CHAPTER 13
I was lost in my own thoughts for the first part of the journey back, only returning to the world about me when Rhys nudged me at some lights.

“You OK, Di? Bit quiet there”

“Ah, mate, just thinking. That lad’s in a bad way”

I could read his mind as he stared at me while the red light sat before us. She’s talking rubbish, it’s not the lad, must be more, leave it for now.

I tried to fill his silence.

“Gay boy, innit? But that’s not it; it’s what the attackers see. That’s the worry, that it’s not just the gay boys at risk”

His voice was flat as we pulled away through the green.

“And that’s worse? That it’s not just the queers who might get a kicking?”

Foot firmly in mouth, PC Owens.

“No, mate, that’s not what I meant. Just, bit harder for us to find the villains if we have to spread the net wider. Sore point with you, then?”

“It is, Di. Just remember that not all of us are twinks, skinny things like that boy”

I could only stare, mouth open, and he risked a little flick of his eyes towards me, before giving his attention back to the road.

“Not for the team, yeah? Not for them to know”

“Yeah, but, it’ll come out some day, surely?”

“Aye, but on my terms, if I can help it. Gob shut, please, Di”

“OK, mate. Your business”

“Thanks. Now, quick cake stop soon as we get back?”

“We got time?”

“What? Oh. No, I mean a stock-up. Got a feeling this day will be a long one. Get some bread and fillings for sandwiches, snack stuff, something to keep us going. Couple of big bottles of pop, that as well”

I was still a little away from things when we did get back, and mentally counting what cash I had, but Inspector Powell was straight into it. I got the impression she wasn’t one to mess about, and as she took our report in her little broom cupboard of an office I made a little prayer to whatever that I wouldn’t stuff up too badly and get on her wrong side.

“What we got, Diane?”

I took a breath. Get it out, girl.

“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”

I could feel the reaction, and realised my prayer hadn’t worked as the shakes set in.

“Di, hang on, get a cuppa, aye?”

I took a risk.

“Ta, ma’am. No sugar”

To my astonishment, she simply rose, went to the bubbling urn, and brought back two mugs. Deep breath.

“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”

Tea. Wash away the bad taste if not the older memories.

“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”

You can do this, girl. Do your job.

“Then they took turns to piss on him”

She looked at me sharply then, checking round to see who might be in earshot, then back at me, eyebrows raised. Sod it. Rhys had coughed to me, I could do no less.

“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 his GP, who sent him to casualty and one or two of the nurses weren’t stupid, and the rest you know”

Drink your tea, cover your mouth.

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

Her face clouded, that anger I had seen before stirring in her eyes.

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

How the hell did she guess that? More to the point, it seemed more like knowledge than guesswork. She set her tea down, and turned back to her desk.

“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”

She smiled, and there was real warmth in there.

“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”

I realised as I said the words that I meant them. What was there between her and Ashley Evans? There was something in the back of my mind, but I was still hearing that man’s snarl. Later, Di.

She told off some of the team to sort the CCTV footage, and then someone gave a rapid knock at the door, which Rhys answered, opening the door to a skinny man I eventually recognised as our leader’s running mate on the fluffiness courses. What was his name? Chris, that was it.

“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”

Where did she get ‘three’ from? Vernon had been very clear on the number.

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

I caught her nod, and turned to the very, very camp man, knowing exactly what he was asking, as he made it so bloody obvious.

“Very much the gay young thing, the skinny type, yeah?”

He gave a sharp nod.

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

That was to Inspector Powell—Elaine. Elaine in here. Start what?

“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”

That was what decided me on liking him. Anyone who could cut to the really important stuff like that was somebody I might be happy to work with, but what exactly was his role? He wasn’t one of us, after all. I had a sudden suspicion, and put it away with my half-memory of Elaine for a better look later. Rhys went to run him out to the hospital, and Elaine turned back to me, with a wry smile.

“Diane… this may sound like the most sexist request imaginable, but I want some cakes and some coffee sorted out”

Rhys had been spot on. I chuckled to myself.

“And you want me to do the runs?”

“No, I want you to tee up a couple of PCSOs. What I am after is a couple of packs of filter coffee, more milk, finger food. Once the footage starts coming in we are going to have a shitload of work to do, and I want people awake. This is your early warning: I am just about to go and ask for volunteers for working for the Queen. I’ll try and swing authorisation later, but this is live right now. Do you need cash up front? I’ve got forty quid here”

I thought about my worries for my own purse, and laughed out loud.

“Definitely a step up from the last boss!”

“Well, hang on a tad, I want to brief the crew first”

We went back into our conference room, now an ‘incident room’, and she waved everyone into a huddle, Blake and Alun back and a stack of discs on one of the tables.

“Boys, girls, we now have a real lead on this one, but it has come a very shitty way”

Alun snorted. Twat. Our boss glared in his general direction, then got back into her stride.

“We have a young rape victim, with at least three attackers. They began with a severe beating, then multiple rape, and finally urinated all over the victim. Victim is twenty-two, and a local boy. Still awaiting his consent before we tell his next of kin. That’s right: best part of three days since he was raped, and he is still so ashamed that he won’t even go to his own mother for comfort.

“That is why Diane said what she did: he wasn’t just fucked, he was fucked up. Now, we don’t yet know how much we are going to be able to get from the victim, how much he remembers, whether he can ID anyone, but we have a lot of camera footage coming in. The pub has its own system, and I will be particularly interested in what comes off that. Particularly, people hanging around outside”

Blake gave me an appraising glance, then stuck his hand up.

“Why they got outside cameras, ma’am?”

“I am told they got twitchy after that Nazi bombed the Admiral Duncan in Soho, lad. Anyway, they set it up to look both ways down the street, not just at the doorway”

It was always bloody Alun, and true to form he muttered “Cost a bomb, that”. Elaine coughed out a bitter little bark of laughter-that-wasn’t, and held up her hands again.
“I am sending out for coffee, cakes, whatever we need to stay sharp here, aye? You know the score: this is being done for the Queen just now. I will try and swing authority for overtime payments, but this is something we need to get done right now. The clock is ticking, and one thing I do NOT want is another rape, or worse, before we tuck this one away. Anyone not happy to stay on?”

Once again it was Alun, the laughter boiled off him and a far more serious expression on his face. After a quick whisper to me of “Better make sure Lynne’s sorted” he had his hand up again.

“Missus will be late in, so I have to sort the kids, ma’am. If I can have half hour, just to get them round their Nan’s, aye”

“Nice one, lad. Anyone else?”

I looked round the team, as it was rapidly becoming, and saw a few head shakes followed by a general one to the boss. She looked down at her feet, just for an instant, then back out at us all, the hint of a smile playing on her lips.

“Thank you all. Diane, do the honours, aye? Anyone got a summary of what we have available?”

I set off for the PCSO’s little room to start the cake and coffee run going, and when I returned there was near silence in our own work space. I looked round, saw the pile of discs, and dug out my laptop. It was just like being back on that bloody bilking case, but with the addition that I now realised it was a job I could not only do, but one I might actually be reasonably good at.

It still took bloody ages, though. The PCSO’s were as good as gold, and I noticed that cups appeared at elbows every so often, no need to ask, and when I looked up I realised that most of them were being prepared by the Inspector, following the ‘who takes what and how; list now on the wall by the urn and kettle.

Bit by bit, the evidence emerged, and it was Blake who seemed to have the eye for the work, to my great surprise. It had been easy to start with, as there were so many cameras by the pub, but after that we were really fishing at random. The one thing Vernon did have that was a help were his shoes, so white they were almost painful on the eye, and several times we got time and place just from two white dots in the darkness.

That got us the time for the cameras in the multi-storey, and we caught him as he passed the pay-station, and then by the lift, and then---then sweet F.A. I sat back from my little computer, back aching as I stretched my shoulders, and a number of rude words exercising my brain.

“Ma’am!”

Blake was standing and waving her over.

“Think I’ve got him!”

It was a few minutes after we had last spotted him, and once again it was the camera near the lift. The big man grinned at me as we gathered round his screen.

“What you said, Di, about them taking him into that store room? I think this is it”

Just a hint, just a couple of flashes of brilliant white, almost out of the camera’s field of view, but I would have bet Blake’s life it was Vernon. Elaine got as close to the screen as she could.

“Nice one, boy. Can you slo-mo that one?”

He fiddled with the mouse/

“Just a sec… he’s not walking, ma’am. He’s being dragged. Hang on… look. There”

Just the edge of another shoe, and part of a trouser leg, with the three stripes of Adidas sportswear running down it. Blake turned, grinning. “Latest Nike trainer, aye, and an Adidas shell suit, bottom half anyway”

Another bark from Inspector Powell. “No brand loyalty, these kids! You know what I want now, aye?”

Not the only one who wants it, those were my thoughts, and I went back to the footage from the pub. Candice got the next bit, after nearly six hours of slog and stop-go. Nike, and Adidas, and we started looking at the other cameras to try and find something above the waist.

Ellen struck this time, with a face, or at least a chin, one with a scrubby goatee beard, under a hood so that all we got was the mouth and chin, the awkward bastard. I gave up and went to get a sandwich, just as Ellen crowed in triumph.

“Got you, you twat!”

I scurried over as she froze the video, and there he was in the act of taking a big lungful of carcinogens from a droopy roll-up. The light was full on his right hand, and there were at least four tattoos there. The boss was almost dancing.

“Bloody well done, team. Get those enhanced and sort out a print of the tats. We’ve got a key to this one at last!”

I knew I had some other discs from that time, so I sat straight back down. I knew where he was standing, and when, and…

“Got him on two more, ma’am, one on the junction and another from the pub. Nobody next to him”

Alun came over for a peek, squeezing my shoulder in recognition.

“Ma’am?”

“Aye, Alun?”

“Want me to pop down to the LIO and see what his little card index says?”

“Intel will be long gone now, butt”

“Aye, ma’am, but I used to work in there”

And do other things, according to the rest of CID, but not now, PC Owens, not now.

“And?”

I suspected he was wishing he’d kept his gob shut, but he was clearly sticking to doing a proper job, bless him.

“I sort of kept a set of keys…”

“What’s he got, then? Remember, this isn’t my nick, aye?”

He grinned. “Ray’s always been a bit of a trainspotter, innit, boys? Never throws anything away”

She frowned. “Bit of an asset in an intelligence officer”

“Aye, ma’am, but he had a real passion for ODFs. Tattoos in particular. He set out years ago to try and catalogue every tat on every scrote in the City. He got one lad with a scarf over his face for abusive behaviour at a home match, aye, just from the tattoo on the hand he was using to give two fingers to the camera!”

The normal Alun was back, now, grinning in a nasty way.

“Got descriptions of some, photos of some, drawings of the rest, aye? I could get these printed off and, well, as long as you can square my going into his stuff while he’s off. Oh, and not tell him I got the keys”

“Go to, butt!”

He was off like a shot, just as one of our new phones rang, the general contact line, and I was the nearest. Short, sweet; I muted it and called over to her.

“Your mate’s back, ma’am”

“Chris? Can you get him brought up? Ta”

He was up straight away, looking vaguely ill but still ogling our edible treats, some of which were already going stale. The Inspector waved a hand at them, and he grabbed a cuppa and a couple of Jaffa cakes.

“Dive in, butt. Girls, boys, gather round for a bit if you don’t mind. This is Chris, who has just spent some time with our victim. Chris, how is he?”

As he stared into his cup, she whispered to me “Let him speak, aye? Fresh angle and all that”

I could see her point, and when he started speaking it was as if he was distracted, recounting a dream.

“He’s a mess, people. If any of you have ever been in his position, you will understand. If not, well, it’s all his fault. He shouldn’t have gone out, he shouldn’t have pissed in a dark corner, he shouldn’t have come to Cardiff, he shouldn’t be gay, he shouldn’t be breathing. Everything is his fault. He--, no, that’s enough for now. He’s washed his hands raw; god knows what his private bits are like. He is going to need a lot of support, that’s obvious, but what I really think he needs most is to see three arseholes locked away for a bloody long time”

What was this ‘three’ business’?

He took a long, slow drink. “They told him they know where he lives, where his family live, all the usual. He thinks they’ll do his kid sister next”

“Did they specifically threaten his sister, Chris?”

“No, Lainey. Just his family, but his paranoia’s on overdrive. We need to sort this out as soon as”

Blake was giving me all sorts of puzzled looks, but I was keeping my mouth shut as per Elaine’s instructions, and so he had to ask out loud.

“Who are you, exactly? I saw you on the sweetness and light seminar stuff, but I can’t remember what you do”

The skinny man smiled, in a very distracted way, and I suddenly understood what this was costing him in sweat and nerves.

“Oh, I’m the sacrificial goat you bloody well DON’T arrive too late for!”