Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (57)

‘What did you do next?’ asked Vicky.

‘I closed the window. It was around 3am, and I was terrified he was going to come back… And I stayed there until it got light.’

‘Did you report it?’

‘I wasn’t going to. I waited until six, when it started to get light and I just wanted to leave there and run for it and get the train… I saw one of the girls as I was leaving. And she saw me and asked if everything was okay, and I told her… She was the one who persuaded me to go to the police. And I reported it.’

‘What happened after you reported it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I never heard from the police, or from anyone at GDA again. I didn’t get a place at the drama school. I didn’t want to go back. It was as if it never happened.’





37





‘Vicky was due to upload episode eighteen of her podcast last week, but she didn’t,’ said Erika when the recording had finished.

‘If it was an episode about a sex attacker, would we know about it? There could be something in the system, if this Becky Wayland reported it,’ said Peterson.

‘But we don’t have an exact date of when it happened,’ said Moss.

‘But we have a place. We need to find out how many houses GDA operates as student accommodation. She says on the tape that it was just near New Cross Gate station,’ said Erika. ‘Again, we need to find out where Vicky kept her notes.’

‘There are three more files,’ said Moss. She clicked on the third one. They heard Vicky clear her throat, and she spoke with a heightened dramatic intensity.

‘This is take one, introduction to act two of episode eighteen… With bulb lamp sound effect…’ She cleared her throat, and then affected a more serious tone of voice. ‘The three students I’ve spoken to all tell a similar tale. Whilst staying in ground floor rooms at student halls in and around New Cross Gate, they reported the radiator being broken and a sweltering room…’ There was a squeaking sound, of metal on metal, rhythmic. ‘The old-fashioned screwin bulbs were missing from the lights…’ The squeaking sound continued. ‘Had someone deliberately staged these rooms? Unscrewing the bulbs and setting the heating on high? I spoke to another woman…’ There was a pause and then they heard the flicking of pages in a notebook, and her voice went back to her normal tone. ‘Oh shit, what’s her name?’

Here the recording ended abruptly. Moss clicked on sound file number four. This was a second ‘take’ of the same and when they reached the same point where Vicky had cut off, she had the woman’s name as Kathleen Barber.

‘Kathleen managed to scare the man off before he could do anything… Another woman, Grace Leith, reported a man in her room, but he was scared off by Grace’s boyfriend coming back from the bathroom.’ At the end of the track there was a pop and a smash as the bulb broke. The sound file ended.

‘Three names,’ said Erika as Moss clicked on the final sound file. It was a recording of a phone call. The phone was ringing, slightly tinny, through the speakerphone. The phone was answered by a woman who announced that she worked for the GDA Student Welfare office. Vicky told the woman that her name was Becky Wayland, and that she was following up on an incident of attempted assault in their Jubilee Road student accommodation, which she had reported back in February 2014. There was a long silence on the end of the phone.

‘Sorry. Why are you calling?’ asked the woman, whose voice now seemed guarded.

‘You see, I reported this to the police, and the Student Welfare office at GDA, and this was four years ago. I heard nothing back…’ There was another long pause.

‘Do you have a crime number?’ the woman said finally.

‘No. I don’t, but I would hope that as this was a serious incident there would be something you could tell me.’

‘This would be a matter for the police, surely?’

‘Yes, but I was staying in the Jubilee Road building when someone broke into my room. There must be a record of this, and a police follow-up? I’ve got the other two names here. Kathleen Barber had a similar experience in the same building in January 2012, and Grace Leith in February 2012 in another student halls building in Hartwood Road near New Cross Gate station. Have you any other reports of incidents?’

The woman on the end of the phone now sounded very flustered.

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to get someone to call you back, and if you have a crime number I’d be better placed to direct your call…’ Vicky gave her numbers and the woman hung up.

‘Better placed to direct your call,’ said Vicky after it ended. ‘What am I? Someone who’s phoning up about the curtains she’s ordered?!’

The sound file ended abruptly.

‘We have dates,’ said Erika. ‘And two addresses of student halls.’

‘The light bulb thing is making me shudder,’ said Moss. ‘Imagine being somewhere where you can’t turn on the light.’

‘And in January and February it gets dark very early,’ said Peterson.

‘We need to run all of these through the system and see what happened to Becky Wayland’s police report,’ said Erika. ‘And see if there are any similar incidents logged – did Kathleen or Grace report what happened?’