A Fatal Verdict (14 page)

The nearest farm was more like two miles away than one. But Shelley caught her own pony and rode there while Miranda sat, cold and shivering, watching the pony in the lethal black water paddle ever more feebly around. Eventually the farmer arrived and, much later, the fire brigade who winched the drowning animal out. They still had the cuttings about it from the Yorkshire Post in a frame on their parents’ wall, and Shelley had a medal from the Royal Humane Society. 

The memory would stay with Miranda for life. If it hadn’t been for her sister’s courage and resourcefulness that day, she would have died. Shelley could so easily have panicked and run for help. Instead she had risked her own life and saved them both.

And now she was dead. Miranda had known for a year that Shelley was unhappy but she hadn’t come back to help her - how could she? Her life was in Wisconsin now, the other side of the ocean. The sisters had talked on the phone of course but ... she should have done more, she knew it. No one had been there for Shelley when she needed them most. Miranda had failed her, and their parents had failed her too. And so she was dead, and all they had left was revenge.

16. Retribution

Sarah’s question was the right one - it unlocked the floodgates to what Kathryn Walters really wanted to say. She wanted to talk about her real daughter, not the corpse, the collection of cuts and subcutaneous bruises which the pathologist had so drily presented this morning. And as she talked, Sarah learned; not about the abstract victim in the brief she had read over the weekend, but about a little girl who for twenty years had been the delight and despair of the tense, angry mother opposite her. A child as real as her own daughter Emily.

Mark Wrass tactfully left them to make a call from his office, and Kathryn told Sarah about Shelley’s difficulties at birth, her worries when the child developed so differently from her elder sister: scatter-brained, harum-scarum, brave and loving but unable to concentrate on anything that bored her for more than a few minutes at a time. Over the years Shelley had suffered from lack of confidence, difficulties in learning, emotional dependency, mental instability, and periods of hyper-activity conflicting with periods of depression. But she could be amazingly rewarding too, making up for the bad times with striking displays of loyalty and love. Occasionally she could show flashes of real brilliance at school too, which astonished her teachers and delighted her mother, though they were seldom sustained for long.

So when Shelley finally succeeded in getting to university Kathryn felt at once proud and anxious, relieved that her difficult, mercurial daughter had achieved so much, but sad that she as a mother would be deprived of the demands on her love which had occupied her for so long. She had been worried when Shelley’s relationship with her first boyfriend, Graham, ended abruptly in the first term, but it was when she described David Kidd that the real bitterness leaked into Kathryn’s voice.

‘It was if he had stolen her from me. He brainwashed her, turned her into an alien almost.’ She turned away, staring sadly out of the restaurant window. ‘I’d given her so much love, so much time. With all her difficulties I was proud of what she’d achieved, and I thought at least she’d be grateful. She was, too, before she met him. But then she just turned. She looked at me like I was ... I don’t know, a stranger almost. All because of him. He’s evil, you know. I could see him laughing at me, he knew what he’d done. He’d stolen her mind, she just parroted what he said. Rubbish about how I was ruining her life, forcing her to be a success. Can you imagine how that feels?’

Sarah nodded quietly. ‘Exquisitely painful, I should think.’

‘It was. Sometimes when I spoke to her on the phone I could hear him in the background, whispering and muttering about me, even kissing her once to distract her because he knew I was on the line, he knew I could hear. He wanted me to know he’d taken her away from me, she didn’t rely on me, didn’t belong to me any more. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to control her like a little sex slave, a puppet almost. And it was easy for him, because she was so loving, so trusting, so innocent. She believed everything he said. But I found out about him, all his lies. His claims to have been in the army, when he hadn’t. And his convictions for beating his former girlfriend. The police told you about those. You’ve read about them, haven’t you?’

‘They’re in the brief, yes.’ Sarah noted the way the look of distrust had returned. ‘Really, Mrs Walters, I have done my homework, believe me. But it’s useful hearing these things from you, all the same.’

‘You’ll tell the jury, then? Make it all count?’

‘I will if I can.’ Sarah sighed. ‘There are rules of evidence, legal niceties that can make some things difficult when it comes to character. But anyway, the basic facts of the case should be enough to get a conviction, even without that. Unless Mr Bhose comes up with something totally unexpected, which I doubt. This young man belongs in prison.’

‘I think I could sleep at night, then.’

‘You don’t sleep?’ Sarah studied the woman in front of her thoughtfully. There were lines around the eyes and cheeks, certainly, but she had dressed with care, her make-up was good, the skin of her neck and arms healthy and firm.

Kathryn noticed the look and smiled faintly. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not wasting away. But sleep - no. Three or four hours at a time before I wake. I cherish those moments, you know. Sometimes when I wake there are times - I don’t know, a minute or two, maybe longer - when I forget what’s happened. I’m drowsy, half-awake, and all of it’s gone. And then it comes back; it’s so painful. I just think, when he’s in jail, locked away, maybe those times will be longer. There’ll be nothing to do, it’ll be over. At the moment I feel I have to carry it with me all the time, even at night. If I forget for a moment, I’ll have betrayed her, he’ll go free.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘That’s just how it feels.’

‘You don’t need to feel responsible,’ Sarah said carefully. ‘You’ve got the police after all. And now me.’

‘I know.’ Their eyes met across the table, searching, cautious. ‘But forgive me, that makes it worse, somehow.’

‘Worse, how? You don’t trust us?’

‘No, it’s not that. I’m sure you’ll do your best, I saw you in court this morning. But ... you see, it doesn’t belong to you. However well you do your job, that’s what it is, a job - and Shelley was my daughter. Sometimes at night I wish we lived in a more primitive society. You know, an eye for an eye. So I could kill him myself. Strap him to an electric chair and pull the lever.’ Tears came to her eyes and she stared away, out of the window again. ‘I know it sounds awful but that’s what I think.’

‘It would be awful though.’ Sarah chose her words carefully before continuing. ‘You might find you couldn’t do it and even if you could, you’d have that memory to keep you awake at night as well.’

‘Maybe.’ Kathryn turned back, her eyes still glistening with tears. ‘Or maybe not. He killed my daughter, after all. Maybe if I killed him, that would help me sleep.’

Silence fell between them. We’ve come a long way from the evidence now, Sarah thought. But this is the power of what we’re dealing with, in court. ‘I expect if the truth were told, a lot of people think like that. But that’s why we have the system that we do, to protect you from the need to commit such a crime. I represent the Queen, you know, the state. You’ve suffered a wrong and it’s my job to put it right, if I can. It’s justice, not revenge. We’re there to protect you from yourself.’

‘Just make sure you do it properly then. Lock him up and throw away the key. I’m sorry, Mrs Newby, I know it sounds bad. But I’ve tried to believe in Christian forgiveness, and I can’t.’

17. Professional Doubts

As Sarah entered the robing room after lunch, Savendra was adjusting his wig in the mirror. He scowled at her with mock ferocity. ‘Ah, the wicked witch of Endor! Where did your pathologist learn his trade? Treblinka was it, or Auschwitz?’

Sarah took her gown from a hanger and shrugged it on. Reluctantly, she turned her mind from the picture Kathryn Walters had painted of the young Shelley, to the pathologist’s unfortunate comments about her dead body. ‘When he talked about experiments on people dying from pierced arteries, you mean? He was referring to atrocities he
hadn’t
committed, not to ones he had. Unlike your client, I might add.’

‘My client says it’s suicide.’

‘You look at his record. Lies, assaults on women - this isn’t Christopher Robin you’re representing.’ She took her wig out of its black and gold tin and picked a piece of fluff from it with her fingers.

‘Nonetheless, he says he didn’t kill her.’ There was a thoughtful look on his face which Sarah, knowing him well, recognised as a prelude to negotiation. ‘Look, what strikes me is the possibility that we’re missing something here. Both of us. You say it’s murder, we say it’s suicide. Both of us can explain how it might have happened, but neither can really explain why. You’re prosecuting, but do you have a motive? Why would he murder her?’

‘Because he’s a nasty inadequate male chauvinist control freak who couldn’t bear the idea that his poor little sex slave had a mind of her own, that’s why.’ Sarah opened her handbag to search for a lipstick.

‘Well maybe, maybe ...’

‘There are lots of men like that, Savvy. I should know. I married one, for Christ’s sake.’

Savendra stared, nonplussed. ‘Not Bob, Sarah, surely ...’

‘No, of course not. Kevin - Simon’s father. Beat me black and blue, the little thug. Didn’t you know?’ She watched him coolly in the mirror before pursing her lips for the gloss. ‘Bob rescued me from all that. The civilized older man.’

She raised an eyebrow ironically at her reflection in the mirror, thinking how far she’d come since then. At sixteen she’d been a tearful teenage divorcee, struggling to restart her GCSEs in night school. She’d been doped out on valium to ease the depression caused by the demands of her mother and the social services to give up her baby, Simon, for adoption. Bob, ten years older, a gentle, bearded young English teacher, had not only befriended her but offered to bring up the child himself, if only she’d do him the honour of marrying him. He’d got down on his knees to propose, like a lanky romantic poet, beside a greasy formica-topped table in the college canteen. And so he’d saved her - from losing her child and failing to learn, both at once.

Their marriage, begun in such desperate circumstances, had every appearance of success, at least to Savendra, soon to take a similar step himself. Sarah and Bob had busy, thriving careers and a luxurious house in the country. They had more or less successfully brought up two children - Simon, admittedly only an apprentice bricklayer but more settled now since the trauma of last year, and his seventeen-year-old half-sister Emily, who was studying A levels and planning to save the planet with the help of her boyfriend Larry. And they had stayed together when many couples of their acquaintance, marrying later in more promising circumstances, had divorced.

So far, Sarah thought, so good. All through her long uphill battle from the slums of Seacroft to the glory of being called to the ‘utter Bar’ in the ancient Elizabethan hall of the Middle Temple, she had drawn strength and support from Bob. He was not, perhaps, the greatest lover in the world, but after her exhilarating, catastrophic initiation to sexual love with Kevin, the randy, cruel, faithless little gamecock who was Simon’s father, Sarah had come to distrust passion; she valued Bob’s qualities of gentleness, reliability, and loyalty far higher.

Or at least she had done, until recently. His announcement this morning that he had had the house valued without even consulting her first was symptomatic of the distance that was opening up between them. Touching her lips with the lipstick, she breathed in and felt a sharp familiar ache somewhere below her breastbone. It was a pain so real she had even consulted the doctor about it once, but he’d found nothing; it was not her body that was wounded, but her heart. Her marriage was not one to be envied, not any more. Not since Bob had let her down over Simon. Kevin’s fist might have bruised her face, but Bob’s cruel words had frozen her heart. She doubted if it would ever recover.

She watched Savendra in the mirror as he casually proposed his deal. ‘So you wouldn’t be interested in a plea of manslaughter?’

‘I doubt it, no. What are you saying - he cut her wrists by accident? Do me a favour, Savvy.’

‘No,
she
cut her wrists, then drowned because her head fell under water. The question is why.’

‘Okay then, why?’ She dropped the lipstick in her bag and took out an eyelash brush, smiling indulgently. ‘Go on, you tell me.’

‘Look, I’m not speaking under instruction now, right. Just exploring a possibility, in the interests of ...’

‘Getting your client off.’

‘No, justice, Sarah. That’s what we do here, isn’t it? Make justice.’

Sarah finished her lashes and hunted for a eyebrow pencil, aware that something, either her words or the makeup business or both, was getting under her colleague’s skin. ‘All right, go on then. Surprise me.’

‘Well, look, suppose we admit my client’s not the great Lothario he thinks he is. Far from it, in fact. But on the other hand his victim, this poor girl Shelley, had all sorts of problems with self esteem and depression which I can and will prove, giving her a tendency to commit suicide under extreme pressure ...’

‘You mean her mother disliking her boyfriend? A few bad essay marks? Is that cause for suicide?’ Sarah finished her makeup and snapped her bag shut.

‘Well, maybe. Such things happen. Not everyone’s tough like you, you know. But what if my client admits that some pressure came from him? On the one side there’s her mum, telling her to give him up, and on the other there’s him, only the second real boyfriend she’s had. It’s tearing her apart. Then she gets this shock, finding him in bed with the other girl, and she decides to dump him. But then when she goes back to his flat something happens; they have a blazing row and then he seduces her ...’

‘Rapes her, Savvy.’

‘Seduces her, Sarah. There is a difference. He sweet talks her into doing what she’d told herself she wouldn’t do any more. It doesn’t have to be rape.’

‘You mean he won’t admit to it.’

‘No. Well as you can see he’s a cocky little bastard who thinks a quick fuck makes everything fine. So she gets in the bath and he goes whistling out to buy her some flowers, trying to be nice for once, and comes back to find she’s so appalled by what she’s done that she’s killed herself. Well, what does the court make of that? It’s not murder is it? She cut her own wrists, he wasn’t even there at the time. But he has some sort of responsibility, he might manage to admit that.’

‘And will he say this in court?’

‘He might, if you’d go for manslaughter instead of murder.’

Savendra was in earnest now, Sarah could see that; and he had a point, of course. Sarah thought back to the lunch she had just had, and the confidence the dead girl’s mother had placed in her. ‘I might go for it, Savvy, if the victim was left-handed. But she isn’t. I’ve checked with her mother, friends, everyone. She held her pen in her right hand, she cut bread with her right hand. If she’d wanted to kill herself she’d have picked up the knife in her right hand first and slashed her
left
wrist, where she would have done the most damage. But that’s not what happened. The artery was pierced in her
right
wrist, not her left. And that means someone cut it for her, Savvy, clear as day. She didn’t do it herself. All the rest is detail.’

‘I see,’ Savendra sighed, disappointed but not particularly surprised. She had never been an easy woman to convince. ‘And that’s what you’re going to tell the jury?’

‘That’s it, Savvy.’ Sarah smiled, as they made their way to the door. ‘Nice try, but this is a murder. And your client did it.’