Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

I hurried across the garden and in through the conservatory, checking the locks more carefully than I normally do. Probably just one of those weird coincidences, and yet, as I pulled a spare blanket from the cupboard and curled up on the sofa, I couldn’t help wondering why it should be tonight, of all nights, that someone should decide to play ‘My Favourite Things’.

I woke to the sound of my phone ringing. It was the duty sergeant at Southwark. I’d left instructions that if a certain person called for me, I was to be found. That person was now waiting at the station. So, day off or not, I was going into work.

9

Saturday 1 September

‘THEY WAS THREE OF THEM. AT FIRST THEY WAS THREE OF them. Then more arrive.’

I sat very still on the wooden bench, not wanting to do anything that might distract her. I really wanted to make notes, but she’d refused to let me. She hadn’t allowed me to turn on the tiny recorder I’d brought with me either. She wasn’t making a statement, she’d said repeatedly, until she was certain I understood. She wasn’t even prepared to stay in the station. So we’d gone out, had walked down towards the river, to the place where Shakespeare’s Globe had been re-created on the South Bank.

Rona Dawson was fifteen years old, plump, with gleaming skin and braided hair. Eyes like dark chocolate. She was a good-looking black girl like dozens of others from south London. And like dozens of others, she’d been raped by her boyfriend and several of his mates.

Rape crime, particularly rape by gangs of young men and boys, has become a huge problem in south London. Not too long ago, Scotland Yard statistics showed a trebling in the incidence of gang attacks across the city over the past four years. More than a third of the reported victims were under sixteen.

When it comes to rape, of course, reported incidents are the tip of the iceberg.

‘When you arrived at the flat, there was just the three of them?’ I asked, when she didn’t go on. ‘One of them was Miles?’

She nodded.

‘And Miles had phoned to ask you to come round?’

She nodded again. ‘He say come round and watch a DVD. I thought it would be just the two of us.’

‘Miles is your friend, boyfriend …?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘He’s just someone I know.’

A little way to our left the Millennium Bridge was already busy, two steady streams of foot traffic flowing gently along it. Visitors from the north bank crossing to view the Globe or visit the Tate Modern; others walking in the opposite direction, heading for St Paul’s Cathedral or the shops and galleries further north. On the first day of September, London was still in peak tourist season.

‘Had you had sex with him before?’ I asked her. ‘Before that day?’

She nodded, without taking her eyes off the river.

‘What happened when you arrived?’

‘I seen these other two. I didn’t know them but I seen them around. We started to watch a film but it didn’t feel right.’

A passenger boat was heading our way, its bow sending waves across the water. ‘In what way didn’t it feel right?’ I asked her.

‘They was looking at each other, not at the film,’ she said. ‘They wasn’t watching the film. I didn’t like it and I said I had to go. That I was meeting Bethany.’

‘Did you get up to go?’

She nodded. ‘Miles wouldn’t let me,’ she said. ‘He said to come into the bedroom. I didn’t want to, I said I had to go, but he pushed me in and shut the door. I said I had a stomachache, but he pushed me down on the bed. I thought if I let him get it over with I could go.’

She looked up at me again, eyes hard, daring me to blame her, to say it was her fault, she’d let him, she hadn’t even put up a fight.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘So you had sex?’

She nodded. ‘He was doing it and I heard the door open. I saw the other two standing in the doorway.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I yelled at them to get out. I told Miles to make them get out, but he just put his hand over my mouth and told me to keep quiet. Then he got up and I tried to get up too, but he pushed me back down again and then the other two were on me.’

Rona’s hand was beside me on the bench. I gave it a quick pat, but stopped when she looked surprised. The passenger boat arrived and docked at a small river pier. We watched the crew hook ropes over giant cleats and the passengers begin to disembark.

‘Did they threaten you?’ I asked, when most of the passengers were on dry land.

She gave a little shrug. ‘They just kept saying to keep quiet and they’d let me go,’ she said. ‘To keep quiet and I wouldn’t get hurt.’

The boat was loading up new passengers now. Nothing Rona had told me so far was surprising. I’d heard variations of it several times already from other girls. I’d read countless reports. It was all horribly familiar.

‘What happened next, Rona?’

‘One of them was kneeling on my shoulders. He pulled my bra up round my neck and put his hands on my …’ She stopped. She was looking down at her body.

‘He put his hands on your breasts?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘He was holding me, saying they was the biggest he’d ever seen, he kept repeating it, all the time his mate was doing it to me. It was humiliating, you know what I’m saying?’

‘I know. Did you ask them to stop?’

She looked down at her hands.

‘I understand that you were scared, Rona,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I have to ask you all these questions. I know how hard it must be to answer them. Are you able to go on?’

She nodded. ‘When the one who was doing it to me had finished, they swapped. Then, same thing again.’

‘Where was Miles while this was happening?’

‘Sitting in a chair, watching.’

‘Did they let you go, when the third one had raped you?’

She looked at me and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They didn’t let me go. Two more of them arrived.’

10

THE UNDERGROUND SPACE IS VAST AND DARK AND SMELLS of decay, like the cathedral of a city whose inhabitants are long since dead. The day outside was bright and clear, close to noon. Down here, the darkness is all consuming and time has become meaningless. The black-clad figure moves slowly and the huge structure amplifies sound like the inside of a great shell. The echo of each footstep seems to dance away into the distance, as though endlessly repeating itself somewhere out of earshot. The chamber feels like a crypt.

‘Perfect,’ says a voice.

The water, twenty feet below the searching eyes, looks black as moleskin in the light of the torch. It’s shining, giving off the peculiar odour of petrol and salt water that always seems to hover around a river when the tide is heading out. Except this water never moves. This water is still as death.

A sudden sound above. Airborne creatures live in here, whether birds or bats or something new entirely, it’s impossible to tell. A stone or piece of brickwork falls into the water. The sound, like glass breaking, cuts through the silence so sharply the air seems to shimmer around it for a moment. Then all is still again.

As the figure in black moves on, the smell seems to evolve. Humanity, street drugs and paraffin: echoes, all of them. It’s been years since anyone has been down here. Years, probably, since anyone has even remembered it was once a home.

And yet there are traces, as the footsteps move on, of the people this vaulted space once knew. A lantern with a candle stub inside it, a small, upturned calor-gas stove. The people made dens for themselves with boxes, old curtains, even what looks like a hospital screen. They divided up the huge space to give themselves territory, erected walls for privacy, and most of their structures still exist. Along this long, suspended gallery are a dozen or more hiding places.