Lisa contemplated her for a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t. As you might have guessed, it’s something else that doesn’t reflect too well on me.’
‘You’re too hard on yourself.’
‘Hear me out first.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I lied to you when I told you I didn’t find the boy who did it. Is that what you suspected?’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Winsome. ‘You did seem to brush over that part of the story rather too quickly. I’d like to know the full story. Unless you murdered him and dumped his body in the River Aire, of course. Then you might be better off keeping your own counsel.’
‘It wasn’t anything like that. Mick, one of the blokes who was with us at the concert that night, knew him. His name was Rob, and he was up from Bradford, as I said. I made out to Mick that I was interested in Rob, you know, said a few flattering things, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. Mick told me. This would have been about a week after it happened, before I knew I was pregnant. Not that it would have made any difference.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I went to Bradford and located him. It wasn’t hard. He was a student at the uni there, and he lived in a bedsit on one of those streets off Great Horton Road, opposite the main campus.’
‘What happened when you found him?’
‘I watched him. I got a bed and breakfast nearby, and I watched him. I must have spent hours waiting for him to set off to classes. I followed him, watched where he went, who he talked to, what he did. The student pub at night, pictures with a girl, all that sort of thing. And do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘The thing that surprised me most, even in the fragile and angry state that I was in, was just how fucking ordinary he was, how he’d done something momentous and horribly destructive to me, yet he just went about his life chatting, laughing, watching movies, going to classes, as if nothing had ever happened. I mean, I expected a monster, right? Remember, all I really knew was what had been done to me, and I wasn’t even certain about that. But the more I watched him, the more ordinary I saw he was.’
‘What had you been planning to do?’
‘Planning? I don’t know. I assumed something would occur to me, when the time came.’
‘And did it?’
‘I suppose so, but hardly what I expected. I thought I might even kill him at one time, or at least chop his balls off and shove them down his throat. You know, stick a dildo up his arse and tattoo I AM A RAPIST PIG or something on his chest. But I’m not Lisbeth Salander. Sorry if I’m shocking you. Do you know that book?’
‘I’ve seen the film,’ said Winsome. ‘The one with Daniel Craig.’ She remembered how much it had made her squirm. She certainly wouldn’t go and see any of the others in the trilogy, or read them.
‘It was mostly him being so ordinary that got to me. I had a knife with me. Is that illegal?’
‘Probably.’
‘But I never used it. I was just going to knock on his door one night, force him at knifepoint to take me up to his flat, then do all that stuff to him.’
Winsome wiped her hands on a crisp linen serviette. ‘Few people could really do that, Lisa. You do realise that, don’t you? Most of us aren’t violent by nature; we shy away from it. I gather you changed your mind?’
‘It didn’t seem like that. I mean, I was improvising. Not even sure my mind was made up. I can only say that with hindsight, you know, that I wanted to hurt him the same way he’d hurt me. An eye for an eye. Maybe I watched him for too long. Maybe it was like that Stockholm syndrome thing, and I became too fond of him. I don’t think so, but you know what I mean. I spent so long watching him that he became human and ordinary, no longer a rapist monster.’
‘Lisa, you should have gone to the police.’
She showed a flash of anger. ‘Yes? And what would he have said? He’d have denied it, that’s what, then he might have beaten me up or something, and got away with that, too. And what proof did I have? His word against mine. What do you think you would have done if I’d walked into your office and told you what I’m telling you now?’
‘Calm down,’ said Winsome. ‘I’m sorry. I know we seem... ineffective... sometimes, but our hands are tied. All I’m saying is we would have tried. I would have tried.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, anyway. I don’t think I could have stood up in court and gone through it all, with the prosecution making out I was a slut and that I asked for it and all that.’
‘It might not have been that way.’
‘Tell me about it.’
They sat silently for a while. Winsome had lost her appetite, and she left the remains of the lunch. Lisa didn’t seem interested in eating any more, either. The waiter asked their permission and cleared away the mess. Lisa ordered another Stella. Winsome could see how hard this was for her, and felt for her. She determined to make no more judgements, no more comments about what she thought Lisa ought to have done. ‘I’m sorry, Lisa. I just have a copper’s nature, that’s all. I know where you’re coming from, believe me. I know why you didn’t report it. Most victims don’t, and that just makes our job a million times harder. But I don’t blame you. I do want to know what you actually did.’
Lisa studied her and nodded. ‘After about a week in Bradford, watching him and following him, plotting in my imagination in bed at night what I was going to do to him, I finally approached him. It was in a square, by the university. He was by himself, but there were plenty of people around. I went up to him and called him by his name. At first, I could tell he didn’t recognise me, then it dawned on him. I could sense it, that he was getting ready to scarper. “Before you run away,” I said, “I just want you to know that I know you drugged me and raped me, and it was a cowardly, cruel and vicious thing to do, and I hope you rot in hell for it.” It wasn’t as effective as it might have been because I was scared and angry and I had a hell of a job holding back the tears.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He turned pale, then he just started shaking his head in horror and backing away, Finally, he turned tail and ran.’
‘And you?’
‘I went back to Eastvale and got pissed. I bottled it. Don’t you see? I had my chance, and I bottled it.’
The allotments were bordered on one side by a railway line on a raised embankment beside a canal, and on the other three by an old estate of weathered redbrick terraces and semis. Though it had originally been a council estate, most of the houses, at least the best of them, had been privately owned since Thatcher put them up for grabs in 1980. Whether Joe Jarvis believed in private property and owned one, Banks didn’t know. He probably thought it made more sense than the local council owning it.
As Banks approached via a ginnel between the ends of two terraces, a diesel train rattled along the railway track. Banks could see the passengers looking up from their newspapers and books as they passed by. He saw the little parcels of land in front of him and noticed that most of them were waterlogged. Here, on their small patches of earth, the locals grew root vegetables, the occasional herb bush, even tomatoes and marrows, but there were none in sight at the moment. Nothing seemed to be growing. The place seemed blighted and barren, as if suffering the effects of some biblical curse. Rain was all well and good for growing things, Banks thought, but not this deluge. Surely Noah was somewhere around shepherding pairs of animals on to his ark. Still, Banks thought as he followed the path Mrs Jarvis had said would take him to her husband’s allotment, it wasn’t raining today, and for small mercies like that he must be grateful.