Conviction

by Denise Mina

  ‘But she was a really grumpy cow. I mean, nothing pleased her–’

  Albert swiped me silent with his finger. ‘That’s enough.’

  He wouldn’t allow us to say rude things about the guests, even if they were awful. He loved the rich and powerful, he loved the royal family and film stars, he thought they had privilege because they were better than us. He adopted their snobberies and dressed like them. He was the perfect servant, like a functional form of Stockholm syndrome. Adam and I could never have done that. We had no future in service and Albert had spotted that in both of us.

  ‘Anyway. What about Ms Harkän?’

  ‘Well, when I worked here she came with a boyfriend called Leon Parker, do you remember him?’

  He flashed me a warning look. When I was young that would have been enough to shut me up. But I was older.

  ‘Do you remember him?’

  ‘Hm. Leon Parker was married subsequently, wasn’t he? Not to Ms Harkän.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘He came to a rather sad end, Mr Parker, I believe?’

  ‘Do you remember him?’

  ‘Only vaguely. I believe we sent him an invitation to revisit shortly after his reported wedding. He didn’t respond.’

  ‘He must have been very rich then?’ I said, nodding towards Fin.

  ‘Actually, it was his wife we were interested in.’

  Fin leaned forward. ‘Gretchen Teigler?’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Did she come?’ asked Fin.

  ‘No.’ There was a cloud in Albert’s mood now; he ground his jaw and snarled a little at Fin. He didn’t seem to want to talk to him any more. I knew he had something to tell.

  I tipped my head at him. ‘Have you met Gretchen Teigler?’

  He scowled at me. ‘Leave it.’

  ‘You have! What’s she like?’

  ‘Very powerful. Leave it, Anna.’

  ‘Sorry, is there a loo down here?’ asked Fin.

  Albert told him it was upstairs, through the bedroom at the top of the stairs. But I knew there was a toilet just off the kitchen. We watched Fin walk out, heard his feet on the stairs, heard the bathroom lock click shut.

  ‘Albert, do you know Gretchen Teigler?’

  ‘No, but you know Gretchen Teigler, don’t you?’

  ‘What–’

  He held up a hand to silence me and waited until he heard Fin flush. Then he craned towards me, his face suddenly flush, and whispered:

  ‘Aren’t you in enough trouble, Sophie Bukaran?’

  24

  FIN CAME BACK DOWNSTAIRS and found us in a completely altered mood. It wasn’t jovial. Albert was frowning and I was frozen with shock. Albert told him we’d decided to go for a walk in the grounds to see what had changed since I was last there. He should wait here. Won’t be long. He didn’t explain why Fin wasn’t invited.

  It was raining a little and my expensive leather coat wasn’t made for hillwalking. Albert lent me a wax jacket from his cupboard.

  We walked out, leaving Fin sitting in the kitchen, bewildered and drinking tea, fiddling with his phone. Fin caught my eye and raised an eyebrow encouragingly, thinking I was going to ask searing questions about Leon and the Dana. I gave him a stiff smile. I didn’t know if I was coming back, or if I would see Fin again and I was sad about that, which was unexpected because he was very annoying.

  Outside, the wind had picked up, flurries of rain swept in from the sea. We walked straight uphill in silence, in the dark, as if it was a chore or we were going somewhere specific.

  I can’t avoid this any more. I have to explain who I am, where I came from, why I ran. A long-held silence is hard to break. You may have to strain to hear. You will have been told this story before but only in one way and not in this way.

  But you know, often with uncomfortable stories like this there is a chasm between lip and ear. You might not be able to hear it at all.

  25

  IF I TOLD YOU their names you’d think you know me. You don’t. I’m not going to talk about that night at the hotel in Soho. I will not name the footballers. I will not specify which London club they played for. You can go elsewhere for all of that.

  I will not talk about my injuries, internal or otherwise, or about what happened in court, what was said about me or my history or my mum. My mum was a good mum. She did her best. My failings are mine alone. I will not talk about the jury taking under an hour to deliberate on nineteen charges.

  At the beginning people begged me to talk. I was offered money. They emailed and phoned and came to my door. Human interest. Your side of the story. What really happened. You have a responsibility to other girls.

  It wasn’t a tactical decision to stop telling my story, it’s just that every time I told it everything got much, much worse. I came to think of it as an incantation, a lyric curse I brought down on myself. But when I stopped telling it everyone turned on me, speculating about my motives, about girls ‘like me’ and what was wrong with us. They said the right to anonymity should be withdrawn in failed rape trials. Then I was named on the Internet.

  The flames were fanned by one of those contrarian columnists. You’d know her name. Her byline back then was ‘She says what everyone else is thinking’.

  I wondered: is that what everyone else is thinking?

  She said that it was consensual. All of it. Even the violence. Some girls like it rough. She said I was envious, that I wanted a footballer boyfriend, money and fame, but that I woke up in that hotel room and realised that they had used me instead of the other way round, and I set out to destroy them. That’s when I went to the police. She pointed out how much damage my spite could have done: billions lost in broadcasting rights, bankrupting a financially precarious football club. Thank God for investors like Gretchen Teigler, willing to bail out a beloved UK institution. I could have ruined careers, finished marriages, damaged children. She is still working, that journalist. Still gleefully opining.

  Chat shows and the phone-ins were full of discussions about the case for weeks. These girls. These girls, what are they doing, going out, dancing, envying?

  Even my supporters didn’t really want the truth.

  They only wanted the bits that suited their agenda. They were only listening for the crimes of their enemies. I was a jumping-off point for stories they wanted to tell anyway. I was a disappointingly unhelpless victim: my mum was a professor at SOAS. I had an unconditional offer from Balliol. I was very drunk. I still don’t think that means they had the right to rape me.

  The first time I told the story it was to the police. That was the most memorable time because I heard it back when they played it in court to prove how much of a liar I was.

  My lip was swollen and split and I was in shock. I sound like someone else entirely, stuttering, slurring, hesitating over details, changing the colours of suits and carpets.

  The police interview took place in a very small grey room with a steel table bolted to the floor. There was me, two women and a camera. One of the women, DS Patricia Hummingsworth, asked the questions. The other one looked bored and sat back in her chair and stared at me.

  Patricia tried to be kind at first. I liked her. I told her what happened.

  She looked at my split lip. ‘Did they do that to you?’

  I touched it. ‘This?’

  She nodded, head tilted, sympathetic. ‘Yes. That. Did they do that?’

  ‘No, I think I did it before I met them. I fell over on the stairs because I was a bit drunk.’

  She blinked and withdrew across the table. When she opened her eyes the warmth was gone. She was never nice to me again. I actually wondered: how did falling over mean consent? She wanted to know how much I drank that night. I tried to remember but, obviously, it turned out later, I’d had a lot more than I thought. This was a big mark against me, as if being drunk in public took away my right to the protection of the law.

  Was I from a well-off family?

  I remember how jarring that conversa
tional segue was. Was I from a what?

  She repeated it: was I from a well-off family?

  Well, I don’t know. My mum had just died, single parent, just died and she didn’t have money. We didn’t have money. I was out that night because my mum had just died and I was trying to cheer myself up.

  Would I say I was feeling reckless that night?

  Feeling what? I didn’t know what was going on.

  The questioning got fuzzy, broken up, it was all about my state of mind and how I felt when I saw those famous men. I don’t follow football. They were wearing suits; I thought they were bankers. I asked her: why are you asking about me? What’s that got to do with what they did?

  Then she asked if I had a boyfriend.

  Oh thank God, I thought, she wants someone to come and get me.

  No, I said hopefully, I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment, but my friend Tasha can come for me. She has a car.

  No boyfriend currently, though? Nice-looking girl like you?

  I thanked her for the compliment. That’s very kind of you but no, I’m not seeing anyone. But Tasha can come and get me. She can drive…

  Sophie, how did you get that scar on your eye?

  This? I fell off a bike when I was a kid. Now, looking back, I know what she was asking me: had I been attacked before? Did I make a habit of being victimised?

  She asked if I had gone out looking for a boyfriend last night.

  Oh God. I suddenly saw it all from her side. A fall-down drunk, a smashed lip, out on the prowl, saw blokes with money and a car and fame and mothers who are not dead.

  It was too late to stop telling. I couldn’t lie. I was drunk. My mum had just died. I’m entitled to get upset and drunk without being raped and beaten by four men. But I couldn’t take it back, and the next thing I knew, we were in court. And then it was finished. Not guilty. There’s a famous photograph of one of the footballers wearing a Prada suit, punching the air outside the Old Bailey.

  Afterwards.

  Everything snowballed. It was everywhere, on chat shows and social media, and everything was about me, why I lied, when I lied. It was never about them. They didn’t lose sponsorship deals or work. Their club gave them full support.

  My name was leaked online, then my address. My house was egged. Eggs breaking on window glass sound like shots fired. A girl spat at me in the street. Men gathered in my garden when the pubs closed and sang the club anthem up at my bedroom window and laughed. Mum’s car was burned out in the middle of the night. The cops wanted me to move. I didn’t want to. I’d lived there with my mum and she was gone. All the things she’d touched were there.

  Early one morning I heard screaming in the street outside my house. A woman was pointing at my front door. Someone had nailed a cat to it.

  It was a small grey cat, a skinny little kitten, not yet fit to meet the world on its own. The cat had a nail through its head. A trickle of black blood ran down our yellow door. The picture was in the newspaper. That was too much: people care about cats. I was relieved. I thought people would finally see what this was like. They didn’t. They said I did it myself, for attention and sympathy. I was a monster.

  It’s hard to lose faith in people when you’re young. You never get over that, not really. I hid. I even hid from my friends.

  So, this time was horrible but it did feel as if it would pass. Until the other girl came forward.

  I first heard her on the radio at home: reports that a witness had come forward in the rape case. She had been in the hotel suite that night and was giving the police a statement. I didn’t remember another girl being there. Would she corroborate my story? If she did would they retry the case? I couldn’t live through that again. Or would she call me a liar, was she a stooge from the football club? If she did would they charge me with perjury? Would they jail me? I had no money for bail or lawyers.

  Paralysed by indecision but needing to do something, I went into the kitchen to find some food. Eating at all was an achievement most days. I focused hard on this one task: I would fry an egg to make a sandwich. I pulled the pan out and poured in too much oil by mistake. I turned the ring on. I went to the fridge for eggs. I broke one and let it slide into the softly bubbling oil. I watched it. Suddenly my mobile rang and made me jump. It was behind me, on the table. I turned my back to the cooker, picked it up and looked at the screen.

  DS Patricia Hummingsworth.

  I can still hear the eggs splutter in the pan behind me. My finger hesitating over the answer button, my heart racing.

  Hot oil spluttering and the phone in my hand, buzzing terror. That was when I felt a calloused hand close on my throat. I saw his dim reflection in the window: dark hair, narrow face. The man was tall and broad, he lifted me up by my waist and neck just as I hit the answer button on the phone.

  Patricia heard it all. She later gave evidence at the inquiry into my disappearance. She heard me gurgling and choking. A strangled scream and a heavy, metallic thud. Then she heard the phone go dead. When they arrived at the abode (cops talk like this), they found signs of a struggle but Sophie Bukaran was missing. Blood everywhere, kitchen in disarray. The findings of that inquiry were that I was presumed dead.

  It turned out the other girl had corroborated my statement. That night, she was passed out in another room, forgotten by everyone. She woke up and heard me screaming for help, begging them to stop. She saw everything but didn’t come forward immediately. She was ashamed because she heard me screaming and just hid.

  As soon as she gave it, someone leaked her statement to very bad people. Minutes after she gave it, they knew that the case would be retried. They knew before Patricia even called to tell me. They knew billions would be lost, unless I wasn’t there to tell that story again. I was nineteen. I was loathed. I had no family. I was disposable. A disposable girl.

  What happened in the kitchen that night is blurry because I’ve never told anyone about it but this is what I recall: my feet leaving the floor, the sensation of choking, my phone falling to the table, the man lifting me by the neck and waist, holding me tight to his body as he swung me away from the phone. My arms flailing, hand closing on the frying-pan handle. He dropped me and reached back into his waistband for a knife. I spun round, swung the pan at him and sprayed his face with hot oil.

  Hot oil stuck to his skin. He reeled, staggering with hands over his face. I clubbed his head with the pan, over and over, screaming brute noises. I saw an unfamiliar big knife on the floor and kicked it away.

  There is a peculiar, sour kind of intimacy in being attacked. I could have identified his hands from a line-up of a hundred. I knew his smell and the earlobe on his right side. His smell, a blend of cigarettes and stale sandalwood, comes to me still, full, total, and makes me want to run.

  He was down but I kept hitting. I kept hitting even though he wasn’t moving. There was a lot of blood, very red. I couldn’t stop. I kept going until my arms were trembling with exhaustion. I think my mind was back in that hotel room with those men, all the wild panic and terror from then was being taken out on an unconscious, blood-splattered man. I saw some of the burned skin on his jaw slough off revealing the flesh underneath and pity made me stop. He was still breathing at that point. I’m pretty sure he was.

  What could I do? I didn’t think I could call the police, they’d find a way to blame me for this too. His breathing was shallow, his eyes were swelling, a cut bloomed on the bridge of his nose. Blood pooled behind him on the floor. He lay very still.

  Who was he? He wasn’t a football fan making a point. He didn’t have a football top on or say anything. He was dressed in dark clothes and hadn’t shouted threats or anything. He just wanted me to be dead.

  I searched his pockets. A photo of me, taken in the street outside my house. Bus tickets. Tesco receipts. A fat envelope, unsealed, full of fifty-quid notes. Ten thousand pounds, I found out later. Inside the envelope I found a business card for Teigler Inc. A phone number was pencilled on the back with ‘D.L.�
� scribbled next to it. I’d heard of Dauphine Loire. I knew who Teigler Inc were.

  I glanced down and saw the colour was draining from his face. I thought he was dying. I ran. Up to the bedroom: grabbed pants, passport and a coat. On the way out I kissed my mum’s photograph, held it to my heart. I couldn’t take it: this was her house, she belonged here. I kissed her again, put it down and ran.

  My passport was new. I thought of running to France, but I didn’t know who was after me. If it was Dauphine and the Teigler organisation, France would be the worst place to go.

  So I pulled up my hood and caught a train to Charing Cross. I walked up to Euston and I caught a sleeper train to Fort William, somewhere I’d never even heard of. I hid in a crappy hotel for weeks, coloured in my distinctive scar with eyebrow pencil, kept my hood up and cut my hair. I spoke little but when I did I affected a genteel Scottish accent. Accents are important signifiers of authenticity and I got good at that one. I became as close to invisible as possible.

  I had been hiding out for three weeks when I met Adam Ross in a supermarket. It was so long since I’d spoken to anyone that my voice sounded strange and strained. It didn’t matter. Adam was OK with strange. He was shivering and sweating. He was the sickest alive person I’d ever seen. He started talking about crisps or something, I can’t remember what he said. It was ten in the morning and he asked me if I had any money and I said I had some and he said would I buy him some drink? Not ‘a drink’, not ‘drinks’. I thought it was a charming regional phrase but soon found out that Adam literally meant ‘some drink’. An unspecified amount of anything with alcohol in it. He’d spent all his money on heroin and needed something.

  It was a chance to practise my accent. It still wasn’t very good but Adam isn’t judgemental. We had a great afternoon in that pub. I didn’t even drink much. He did.

  He said there were jobs going where he worked in the summer, if I wanted one. I was amazed he was employed. The job was live-in, on a private estate with very high security. I said that sounded perfect but I didn’t have papers or want to be found. Adam didn’t ask why. He just shrugged and said, aye, OK, look; Fort William is full of tourists passing through, leaving coats and rucksacks lying around unattended. He’d get me a new ID if I wanted?