Mark Burnell - The Rhythm Section

‘Bollocks. You’ve trousered a little for yourself, ain’t you?’

A total of three hundred and fifty-five pounds. All she’d left them with were their coins. ‘They must have blown what they had on all that cheap wine they were throwing down my neck.’

‘Don’t try to be funny, Steph. And don’t try to pull a fast one on me, neither. Now cough it up.’

‘Just what Detective McKinnon was always saying to me. I’ve still got his number somewhere, you know.’

Superficially, West’s anger dissipated but, internally, he was seething and they both knew it. ‘Don’t push your luck, Steph. One day, it’s gonna run out.’

‘I know. And so will yours. We’re both on borrowed time.’

Dean West raped me once. I say ‘raped’ because that is how it appears to me now but, at the time, I was less sure. Anne Mitchell was the one who introduced me to him. She was still a prostitute in those days, working for West, and I think she did it purely to please him although she said it was in my best interest. She told me that for a small percentage of my earnings he would provide protection for me and that, anyway, without his authority, I wouldn’t be allowed to operate in this area. That was a lie. So were most of the things that Anne said in those days. But I don’t hold that against her. She was no different to anyone else in this business, no different to me .

It occurred here, in Brewer Street, in the very room in which I am currently standing. In fact, I am looking at West right now and I am wondering if he is also thinking about it. It seems a lifetime ago. Or rather, it seems like another life altogether. Not mine, but someone else’s. I barely recognize the Stephanie who features in my memories. If I was ever really her, I no longer am .

As I entered this room on that morning, he was polite in an old-fashioned way. Courteously, he held out a chair for me to sit in. This, I later learned, was typical of West. One moment he’s charm itself, the next he’s a savage. I have never discovered whether this is genuine or whether it’s something he has cultivated but, either way, it’s part of his legend. What is beyond dispute is that West has always enjoyed his reputation as a man not to be crossed. He’s thirty-five years old and has spent twelve of his last nineteen years in custody .

To look at him, you would never think he was so vicious. There is nothing in his physique that suggests menace. He is not particularly tall – five-nine, I should think – and he’s very thin with fine features; he has hands as delicate and long-fingered as a female pianist’s. His lank, light-brown hair falls limply from a centre parting, giving a rather effeminate appearance. In a crowd, he is invisible. But when the rage is in him, the bulging eyes threaten to pop out of their sockets, the pale skin becomes so bloodless it almost looks blue and he radiates a feeling that is unmistakable: pure evil .

There is no bluff with West. Everyone knows it. If he says he’ll play noughts and crosses on your face with a pair of scissors, you know he will because if you know anything about him, you’ll know that he’s done it before. When I first entered this room, about two years ago, I never even noticed the screwdriver on the table next to where I was sitting .

At first, he told me how sexy I was, how I was going to make so much money. He told me that if there was anything I needed all I had to do was ask him. Then he came round from the other side of the desk, picked up the screwdriver and stood behind me, before stooping to whisper in my ear, ‘I want to see what you’ve got. And then I’m gonna try you out. Now get your clothes off.’

He never threatened me verbally, or with the screwdriver. He didn’t have to. And the fact that he didn’t somehow persuaded me at the time – and for some time after – that it wasn’t really rape. Now I know that it was because my compliance was automatic and was based on the certainty that, one way or the other, West would have sex with me. There was no choice in the matter. Compliance was self-preservation. And this was before I knew of his fearsome reputation. I could feel the menace and I knew it was genuine. I think he would have preferred me to protest, or even to struggle, just to provide him with some justification for violence. But I didn’t. Instead, I stripped and let him take me as he wanted. It was mechanical, brutal and painful but I never let it show .

This disappointed him. So over the following fortnight, he forced me to have sex with him on a dozen occasions. Each time, he was rougher than before, determined to provoke some reaction from me, but I never gave him that satisfaction. My icy composure remained intact, each humiliation only serving to strengthen me. Every time he finished, I held his gaze in mine and we’d both know whose victory it was. With every attempt to break me, West unmanned himself a little more .

I see now how stupid this was. Sooner or later, his patience would have snapped and I would have paid a fearful price for his humiliation. Fortunately, it never came to that .

An East End heroin peddler named Gary Crowther fell out with Barry Green over some money that Crowther owed. As a favour to Green, Dean West agreed to teach Crowther a painful lesson, choosing to deal with him personally. Unfortunately, Crowther had come off a Kawasaki on the M25 the previous year. The accident had left him with multiple skull fractures and had required two operations on the brain to save his life. West’s first punch knocked Crowther unconscious and he never recovered. What should have been a mere warning ended up as murder .

I never saw the blow that killed Crowther – by all accounts, it was more of a slap than a punch – but I did glimpse the unconscious body through a partially-opened door. Just for a second, but a second is all it takes .

I was the only witness that West couldn’t trust. Those who dumped the unconscious Crowther in Docklands were West’s closest men. They were never going to be a problem. But considering how he had treated me, West had every reason to be nervous .

Most of all, I remember the confusion in his face because I don’t think I’ve seen it since. He was truly scared. He knew that if he was convicted, he was looking at a life sentence. As for me, he wasn’t sure whether to try to sweet-talk me or whether to resort to violence. As it was, he did neither because I made up my mind before he made up his. I said to him, ‘If I was never here, you’re never going to touch me again. Do you understand?’

Dumbfounded, he’d simply nodded .

‘Let me hear you say it.’

‘I understand.’

Since then, I’ve kept silent and West has kept his word and Detective McKinnon – the officer who headed the investigation – has remained frustrated .

As for the rape – or should I say, the first rape? – I have analysed it constantly since it happened. I cannot pretend it was the brutal assault it could have been – the type that makes the news, the type that leaves a mutilated corpse in its wake – but it was a horror to be endured nevertheless. Having been endured, however, I think the experience has been strangely empowering. Primarily , having survived such an ordeal, it taught me that I could survive such an ordeal .

I began to be able to see myself as West saw me – as a thing, not a person – and this has enabled me to divide myself in two so that there is a part of me that nobody can reach, no matter what abuses they visit upon my body. This has allowed me to do what I do, to cope with the repulsive acts I perform for my repellent clients. It’s allowed me to live with the threat of violence without it driving me crazy .