‘Yes, when your brother is—’
‘I can take care of it,’ she stated.
Kim hesitated. ‘It may be something your brother needs to do for acceptance,’ she said, looking back into the house and noting that the man still hadn’t moved an inch.
‘I’ll decide later if he’s up to it,’ Ella said in a parental tone.
Kim didn’t show her surprise at the woman’s take-charge attitude. Sometimes it was what people needed at times like this.
‘Oh, and Inspector,’ she said with her hand on the door handle, ‘please cancel that liaison officer. My brother has me. He doesn’t need anyone else.’
Eleven
‘It was around one thirty in the morning,’ Lesley began with a faraway look in her eyes.
Stacey guessed that was the last memory she had of being carefree and unafraid.
‘The last act had finished a while before and security were ushering us out the gates. Taxis and parents’ cars lined the road, even at that time. I lived less than a mile away, so hadn’t asked anyone to pick me up. I said good night to my friends, and they piled into different cars and carried on up the road. I could still hear the beat of the band in my ears, which is probably why I didn’t hear anyone behind me.’
Lesley paused as a dozen ‘if onlys’ appeared to surge through her mind.
‘I was about halfway home when I felt a searing pain to the back of my head,’ she said as her right hand touched the spot. ‘I didn’t know I’d been hit. I didn’t know anything until I regained consciousness and, even then, the blinding pain came second to the smell.’
‘The smell?’ Stacey queried.
Lesley nodded. ‘I was face down in someone’s front garden. My head was being held against the dirt amongst a bed of geraniums; it’s a smell I’ll never forget. I can’t smell it now without wanting to burst into tears.’
Stacey knew that some victims retained triggers from their attacks that brought the memories flooding back, even if the attack was not at the forefront of the mind. It could be the sound of traffic, a car horn, certain words or phrases used by the attacker. For Lesley, it would be the cloying scent of geraniums.
‘I felt the suffocation of the smell before the thundering pain in my head or the realisation of what was happening. His hand was holding me down exactly where I’d been struck, and he was assaulting me from behind. Any movement and the pain brought nausea up to my throat. I thought I was going to choke on my own vomit. I thought I was going to die,’ she whispered, blinking back the tears.
Stacey nodded but said nothing. She didn’t want to rush her along. The story had to be told at her own pace, in her own way.
‘It was only then that I became aware of what was being done to me. I could feel something cold and hard being pushed in and out of my vagina. My shorts and underwear were around my ankles, and he was positioned on my left side, one hand on my head and one… well…’
Stacey nodded, trying to keep her face expressionless in spite of her growing rage. She didn’t need the girl to keep repeating it. The ordeal was horrific enough the first time.
‘I tried to scream, but my mouth was face down in the dirt. I tried to struggle, but my body was beyond exhausted, as though every limb was being held down by lead weights. It carried on for a few more minutes and then it was over. I could still smell the flowers, but the weight disappeared from my head. I still couldn’t lift it. I didn’t even know I’d been crying; the tears had mixed with the dirt. Suddenly, the silence was overwhelming.’
Stacey waited.
‘Eventually, I managed to crawl to the front door of the house and hit the front door. At first, the elderly man who lived there thought I was drunk and threatened to call the police. I just croaked out that I’d been raped. He called the police, and then sat beside me, careful not to touch me but just telling me he wasn’t leaving me and that the police were coming. Ten minutes later they did.’
She opened her hands expressively as if to say, ‘that’s it’.
Stacey had been forming a list of questions in her mind as Lesley had been speaking. Right now, she was at a loss to understand why this woman had been denied the opportunity to testify on the stand. She was clear, concise, had a good memory of events which she recited calmly.
Stacey knew her questions had already been asked at the time of the attack, but maybe the retelling of the event had brought up some forgotten detail.
‘Did he say anything to you at all?’
Lesley shook her head. ‘Not one word.’
‘Was there any obvious smell, other than the flowers?’
Lesley sighed heavily, as though she wished she had more to offer. ‘None.’
‘And you saw nothing at all?’
Again, she shook her head. ‘Once he was gone, I didn’t move for ages in case he came back to kill me. I thought I was going to die, so I was too frightened to look.’
‘Do you have any idea what he used to assault you?’
‘I’m sorry but I don’t. It was hard and smooth, but not cold like glass.’
Stacey knew nothing had been found at the scene.
‘It said in the report that there was minimal damage and bruising to the vagina.’ A fact that had thrown doubt over her story at the beginning of the investigation.
‘He wasn’t rough.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Stacey said, taken aback. The attack had sounded horrific.
‘He wasn’t brutal. Don’t get me wrong, I was humiliated, angry, hurt, shamed and undeniably changed for the rest of my life because of what that bastard did to me. I’ll likely never trust a man again, but you haven’t asked me if there was anything I sensed.’
‘Was there?’
She nodded.
‘I got the impression that he wasn’t in control, that he didn’t really want to do what he was doing.’
Stacey sat back, careful to keep the surprise from her face. But, finally, she understood why Lesley Skipton could never have been put on the stand.
Twelve
I did it. I killed her, and there was a satisfaction to the twist of the neck that was morbidly gratifying for me. A slight thing, she didn’t put up much of a fight, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she had. She was going to die regardless.
There were so many stages of the killing process to enjoy. The planning, the how and the where and eventually, the who. There is a power that comes with deciding whose life I’m going to take. I relish that anticipation, enjoy the dominance I have. I imagine their life and the grief it will cause. I want to inflict the maximum amount of pain on the victim and their family.
The act itself is almost the best part. I had visualised the manner of death way before I touched her. In truth, there was a little disappointment. It was much harder to twist the neck than I’d thought. Even with one hand on the chin and one hand on the top of the head, there was no definite crack of the neck as the spinal cord snapped, making a sound like it does in the films. I would have liked to hear a sound. Instead, she just fell limply against me, her eyes staring up in an anticlimactic kind of way.
I must try not to think about such things; my enjoyment pales against the practicality and prefers to remember it how I saw it in my mind’s eye. And anyway, it was quick, it was clean, and I will not get caught. That’s what matters the most.