“Took what?”
“...took my mind off... off... ”
“The grief. Of course. I mean as well as getting fit, you had to get sponsors. How much did the charity ask you to raise?”
“Three hundred and fifty.”
“Obviously you managed it.”
“Over two thousand.” Spoken flatly, without a shred of self-congratulation, but at least a few more words had come and she’d lifted her head enough for her face to be visible.
“Awesome,” Ingeborg said.
Diamond was in awe himself, at a loss to understand how this painfully shy young woman had raised such a sum. In the past he’d been asked by friends and people at work to pledge small amounts for personal challenges they were taking on for charity, some seriously demanding and some quite silly. He always paid up regardless. It was bound to be a good cause and you don’t turn your back on somebody you know. But how many friends did Belinda have? Even if he was wrong and she had hundreds, he couldn’t imagine her asking anyone to sign up.
The mystery was cleared up in her next utterance. “Crowdfunding.”
Ingeborg smiled and said, “Of course. The internet is your job. You know how to get yourself a page on JustGiving and reach out to people you don’t even know. But two thousand plus is still a marvellous sum.”
“A burden.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“The responsibility.”
“I understand. All those pledges mounting up and the sponsors trusting you to finish the race.”
“Which I didn’t.”
“You pulled out halfway through. What happened, Belinda?”
She shook her head more emphatically and there was a real danger she would go silent again.
Ingeborg was quick to say, “You’ll feel better for explaining. Don’t internalise it. I’ll bet anything you were fit enough to run. You did the training, didn’t you?”
“Mm.”
“I’m trying not to put words in your mouth. You must tell us what went wrong.”
Belinda clearly sensed that she was being edged towards sharing more than she intended.
“You know why it’s so important to us,” Ingeborg added. “I already explained and I think you understand.”
Belinda raised her face and she was frowning as if, in fact, she didn’t understand. Then apparently a new thought dawned and the frown turned to a look of shock and then horror. “Did he find someone else?”
“Who are we talking about here?”
“The man I escaped from.”
A suggestion that hadn’t yet occurred to Diamond. He’d been fixated on Belinda’s story to the exclusion of everything else, even the mortifying mistake he’d made about the body in the quarry. He couldn’t duck the fact that he’d forced his idiotic hallucination on his entire team. Or could he? Was she right to suggest Pinto may have attacked another woman? Was there a body down there after all?
He wanted to pursue this, but he could see that anything he said would destroy the delicate rapport Ingeborg was trying so hard to create. He was torn, feeling uncomfortable staying in the room and possibly inhibiting Belinda from speaking frankly, but needing to hear every word she said. Her story was inextricably linked to his own survival as a senior police officer.
“We don’t know anything for certain,” Ingeborg said, “but you can help by telling us your experience.”
“There was someone else, wasn’t there?” she said, still wide-eyed. “You’re not telling me everything.”
“I could say the same about you, Belinda.”
“He terrified me. He was vile. I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
“Deal with what?”
“Comments about my body, suggestions, touching — trying to make it seem accidental.”
“This was during the race?”
“Right from the start, when we were bunched in the pen.”
“He touched you?”
“My bottom, more than once. The second time his whole hand was groping, clutching.” The thought that another woman might have suffered the same and worse had broken the shackles of Belinda’s shyness.
“That’s sexual assault. What did you do — tell him to stop?”
“I was embarrassed.”
“Anyone would be, but he had to be told.”
“I turned my head and couldn’t see him properly. He said, ‘Oops,’ or something as if it was accidental, but I knew it wasn’t. I tried to move away and couldn’t. We were packed in, starting to step forward and people were touching each other accidentally, but this was deliberate.”
Animated by anger, she was speaking with absolute freedom now, vividly revisiting the incident. “I just wanted to get away from him, but when we crossed the start line and started to run, he stayed close behind. You know how you can sense someone’s presence? I went faster, quicker than I wanted to run the race, overtaking other runners, and he kept up, and soon he started saying things.”
“Chatting you up?”
“Trying to. About what a good mover I was and how he liked my action and crude stuff like that. I didn’t know how to get rid of him. He started asking my name.”
“Did he tell you his own?”
“If he did, I didn’t hear it. I was in a bad state.”
“Understandably. Can you describe him?”
“I tried to blank him out. I deliberately didn’t look at his face. All I can tell you is he had a blue headband, yellow top and blue shorts. And he was a lot older than I am.”
Diamond hadn’t any doubt that the groper was Pinto, so the colours of the running kit came as no surprise.
“How long did this pestering go on?” Ingeborg asked.
“All through the first part of the race. Through Sydney Gardens and Bathampton and a long stretch beside the canal. It’s a beautiful part of the course and I’d been expecting to enjoy it, but it’s just a blur. My mind was totally taken up with that horrible man and what I could do to get rid of him. Running faster wasn’t doing any good.”
“He stayed with you all this time?”
“There were a few times when he seemed to go away but never for long. I’d sense him close behind me and the remarks would start up again. Was that a sports bra I was wearing and wasn’t it uncomfortable with so much crammed into it? I was almost in tears. We came to a feeding station and I felt his hand on my back and he said he’d pick up extra water to share with me. I kept telling myself not to speak to him because it would only encourage him, but I blurted out, ‘Leave me alone,’ which he ignored, of course.”
“Weren’t there marshals to complain to?”
“Yes, but what was I going to say? ‘This man is pestering me, and will you please ask him to stop?’ Other women know how to deal with men who come onto them. I’m different. I can handle most problems, but not that.”
“You’re not alone,” Ingeborg said. “It’s difficult for us all.”
“I’m not used to it. I don’t go on dates, don’t go out much at all. My parents divorced when I was four — I was their only child — and my father went to live in Spain, so men are outside my experience. What were you asking? About why I didn’t report this man for pestering me? It’s against my nature to share private things with other people. You can see the effort it’s been telling you what happened.”
“You’re doing okay.”
Doing remarkably well, Diamond thought. Partly this was thanks to Ingeborg’s sympathetic questioning, but mainly the outrage that had needed to be expressed.
“Now I’ve started, it’s easier. I want to relate to other people more and I know I should force myself, but it’s not easy. Anyway, as we went under the Dundas Aqueduct and headed towards Monkton Combe I was already dreading what was to come.”
“The Combe Down tunnel?”
“Yes. I know what it’s like. I’d been in there once on a training run. It should be a fun part of the race, a change of atmosphere. There are lights at intervals and a nice breeze runs through it, but it’s narrow and of course when you’re inside you have to keep going for a mile. There’s no escape. I was already heavy-legged from running faster than I should have done and a mile seemed a very long way.”