The Kill Call

none that she could remember, and certainly none had come forward at the time. There had been plenty of appeals, of course. Lots of trawling from house to house in the area, hours spent stopping cars that used the nearby roads, and talking to motorists, lots of effort put into leaning on informants who might have heard a murmur on the streets. All to no avail. It was an offence with no witnesses other than the perpetrators and the victim.
    Apart from her own statement, the only evidence she had of the attack were bruises and abrasions. And those faded with time, leaving only the crime-scene photographer’s prints to pass around a jury. As for the psychological scars … well, they didn’t show up too well in court.
    ‘Do I get to find out who the member of the public is?’
    Blake pursed his lips. ‘Sorry. They’re on witness protection. You know how this works, Diane.’
    ‘Yes. They’re putting themselves at serious risk to testify. You must have done some pretty smooth talking, sir.’
    ‘You know, I don’t like to hear you call me “sir”, Diane. It was always “Gareth”, wasn’t it?’
    ‘It was, but …’
    Fry stopped, realizing that she didn’t quite know how to put into words what she was feeling at this moment. Blake was trying to be friendly, of course. But his insistence on his first name was the way he would talk to a nervous defendant he wanted to put at ease.
    It was a clear signal that their relationship wasn’t going to be a professional one. They weren’t to be considered a DS and a DI working together, no longer colleagues who could safely share information fully with each other. From this moment, from the second she called him ‘Gareth’, she wouldn’t be a police officer any more. She’d be the victim.
    Now Blake changed tack, thinking that she was on side. Hit her with the bad news.
    ‘I’m afraid the conviction rate in rape cases is still very low in this country.’
    ‘Yes, I know that.’
    Blake tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘Of course you do. And I’m sure you’re aware, too, that there’s a lot of pressure to improve conviction rates.’
    ‘Absolutely. The inference from the poor figures being that the police don’t take rape allegations seriously enough.’
    ‘Well, that’s a perception the public might take away from the statistics. We know it isn’t true, though, don’t we? Generally speaking. There are lots of other factors that make convictions difficult to achieve, especially in cases where the defendant is known to the victim.’
    ‘Like the fact that it’s impossible to provide objective evidence on whether consent was given.’
    ‘Exactly. It always comes down to one person’s word against another. And juries don’t like that. They want to be presented with evidence. We’re handicapped by those old-fashioned notions of people being innocent until proven guilty, and having to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. When it’s just a question of “ he says, she says ”, there’s always going to be room for reasonable doubt. It would take a piss-poor barrister not to ram that point firmly into the heads of a jury.’
    ‘Or a defendant who’s not very convincing on the stand?’
    Blake smiled. ‘Ah, yes. There are some people who just look so guilty that jurors will convict them whatever the evidence. But that’s the chance you take in a jury system, isn’t it?’
    ‘Have you lost many convictions turned over as unsound?’
    ‘Through prejudiced juries?’

    ‘Yes.’
    ‘One or two. The information age is a killer.’
    The information age. Fry knew what he meant. For many decades, newspapers had been subject to restrictions on what they could publish during a trial without being guilty of contempt of court and prejudicing a jury. But the internet had changed all that. There were archives of news stories from the time of an offence being committed, or from a suspect’s arrest, which could be accessed at the click of a key. For many jurors, it was too much of a temptation not to do a bit of research for themselves. The Court of Appeal had quashed convictions as unsound on those grounds alone. Too much information. A real twenty-first-century curse.
    She realized that everyone in the room was looking at her again. Had she been asked a question? She would be a hopeless witness on the stand if her attention wandered from the question so easily.
    ‘So what do you say, Diane?’ asked Blake.
    ‘I need time.’
    ‘Of course. All