Errors of Judgment(116)

Twenty-five euros persuaded the bar manager to produce from the kitchen some bread and fruit, and a hunk of brie, and they sat in the silence of the bar with a glass of wine each, and ate a late supper.

‘So, what made you run all the way down here?’ said Leo. ‘Why were you so terrified of the police being called?’

Gabrielle had taken off her coat, and in her sweatshirt, jeans and trainers, with her hair tied back, she looked very young and vulnerable. ‘OK, I’ll tell you the whole thing. I should probably have told Anthony, but I was too – well, I was a bit high.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d taken some coke.’ She glanced at Leo’s face. ‘I know. Don’t look like that. It was just there.’

‘Well, for an aspiring barrister, it was a remarkably dumb thing to do. Potentially career-ending. That can’t be the reason why you hopped on a flight to France, though.’

‘No. But when you wrap it up with everything else that happened …’ She sighed and pushed her plate away. ‘You see, one of the Russian girls, Dina, had gone into the bedroom because she was a bit drunk and wanted to lie down. Well, I only know that now. I wasn’t aware then. And one of the Saudi guys went in after her. I wasn’t aware of that, either. The first time I realised there was anyone in the bedroom was when I went into the bathroom, which was in between the bedroom and the room where the party was, and while I was in there I heard this sort of muffled shouting from the bedroom. I opened the door to see what was going on, and there was this fat Arab guy – Hakim, I think his name was – with his trousers round his ankles, Dina with her dress round her waist, and him trying to drag off her knickers with one hand. He had his other hand over her mouth. She was struggling and kicking, and then suddenly he just fetched her one really hard across the face, and her nose began pouring with blood. It was horrible. So I ran into the room and tried to pull him off, and he began to stumble about, and the next thing I knew one of the other Saudis had come in. He pulled the door shut behind him, so it was just the four of us in there. He saw what was going on, and he was hissing things at Hakim, presumably telling him to pull his trousers up and get out. And I said something like, “Hold on a minute – he was trying to rape her. I saw him.” And he just rounded on me, saying things like, “You’re all sluts. You deserve what happens. Nothing happened here. You didn’t see a thing.” And I said, “I most certainly did. What I saw was attempted rape and assault, and I’m going to make sure everyone knows.” So I headed for the door, and he followed, trying to grab me, but I made it into the sitting room and – well, I just started shouting about what I’d seen. And the next thing I knew a load of people had gone in and grabbed Hakim, and the other Russian girls were all freaking out, because Dina was just lying on the bed with blood all over her face. It was kind of mayhem.’ She stared at her plate, then picked up a piece of Brie rind and nibbled it.

‘And then?’

‘Then I was just sort of standing in the doorway of the sitting room with all this chaos erupting, and Anthony came out of the poker game and asked what was going on. I told him, and he went through to the bedroom. Then a couple of seconds later the other Saudi guy came out and saw me, and he pushed me into the corridor and grabbed the top of my arm and said something like, “If the police are called, and you say anything, if you say one word about what you saw, I’ll make sure you regret it.” He sounded so vicious, and I was really scared. And then he asked me if I’d ever seen what a girl looked like after she’d had acid thrown in her face. Because that was what was going to happen to me if I told the police what happened.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘It sounds so stupid now, but I was a bit drunk, and a bit high, and when Caspar Egan said he was calling the police, I just had to get out of there. I thought if I got away for a week or so, till everything had died down, maybe no one would mention that I’d been there, or that I might have seen something.’ She was weeping now, her shoulders shaking. ‘I was just so scared. I know it was stupid to run away. I know if the police had been called that it would only have made things worse, but at the time …’

Leo laid a hand on her arm. ‘Come on. You overreacted, but you were scared.’

‘All last night I just lay in the apartment in my sleeping bag, thinking about what would happen if there was a trial, and I had to give evidence. You know, I really believe that man would have carried out his threat.’ She gazed at Leo with large, haunted eyes.