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‘Hey, buddy,’ Alison said as she answered the phone.
‘Got a minute?’ Stacey asked.
‘For my bestie, always. Wassup?’
She’d worked with psychological profiler Alison Lowe on numerous occasions. Outside of that working relationship, the two of them had struck up an unlikely but very firm friendship.
‘Wanna talk to you about stalking.’
‘Oh, come on. I thought we weren’t gonna bring that up,’ Alison joked.
Normally, Stacey would have laughed at that but not today.
Intuitive enough to know her humour hadn’t landed, Alison launched straight into helpful mode. ‘What do you need?’
‘Just tell me what you know,’ Stacey said, moving further away from the building.
‘Okay, the majority of stalkers are male. Women stalkers are rarer and tend to target other women. What are we talking about?’
‘Men stalking women.’
‘Us psychologists group stalkers as either psychotic or non-psychotic. The majority are non-psychotic and their pursuit of victims is angry, vindictive, focussed, obsessive depending on the type they are.’
‘There are types?’ Stacey asked. Surely if she knew what Birch was, she’d have a better chance of understanding how to deal with him.
‘You’ve got five types of stalker. Rejected stalkers follow their victims in order to reverse or avenge a rejection. Resentful stalkers start a vendetta cos of a sense of grievance against the victim, motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress. Intimacy seekers are trying to establish a relationship with their victim. This type believes the victim is a long-sought-after soulmate and that they were meant to be together. Incompetent suitors are the type that have poor social skills and develop a fixation, a sense of entitlement, about those who have attracted their interest. And then you have predatory stalkers who spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack which is often sexual.’
The third one, intimacy seeker, sounded like Birch’s fixation on Charlotte, but the last description Alison had offered had chilled her to the bone.
‘Can there be a crossover?’ Stacey asked, crossing her fingers.
‘I wouldn’t rule it out. I’m not sure every stalker stays the same, but I don’t have any data to back that up.’
‘Do they go for a certain victim?’ Stacey asked.
‘Victims are normally prior intimates for the rejected stalker but otherwise victims can be casual acquaintances, friends, neighbours, professional contacts, colleagues, strangers and sometimes famous people. Has the victim contacted the National Stalking Hotline?’
‘No…I mean…I don’t think so.’
‘They should,’ Alison advised. ‘They should also keep in close contact with their local police force. I know that’s not CID but I’m just saying. Since the law changed in 1997, the Protection from Harassment Act makes reporting incidents to the authorities much easier than it used to be before stalking was an actual crime. It’s now a criminal offence, punishable by up to six months in prison, to make a course of conduct which amounts to harassment on two or more occasions. The court can issue a restraining order which carries a maximum punishment of five years if breached.’
Stacey allowed her friend to keep talking as though she wasn’t on the line with a police officer, while all the time thinking that none of this improved protection had helped Charlotte.
‘You are treating her seriously, aren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Stacey said.
‘Good. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t experienced it can properly appreciate the devastation being stalked can have on the victim’s life.’
Charlotte had moved thousands of miles away, so she was starting to get a good idea.
‘It’s not referred to as psychological rape for no reason,’ Alison continued.
‘Go on,’ Stacey said.
‘It affects everything. Stalking is a form of mental assault in which the perpetrator repeatedly breaks into the life-world of the victim. The separate acts that make up the intrusion can’t by themselves cause mental abuse but do when taken together.’
‘What do you mean?’ Stacey asked. Surely any unwanted attention was mental abuse.
