Dead Simple

long ago, when traumatized rape victims had to walk through a police station and frequently be interviewed by cynical male officers. All that had now changed and this centre was the latest development.
    Here the victims, who were in a deeply vulnerable state, would be seen by trained same-sex officers and psychologists – professionals who would do their very best to comfort them and put them at their ease, while at the same time having to go through the brutal task of establishing the truth.
    One of the hardest things facing Sexual Offences Liaison Officers was the fact that the victims actually had to be treated as crime scenes themselves, their clothes and their bodies potentially containing vital trace evidence. Time, as in all investigations, was crucial. Many rape victims took days, weeks or even years before they went to the police, and many never reported their attacks ever, not wanting to relive their most tormented experience.
    *
    Branson and Grace hurried past a black wheelie bin, then a row of traffic cones incongruously stacked there, and reached the door. Grace pressed the bell and moments later the door was opened. They were ushered in, and out of the elements, by a woman staff member he knew, but whose name he had momentarily forgotten.
    ‘Happy New Year, Roy!’ she said.
    ‘You too!’
    He saw her looking at Glenn and desperately racked his brains for her name. Then it came to him!
    ‘Glenn, this is Brenda Keys – Brenda, this is DS Glenn Branson, one of my colleagues in the Major Crime Branch.’
    ‘Nice to meet you, Detective Sergeant,’ she said.
    Brenda Keys was a trained interviewer who had processed victims in Brighton and other parts of the county before this facility was established. A kind, intelligent-looking woman with short brown hair and large glasses, she was always dressed quietly and conservatively, as she was today, in her black slacks and a grey V-neck over a blouse.
    You could tell you were inside one of the modern generation of interview suites with your eyes shut, Grace thought. They all smelt of new carpets and fresh paint and had a deadened, soundproofed atmosphere.
    This one was a labyrinth of rooms behind closed pine doors, with a central reception area carpeted in beige. The cream-painted walls were hung with framed, brightly coloured and artily photographed prints of familiar Sussex scenes – beach huts on the Hove promenade, the Jack and Jill windmills at Clayton, Brighton Pier. It all felt well intentioned, but as if someone had tried just a bit too hard to distance the victims who came here from the horrors they had experienced.
    They signed themselves in and Brenda Keys brought them up to speed. As she did so, a door opened along the corridor and a heavily built female uniformed constable with spikes of short black hair rising from her head, as if she had stuck her fingers into an electrical socket, ambled towards them with a genial smile
    ‘Constable Rowland, sir,’ she said. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace?’
    ‘Yes – and this is DS Branson.’
    ‘They’re in Interview One – only just started. The SOLO, DC Westmore, is talking to the victim and DS Robertson’s observing. Would you like to go into the observation room?’
    ‘Is there room for us both?’
    ‘I’ll put another chair in. Can I get you anything to drink?
    ‘I’d murder a coffee,’ Grace said. ‘Muddy, no sugar.’
    Branson asked for a Diet Coke.
    They followed the constable down the corridor, past doors marked Medical Examination Room , Meeting Room , then Interview Room .
    A short distance along she opened another door with no sign on it and they went in. The observation room was a small space, with a narrow white worktop on which sat a row of computers. A flat-screen monitor was fixed to the wall, displaying the CCTV feed from the adjoining interview room. The Detective Sergeant who had first attended at the Metropole Hotel, a boyish-looking man in his late twenties with a shaven fuzz of fair hair, was seated at the desk, an open notebook in front of him and a bottle of water with the cap removed. He was wearing an ill-fitting grey suit and a purple tie with a massive knot, and he had the clammy pallor of a man fighting a massive hangover.
    Grace introduced himself and Glenn, then they sat down, Grace on a hard secretarial swivel chair which the Constable had wheeled in.
    The screen gave a static view of a small, windowless room furnished with a blue settee, a blue armchair