Without Consent (29 page)

‘A kind of rape.'

‘A kindred offence, then. Which all were either too ashamed or too confused to report accurately. There is another category who actively enjoyed his powerful attention, but, in the case of Shelley Pelmore and two before, there was a real risk of them blowing the whistle. So, using a method he had perfected from study … or practice of old abortion techniques, he persuaded them into cooperation with the use of a syringe created an air embolism, which killed them. It may not have been deliberate. It
may have been accidental. They may have asked him to do it. Are you with me, so far?'

‘It couldn't be accidental.'

‘Yes, it could. It could be in the course of an abortion. And, anyway, there's no one alive to say otherwise. If you consent to sexual experiment, or to cheap makeshift abortion, are you consenting to death? And although the good doctor is prolific in his notes, including love-letters so ambiguous they may as well be in Greek, his jottings do not include confessions. Although he gloats a little about his lack of hair and his choice of fibre-free clothes, there's nothing else to indicate either a criminal mind, or a conscience.'

‘Where does this leave Ryan?'

He looked at her quizzically, saving questions for later. A hard stare which left her uncomfortable.

‘Ah, the good doctor could be very useful there. He's very kindly kept the particulars of several victims, if you can call them that, including Shelley. By which I mean he's copied personal details from the records of the place where he works and brought them home. Incriminating, in a benign kind of way, since names on his list coincide with a series of women who went to the police with vague complaints which, at best specified his appearance, at worst nothing. The doctor's list is longer, of course. Includes Lady Hormsby something, lives near you. Ever met her?'

‘I may know ladies. None with titles.'

‘He stocks good coffee, this man,' Bailey said. ‘Which is kind of him, since he had no idea he would be offering hospitality to strangers.'

‘I'm no stranger. I'm his cousin; to get this far.'

‘So am I.'

‘But I'm the only cousin on the distaff side whom he longs to see,' Helen said, desperate to make Bailey smile in this oppressive room. ‘He and I have corresponded for years. We were childhood friends. We played doctors and nurses. Very clever boy he was. Only the slightest tendency to rape. Had an ambition to be a plumber. He knows me well.'

‘How lucky for him. I don't,' Bailey said.

He left the doctor's desk and paced the room.

‘How odd, how little one knows. I was contracted to marry a woman who looks vaguely similar to you, an hour ago. I hithered there on the dot and thithered hence, in case she arrived, but it was all in my imagination that she had ever meant what she said. So I came back to act the doctor. Do you think I look the part?'

Helen felt that if she touched him, her fingertips would freeze from cold. Bailey's skin was pale; he looked old.

‘You look like Doctor Death.'

‘It's only the names he collects', Bailey said, ‘that make him deeply suspect of naughty play. A new phrase I've invented. Like your legal phrase, it won't work. Although it will work, to prove Ryan had a bona fide investigation, an honourable intention in his silence, and there is another candidate for the attack on Shelley and her untimely death. We can blame everything on this doctor. Except…'

Then he laughed, but she could not laugh with him. He paced the room again, still laughing.

‘This man,' he said, ‘needs beating up on a street corner. Like we were allowed to, once. A kick in the balls. If his balls, or his prick, would suffer.'

He seemed to find all this funny, extremely funny. He removed a large handkerchief from his pocket to absorb the tears of laughter. Fountains of water appeared on his gaunt cheek-bones, showing up the contours of his face. He looked cunning: a fox with a shiny nose; she found it repellent.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes. Only Ryan could pursue a rapist who can't rape. Can't rape anyone, this customer. Impotent. Ugly. Chemotherapy burns. He sued them over his cancer treatment gone wrong, but it got him nowhere. Poor bastard.'

Helen sat stunned.

‘No wonder he likes his food,' Bailey added irrelevantly. ‘And another thing. If the good doctor comes home, I have no right to be here. No search warrant, no nothing, since there is not a scintilla of evidence that the man committed any crime, only evidence that a series of women fantasized about him, unpleasantly. That might be enough to restore official faith in Ryan, provided the doc does not get a lawyer and, quite rightly, stop us referring to illegally accessed private papers. In fact, it would be highly convenient all round if the poor blighter left the country and never came home. Where is Ryan, do you know?'

She felt as if she was giving him a blow beneath the ribs.

‘At my house. Doing the garden.'

He faced the window, unable to look at her. Picked up the strange-looking vase which was the only ornament, studied it and put it down carefully.

‘The poor emasculated doctor has no one to trust,' he said. ‘I think I know the feeling.'

‘The charges of rape and attempted rape are punishable with imprisonment… other than in the most exceptional circumstances, an immediate custodial sentence should be imposed following a conviction for rape in order to mark the gravity of the offence, to emphasise the public disapproval, to serve as a warning to others and to protect women. The length of the sentence should depend on all the circumstances.'

T
here were no newspaper headlines about rape or even the sexual peccadillos of cabinet ministers. Parliament was not in session; the late-summer news was dominated by a new royal scandal and the abduction of two British children by their Spanish father. The last week in August had brought more rain and the trickling home of the holiday crowds. West End shops swelled with mothers and teenagers, quarrelling about the most appropriate clothes to wear for the new term at school. Members of Aslef, the union for railway workers, went on strike, and for two blessed days, the larger stations were as hushed as museums.

A doctor who had gone missing failed to return home. It was thought by his employers that he might have made a sudden and inconsiderate decision to holiday abroad with a cousin.

A man in North London referred his wife to a psychiatrist for her habit of wandering the streets on the rare occasions she consented to get out of the bath; a hitherto unknown form of agoraphobia was diagnosed.

Miss Rose Darvey prepared, with glee, to change her name. ‘I never liked it in the first place,' she said.

Detective Sergeant Ryan was admonished by his superiors. His reinstatement was close to a foregone conclusion, pending the convening of the right kind of committee. Someone was obstructing it.

A famous English cricketer announced he was gay.

R
yan and Bailey sat in the latter's large clean flat, watching the sunset. It had been a long lunch.

‘I suppose I'm meant to feel sorry for the bloke,' Ryan was saying. ‘And I suppose, in some ways, I do. Fancy, overdose of chemotherapy, you said? Ouch. It's more difficult to be terrified of a chap with such an affliction and a prick as useful as a chipolata. Why the hell didn't he win his negligence case?'

‘Because he'd interfered in his own treatment. Thought he knew best. Misdirected a technician. Arrogant.'

‘So some of this was his own fault? Naa, you can't say that. Getting cancer wasn't his fault. I mean, it isn't as if you ask, is it? Make a prayer, like, go on, God, disfigure me, why don't you?'

‘He was brave, apparently. Stoic, philosophical,
courageous in the face of pain, all that. And is admired as a doctor for his holistic, sympathetic approach.'

‘Oh yeah? Loves his patients, you mean?'

‘And still, poor sod,' said Bailey softly, ‘wanted to be a lover. Don't we all?'

‘Steady on, guv,' said Ryan, not wanting to get maudlin, or not yet, anyway, and then getting angry. ‘I mean, steady on. What do you want me to do? Be sorry for this fucking ghost with no balls? What did he do, then? What did he do? He had trust, sacred trust, the sort you and I get in a month of fucking Sundays, handed to him on a plate. And he used it. For what? Some kind of fucking revenge. A power trip. Made girls hate themselves, made them mad for him, made them trust him and then killed them; or made mad fools of them while he fucking experimented.' He was speechless with rage. ‘I mean, what kind of fucking wanker does that? Gets a job like that?'

‘Your use of the word fucking in this context is hardly apposite,' Bailey interrupted primly. ‘And he might not have had much choice about his job.'

‘The fucking hell he would! He's a doctor,' Ryan shouted. ‘He ain't judged by his balls! And a fucking doctor, like any other man, should know that disease and disappointment is what you get from being alive. You've got no licence to spread it. And just because you've taken some fucking Hippocratic oath that's going to keep you all right with the pension plan, you don't have the right to abuse. Jesus, Bailey, you've gone soft in the head. Stop finding fucking excuses. There was pleasure in what he did; love wasn't involved. He was experimenting with lives; he was full of self-pity, the worst. Can't you see evil any
more? Even when it puts its tongue into your mouth? Sod the excuses. He's still a monster, because he knew what he was doing. There aren't any excuses. I just wish one of his women had found a way to retaliate.'

His anger faded into a dull ache. He settled himself back into the depths of the enormous sofa, squinted round this minimalist but colourful room and thought, benignly, how he had always considered it a bit cold, although it wasn't really, and quite comfortable, even with all that space. At least he didn't have to walk across the carpark-sized floor for the next sustenance, which stood at his elbow. Personally, he preferred the clutter and noise of his own home, like everyone did, despite the superior quality of the whisky and, really, if he had to choose between the two, he liked Helen's place better than this. Now there, even with his many reservations, was one hell of a woman. She had spent hours on the phone with his wife, squaring it all up, so that he could go home and explain it again, knowing he was halfway there. He felt suddenly ashamed at his own good fortune and his own role as the one who persisted in getting away with it. And Bailey's reluctance to condemn enraged him. He would never dare ask if Bailey had ever actually believed the rape charge against himself. If he had actually done it, Bailey should have shot him. That would have been justice, instead of all this analysis and trying to understand. Ryan still wanted something.

‘It wasn't all in my mind, was it? He does exist, doesn't he? Can I tell a liar from a lover? I dunno.'

There was this fact about Glenmorangie: it kept on tasting good. Not as good as the first sip, but still good.

‘No, he wasn't entirely a creature of fiction. Maybe fifty
per cent the fevered imagination of those reporting on him, but more than a grain of truth.'

‘The man's a bastard gone to ground, wherever he is. Where the hell has he gone?' Ryan grunted, resolving privately, as he had publicly, that he personally was never going to search. They would turn over what they knew to the medical establishment, let them hound him out. If Littleton could not practise, he had no base for manipulation. It irked him that that was all they could do.

‘Where's he gone? People asked the same questions about you a couple of days ago,' Bailey said. ‘What makes you think you're the only one with licence to disappear? The doc's got plenty of money. Goes where he likes, and when. Earned money, own money, a mixture of both; mystery man. You're a shit, Ryan. Why didn't you trust me?'

Ryan remembered to pause and think about his answer. Bailey had spent years teaching him that.

‘Didn't. Couldn't. You had a job to do and you know me too well. You knew I could have gone off the rails; you know how close I've been … Besides, I wanted to hit you for not being able to spring me out of there. I wanted to hit you. Kick you. In the balls. But you were always out of reach; like Helen always seems.'

‘Helen isn't out of reach,' Bailey said. ‘Merely absent.'

‘Are you accusing me of fucking it up; the wedding, I mean? Well, stone me; if you have to get married in secret, you ain't got a lot going for you, have you? I didn't believe you'd ever do it; nor did she. Funny what she said in the middle of the night.'

Then he found Bailey standing over him. Pulling him
up by the sleeves, shaking him like a rat, the sound of cloth tearing. Controlled violence of some intensity, designed to intimidate. It had been a good shirt, once.

‘Oh, for God's sake, leave it alone, will you? Would I ever touch your woman, you stupid idiot? Even less, would she touch me? Hates my guts; don't fancy me either. Nor me the other way round, if I'm being frank. Leave off, Bailey. There, that's better.'

Bailey returned to the opposite chair, calm as a sleepy spider. Jealousy had not really featured in his action; merely a vague suspicion that Ryan's sabotage of his own marriage plans had been, in some sense, deliberate.

‘She talks in her sleep, that's all, and she talks loud. Carries through to that sofa in the living room where she parked me for the night. All sorts of stuff. Like she thinks she don't live up to a man like you. Well, thinking the way you think – namby-pamby, forgiving everybody – she may be right.'

Ryan became restless, the way he did with emotion in anything other than a professional context. He could handle weeping women, provided they were strangers. Emotional men were another matter, and besides he was not being entirely truthful. He'd always thought Helen was a very tasty piece, likeable or not.