‘I have, thanks. I’d like to go there.’
It was an easy enough decision.
‘I think that’s the right thing to do, Shelley, you’ll be in the best hands and well looked after. But I will have to take a basic statement from you now. When you’ve told it all in greater detail over there, that statement will be recorded and we will have access to the recording. I just do need to take some information from you now, if that’s all right. Take your time. I can give you a break whenever you like.’
‘It’s all right. I want to get on with this now.’
Name. Address. Date. Place. Easy. Brief description. Easier than she had expected because now she was angry again.
‘OK – you say that the person who raped you was someone known to you. How well known – a relative?’
‘No, no. A – more an acquaintance. My husband knows him better than I do. I’ve only met him at social occasions …’
Lois was writing. She looked up. ‘Thank you. And full name?’
Shelley took a deep breath. Realising. Suddenly, realising.
‘Serrailler,’ she said. ‘Dr Richard Serrailler.’
The sergeant looked quickly down at her notepad, then back. The shock on her face was quickly concealed.
She paused a moment, then said, ‘I’m sure you know the implications of this, Shelley, and some of them aren’t necessarily relevant. I would just caution you, though. Are you absolutely sure? Any doubts at all, any possibility of confusion of identity, and you should tell me now. I will support you and so will the rest of the team who look after you but you’ve named someone of prominence in the community and with a high reputation in the medical world. If you do press this charge I’ll warn you informally that it will be – difficult. It will raise the level of publicity and frankly, I’d expect big legal guns to be wheeled out as defence counsel.’
‘Are you telling me I should drop this charge just because he’s a prominent person? A high-up Freemason, a top doctor? And the father of your Superintendent?’
‘No – categorically no. I just want you to be aware that the identity of your alleged attacker will raise the profile of the case and you would need to be fully prepared for that.’
‘It doesn’t make any difference. It makes me more angry. It makes me furious actually.’ Her hands were shaking again but she had raised her voice.
‘That’s fine, but it would be wrong if I didn’t put the position to you and they will probably do so again at St Catherine’s. No way will anyone try to stop you and in all other respects it’s irrelevant what position your attacker holds or doesn’t hold or how he’s regarded. Right, that’s everything from me. One or two practical questions – have you had a bath or a shower since the attack?’
‘Yes. I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t bear …’
‘That’s all right, it’s quite understandable. Hopefully it will still be possible to get forensic evidence from an examination. Have you got the clothes you were wearing – all of them, including underwear and shoes?’
‘No. Yes. I’ve got my shoes.’
‘What happened to everything else?’
What had happened? For a moment, she had no idea at all, except that she had not been able to keep them in the house, had had to get rid of them, had …
‘I threw them away in a binbag but I know where … I …’
‘Could you retrieve them?’
‘Yes, unless … I ought to but … maybe someone has moved them.’
‘Right, then the first thing we do is go to where you dumped them. I’ll drive you there, and then take you on to St Catherine’s. Would you be able to come and pick your car up later? Or maybe your husband could do that for you?’
‘No. I’ll be fine to do it.’
‘No hurry. If you don’t feel in a fit state to drive you should just get a taxi home and pick your own car up tomorrow. Give me a couple of minutes to drop this statement off and get a car.’ She turned as she reached the door. ‘You’ve done absolutely the right thing, Shelley.’
Had she?
They retrieved the plastic bin liner full of clothes, still where she had left it.
Had she done the right thing?
They went to the house and collected her shoes.
Had she?
They hit the bypass and were halfway to Bevham before the full implication of what she had done and was doing reared up at her and she said, ‘I’m not sure about it now. I’m really worried.’
‘I can’t stop here but as soon as we turn off this road I will. I understand exactly what’s happening, Shelley, and I don’t blame you. It’s just hit home and we need to talk about it again. The way you’re reacting now – it’s perfectly normal. This is a big deal. You’re talking about accusing a highly respected and prominent local man of raping you, and you if press this charge you’ll have to go to court and give evidence. It’s not trivial. Frankly, I’d be worried if you weren’t having second thoughts and you’ll have third and fourth. You need to sit calmly and go through this again and ask yourself, do you want him to get away with this? Do you want him to carry on as normal, big guy, everyone respects and all that – this rapist? Is that what you want? I’m not sure you do. Ask yourself, why did you come to the station in the first place?’ There was a new edge to her voice, almost a desperation.
‘You sound as if you really want me to do this. So what if I just wanted to get at him for some other reason, what if I was making it all up?’
‘Are you?’
‘No, I’m bloody well not.’
‘Didn’t think so.’ ‘Still …’
‘Still?’
‘You seem – you really want me to go for him, don’t you? Just wondered why. Do you know Richard Serrailler?’
‘No. So far as I’m aware I’ve never met him.’
They turned off the bypass and pulled up beside a row of new estate houses.
Lois switched off the engine, glanced at Shelley and then away.
‘It happened to me,’ she said. ‘Some years ago, before I joined the police. It was someone I knew and I didn’t report it because I was scared and young and I just wanted to forget it. But I never have. I try very hard not to let it influence me, that would be totally unprofessional. I haven’t any opinion about this, Shelley. I don’t know if you were raped in the meaning of the term or if you led him on a bit and it was more or less consensual. I don’t know. All I know is that if you’re telling the truth, you have to pursue this, if only to make up for all those people like me who were too cowardly and didn’t and as a result sent out the message that it’s OK, carry on, rape women, they won’t say anything, it won’t go any further, there’ll be no consequences. You see?’
‘Yes. Thank you for telling me that.’
Lois started up the engine.
Twenty-four
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, but why look at me as if I were an armed intruder?’
Judith stood in the sitting-room doorway, the back of her hand up to her mouth, heart beating too hard.
‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘Because you had the television on too loud.’
‘Yes, I suppose that was it – but you crept in so quietly.’
‘My dear, I did not “creep” at all. I walked round the house and the back door was unlocked, as it seems to be far too often. Talking of armed marauders, Catherine really should be more careful, living out here by herself. Are you going to sit down?’
Judith backed a little until her legs found the sofa.
‘Do you know where she keeps the whisky?’ he asked.
‘Yes, in the cupboard below the dresser.’
‘For you?’
She was about to refuse, but said, ‘A small one, that would be nice.’
‘Water?’
‘Please.’
It was a little after nine. Cat was at choir practice, Felix and Hannah were asleep, Sam in his room watching a rerun of the Ashes on his iPad.
The strange
thought, that Richard would not attack her while the children were in the house, zigzagged through her head. But what made her think that he might attack her? He had hit her during arguments, but never simply gone for her out of the blue.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to collect you earlier. I was in London and then Catherine’s message said you needed a bit of recuperation and I’m not surprised – these bugs seem trivial but in small children and old people they are often serious if dehydration sets in, as it clearly did with you.’
Judith looked at him as he sat leaning back in the armchair, whisky in his hand, relaxed, pleasant. Handsome. Yes. Of course people do not marry for looks at our age but I had always noticed Richard’s – I had even been flattered that he had picked me out, when he could have had anyone. Though she knew that she had not looked her age, as perhaps she did now, had always dressed well because it gave her pleasure, never become slack about hair, make-up, weight. She had paid attention to those things for herself, and out of pride, not to attract a man. But perhaps it had helped.
He was seventy-three, looked at least ten years younger. He had Simon’s fine features, and tall, narrow frame, though they did not share colouring.
She looked at him again as she drank. What had gone wrong? They had started wonderfully well, she had been happy. He had seemed happy. No – he had been happy. She was sure. Nothing in particular had happened but almost overnight a different man had emerged from the shadows of the one she knew.
And now?
‘I have not behaved very well,’ he said. ‘Correction – I have behaved very badly. To you.’
‘Yes.’
‘I am of uncertain temper. That isn’t an excuse, Judith.’
‘But a lot of people have tempers – not all of them manage to control them but I think most do. I don’t understand you, Richard. And that’s a hard thing to accept.’
He sighed. ‘I’m not sure I understand myself. I seem to have reached my seventies without attaining much wisdom – about myself, anyway.’
‘What are you saying to me? Are you trying to explain – apologise – excuse yourself? Because – you frighten me and I’m not sure how I can get over that.’
They sat in silence. Judith felt a surge of confidence, in her own ability to carve out a new understanding on which their future might be based, in her absolute wish to have everything open and clear between them, and in her belief that if it was not, she could and would walk away from him and from what had started by being a good marriage but which now had a rottenness at the core.
‘What do you want to do?’ he asked now, speaking very quietly without meeting her eye.
‘Stay here for another couple of days. I need to work things out. You?’
‘I’d like us to go away – take two or three weeks in the sun.’
‘It’s sunny here.’
‘Indeed. But if we just took the car and drove down through France, stopped where we felt like it, might we not be able to mend things?’
‘You are the one who needs to do the mending, Richard.’
‘When we went to America we were happy, weren’t we, doing just what we wanted, going about, staying a day or a week wherever we wanted?’
‘I was happy then, yes. I think you were too.’
‘I don’t want you to think my irritability always has to get the better of me.’
‘More than irritability.’
‘It begins there.’
‘And should end there.’
He stood up. ‘There isn’t much to pack up. Catherine will look after the house.’
‘Cat has more than enough to do already and it isn’t the house that’s the problem.’
He was looking at her like a child waiting to be back in favour, nervous, hopeful, half smiling. Did she still love him, love him enough to give in?
‘When were you thinking of going?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Goodness, as soon as that? I’m not sure I can be ready by then and why the rush?’
He put out his hand to her and, after a moment, she took it.
‘Because this is too important to wait,’ he said. ‘Nothing matters more.’
When Cat came in an hour later, the kitchen had been tidied and the table laid for the next morning’s breakfast, children’s school things were ready and Judith’s bag was in the hall.
‘I’ve left a quarter-bottle of wine in the fridge. How was Mozart?’
‘Good except that too many people were missing – the norovirus has a lot to answer for. Hello, Dad.’
‘Catherine. You look to me as if a small whisky would suit you better than the dregs of a cheap bottle of wine.’
‘This will do fine.’
Judith looked away from her as she said, ‘I’ve imposed on you enough, darling, and it’s time I went home. Your father’s suggested we take a break in the sun which I do need and which will get rid of the last bugs, so I have to get back and sort everything out.’
She went out to find her coat. Cat stood with her back to the draining board, watching. There was nothing she could or would do. Judith was an adult, she had to make her own decisions. That things were not yet right between her and her father was obvious. She hoped they might mend but doubted they would.
‘I imagine you have no more news of Simon than we have?’ Richard said. He sounded more anxious than usual. ‘Odd how these things work. He could be anywhere, doing anything, for any length of time and nobody is allowed to know. He might as well be working for MI5.’
‘The only thing that worries me is having no way of getting in touch. What if something happened?’
‘I imagine the people at his police station have ways. He implied that he could be absent for months rather than weeks.’
‘Did he? I didn’t think he knew.’
She heard Judith go upstairs, probably to retrieve something she had forgotten, and in the few moments she had, she knew she ought to get his opinion, before he also disappeared for weeks.
‘Dad – I need your take on something.’
She told him, as succinctly as she could, about the private practice offer. He listened carefully, as he always did about anything to do with her career. His advice was always valuable to her, though she didn’t ask for it often.
He was silent for a minute, frowning. ‘You can’t worry about what Chris would have thought. We both know he had a point, but there are counter-arguments. Two things occur to me. You probably wouldn’t get the wide variety of medicine that you have in an NHS general practice, though that’s not to say the well off don’t present with interesting illnesses from time to time, but you would have to do rather a lot of pandering to very minor ailments. My only other query is whether it could possibly work here. Private practice used to be very successful – probably still is in parts of London – but it bears no relation to private hospitals, which are largely financed by insurance. No insurance will pay for a private GP. So I just wonder if they’ve done their sums.’ He got up. ‘After all, most people would ask why pay for something you can get free.’
Judith stood in the doorway.
‘Good,’ he said, smiling at his wife. ‘You should think hard about this one, Catherine, but you may come to a different conclusion.’
She watched them drive off. It was a balmy night. An owl hooted from the chestnut tree. There were stars. Behind her in the house, three slept.
Whatever happened between her father and stepmother would happen and was no real business of hers. Wherever her brother was and whatever he was doing – much the same. She felt entirely alone but was conscious that for the first time in years she was content to be so. She had let something go.
Wookie had come out of the house to sit quietly beside her on the step, a small, silky, warm presence, anxious to have company. She picked him up, rubbed his ears and stroked his head.
‘Funny little object. You’re not a proper dog at all.’ Chris would have said that. Then, growling suddenly, Wookie struggled to be put down and
raced off into the darkness, barking ferociously.
Cat waited for him to see off whatever ghostly presence he had detected deep in the bushes, and when he returned, still making small grumbling sounds, hustled him inside and shut the door.
Twenty-five
‘Do you have a History section?’
He was in his fifties with wavy grey hair, handsome in a fleshy, full-lipped way. He looked slightly familiar.
‘Far wall, in the middle, but Local History is by the door.’
He smiled. ‘Not my cup of tea.’
Fifteen minutes and he was still browsing. He had also brought a pile of books to the counter.
‘I wanted Antony Beevor’s D-Day too.’
‘That’s out of stock again but it will be in tomorrow. I can keep one for you.’
‘Would you? That’s very kind. Yes please.’
The shop had been busy the day before, mainly with children coming to spend tokens they’d won as school prizes, but Rachel had sold a respectable number of other books, including a couple of expensive illustrated ones. She was pleased. Emma would be pleased. She had discovered that she was very much enjoying being a bookseller. But so far this morning the shop had been dead – two greetings cards and a map, at least until the man in the History section. He brought two more hardbacks to the counter and moved to biographies. Four there. Three children’s picture books, which he seemed to pick up at random.