Deadly Cry (DI Kim Stone #13) - Angela Marsons Page 0,19
of Colleen Stan, who was abducted by a husband and wife, Cameron and Janice Hooker, while hitch-hiking in 1977. The woman had been kept as a domestic/sex slave in a box beneath the couple’s bed for seven years and did not attempt to escape. When freed by Janice, Colleen remained silent about the abuse, as requested by her captors.
But any case of Stockholm syndrome that Stacey knew of involved the victim spending time with their captor, and the attachment growing over a period of years, months, even weeks. She’d never heard of it with a rape victim.
She put the thoughts aside as a constable appeared at the door.
‘First statements will be up in a couple of hours,’ he said, throwing the post on the spare desk.
‘Cheers, John,’ she said as he went out of view.
She typed up an email to Katrina’s doctor and hit the send button. Gone were the days she could get medical information over the phone.
Okay, jobs done, she reached for the file of Lesley Skipton, and yet what she really wanted was the file of Gemma Hornley. That hadn’t been sent to her, as the case was solved and Sean Fellows was doing the time.
She searched for the case electronically. If Sean Fellows had raped both of them, why hadn’t his first victim had similar feelings to Lesley?
She read through the initial statement given by Gemma on the night of the attack.
She had been leaving a pub in Hagley, again with only a short walk home. Just like Lesley, she’d been hit on the back of the head, rendered unconscious and dragged into someone’s property. She’d regained consciousness to find her head being held into the dirt by a hand and a foreign object being inserted savagely into her vagina.
Stacey skipped forward to the medical report which bore out Gemma’s description. The bruising and cuts to her vagina and thighs had indeed been the result of a brutal attack.
There had been no words spoken, just like Lesley’s attack, but there was one significant difference. After the sexual assault, Sean Fellows had taken a knife and cut into the flesh of Gemma’s buttock. The wound was only an inch or so, made up of a few small cut marks. Why had Sean Fellows not done the same to Lesley?
The more she read about Gemma’s attack, the more confused she became. The cases were so similar yet different.
Sean Fellows had been identified by Gemma Hornley herself. She’d had sex with him earlier in the evening in the club toilet. He’d approached her as she was leaving, asking for a repeat performance. She’d refused, and he’d got angry. CCTV had shown a heated argument between them, Gemma storming off, and him heading away in the same direction.
Gemma had been convinced it was him, so had the police and so had the jury.
Stacey suddenly had a ridiculous thought that Brierley Hill didn’t even appear to have considered: what if Sean Fellows wasn’t responsible for the attack on Lesley Skipton? What if they’d been chasing the wrong man for it all along?
Stacey knew she needed to talk to Gemma, his first victim. Having already spoken to Lesley, she would then be in a position to compare the attacks on both women.
She reminded herself that Gemma was a solved case and that Brierley Hill wouldn’t be thrilled to have her sniffing round, asking questions of one of their victims.
But whether it made her popular or not, it was something she was just going to have to do.
Nineteen
‘There she is,’ Kim said, stabbing the screen with her finger.
The store detective at the Shop N Save had kindly burned the relevant CCTV footage to disc, which they were viewing right now.
They watched as Katrina Nock and her child entered the store. Mia immediately began pulling at her mother’s hand to go in the direction of the toys located at the back of the shop. Katrina appeared to protest for just a few seconds as she looked towards the card stand located at the entrance, but then gave in and followed her daughter out of camera shot.
The CCTV operator had had no cause to follow them on camera, so they disappeared from view within seconds.
The screen went blank as the computer jumped to the next snatch of footage on the disc. This was a visual of both mother and daughter looking around the toys in the background of the main shot. The camera was focused on a teenage male wearing a hoody and loose jeans.