Without Consent (8 page)

S
helley remembered that when she had finally reached home on the fateful night of her meeting with Ryan, she had smelt. Hot-night sweat of rage and fear with overtones of heavy perfume. There was mucus on the jacket, tears in brown mascara rivers on her face, filth embedded in her torn clothes. When Derek had found her, he had not touched her. This had been, he explained, the actions of a careful man who had seen films about the need to preserve evidence in cases such as these.

First, he had put down the rubbish bag he had been carrying and then sprinted for the phone. Highly sensible,
a police officer had conceded, but Shelley did not think she would ever forget the fact that he had not hugged her.

Their lives were full of patterns and plans. Derek was like her mum and dad: constantly in a state of vigilance against the awful threat of the unpredictable.

D
erek Harrison watched Shelley Pelmore get up and open the curtains he had just pulled closed. She did not open them completely, since she did not wish to contradict him, but enough so that she could see the opposite side of the road and the darkening sky from her window seat of oatmeal coloured fabric from Ikea, identical to that possessed by her mother; such good value. They now had a matching pair of such chairs, replacing the cushions she had possessed. Derek's reason for the replacement was that sitting on cushions meant you had to go such a long way down to the floor and such a long way back up again, and even though she might reckon herself double-jointed, he was not. The same argument prevailed when it had come to acquiring a new bed to replace the double mattress. Derek was the master of do-it-yourself, but he liked to have her around when he did it, requiring an assistant and admirer for his skills. Mostly, it was his money that went on improvements.

I don't resent it, Shell, how can I? he would say as she demurred every time another length of wood appeared. It's our future I'm building.

A future in bricks and mortar, shelving and three-piece suites stretched before her. Matching crockery and washing machines to save them from falling into animal behaviour. Ready-made, machine-washable curtains in
pastel shades to make sure they could distinguish themselves from the creatures in the jungle outside. Shelley was twenty-two and worked in a shop in the West End. She got a discount on clothes of which Derek approved; he didn't like her shopping anywhere expensive, so that when she did, she scrunched the garment into a small parcel and hid it away. Brick by brick, Derek built their future; she could feel the walls of it surrounding her. Sometimes, the prison had the comfort of a padded cell; at others she wanted it bulldozed to the ground. Derek was so kind. Everyone approved of him. She had everything she wanted.

‘I think I'll go to work tomorrow,' she said.

He looked up in surprise. On the floor between his feet, sitting neatly on a double thickness of newspaper to save the carpet, were the innards of their vacuum cleaner which Derek was mending.

‘Oh, no, I wouldn't. It's too soon, lovey, after all you've been through. It's only a couple of days since … You need your rest.'

‘Two days. I don't need rest. I need something to do. I feel much better, honest, and if I don't go to work, the old bat will think it's time she got someone else …'

Shelley could hear the whine in her voice; a rising note of panic singing along tunelessly behind it.

‘There are laws against unfair dismissal,' he said primly.

‘I know there are, but they don't count for nothing if you get the sack. You can spend weeks fighting it or you can put up and shut up, the manager knows that. Anyway, a couple of days on the sick is all I can get away with before anyone asks questions. And we've got a sale this week.'

Shelley liked work, usually; work was a laugh. The
corollary of not going to work was having to stay at home, in this flat, cleaning it, fussing round it, making custard for apple pie. Derek worked on the vacuum cleaner. Silence reigned, apart from the sound of a screwdriver, tapping the filter free of dust.

‘I don't want to tell them, at work, I mean, Derek. I just don't.'

‘No, of course you don't. Why should you?'

He dusted his hands, stepped across to her and patted her head indulgently. Then he sat down again and continued tapping the filter. The small sound grated on her nerves. She knew his industry did not imply any criticism of her for fouling up the machine in the first place, but that was what it felt like.

Between them both, the television glowed and people were murmuring at one another. A police officer appeared through a door on the screen and Shelley squirmed at the sight of him. The trembling spread throughout her limbs; she pulled her knees into the chair and clasped her hands around her calves.

‘What's going to happen, Derek? What are they going to do to him?'

He looked at the screen, puzzled.

‘Sorry, love, I wasn't watching.'

She wanted to shout.

‘I don't mean the man on the telly. I mean that copper. Ryan.'

Derek's hands ceased moving and he gave her his full attention. She had had the benefit of his 100 per cent solicitude for forty-eight hours; he never seemed tired of giving, darling Derek.

‘Charge him, put him on trial, lock him up and throw away the key, I hope, after what he did. But we don't know, love. Most likely they'll cover it up, just because he's a copper. They stick together, you know.'

‘I don't want to give evidence,' she said, her voice tremulous. ‘Do you know what he did for a living? He was doing sex cases. That's why I had to go so far, all that way, to that other police station; I couldn't go where anyone knew him. Why didn't they take
him
somewhere else? 'Cos I couldn't be on his territory. I don't want to give evidence. What's the point?'

‘You can't let him get away with it, Shell. And you mustn't worry. I'll be with you all the way. Now and for ever.'

Such a good man, the best she would ever find. The girls told her so, warned her not to lose him. Shake him off a little from time to time, sure, but never risk losing such a man in a million who worked hard and didn't mind if she went out alone, didn't even mind if she came home late; loved her enough to give her freedom. Look, Shell, he would say, I don't like clubs and discos, and I got all these late shifts, so you go on and have fun, girl. I like you having a good time. The unspoken context was his own plan to have her knee-deep in babies and living a million miles from town within a couple of years, but perhaps that was an unfair interpretation. He wanted any wild oats sown so he could reap the crop; he would turn one blind eye, admire with the other, as long as he kept her.

She looked at the world outside, listened to the traffic, felt her heart contract with fear.

‘I'd better iron some gear for the morning,' she said, uncurling from the chair.

‘I'll do it for you,' he said. ‘You just sit still now. Want a hot drink, love?'

‘T
ell me again,' Helen asked Bailey. ‘Just so I get it straight in my mind.'

The meal was finished, to mutual satisfaction. Steak for him, fish for her, because fish was something she reserved for the occasions when she did not have to cook it. She was superstitious about fish and always imagined it would leap out of the bag on the way back from the shops, find a drain and try and swim back home. There were lights in the roof of Casale's, suspended from branches, giving the effect of Christmas decorations in a barn. The floor was uneven, the chairs rocky and the proprietor rude to a fault. It was a small price to pay for the food.

‘Not that much to tell. I'm told Shelley Pelmore seems nervous, truthful and she's very pretty. I'm never quite sure whether it favours a prosecution case to have an attractive victim, or a plain one. Depends on the argument. If the issue's consent, it's better to have them pretty, because juries will believe she had every right to refuse …'

‘Well, well… I take it you aren't actually saying that a plain woman hasn't any right to say “No”?'

‘Helen … I'm simply saying that a jury is more likely to assume that a pretty lass can pick and choose. She'll have more men after her. She's likely to have more confidence, reject what she doesn't want, demand more. A pretty girl has more power, that's all. On balance, unless she's provocatively sexy, when her looks go against her, she's more likely to be believed.'

It was not a conclusion Helen wanted to accept, but she remained silent.

‘Anyway, this pretty woman, girl, is out in a pub, West End, after work, a regular hang-out for the girls. She's met Ryan before, I told you about that. He knows where she lives, because he's been there to take a statement…'

‘About the other rape case? The non-starter case he was telling you about, where the girl won't say …'

‘Yes. Ryan happens to be in the West End, meets her this time by accident. They get chatting in the pub. She liked him in the first place, she said; he made her laugh. He says he'll give her a lift home, but they stop in another pub, near her flat, for another drink, ostensibly to talk about her friend. As far as Ryan will say anything at all, he says she wanted to stay in this pub near St Pancras, decided she'd wait for another friend and didn't want to go home yet, so he left her there. That was it. The sum total of his evening's acquaintance with Ms Pelmore: one lift, two drinks, left her to meet someone else. Shelley says they get back in the car to complete the journey to her flat, but halfway there, Ryan stops on the edge of the park and makes … suggestions. She laughs at him; he seems to lose his temper, comes round to her side of the door and says, OK, get out and walk. She gets out, not particularly worried, but shocked as hell, because she doesn't expect a copper to come on like that. He drags her into the bushes, telling her she's asked for it; she resists and then stops because she already hurts, and bingo. He mucks her about, tears her knickers, puts on a condom, shoves it in, but can't come, gives her a slap, then leaves her. He drives off; she staggers home.'

‘Where the ever-loving boyfriend finds her on the step. Wearing Ryan's mucked-up jacket. How does he explain the jacket?'

‘He doesn't. He won't. Not even how there came to be another condom in the pocket. Such a responsible man.'

‘Traces of her in the car?'

‘Bits of straw from a straw bag she had on the back seat. Not conclusive, because she was in the car anyway. Bits of hairy fabric under her nails, from his jacket. Soil. She had scratches … bruises.'

‘Her friend had scratches. The other one you told me about.'

‘Not the same. The only skin under that little girl's fingernails was her own. Shelley had soil from the park. There might have been skin under Ryan's fingernails, but there wasn't, for the simple reason he'd bitten them to the quick before anyone took samples. Now, would you say the man had a case to answer?'

‘Yes. I'm glad it won't be coming to me.'

‘What a crying, bloody awful shame, and I still don't want to believe it.'

Bailey looked as if he might begin to beat the table, an outburst curtailed by the arrival of coffee and four chocolates which he ate absent-mindedly.

‘Shall we talk about something else? Weddings? Births, marriages and deaths?' he said. She had once thought his habit of changing the subject with such speed was evasive, now she knew it was merely habitual, a symptom of a crowded mind, full of separate, easily accessed compartments.

‘Marriages first. I thought later this month. Two weeks
tomorrow. We always said we'd do it by special licence, midweek. No time for thinking. Put the date in your diary, for God's sake. We can have a party later. To dispel second thoughts.'

‘That's just a couple of days before Rose. Fine. Daren't tell her, though.' She hesitated. ‘I thought you might want to postpone it until this business with Ryan's over.'

‘Nope. If life's negative, I want to do something positive.'

Helen nodded. So they had agreed. Their wedding would be spontaneous, eccentric and private. Suddenly, he grinned, leant across the table and kissed her.

‘This is your ever-so-decisive husband, Miss West. Don't change your mind about changing your name, will you? I like it as it is. We can be like all those characters out of Jane Austen. Husband and wife addressing one another as Mrs Smith and Mr Smith. Never Helen and Geoffrey; far too familiar. You'll be Miss West, even first thing in the morning, and I'll be Mr Bailey.'

‘Don't expect me to call you sir.' She was laughing now, covering the slight feeling of awkwardness and embarrassment which afflicted her whenever she thought of this forthcoming event, a thought recurring every single day but only long enough to put back in a box marked secret.

‘Take ourselves by storm. I'll fix it. Think of it like a medical appointment. This way you haven't got enough time to plan an escape.'

He grinned again, the smile which was imprinted on her imagination. Bailey's smile lit up his lined face and made it look like a map. Age was only intermittently kind to him: he could look cadaverous, but his eyes were
brilliant, aware of her ambivalence about marriage; accepting it. He was not bullying her, just following out their mutual conviction that this was the best thing to do. God knows where we'll drift if we don't.

You will be a very distinguished old man, Helen thought, and how well, how very well you know me. I do not think I really deserve you at all.

R
yan loved the City of London with a passion. He could have opted to be a City of London constable instead of an officer serving with the Metropolitan, had it not been for the little matter of family tradition, and the more important detail of his size. Six foot had been the minimum for the City; some of the men looked like giants in their helmets. He was only five ten in stocking feet. In boyhood, he had attempted to stretch his own size by holding on to the wardrobe door with his outstretched arms, his feet hooked under his bed, maintaining the pose until it hurt. In retrospect, he reckoned this exercise had stunted his growth rather than increased it. I should've been stopped, he told himself; I should have been stopped from doing a lot of things. Dozens of defendants had told him the same.