When it was over, I helped Tash put on her clothes and washed the blood from beneath her nose. She moved in slow motion, hurting in places I could never understand. There were red welts on her thighs and stomach, back and arms. Bruises coming.
They had warned us what would happen if we told anyone. There were photographs, they said, footage of Tash naked. They would upload it on the Internet and post the pictures on Facebook.
Then they told us to count to a thousand, so that’s what I did. I counted to a thousand and then I counted to two thousand.
Tash didn’t say anything. She could have been asleep.
Then I heard her voice, quiet and unsure. “Piper?” she said. “I want to leave now.”
I thought she meant go home, but she meant run away.
“I have five hundred pounds. How much can you get?”
I didn’t say right away.
“Don’t worry. I have enough.”
“We should tell the police.”
“No.”
“But you’re hurt.”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She made it sound as though someone had turned off a switch in her body and she couldn’t be hurt any more.
“What about Emily?”
“You go to her house. Tell her that we’ll meet her tomorrow morning, first thing. She doesn’t have to come, but I’m not changing my mind.”
My stomach twisted and coiled like a snake inside me. Tash looked at me as though I were made of glass and she could see right through me.
“I know you’re scared,” she said. “So am I.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say that would change things. In her mind, Tash was already running. She wanted me to catch up with her. It’s what I do, I told myself. I’m a runner.
39
A n hour before first light on Christmas Eve, armed response teams gather at Abingdon Police Station. Seven addresses have been identified. Five more suspects are being sought. I’m barely awake when these men are dragged from warm beds, handcuffed in front of their families and bundled into police cars.
Theo Loach arrives at the station with his shoulders back and head up, shunning the offer of a coat to cover his head. His gunmetal hair is trimmed tight to his scalp and the only sign of disruption to his normal routine is the stubble on his chin.
Reuben Loach, Callum’s older brother, has a cyclist’s ropy build and trim black hair that clings to his skull like a helmet. He doesn’t stop talking, insisting there’s been a mistake.
Callum’s uncle, Thomas Rastani, is a fifty-year-old insurance salesman with a wife and three children. Overweight and sweating in the cold, he hammers on his cell door, pleading to speak to his wife.
Scott Everett is another of Callum’s friends. In his twenties, with a foppish fringe and eyes the color of pea soup, he crouches beneath the blanket as though hoping it might make him invisible. Within minutes his father has arrived, politeness personified, but dropping the name of the barrister he’s hiring.
The last suspect seems to have no obvious links to Aiden Foster or Callum Loach. Nelson Stokes, the former school caretaker, doesn’t seem surprised by his arrest. He knows the drill-when to duck his head, when to cover it, when to keep quiet.
The men are brought in separately. Fingerprinted. Photographed. Read their rights.
By 9:00 a.m. the mood at the station is a festive one. There is a sense of expectation-a major case about to be cracked, the suspects in custody, the truth only hours away, or days. Phone records will link each suspect to the scene of the attack and to each other. They will deny everything initially, until one of them breaks ranks and tries to cut a deal. Then they’ll turn on each other like guests on Jerry Springer.
I watch the early interviews, hoping for some sign that sets one of these men apart. Each of them is guilty of sexual assault and conspiracy and false imprisonment. They held her against her will. They cut off her clothes. They made her dance. They ignored her pleas. I don’t know if they raped her or penetrated her, but one of these men is likely to have kidnapped the girls. Who among them is the collector?
According to Toby Kroger’s statement, Theo Loach came up with the plan to punish Natasha. Aiden Foster had gone to prison for crippling Callum, but Natasha was equally culpable in Theo’s eyes. She caused the fight. She provided the drugs. She walked free. His sense of outrage only grew when he saw her flaunting herself, flirting with boys, turning heads, walking on two legs. Someone should teach her a lesson. Show her that actions have consequences.
He recruited the others with the help of Kroger and Gould, organizing a meeting at a pub in Abingdon.
“We were only supposed to scare her,” Kroger said. “Theo talked about using acid on her face or tattooing something on her back, but we didn’t want no part of that. So we agreed we were going to shave off her hair. Nelson said that’s what they did to women in the war who fraternized with the enemy, you know, the Germans.”
Watching the interviews from behind the mirror, I learn what I can about the suspects. Theo Loach appears unrepentant. Reuben Loach is strangely silent, pushing his glasses up his nose and frowning at every question. Thomas Rastani is in denial, asking when he can go home. Scott Everett is defensive and difficult. Craig Gould cries twice during the interview and keeps apologizing for his tears.
Shown footage of the assault, he says, “I know it looks bad, but she was just dancing. Nothing else happened.”
Only Nelson Stokes appears unperturbed. He doesn’t act hunted or feign contrition or construct a defense for himself. He’s not delaying his answers or embellishing them with extra details. There are no outward signs of stress in his posture or his face. He’s even playing games, jotting down numbers on scraps of paper, refusing to say if they’re map references or coded messages.
Often the guilty look relaxed because they have less to worry about-they’ve already been caught. The innocent have more to fear because mistakes can be made. Witnesses can lie. Evidence can be lost. There are the dodgy juries, hanging judges and corrupt police.
No matter how hard I try, I still can’t picture Stokes as the kidnapper. He’s a pervert and a peeping tom, but on the continuum of sex crimes it is a major leap to have kidnapped and imprisoned the girls… to have mutilated Natasha. Not impossible. Not unprecedented. Unlikely.
Leaving the interviews, I wander upstairs to the incident room. DS Casey is updating the whiteboards with new information that links each suspect to the leisure center.
“How many of them have alibis for the Saturday night of the blizzard?” I ask.
“The Loaches, Rastani and Everett.” He points to their photographs. “Gould and Kroger are claiming they were with each other.”
“What about Stokes?”
“Says he can’t remember. He’s a cocky bastard.”
“What about the fingerprints at the farmhouse?”
“Forensics will be another few hours but we won’t have DNA profiles until after Christmas.”
Drury appears upstairs with DS Middleton.
“Gould has given a statement,” he says. “He’s implicated the others.” There are cheers and high-fives among the assembled detectives. “I want them charged. A special bail hearing has been convened. We’re not opposing bail for Theo and Reuben Loach, Rastani, Gould or Everett but we’ll be asking for provisions: no contact with each other
