Without Consent (24 page)

She moved her finger from the kitchen sink, swathed it in layers of kitchen towel and still it bled. On the floor, in the sink, wherever she tried to keep it out of harm's way, it bled. She managed to avoid drops on the carpet, but any admonition to her finger did nothing more than make it spout blood even faster. She held it above her head, like a trophy, wrapped in kitchen towel and still it bled. The Elastoplast was somewhere, she forgot where, inaccessible. Finally, she went into the garden. Blood was surely good for the soil.

The rain had stopped, but the sky had turned from purple to a bleak grey.

Signs of neglect out here, Helen remarked to herself, crossing her hands across her chest. Anna Stirland said you had a care of your plants if you could stop them throttling one another. Which, revived by rain, they were about the business of doing; she imagined she could see them moving, the whole thing a jungle, praying for attention, made aggressive by nourishment.

Gloves, then; let the finger bleed inside the sleeve of her stiff gardening gloves, hanging by the door, awaiting a mood like this, when care and control of the garden seemed more important than anything, if only as a substitute for control over her own life. Nothing hurt when she worked in the garden; she would surprise herself later with the discovery of unconsciously acquired scratches on arms, legs and torso, regarding them proudly as symbols of the fact that, though she might not be an expert,
something in this small wilderness had received the benefit of her energy.

There was a school playground on the other side of the high wall which bounded the back of Helen's garden and made it so private. She liked the presence of the children she never saw, although on days at home she heard the raucous playground screams, always amazed at the sheer exuberance of their noise and the deafening nature of the quiet which followed. Remembering now, as it grew dark and silent around her, how long it had taken to feel safe in this garden. She pulled at the convolvulus which made the ivy look shaggy, tore at it as if it was a real enemy and, as the pile of weedy rubbish grew on the grass, she felt the beginnings of satisfaction. The dark grew gently deeper, summer dusk turning inky black, so that soon the only light spilt from the kitchen window and it was silly to go on. Helen paused, thirsty, and turned to go indoors.

It was then she saw a figure crossing the patch of light, disappearing into the shadows. Her elderly cat had died in the spring and its presence haunted her still, but she knew it was not the cat, or any ghost. She was suddenly engulfed with a fear which was at once strange and yet appallingly familiar. There was more than one kind of ghost in this garden. Bailey would not joke like this: he knew her fears and respected them, but all the same she called his name, her voice quavering uncertainly.

‘Bailey? That you?'

Silence. The tree which shrouded the corner seemed to sigh, shuffling a full head of leaves and loosening the very last of the rain. The scrape of a shoe on stone.

It was a small garden by country standards, large in
urban terms, but now it felt enormous, the distance between herself and the back door the length of a long minefield. She stumbled in her headlong run to the rectangle of light which represented safety, her glove skidding against the rough surface of the wall, her hair flicking into her eyes, all of her sick with fear. Falling into his arms.

There were lights from the upstairs windows of the houses on either side, their promise a mockery. Her scream ascended unheeded as she had known it would; she was in the midst of a crowded street and it made no difference. The creature who twisted her body round so that he held her neck and clamped a dirty hand over her mouth might as well have been holding her over a cliff on a shoreline devoid of humanity for all the help she could summon.

‘Shut up,' he snarled. ‘Shut up.'

She nodded her head, let her body go limp. The hand moved from her mouth to her throat, his other arm pinioning her round the waist, pressing her against his groin.

‘Lovely Miss West,' his voice murmured. ‘And you never knew I cared.'

She could feel his penis stir against the soft flesh of her buttocks; his palm strayed to brush across her breast and a deep shudder passed through her. Then she began to tremble.

‘Obviously mutual,' the voice continued. ‘Always knew you fancied me rotten. Shall we go inside, love? Get ourselves comfy, eh?'

I
t was Todd who kept stating his wonderment about how Ryan could disappear, repeating himself stupidly without thinking about what he was saying. Bailey had no such
confusion and he was bored of listening to the ramblings of frustration. Despite his years as an officer, Todd had never somehow taken to the streets; he had formed no affiliations there and still could not understand how a man like Ryan, who had so often failed to make his own way home in the evening, could remain at large now. Bailey thought the quickest way to flush him out would be to stop his credit cards; let him play cat and mouse if he would; he himself was tired of the game and angry with Ryan for prolonging it.

‘I feel sorry for the boyfriend,' Todd said, nursing his pint like someone slightly afraid of it, sitting there in the uncomfortable company of Bailey, guilty for being in a pub at all, but knowing he would feel guiltier if he simply gave up. He was like a dog gnawing at a bone, turning it over with one paw and chewing the other end. If he had been Ryan, he would have given up on the subject long before now and gone on to his summer holidays.

‘He seemed a decent bloke,' Todd went on.

‘He probably is,' Bailey agreed, recalling a lad with a large ever-mobile Adam's apple and eyes full of tears, whose stress he had thought owed as much to fear as to grief. Eyes darting everywhere whenever they forgot to maintain a self-consciously sincere contact with those of his interlocutors. Lying about something, Bailey thought; the boy was suspiciously relieved to have it stressed that his dearly beloved had not died of strangulation, and even more suspiciously confused and angry to learn there had been no signs of sexual attack. Then he had cried. Bailey had disliked him even more than the manageress in the shop where Shelley Pelmore worked: a bitch from hell,
who, even in the midst of genuine shock and tears, remembered to flirt. Bailey had failed to tell Todd that after this pint he was going back to see her.

‘Did I hear tell you were getting married?' Todd was asking, trying too late in the day to be conversational. ‘A triumph of hope over experience, is it?'

Only Ryan was allowed to tease and Bailey could feel himself about to snap, until he realized it had slipped his mind. Slipped? The thought of marriage had sunk like a stone. When was it? Next week? Tomorrow? Christ, tomorrow. Perhaps, after all, he was already married; to Ryan. Go home, Todd, he urged silently. Go home and let me get on.

‘What? Oh. Yes.' Tomorrow. Jesus wept ‘Excuse me a minute, will you? I've just got to go and phone her. She does like to know when I'm going to be late.' Todd nodded, with an understanding smirk which made Bailey cringe.

Bailey dialled, drumming his fingers on the shelf inside the booth. Perhaps there was something to be said for mobile phones; they would be mandatory soon for him, just like a radio for every beat copper, and then they could all stand around on street corners in common with half of the population, yelling at one another like lunatics. She answered after interminable ringing. Bailey imagined her out in the garden, or ironing a garment. Doing something frivolous and feminine, the way he secretly liked to imagine her, such as lying in a scented bath, with her tan-coloured skin turning pink.

‘Look,' he said, before she could even say hello. ‘You haven't forgotten, have you?'

There was a long pause, laboured breathing.

‘Forgotten what?'

‘Wedding,' he said tersely. ‘I'm sorry, I was so … brisk this morning.'

‘Have you found Ryan?' she asked.

‘No.'

‘What a pity. I expect he's closer to home than anyone imagines.'

Her voice was high; then she seemed to explode in a fit of coughing, ending as if she had been thumped on the back. There had been no coughing this morning, not that he recalled.

‘I don't want to talk about Ryan. I've had it up to here with Ryan …'

‘… But he's very close to you, I'm sure he is …'

Her voice was now so strained, it sounded almost as if she was trying to swallow. Choking on something, possibly laughter.

‘Listen, love, are you ready for this? Ryan doesn't matter as much as us. Eleven-thirty in the morning. Don't be late, will you?'

Again, he allowed himself that fond imagination of Helen peacefully at home, sorting out her special-occasion wardrobe. He loved her clothes and the way she wore them. Then he heard the sound of clinking glass; a voice, which could only have been Helen's, turned sideways to the phone, saying shush. Then a male voice, very close, whispering, and the sound of smothered laughter. A cork being pulled from a bottle.

He could feel a sensation like a mild electric shock, then a feeling of despair. Shame on her, Helen drinking for
Dutch courage. Finding someone else for reassurance? That was it, then. Hadn't he always known there was a risk, a big risk that she would run away from commitment to him in the end, that marriage terrified her, and that his middle-class, professionally qualified, passionate but cool-as-ice Helen would decide she could do better than him and find someone her own class would approve?

‘Bailey?' She seemed lost for words. It was only ever guilt which made her speechless.

‘Look,' he said wearily. ‘It's up to you, isn't it? I could call round later, only …'

‘Not
later,'
she spat, then fell silent. Bailey could not think of a single thing to say. On the other end of the line, he could hear someone whistling in the background. Someone thoroughly relaxed in her house. Slowly, he replaced the receiver, unable to listen.

‘Y
ou look so glamorous in those gloves,' Detective Sergeant Ryan remarked. ‘So why doesn't a smart woman like you change into gardening clothes before she stoops to do the garden? I always do, myself.' Helen looked down at herself. The gloved hands were folded in her lap; they had made it awkward to hold the phone. She sat in the least comfortable of the kitchen chairs by the window, noticing, at his prompting, the dirt of her workday skirt and blouse, thinking, yes, perhaps she would be an all-round better person if she remembered to change her clothes before making an onslaught on the garden, and surely Bailey would know there was something wrong. Don't come
later,
come sooner. Feel concern for my cough. Wonder why I mention Ryan.

Ryan took the phone off the hook.

‘Just in case he phones back, eh? Then he can think you're cosily engaged.'

‘Why did you make him think someone was here?' she asked.

‘I didn't make him think anything,' he said. ‘I just told you to get rid of him before I hurt you and also because, if he comes round here, I'll kill him. Only he won't. If he thinks there's someone else here, he'll simply go into a state of shock. Not a jealous fellow, Bailey, just in a state of constant dread. He doesn't deserve you, you know,' he added, mimicking her voice. ‘Oh no, never did.'

He took a swig from a tumbler of whisky: she looked at him with a mixture of amazement and contempt, shivering at the memory of his body pressed against hers. She noted the growth of beard, the training shoes, and felt strangely resigned now that she had spoken to Bailey, scarcely caring at that particular moment about the carving knife which glinted on top of the fridge, well out of her reach, but easily within Ryan's. She pulled at the gloves; the one on her right hand was firmly stuck; she tugged at it, grimacing, releasing it from her fingers, letting both gloves drop on the floor. Her hands felt light and cool; she pushed her hair away from her face, a small attempt to make herself tidier than she was, a minute effort in the difficult exercise of self-control. Ryan's eyes suddenly widened; she shrank from him in alarm. This was the moment, then; this was when the rapist would go berserk.

‘Christ, Helen, I didn't do that, did I? Oh God, did I do that?'

She had put her hand to her face, the first gesture of
self-protection, noticed that it was covered in dried blood and fresh blood oozed from the injured finger.

‘For God's sake,' he said, dragging her towards the sink by the wrist. ‘Put it under the cold tap, you silly bitch.'

Always some act of kindness which did it.

Made her cry.

P
erhaps I could love someone. Perhaps they could love me. Perhaps what has happened to me is all a figment of my imagination.

Perhaps I did love her. Little Shelley, who wanted the thrills, the decadence, the dirt. Or perhaps my current sombre mood is a reaction to murder.

But she consented, even to that. It was not submission, it was consent.

W
omen have such a capacity for forgiveness. Perhaps it is not too late for me. The love of a good woman.

I must not do this … now I have perfected it, my own power terrifies me, and it will corrupt. My hands itch to hold the implement, insert it between soft lips … nothing but the air we breathe …

H
er life would have been wretched anyway. She would have made it wretched because she was far too afraid to change it.

Maybe it's not too late for me.

I could always try again. I could try and see if love redeems me. Redeems my flesh, and blood.

T
he blood ran away under the tap. She gazed at it, mesmerized, watching the pale pink of the water.

‘Should probably have a stitch,' Ryan said. ‘But a plaster would do. In the bathroom, are they?'