Chapter 2
During the Friday night into Saturday morning shift the Bricewell police station in Bristol city centre was always more active than at any other time of the week, except for those Saturday afternoons during the football season when Bristol City were playing Cardiff and the whole place became a war zone. Normally by this time, it was just 2am, most of what was going to happen out on the streets had happened, or was still happening and the results were being processed here. Today was no exception and the front lobby had an atmosphere of smoke, vomit and stale alcohol. Strangers noticed it although the staff had lived with it so long it barely registered with them.
The girl walked in through the double front doors and went to stand by the counter. The sergeant on desk duty, a grey haired man in his fifties, had seen it all before. He was trying to calm a another group of six teenage girls who's boyfriend and husbands had just been taken down to the holding cells after being arrested for breaking a shop window during a drunken fight in Baldwin Street. It was obvious that the girls were also all the worse for drink and this was confirmed when one of them suddenly turned and was sick all down the wall before falling from the bench she was sitting on and passing out on the floor. The sergeant's patience broke.
“That does it. Jacobs.”
His last word shouted towards the door behind him from which a young constable appeared as if on elastic.
“Yes, Sarge?”
“Get this lot out of here and if they won't leave quietly arrest them as well, for causing an obstruction in a police station.”
The constable looked doubtfully at the six girls, but the sergeant seemed really pissed off so he gave it a try. He did a good imitation of a novice farmer trying to herd a flock of chickens by waving his arms at them.
“Come on ladies. You heard the sergeant. You can come back and collect the lads in the morning when they will be up for bail.”
The girls reluctantly started to leave, but the fact that one of their number now needed to be carried hampered them quite a bit, meaning that they had no arms left free to attack the law. The constable gently shovelled them through the door, wincing at the language coming from the young mouths before returning to stare in dismay at the mess down the wall and on the floor. Then he sighed deeply and went to get the mop and bucket. The sergeant turned back to the girl. He liked what he saw and smiled for the first time in an hour.
“Yes, Miss. What can we do for you?”
The girl did not smile back, but picked her way carefully towards the counter taking great care to avoid the mess on the floor. She looked him in the eye and his smile faltered.
“I want to report a rape.”
The sergeant blinked and did a double take.
“Pardon? Did you say rape, Miss?”
He took off his glasses and polished them on a large blue handkerchief.
“Who has been raped then?”
The girl looked at him with scorn.
“I have, you berk. You don't see anyone else with me, do you?”
She waved a hand around the reception area. The sergeant put his spectacles back on and studied her. Not a hair out of place as far as he could see and she didn't look to be in any particular distress. He gave her his patient smile that he reserved for drunks who reported seeing aliens.
“I see. And when was this, if I may ask?”
The girl was getting angry. She turned away as if counting to ten beneath her breath and then turned back to him.
“I think you bloody well should ask, don't you? Its what you're paid to do when someone reports a crime isn't it?”
The sergeant knew trouble when he saw it and decided his best hope lay in strict formality. He pulled the incident book towards him and took a biro from his shirt pocket.
“If we could just have a few details then, Miss.”
She snorted.
“I want to talk to a woman. I am not standing here in the middle of the bloody reception area talking to you about it so you can get your kicks. Sodding pervert.”
She turned away and sitting down on one of the chairs against the sidewall studiously ignored him. For a few seconds the sergeant thought about ignoring her in return, but then he sighed and picked up the phone. He turned away and spoke quietly into it.
“Jackie? Good, I have a young lady down here who claims she was raped, but will only talk to a WPC about it. No, that is all I have got. No other details. Right, two minutes. Thanks Jackie.” He turned to face the girl. “Detective Ward will be down to see you directly. That's Woman Detective Jackie Ward”
The girl just curled her lip at him and he went back to his paperwork. Two minutes later the door behind the sergeant opened and a female plain-clothes officer in her late twenties came through it. The sergeant nodded his head in the girl’s direction and she lifted the flap in the counter and came through into the reception area. Five feet eight inches tall and with shoulder length blonde hair, she was dressed in denims and a loose sweater and did not look like a typical WPC. She approached the girl.
“Hello love, I'm WDC Jackie Ward. The sergeant tells me you have had a nasty experience. Would you like to come up stairs and tell me about it.”
The girl looked at her for several seconds taking in her appearance before she nodded and rose. She followed the WPC and the two of them went back through the counter flap and disappeared through the door at the rear. The sergeant watched them go and then went back to his paperwork, glad of the lull in the evening’s proceedings. He was just thinking rosy thoughts about a nice big mug of tea when the double doors into the station reception area crashed open. The man who stood there swaying gently was dressed in full highland regalia except for one thing. His kilt was missing and the only thing left covering his dignity was a large, furry sporran. He swayed about blinking short-sightedly in the time-honoured manner of drunks the world over until his eyes found and focused on the sergeant. When he spoke it was with a strong Birmingham accent.
“I want to report a bloody mugging.”
The sergeant gave a small sigh and glanced up at the clock. It was only half past one. He still had nearly five hours to go.
Jackie Ward was twenty-nine and had been in the police service for eight years. She had left school at sixteen and had tried various jobs in different offices, her seven GCE “0” levels giving her more than the average choice, before she had realised that it was not the life for her. Nine to five in an office for the rest of her life would be living death. This was an important decision for her as marriage did not figure very strongly on her list of important things to do in her life, having watched both her parents divorce, remarry and divorce again. Added to this she had realised that most young men of her age were only interested in what she concealed under her underwear and that did not seem like a good basis for a lasting relationship. Not that she was against sex. She just did not prescribe to the theory that you should spend the rest of your life with whoever gets first bite at your cherry or because they were a good lay.
After some time of looking around she had decided that she might be more suited to the army. A natural blonde of taller than average height she looked good in a uniform with her narrow waist, big hips and better than average breasts. She also liked the mixture of discipline and responsibility that the army appeared to be offering, so at the age of eighteen she signed on for three years. It took her three months to realise that she had made a mistake. Firstly she had not realised how many butch women there were in the world until her first night in a barracks. It was not that these girls were all lesbians, far from it, but they talked and acted more like the boys from the local rugby club than most of the girls she knew and she could not understand this need many of them had to appear tough and hard and make every third word a curse. She spent three quite miserable years during which she made the best of it and kept her head down as much as possible and then escaped as soon as her time was up and she could go. All in all it hadn't been too bad and she had learned a lot, but it was not where she intended to
spend the rest of her life. She then spent three months in a tiny bed-sit working out what she would do next, living on a diet of tea and pasta to make her savings last. During this time she had no one to turn to and nowhere to go for advice, her father having moved to Australia while she was in the army and her mother being tied up with the arrangements for her third marriage. What decided her on the police force as a career was getting involved in an armed robbery.
She was in the local building society drawing out the last of her savings when two youths crashed through the door waving handguns. Lying on the floor with her face on the dirty carpet of the building society office while the two youths with sawn off shotguns took the money that had been going to buy her food for the weekend, she felt an raging anger at those who prey on the innocent and helpless and vowed that she would do something about it. Later on at the police station she had asked the lady detective who had taken her statement how one went about joining the police and what they were looking for in recruits. The girls answers didn't put her off the idea and a week later, after she'd had the pleasure of picking out in an identity parade both of the youths who had pointed guns at her, she asked the police sergeant in charge how did she apply to join. The sergeant, delighted with her cool performance at the identity parade and her ignoring of the shouted threats against her that the identified youths had made, gave her all the assistance he could. She was accepted and after her basic training assigned to Bristol. After spending four years in uniform she had finally made the transfer to CID and was now in her element.
Jackie heard the girl's story through in silence while she sat and watched her, sitting at the table in the interview room, telling her about how she had come to be in the group’s bus. She did this truthfully and with defiance in her eyes and Jackie felt pity for her. Alison Jensen, that was the girl’s name, was an army brat and it showed. It showed in her shout for attention to every man that crossed her path and to Jackie it showed in her need to collect sexual scalps from rock bands. Her own army experience had shown her what happened when an army father was always abroad and the army wife started looking for someone else to take his place. The kids suffered. From what she had said about him this girl's father seemed like a normal enough bloke, but the resentment his daughter felt at his continual absence had come out loud and clear once Jackie had managed to break through the hard shell of worldly bitterness the girl affected. For her mother however, she showed nothing, but contempt using descriptions of her that in her own younger days would have shocked Jackie. Slag and the barracks bike having been two of the more repeatable ones. The real problem though was Alison Jenson's age and Jackie Ward sighed inwardly at the can of worms that this case would open. She tried to ring the girl's mother once more, but as before the phone just rang and rang. That was it then. It looked as if she would have to push this one higher up. She sighed and reluctantly dialled the Social Services emergency number.