Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

Having read Naomi Jenkins’ survivor’s story, Charlie was curious about the others. While she waited for Graham to return with her painkillers, she thought she might as well look at a few of them. She clicked on numbers seventy-three, seventy-four and seventy-five in that order, and skim-read them. They were all descriptions of incestuous rapes. Number seventy-six was a stranger rape, but it was so lewdly described that Charlie was sure a male pervert had written it. Could Naomi Jenkins be a pervert? she wondered. That might explain why she’d lied about Haworth having raped her; Charlie was certain she had lied. But Naomi’s letter to the website had contained no lurid details. She could easily have included some; there was no shortage of them in her statement, from what Simon had said, so if she was a fantasist, why not write up the full fantasy for inclusion on the website? Charlie wished she was at Silsford nick, able to ask Naomi Jenkins all these questions and watch her face as she replied.

The lodge door opened and Steph walked in. She was wearing a different outfit from the one Charlie had last seen her in, but this one also involved a pair of trousers, black ones this time, that stopped just below her jutting hipbones. How did she keep them from sliding down her legs? It was a mystery. The jeans she’d been wearing yesterday morning were the same. You can practically see her pubic hair, thought Charlie. Then she amended the thought: a woman like Steph wouldn’t have any, or if she did, it would be shaved into a heart shape or something gross like that.

Up close, Steph’s multicoloured highlighted hair looked ridiculous—as if several birds, each one with a different stomach complaint, had emptied their bowels on her head at the same time. Her hair stuck out in strange, stiff tufts and irregular, gelled spikes, a style that was too much for any ordinary situation. It was the sort of thing you’d only really expect to see at a fashion show. And then it would be done much better.

Thick foundation covered what Charlie suspected was a poor complexion. Steph’s lips, like her hair, were painted several different colours: pink and glossy in the middle with a thin red border inside an even thinner black line. As she walked into the lodge, she made a jangling noise, and Charlie noticed the gold bangles on her arms.

‘That’s our computer,’ said Steph, immediately irate. ‘You can’t use it.’

‘Graham said I could.’

Steph pouted. Charlie watched her glossy lips pull up and in. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s gone to find me some painkillers. I’ve got a headache. Look, a work emergency came up and Graham said it was fine for me to—’

‘Well, it’s not. Guests aren’t allowed to use it.’

‘Where did you take my sister?’ asked Charlie. ‘To a hotel?’

‘She told me not to tell you.’ Steph picked her teeth with a long fingernail that had what looked like a small diamond at its centre. ‘Has Graham already fucked you, or what?’ she said. ‘You were all over each other earlier, in the bar.’

Charlie was too stunned to reply.

‘He wouldn’t have let you in here unless he’d fucked you or was planning to. Just to warn you: if he has, or if he does, he’ll tell me all about it. Everything. He always does. You’re not the first guest he’s fucked, not by a long shot. There’ve been loads. He does impressions of the noises they make in bed. They’re really funny!’ Steph sniggered, hiding her mouth behind her hand.

If Graham hadn’t reappeared at that moment, Charlie would have crossed the room and punched her in the face.

‘What’s up?’ he asked Charlie. He had a packet of Nurofen in his hand. ‘What’s she said to you?’

‘I just said she can’t use the computer,’ Steph answered before Charlie could.

‘Yes, she can. Fuck off and get some sleep,’ said Graham amiably. ‘You’ve got a full day’s skivvying tomorrow. Starting with breakfast in bed for me and the sarge, here. Full English. Her bed, that is. That’s where we’ll both be. Isn’t that right, Sarge?’

Charlie stared at the computer screen, cringing.

Steph pushed past Graham. ‘I’m going,’ she said.

As she headed for the door, he started to sing loudly. ‘White lines, going through my mind . . .’ He clearly wanted Steph to hear. Charlie recognised the song as one that had been in the charts in the 1980s. She thought it was by Grandmaster Flash.

The lodge door banged shut.

‘Sorry.’ Graham looked shamefaced. ‘She winds me up like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Oh, I’d believe it,’ said Charlie, still shocked by what Steph had said.

‘Doesn’t she know what a cliché she is? The stereotypical evil servant, like Mrs Danvers in Rebecca —have you seen it?’

‘Read it.’

‘Oh, very posh, guv!’ Graham kissed Charlie’s hair.

‘Is Steph a coke-head?’

‘No. Why, does she look like one?’

‘You were singing “White Lines” at her—a song about drug abuse.’

Graham laughed. ‘Private joke,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get our breakfast, you’ll see. She’s an obedient old mongrel.’

‘Graham . . .’

‘Now, a glass of water, so you can take your pills.’ He turned to the water-cooler. ‘No cups. Great. I’ll have to get some from the storeroom. Won’t be a sec. If the dogsbody comes back again, you know what song to sing.’ He winked, then vanished, leaving the door wide open.

Charlie sighed. There was no way she was going to sleep with Graham now, and risk him sharing the details with his staff. She turned back to the Speak Out and Survive website. She would read Naomi Jenkins’ letter once more, she decided, and then she’d go back to her chalet and collapse in bed. Alone.

Yawning loudly, she reached for the mouse. Her hand slipped, and instead of clicking on survivor story number seventy-two, she hit number thirty-one by mistake. ‘Damn,’ she muttered. She tried to go back to the previous screen, but Graham’s computer had frozen. She pressed control, alt and delete, but nothing happened. Time to give up, she thought wearily. Graham could sort out the computer when he got back; she would leave it as it was—paralysed.

She was about to get up when she noticed something. A word, on the screen in front of her: ‘theatre’. It took a while to reach her fuzzy brain. When it did, she jerked upright, inhaling sharply. She blinked a few times to check she wasn’t hallucinating. No, it was really there, in survivor story number thirty-one. A little theatre. A stage. And a few lines further down, the word ‘table’. It leaped off the screen, its black lines vibrating in front of Charlie’s eyes. An audience eating dinner. They were all there, all the details from Naomi Jenkins’ rape statement that Simon had mentioned on the phone. Charlie looked at the date—3 July 2001. At the bottom, it said, ‘Name and e-mail address withheld.’

She phoned Simon’s mobile and got the engaged signal. Damn. She rang the CID room. Please, please, somebody be there.

After fourteen rings—she counted them—Gibbs answered. Charlie didn’t bother with pleasantries, since he seemed to be a stranger to them these days. ‘Get on to the National Crime Faculty at Bramshill,’ she told him. ‘Fax through Naomi Jenkins’ rape statement and see if they’ve got any matches, anywhere in the UK.’

Gibbs grunted. ‘Why?’ he said truculently, as an afterthought.

‘Because Naomi Jenkins was raped, and she wasn’t the only one. This is a series,’ Charlie uttered the words every detective dreaded. ‘Tell Simon and Proust I’m on my way back.’

Part II

Speak Out and Survive

Survivor Story no. 31 (posted July 3, 2001)