by Linda Coles
By someone else.
She grabbed a chocolate biscuit from the jar and took the steaming mug with her to her room where she slid between the sheets and sat thoughtfully with her drink. Crumbs dropped on the bed as she bit into the biscuit, and she absentmindedly brushed them to the floor, not particularly caring. She was due to vacuum tomorrow anyway. Her phone chirped a message and she reached over to the side table to see who it was. Did she want to talk? Probably not. Ruth’s name filled the green text box.
“Just saying hi. Hope you’re okay. Sorry to have dug up the past. If you need me, you know where I am. xxx”
Smiling at her friend’s thoughtfulness, she tapped a text in reply.
“Just sat in bed, with Horlicks and a biscuit. How sad is that? Seriously, I’m fine though. Thanks for checking in.”
Since Amanda had been to the Palmers’ home and found out Taylor, too, had received the same card, the idea of its being a coincidence was seeming less and less likely. If whoever had assaulted her all those years ago had surfaced again only recently, something or someone had activated them, to her way of thinking. Unless of course they had never completely gone away.
“When are you going in to the station to fill out a report?”
“I’m going in tomorrow. There is no real urgency, just getting it on paper really. It may help someone else.”
“Yes, that’s the spirit. Well, good luck. And good night. Xxx”
“Night. xxx”
Stephanie stared at the screen and re-read the message. While it was probably too late to get justice in her own case, she hoped her experience and any evidence she might be able to give would help catch the perpetrator and prevent it happening to anyone else. Had Sebastian Stevens still been alive to tell his side of the story from that night, that might be a different matter.
Opening her Kindle, she turned her attention to her book and finished her Horlicks as Jack Reacher chased a badass through a crowded market. If nothing else, it took her mind off her own life’s issues, and she allowed the fiction to cover her like a soft blanket. Half an hour later, she was sound asleep, her bedside lamp still blazing, the boys in the other room still reading. It was a little after 1 am that she woke with a start and went to check on them. Both were by then fast asleep. She turned off their lights, tucked their blankets around them and crept back into her own room, now lit only by the moon streaming in through the window. She lay listening to the night – a couple chatting quietly as they walked on the pavement below, their voices carrying upward on the still air; the distant sound of a dog barking a couple of times before settling again; and a car cruising to a standstill nearby. A car door slammed shut and she heard the sounds of two people saying goodbye. Then silence returned.
She turned over in bed, wide awake again. Tomorrow, she would report what she could remember. Which wasn’t much. There had only been herself and one other person in the room that night. They’d had a good time, pushed some boundaries, and afterwards she’d fallen asleep. Or so she had thought. A vague recollection came back to her as she lay there and delved a little deeper. She reared up in bed with the sudden realization of something.
“Oh shit!” she said quietly, her heart rate picking up speed as she remembered back. There had been an argument, the sound of another male voice in the room for a brief time. But she’d been half out of it and fallen back into oblivion. What had all that been about? She lay back down to think through the events that had followed.
Sebastian Stevens had still been lying next to her the following morning, and he’d been the first one to point out her hair was gone. He’d sat bolt upright in the bed, pale as a ghost, and said “What the hell happened to your hair?”
She’d rushed into the bathroom to look in the mirror and stood there open-mouthed in shock. It couldn’t have been him; otherwise, why hang around until morning and act the way he had? In a panic, she’d gathered her belongings, dressed and fled back home. It was when she’d got in her own shower that she’d noticed the little blobs of dried blood and felt the stinging on the backs of her thighs as the water washed over her. That was what had really concerned her. The card she’d found later on, just inside her handbag, and reflecting back now, she realized it had been placed where only she would have seen it. Yes, she’d wanted to report it, but the message on the card had been clear. As was the voicemail Sebastian had left on her phone after she’d fled.
“No one will pay you any attention after what you agreed to last night.”
She had known that was true. What they’d done – the sex, anyway – had been consensual. But what about the nicks? And why had her hair been so cruelly taken? And by whom, for what? She had never asked him, had wanted to simply put the whole eerie incident behind her and forget it, and him. Over the following weeks, she’d willed herself to put the whole thing out of her mind, learn from it and move on. Resolutely, she’d vowed never again to pick up a man who seemed too good to be true, and to run for the hills when the coke came out.
Tomorrow’s report-taking would drag it all back up in detail, she knew, details she’d rather forget. But if someone else had been involved that fateful night and the police managed to track them down, her day in court would come.
Snuggling further down into the bedclothes, she willed sleep to return.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Interview rooms in police stations were set up not for victims but for criminals, Stephanie thought. Uncomfortable plastic chairs and functional cheap tables made anyone who sat at them feel uneasy in their surroundings, and the discomfort only added to Stephanie’s anxiety. At least she knew the friendly faces on the other side of the table, which eased her mind a little. But she’d been drained before she’d begun: thinking back to an event that she’d rather have blocked from her mind, one that had happened fifteen years ago, wasn’t an easy task, especially coupled with a fitful sleep the night before. She’d never smoked a cigarette but was desperate for one now.
Jack was the one asking the questions. “Let’s start right at the very beginning, then, before you met Mr. Stevens. What were you doing that night, and who with? Then fill us in from there. Don’t leave anything out: the smallest detail could be of use and I’ll prompt you along the way if I need clarification on anything. Okay?” He smiled encouragingly at her.
Though she was still feeling wound up, Stephanie took a deep breath in, exhaled and started on her account of that night’s events. Jack scribbled as she talked.
“I’d met a man, who turned out to be Sebastian Stevens, in a bar one night. I’d had quite a bit to drink. My friends had split up a little, and I found myself propping the bar up. That’s when he said hello. He seemed nice enough and I allowed him to buy me a drink.” She sipped water from a plastic cup. “He had started out with some other friends, I assumed, and a bit like me, he’d split off from them. We chatted, we drank, we flirted and later that night, he escorted me out to his car. He said he had a driver, which I believed because when we got outside, there was a man in the driver’s seat of a flash black car. And he, I mean Sebastian, was as drunk as I was, so I was glad he wasn’t driving.
“I got in, and we went back to his place. It was only a mile or two away, but too far to walk in my heels, and like I said, we’d drunk quite a bit.” She took another deep breath and carried on, knowing that the next part could be embarrassing. “We went inside his flat, which was more of a penthouse, so I knew he was really well off, what with the driver as well. He poured us drinks, and one thing led to another. I’m sure I don’t need to spell the next part out to you.”
“Do you remember, and I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but were you still coherent at that stage or not?” Jack was embarrassed too but needed the answer.
“Yes, I was alert. Pissed out of my head but alert. We got into bed, and I remember having sex but I must have passed out shortly after that. The next thing I remember was a vague conversation sometime in the night. Not Sebastian, but another voice, like there was someone
else in the room. But I drifted back to sleep again. When I awoke in the morning, Sebastian was still there in bed and it was him that noticed my hair had been cut off. And not just cut off but stolen. Then I panicked. Sebastian was as shocked almost as I was, I think, and swore it hadn’t been him. And I believed him, because why would he? And he was still there with me. If he’d done it, I figured he’d have been long gone, but then we were in his place. A hotel room would have more suitable, had that been his plan, not his home.
“My hair wasn’t in the room. I looked. It had definitely gone. So I left as fast as I could and got a taxi home. That’s when I discovered the tiny nicks on my thighs. That, I believe, was him.”
“What made you think that?”
“Because he wasn’t the usual vanilla in bed. He was,” she paused for a moment, “more adventurous. He wanted me to do things I hadn’t done before. He encouraged me to try stuff, and he liked to dominate. He wanted me to be submissive, stay on the floor on my knees, that sort of thing.”
“Did you confront him after that night, about the tiny cuts?” Amanda said gently, aware that this was extremely personal territory.
“I didn’t. Because he sent me a text telling me nobody would listen to me so not to bother telling anyone. I’d gone to his room for sex, and that was that. My own stupid fault.” Stephanie’s bottom lip started to tremble and she fought to keep control of her emotions. “I didn’t consent to that though – my hair being severed,” she wailed, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Amanda passed her a tissue and looked at Jack sympathetically. “Take a moment,” she said. “There’s no rush. Then can we go back to when you thought you heard another voice in the room.”
Stephanie nodded and blew her nose. When she’d regained her poise, she rewound back to where Jack wanted her to be.
“I don’t know what time it would have been. We didn’t get to his place until around one am and I left at around seven am. I remember the sunlight streaming in – that’s what woke me in the morning, I think. It was so bright. He hadn’t closed the curtains. Anyway, all I can remember from earlier was I was in bed. It was dark, but there was a muffled sound, conversation, two deep voices. I assumed one was Sebastian and one was another man, though I’ve no idea who. Like I said, I was pretty out of it.”
“Was Sebastian out of it too, do you remember? Had he taken anything, and had you?” Stephanie looked a little sheepish and the answer was obvious.
“He took some coke – I think it was coke. But I never touched it. I’ve never done drugs. He wanted me to have some, but I said I didn’t need it. He took some, like they do in the movies – you know, up his nose. He said it relaxed him.” Turning to Amanda quickly, she asked, “Do you think that’s what he drugged me with – cocaine?” Her voice rose in panic.
“Probably not, though we’ll never know. If you had been drugged to knock you out, it would more likely have been Rohypnol – ‘roofy’ is the street term for it, and it’s also known as the ‘date rape’ drug.”
Stephanie sat speechless for a moment. At least she hadn’t been raped; her experience had been consensual, although only marginally so.
Jack broke the silence. “Can you tell us anything, anything at all about the other voice? Accent maybe, old- or young-sounding, foreign possibly? Anything?”
“No. It was just a blurry voice, like I was hearing it under water. I wish I could tell you more.”
“It may throw some light on what happened. As Mr. Stevens was murdered, we can’t ask him about that night. And you seem pretty sure he didn’t have anything to do with your hair being cut. So let’s get to the part about the card, the note you found. Go on from there.”
“When I got home, I showered, got dressed and sat on the sofa, trying to sort my thoughts out, really. And figure out what had happened, what I was going to do next. I grabbed my bag, looking for something, though I can’t remember what. And then I saw an envelope sticking out. It had my name on the front. It just said ‘Stephanie,’ so I opened it. The single piece of card inside said ‘Tell no one. It wouldn’t be wise.’ And that the debt was settled. Or words to that effect. It spooked me, and I assumed it was to do with my hair being taken. I’d already had the text from Sebastian about being game, so it didn’t make sense for it to be from him. I do remember it looked very elegant though, a swirly handwritten script, not from a computer.”
“What did you do then? Did you tell anyone about the card?”
“No, I didn’t tell. I was too spooked all round. I threw the card in the rubbish and that was that. My hair would grow back, and I figured I’d had a bloody lucky or unlucky night, depending on how you looked at it. It taught me a lesson, I can tell you.”
“Is there anything else?” Jack sensed she had finished, had told all she knew and was ready to wrap it up.
“No. I’ll let you know if I think of anything. Can you tell me why this is so important now, after all this time and Sebastian being dead?”
Good question. Jack took it.
“There may be another case that’s recently come to our attention. Quite by accident. She had a similar card left and thought she’d been drugged.”
Stephanie’s hand flew to cover her mouth.
“And her hair?”
“Sadly, gone.”
A groan of disbelief and anguish escaped her mouth. Fifteen years later it was happening again. Had it ever stopped?
“My god. It’s been happening all this time and nobody knew.” It was a fact, not a question.
“Well, we do now.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
It had been a harrowing hour or so at the police station, regurgitating events from so long ago, events that she’d worked hard to forget. Now they were back swimming around the inside of her head like sharks circling in shallow water. A nuisance, and frightening. While she probably hadn’t been much help – she hadn’t seen anything of use – if it helped to catch whoever was responsible for the latest victim and prevent more women from going through this, then it would have been worth the pain.
As she walked, a thought nagged at the back of her mind now – the reference on the card to a debt being settled. At the time she’d wracked her brains, wondering what it had meant, but nothing had come of and it had been forgotten with the rest of the nightmare. But now, having told Jack and Amanda about it, she began uneasily to ponder it again. Your debt has been settled. But what debt, and to whom?
Right now, she needed a drink. There was a place up ahead that would do.
Stephanie opened the door to the wine bar and found a vacant stool at the bar. She didn’t want to be totally on her own, but she didn’t totally want conversation either. She hoped a glass in the vicinity of others would soothe her nerves. A young man dressed in a denim apron with “Matt” embroidered on his nametag approached her, smiling pleasantly.
“A glass of white wine, please,” she said. “A large one.”
“Coming right up.” She watched him pour from a bottle in the fridge, salivating at the thought of the crisp, cold liquid she was about to consume, then silently reprimanded herself.
You sound like a desperate alcoholic.
“Thanks,” she said, and greedily took three large mouthfuls.
Matt raised his eyebrows at her. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Only you’ll be falling off that stool in a minute if you’re not careful.” His concerned look told her he wasn’t being a comedian or an asshole.
“Rough day, that’s all.” She put her glass back down. It was now only a third full. “And I know it’s still early, but really, it’s been a crappy day already.”
Matt took the hint and busied himself further down the bar to give her some space, and she nursed the rest of her glass at a more leisurely pace. She’d been sat there thinking for about twenty minutes when the door opened again and three women walked in, chatting earnestly together, and headed to the bar to order. All three women would have been in their thirties, and from the way they were dressed, prob
ably office workers of some kind, and well paid, judging by the shoes they were wearing. Stephanie loved nice shoes. One of the women was telling a story, the other two listening intently as Matt approached, and Stephanie’s ears perked up, not out of nosiness but because the woman was obviously wound up – probably the reason they were in the bar in the first place, much like Stephanie. One of her colleagues took the liberty of ordering them gin and tonics, and Matt began to mix them, shooting a quick glance at Stephanie.
“Honestly,” the first woman exclaimed. “It’s like Hollywood in that place now, probably worse. What’s his last indiscretion going to do to the company’s reputation now, eh? I’m getting pretty sick of fighting his fires because he can’t keep it in his pants, or his hands to himself. He’s a bloody nightmare to have around. I’m seriously thinking of talking to the board. It’s not good for business.” The woman steadied herself with a deep breath before taking a large mouthful of her drink. Her hand shook slightly, and the ice cubes rattled. The other two women sipped slowly; so far, they’d only offered the occasional ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ to confirm they were indeed listening.
The speaker set her drink on the counter and began talking again, her voice vibrating with anger as she spoke. “It’s Lisa I feel sorry for now. Having put up with his advances all this time, it won’t be him that moves on, but Lisa, and she’s a damn good team member. Not like Mr. Shitty Sleazeman.”
One of the other women nearly choked on a mouthful of gin, coughing and smiling at the same time. “Sorry, that’s actually quite funny,” she apologized, wiping her mouth. “Cheeseman, Sleazeman. Who made that up?” She giggled and took another sip of gin.
“I think he earned that name himself don’t you?” said the first woman. If the cap fits and all that.”