Faraday 02 Network Virus (2 page)

“
Where’s the taxi?” she asked. “He usually waits by the entrance to the car park.”

“
I don’t know. Maybe he got fed up with waiting and thought you’d got a lift.”

“
Sod it,” she cursed. “That means we’ll have to go back and phone again. I’m going to be ever so late.”

“
I’d better give you a lift,” said James decisively. “I’ll have you home in ten minutes. My car’s just over there.”

“
Are you sure you should be driving?” she asked. “After all, you’ve had a lot to drink.”

“
I’m OK. I haven’t had that much, spread over three or four hours. Come on.” He guided her across the car park again. “There you are - that red Ford.”

They reached the car and he turned to face her. “Here, can you hang on to your mack with both hands while I get my keys out?”

Obligingly she reached up and took the other side of the mack, holding it above them like a strange umbrella. Their faces were very close. He leaned forward and gave her a gentle, rather wet kiss on the mouth.

She found herself responding. After all, he was a very attractive man and he needed some comforting. Then she stopped herself and moved her face away.

“
No, James, you mustn’t.”

“
Why not?”

”’
Cause I’m a married woman. That’s why not.”

“
Hmm,” he snorted. “I bet that husband of yours doesn’t let marriage stop him. I bet he’s shafting some bird in Singapore, or wherever he is, at this very minute without a thought for you waiting faithfully back at home.”

If she’d laughed good-naturedly and told him not to talk about things he didn’t understand, it would probably have gone no further. But instead she was silly enough to argue with him.

“
Just because you’re feeling randy doesn’t give you a right to kiss me. We have plenty of guys come into the Club who think, that by buying a girl a few drinks, they’ve got the right to do what they want with them. Well, I can tell you …” She got no further.

Suddenly he grabbed her by the shoulders. His mouth fastened itself roughly over hers and he pushed her against the side of the car. She could feel the wet soaking into the back of her dress. She let go the mack and tried to fend him off. She wasn’t going to let him think he could kiss her whenever he felt like it.

“
Stop it, James.”

“
Hah, you women are all the same. It’s lucky you haven’t got a bomb in your clothing.”

The next moment his hands violently caught hold of the neckline of her dress and pulled it off her shoulders and down her arms which were pinioned to her sides. One bra strap went with the dress. He pulled at the other and broke it. She was suddenly naked almost to the waist.

He bent down. “I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he said. He fastened his mouth over her left breast and he sucked it deep into the back of his throat.

The sudden sensation made her gasp. “Stop it,” she managed to say. “If you don’t stop it, I’ll scream and then you’ll be in trouble.”

He let go her breast, and she thought for a moment that he was going to stop and apologise. But the next second he fastened a hand over her mouth and forced her head painfully back against the side of the car. He put his face close to her.

“
I’ll show you what we do with women who fight against us in the army. You’ve been waggling those tits of yours at me all evening.” There was no sign of the gentleman now. “You’ve been prick-teasing like mad. Now the time has come for the reckoning, my girl.”

She wriggled her head and attempted to make a noise, but his hand was gripping her face tightly and painfully. His other hand reached up under her short skirt and started to pull at the top of her tights. She clamped her legs together to stop him going any further.

“
We can play it either way,” he hissed. “If you nod your head we can do it quietly in the back of the car. It’ll soon be over and then I’ll run you home. You’ll probably even enjoy it. If you continue to fight, I’ll still do it anyway and you’ll get hurt. Which do you want?”

He relaxed his hand on her mouth a little and she was able to move her head. For her answer she bit him as hard as she could.

“
Aah!” He whipped his hand away and let her go completely

For a fraction of a second she thought he had come to his senses and would stop. Then the next instant he grabbed her, swung her round and crashed her half over the bonnet of the car. All the wind was driven from her body. Her legs were dangling, her feet were off the ground and her tights and knickers were down round her ankles. It all seemed to happen in a few seconds.

As she lay there, wet and gasping, he entered her from behind, pushing up against her buttocks. She could feel how big he was but she felt no pain when he raped her. Perhaps the gin was acting as a lubricant or as an anaesthetic. But her stomach ached and she couldn’t get her wind back to do any more than groan her protest.

He began to work backwards and forwards into her, getting rougher and more excited as he worked himself up. He was gripping her shoulders to hold her against him as she slithered back and forth across the wet car bonnet with each more violent thrust. She knew she should be screaming for him to stop - for someone to come and rescue her. But she still couldn’t raise the breath to call out. So this, she thought dumbly, is what rape is really like.

His excitement began to mount to fever pitch. His movements speeded up, became more jerky and spasmodic. Then she felt the hot liquid spurting deep into her and heard the gasping breaths of air which he took in through his open mouth. To her shame and mortification she felt her insides begin to respond. She hadn’t had any sex for six months and now her body was taking over. She felt herself shudder as the orgasm began to build up in her. Then, he suddenly finished and withdrew and the climax never came. He stood back and let her go completely.

“
Oh,” she groaned as she slid off the car bonnet and lay in a heap on the ground, panting and exhausted. Tears of humiliation trickled down her face, smearing the mascara over her cheeks. She was wet and dirty and half-naked. She felt utterly spoiled.

“
Sorry,” he muttered, “but we say in the army that it’s the only way to treat you bloody women when you’re asking for it.”

She still couldn’t raise the energy to respond. There was silence for some seconds. Then she was jerked back to awareness by the car’s engine starting up. Was he going to run her over? She started to drag herself painfully to her feet. The car backed away from her. The headlights came on, blinding her and exposing her nudity to anyone who might be watching at half past one in the morning. The next second the car accelerated, swung away from her and sped across the car park and round the corner onto the road. The noise of its engine faded away and she was left alone in the middle of the wet parking area with the steadily increasing rain plastering the hair onto her ravaged face.

With an acute sense of misery she pulled her clothes into place as best she could and wrapped her mack round her to hide the worst of her shame. Then she limped across to hammer on the staff door to try and get them to come to her relief. As she did so she realised she hadn’t even had the sense to take the number of his car.

- 2 -

Detective Sergeant Greg Mallinson pulled the grey Vauxhall into the kerb and looked along the rows of terraced turn-of-the-century houses stepping their way up the hill. He pulled out his notebook and consulted the first page. He was looking for number twenty-seven. A quick check of front doors told him it was four houses up on the opposite side of the road. He got out of the car and locked it, crossed the street and walked up the hill towards his target.

It was a dull, damp morning - somehow unlike the weather one expected to find in late June in Torbay. The rain made him even more aware of the similarity of the setting to the back streets of Leeds where he had been brought up - the red brick houses with the grey slate roofs, the second-hand cars lining the kerb (some of them would never be driven again) and the net curtains stretched across the front windows. The only difference was the lack of youngsters playing in the road which you would always have found at home. That made the place seem like a cardboard film set instead of a real lived-in place.

In reply to his ringing the bell, the door was opened by a middle-aged woman in dark-rimmed glasses. Her hair was pulled back in a bun.

“
Is Sidney Pullman here?” asked Mallinson in response to her quizzical gaze.

She had a clear Welsh accent. “Who wants him?”

The sergeant showed her his warrant card. He said nothing while she studied it and looked back at him.

“
You don’t waste much time, do you? He hasn’t been here a week yet.”

Mallinson didn’t intend to argue with her. “Is he in?”

She jerked her head to indicate that he should enter. Then she closed the door swiftly behind him after a surreptitious glance outside to see if they had been observed. She preceded him down the narrow hallway, past the foot of the stairs. She opened the door to the front sitting-room and stood aside for him to enter, but she didn’t follow him in.

“
I’ll get him.”

Mallinson crossed to the empty fireplace and inspected himself in the ornate mirror above the mantelpiece. He hardly recognised the character who gazed back at him. He saw a man who was no longer young although he was still in his early thirties. His pale ginger hair was starting to thin. His jowls sagged a little. He was hardly aware of the tar stains on his fingers and the developing beer gut. Here was a man, he thought bitterly to himself, who had little chance of further advancement in the police force. His prospects were a lot poorer than DCI bloody Charlotte Faraday - the new bright hope in the Devon and Cornwall force, and she was several years’ younger than him.

His thoughts were interrupted by seeing the reflection of a thin, seedy individual who appeared in the doorway. The bloke was supposed to be only forty-five but already he looked nearer sixty. The DS turned to face him.

“
My sister says you want to see me.” There was the merest trace of Welsh music in his voice.

Sidney Pullman had a hunted look - almost as though he was the victim and not the tormentor that Mallinson knew him to be. His wire-rimmed glasses were begrimed with grease. His thin, grey sweater had patchy food stains down the front. The trousers had baggy knees and his carpet slippers were rubbed bare at the toes. Most of all, his body seemed weak and bent. Perhaps he was burdened down by the guilt which he had been forced to carry for the last twenty-one months.

The sergeant’s lip curled as he looked at the pathetic figure, “We’ve been notified that you have given this address as your place of permanent residence following your early release from prison.” He felt no sympathy as he barked, “Is that correct?”

Pullman flinched but only nodded.

“
And you intend to live here for the foreseeable future?”

“
Yes.”

“
I have to inform you that you have been entered on the local Register of Sex Offenders as a paedophile living at this address.” Mallinson sniffed. “We don’t like it but we’ve got to accept it.”

The man looked at him in horror. “I ain’t a paedophile,” he whimpered.

The sergeant looked down at the notes on his pad. He advanced on Pullman. “What else,” he demanded, “would you call a character who has sex with a young girl?”

“
I didn’t have sex with her.”

“
Only because you were caught before you could get it up her.”

The man flinched. “I was set up.”

“
It was a bloody good job you
were
. These kids have to be protected from bastards like you.” Mallinson grimaced. “The poor bloody girl was thirteen.”

“
I didn’t know she was thirteen.” The man held out his hands in supplication. “Seriously - she looked at least eighteen to me. She was all made up and dressed in a revealing dress. These Philippine girls are very mature.”

The sergeant sneered. “For fuck’s sake, Pullman, don’t try to tell me that you went all the way to Manila and let some bloke arrange for you to have sex with a local bird and you thought all along that she was a normal prostitute.” He sighed theatrically. “If you believed that, you must be thick as well as a fuckin’ pervert.”

Pullman didn’t respond to the policeman’s aggressive attitude. He seemed lost in his own little world. “It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

“
What the hell do you mean - it doesn’t seem fair?”

“
I wasn’t really guilty, you see.” Mallinson noticed the man had strange staring eyes when he looked directly at him. “I only agreed to plead guilty so that they could catch the bastard who set it up. I was promised a light sentence if I did that.”

“
Thirty-two months in jail?” Mallinson jutted his head forward until his nose was inches from the other fellow’s face. “Less than three bloody years? That seems light enough to me.”

The man nodded. “I thought it was until I was sent back to England to serve the two last years. I was nearly lynched in the Scrubs. So they sent me to an open prison in Dorset. I got fourteen months off for good behaviour. I thought when I was released it would all be forgotten.” He shook his head mournfully. “Now it looks as though I’m going to be labelled for life.”

The sergeant shrugged. “Well that’s got nothing to do with me. If you don’t like the verdict, you can appeal. It seems to me that you’ve got off bloody lightly. All I know is that you’ve landed on my patch and I’m here to tell you what the position is now you’re in Torquay.” He paused for breath but the other man didn’t interrupt him. “Now then - these are the arrangements. You are required to come down to the local nick every Friday evening to sign the book to say you’re still here. Do you know where the station is?”