Day Two - Realisation part 1
Vanessa woke feeling groggy almost fluey, and a little disoriented. She looked across at the clock reading 0600 and tried to put thoughts into order before she arose. Her memories of yesterday were vague, middled with dreams of naked men in the road and people dying. There was a soreness in her groin that puzzled her, it felt almost as if she had been using her toy for an overlong session, a feeling of a night filled with an orgy of sex, an orgy she could not remember having.
She got up and went to the toilet and as she sat there emptying her bladder, she realised there was an old stickiness to her legs and thighs, a stickiness that had no right to be there. “What the fuck?” She shouted into the air running her hand through the stickiness and sniffing, “fuck, fuck, fuck.” She pulled at the toilet roll and wiped up as much of the stickiness as she could, also wiping between her legs, grimacing at what seemed a ridiculous amount to be wiped. She did not flush any of the tissue, but saved it all in a small pile on the toilet cistern.
Finished, she went to the kitchen and tore a polythene food bag from the role and went back to the toilet and put the tissues in the bag, sealing it as best she could. She then went to her medicines cupboard in the kitchen. “Thank fuck I’m a nurse,” she said as she took out a cotton wool swab, small plaster, a rubber strap and a syringe. She tightened the rubber strap around her upper arm, “just a small scratch” and pushed the needle into her arm, extracting a small phial of her blood.
She put the phial of blood on the kitchen work surface, relaxed the tourniquet, withdrew the needle and held the cotton swab against the small wound. “Right you fucking bastard” she said to the empty kitchen, “I have your fucking DNA, and we will see what you drugged me with you little shit.”
Vanessa went to the bathroom and turned the shower on, satisfied that she had everything necessary in terms of evidence of her rape she now needed to cleanse herself of every stinking trace of her attacker, inside and out. She also needed to get to the pharmacy at work for a quick injection, the morning after pill was sold in tablet form to the public, but she knew she could get the same thing into her system quicker in vitrio. Unscrewing the shower head she gingerly pushed the hose end past her sore and bruised folds and stood her knees parted and slightly bent, one hand on the wall, the other holding the shower hose between her legs, flushing herself clean. “You bastard, bastard, bastard” she muttered as the water cleansed her until it eventually ran clear.
Eldred sat hidden in a barn, his form merged with the dark shadows behind bales of fodder analysing the memories he had taken from her blood. The world had moved on since he went to ground, many times the world had turned, many more times than he had expected. His family should have raised him long ago, but they had left him in the ground, awoken only by the chance of a small drop of mammals blood dropping onto his bones, a small drop enough to resurrect him, ravenous and unknowing of who or what he was until he had fed. The memories from the woman and the boy he studied, but had no mention of his kind, save vague mentions of similar types in fiction and stories, Was he the last, had his family and brethren slipped into extinction? What of his pets the Lykens and Felcans, again, no mention of either, were they too long gone?
He had to feed, it would take many feeds until his strength was fully restored, but he knew not to leave a trail. His first feed had drained the body dry, his instincts not able to stop him until there was no further to be drunk and he held only a dry husk. He had no doubt that the authorities were more organised in this age and that a trail of dead bodies would bring unwelcome attention, an attention that he was not yet strong enough, or prepared enough to deal with.
Jessica Bale sighed, not a sigh of exasperation or tiredness, simply a sigh of no consequence. The life of a farmer’s wife was hard, and the toil never seemed to end, no holidays in the sun for her, but the rewards were great. No smoke and fume filled city dwellings, just the open fields of the farm and the weather, each day bringing a new scenery for her to enjoy. Cloud sculptures never repeating themselves, the trees waving in the wind, their semaphore never giving the same message two days running. The battle with the foxes to keep her layers safe, but still allowing the foxes their life, the badgers snuffling and grubbing for worms in the twilight hours all gave a great joy that could never be granted her by an idolatrous life in a grey city office.
Her next task of the day was to clean out the coop, to give her layers nice fresh hay. She went across to the barn and collected the wheel barrow laying upended against the barn wall. She would need a full bale, and wheeling it in the barrow was easier than over her shoulder on a pitch. Pulling the smaller barn door open she went into the gloom giving her eyes a moment to adjust, and in that moment there was a feeling of a sudden breeze and the door shut to behind her.
She turned back to the door and was startled by a shape barely visible in the gloom. “What…. Who?” she asked.
“Hush my dear” a soft voice came out of the darkness, and then eyes seemed to shine and transfix her, “I shall do you no harm, come my dear.” She took a step forward towards the eyes, towards the voice and then felt an arm around her shoulder, and lips upon hers, soft sensual lips, kissing in a way unknown and her legs felt weak as she felt hands roam her body, caressing her breasts, rubbing between her legs, pulling her skirt up, laying her on the hay strewn ground.
“Yes” she whispered between the kisses, “yes” as she felt her underwear pulled away and as she felt the pressure of penetration the kissing stopped and, momentarily, a sharp stab at her neck. As she felt him push deeper into her she arched her back and a pleasure unlike any she had ever known engulfed her.
The thrusting stopped and she felt his withdrawal, and then a kiss once more, “hush my dear,” the voice so soft and tender, “hush my dear and when I am gone you will not remember this moment between us.” He kissed her and once more she felt the pressure of a man between her legs, and hands upon her breasts.
Vanessa pulled up at the police station grumbling at how difficult it was to park anywhere near where you wanted to be. She took her Tesco carrier bag of evidence and pressed the bell at the station entrance. After a moment there was a buzz and the door unlocked. She pushed and entered the lobby. The wall was adorned with various crime prevention posters which she glanced at without really reading and then there was another buzz and the inner door unlocked. She pulled that door, went through and stood at the desk.
“What seems to be the problem?” The uniform behind the desk asked.
Her words came in a torrent, “I have been raped. I have no idea by who or how, but I have a bag full of evidence for DNA testing and a blood sample to check for what ever drug the bastard pumped into me. I have no idea what happened, I simply woke up in my bed, unusually groggy with evidence of sex I do not recall having.” She stopped and took a breath and stood up straight, looking the officer straight in the eyes.
“Right madam. Please wait in the chair over there, and please look after your bag. For this allegation…”
“This is not a fucking allegation, This is a fucking crime” she interrupted, not once realising the irony in her words.
“Yes madam, please understand that for this circumstance I need to alert a WPC and a doctor. I apologise but that is the rule that I have to follow. Please have a seat.”
“Can you at least put the sample in a fridge?”
“Madam I am sorry, but if that is evidence it has to be properly logged in. I will get someone to see you as soon as possible.”
Vanessa turned and walked to the small row of plastic chairs on a wall and sat under a poster of a woman with a cut and bleeding eye. She put the bag under her chair and sat and almost for the first time since she woke up that morning she had time to stop and think about the events. Some bastard had taken advantage, enjoyed her body without so much as a please or thank you. She could be pregnant, that would be the next thing she attended to, she could be filled with disease, oh God she hoped not, and worst of all, she hadn’t been around to fucking well enjoy it. “Bastard” she said aloud.
“I am sure you don’t mean me” said a dark masculine voice. She looked up. A man stood before her, chinos and open necked shirt, Police ID badge clipped to his shirt pocket.
“No, I mean the bastard that …” she paused, after all, she didn’t know if he was here to see her and she didn’t really want to blurt her sorry story out to anyone. “No, I didn’t mean you.”
He put a hand out to her, “please come with me and let’s get the process started” he said, helping her to her feet. He took his pass and swiped it through a reader at a door to the side of the desk room, and she followed him though and along a short well lit corridor. He stopped at a door with frosted glass, slid a label to show ‘engaged’, opened the door and ushered her inside.
“Right, before we start I am DI Bentley, Chris Bentley. There is CCTV in this room, and I am saying this as I know that this is a traumatic time for you, and our WPC is just out on an incident and will be back as soon as she can. I also have a female Detective Constable, but seems to be missing presumed fed with a McDonalds breakfast. Sorry, it’s a bit of a rush this morning. I just wanted to get thing started as quickly as I could, but this means you being in this room with me until she can get here. The CCTV records everything, you are perfectly safe here.”
Vanessa looked around the room, and there was a camera with a small red light on above the door, and another at the other end of the room. She was no idiot and knew that the cameras were there for his protection against false allegations, rather than her comfort.
“Look, it’s ok, can we just get started? I really want this blood sample in a fridge before it degrades and is useless.”
He gestured to a chair one side of the table, “please sit,” and he took the chair the other. He opened a folder and looking at the date clock on the wall he wrote the date and time on top of a form in the folder.
“Right Vanessa. What I want you to do is start at your last clear memory and tell me everything working forwards, Is that okay?”
“Right, okay, yes.” She sat and tried to think back to the events before the darkness, the hole where her memory should be. “Okay, it was near the end of shift, and Mrs Balcombe died. We knew she was close but had hoped she would hang on a bit longer, but she didn’t, so as Staff, I had to fill in the paperwork and that took me past the end of shift, so I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I left. And then that bloody idiot in the road on my way home…”
“Wait a minute please Vanessa” he interrupted her flow, “let me just catch up, sorry, my writing can be a bit slow,” he was still writing a few more words. “Did you have a drink before you left work, perhaps whilst you were filling in the paperwork?”
She shook her head, “No, I was on a quick changover to early shift and never drink late otherwise I am up in the night.”
“Okay Vanessa, now I will need to know what ward you were on, but that can come in the detail later, what about the idiot in the road? Where was that?”
“I was on the way home, in the lanes not far really, I went round the bend by Raddles Mission and there was a naked man in the road his arms held aloft. I only just managed to come to a stop without hitting him. I wound the window down and told him what I thought of him and then drove home.” Vanessa paused and then looked up at Chris. “Well, yes, I remember stopping, yes, and then I remember driving past him, but no, I don’t actually remember getting home. It gets all black then until I woke up this morning.”
“Okay Vanessa. Now I want you just to wait here a moment. Can you give me your bag, and I will get it logged and put somewhere safe. I won’t be long.”
She passed him the Tesco carrier bag and leant back in the chair as she watched him go out and close the door behind him.
Chris Bentley walked down the corridor and passed the bag to a young DC sitting at a desk in the office, “Christine, get this logged, Rape, biological, case 383.” He walked without waiting for a response to the bigger desk at the end of the office. “Sir, you know I hate coincidences, but, the body that was reported by Raddles Mission? Well I have a rape reported in the same area.”
He stayed hidden at the back of the barn. The woman had lain for a while after he had fed and then got up as if nothing had occurred and dragged one of the hay bales outside, pulling the door too after her. The sunlight couldn’t kill him, not here, not at these latitudes, but it was uncomfortable whilst he was still rebuilding. Better to stay out of it until he had restored his full strength. He studied the memories from her blood, probing, searching to fill in the gaps in the knowledge he had gained from Thomas, the first lad, and then Vanessa, knowing that he would need to taste many more memories before he had a clear enough understanding of the time he was in. There was a new memory, large black cats had been worrying farms in the area taking sheep. Felcans he wondered? He sniffed, there was a scent, a very special scent, he sniffed again.
Jessica finished cleaning the chicken coop. She felt weary, and really did need a shower. She leant the wheel barrow up against the barn wall and went back to the farmhouse. She poured hot water from the Aga into a jug and slipped into the washroom, a shower could wait until the end of the day, a quick strip wash would do for now, and then perhaps a cup of tea. The morning seemed to have gone by in a blur, she could hardly remember any of it. As she stripped she stopped momentarily confused. She had no panties on, she always wore underwear, it was not something a decent woman ever went without. She was confused and as she washed herself she became even more confused, she hadn’t been with Jack this morning, he was up before her and in the top meadow, yet to all intents and purposes, if the evidence between her legs was to be believed…
The door opened and a new man entered, followed by Chris. “Hello Vanessa, I am Adam Hart, I’m the DCI, and I guess I am the boss. Do you mind if I have a few words?”
Vanessa looked at Chris, his face impassive and then across at the new man. “No, I suppose not, but really, I have said everything I can remember. I have no recollection of the rape, no face I can bring to mind, nothing clear after I drove away from the naked man in the lane.”
Adam spoke, his voice calm, yet somehow authoritative. “Is there any chance that you hit something in the lane, oh, I don’t know, a badger or a fox or something?”
“Good god no. I was shaken up by nearly hitting naked man, I would be mortified if I actually hit anything, and that I would remember, believe me.”
“Do you have your car with you Vanessa, the one you were driving last night?”
“Well, yes, of course, it’s a red mini outside.”
“Would you mind if Chris pops down and has a look, just to rule it out of the equation?”
“Er, no, what equation?”
Adam Hart spoke quietly, looking Vanessa directly in the eyes, there really could be no argument. “If you could just pass Chris your car keys, and he can pop out and look whilst we chat here.”
Vanessa took her key bundle from the car and passed it across to Chris who took them, smiled a thanks, and then left the room.
Adam read the notes that Chris had taken. “You saw no one else on the road then, just this naked man pointing at the sky?”
“No”
“Did you say anything to him?”
“”Well, yes but as to exactly what I don’t know. An idiot or words to that effect.”
“Anything likely to make him irate or angry in anyway?”
“I should think so, he was in the middle of the road.” Vanessa paused and then looked directly at the Inspector, “but, I definitely remember driving away.”
“Describe him.”
“It was dark, he was naked, what more can I say.”
“Big, short, fat, thin, aroused, what?”
Vanessa cast her mind back to the darkness and the encounter in the lane, trying to remember the man. “Tall and thin, it was dark so I can’t tell you skin tone, apart from I don’t think he was black. Endowed, no, not so much, enough to tell it was a man and that is about it.” She then laughed a little. “Actually I remember calling after him that it must be a cold night ‘cus his Dick was so small.”
Adam finished writing down her words and then commented, “Well that could certainly make a man angry. And you saw no one else, no one wearing a T shirt for example?”
“Where, near naked man? No, no one at all once I go off the main drag and into the lanes, in fact, I don’t actually remember seeing anyone walking once I left work. Why, what is this all about?”
“It is okay Vanessa, we are just gathering all the facts.”
“Am I suspect in something?” Vanessa got up pushing the chair angrily away from her. “I was fucking raped and God fucking knows what else, and you are fucking interrogating me like I am the fucking criminal. Jesus fucking Christ, it’s a man’s fucking world. No wonder women do not report rape.” She turned to the wall, unable to look the man in the face, her anger mixed with disgust and hatred for the system that she found herself in.
“Please Vanessa, forgive me, I am sorry. Your case is being treated with the utmost importance, you are our priority here. You must forgive me, there are certain enquiries that we have to make. Is it possible for instance that the naked man followed you home and subdued you? Is it possible that there was someone else in the lane that witnessed your encounter with him? All these things are lines of enquiry and as you are our only witness to what ever happened, you must be questioned as closely as we can, whilst being mindful of the trauma you have experienced. Please, sit down, let me go and get you a cup of tea. Me getting tea will be a stir in the office I can tell you.”
His line of levity seemed to work, Vanessa relaxed, her shoulders sank a little and her fists uncurled. She sat down once more. “Yes. Please, white none.” A real weariness overcame her and she slumped back in the chair, the realities of the past few hours catching up with her and tears began. She shuffled around her pockets searching for a tissue, failing to find any as the sobs began and the emotion finally caught up with her.
“I tell you boss” Christine said looking at the scenes on the CCTV monitor, “she’s a victim if ever I saw one. You best called the ‘pyschie’ as well as the regular Doc. I hope I never experience what she has.”
“Maybe” was the reply.
Leanne had finished the washing, thankful that she could use disposable nappies, not like the big re-washable towel nappies her mother had used. Donny was still asleep, and wouldn’t need feeding for a while, but she knew she was full and ready, her breasts distended and painful, she looked forward to feeding him, relieving the pressure. She looked at the sky, it was cloudy and grey, but not promising rain. The breeze should dry her washing, she decided to risk it in the garden rather than on the dryer in the bathroom.
His senses had bought him here, thankful for the cloudy sky, Eldred had ventured from the barn, following a special scent. The abode was the last cottage in a small row, he remembered these cottages from before, lived in by labourers and their wives, a regular hunting ground for his family, could it be thus again? He sniffed again and slipped through a wire fence and went to the rear of the cottage. There was a woman hanging washing on a line, the scent was strong, it was her. He quietly vaulted the fence.
Leanne turned to look behind her and was startled by a tall dark man. “What…. Who?” she asked.
“Hush my dear” a soft voice came out of the nowhere, and then eyes seemed to shine and transfix her, “I shall do you no harm, come my dear.” She took a step forward towards the eyes, towards the voice and then felt an arm around her shoulder, and lips upon hers, soft sensual lips, kissing in the way of her husband, but not, and her legs felt weak as she felt hands roam her body, caressing her swollen milk laden breasts, rubbing between her legs. “Would you care to invite me in?” the soft voice asked.
“Please, come inside,” she said her voice seemingly not her own and she took his hand and led him into the cottage and up the stairs to her bedroom. In her room, she turned to him and he kissed her once more, her lips seeming to melt into his as her clothes somehow fell from her body. She felt his need, his yearning and as she fell back on the bed, his penetration caused a gasp and then the little sharp pain in her neck coinciding with his first deep thrust. The moment of pleasure hit and she arched, lifting off the bed as his mouth fed at her neck, his eyes savouring the feast at her breast to follow.
Vanessa woke feeling groggy almost fluey, and a little disoriented. She looked across at the clock reading 0600 and tried to put thoughts into order before she arose. Her memories of yesterday were vague, middled with dreams of naked men in the road and people dying. There was a soreness in her groin that puzzled her, it felt almost as if she had been using her toy for an overlong session, a feeling of a night filled with an orgy of sex, an orgy she could not remember having.
She got up and went to the toilet and as she sat there emptying her bladder, she realised there was an old stickiness to her legs and thighs, a stickiness that had no right to be there. “What the fuck?” She shouted into the air running her hand through the stickiness and sniffing, “fuck, fuck, fuck.” She pulled at the toilet roll and wiped up as much of the stickiness as she could, also wiping between her legs, grimacing at what seemed a ridiculous amount to be wiped. She did not flush any of the tissue, but saved it all in a small pile on the toilet cistern.
Finished, she went to the kitchen and tore a polythene food bag from the role and went back to the toilet and put the tissues in the bag, sealing it as best she could. She then went to her medicines cupboard in the kitchen. “Thank fuck I’m a nurse,” she said as she took out a cotton wool swab, small plaster, a rubber strap and a syringe. She tightened the rubber strap around her upper arm, “just a small scratch” and pushed the needle into her arm, extracting a small phial of her blood.
She put the phial of blood on the kitchen work surface, relaxed the tourniquet, withdrew the needle and held the cotton swab against the small wound. “Right you fucking bastard” she said to the empty kitchen, “I have your fucking DNA, and we will see what you drugged me with you little shit.”
Vanessa went to the bathroom and turned the shower on, satisfied that she had everything necessary in terms of evidence of her rape she now needed to cleanse herself of every stinking trace of her attacker, inside and out. She also needed to get to the pharmacy at work for a quick injection, the morning after pill was sold in tablet form to the public, but she knew she could get the same thing into her system quicker in vitrio. Unscrewing the shower head she gingerly pushed the hose end past her sore and bruised folds and stood her knees parted and slightly bent, one hand on the wall, the other holding the shower hose between her legs, flushing herself clean. “You bastard, bastard, bastard” she muttered as the water cleansed her until it eventually ran clear.
Eldred sat hidden in a barn, his form merged with the dark shadows behind bales of fodder analysing the memories he had taken from her blood. The world had moved on since he went to ground, many times the world had turned, many more times than he had expected. His family should have raised him long ago, but they had left him in the ground, awoken only by the chance of a small drop of mammals blood dropping onto his bones, a small drop enough to resurrect him, ravenous and unknowing of who or what he was until he had fed. The memories from the woman and the boy he studied, but had no mention of his kind, save vague mentions of similar types in fiction and stories, Was he the last, had his family and brethren slipped into extinction? What of his pets the Lykens and Felcans, again, no mention of either, were they too long gone?
He had to feed, it would take many feeds until his strength was fully restored, but he knew not to leave a trail. His first feed had drained the body dry, his instincts not able to stop him until there was no further to be drunk and he held only a dry husk. He had no doubt that the authorities were more organised in this age and that a trail of dead bodies would bring unwelcome attention, an attention that he was not yet strong enough, or prepared enough to deal with.
Jessica Bale sighed, not a sigh of exasperation or tiredness, simply a sigh of no consequence. The life of a farmer’s wife was hard, and the toil never seemed to end, no holidays in the sun for her, but the rewards were great. No smoke and fume filled city dwellings, just the open fields of the farm and the weather, each day bringing a new scenery for her to enjoy. Cloud sculptures never repeating themselves, the trees waving in the wind, their semaphore never giving the same message two days running. The battle with the foxes to keep her layers safe, but still allowing the foxes their life, the badgers snuffling and grubbing for worms in the twilight hours all gave a great joy that could never be granted her by an idolatrous life in a grey city office.
Her next task of the day was to clean out the coop, to give her layers nice fresh hay. She went across to the barn and collected the wheel barrow laying upended against the barn wall. She would need a full bale, and wheeling it in the barrow was easier than over her shoulder on a pitch. Pulling the smaller barn door open she went into the gloom giving her eyes a moment to adjust, and in that moment there was a feeling of a sudden breeze and the door shut to behind her.
She turned back to the door and was startled by a shape barely visible in the gloom. “What…. Who?” she asked.
“Hush my dear” a soft voice came out of the darkness, and then eyes seemed to shine and transfix her, “I shall do you no harm, come my dear.” She took a step forward towards the eyes, towards the voice and then felt an arm around her shoulder, and lips upon hers, soft sensual lips, kissing in a way unknown and her legs felt weak as she felt hands roam her body, caressing her breasts, rubbing between her legs, pulling her skirt up, laying her on the hay strewn ground.
“Yes” she whispered between the kisses, “yes” as she felt her underwear pulled away and as she felt the pressure of penetration the kissing stopped and, momentarily, a sharp stab at her neck. As she felt him push deeper into her she arched her back and a pleasure unlike any she had ever known engulfed her.
The thrusting stopped and she felt his withdrawal, and then a kiss once more, “hush my dear,” the voice so soft and tender, “hush my dear and when I am gone you will not remember this moment between us.” He kissed her and once more she felt the pressure of a man between her legs, and hands upon her breasts.
Vanessa pulled up at the police station grumbling at how difficult it was to park anywhere near where you wanted to be. She took her Tesco carrier bag of evidence and pressed the bell at the station entrance. After a moment there was a buzz and the door unlocked. She pushed and entered the lobby. The wall was adorned with various crime prevention posters which she glanced at without really reading and then there was another buzz and the inner door unlocked. She pulled that door, went through and stood at the desk.
“What seems to be the problem?” The uniform behind the desk asked.
Her words came in a torrent, “I have been raped. I have no idea by who or how, but I have a bag full of evidence for DNA testing and a blood sample to check for what ever drug the bastard pumped into me. I have no idea what happened, I simply woke up in my bed, unusually groggy with evidence of sex I do not recall having.” She stopped and took a breath and stood up straight, looking the officer straight in the eyes.
“Right madam. Please wait in the chair over there, and please look after your bag. For this allegation…”
“This is not a fucking allegation, This is a fucking crime” she interrupted, not once realising the irony in her words.
“Yes madam, please understand that for this circumstance I need to alert a WPC and a doctor. I apologise but that is the rule that I have to follow. Please have a seat.”
“Can you at least put the sample in a fridge?”
“Madam I am sorry, but if that is evidence it has to be properly logged in. I will get someone to see you as soon as possible.”
Vanessa turned and walked to the small row of plastic chairs on a wall and sat under a poster of a woman with a cut and bleeding eye. She put the bag under her chair and sat and almost for the first time since she woke up that morning she had time to stop and think about the events. Some bastard had taken advantage, enjoyed her body without so much as a please or thank you. She could be pregnant, that would be the next thing she attended to, she could be filled with disease, oh God she hoped not, and worst of all, she hadn’t been around to fucking well enjoy it. “Bastard” she said aloud.
“I am sure you don’t mean me” said a dark masculine voice. She looked up. A man stood before her, chinos and open necked shirt, Police ID badge clipped to his shirt pocket.
“No, I mean the bastard that …” she paused, after all, she didn’t know if he was here to see her and she didn’t really want to blurt her sorry story out to anyone. “No, I didn’t mean you.”
He put a hand out to her, “please come with me and let’s get the process started” he said, helping her to her feet. He took his pass and swiped it through a reader at a door to the side of the desk room, and she followed him though and along a short well lit corridor. He stopped at a door with frosted glass, slid a label to show ‘engaged’, opened the door and ushered her inside.
“Right, before we start I am DI Bentley, Chris Bentley. There is CCTV in this room, and I am saying this as I know that this is a traumatic time for you, and our WPC is just out on an incident and will be back as soon as she can. I also have a female Detective Constable, but seems to be missing presumed fed with a McDonalds breakfast. Sorry, it’s a bit of a rush this morning. I just wanted to get thing started as quickly as I could, but this means you being in this room with me until she can get here. The CCTV records everything, you are perfectly safe here.”
Vanessa looked around the room, and there was a camera with a small red light on above the door, and another at the other end of the room. She was no idiot and knew that the cameras were there for his protection against false allegations, rather than her comfort.
“Look, it’s ok, can we just get started? I really want this blood sample in a fridge before it degrades and is useless.”
He gestured to a chair one side of the table, “please sit,” and he took the chair the other. He opened a folder and looking at the date clock on the wall he wrote the date and time on top of a form in the folder.
“Right Vanessa. What I want you to do is start at your last clear memory and tell me everything working forwards, Is that okay?”
“Right, okay, yes.” She sat and tried to think back to the events before the darkness, the hole where her memory should be. “Okay, it was near the end of shift, and Mrs Balcombe died. We knew she was close but had hoped she would hang on a bit longer, but she didn’t, so as Staff, I had to fill in the paperwork and that took me past the end of shift, so I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I left. And then that bloody idiot in the road on my way home…”
“Wait a minute please Vanessa” he interrupted her flow, “let me just catch up, sorry, my writing can be a bit slow,” he was still writing a few more words. “Did you have a drink before you left work, perhaps whilst you were filling in the paperwork?”
She shook her head, “No, I was on a quick changover to early shift and never drink late otherwise I am up in the night.”
“Okay Vanessa, now I will need to know what ward you were on, but that can come in the detail later, what about the idiot in the road? Where was that?”
“I was on the way home, in the lanes not far really, I went round the bend by Raddles Mission and there was a naked man in the road his arms held aloft. I only just managed to come to a stop without hitting him. I wound the window down and told him what I thought of him and then drove home.” Vanessa paused and then looked up at Chris. “Well, yes, I remember stopping, yes, and then I remember driving past him, but no, I don’t actually remember getting home. It gets all black then until I woke up this morning.”
“Okay Vanessa. Now I want you just to wait here a moment. Can you give me your bag, and I will get it logged and put somewhere safe. I won’t be long.”
She passed him the Tesco carrier bag and leant back in the chair as she watched him go out and close the door behind him.
Chris Bentley walked down the corridor and passed the bag to a young DC sitting at a desk in the office, “Christine, get this logged, Rape, biological, case 383.” He walked without waiting for a response to the bigger desk at the end of the office. “Sir, you know I hate coincidences, but, the body that was reported by Raddles Mission? Well I have a rape reported in the same area.”
He stayed hidden at the back of the barn. The woman had lain for a while after he had fed and then got up as if nothing had occurred and dragged one of the hay bales outside, pulling the door too after her. The sunlight couldn’t kill him, not here, not at these latitudes, but it was uncomfortable whilst he was still rebuilding. Better to stay out of it until he had restored his full strength. He studied the memories from her blood, probing, searching to fill in the gaps in the knowledge he had gained from Thomas, the first lad, and then Vanessa, knowing that he would need to taste many more memories before he had a clear enough understanding of the time he was in. There was a new memory, large black cats had been worrying farms in the area taking sheep. Felcans he wondered? He sniffed, there was a scent, a very special scent, he sniffed again.
Jessica finished cleaning the chicken coop. She felt weary, and really did need a shower. She leant the wheel barrow up against the barn wall and went back to the farmhouse. She poured hot water from the Aga into a jug and slipped into the washroom, a shower could wait until the end of the day, a quick strip wash would do for now, and then perhaps a cup of tea. The morning seemed to have gone by in a blur, she could hardly remember any of it. As she stripped she stopped momentarily confused. She had no panties on, she always wore underwear, it was not something a decent woman ever went without. She was confused and as she washed herself she became even more confused, she hadn’t been with Jack this morning, he was up before her and in the top meadow, yet to all intents and purposes, if the evidence between her legs was to be believed…
The door opened and a new man entered, followed by Chris. “Hello Vanessa, I am Adam Hart, I’m the DCI, and I guess I am the boss. Do you mind if I have a few words?”
Vanessa looked at Chris, his face impassive and then across at the new man. “No, I suppose not, but really, I have said everything I can remember. I have no recollection of the rape, no face I can bring to mind, nothing clear after I drove away from the naked man in the lane.”
Adam spoke, his voice calm, yet somehow authoritative. “Is there any chance that you hit something in the lane, oh, I don’t know, a badger or a fox or something?”
“Good god no. I was shaken up by nearly hitting naked man, I would be mortified if I actually hit anything, and that I would remember, believe me.”
“Do you have your car with you Vanessa, the one you were driving last night?”
“Well, yes, of course, it’s a red mini outside.”
“Would you mind if Chris pops down and has a look, just to rule it out of the equation?”
“Er, no, what equation?”
Adam Hart spoke quietly, looking Vanessa directly in the eyes, there really could be no argument. “If you could just pass Chris your car keys, and he can pop out and look whilst we chat here.”
Vanessa took her key bundle from the car and passed it across to Chris who took them, smiled a thanks, and then left the room.
Adam read the notes that Chris had taken. “You saw no one else on the road then, just this naked man pointing at the sky?”
“No”
“Did you say anything to him?”
“”Well, yes but as to exactly what I don’t know. An idiot or words to that effect.”
“Anything likely to make him irate or angry in anyway?”
“I should think so, he was in the middle of the road.” Vanessa paused and then looked directly at the Inspector, “but, I definitely remember driving away.”
“Describe him.”
“It was dark, he was naked, what more can I say.”
“Big, short, fat, thin, aroused, what?”
Vanessa cast her mind back to the darkness and the encounter in the lane, trying to remember the man. “Tall and thin, it was dark so I can’t tell you skin tone, apart from I don’t think he was black. Endowed, no, not so much, enough to tell it was a man and that is about it.” She then laughed a little. “Actually I remember calling after him that it must be a cold night ‘cus his Dick was so small.”
Adam finished writing down her words and then commented, “Well that could certainly make a man angry. And you saw no one else, no one wearing a T shirt for example?”
“Where, near naked man? No, no one at all once I go off the main drag and into the lanes, in fact, I don’t actually remember seeing anyone walking once I left work. Why, what is this all about?”
“It is okay Vanessa, we are just gathering all the facts.”
“Am I suspect in something?” Vanessa got up pushing the chair angrily away from her. “I was fucking raped and God fucking knows what else, and you are fucking interrogating me like I am the fucking criminal. Jesus fucking Christ, it’s a man’s fucking world. No wonder women do not report rape.” She turned to the wall, unable to look the man in the face, her anger mixed with disgust and hatred for the system that she found herself in.
“Please Vanessa, forgive me, I am sorry. Your case is being treated with the utmost importance, you are our priority here. You must forgive me, there are certain enquiries that we have to make. Is it possible for instance that the naked man followed you home and subdued you? Is it possible that there was someone else in the lane that witnessed your encounter with him? All these things are lines of enquiry and as you are our only witness to what ever happened, you must be questioned as closely as we can, whilst being mindful of the trauma you have experienced. Please, sit down, let me go and get you a cup of tea. Me getting tea will be a stir in the office I can tell you.”
His line of levity seemed to work, Vanessa relaxed, her shoulders sank a little and her fists uncurled. She sat down once more. “Yes. Please, white none.” A real weariness overcame her and she slumped back in the chair, the realities of the past few hours catching up with her and tears began. She shuffled around her pockets searching for a tissue, failing to find any as the sobs began and the emotion finally caught up with her.
“I tell you boss” Christine said looking at the scenes on the CCTV monitor, “she’s a victim if ever I saw one. You best called the ‘pyschie’ as well as the regular Doc. I hope I never experience what she has.”
“Maybe” was the reply.
Leanne had finished the washing, thankful that she could use disposable nappies, not like the big re-washable towel nappies her mother had used. Donny was still asleep, and wouldn’t need feeding for a while, but she knew she was full and ready, her breasts distended and painful, she looked forward to feeding him, relieving the pressure. She looked at the sky, it was cloudy and grey, but not promising rain. The breeze should dry her washing, she decided to risk it in the garden rather than on the dryer in the bathroom.
His senses had bought him here, thankful for the cloudy sky, Eldred had ventured from the barn, following a special scent. The abode was the last cottage in a small row, he remembered these cottages from before, lived in by labourers and their wives, a regular hunting ground for his family, could it be thus again? He sniffed again and slipped through a wire fence and went to the rear of the cottage. There was a woman hanging washing on a line, the scent was strong, it was her. He quietly vaulted the fence.
Leanne turned to look behind her and was startled by a tall dark man. “What…. Who?” she asked.
“Hush my dear” a soft voice came out of the nowhere, and then eyes seemed to shine and transfix her, “I shall do you no harm, come my dear.” She took a step forward towards the eyes, towards the voice and then felt an arm around her shoulder, and lips upon hers, soft sensual lips, kissing in the way of her husband, but not, and her legs felt weak as she felt hands roam her body, caressing her swollen milk laden breasts, rubbing between her legs. “Would you care to invite me in?” the soft voice asked.
“Please, come inside,” she said her voice seemingly not her own and she took his hand and led him into the cottage and up the stairs to her bedroom. In her room, she turned to him and he kissed her once more, her lips seeming to melt into his as her clothes somehow fell from her body. She felt his need, his yearning and as she fell back on the bed, his penetration caused a gasp and then the little sharp pain in her neck coinciding with his first deep thrust. The moment of pleasure hit and she arched, lifting off the bed as his mouth fed at her neck, his eyes savouring the feast at her breast to follow.