The Job 28

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CHAPTER 28
I didn’t have that bad a hangover, but there was a smell about me even I could detect, which meant my curry had left traces. I showered and brushed my teeth twice, before heading in to start the day’s work.

To my surprise, Chris was there again, moving very stiffly but actually on his feet.

“I have decent biscuits, my love! And milk!”

I moved towards him on reflex, and he raised a hand.

“No hugs, sweety, I’m a bit sore. Will be for a while, but that’s all, thank god. Urn and kettle are both on, and I have sent Ellen away to brush her teeth. What WERE you eating last night?”

“Er, sorry, mate. Bit of a celebration. Job’s a good’un, as they say, especially after the interviews”

He looked at me, one eyebrow raised, and I shook my head.

“No, Chris. You haven’t exactly been in a good place for an interview or statement, so I am not going to discuss it with you. Get your version down before you hear ours. Anyway, you must know how it goes. Charge or release as soon as enough evidence is in place for the choice to be made. You are the last bit for that”

It was true, as far as it goes, and I knew Sammy had been skating close to the edge. The official test results in Hansen’s powders really affected only him, but the evidence provided by our goat involved all five.

“Bugger it, Chris. You up to the formal bit when Ellen’s back? Yes? I would really like it done as soon as, but only if you feel you can. You are the one who got the kicking, innit?”

She was with us only a minute later, and we went off together to one of the interview rooms to lead Chris through his statement, which Ellen typed into her laptop as we spoke. It sounds a simple process, but it isn’t. A skilled statement taker has a way of talking through events the witness thought were clear, and showing them things that they had almost forgotten, or had never realised they remembered. It’s not prompting, saying things like “it was a red car, wasn’t it?” but leading memories into the open air.

“What caught your attention? What was it about the vehicle that made you look up?” are typical tricks to bring sound and vison of past events back to life, and it is an art I will never have. Ellen, however, was a star, and as we walked Chris through the evening’s horrors, I swear I could smell the piss in the car park stairwell.

Chris answered the questions, I converted each response to statementese, and Ellen typed them up, frowned and asked another question.

“How did you realise you weren’t alone, Chris?”

“When I was grabbed---no, that’s not right. I can remember hearing some heavy breathing, and then rapid footsteps. All echoes in the landing, everything booming and amplified. Yeah, footsteps, then panting, like someone running, and then… No. They punched me in the right kidney first, then I think it was a stick or something, right across the back of the thighs. Bloody well hurt, both of them. I went down, hard. Got gravel rash to my knuckles”

“What happened then, Chris? Could you see who it was? Any one thing that stuck in your memory? Sound, smell?”

“Oh yes!”

He started to laugh, winced, tried to stop and ended up moaning.

“Bloody ribs! Ow ow ow. Yes, ladies: who did the sewing on the belt? One of them grabbed the back of it to haul me up, and all the stitching on the buckle just went ‘Pop!’ and the belt pulled out of the loops, and my poor face went straight into the concrete again. Not nice, not at all”

He sat up straighter, something returning to him with a sizeable impact.

“Yes! Two of them spoke just then. I’d forgotten!”

Ellen smiled at him. “What did the first one say?”

He tilted his head to one side, staring into the distance, or at least the corner where the walls met the ceiling.

“The belt pulled all the way out, and I went bang into the floor, and one of them said ‘You not want that, Dai?’ and then a second one just hissed at him, and hissed is the word, real contempt in the way he said it, and it was just ‘shut the fuck up, you idiot’, and then I was hit a couple of more times”

“Where were you hit, Chris?”

“First one was a kick to my side, then I was hauled up to my knees, and someone hit me in the side of the head”

“Can you say what hit you, Chris?”

“Fist, I think. I was getting a bit confused by then”

My respect for him could hardly go up, but it was trying. Punched, kicked, walloped with a baseball bat, and he owned up to ‘getting a bit confused’. Ellen continued drawing him out.

“I was groggy by then, lost count of the number of times I was hit, but I remember they put me in a vehicle. I could hear the door when it opened, and it was a sliding door, a big van sort of thing. There’s a sliding noise followed by a bang as it goes into place, shuts. There was only the one sound, when it shut. It must have been open already. They put me in the back, and someone grabbed my face, so I thought I’d try and bite him, leave some evidence in his skin, but one of them, same one who’d told the other one to shut up, he just says ‘tie him up properly, shit tried to bite me’, and one of them taped over my mouth… Yes, I could feel the van going round and round. Multi-storey exit, you know? Like a huge spiral till you’re on the street again.

“So it does all that, and they’re just holding me face down in some blankets or something, and the van stops a couple of times, probably for traffic lights, and once it’s moving steadily they’re punching and punching, and they ripped my top off, and there’s a bite, in my shoulder, and another one, and then someone’s pulling at my jeans”

He stopped just then, tears forming, and I opened my mouth to say something about taking a break. Chris just looked straight at me as Ellen handed him some of the blue tissue from a roll she’d brought.

“No, Diane, I get this done now, we get it done together, and then we take their lives away”

He shook himself, almost a shudder.

“No, my darlings, I don’t mean kill them. Just make sure that whatever useful, enjoyable, decent in their lives is taken away, and that they don’t walk free again until they are completely fucked. Me, vindictive?”

He took a couple of deep breaths. “Am I allowed to say how I felt, ladies? Is that allowed in my testimony?”

Ellen reached across to take his hand.

“It’s essential, my love. We don’t just tell the jury what they did, but what they did to you. How did you feel?”

“Bloody terrified, isn’t it? I didn’t know where you all were, there was nothing anywhere around me but the van. No rush, no hurry, just rolling along smoothly while they punched and bit, and ripped my clothes off, and they were all talking then, and it was swearing, poof, filthy shirtlifter, fucking arsebandit, paedo, on and on, and I thought…”

He was crying now, full throttle.

“I thought I was going to bloody well DIE, and it was the worst moment of my whole bloody life, and then suddenly there’s sirens, and a bang on the van---did one of your boys ram it? And there’s shouting, and glass smashing everywhere, and the interior light goes on in the front of the van.

“I managed to get onto my side, rolled over, and I can see! And there’s bats and other things, baseball bats, and one of them is grabbing for one, so I managed to kick him in the leg, and suddenly…”

He broke down just then, for a couple of minutes, and once again I moved to say ‘time out’. In his turn, he shook his head again, wiping the tears.

“Someone came over the back of the front seats, and I looked up, and it was my lovely Big Boy, and I don’t care if he’s playing hard to get, right then Blake was MINE, and he punches one of them as he unlocks the side door, and it whips open, and there’s LAINEY, and she’s like Ripley in ‘Aliens’, all snarl and fury, and… And I am safe, and it’s over, and the paramedics are lovely, and there’s me, feeling ashamed because I thought you’d lost me”

We sat together in silence for twenty seconds or so, Ellen still holding his hand, before she smiled gently at him.

“I think we have all we need, Chris. Take Di out and feed her biscuits and stuff, and I’ll pull this into shape before I print it off. Be with you in a few, aye?”

An hour later, after she had printed out the agreed statement and Chris had signed it, Ellen took him for a walk as I read their words out to the team, their faces hard. As I finished, Sammy grinned, once more in that feral way.

“Friends, I prepared the charge sheets yesterday, just in case, no assumptions, flying pigs, yeah? I do believe we now have enough evidence to make a decision on charging or releasing them. Alun, you’re nearest the phone. Give CPS a shout for me? Get them to agree, and then we can go down and fulfil our very brave goat’s request. When we are done they will know exactly what being fucked feels like, and not in a nice way. And Blake? Your brother will be with us tomorrow.”

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Comments

Had Me In Tears With This One

joannebarbarella's picture

I swear I felt every kick, punch and bite as Chris related his story and the malice with which they were delivered. I could imagine just how scared that poor boy was and sustained only by his faith that the cavalry would get there in time.

The "belt" explained...an accident, not skulduggery.

Amusingly...

There is, on my feed of this page, an Amazon ad at the bottom. Three of the items advertised are baseball bats.

There is nothing quite like a

There is nothing quite like a Louisville Slugger made from White Ash coming from the forests of the Northeastern United States. Being hit by one is indeed "a real attention step". After the perves have their trial, they should be taken out and taught by actual actions how a ball bat feels upon your body.

All good so far.

Now I'm wondering about the final retribution for the events in the first chapter.

Thanks again good girl.

Bev x

bev_1.jpg

Continued addiction

Thanks yet again Steph

I stumbled over this You Tube clip, which made me think of you and Diane and Blake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NofR8X_Zab4

I hope this adds in a little humour for your readers, but all the while acknowledging that the subject of your tale is very earnest and not funny at all. Thanks.

Suspicions averted

Just some "not strong enough" stitching on the belt. No mole hunt required. I am relieved.