“Thank you for coming in at this difficult time, Mrs Brock. We’re sorry for your loss. I’m DI Bagley. This is DC Adams.”
“I’m Linda Parry,” the large woman says, “Gaby’s sister-in-law, Carl’s sister.” She swallows hard.
Bagley ignores her. “I need to ask some questions about this morning. Are you up to it, Mrs Brock?”
Gaby Brock blinks her doe eyes.
Bagley seems to take this as a yes and presses on. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Gaby’s pale mouth remains closed for a moment, apparently still frozen by her ordeal. When she finally speaks, her voice is soft and pretty – like honey. It doesn’t seem right for a voice like that to come out of such a damaged face.
“We were asleep in bed,” she says. “Two men burst in and dragged us downstairs. One of them punched me in the face and I fell. The other grabbed my arms and pulled me up again.”
“Can you describe these men?”
She blinks again as if searching the images in her head for the faces of her attackers. “They were black,” she whispers eventually, “and big.”
“How old were they?”
This time her pause is so long that Linda Parry squeezes her shoulder and prompts, “Come on, Gaby, love. You can do it.”
I see Gaby wince. The shoulder squeeze must have hurt. It’s a stark reminder that, although the face pummelling is there for all to see, there are other injuries hidden under the forensic suit.
“Well, Mrs Brock? How old were your attackers? Teenagers? Twenties? Thirties? Older?” Impatience steals into Bagley’s voice.
Gaby’s hand tightens on the empty plastic cup. Somehow she’s managed to consume an entire outpouring from the interview suite coffee machine. The trauma must have affected her taste buds.
Gaby’s answer rolls out at the same hesitant pace as her previous ones. “They weren’t kids, but I don’t know how old.”
Bagley studies the woman’s face, weighing up her reliability as a witness. “What were they wearing?”
“I couldn’t see. It was dark.”
“You mean they didn’t turn the lights on?” she asks, more irritation creeping in.
How long ago did the DI attend the Dealing with the Traumatized Victim course, I wonder. Do they offer refreshers?
Gaby shakes her head slowly. “They shone torches in our faces. And I was too scared to look at them.”
“Did you see their hair? Was it long or short?”
“They wore hats. Woollen ones.”
“Balaclavas?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I couldn’t see. I’m not sure.”
“Did they say anything?”
Gaby Brock blinks again and her sweet voice cracks. “They told Carl to get a chair and chain me to it. One punched me on the shoulder and I fell back into the chair.”
Linda lets out a sigh and tightens her arm around Gaby. I turn away, not wanting to see Gaby Brock flinch again.
DI Bagley ignores Linda once more. “Did you notice any kind of an accent?”
There’s another pause as Gaby considers her answer. “I think one was local and one was sort of West Indian.”
“And they brought the chains with them?”
Gaby’s body tenses as if reliving the memory. “They brought metal chains and handcuffs. They made Carl tighten the chains around me and handcuff my arms to the chair. They gave him the keys and told him to put them in my pocket.” She taps her chest to indicate the spot where her pyjama pocket had been. “Then they took Carl away.” Her words are faint and slow.
Her eyes are watery, empty. Victim’s eyes. Victim … Still living, still breathing but a victim nonetheless … No one could know how that felt except another victim … The hairs on my arms bristle but I won’t go there. I concentrate on the interview.
A thought comes to me but I’m not sure of my role. Does Bagley want me to remain the silent trainee or should I take part in the interview?
“Did they say anything else?” Bagley asks.
Gaby Brock takes a deep breath. “They said to Carl, ‘You need a lesson of your own, teacher’.”
“He was an English teacher at Swan Academy and a damned good one,” Linda explains. She pats Gaby’s hand. “Everyone liked him, even the kids.”
I think of the literature textbooks on the Brocks’ bookcase.
“And the kidnappers definitely called him ‘teacher’?” Bagley asks.
Gaby lowers her head, too weary even to nod. My heart races. Dare I ask my question?
“Would you recognize the men again?” Bagley continues.
“Maybe but – I don’t know – it was dark. The torchlight in my face … I couldn’t see …”
As the woman’s voice tails off, I expect Bagley to fill the silence. When she doesn’t, my question pops out.
“How did your husband cut his hand and get the bruising? Was it during the assault?”
Bagley’s jaw tightens at my interruption but she looks at Gaby Brock, waiting for the answer.
“His hand?” Gaby’s eyes glaze over and she seems to retreat into her private thoughts. “I don’t know. I don’t think he tried to fight them off. How could he? He might have done something to his hand at school, but it hardly matters now that he’s …” Gaby shakes her head. Her right cheek is black, and a purple blotch, visible through her thin fringe, spreads from her left temple across her forehead into her hairline.
Bagley lets out a small, defeated sigh. “That’s all we’re going to ask you at the moment. I want you to look through some images later to see if we can identify your attackers but for now you can leave the station. Where can we find you?”
“She’s staying with me,” Linda says. “I’m not having her go back to that house.”
“Good. I can’t let you go home anyway, Mrs Brock. It’s a crime scene. We’ll be doing an appeal to the public, so it would help if we had a recent photo of your husband. If you tell me where to look, I’ll send an officer into your house to get one.”
“Photo,” Gaby echoes as if she’s never heard the word before. I cast my mind over the barren walls and tables of the Brocks’ lounge. Photography does seem to have been an alien concept to the couple.
Linda Parry comes to her sister-in-law’s rescue, offering to provide something from one of her own family photo albums. DI Bagley closes the interview with a cursory “thank you” and stands up.
I follow her to the door and look back at the two women. “Goodbye,” I say. “It was nice to meet … I’m sorry for … Goodbye.”
DI Bagley speeds along the corridor. “I want you to join DS Matthews in Forensics. See what they’ve got so far. Good question, by the way, well done, but no need to be overfamiliar with the witnesses. This is a murder inquiry.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” I say to the back of the gingham skirt as it disappears through the door at the end of the corridor. I can’t help grinning to myself. I’ve asked my first question in CID and, despite it coming out in a gabble, the inspector was impressed. Not that the answer told us anything. The cut hand is still a mystery. Dr Spicer has already said there’s no other sign of a struggle, so Gaby’s vague suggestion