Matter of Trust

It was Marsh who rang for the police, who explained what had happened, who refused to allow her to go into any of the other rooms until they arrived.

Once they did arrive Debra went through the house with them, shaking off the gentle hand Marsh placed on her arm, afraid of giving in to the compulsion she felt to simply let him take charge.

She had heard and read of the effect that having their homes broken into could have on people, and now she understood how they felt.

The sitting-room was full of feathers from her ripped sofa cushions. More slogans had been sprayed on the walls, words that not merely demeaned her personally as a woman but that demeaned her whole sex.

She saw the way the young policewoman winced as she read them.

Inwardly she was shaking, stunned and sickened by what had happened, not really able to take in the full horror of it.

In the kitchen all her cupboards had been emptied, foodstuffs and broken crockery all over the floor, but it was upstairs in her bedroom that the worst atrocities had been performed.

At first the police were reluctant to let her see in, glancing over her head at Marsh, but she pushed past them and then came to an abrupt halt at what she saw.

It wasn’t just that every drawer and cupboard had been opened and her clothes thrown all over the room, it wasn’t just the violence that was so frighteningly evident in the words sprayed over her walls; they weren’t so very much different from what was downstairs.

What transfixed her was the photograph pinned up over her bed, a photograph of a nude woman obviously torn from some semi-pornographic magazine, the photograph pinned to the wall with the knife that had been used to slash across the woman’s body.

Out of the corner of her eye Debra saw that the policeman was picking up her strewn underwear and that it too was ripped and torn.

This wasn’t just a robbery, Debra recognised sickly. It was an act of violence, of aggression ... against her personally. She looked back at the photograph over the bed and her gorge rose. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, shaking

with shock and fear.

It was well over an hour before the police left. It was Marsh who walked to the door with them, who told them that nothing would be touched, just as it had been Marsh who, when she was asked if there was anyone who might have a grudge against her, had grimly mentioned Kevin Riley’s name, something which would never have occurred to Debra.

She was standing in the kitchen when Marsh came back, just staring around, still unable to take in what had happened. The only thing that had actually touched her with any sense of reality was the knowledge that never, ever again could she live in this house; that never, ever again would she feel safe and secure here, that no amount of cleaning or redecorating would ever wipe from her memory the desecration she had seen.

‘Come on,’ Marsh said quietly, his hand on her arm as he guided her back into the hall.

She let him lead her, numbly following him out to his car and letting him settle her inside it without question or curiosity. She had no idea where he was taking her, nor did she really care. She was still in too great a state of shock, her eyes wide and staring as she fought against closing them and seeing again that violently abused photograph above her bed.

Kevin Riley. Could a boy of that age be capable of that kind of violence, that kind of sexual menace? She shuddered, suddenly knowing that he could. Tears filled her eyes and she started to shake.

Immediately Marsh reached out and touched her shoulder, in a gesture of understanding and comfort.

Now there was no room left in her to fear or resent her response to him, only a deep relief that he was there; that she wasn’t alone.

CHAPTER SIX

When Marsh stopped the car outside the house he was renting Debra looked uncertainly at him.

‘It’s almost half-past one,’ he told her calmly. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to disturb your parents so late. I’ve got a spare room, and the bed’s made up. You can sleep there tonight. I expect the police will want to see you again in the morning anyway, and I’ve given them my address and told them that you’d be staying with me.’

Debra felt too drained to argue. She still couldn’t fully accept what had happened.

Somewhere inside her a small panicky voice whispered that she couldn’t stay with Marsh, but she was too exhausted to listen to it.

Suddenly and wholly unexpectedly she craved sleep, or rather the escape that sleep would bring, and so she stood docilely while Marsh locked the car and then let him guide her up the path to the front door.

He still held her while he unlocked it, as though somehow he instinctively knew how much she needed the security and reassurance of that protective masculine touch.

It was only once she was inside the house with him that she started to panic, remembering that she had no change of clothes, no toothbrush, no personal possessions of any kind, and yet the thought of going back to what had once been her home, to search through the devastation and contamination for those things, made her stomach chum with nausea.

‘It’s this way,’ she heard Marsh saying quietly, the light touch of his hand on her arm guiding her towards the stairs.

She half stumbled on them, her body shaken by rigors she could not control. She heard Marsh curse, a muffled explosive sound that tensed her already strained muscles as her body recognised the male sound of aggression and reacted to it, terrifying vivid slashes of visual memories jagging through her brain: her bedroom, her clothes, that photograph.