perils of a promise like that. Especially if this is a hate crime. Somer takes a deep breath and makes a decision.
‘Until we know who did this we won’t know why. If he did it because of your status, then we’ll have to charge him with that offence and it’ll be almost impossible to keep your name out of it entirely.’
Faith starts to shake her head but Somer plunges on. ‘But if he attacked you because you’re a beautiful girl – and you are – then that’s different. Either way, I promise you I will do everything I possibly can to protect your privacy.’
She reaches out for Faith’s hand, forces her to look up, to believe her. Their eyes meet and slowly the girl sits up a bit straighter and lifts her chin.
‘OK. What do you want to know?’ she says.
‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’ says Somer. ‘You had breakfast with your mum and sister then left for college? Let’s start from there.’
Faith takes a deep breath. ‘I left the house at 9.00 and walked down towards the bus stop on Cherwell Drive. That’s where it happened.’
‘Someone took you – abducted you? Is that what you’re saying?’
Her head drops and she nods.
‘It’s usually quite busy along there at that time of the day, isn’t it?’ says Ev. She makes it a question, hoping it sounds less confrontational like that, but there’s no getting away from the fact that Rydal Way is a rat run and no one reported any sort of incident along there that morning. The idea that a young girl could have been snatched off a busy cut-through in the middle of the rush hour and no one saw anything –
Faith looks up briefly. ‘It had just started raining. Really hard.’
Which could – just about – explain it. The road is suddenly awash, windows get steamed up, drivers concentrate more on where they’re going and less on what’s around them.
‘I’d stopped to get out my umbrella,’ says Faith. ‘I’d propped my bag up on a wall to look for it. That’s when it happened. Someone put a plastic bag over my head and started dragging me backwards. I tried to fight them off but they jabbed something in my back. Something sharp. I thought it was a knife.’
‘You didn’t see his face?’ asks Somer, keeping her voice steady. It’s her own personal wake-at-dawn terror. Not being able to breathe, not being able to see. ‘No one went past just before? No one was hanging around?’
‘I had my earphones in, so I wasn’t really concentrating.’
‘And then what happened?’
‘He started dragging me round the back towards the garages. I couldn’t see but I could tell – it’s all gravelly in there – it’s different to the pavement.’
‘The garages?’ asks Ev.
‘Yeah, you know, at the bottom of the road.’
And Ev does know, now she thinks about it. You hardly ever see that sort of thing any more, but Rydal Way has a separate area for garages just before the junction with Cherwell Drive. And now Faith’s story is starting to make more sense: if the attacker was lying in wait round there he wouldn’t have been visible from the street and it would have taken only a few seconds to bundle Faith out of sight.
‘And then he shoved me against the van and I heard him open the door.’
‘He had a van?’
Faith nods. ‘Oh yeah, he had a van.’
‘What happened next?’
‘He pushed me forward and I fell into the back. That’s when he tied up my hands.’
‘In front or behind your back?’ ‘In front.’
‘And you’re sure it was a van? It couldn’t have been an SUV? Some other sort of car that opens at the back?’
Faith shakes her head. ‘I never saw it but it was too low for an SUV. And it wasn’t that big. When we went round the corners I got thrown against the side. There was some sort of plastic on the floor – I could feel it sticking to me.’
Somer nods and makes a note. However traumatic it was to get to this point, now Faith has made up her mind she’s proving to be a surprisingly good witness. Accurate, observant, attentive to detail.
She’s playing with her necklace now; the one that bears her name.
‘Just now you said “they”,’ says Somer. ‘And then you said “he”. Is it possible there was more than one person?’
Faith shrugs. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure.’
‘But no one spoke to you – you never heard any voices?’
She