Stuart Pawson - Deadly Friends

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Pity," I told him. "Nowadays it can be used in mitigation. I don't know if it makes any difference, but it gives the defence something to pontificate about. We're not letting you go, Darryl. I want you charged with the rape of Janet Saunders and in front of a magistrate tomorrow morning. We'll be opposing bail."

"This is preposterous," Mr. Turner protested. "On what grounds can you do this? My client has made it clear what happened. At the previous interview he told you that Mrs. Saunders became hostile when he tried to leave and demanded money. She has a reputation in her locality for being a woman of some sexual experience."

"Some sexual experience!" I gasped. "And what about his reputation?"

"If my client has any sort of reputation it is inadmissible as evidence."

"But hers isn't?"

"No."

"Does that strike you as fair?"

"It's the law. Fairness doesn't enter into it."

"Mrs. Saunders says Buxton raped her, at knife point "And he says she consented. I suggest you release my client and pass the file to the CPS for their consideration. I can safely say that they will not entertain it. The words "wasting time" might appear somewhere on their response."

I was in my shirt sleeves, my jacket draped over the back of the chair.

I half turned and retrieved the Wetherton package from a pocket.

"This," I said, unwrapping the contents and holding it towards Buxton, 'is a digital thermometer. You switch it on… here, and press this end against whatever it is you want to know the temperature of, like this." I held the probe end against the palm of my hand and offered the instrument so his solicitor could read the liquid crystal display.

"Could you please tell us what that says, Mr. Turner?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I don't wish to take part in this charade."

"Read that, DC Sparkington," I said.

"Thirty-six point… something," he replied.

"That's degrees centigrade," I told them, 'which is blood heat, near enough. That's how you check the thermometer. I am now going to take a reading from the wall where Darryl leaned a few minutes ago. Would all those present like to come and check this?"

Sparky stood and moved round the table but Turner and Buxton remained glued to their seats. I nodded to Martin to join us. I pressed the probe against the tiles and waited for the numbers to settle.

"What does it say?" I asked.

"Twenty-one degrees," Martin informed us.

"Yep, twenty-one," Sparky confirmed.

We resumed our places. "You used to be a bailiff, a repo man, I believe," I said to Darryl. He didn't answer.

"You have to be able to handle yourself in a job like that," I continued. "Fancy yourself as a tough guy, do you?"

He glowered at me, his top lip distorted and his forehead shiny with sweat, but stayed silent.

"Perhaps you just don't like the cold," I suggested.

"You're a hothouse plant. I'm not. There's nothing I like better than to be out on the moors on a frosty morning with the wind whistling round my ears and the air like champagne." I did an exaggerated breathe-in and exhaled with a sigh. "Yesterday morning… I visited Mrs. Saunders' home. I went upstairs to the bathroom, where you claim intercourse took place. I removed my shirt and stood in the bath, right where you say you did. I leaned back against the wall. Your actual words, a few seconds ago, were: "It's fucking freezing." You were dead right. Her bathroom wall was fucking freezing. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a… pawnbroker's sign. I couldn't lean on it for two seconds. So, I took out my faithful friend here." I tapped the thermometer. "And measured the temperature. It was eighteen degrees, a full three degrees centigrade lower than the wall in this room. Your story is a pack of lies, Buxton. Sex in the shower is one of your pathetic fantasies. In the North of England, in winter, in an unheated bathroom, it's strictly for masochists."

"Inspector," his brief, Turner, began, raising a conciliatory hand.

"All this is rather far-fetched. What happens in the clinical conditions of this interview room cannot be compared with the high passions that were running that night. The cocktail of lust and alcohol that both parties were under the influence of would surely overcome any chilliness of the tiles in her bathroom, don't you agree?"

"Mrs. Saunders doesn't drink," I said. "But your client was no doubt under the influence of alcohol, and probably anabolic steroids, too. A simple drugs test will show that. Meanwhile, we'll let a jury decide about the anaesthetising effects of "high passion", as you called it. I want him in court, and when he is, we'll play it clever, like you usually do. For a start, there'll be women on the jury. We'll make sure that there's an overnight adjournment between them hearing our evidence and retiring. And do you know what they'll do, every one of them, when they are at home or in the hotel? They'll all stand in their showers, stark naked, and lean on the wall. Just like you will, tonight, Mr. Turner. And that's when they'll make their decisions." I leaned back, flicking my notebook closed.

Sparky said: "And then there's all the other women you've attacked.

We'll call them, just for indentification purposes, of course. "Is this the man you knew as Darryl Burton?" "And when did you last see him?" That sort of thing."

"You can't do that!" Turner protested. "It's inadmissible."

"We'll get round it," I told him. "When they learn that your client is probably going away for a long time one or two might be willing for CPS to re-start their cases. Young Samantha Teague might press charges.

The phrase I'm wanting to hear from the judge's lips is the one about being put away until no longer a danger to women." I turned to Sparky.

"How old do you reckon that is, Dave? About seventy?"

"God, older than that, I hope," he replied. "Charlie Chaplin put their Oona in the family way when he was about ninety."

"A long time, anyway."

"You can say that again."

"Anything else?" I asked.

Sparky shook his head.

"Mr. Turner?"

"Not at the moment, except to confirm that we will be strenuously denying these charges and protesting about the way the evidence of this morning was obtained."

"Buxton?"

He glared at me, one corner of his mouth pulling in uncontrolled twitches towards his ear. "I'll get you, you bastard!" he hissed.

Turner slapped a hand on his arm to silence him.

"We'll take that as a negative," I said. "Interview terminated at… twelve forty-seven p.m."

We took him to the charge office, read him his rights under PACE and showed him the menu. Our natty paper suits do not come in a full range of sizes, and the one that fitted his shoulders was rather long for him. The crutch was level with his knees and the legs were concertinaed around his ankles. All part of the dehumanising process, of course, but sometimes it doesn't bother me a bit. As soon as he was settled in we left.

As we walked out of the headquarters Sparky thumped me on the upper arm and said: "Well done, Squire! Bloody brilliant."

I rubbed my arm. "You don't know your own strength," I complained. As we'd missed the Saturday morning remand court we'd have to keep Buxton until he could appear before a magistrate on Monday, and not 'tomorrow', as I'd told him during the interview. It would give him another twenty-four hours to reflect on his misspent youth. I drove us both back to Heckley nick.

"I'll sort out the remand file in the morning, if you don't mind,"

Sparky said as he unbuckled his seat belt. "I promised to take Daniel to the match, if we got done early enough."

"I've nothing on," I told him. "I'll pop upstairs and do it myself. It won't take long."