Dead Like You

around it, each secured with a heavy-duty padlock.
    Biglow held up the watch. ‘Tell you what. I always been a fair man and don’t want you thinkin’ ill of me after I gone. We got three years’ left-luggage fee to negotiate and all. So what I’ll do is give you thirty quid for the watch. Can’t say fairer than that.’
    ‘A fucking carpet?’
    In a fit of fury, Spicer grabbed Terry Biglow’s hair with his left hand and jerked him up, out of bed, and held him in front of his face, dangling him like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was surprised how light the man was. Then he slammed a rising punch under his chin as hard as he could, with his right hand. So hard it hurt like hell.
    Terry Biglow went limp. Spicer released him and he fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. He took a few steps forward and trampled out the cigarette that was burning. Then he looked around the squalid bedsit for anything that might be worth taking. But other than recovering the watch, there was nothing. Nothing at all. There really wasn’t.
    Lugging the heavy suitcase under one arm, and his holdall containing all his basics, he let himself out of the door, hesitating for one moment, in which he turned back to the crumpled heap.
    ‘See you at your funeral, mate.’
    He closed the door behind him, then climbed the stairs and went out into the freezing, blustery Brighton Friday morning.

34
    Friday 9 January
    For the second time in just over a week, the Sexual Offences Liaison Officer, DC Claire Westmore, was back at the Saturn Centre, the Sexual Assault Referral Centre attached to Crawley Hospital.
    She knew from experience that no two victims ever reacted the same way, and nor did their conditions remain static. One of the difficult tasks facing her right now was to keep abreast of the changing state of mind of the woman she was with. But while treating her sensitively and sympathetically, and trying to make her feel as safe as possible, she could not lose sight of the cruel fact that Roxy Pearce, like it or not, was a crime scene from whom every possible scrap of forensic evidence needed to be obtained.
    When that was completed, she would let the woman rest – safe here in this suite – and with the help of medication get some sleep. Tomorrow, when hopefully the woman would be in a better state, the interview process could start. For Roxy Pearce, as with most victims, that was likely to mean three gruelling days of reliving what had happened, with Westmore extracting from her a harrowing narrative that would eventually fill thirty pages of her A4 notebook.
    At this moment she was going through the most distressing part of all for the victim – and for herself. They were alone with a female Forensic Medical Examiner, or FME, as Police Surgeons were now called, in the sterile Forensic Room. Roxy Pearce was wearing only the white towelling dressing gown and pink slippers in which she had travelled here. She’d had a blanket wrapped around her for warmth in the police car, but now that had been removed. She sat, hunched and silent and forlorn, on the blue examining couch, her head bowed, eyes staring blankly at nothing, her long black hair matted and partially obscuring her face. From being hyper-talkative when the police had first arrived at her house, she had now become almost catatonic.
    Claire Westmore had heard victims say that being raped was like having their souls murdered. Just as with murder, there was no going back. No amount of therapy would restore Roxy Pearce to the person she had previously been. Yes, in time she would recover a little, enough to function, to live a seemingly normal life. But it would be a life constantly stalked by the shadow of fear. A life in which she would find it hard ever to trust anyone or any situation.
    ‘You’re safe here, Roxy,’ Claire said to her with a bright smile. ‘You’re in the safest possible place. He can’t get to you here.’
    She smiled again. But there was no response. It was like talking to a waxwork.
    ‘Your friend Amanda is here,’ she went on. ‘She just went out for a ciggie. She’s going to stay with you all day.’ Again she smiled.
    Again the blank expression. The dead eyes. Blank. As blank as everything in here around her. As blank and numb as her insides.
    Roxy Pearce’s eyes registered the magnolia-coloured walls of the small room. Recently painted. The round, institutional clock showing the time as 12.35. A rack of boxes containing blue latex gloves.