So who are these men?
They’re your friends. They’re your father, your brother, your best friend, your neighbour, your boss. They’re the people you see every day; the people you travel to and from work with.
You’re shocked. You think you know them better than that.
You’re wrong.
23
‘Is this your vehicle?’ Kelly pushed a photograph of a black Lexus across the table. Gordon Tillman nodded. ‘For the benefit of the tape, the suspect is nodding his head.’ Kelly looked at Tillman, less confident now his flashy suit had been exchanged for a grey custody-issue tracksuit, but still arrogant enough to try and out-stare his interviewers. His date of birth put him at forty-seven, but he looked ten years older; his skin mottled by years of excess. Drugs? Or drink? Drink and women. Late nights spent flashing the cash to attract girls who wouldn’t otherwise give him a second glance. Kelly tried to keep the look of disgust off her face.
‘Were you driving it at approximately quarter to nine yesterday morning?’
‘You know I was.’ Tillman was relaxed, his arms folded across his chest as he answered Kelly’s questions. He hadn’t asked for a solicitor, and Kelly hadn’t yet worked out how the interview was going to go. Full admission? It was looking that way, and yet … there was something in Tillman’s eyes that suggested it wasn’t going to be quite that easy. She had a sudden memory of another interview room – a different suspect; the same crime – and she clenched her fists tightly beneath the table. It had been a one-off. He’d pressed her buttons but she was younger then, less experienced. It wouldn’t happen again.
But sweat trickled down her spine, nevertheless, and she had to fight to keep focus. It had never come back to her; the words whispered in her ear. The words that had tipped her over the edge and caused the red mist to descend so completely that she lost control.
‘Could you tell me, in your own words, what happened between half past eight and ten o’clock yesterday?’
‘I was returning from a conference I’d been to the night before. There was a dinner afterwards and I stayed the night in Maidstone so I was about to head back to Oxfordshire. I was going to work from home for the rest of the day.’
‘Where do you work?’
Tillman looked at her, letting his eyes flick briefly, but very deliberately, down to her chest before he answered. Kelly felt, rather than saw, Nick lean forward in his chair. She willed him not to speak. She didn’t want to give Tillman the satisfaction of knowing she’d even noticed where his gaze fell.
‘In the City. I’m a wealth manager for NCJ Investors.’
Kelly hadn’t been surprised when the DI had told her he’d be sitting in on the interview. She had begged him to let her interview Tillman, reminding him of how hard she’d worked on the case, and how badly she wanted to be there at the finish. He had taken for ever to reply.
‘Okay. But I’ll be there too.’
Kelly had nodded.
‘You’re too inexperienced to lead this alone, and there’ll be a few noses out of joint in the office as it is.’
The other reason lay unspoken between them. He didn’t trust Kelly not to lose it. How could she blame him? She didn’t trust herself.
She had been suspended instantly, the threat of criminal proceedings running alongside the internal disciplinary.
‘What the hell were you thinking?’ Diggers had said, when Kelly had been hauled out of custody, her shirt ripped and a bruise forming on the side of her face where the suspect had fought back. She was shaking violently, the adrenaline leaving her body as quickly as it had arrived.
‘I didn’t think at all.’ That wasn’t true. She’d been thinking about Lexi. It was inevitable, she’d known that as soon as the case came in. A girl, raped by a stranger on her way home from school. ‘I’ll take it,’ she’d told her DS instantly. She’d treated the victim with the compassion she had wished her sister had experienced, feeling like she was making a difference.
A few days later they brought in the offender; a DNA hit on a known sex offender. He declined a brief; sat smirking in the interview room in a paper suit. No comment. No comment. No comment. Then he yawned, as if the whole situation were boring him, and Kelly had felt the rage building inside her like a kettle about to boil.
‘So you were driving home …’ Nick prompted, when Kelly didn’t say anything. She forced herself to focus on Tillman.
‘I was coming past the station and I realised I was probably still over the limit from the night before.’ The corner of Tillman’s mouth curled into a smile, and Kelly realised he knew full well the admission could never result in legal proceedings. She would have bet her pension on Gordon Tillman being a regular drink driver: he was just the sort of arrogant wanker who would claim to drive better after a few pints. ‘I thought I’d better stop for a coffee, so I pulled over and asked a woman if there was somewhere nearby.’
‘Can you describe this woman?’
‘Mid thirties, blonde hair. Tidy figure.’ Tillman smiled again. ‘She recommended a café relatively close, and I asked if she wanted to come with me.’
‘You asked a complete stranger out for coffee?’ Kelly said, not bothering to disguise her disbelief.
‘You know what they say,’ Tillman said, the smirk still playing across his face, ‘a stranger’s simply a friend you haven’t met yet. She was giving me the eye as soon as I pulled up.’
‘Do you make a habit of asking women you haven’t met out for coffee?’ Kelly persisted.
Tillman took his time; looking Kelly up and down again, and shaking his head very slightly before answering. ‘Don’t worry, love, I only ask the pretty ones,’ he said.
‘If you could continue,’ Nick interrupted, ‘with your version of events.’ Tillman registered the emphasis, but carried on.
‘She got in, and we headed towards the café, but then she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’ The grin on Tillman’s face made bile rise in Kelly’s throat. ‘She said she’d never done anything like this in her life, but she’d always had this fantasy about having sex with a stranger, and what did I think? Well,’ he laughed, ‘what would you think? She said she wasn’t going to tell me her name, and she didn’t want to know mine, and then she directed me to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Maidstone.’
‘And what happened there?’
‘You want all the details?’ Tillman leaned forward, looking at Kelly challengingly. ‘There’s a name for your sort, you know.’
Kelly didn’t miss a beat. ‘And there’s a name for your sort.’ There was a knot of rage in her stomach, and she concentrated on keeping it there.
There was a pause. Tillman smirked. ‘She gave me a blow-job, then I fucked her. I offered her a lift back but she said she wanted me to leave her there. Part of the fantasy, I guess.’ He held Kelly’s gaze, as if he could sense there was a battle raging inside her; that this entire situation was unlocking something she’d so successfully suppressed. ‘She liked it rough, but then a lot of women do, don’t they?’ He smirked again. ‘Judging by the noise this one made, she loved it.’
She loved it.
The suspect hadn’t taken his eyes off Kelly for the entire interview. She’d been with a male colleague, and the offender hadn’t said anything provocative; hadn’t made any move to intimidate Kelly. It was when the tapes were off, and Kelly was leading him back to his cell alone, that he leaned in towards her. She felt the warmth of his breath on her neck, and smelt the stale tang of body odour and cigarettes.
‘She loved it,’ he whispered.
It had been like an out of body experience, Kelly had thought afterwards. As though it were someone else who had spun round with her fist raised; hitting him squarely on the nose, clawing at his face. Someone else losing control. Kelly’s colleague had dragged her off, but it was too late.
Kelly wondered when Lexi had written that letter to Durham Constabulary; whether even by that point Lexi cared less about the outcome than Kelly did; whether Kell
y had almost lost her job for no reason.
‘That’s it, is it?’ Kelly said, pushing the image away. ‘That’s your story?’
‘That’s what happened.’ Tillman folded his arms again and leaned against his chair, making the plastic creak. ‘But let me guess: she’s had an attack of the guilts, or her boyfriend’s found out, and now she’s crying rape. Right?’
Kelly had learned a lot over the last few years. There were better ways to deal with criminals than by getting angry. She leaned back, mirroring Tillman; the palms of both hands raised as though she were accepting defeat. Waiting for the smug smile she knew was coming.
And then, ‘Tell me about find the one dot com.’
The change was immediate.
Panic flashed in Tillman’s eyes and his whole body tensed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘How long have you been a member?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Now it was Kelly’s turn to smile. ‘Oh really? So when we search your house – which we’ll be doing while you’re in custody – and we look at your computer, we won’t find any record of your visits to the website?’
A sweat broke out on Tillman’s forehead.
‘We won’t find details of the victim’s commute? Paid for? Downloaded?’
Tillman wiped his palm across his face, then rubbed the fabric of his tracksuit bottoms, leaving a dark patch of sweat on his right thigh.
‘What membership level did you go for? Platinum, right? A man like you wouldn’t settle for anything but the best.’
‘Stop the interview,’ Tillman said. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want a solicitor.’
It didn’t surprise Kelly that Gordon Tillman wanted his own solicitor summoned, rather than the duty brief, and it was no skin off Kelly’s nose that he had to wait three hours for the privilege. In the meantime police in Oxfordshire seized Tillman’s laptop, along with the underpants he’d been wearing at the time of the alleged assault, which were lying half in, half out of the laundry basket in his bathroom. Met officers visited Tillman’s office to seize his work computer and the contents of his desk drawers, and Kelly took comfort from the fact that, whether a court found Tillman guilty or not, his career was over.
‘How fast can you process the laptop?’ Nick asked Andrew. He and Kelly were back at MIT, while Tillman consulted with his solicitor.
‘Three to five days on urgent. Twenty-four hours if you can find the budget.’
‘I’ll find it. I want his search history for the last six months, with every visit to the website documented. I want to know which profiles he’s viewed, what he’s downloaded, and if he’s Google Earthed their locations. And trawl the hard drive for porn – he’s bound to have some, and if any of it is within an inch of being illegal, we’ll have him for it. Arrogant arsehole.’
‘You didn’t take to Tillman, then?’ Kelly said, after Andrew had disappeared off to his cubbyhole. ‘But he was so charming.’ She grimaced. ‘How much do you think he knows?’
‘Hard to tell. Enough to clam up when he realised we knew about the website, certainly, but whether he knows who’s behind it, I’m not sure. If his brief’s got any sense he’ll advise him to go no comment, so it’ll come down to forensics. Have we had the report from the medical examiner?’
‘I spoke to Kent’s sexual offences team before we went into interview, and they’ve faxed through the full report. There’s clear evidence of sexual intercourse, but of course that’s not in dispute.’
She handed the fax to Nick, who scanned its contents.
‘No defensive injuries, and no obvious signs of force?’
‘That doesn’t mean anything.’
Lexi hadn’t been injured. She’d frozen, she told Kelly; it was what she blamed herself for more than anything else. Not fighting.
‘No, but it makes it a damn sight harder for us to prove a lack of consent. It’s critical we prove a link between Gordon Tillman and the victim’s profile on the website. If we can do that, his story about randomly meeting her on the street comes instantly undone.’
‘And if we can’t?’ Kelly said.
‘We will. Where’s Lucinda?’
‘In a tasking meeting.’
‘I want her to identify the outstanding victims on the website. We don’t have their names but we have their photos and we know exactly where they’ll be between home and work. I want them identified, brought in, and warned.’
‘Consider it done.’
Nick paused. ‘That was a tough interview. You did a good job. I’m impressed.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Let’s get him back in. I can’t imagine it will take long.’
* * *
The DI’s prediction was correct. On the advice of his solicitor, a thin, anxious-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses, Gordon Tillman answered no comment to every question asked of him.
‘I trust you’ll be bailing my client,’ the solicitor said, when Tillman had been taken down to his cell.
‘That’s not what we had in mind, I’m afraid,’ Kelly said. ‘This is a serious investigation and we have extensive forensic enquiries to carry out. Your client will need to make himself comfortable for quite a while.’ Nick’s positive feedback had given her confidence, and she had felt more like her old self during the second half of the interview. The DC she used to be, before she messed up.
They could hold Tillman for up to twenty-four hours, but Nick had been in touch with the duty superintendent for an extension. Given the time frame from Andrew, even the additional twelve hours the superintendent could authorise was unlikely to be enough; they would need a magistrate’s authority to keep Tillman behind bars for any longer.
Kelly flicked through the case papers while she waited to update the custody sergeant. The victim statement made grim reading. The black Lexus had pulled up alongside her; the man inside asking for directions, pushing open the passenger door because ‘the window doesn’t open’.
‘I thought it was odd,’ her statement read, ‘given how new the car looked, but it didn’t occur to me to be suspicious.’ Kathryn had leaned into the car to give directions – the driver said he was looking for the M20 – and described a man who seemed friendly and unthreatening.
‘He apologised for taking up my time,’ she said, ‘and thanked me for being so helpful.’
Kathryn had been going over the directions a second time (‘he said his memory was terrible’) when Gordon Tillman’s true intention had become clear.
‘He suddenly reached out and grabbed me. He took a huge handful of the grey wrap I was wearing, gripping it somewhere behind my right shoulder, and hauled me into the car. It happened so fast I don’t think I even managed to scream. He drove off, my feet still out of the car, and my face pushed into his lap. I could feel the steering wheel on the back of my head, and he used his free hand to push my head against his crotch.’
At some point the car had stopped for long enough for Tillman to reach across the victim and slam the passenger door shut, but he kept her head pressed into his groin; the car in a low gear he didn’t once change.
‘I tried to turn my head but he wouldn’t let me,’ she had told the Kent detective taking her statement. ‘My face was pressed against his penis and I felt it getting harder and harder. That’s when I knew he was going to rape me.’
A note from the attending officer told Kelly the victim had two children, the youngest just eighteen months old. She worked full time as a recruitment consultant and had been married for eleven years.
I fully support police proceedings and am willing to attend court, if required.
Of course she did. Why wouldn’t you?
Why didn’t Lexi?
‘I need some fresh air,’ she told Nick, who barely looked up from his desk. Kelly left MIT running down the stairs and making her way to the gated area at the rear of the station. She realised her fists were clenched into tight balls, and she made herself unfurl her fingers an
d take a deep breath.
Lexi picked up the phone just as Kelly thought it was going to go to voicemail.
‘Why did you tell Durham police you wouldn’t go to court?’
Kelly heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘Hold on.’
There was a muffled conversation; voices Kelly recognised as Lexi’s husband and one of the children. Fergus, she thought. A door closed. When Lexi spoke again she was quiet but firm.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Why did you tell them you wouldn’t support a prosecution, Lexi?’
‘Because I wouldn’t.’
‘I don’t understand. How could you walk away from the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you?’
‘It isn’t the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me, that’s how! My husband is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. Fergus and Alfie are the biggest things. You, Mum, Dad … all more important than what happened in Durham a lifetime ago.’
‘What about other people? How would you feel if he raped someone else, because he hadn’t been found guilty of attacking you?’
Lexi sighed. ‘I do feel guilty about that, I really do. But it’s self-preservation, Kelly. I would have cracked up, otherwise, and then where would I have been? What use would I have been to the boys?’
‘I don’t understand why you’ve made it so black and white. It might be years before he’s caught – if ever – you might feel completely differently then.’
‘But don’t you see, that’s exactly what made it so hard?’ Kelly heard the break in her sister’s voice, and felt a lump in her own throat. ‘I never knew when it might happen. I didn’t know if I’d suddenly get a call to say they had someone in custody, or that someone had come forward with information. What if it was the day before a job interview? What if it was one of the kids’ birthdays? I’m happy, Kelly. I’ve got a good life, with a family I love, and what happened in Durham was a million years ago. I don’t want it all dragged up again.’
Kelly said nothing.
‘You must be able to understand that. You must see why I did it?’