Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

What sort of stupid bitch would believe a man like Graham Angilley?

Steph looked up. ‘What choices?’ she said, tears and snot dripping down her face.

‘Get me a photograph of Graham. And I’ll need the keys to that chalet.’ She indicated the pistachio-coloured door. ‘Naomi needs to identify the man and the place. After she’s done that, we’ll go to the lodge and you’ll tell me everything I want to know. If you fob me off with even the smallest lie, I’ll know, and I’ll make sure you rot in the shittiest prison I can find,’ Charlie lied confidently. In reality, the police had no control over where prisoners served their sentences. Steph might end up in the new, cushy Category D resort on the other side of Combingham. Everyone in CID knew it as ‘The Resort’ because it had boarding houses instead of cells, and the inmates’ food was rumoured to be reasonable.

Steph staggered across the field towards the lodge. The back of her skirt was soaking. She’d been lying on the wet grass, but Charlie was pretty sure she’d pissed herself as well: the smell gave it away. I ought to feel some compassion for her, thought Charlie. But she didn’t. There was not even an ounce of sympathy for Steph inside her.

‘What if Graham forced her into it?’ said Naomi. ‘What if she really doesn’t know anything about it?’

‘She knows. Nobody forced her into anything. Can’t you tell when someone’s lying to you?’

Naomi rubbed her hands together and blew on them. ‘You and Graham—’ she began tentatively.

‘We’re not going to talk about that,’ Charlie cut her off. Naomi couldn’t have chosen a worse combination of words than those three if she’d tried.

The lodge door opened and Steph emerged. She began to make her way across the field, steadier on her feet. She’d changed into black tracksuit bottoms and trainers. From a distance, Charlie saw the photograph in Steph’s hand, saw Naomi recoil. ‘It’s only a picture,’ she said. ‘It can’t hurt you.’

‘Spare me the therapeutic crap,’ Naomi snapped. ‘You think it can’t hurt me to see his face, after all these years? What if he comes back? I’m not sure I can do this. Can’t we just go?’

Charlie shook her head. ‘We’re here,’ she said, as if that state of affairs were somehow irreversible. That was how it felt. She would always be stuck here, at Silver Brae Chalets, with the wet grass tickling her ankles through her tights.

Steph looked as terrified as she had before. As she approached, she began to speak frantically, too desperate to wait until she got closer. ‘I didn’t know they were raping the women,’ she said. ‘Graham told me they were actresses, that the frightened-victim thing was all an act. Like it was when I did it.’

‘When you did it?’ Charlie echoed. She snatched the photograph out of Steph’s hand and passed it to Naomi, who looked at it for a second and passed it straight back. Charlie tried to catch her eye, with no success; Naomi was staring fixedly in the opposite direction, at a bank of trees. Charlie put the photo in her handbag, which she dropped on to the driver’s seat of her car. She didn’t want to be anywhere near a picture of Graham. Why wasn’t Naomi saying anything? Was Graham the one who’d raped her or not?

‘Most of the time, I was the victim,’ Steph went on, breathless. ‘I was the one Graham tied to the bed, I was the one who had to scream and beg and try to struggle free. It was knackering. I had the chalets to see to as well, all the cleaning and the reservations, the confirmations—’

‘Shut the fuck up.’ Charlie held out her hand. ‘Give me the key. Go and wait for me in the lodge. And do nothing else, do you hear me? Don’t try to ring Graham on his mobile. If you phone anyone, I’ll find out. I can get the information from BT, from your mobile service provider—easy. One wrong move and you’ll spend the next twenty years in a dirty, stinking cell. You won’t see daylight till you’re an old woman, and even when you get out, someone’ll probably knife you in the street.’ If only, Charlie thought. Still, she was enjoying the pretence. ‘Women who collaborate with serial rapists tend not to be popular,’ she concluded.

Whimpering, Steph handed her the key and stumbled back towards the lodge. ‘Well? Is that the man who attacked you?’ Charlie asked Naomi.

‘Yes.’

‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ Please be lying.

Naomi turned to face her and Charlie saw how white her skin had gone, almost translucent. It was as if she’d been bleached by the shock of seeing that face, Graham’s face. ‘I don’t want it to be him,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to say yes. In a way it was easier not to know, but . . . it’s him. That’s the man who raped me.’

‘Let’s look at the chalet, get it over with,’ said Charlie, walking towards the door with the key between her thumb and forefinger, ready to stab anyone who got in her way. She stopped when she realised Naomi wasn’t following her. ‘Come on,’ she said.

Naomi was staring up at the window. ‘Why do I have to go inside?’ she said. ‘I know it’s the place.’

‘You might, but I don’t,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m sorry, but you said in your statement that you didn’t see the outside of the building you were in. I need you to recognise the inside.’ She unlocked the door and walked into darkness. She felt the walls on either side of the door and found a panel of light switches. Most of them were dimmers. She fiddled with them until a few came on. It was just like the chalet she and Olivia had rented, except bigger. Nobody appeared to be staying at the moment: there was no evidence of clothes or suitcases. The place was empty apart from the furniture, immaculately clean. The dark-red curtains on the rail around the mezzanine bedroom were open and Charlie saw a wooden bed. At the top of each of the four bedposts, an acorn had been carved out of the wood.

She heard laboured breathing coming from behind her. When she turned, she saw that Naomi was shaking. She climbed the stairs to the mezzanine, wondering if Graham had chosen the bed precisely because of these protuberances, because of how easy they were to tie rope around. For a second she thought she might throw up.

‘Can we get the hell out of here now?’ said Naomi, from the bottom of the stairs.

Charlie was about to reply when the lights went out. ‘Who’s there?’ she shouted, at the same time as Naomi shrieked, ‘Charlie!’

There was a loud thud, the sound of the chalet’s front door slamming shut.

26

Saturday, April 8

IT’S THE WORST sort of darkness that surrounds us, the sort that folds you in and makes you feel you might never claw your way back to the light. It only lasts a second. I hear a buzzing sound, and the chalet’s interior is visible again. Just. Everything looks grey. A man’s voice says, ‘Shit.’ I see two forms in the dimness—a thick one, and a smaller, narrow one. The broader shape could be yours, Robert. For a moment I convince myself it is and my heart soars. I do not think about DNA matches and the lies you have told me, or the real name you share with your brother, a rapist. Not immediately, anyway. I think about your kisses, and how they felt, how I felt when you told me to go away and leave you alone. The loss of you.

Gradually the room gets brighter. The buzzing was the sound of a dimmer switch. Neither of the two men is you, or Graham Angilley. My shoulders sag as the tension drains from my body. It’s DC Sellers and DC Gibbs.

‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ Charlie yells at them. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

I look at Gibbs, expecting him to react badly to being reprimanded, but he doesn’t look as fierce as he did on Wednesday, in my workshop. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I must have leaned against the switch.’