Innocent Lies (Reissue) Read online

  Along with all the search team from the OCU, a handful of members of the public had also come forward to help, some of them students, mostly postgraduates. The summer exams were over and many of the students had gone down. The straggling line swept across the ground like an ill-disciplined advancing army.

  * * *

  After issuing instructions, Mariner left Sergeant Pete Welford to supervise the search. Taking Knox with him, he walked along to the hut at the barrier to talk to the security guards who had been on duty on Tuesday afternoon. This was not an area covered by CCTV so they were going to have to rely on the vigilance of the university-employed personnel. Not that Knox was much help. He seemed to be having problems focusing on anything today. One of the security guards thought he remembered having seen Yasmin on several occasions, but not every day, and he couldn’t specifically recall seeing her on Tuesday.

  Which didn’t mean that she hadn’t been there. The guards weren’t compelled to stay in their hut all afternoon, especially in this sort of weather, when the flimsy structure offered little relief from the heat. And inevitably, with fewer students around, the rules were more relaxed. It was not unusual for them to leave the barrier raised for lengthy periods. Most people coming in and out at that time of day would have their own passes. Neither man had noticed anything out of the ordinary on Tuesday afternoon. Leaving the booth, having learned next to nothing, Mariner was immediately accosted by a young woman.

  ‘Are you here about the girl who’s gone missing?’ She spoke with an upward inflection at the end of the sentence that placed her as a native of the Antipodes. She was dressed for a day out on Bondi Beach, in low-cut denim shorts that were a long way off joining company with the cropped T-shirt that stretched across her ample chest. All of which was offset by a rich honey-coloured tan. Instinctively Mariner glanced across at Knox for signs of awakening interest. On any other day his tongue would have been practically hanging out. But for once he barely seemed to notice.

  Mariner nodded. ‘We’re the investigating officers.’

  ‘They’ve told you about the flasher, right?’

  Mariner glanced back at the security guard who squirmed uncomfortably.

  She shook her head knowingly. ‘I thought as much. A couple of months ago, back in May, one of my roommates, Lizzie, got flashed at.’

  ‘Do you know exactly what happened?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I mean it was a bit of a giggle, but it shook her up all right.’

  ‘What time of day was this?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘It was early evening. About five, half-five. She was coming back over the meadow.’

  ‘The meadow?’

  ‘It’s what we call that rough patch down there.’ She pointed down the hill from where they stood to the area that the search party had just left — the area that Yasmin would have crossed immediately after leaving the station.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mariner.

  ‘Well, the way she told it, Lizzie was just walking along the path minding her own when this guy jogged past her. She thought nothing of it, but then as she rounded the corner and into the trees there he was again, standing with his back to the path like he was taking a leak. But as she approached he turned around and it was all, like, sticking out there. He grinned this nasty little grin and mumbled something about getting “caught short.”’

  ‘Did Lizzie think that could have been genuine?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not a bit. She said: “no guy I know pees with a stiffy like that.”’

  ‘So what did Lizzie do?’

  ‘She said something like, “get a life, loser”, and got past him as fast as she could. She came straight home and told me all about it.’

  ‘She didn’t report it to the police?’

  ‘When she’d calmed down a bit she thought it was a fuss over nothing. Just some perve getting his kicks. And I think she felt pretty stupid too, you know? I guess you always think if you’re in that situation you’d be cool and just laugh it off, because it’s so pathetic. But I think she was shocked and she knew that this guy could see it. So he got what he wanted, didn’t he?’

  ‘Did Lizzie feel physically threatened in any way?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘I don’t think so. Like I say, she just felt stupid that something so harmless freaked her like that.’

  ‘There’s nothing harmless about flashing,’ said Mariner. It was always the same. Despite the progress made in forensic psychology and the established principle that indecent exposure could, and often did, escalate to serious sexual assault, flashing had never somehow lost its reputation as one step up from a music hall joke. ‘Did Lizzie tell you what this man looked like?’

  ‘Not really. I don’t think she got a good look. She’d come from the bright sun into the shade, and she said he was turned sort of sideways, with a baseball cap pulled low.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘And I guess his face wasn’t the first thing she noticed, you know?’

  ‘Did she tell anyone else about it?’ Mariner asked.

  ‘She didn’t want to. But I made her write it all down, just in case, and she agreed to think some more about reporting it. In the end she chickened out and mentioned it to one of her tutors, who said she’d pass it on. They told her security would deal with it — issue a warning to students and let the dean know and, to be honest, I think that suited Lizzie.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We heard nothing more. Then a couple of weeks ago there was this rumour going around that it had happened again to someone else, in practically the same spot. I wondered if it could be the same guy. I know Lizzie did too.’

  Mariner nodded. ‘Where’s Lizzie now? We may want to talk to her.’

  The girl pulled a face. ‘I can’t be very specific. She’s backpacking round Europe with her boyfriend.’

  Mariner was sure none of this had got as far as the police. Incidents like these would show up on the monthly intranet bulletin. There had been a spate of indecent exposure as there often was when the weather got warmer, but nothing that he could remember having been reported on or around the university. He turned to the guard. ‘You knew about this?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’d heard something, but we were told not to make an issue of it.’

  ‘It already is an issue,’ Mariner pointed out. ‘What makes it worse is that we weren’t told.’ Angela Woolley would have to be confronted about that.

  ‘Do you know the name of the other girl?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  * * *

  Mariner knocked and walked into Angela Woolley’s office, leaving the dean little opportunity to protest. She was on her feet, packing things into a briefcase. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I’m due at a—’

  ‘I think that might have to wait,’ said Mariner coolly. Now he had her attention. ‘Do you understand what we’re doing here?’ he demanded. ‘That we’re here searching for a seventeen-year-old girl who may well have vanished less than a mile from this very office? Why didn’t you tell us about the indecent exposures that have been occurring next to this campus for the last two months at least? Of course, that’s not counting any incidents that will have gone unreported because the victim is completely unaware that it’s happened to anyone else but her. Ms Woolley, you have a sexual predator operating here and I think it’s about time you told me what you know.’

  In effect they’d had the better account from the student and Angela Woolley’s version demonstrated that she’d barely attended to the facts. At least now she had the grace to be embarrassed.

  ‘I’d really like to know whose idea it was to suppress this information,’ Mariner said.

  Woolley was defensive. ‘It wasn’t a question of suppressing it. We just felt it was better that only a limited number of people should know. What we didn’t want to do was cause panic among the students, or deter any prospective students. Miss Greenwood was offered counselling, as were the other two young women—’

  ‘You mean there are at least four?’

  �
�Really, Inspector, this all happened months ago and I’m sure it was just a harmless student prank. There haven’t been any incidents since the end of—’

  ‘You mean, there haven’t been any reported incidents. And why would students report it when none of this information is acted on? These incidents are far from harmless. Have you ever met any sexual deviants Ms Woolley? Any convicted rapists among your acquaintances?’

  ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘Let me tell you something about rapists then, because in my line of work I’ve met one or two. And guess what? They don’t wake up one morning and decide that today they are going to rape. Rape is just one stage in a progressive pattern of sexually abnormal behaviour. And that pattern starts, more often than not, with flashing; indecent exposure; an unsolicited demonstration of naked sexual power to an unsuspecting victim. Then when the buzz begins to wear off from that relatively harmless little pursuit — and believe me, it nearly always does — that’s when things start to turn nasty. If you’re so concerned about adverse publicity, I wonder what prospective students would make of the fact that, for the last few months, failure to disclose information to the police has exposed existing female staff and students at this university to the risk of being attacked by a potential rapist.’

  Angela Woolley did not have a reply.

  * * *

  ‘Jesus. Since when did education become an exercise in PR?’ Mariner boiled as they left the building. In the absence of any response from Knox, he answered his own question. ‘Since it became a commercial enterprise, that’s when. It’s all about reputation and money.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We’ll need to track down all the girls who’ve been victims of this flasher and take statements from them. It might not have anything to do with Yasmin, but they need to be investigated just the same.’

  They had been given one other name. Helen Greenwood was a library assistant who fortunately remained on campus throughout the holidays.

  ‘Take a detailed statement from her,’ Mariner said to Knox. ‘Then I want you to go back to the station. Follow up on any other similar incidents there have been locally and see if there are any links.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Knox had about as much enthusiasm as a bloodhound on Valium.

  * * *

  Librarian Helen Greenwood, was thirty-three, so she said, but in Knox’s eyes she could have been anything up to about fifty. Her mousy brown hair was held off her face by a tortoiseshell Alice band and her simple blouse and skirt could only be described as ‘sensible.’ All she was missing, Knox thought, were the horn-rimmed glasses. He really didn’t want to have this conversation. Greenwood was already behaving as if she was afraid of him, but then, he was a man so perhaps she was. It was hard to imagine her having had much experience of the opposite sex. Knox found her as she was about to take her lunch break.

  ‘I’ve brought sandwiches and I usually go out for a bit of fresh air,’ she told him apologetically.

  ‘Well, perhaps you could walk me to where it happened,’ Knox suggested. ‘Then you can tell me about it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘We’ll take it slowly.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, sounding as if it was anything but.

  It was going to be a waste of time, thought Knox. She was scared of her own shadow. They walked down the footpath, back towards the railway station until they’d almost reached the rough ground, where the path went briefly through an area of shrubs and there was plenty of scope for concealment. Then she stopped abruptly. ‘It was about here.’

  ‘So he could easily have been waiting over there on the rough ground until you came along, then hopped over the wire,’ Knox surmised. ‘Was there anyone else about?’

  ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘I mean, the campus wasn’t deserted, but there weren’t many other people in this area at the time.’

  ‘Do you take the same route every day at the same time?’

  ‘I used to, yes, but not any more. If it’s quiet I walk all the way round on the road now.’

  ‘Can you describe to me exactly what happened?’ Knox took out his notebook, partly because his memory didn’t seem to be all that reliable at present, but also so that she wouldn’t have to look at him while she went over the details.

  ‘I was just walking down to the station to catch the train, along here,’ Greenwood began, her voice reedy and thin. ‘It was one of the first really nice warm days we had this year. It seems ages ago now.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He just stepped out from the bushes in that way that everyone says they do. I didn’t notice at first. He smiled at me so I smiled back, but his smile was sort of . . . lewd, and then we were almost level when I happened to glance down. I don’t know what made me do it and I saw that he had his, his . . . thing out.’

  ‘His pri— his penis.’

  She flushed scarlet. ‘Yes. He was holding it. And it was huge and horrible. I just felt sick.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I just got past him, around him, as fast as I could and hurried down towards the station.’

  ‘Did he follow you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t dare to look back, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘So what was he like?’

  ‘That’s the silly thing. I can’t really remember. I only glanced at him for a second or two.’

  ‘Was he white or black?’

  ‘White.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, he seemed to have a very high colour, from the little I could see. He had this cap pulled down low so I couldn’t really see his eyes, but his cheeks and his chin were—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sunburnt, I think. His chin was very red.’

  ‘What colour was the cap?’

  ‘Dark. Blue or green, I think. One of those that lots of men wear these days.’

  A baseball cap. ‘How tall was he?’ Knox stepped back and stood up straight. ‘Same as me?’

  She made herself look him up and down. ‘Slightly taller, I think. And thinner.’

  Knox pulled in his stomach. This was better than he’d expected. ‘You’re doing well,’ he told her. The other overriding impression, she said, was the powerful smell of his cologne ‘—or aftershave or whatever. It was too strong, and smelled sort of cheap and nasty.’

  * * *

  Taking the statement took around an hour. A couple of times Knox had to ask Helen Greenwood to repeat what she’d said because he’d missed it. Now, back in the office he was finding it difficult to concentrate on what was on the screen in front of him. He had some detective work of his own to do and he wouldn’t be able to settle until he’d done it. The office was quiet, everyone taken up with the two investigations. Knox reached for the thermos he’d brought with him. He needed a bit of Dutch courage for this.

  Minimising the programme he was in, he went online.

  ‘It’s someone I’ve known for years,’ Theresa had told him during that painfully brief conversation on the phone.

  ‘Do I know him?’ he’d asked. She hadn’t answered, which meant that maybe he did.

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘It’s not important.’ But Knox had already worked it out. The only someone she could have known a long time who was also a mutual acquaintance must be someone from school. Theresa used the computer all the time. She’d been on courses and could find her way round it better than he could. He also knew that she visited the various school reunion sites that were springing up. Once she’d even urged him to have a look.

  ‘It’s fun,’ she’d said. ‘You get to find out what’s happened to all those spotty oiks.’ But Knox had declined. He didn’t have the same enthusiasm for the past as Theresa did. Maybe it was a woman thing.

  There were half a dozen sites offering to put people in contact with old acquaintances. Knox logged into the first and typed in the name of the secondary school that he and Theresa had gone to. Then the year they’d both left. By the time he clicked on it, his pa
lms were sweating and his heart pounding. Would he know who it was? Would he recognise the name?

  ‘Anything?’ Mariner’s voice behind him made him jump out of his skin. He hadn’t heard anyone come in.

  ‘No. Nothing yet, boss.’ He shrank the screen but Mariner was already looking over his shoulder.

  ‘Are we sure we’re looking in the right place?’ But it was curiosity more than anything else.

  Knox fumbled for the notes he’d made. ‘Checking back over indecent exposure incidents in the south of the city during the last six months, there have been two others as well as the unreported ones at the university,’ he told Mariner. ‘All occurred at different times of day, and on the surface there doesn’t seem much to connect them.’ He’d plotted the incidents on a map, which they now pored over. ‘As you can see, boss, the other two happened in secluded areas, but then a flasher is hardly likely to strike in the middle of a busy shopping centre, is he?’

  ‘Not usually known, no.’

  ‘One common thread seems to be that a lot of them take place fairly near railway stations.’

  ‘Like Kingsmead.’ Mariner was thoughtful. ‘Okay, we’ll keep it in mind. How did you get on with Helen Greenwood?’

  Knox reported what she’d told him.

  ‘Sunburnt, eh?’ said Mariner. ‘That might be useful.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Calling in at the incident room revealed that the news bulletin had been less fruitful. Although there were a handful of possible sightings of Yasmin to follow up, the descriptions were vague and there didn’t appear to be anything that held any great significance. Mariner could safely leave Knox to handle those. As the search of the university campus had turned up nothing either, apart from a handful of spent spliffs, the logical thing to do was to widen the search to the stretch of railway track between Kingsmead station and the point at which Yasmin left the train. That would be a much bigger operation requiring far more manpower, which Mariner didn’t like to think about just yet. As far as he was concerned they were already jumping the gun. Instead he wanted to concentrate on the information they already had. On an investigation like this it was important to be systematic, starting at the core and working gradually outwards, making sure not to miss anything.