I swallowed. Oh yes, they had indeed.
There hadn't been anything in the papers to start with, of course. The army don't tend to wash their dirty linen in public if they can help it. Once I'd made the foolish mistake of bringing a civil action, though, then they really let rip.
To begin with, the headlines had just been sensational. Girl soldier gang-raped by fellow squaddies. As if the ordeal itself hadn't been enough to live through, I'd then had to face the vindictive clutches of the media. At first they'd overflowed with fake sympathy. My story should be told, they said. Make it a lesson that others could learn from. Stop it happening to some other poor girl.
Then, God knows how, some particular ferreting had brought out my relationship with Sean. Oh, he wasn't married, or anything like that. That would have been too straightforward. Instead, he was one of my training instructors, and that was a complete no-no as far as the top brass were concerned. Relieved to have so easy a get-out presented to them on a plate, the full might of the army had swung against me. I never stood a chance.
As for the press, in the space of a print-run I was transformed from an innocent victim into an immoral slut. If I was prepared to screw one soldier, why not a whole bunch of them? Maybe, they reasoned, the men's claims that I'd been a willing participant weren't so far-fetched?
My parents' house had been besieged. We had reporters and photographers creeping through the garden for weeks. By the time of the civil case, the twisted facts and outrageous stories they'd printed had hopelessly biased any chance of my getting a fair hearing. The media went into a frenzy over the Not Guilty verdict against my attackers. By the time they'd finished with it, it was me who was as guilty as hell.
“It must have been quite a shock that your mother refused to support your appeal,” MacMillan said now. “Especially with her being a magistrate herself.”
“She's a great believer in the criminal justice system in this country,” I said through gritted teeth. So great a believer that she'd refused to acknowledge the possibility that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. She'd shut her mind to it. And shut me out. It had been the final nail in my coffin.
The Superintendent made no comment as he came to his feet. He'd obviously gone over the reports from the time, and the scepticism was plain on his face. I'd been pilloried as a cold-blooded liar in a court of law. Why on earth should he take my word as gospel now?
“I don't suppose,” he said, although clearly not holding out much hope, “that you do have any idea of who might be behind these attacks?”
I wasn't sure whether to be surprised that he'd bothered to ask my opinion, or insulted, but I remembered Joy, and gave it thought. “There's always Angelo – one of the doormen from the New Adelphi,” I suggested. “The girl who found Joy yesterday, Victoria, she's his girlfriend. He'd beaten her up pretty badly, and I'd say he probably enjoyed doing it.” When MacMillan didn't respond, I added, “And he could have picked both Susie and Joy when they were at the club.”
“That would be Angelo Zachary, would it?”
I nodded.
“We've already interviewed Mr Zachary after the death of Miss Hollins,” he said. “He had an alibi from the bar manager, Gary Bignold from the time Miss Hollins was ejected from the club, to well past the time we believe she was killed.”
If it had been Len who'd vouched for Angelo, I would have suspected it, but Gary had no special allegiances as far as I could tell. I shrugged. “I can't help you, then.”
He moved to the front door, paused on the threshold. “Not very loyal to your colleagues are you, Charlie?”
I just glared at him, and he sighed, reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket. He produced a rather plain-looking business card, enlivened only by the colouring of the Lancashire Police crest. “If you do have any further contact with this man,” he instructed, “call me.”
I took the card. It gave me a good reason to unclench my hands. “Will you let me know – if you make any progress?” I asked.
He nodded. “Of course.” There was a pause, then he said, “You’re not quite what I was expecting, Charlie.” He cocked his head on one side.
“Maybe I just don’t scare easily,” I said. But I was more scared than I would like to admit. Not to the Superintendent, and not to myself, either.
It was a nasty, insidious kind of fear, that eats away at you from the inside out, twists your guts into knots, beads sweat on your upper lip.
You only have to relax your guard for a second and it’s away and running, like a bolting horse. I concentrated on keeping a tight rein on mine.
MacMillan showed himself out, and I watched from the window as he climbed into a big dull-coloured Rover saloon parked next to the far kerb. Just before he drove away he glanced up and looked directly at me. It was too late to pull back without making it appear more suspicious, but the whole encounter left me feeling restless and uneasy.
***
It didn’t start out badly, the Special Forces course. I wasn’t training for the full-blown SAS, which is everybody’s first assumption. There are still no women allowed there, but that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of other opportunities in the lesser-known covert units. Ones where females had proven far more effective at undercover surveillance work.
And I’d been good enough. Without conceit, I knew it.
The trouble had come when the others realised it, too.
To begin with, Sergeant Meyer kept his promise to push us all hard – harder than we’d ever experienced. By the time the course was halfway through, almost fifty percent of the trainees had chosen to go outside the wire and not return.
But after a while it seemed he was on my case far more than the others. I couldn’t turn around without encountering that brooding scrutiny. I refused to let it intimidate me, used it to drive myself to greater heights and plunder deeper internal resources than I’d ever known I possessed.
Looking back, the turning point was my ability to shoot. I was pretty good with a long gun, but when it came to pistol it was a whole different ball game. Even the range instructors couldn’t quite get their heads around the fact it soon emerged I could take the bull’s-eye out of a target with a 9mm handgun at the limit of the thirty-metre range. At first, they treated it almost as a joke, and then the prospect of using me as their secret weapon at the next Skill-At-Arms meeting went from canteen banter to an actual plan.
They started to coach me outside the confines of the normal training program. It wasn’t long before Sean Meyer got involved. He’d been teaching us unarmed combat and tactics, and the first time he turned up on the range to watch me practice, he made me so nervous my hands shook loading rounds into the magazine.
“Charlie, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, Sar’nt.”
“Relax, soldier, or the only thing you’re going to hit tonight is the sand berm at the back of the range.”
I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the task at hand, mumbled, “Yes, Sar’nt.”
I heard him sigh, saw him move towards me in my peripheral vision, and jerked my head up. Normally, the only time he came anywhere near me was to demonstrate a chokehold, strike or throw. And they always hurt, as they were designed to.
He saw my instinctive reaction and his mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. He reached across for one of the empty magazines and started threading in rounds, hands moving automatically through a ritual as familiar to him as a rosary. The action was companionable, almost friendly. Ironically, it only served to make me even more wary of him.