A Fatal Verdict (10 page)

‘He’s been a liar all his life,’ said Terry. ‘A serial fantasist. The girl’s mother saw through him from the first.’

‘So it seems,’ Sarah agreed. ‘But sadly, her evidence won’t count for much. Plenty of mothers dislike their daughters’ boyfriends. It doesn’t mean they’re all murderers.’

‘What about the evidence of her friends?’ Tracy asked. ‘They knew what a shit he was.’

‘That will help. Particularly this girl Sandy.’ Sarah paused, thinking. ‘But in the end this case boils down to two possibilities. Shelley Walters died in a bath in her boyfriend’s flat. No one else was involved. So either he killed her, or, as the defence are bound to claim, she committed suicide. Now, sadly, all the evidence about the boyfriend’s past character can’t be used in court - not unless Mr Bhose slips up somehow, and I don’t anticipate that. But evidence of the
victim’s
past character
is
relevant, and this girl had a psychiatric disorder, so ...’ she glanced down the table at her solicitor. ‘I shall try and get that excluded but I don’t hold out too much hope. A lot will depend the psychiatrist, and how he comes across to the jury. Still, most girls don’t slash their wrists, even if they are breaking up with their boyfriends. And especially not like this, holding the knife in the wrong hand and leaving no fingerprints. Nor do suicides leave bruises round their own necks. So although it’s a long way from being a certainty ... ’

She looked around, a faint smile playing on her lips. Terry felt a surge of relief. ‘Does that mean you’re recommending the case should go ahead, then?’

‘I think we have more than a fifty per cent chance of conviction, yes.’

Part Two

Trial

12. Mothers Meet

The day of the trial began badly for Sarah. Her husband Bob, a head teacher at a primary school in York, started talking at breakfast about the possibility of selling their house and moving to Harrogate.

‘What?’ Sarah asked, hurriedly buttering toast and searching the fridge for some edible cheese. ‘Whatever for, Bob? We’re happy here, aren’t we?’

‘If get this headship, I mean,’ her husband explained patiently, referring to a job application he’d made recently. ‘It’s for a school just south of Harrogate, much larger than mine. And you’d be nearer the courts in Leeds. Lots of lawyers live in Harrogate.’

‘Have you seen the price of property there?’ Sarah asked, pouring herself some coffee  as her seventeen year old daughter Emily shambled past and started frantically pulling clothes out of the tumble dryer. ‘We could scarcely afford a shed.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve asked someone to come and value this place and ...’

‘You’ve done what? Emily, pick those things up off the floor.’

‘Just a free valuation. If we’re going to move we need to know ...’

‘Dad! What are you talking about? We’re not going to move, are we? What about all my friends?’ Emily, who Sarah had thought was ambulant but still comatose, suddenly exploded in teenage hormonal fury. ‘You can’t do something like this without thinking about me! Don’t I matter at all? I do live here too, you know! Hello?’

‘It’s just a possibility, Em, that’s all,’ Bob answered patiently. ‘Nothing’s decided. It’s just that I thought ...’

‘Well, don’t think, okay! I don’t want to move. I’m happy here, aren’t you?’

The explosion had gone on for some time, scattering emotional shrapnel through the few moments before they all had to leave, Bob and Sarah for work, Emily on the bus to the sixth form college. Exactly what I don’t need on the morning of a major trial, Sarah thought, gunning her motorbike out of the drive after Bob had left in his Volvo. What the hell is he playing at, arranging to value the house without even letting me know? That’s a huge family decision, not just a matter for him. What does he think - a move to Harrogate will revive our marriage somehow? Wreck it, more like ...

She leaned the bike into a bend and twisted the throttle viciously as a half mile straight opened ahead of her. This bike, the black Kawasaki 500, was another bone of contention between them. Bob loathed the machine as much as Sarah loved it. For him it was dangerous, noisy, unsuitable for a middle-aged wife and mother; for her it was a symbol of risk and freedom. She had originally been attracted to it by the practical advantages of being able to weave her way through gridlocked traffic into the congested city centres of York and Leeds, but this had long since given way to the sheer thrill of the deep-throated environmentally hostile roar of power between her legs each morning, the blast of wind as she crouched low over the handlebars, at speeds which, though perfectly legal, seemed to her terrifying in the extreme. For a few exhilarating moments she could stop being a wife, a mother, a professional lawyer, and become a black, anonymous figure, forgetting everything, concentrating only on the speed and the road and the wind.

Most days, at least, but not today. As she slowed off the A64 into the Fulford Road, creeping discreetly past a long line of stationary cars, the memory of the family row came back to her. It wasn’t the first such event. Nothing had really been the same since Simon’s trial last year. Bob, who had been such a saint when her son was small, had failed the young man in his moment of greatest need. Bob had not only believed him capable of murder, but even found a witness to support the police case. Only Sarah had stood by Simon, who was after all her son, not Bob’s, and the rift in their marriage had still not healed. Perhaps it never will, Sarah thought, it’s a scar we’ll always live with.

Since that trial they had drifted apart. Bob had become more absorbed in his work, in his new ambition to crown his career with the headship of a larger school, or perhaps to become a government inspector, a setter of targets. All very laudable, no doubt, but not goals that filled Sarah with enthusiasm. And now to think of selling their house, their beautiful home with the willow trees and lawns and views of the river, without even discussing it with her first ...

The man must be mad, she thought, he’s losing it, suffering the male menopause. Well, that would explain several other things about Bob’s recent behaviour. But for now, as so often in her life, those things would have to be put on hold.

Wheeling the bike into the converted outhouse at the back of her chambers in Tower Street, she paused briefly to admire the other motorbike there, a shiny red 1000 cc Honda FireStorm, the proud new possession of her colleague and opponent in today’s trial, Savendra Bhose. The bike was twice as heavy and powerful as Sarah’s, and Savendra had intended to take his fiancee, Belinda, on it for a weekend in the Lake District. Wondering how that had gone, Sarah ran upstairs to her room, where she changed out of her motorcycle leathers into a smart black trouser suit, stiff white collar bands, and gown. Swiftly checking her makeup in a mirror on her desk, she peered out of the window across the street at the view of the Norman castle, Clifford’s Tower, beside the Crown Court.

As she did so a car passed along the street in front of the castle. The woman in the passenger seat caught Sarah’s eye - a well dressed woman in a smart black suit and hat, with an intent, serious look on her face, as though she were going to a trial or a funeral. As the car turned right towards the castle car park, Sarah put away her makeup, checked that her briefcase contained all her papers and her wig in its enamelled tin box, and headed downstairs for the short walk across the road to the Crown Court.

Getting out of the car, Kathryn Walters felt her legs trembling. This was it, then, they were here at last. Six months after Shelley’s death, they had finally come to get justice. She drew a deep breath and waited while her husband Andrew bought a parking ticket from the machine. She would go in with him beside her. Their marriage was no longer close but this, above all else, was still something they shared. In sickness and in health, until death ... but this was not the sort of death the preacher had meant, all those many years ago.

Andrew stuck the parking ticket inside the windscreen, locked the car doors, and took his wife’s hand. They had never been a demonstrative couple, but now ... her fingers, in the smart black gloves, laced tightly between his, in a grip just this side of pain. She looked up and saw the tension in his face, the lines around the mouth that had deepened over these long, dreadful months, the hurt and anger that were liable to break out at any time and made living with him so difficult, even without his constant, humiliating betrayals. In his eyes she saw his intention to comfort her fighting with his own urgent need for comfort himself.

‘Ready then?’

‘As much as I’ll ever be.’ She raised a gloved hand to brush a wisp of hair back over his receding temples, and made a doomed, infinitesimal attempt at a smile. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

They walked towards the court, attracting several curious glances on their way. The strain of Shelley’s death had accentuated the differences character brought to their appearance. In Kathryn, grief had turned to anger - an inextinguishable flame of rage that this could happen to her daughter, her family - and an icy determination to make someone pay. But because the police and prosecution took so much out of her hands, she had channelled her desire for revenge into physical activity. A naturally healthy woman, since her daughter’s death her keep fit activities had developed into an obsessive, gruelling regime of self-punishment, lashing her body through barriers she had never passed before, so that in the recovery afterwards she could feel peace, a flood of endorphins temporarily drowning the rage in her mind.

As a result of all this exercise she had a body as firm and fit as that of a woman in her early twenties, half her real age. But it was her clothes as much as her physique that attracted attention. For while Andrew wore his normal threadbare professor’s suit with a row of pens sticking out of the top pocket, Kathryn had taken care over her appearance today, dressing as formally as she had for Shelley’s funeral - black suit, black shoes, coat and gloves, even the small black hat over her shoulder length blonde hair, pinned back in a neat pony tail.

Andrew had queried the outfit when she had appeared in it this morning. ‘We’re not on show today, you know. No one will be looking at us.’ But Kathryn had brushed him aside. ‘It’s a matter of respect. If you don’t understand that, I do.’

At least he wore a clean shirt and tie, which was something, given the dismal state of his wardrobe. For Andrew, unlike his wife, had let grief and guilt drive him to despair. The pain of Shelley’s death had destroyed his ability to concentrate. For hours, he sat in the university library with his brain in neutral, his hands and eyes working their way through medieval documents whose significance he could no longer explain; his research, such as it was, carried on by Carole, the graduate student whom he spent more time with than his wife. His listlessness infuriated Kathryn, sparking a rage which scared him deeper into his shell. She guessed he had a mistress, and no longer cared; he had become so thin and haggard that she almost welcomed the idea for his sake.

But today’s ordeal, at least, brought them together.

Near the circle of grass known as the Eye of York they stopped, a forlorn, formal pair, while three teachers shepherded a line of schoolchildren in front of them. Kathryn let out a little gasp of pain.

‘What is it?’ Andrew turned to her in concern.

‘It’s ... no, nothing.’ But she gripped his hand tighter. ‘Don’t you see? That girl ...’

‘Which girl? What do you mean?’

As the children passed Kathryn saw that of course it wasn’t true: the lively little girl at the front was no ghost, not Shelley come back to visit, of course not. But still - it was such an uncanny resemblance. Same long, fair hair like her mother’s, same smile, same bouncy, fidgety walk that Shelley had had at age ten.

‘Don’t you see it?’ she asked, as the children went by. ‘That one there!’

‘Look, Kath, you’ve got to stop doing this.’ He grasped her shoulder with a skinny left hand. ‘It’s nonsense.’

‘But it did look like her, didn’t it? You do remember?’

‘Of course I do. God!’ He watched the children forming a disorderly queue outside the museum. The girl punched one of the others and then hid behind a friend, laughing, her blonde hair tossing from side to side as she ducked. ‘But she’s gone, Kath. She’ll never come back.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Kathryn turned away, towards the wide steps and pillared portico of the Crown Court, with the stone statue of Justice above, holding her spear and balance. A woman in a black gown, carrying a large briefcase, came round the corner from Tower Street, and stopped on the balcony outside the entrance to the court, talking to a couple of men in suits and a security guard. A prison van with blank windows drove up and parked at the foot of the steps.

‘Will he have come in that, do you think?’

‘Probably.’ Andrew watched the security guards unlocking the rear door. ‘Let’s ... walk around this way slowly. We don’t want to bump into him on the steps, do we?’

‘No.’

They turned back towards the museum, waiting until the prison van was unloaded. As they approached the children Kathryn saw the child who had upset her again. She was no ghost; her nose was too short, her cheeks broader than Shelley’s had ever been. But if Shelley ever did come back, that would be the age she’d want to see her.

She leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder, remembering.

When Shelley was ten and Miranda was twelve they’d been living in Yorkshire for what - four years? They had bought the house near Wetherby, with the stables and paddock for the ponies that the girls had always wanted. She remembered how eager the girls had been at that age, how much energy they’d had! They’d got up at six in the morning to brush their ponies before she took them to shows, pulling them there in the trailer behind the old Volvo which came back cluttered with muddy jodhpurs, saddles, boots and rosettes. Shelley’s problems were just a cloud on the horizon. School, music lessons, concerts, swimming, parties - Christ, she thought, where did we get the energy? But we were a family too, busy at our work, me at the pharmacy, Andrew with his lectures. And whatever he got up to with his students, the bastard, he was always there for the girls, as I was, our lives revolved around them then, they were the centre of everything ...

And now what? Our lives still revolve around Shelley, but she’s just a coffin disappearing behind a curtain, a little urn of ashes in the crematorium gardens. Was it all for
that?

‘I think he’s gone inside now,’ Andrew said. ‘The van’s pulling away.’      

‘Did you see him?’

‘I’m not sure. He had his hands over his face.’

‘That won’t do him any good. He can’t hide now.’

‘Let’s hope not.’ He squeezed her hand, and they walked towards the courtroom steps, where the solicitor Mark Wrass was waiting. There was a great emptiness inside Kathryn, a despair that even the horror of this trial would not help; nothing could bring Shelley back again. But inside the horror a thin flame of anger longed for the fuel of justice to make it blaze. Fifty years ago, she thought, David would have been hanged for what he did to our little girl. I wish I were living then, that’s what he deserves.