Without Consent (11 page)

‘The ones in this file are the real no-hopers; nowhere to go, no names, no forensic, nothing to toy with.' She was so close she could have spat in his eye, which was exactly what she wanted to do. ‘But they were the ones we believed. We believed them. You hear me? They had no case and we believed them.'

The cord from the venetian blinds came away in her hand and she sat down abruptly.

‘The problem is, sir, no one believes
us.'

‘Perhaps I should go and see them. Check the black-book theory.'

She laughed.

‘You do that, sir. Not a long list, is it? Especially since two of them are dead.'

T
here was a moment, later on, when he sat in a pub, nursing a half pint and mulling over what Sally Smythe had told him, that Bailey missed Ryan so intensely it was painful. And pathetic, he told himself, to find no pleasure in a drink unless that silly fool was sitting next to him.
Ryan had a rare cunning for finding an excuse to get into a pub. He could fabricate an informer who must be seen, or a rumour that the drinks were free, but Bailey had never thought that such petty deceptions made Ryan a liar. He was fond of conspiracy theories, though; capable of inventing drama when life was too dull to be endured, and plenty capable of getting Sally Smythe to go along with some fantastic theory if he believed in it himself, even if his commitment to the idea had some ulterior motive.

What theory and how fantastic? Bailey spelt it out to himself, as explained by Ms Smythe, a woman under Ryan's influence, of course. Oh, what a joy it would be to have the luxury of listening to someone and believing what they said without a second thought.

Ryan's theory hinged on his belief that there was, out there, a rapist with a difference. Quite a different animal to the rabid man who leapt out of bushes to satisfy a sudden surge of lust on any female, of whatever age, who happened to be passing. Different, also, to the ex-lover, raping out of revenge, or the sly next-door neighbour or date rapist who mixed rape with seduction and pretence. These were merely distant cousins to Ryan's rapist. One way and another they wanted sex. This one wanted gratification of a peculiar kind.

Bailey looked around the bar. No candidates here. Ordinary men with ordinary desires and shirtsleeves.

At best, at his most normal, this creature was a performing trickster, a manipulator, who learnt as he went along. A man who wanted to tease and control, who made up the rules
en route,
sometimes clumsy with it, because the delight, of course, was crude. The achievement was to
leave a victim so ashamed that, even if they began the formalities of a complaint, they would never complete the process.

It was an awful pint in a pub for those on the dole, with the Catholic church about next door. Downhill were the train termini and a view of London, swathed in a mist of heat.

A foul kind of magician, then, this mythical attacker, with blunt factual Ryan on his tail. Possibly a man with allies. Or a figment of Ryan's overfevered imagination, created to add purpose to the sometimes mundane and ever-seedy business of the Rape House. A fiction to allow him to preserve the names of the fantasists; keep a dossier of vulnerable women who might, after all, like indoor love with a married man, no strings attached.

The door of the pub burst open. A young woman with a dog, regretting the row of her entrance, went outside and did it again, only quieter, as if the second entrance would make her invisible. Something to sell, or buy, perhaps; nothing to celebrate.

Bailey could not see subtle plotting as part of Ryan's stock-in-trade, not for the sake of sex alone, unless he saw himself as some romantic counsellor, helper of the afflicted. That was more like it for a heavily romantic man who still believed that people could be helped despite their own resistance. He lied sometimes; an honest liar. Try that for a character reference, as if any character reference was going to help a policeman charged with rape, or save him from the extra brutality reserved in prison for his kind.

The thought made Bailey sick. His stomach growled.

If Ryan were put on trial, on the decision of some
separate faceless bunch of lawyers whose decisions Bailey felt he could quite safely predict, the defendant could be acquitted. Easier, for such a good-looking man with so much to lose, charged with such an offence; the jury might not have it: they were soft on police officers. Ryan could come out of there, the exonerated darling of the tabloid press, but Bailey despised that kind of result. He was either innocent or guilty, not to be consigned to that half-life of disbelief in between.

Look at the black book, then, find an excuse.

The bottom line was wanting him free.

‘W
ell? What did she say?'

‘Who?'

‘Anna, of course. Who did you think I meant?'

‘Rose, if I was going to tell you, do you think I'd do it here?'

‘Oh, see what you mean.'

The Central Line of the underground was tolerable for once, although not a suitable venue to discuss anything personal, even for someone as uninhibited as Rose. They sat together; Rose fished into her purse for a list.

‘All we've got to buy, Aunty H, is a complete transformation of me for less than a hundred pounds. Inclusive of shoes, bikini and a full frontal lobotomy. Got to put the old me through the mangle of the Dickins & Jones sale and collect a fully-fledged wifeling at the other end. Got that?'

‘I thought you said you wanted a dress.'

‘Oh, that too. I don't think I've had a dress since I was twelve.'

Rose would be married in an outfit yet to be found. She
had drawn the line at a frock of virginal white, not on account of any hint of hypocrisy it might imply about her lifetime's experience, but because she thought white was tame. The closest she had got was a sort of ivory shirt, tried on beneath Helen's critical eye and giving rise to smothered laughter in a changing-room. Rose had resembled a waif in someone else's silken dishcloth, her skin bleached by the sheen of the material; a sort of sickly bimbo without style. Suits she could handle, dresses not, but she still craved a dress. She longed to flounce away from her own reception with a wobble of fluffy skirt.

‘Hope Michael's in when I get home tonight,' Rose announced cheerfully. ‘As of yesterday, he was leaving for Timbuctoo.'

Never mind the perfidy and wickedness she dealt with on a daily basis, if wonderful, solid, kindly Michael were to scoot, do a bunk, lose his bottle about Rose, then Helen really would lose her faith in human nature. It was frayed already, but not that much.

‘'S all right. He's twitchy, that's all. I mean, he's the one with all the family complications I ain't got. He's the one who's got to cope with his Aunty Mary, Uncle Stephen and 'orrible little cousin, Jim. To say nothing of all his mates at work, ribbing him, warning him marriage is the end of life as he knows it, and telling him he shouldn't be marrying someone like me. He's bound to listen sometimes. I can see the pressure, really. Thank God for his mother. Are all men such babes, Aunty H?'

She seemed unfazed, much to Helen's relief. Opposite her seat, a man lowered his newspaper to look at them. His eyes rested first on the tube map above their heads; then
he appeared to examine the roof of the carriage; then stared briefly at Helen, longer at Rose, frankly curious. Rose noticed.

‘Hello,' she said boldly. ‘Nice weather, innit?'

He smiled, nodded acknowledgement and retreated behind the newspaper again. Helen noticed immaculate shoes, casual trousers of some synthetic fabric and a pair of brown hands, before the train rumbled into Oxford Circus. As she passed towards the door, she noticed the top of his head, the skull shiny brown, like polished wood. The indentations in that sculptured skin showed up in the station's artificial light, the dome oddly tactile, so that she almost wanted to reach out and touch it, like the knob on a banister. She compounded Rose's cheekiness with a grin of her own, surprised to feel a frisson of attraction for an impertinent stranger so completely bereft of hair.

‘Are you always like that with men on the tube?' Helen asked as they crushed together on the escalator, where it seemed the whole world had suddenly joined in a headlong rush to escape the subterranean oppression. She always expected someone to begin howling with rage on the up escalator out of the underground, because of the sheer slowness of it and the pushiness of passengers, but resentment was more conservatively expressed. Behind her a shopping bag, carried like a weapon by a determined woman, brushed her legs. She turned, somehow expecting to see the bald head further down. It was a foolish expectation, even in an ideal place for strange hallucinations. Rose was answering her as they put their tickets into the gates and started up the stairs, avoiding the inevitable someone who could not manage the machinery and held up the queue.

‘He wasn't a stranger,' Rose shouted back.

‘Who was he then?'

‘He's a doctor. Saw him yesterday. Stared up my fanny; must have recognized my voice. I talked too much.'

She did not elaborate; Helen did not ask. Shopping fever had descended on Rose's brow and her face wrinkled with concentration. There was the mild state of madness induced by Oxford Street in all its tawdry splendour; the one place where Helen failed to detest crowds.

There was method in the madness, too. Unlike Bailey, who shied away from shops like a frightened filly, crept into them and out again as if he was on a secret mission, Helen and Rose stood at the threshold, breathed in the scents of the perfume counters and knew they were home. The method was no method; there had to be a purpose to justify the expedition, but the purpose could be abandoned. It took Rose half an hour to fall out of love with the idea of a dress (Look at this, Aunty H … I wouldn't wear it to go to bed in …) and fall into adoration with the idea of a trouser suit she had seen (perfect shape, foul colour). They were on the trail; out of this place, on to somewhere else, looking without real expectation for a facsimile of a suit with the same buttons, but not that tasteful and over-bred shade of sludge. In the meantime, Helen had purchased three pairs of stockings and a hair-slide and Rose had bought a pan. If that was all they got, it really would not matter.

Heavy on the blood sugar, though, as Rose put it, necessitating frequent sit-downs and caffeine fixes. It was understood, after initial quarrels, that Helen would purchase these overpriced beverages and also the cake, which
was part of the proceedings, the paying arrangement being an acceptance of Helen's motherly role and their unequal financial status.

‘
They
know how to shop,' Rose said enviously, counting the bags of two delicate tea-drinking Japanese ladies in Liberty's café. ‘They've got fifteen carriers each.' She sipped and put down the cup with a clatter.

‘All right, Aunty H, now tell me what Anna told you.'

Typical Rose, waiting for the right blood-sugar level, never really forgetting anything; but that was another thing about large shops. All the ladies, as well as the minority of men, sipping liquids and giving one another their wholehearted attention, talked nicely in whispers, like a lot of low-voiced conspirators. Revolutions could be planned here; coffee-shops in the anterooms of spending halls were exactly the right kind of place for secrets and the baring of the soul. Indiscretions would be taken away, wrapped in tissue paper, back to the realms of suburbia where they would no longer exist.

‘I don't think I can tell you. She didn't swear me to secrecy or anything, but she didn't want you to know.'

Rose nodded, curious but unperturbed.

‘I s'pose I've got to respect that. Did you tell Bailey?'

‘No, but I might. In fact I'm sure I shall, but then, he doesn't know her. There's a difference.'

Rose nodded again, mature about such things, well versed in the need for respecting confidence. She was a fabulous gossip, loved it; she also knew what not to repeat and what not to demand.

‘Did you like her?'

‘Yes. Yes, very much.'

Such value in the faint praise offered like that. Rose finished a mouthful, sat back and rubbed her stomach.

‘I shouldn't have had that, Aunty. On account of the traditional pre-wedding diet,' she said without much conviction, using the pastry fork to subdue and then eat the last of the crumbs, only satisfied after the last was swallowed. ‘Two more questions, Aunty, then I'll leave it alone, promise. First, was she raped, and second, could you help?' She mimicked the Redwood voice.

Helen was choosing words with the care which so often infuriated Rose. All she wanted was a quick response, the flush of shopping fever temporarily suspended.

‘If she's telling the truth …' and Rose noted that the ‘if' was not emphasized, merely used to introduce that lawyerly note of caution she so loathed, ‘… then she was assaulted in a way designed to make a complete and utter fool of her. Using means so silly that the telling of it would make a fool of her all over again, because it sounds like a joke. Her assailant was someone she admired, with a cruel sense of humour. She's adamant about not going to a professional. Perhaps it helped that I didn't laugh.'

Rose chose not to say that this all sounded like a load of cobblers.

‘And she's equally adamant she won't say who it was.'

‘Protecting him?' Rose asked incredulously, always dismissive despite herself when Helen got formal. Shop till you drop with this woman, she'd told Michael, but never say you know her.

‘No. Protecting herself from further ridicule. She might be coming round for a drink and a meal next week. That
might help more. And she loves her work. That will help too. Did what I could, Rose. Not much.'

‘Sure you did.' That was enough. Some kind of result, Rose supposed; enough to mean it was time for her to abandon interest. It surprised her to hear that Anna loved her work, that wasn't what she had heard, but if Helen liked Anna and Anna liked Helen, something had been achieved. Helen always underestimated her own power. She doesn't even know how lucky I feel to know her, even when she gets things wrong, Rose thought, scraping back her chair, treading respectfully over the distinctive bags which fanned out from the next table, moving gingerly with the steps and smile of a cat. She had no time for people buying porcelain.