Easy Meat

Thirty-eight

Maureen Madden was the sergeant who ran the rape suite, an attempt, largely successful, to make rape victims-the ones that came forward-feel more at ease than in the functional brusqueness of the normal police station. Comfortable chairs, subdued lighting, carpet, pictures on the walls; the facilities for medical examination all present. In the three years or so that Maureen had been working there, she had not had one victim to deal with who was male.

And this had begun differently, at the hospital, no time for anything but the most rudimentary counseling before the doctor on duty carried out his examination. Maureen was uncertain whether Declan Farrell would have been relieved to discover the doctor was male, or whether by that stage he even cared; she had no clear idea how he would respond to talking to her rather than to a man about what had happened. It crossed her mind to contact one of the members of the Lesbian and Gay Police Association, but then she had no way of knowing if Farrell himself were gay. A married man, two kids apparently, she wondered if he knew himself. He had pleaded with them, when they informed his wife of where he was, not to give her the details of what had happened.

Now Mrs. Farrell was pacing the waiting area, chewing stick after stick of Dentyne, dropping coins into the vending machine for lukewarm cups of tea, and Declan was unburdening himself little by little as Maureen, patient, trained, won his trust.

Millington had rousted out Naylor and Vincent, but found Divine impossible to track down. No surprise. “Round midnight of a Friday,” as Millington had pointed out, “state Mark’ll be in, likely neither use nor ornament.”

The toilet was in one corner of the recreation ground, close to the gate on the southern edge and in the shadow of the church. They checked the interior, a short stand of unseparated urinals and one cubicle, careful not to disturb anything forensic might turn to good use later. The small, low building was ripe with the stink of stale urine, its walls festooned with barely decipherable graffiti and gouged here and there with slogans: MUFC Rule! Colleymore Walks On Water (from which someone had erased the I and substituted an n) and Niggers Out!

Lights were still showing in a good number of the houses in Church Street and Church Grove, as well as along the Promenade, so they began the slow and diligent business of knocking on doors. Uniformed officers, using emergency lighting, made an initial search of the mainly grassed area between the toilet and where Farrell had climbed the fence onto the path where he had been found. At first light, the same process would be gone through more thoroughly, taking in the thick area of shrubs along the church wall.

“Charlie,” Hannah had asked, face still pale, “how did you know?”

“I didn’t at first.” Resnick had shrugged. “Not for definite. Not till I saw the blood.”

“Oh, Christ! It’s horrible.”

“Yes.” Holding her now, hair across his mouth, one hand to his chest. “Yes, I know.” Except I don’t, he thought, not really. I can’t. And hope to God I never do.

The doctor was young, Australian, working on a short-term contract he didn’t expect to be renewed, though that was due to a lack of funding rather than any fault of his own. The room in which he spoke to Resnick and Maureen Madden was small and white-walled, the overhead lighting so strong it discouraged you from raising your eyes. His voice was occasionally slurred and Resnick might have thought he had been drinking if he were not so obviously tired.

“The cuts to the face were pretty much as you’ve seen; he took quite a few stitches and he isn’t going to be looking in any mirrors for a while, but other than that it’s not too serious. There is evidence, though, of quite severe bruising on the neck.”

“Finger marks?” Resnick interrupted to ask.

The doctor shook his head. “More like some kind of bar, I don’t know, something hard, some sort of stick, you know, like a walking stick. Pulled back against the neck below the a dam’s apple.”

“Forcing back the head?” Resnick asked.

“Yes, quite possibly. We’ll know better once the bruises’ve come out more. But yes, it could be.” He cleared his throat and looked up into the brightness of the light and then at the floor beneath his feet. “Look, I’m sorry, I seem to be avoiding the issue here.”

“It’s all right,” Maureen said, “take your time.”

Resnick caught himself wondering, would he be so reluctant if this were a woman he’d just seen?

“There was penetration,” Maureen prompted him.

“Yes. Without any doubt. But not …” For an instant, he caught Resnick’s eye. “I mean it was sexual, clearly, but I think what was used was some kind of … well, instrument.”

“What, you mean a vibrator?” Maureen asked. “A dildo, what?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Nothing that appropriate. It probably would have been better for him if it were. No, this was quite large, two to three inches in diameter at the end and solid, probably not tapered towards any kind of a point. Not sharp-edged, though, or the damage would have been even worse than it is. But whatever it was had been used with a lot of force. There’s quite a bit of tearing of the sphincter muscles and around the orifice itself, and considerable rupturing of blood vessels along the anal canal.” He shook his head again. “Poor bastard,” he said.

The story Declan Farrell had told Maureen Madden was this: he had needed to use the toilet on his way home from the pub and shinned over the gate. Easy, he’d done it before. The man was there when he went in; inside the cubicle, so Declan didn’t see him. But he had followed Declan out, jumped him from behind. Hit him across the face with some kind of club. Almost knocked him out. Forced him to kneel down on the grass, pulled down his trousers and his pants. Told him he was going to give him what he wanted. His words: this is what you want. And then … and then at that point Declan’s voice had choked and Maureen had held his hand and said, “Okay, now. It’s all right. Declan, it’s okay.”

“I’m going to have to talk to him, Maureen,” Resnick said.

“Tonight?”

“Sooner it’s done.”

She nodded. “I suppose so. You want me with you?”

“Please.”

“Let’s take him back to the rape suite, then. Not here.”

Resnick agreed.

“And his wife?” Maureen asked.

Resnick looked back at her, unblinking.

“All right,” Maureen said, “I’ll speak to her before we leave.”

Skelton was at the station when they arrived, waistcoat unfastened, no tie; like the reformed non smoker he was, cigarette never far from his hand.

“So, Charlie, this little effort, we’re not thinking there’s any kind of link with the attack on Bill Aston?”

“Bit early yet to know what we’re saying.”

“But this-nancy boy pick-up gone sour, that’s what we’re dealing with surely?”

Nicely put, Resnick thought. “Sexual, certainly,” he said. “Of a kind. Victim’s wallet was still on him, nothing stolen. But to what degree there was ever consent …”

“I thought we were talking rape?”

“I mean, whether or not there was anything between them beforehand …”

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine, that sort of thing? Bit of hanky-panky up and down the stalls.”

“Something like that, sir, yes.”

“Scarcely matters, does it, one way or another? Bit of flashing in the Gents not that much different from walking into the pub with half your tits hanging out-provocation, not an issue any more where rape’s concerned.”

Resnick was far from certain that was true, when it came to juries at least. “I’m interviewing him, sir, now. I’ll bring you up to speed soon as I can.”

“That’s it, Charlie.” Skelton winked. “Get to the bottom of it, eh?”

“Bastard asked for it, didn’t he,” Divine said, finally tracked down after one of those rare Friday nights when he had failed to pull. “No question. Went out looking for a bit of rough and got more than he bargained for. Now he wants us to say there, there and hold his hand. Well, not bloody me and that’s a fact. Kev, while you’re over there, be a mate will you and fetch us a tea.”

Declan Farrell had refused tea or coffee, didn’t want anything to drink at all; he sat there, between Resnick and Maureen, unmoving in the hushed quiet of the room. Numb. Except that’s what he wasn’t, numb: only what he wished to be.

“The man who attacked you,” Resnick asked for the third time, “what can you tell us about him?”

Eleven minutes past two.

“His voice, his appearance …”

“I didn’t see him.”

“You heard his voice. He spoke to you at least once, you said.”

Nervous, Farrell touching the stitches scissoring above his eye, the worst cut and the deepest, fingers going back to it like a tongue unable to stop itself probing a bad tooth. Farrell sitting in hastily borrowed clothes, his own carefully labeled, packaged, and shipped off to forensic.

“Semen?” Resnick had asked the doctor.

“Not really. None around the area of penetration. A trace inside his clothing, probably his own.”

His own?

“Why don’t you try and concentrate,” Resnick said, “on the voice?”

As if he could ever forget it, Declan thought. As if there’d ever be a night again when he wouldn’t hear it: This is what you want, you bastard. You fucking cunt!

“The voice,” Resnick asked, “was it young or old?”

“Young,” Farrell said, so quietly that both officers had to lean forward to hear him. “At least, I think … Oh, God, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“An accent? Did he have an accent?”

An age before Farrell answered and then, “Yes, maybe.”

“Local?”

“Sort of. I mean, around here, yes, but not strong.”

“Is there anything else,” Maureen asked, “that you can help us with, about the voice?”

Making him play it back, again and again, six seconds on repeat. “It was rough.”

“Rough?”

“Sort of rasping.”

“As if he had a cold, that sort of sound?”

Farrell leveled his gaze and stared. “As if he was excited,” he said.

Seventeen minutes to three.

“Declan,” Resnick said, “no one’s judging you here, you know that. Maureen and I, we’re not passing judgment on what you do. Whatever you’ve done. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about?” Farrell asked, a sudden unsuspected shout. “Why can’t I just go home? That’s what I want.”

“What this is about,” Maureen said, “part of it, is making sure that whoever it was did this to you won’t do it again to somebody else.”

Farrell was leaking tears again; they came and went so frequently now he scarcely bothered wiping them away.

“You’re sure you didn’t know him, Declan? This man?”

“I told you, I told you I never even saw him. How can I know if I’ve seen him before?”

“But you have been there before,” Resnick asked. “Those toilets?”

“Of course I have.”

“I mean, to meet someone. For the purposes of sex?”

“No.”

“Declan …”

“No! I’ve told you, I’m not queer, I’m not gay, not any of the things you think I am.”

“Declan, please …”

He was on his feet now and making for the door, Maureen looking quickly across at Resnick, wanting to know should she stop him.

“Declan,” Resnick said, “I think you had been there before, after closing, around the same time. I think sometimes you were lucky, met someone you fancied, sometimes you didn’t, gave it up and went on home. I think whoever was shut in the cubicle tonight you thought had gone there for the same reason as you. Now I don’t know what you did, whether or not there was some signal between you, whether you showed yourself to him through a hole in the door, hole in the wall. But when you went out onto the Rec I think you thought he would follow you and he did. And Declan, I don’t care about any of that, I honestly don’t. But what happened next, that’s what I care about. This person, whoever it was, viciously assaulted you, assaulted you in the most terrible way imaginable. And as Sergeant Madden said, we want to ensure he doesn’t remain free to do this again. To someone else. And because you know what it’s like, Declan, you must want that too. So 1 am asking you, please, to help us as much as you can.”

After several seconds’ hesitation, Declan Farrell opened the door and walked out. Maureen looked across at Resnick and slowly shook her head, closed her eyes.

When Carl Vincent came into Resnick’s office he was looking a little tired, a man who had been up all night and only snatched a half-hour’s sleep, slumped across a table in the canteen. There were a couple of marks on the sleeve of his lightweight suit, picked up during the search, and his collar was somewhat awry, but otherwise he didn’t look much the worse for wear.

A sight better than Resnick himself. “Carl, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“This business last night, the talk is you’re not making any connection with the Aston murder.”

“That’s pretty much right.”

Vincent drew a deep breath. “Look, sir, maybe I should’ve said before, but I saw him a year ago, Aston, in a gay club in Leicester.”

For a second, the pulse beating at the side of Resnick’s head seemed to stop. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Bill Aston was gay.”