CHAPTER 24
“Chris, got a sort of a favour to ask”

He laughed, and I could hear Adam’s description of him in the way he did it. Absolutely and completely, which left me wondering how well I ticked the ‘butch dyke’ checklist.

“What have you decided to drop me into this time, Inspector Powell? Yes, I heard! I have my sources”

“Well, what we have---“

“Ma’am!”

I looked up to the door of my little office, where a rather young PCSO was looking rather pale.

“Hang on a sec, Chris. Yes?”

“Another one, ma’am. Didn’t want to say anything at the hospital, but, well, one of the nurses has had a bit of experience, and she, well…”

“Out with it, son!”

He took a long and rattly breath.

“Raped, ma’am. By three men”

I must have stared a bit too intently, because he started to justify himself. “I know some of the women’s groups say it isn’t, but it bloody well is!”

“Yes, son. I fully agree. Get the reception suite ready, please”

“Er, I already have, ma’am. Doctors are doing the DNA thing”

“Nicely done. I’ll finish here and get round to CID soon as, aye? This one’s mine”

I turned back to the phone. “Still there?”

“Oh yes. Can I hazard a little guess as to your plans to use me as a tethered goat? And please, no sheep jokes”

“Aye, Chris, that was what I was going to ask. We need to get the culprits out of the shadows. It’s easier to watch one man on the streets than every bloody public toilet or back alley at once. Thing is, it’s gone up a notch or ten now, aye?”

He sighed. “All the more reason for someone to put a stop to it now”

“You not worried a bit, butt?”

“Lainey, I may be a prancing nancy-boy queer poof, but I still have balls. My men prefer me that way, as it happens. Having balls, that is. You see---“

“Enough! Can you come over?”

“I will speak to those above and see what they say. Can you give me an appropriately worded e-mail just to cover it?”

“Will do. I’m off now to see what state this poor sod’s in”

“Later, then, I hope”

I ended the call and went looking for my team. It turned out the victim was staying in hospital for at least a second night, as his injuries were far from minor. Once in the meeting room, I looked round at what I had to work with.

“Right, boys and girls, this has moved onward and bloody downward. We have a gang rape this time, not just a beating. Diane, you take one of the boys up the hospital and see what you can get from him. Softly softly, aye? I want location soon as you can, and then…you, you, you off to pull camera footage. That leaves…aye, Alun and Blake, you tee up SOCO for when we know where we’re going. Yes, Blake?”

“Ma’am, doesn’t this narrow the field down a lot, now we know we’re looking for homos?”

Diane turned back on her way out of the door.

“You can be so fucking thick at times, boy! What makes you think they’re gay?”

“Well, bum sex, aye?”

Scorn dripped from her voice, and I knew I had picked the right one to speak to the victim first. “It’s not sex, you pillock, it’s RAPE. It’s about power, about humiliation, about destroying someone. They weren’t fucking him, they were fucking him up, right?”

She turned to me, a small tic working at the side of her mouth. “Ma’am, don’t ask me how I know this, but I’m willing to lay a pound to a penny that they pissed on him after, like. We’ll give you the gen as soon as we have it”

Half an hour later we had the address and Alun and Blake were ready with paper suits and heavy bags. I had to tell myself to sit down and let my team work; I was the manager, the coordinator, not someone detailed to go through rubbish bins or fish around the back of toilet bowls. I settled down with a cuppa and waited for the news to start filtering back and the picture to emerge.

Diane was back three hours later as the first discs were already being checked, and she gave us a time frame as well as a story.

“Name’s Vernon Pugh, ma’am. Twenty-two, from Cowbridge. Studying Art and Design at the Uni. Went out for the night, down the Smuggler’s, that pink pub on Charles Street, aye? Has a bit of a dance and a laugh, more than a few beers, comes out of the pub and does the usual—walks twenty yards and wants a piss”

She was trembling. “Di, hang on, get a cuppa, aye?”

“Ta, ma’am. No sugar”

I did the honours, and she continued. “You know the score. Rather than turn round and go back into the pub, they wander on, looking for a dark spot to let the waters flow. He picked the multi-storey. Suppose it explains why it always smells of pee. Anyway, he’s standing there in a dark corner on the third level, earphones in, music on, brain off, and the first one punches him in the left kidney. There’s the usual sequence then: he goes down, they use him as a football, he’s trying to protect his face”

She took a mouthful. “There’s a storage room by the lift. That’s where SOCO needs to go. They had the door open somehow, and they dragged him in there”

“They speak at all?”

“Oh indeed. Dirty little poof, fucking arsebandit, all the usual. Local boys, he says, at least not English or from down west. Valleys, he says. Anyway, one of them hauls his chinos down, and they take the piss out of his cock for being all shrivelled up and hiding, like, and then they haul him upright, punch him in the guts and he hears the first one unzip. One after the other. They all came, apparently”

Another long examination of her cup. “Then they took turns to piss on him”

She stayed silent for a while, then looked at me quizzically. “Ma’am, this is confidential, aye? Just us? No need to know crap, aye? How I know…. I was sixteen. I didn’t report it, just went home and washed and washed and washed. That’s what he did, but he was still bleeding from, well, down there, so he went to casualty and one or two of the nurses weren’t stupid, and the rest you know”

Another sip. “He was a local councillor, ma’am. I never did say anything. Big man, important man, connections, aye? And me a schoolgirl from Barry. Who would you believe, ma’am?”

What was it with fucking men? Hold it together, Elaine, and think of Dad, Tony, Steve rather than Joe Evans and some fucking councillor---

“Diane, just a guess of my own. Your man by any chance called Evans?”

Her face gave me the answer. “Di, we’ll talk some time, really talk. Now, from what you said, he’s probably douched or whatever to get their leavings out. DNA?”

“They are doing their best, but he really did scrub half his skin away trying to get their mark off him. He’s not in a good way, ma’am”

I thought back to my own mentor. “Elaine in here, Diane. Look, you have made contact with this kid. He will trust you, I hope, and please don’t take this wrong, but you will have far more empathy with him than most of the dinosaurs here. Will he give a statement?”

“Don’t know… Elaine. I will do my best on that one”

A knock at the door, and Chris was there. “Am I interrupting, Lainey?”

“No, butt. Diane here has just been filling me in on the events night before last. We’ve got three absolute bastards out there”

“At least three, you mean. Victim on my bus?”

I looked over at Di for the answer and she nodded. “Very much the gay young thing, the skinny type, aye?”

Chris nodded. “Twink, you mean. All the body strength of a wet dishrag. Where do you want me to start, girl?”

“Not just yet, Chris. This one has sort of dropped on us, so we will have a shake of the tree and see if anything drops out first. Boys are filtering the footage as we speak. Gang rape and pissed on, Chris”

He gave it a few seconds thought. “Where is he now, Lainey?”

“Back at Queen Street, oddly. Went all the way home first, then came back in a taxi after seeing his GP”

“Can I see him?”

“What exactly for, Chris?”

“Firstly, if I am going looking for these pigs, I want a decent briefing, and he’s the only one we can use right now. Secondly… secondly, but more importantly, if it were me in that state, I’d want someone to hold my hand”