Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

Colin Sellers groaned in disgust. ‘I know none of the rapists we meet are real charmers or anything, but this guy’s about the worst I’ve heard of.’ Everyone nodded. ‘He’s not doing it out of desperation, is he, because he’s a sad, screwed-up fucker? He’s planning it from a position of strength, like it’s his favourite hobby or something.’

‘He is. Albeit an imagined position of strength,’ said Sam Kombothekra.

Simon agreed. ‘He has no idea how sick he is. I bet he’d rather be labelled evil than sick.’

‘It’s not about sex for him,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s about humiliating the women as much as possible.’

‘It is about sex,’ Gibbs contradicted her. ‘Humiliating them’s what turns him on. Or else why do it?’

‘For the show,’ said Simon. ‘He wants to draw it out, doesn’t he? Act One, Act Two, Act Three . . . making the women talk about sex in between the actual rapes, a verbal as well as a visual spectacle. It’s all more stuff to pad out the performance. Are these paying audiences, or invited friends?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Kombothekra. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know. It’s one of our biggest and most demoralising failures, not getting this guy. You can imagine how Prue Kelvey and Sandy Freeguard feel. If we can get him now . . .’

‘I’ve got a theory,’ said Sellers, looking brighter suddenly. ‘What if Robert Haworth raped Prue Kelvey and Sandy Freeguard, then told both Juliet and Naomi that he’d done so. That’d explain how they both knew the MO.’

‘Why did Jenkins lie, then, and say he’d raped her?’

‘For the reason she admitted,’ Charlie suggested. ‘She didn’t think we were looking for him hard enough. Once we found him, she planned to withdraw the accusation and she thought the whole thing’d go away. She didn’t bank on us finding out about Kelvey and Freeguard.’

Simon shook his head vigorously. ‘No way. Naomi Jenkins is in love with Haworth—there’s no doubt in my mind about that. Juliet Haworth might be able to stay with a man who rapes other women, either for fun or profit, but Naomi Jenkins wouldn’t.’

Proust sighed. ‘You know nothing about the woman, Waterhouse. Don’t be absurd. She’s lied from the word go. Well? Hasn’t she?’

‘Yes, sir. But I think she’s a fundamentally decent person, lying only in desperation . . . Whereas Juliet Haworth . . .’

‘You’re being contrary for the sake of it, Waterhouse! You know nothing about either of them.’

‘We’ll see what happens with Robert Haworth’s DNA sample, whether it matches up,’ Charlie intervened diplomatically. ‘The lab are on it at the moment, so we should have a result by sometime tomorrow. And Sam’s got a copy of the photo of Haworth to show the two West Yorkshire women.’

‘Another similarity between Jenkins’ account of her rape and Kelvey and Freeguard’s accounts is the invitation to a member of the audience to join in,’ said Kombothekra. ‘A man called Paul, in the case of Jenkins. Kelvey said her rapist extended his invitation to join in to all the men present, but he was particularly keen for a man named Alan to get involved. He apparently kept saying, “Come on, Alan, surely you want a go?” And the other men encouraged this, also egging on this Alan character. Same story with Sandy Freeguard, except the man was called Jimmy.’

‘And? Did Alan or Jimmy partake?’ asked Proust.

‘They didn’t, neither one,’ said Kombothekra. ‘Freeguard told us that Jimmy said, “I’ll play it safe, I think.”’

‘When you hear about men like these, you start to mourn the absence of the death penalty,’ Proust muttered.

Charlie pulled a face behind his back. The last thing they needed was a diatribe from the Snowman about the good old days of hanging. He seized upon any excuse to lament the abolition of capital punishment: a theft of some CDs from HMV in town, nocturnal fly-posting. The inspector’s readiness to wish death upon random civilians depressed Charlie, though she happened to agree with him about the man who had raped Naomi Jenkins, Kelvey and Freeguard, whoever he was.

‘Why the differences, then?’ she wondered aloud. ‘It has to be the same man . . .’

‘His method evolves with each rape?’ Sellers suggested. ‘He likes his basic routine, but maybe a bit of variety within that makes it more exciting for him.’

‘So he made Kelvey and Freeguard undress in the car,’ said Gibbs. ‘To make the drive more fun.’

‘Why the change of venue, for Freeguard and Kelvey, and why take the elaborate dinner out of the equation?’ The Snowman barked impatiently. Charlie had been expecting his mood to deteriorate. When there were too many uncertainties, he usually grew ratty. She noticed that Sam Kombothekra was suddenly very still. He’d never met Proust before, never experienced one of his invisible ice installations, and was no doubt wondering why he felt unable to move or speak.

‘Maybe the theatre became unavailable,’ said Charlie. ‘Maybe the panto season started and the stage was needed for Jack and the Beanstalk. ’ She spoke in a deliberately relaxed way, trying to diffuse the atmosphere; she knew from long experience that she was the only one of the team who could. Simon, Sellers and Gibbs seemed to accept it as inevitable that they would all congeal in the Snowman’s disdain for hours, sometimes days. ‘In Jenkins’ statement, she says her attacker was serving the food as well, in between sexual assaults on her. Survivor number thirty-one alludes to the same thing.’

‘So you’re saying he decided to streamline his operation?’ asked Simon.

‘Maybe,’ said Charlie. ‘Think of what Naomi Jenkins described. That must have taken it out of him, don’t you reckon? A kidnap followed by a long drive, multiple rapes, serving a posh dinner to more than ten guests, then a long drive back.’

‘It’s possible our man moved to West Yorkshire between the Jenkins rape and the Kelvey rape,’ said Kombothekra. ‘That could explain the change of venue.’

‘Or he always lived in West Yorkshire, since Jenkins said her drive was much longer,’ said Sellers.

‘Maybe that was a red herring, though, and another part of what made this scrote’s “act” too tiring to sustain long term,’ said Charlie. ‘Maybe he lived in Spilling—and that was how he knew Jenkins, or knew of her—and he drove her round and round in circles to make her think the site of the attack was at the other end of the country.’

‘This is just pointless speculation,’ Proust murmured in disgust.

‘Has he got a day job?’ asked Gibbs. ‘Does he take time off to kidnap his victims?’

‘There’s one thing we haven’t talked about yet,’ said Charlie.

‘That sounds unlikely,’ Proust grumbled.

She ignored him. ‘All the women say their kidnapper knew their names and numerous details about them. How? We need to find out if these women have got anything in common other than the obvious: they’re all successful, middle-class, professional. Naomi Jenkins makes sundials. Sandy Freeguard is a writer—she writes children’s books. Prue Kelvey’s an asylum and immigration lawyer.’

‘Was,’ Sam Kombothekra corrected her. ‘She hasn’t worked since the attack.’

‘We can’t be sure in the case of survivor number thirty-one,’ Charlie went on, ‘but she writes like an educated person.’

‘Jenkins, Kelvey and Freeguard all say that their rapists asked them how it felt to be successful career women, so we’ve got to assume that’s a motivational link,’ said Kombothekra.

‘But then there’s the survivor story from the SRISA website, Tanya from Cardiff,’ Simon reminded him. ‘She’s a waitress, and her written English is poor. I’m not convinced her rape’s part of the same series.’