Evil Games Read Free Page A

do.
    Ruth had been nineteen and a promising student of Law when she’d been brutally raped, beaten and left for dead two hundred yards from her home.
    The fingerprints from the leather rucksack that had been torn from her back had revealed the rapist to be thirty-eight-year-old Allan Harris, whose details had been in the system for petty theft in his late twenties.
    Ruth had faced an arduous trial that had seen the perpetrator sent to prison for twelve years.
    The girl had done her best to put her life together but the event completely changed her personality. She became withdrawn, left university and lost touch with her friends. The subsequent counselling had been ineffective in returning her to any semblance of a normal life. Her existence consisted of going through the motions. And even that frail façade had been destroyed three months earlier when she’d passed a pub on the Thorns Road and seen her attacker leaving with a dog by his side.
    A couple of phone calls had confirmed that Allan Harris had been released on good behaviour after serving less than half his sentence. This news had driven the girl to a suicide attempt and the resulting court order had brought her to Alex.
    During their last session, Ruth had admitted to spending every night outside the pub, in the shadows, just to see him.
    ‘If you recall, I did advise against going back when we last met.’ This was not a total lie. Alex had advised her not to go back, but not as strongly as she could have done.
    ‘I know, but I had to see.’
    ‘But what, Ruth?’ Alex forced tenderness into her tone. ‘What were you hoping to see?’
    Ruth gripped the arm of the chair. ‘I want to know why he did what he did. I want to see in his face if he’s sorry, if he’s got any guilt for destroying my life. For destroying me.’
    Alex nodded sympathetically but she had to move this along. There was much to achieve in a short time.
    ‘Do you remember what we talked about last session?’
    Ruth’s pinched face became anxious. She nodded.
    ‘I know how hard this will be for you but it is integral to the healing process. Do you trust me?’
    Ruth nodded without hesitation.
    Alex smiled. ‘Good, I’ll be here with you. Take me through it from the beginning. Tell me what happened that night.’
    Ruth took several deep breaths and fixed her eyes above the desk in the corner. Perfect.
    ‘It was Friday the seventeenth of February. I’d been to two lectures and had a mountain of study to get through. A few friends were going for drinks in Stourbridge to celebrate something, as students do.
    ‘We went to a small pub in the town centre. When we left I made my excuses and started home ’cos I didn’t want a hangover.
    ‘I missed my bus by about five minutes. I tried to get a taxi but it was peak clubbing time on a Friday night. It was a twenty-minute wait and I was only going a mile and a half to Lye so I started walking.’
    Ruth paused and took a sip of coffee with a trembling hand. Alex wondered how many times in the years since she wished she’d just waited for the taxi.
    Alex nodded for her to continue.
    ‘I left the taxi rank in the bus station and put my iPod on. It was freezing so I walked quickly and got to Lye High Street in about fifteen minutes. I went into the Spar and grabbed a sandwich because I hadn’t eaten since lunch time.’
    Ruth’s breathing quickened and her gaze was unblinking as she recalled what happened next.
    ‘I kept walking while trying to open the damn plastic container. I never heard a thing, nothing. At first I thought a car had run into the back of me and then I realised that I was being dragged backwards by my backpack. By the time I understood what was going on there was a huge hand covering my mouth. He was behind me so I couldn’t hit him. I kept thrashing but I couldn’t reach him.
    ‘I felt like I’d been dragged miles but it was only about fifty yards into the darkness of the graveyard at the top of the High