
‘My instructions are to drop you off and then get back to the estate,’ he said. ‘We have to knock on every door, see if anyone saw or heard anything. It’s going to take days.’
Stenning was making an effort to look bored, but not really managing it. He was fired up, eager to drop me off and get out. Even in inner London, the opportunity to work on a murder investigation didn’t come along every day.
‘Have they had the post-mortem?’ I asked, because it was worth one last try.
Stenning could turn his grin on and off like a light. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘This will all be public information in a matter of hours.’
‘OK, OK. They had the PM first thing this morning,’ he said. ‘The DI was there. The full report won’t be in for a while, but time of death fits with everything you told us and the cause was extensive blood loss. Still no clue as to who she was. No one’s been reported missing.They’re going to put her picture on the news tonight, see if anyone comes forward. Happy now?’
‘They’re putting a photograph of a corpse on national television?’ I asked in disbelief, imagining a horror-struck family seeing their mother with her throat cut.
‘Not a photograph, bozo, a drawing. There’s an artist over at the mortuary now working on it,’ replied Stenning.
He turned into Lewisham’s station car park. ‘She was wearing thousands of pounds’ worth of jewellery and had cash in her bag, so it wasn’t about robbery. It all hinges on who she was, according to the DI. We find that out, and what she was doing on the Brendon Estate, and it should become obvious why she was killed. Everyone seems to think it’ll be wrapped up pretty quickly. Oh, and there’s something odd about the murder weapon, but Tulloch was keeping that pretty close to her chest.’
The room where Dana Tulloch’s murder-investigation team was based was already crowded. I stopped at the open door, not quite having the nerve to go in. Tulloch had arranged for a street map of the area to be projected on to a white screen at the far end of the room. She was standing in front of it and a dozen people were grouped around her, some sitting, others leaning against desks. Then I realized that someone at the back of the room had turned to face me. Suntanned skin, turquoise eyes, one of them bloodshot. And my day was complete.
13
A COUPLE OF MINUTES LATER, TULLOCH BROUGHT THE meeting to a close. People began drifting out, one or two nodding to me. Gayle Mizon paused in the act of biting on an apple to give me a smile.
‘Lacey, how are you?’ Tulloch beckoned me inside. She indicated a seat and then sat down herself. She looked tired. There were shadows under her eyes and her make-up had all but disappeared. Joesbury perched himself on the desk behind her with a proprietorial air.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I said, thinking that if I concentrated on Tulloch, I wouldn’t be tempted to raise my eyes a few inches and look at the man directly behind.
‘Sleep well?’ asked Joesbury. We both ignored him.
‘Lacey, I’ve put in a request to have you transferred to one of the other stations until this investigation is over,’ said Tulloch. ‘One north of the river. I know it—’
‘What?’ I said, before correcting myself. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but surely that’s not—’
‘Call me Dana,’ she interrupted, ‘and I’m afraid it is necessary. You’re an important witness and if the wrong person saw you last night, I want you well out of the way.’
‘I can’t leave Southwark,’ I said. ‘That witness I was telling you about, she came in this morning. I’m just getting closer to her. I may be able to persuade her to press charges.’
There was the tiniest glint in her eyes. ‘We’ll make sure someone takes over …’ she began.
‘But she trusts me,’ I said, making an e
ffort not to talk too quickly. ‘Or at least, she’s starting to. She’s seriously scared. If I leave now she’ll think I’ve run out on her.’
Tulloch sighed. ‘I understand how you feel, but last night’s murder has to take priority.’
I should just agree. It made no real difference to me what station I worked from. Besides, I was low-profile girl, I didn’t rock boats. ‘She was raped by five boys,’ I said. ‘She thinks they’re going after her twelve-year-old sister next. Her mother is out of her head on drugs most of the time and these girls have no one to look out for them.’
Those green eyes suddenly looked a whole lot colder. ‘The decision’s made, Flint,’ she said. ‘Deal with it.’ She stood up and turned away from me. I watched her walk halfway across the room.
‘Hold up a sec, Tully. Why doesn’t she come here?’
Tulloch stopped and turned round. ‘What?’ she said.
‘Bring her here,’ said Joesbury, talking over my head. ‘She’ll be close enough to Southwark to stay with her current cases.’
Tulloch looked at him like he was simple. ‘I can’t have her near the investigation,’ she said. ‘Her credibility in court will be completely undermined if it comes out that—’
‘If a detective on your team had arrived before your victim died, you’d have exactly the same issues with him,’ said Joesbury. ‘Keep her at arm’s length, if you have to,’ he went on. ‘But you’re going to want her on hand. She needs to go through the CCTV footage, for one thing.’
Tulloch frowned at him. A muscle beneath her left eye was flickering. ‘That will take hours, at most,’ she said.
‘If you go ahead with the reconstruction, she’ll be involved in that.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘You need to make sure she gets trauma counselling, unless you want the Met to face a personal-injury claim. Much easier to see that happens if she’s here.’
Now You See Me Page 4