Mr Imiela arrives in Maidstone Crown Court

The man told the woman's mother he had had sex with her daughter, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

And when the victim's sister rang the mobile phone a man told her "she's a bit tied up" - after leaving the victim bound on heathland.

Antoni Imiela, 49, of Appledore, near Ashford in Kent, denies being behind a series of rapes across the south of England in 2001 and 2002.

The court heard the incident with the phone came after a rape, on Putney Heath in south west London, in July 2002.

'Callousness of the attacker'

The jury was told the 26-year-old victim was dragged into undergrowth and raped by a man who called her "a nice looking girl" and "a bitch".

He told her: "You smell nice - better than the last one. The last one stank," Mark Dennis, prosecuting, said.

The attacker left her tied up and stole her mobile phone from her bag before calling her mother in a move which Mr Dennis said demonstrated "the callousness of the attacker".

Mr Dennis told the jury records of Mr Imiela's mobile phone calls and credit card transactions showed he was in the area shortly before the attack.

The trial heard DNA taken from Mr Imiela when thousands of men in the Ashford area were screened by Kent Police was a close match to DNA taken from semen found on a 10-year-old girl, said to be his first victim.

Mr Dennis said: "The probability of the tissue not belonging to the defendant was in the order of a billion to one."

'Motivated by excitement'

Mr Dennis also told the court Mr Imiela was motivated by the excitement of the risks he was taking and prowled open spaces and motorways to search for his victims.

The court heard his work installing safety devices on trains frequently took him to different places around the M25 and M20, where most of the attacks occurred.

Mr Imiela is alleged to have been behind attacks in Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, south west London and Birmingham.

Mr Dennis also told the court a girl's grandmother appeared to have foiled a further potential attack in Hertfordshire in October 2002.

The court heard the woman was in a car following her 11-year-old granddaughter to make sure she was safe while doing her paper round.

Woman 'dazzled'

She noticed a man who had parked his car and was leaning against a fence looking agitated, Mr Dennis said.

The woman pulled over by his Citroen car, at which point he got back in and turned on the headlights to dazzle her, the jury was told.

She took a note of his car registration number and it was later found to match that of Mr Imiela, but with two numbers the wrong way round.

"It would seem to be clear that the grandmother's alert action had prevented another attack," Mr Dennis said.

Mr Imiela denies nine counts of rape against five women and three girls in the South East, between November 2001 and October 2002.

He also denies the kidnap, indecent assault and attempted rape of a 10-year-old girl in Birmingham on 21 November, 2002.