The Shadows of Justice (10 page)

From above came a low creaking, followed by a thud, then another. Flaming straw fell past the window.

“The bloody place is coming down!” Dan shouted. “Adam, we’re going to die in here!”

He clutched for his friend, but too late. In the far corner of the room was a small door. Adam leapt for it, pulled it open. Shelves, a vacuum cleaner, some pillows and blankets. He span and headed back for the corridor. The merciless heat was everywhere and growing always more intense.

They burst into a kitchen. Adam pulled open a row of cupboards. He groped blindly inside, arms flailing. Cans, pots and pans tumbled out, clattering a discordant rhythm on the stone of the floor.

Dan leant back against the sink and tried desperately to catch some breath. The air was full of singeing, cloying smoke. A bottle of wine dropped and shattered. Another groaning thud echoed from the roof.

“Come on, come on!” Adam panted, lunging for the end of the kitchen, glass crunching under the hard soles of his shoes.

Another black wooden door faced them. It was a store room, also stone floored, the shelves full of packets and tins and the air blissfully cool. And on the floor, on a tartan blanket, was the curled shape of a person, hair seeping onto the flagstones. It was motionless, no sign of life.

“It’s Annette!” Adam yelled. “Help me! For fuck’s sake!”

Dan tried to breathe, felt his stomach heave with the effort. He bent down, battling to fight the bile of the rising nausea. The air was clearer by the ground, free of the sticky, suffocating smoke. He gulped it in.

“Her legs!” Adam ordered. “Come on man!” His voice rose to a scream. “Now!”

Dan fumbled to get a grip, managed to grab a fold of jeans, then an ankle. He felt the warmth of Annette’s body through the material and had to concentrate to force himself not to let go. Clouds of dense smoke billowed around them, stinging his eyes. They were watering so hard that he could barely see.

“Lift!” yelled Adam. “For Christ’s sake, lift!”

It felt like an immense, immovable weight. He managed to half-lift, half-drag the flaccid legs towards the door, following Adam and shuffling towards the hazy light. Ahead was the sweetness of the clean air, the breeze like the most rejuvenating of balms.

Dan urged his leaden muscles to take one step, then another, to wade through the hellish smoke and heat and stench of fire. He was vaguely aware of arms helping to pull him, Nigel’s contorted face looming. Someone was shouting, but the words made no sense.

He nearly fell but steadied himself, forced another couple of steps from his faltering legs and they were out in the light. The blessed, beautiful sunshine. Dan collapsed onto the lawn, struggling to breathe in the sudden shock of freedom.

Adam sunk to his knees beside Annette. He tapped gently at her cheek, then harder. But there was no reaction.

The spirit of the reaper chilled the air. The darkness of his outline lurked in the corner of each set of eyes, beckoning to the young woman trapped in the twilight between life and death.

Another flare of fire arced from the cottage roof, smoking fronds filling the sky. Adam leant back, let out a low groan, grasped Annette’s shoulders and shook them, then again, harder now.

There was still no reaction. He tried once more, then stopped and stared at the prone figure lying lifeless on the grass.

Annette’s eyes twitched and opened.

In all of his lifetime, Dan never forgot that sight. Choking for breath on his hands and knees amid a perfectly cultivated lawn on a beautiful Devon day, a voracious fire devouring the cottage and sirens screaming around him, yet all he could see were the eyes of a young woman.

He took long weeks trying to understand what it was he found in them. Finally, many months later, when all was at last done with the story of Annette Newman, when he could summon the courage to revisit that day, Dan decided.

Her eyes were filled with newborn demons.

Annette’s face froze, lingered and disappeared. The television screens faded to blackness, only the red jewels of the standby lights showing in the darkness.

The flames that had filled the inside of the cottage, which had leapt from the monitors and around the old room, were gone. The roaring of the inferno that had sounded from the floorboards and walls was quietened. The blinds were drawn back and the lights in Courtroom Number Three turned on once more, a horde of the shadows of the past running before them.

The pictures Nigel filmed that spring day, six months ago, had made for one of the most dramatic parts of an extraordinary trial. And now, at last, they had reached the denouement.

The eleven in the jury box sat silent. Only the foreman remained standing. He took off his glasses and polished them with his thin, acrylic tie. Around him, all waited to see where the man would look.

The old adage was everywhere. At the Edwards, or elsewhere. Guilty or not guilty.

But still the man was resolutely staring downwards, rigorous in the pursuit of the slightest speck of grime on those oversized, outdated spectacles.

And the courtroom waited.

Eyes automatically found that one, vacant seat. And the father who sat beside it, bent double now, a polished shoe turning on the carpet tiles.

On the press benches Dan squirmed as a sweat spread across his back. Ahead sat Adam, his dark hair newly cut for this final week of the trial and his flushed neck turning ever redder. Beside him Claire toyed with a pile of folders.

Still, six months on, they hadn’t talked. The occasional walk, yes, the odd drink, yes, always on the neutral territory of moorland or a pub, but never the conversation which threatened. Always he was too tired, or she too preoccupied by a case.

To Adam’s other side Katrina sat back, her arms folded. Her hair was a little longer than six months ago, perhaps with the hint of a shading of colour. On her shoulder lay that legendary symbol.

Dan found his pen sketching an outline of the tattoo. He knew what it was now, he had made the discovery precisely ten days ago. And in what extraordinary circumstances.

The foreman finished buffing his glasses and was replacing them carefully upon his nose. At last he was starting to look up.

And then a noise as shocking as a thunderclap. A hammering at the courtroom doors. A random, relentless beat. Panicked hands with pummeling fists.

And the sound of a cry. The voice of a young woman.

“Let me back in! I have to know!”

The doors shook under the attack. Judge Templar tapped a finger on the gavel, balanced upon the bench.

Another rocking of the doors. “Please! Please!”

Furrows pitted the judge’s brow. “Such an occurrence is most irregular at this point so pivotal in the trial,” Templar announced. “The doors of justice are locked only occasionally, but always for good reason. However, the young lady is understandably distressed and the court will make allowances.”

The usher slid over, unlocked the doors and in tumbled Annette. Her face was blurred with tears and taut with lines of misery. Her father rose and she collapsed into him. There they stood, intertwined, Roger’s arms squeezing the breathless moans from his daughter’s body.

One final anguished wail emerged, the sound of a spirit close to breaking. And as for Roger Newman, his eyes had closed as if no longer able to fight the weight of such an infinite burden.

Rays of sunlight streamed into the court. It was growing ever warmer.

The usher stepped carefully across and handed Newman another plastic cup of water. He took a sip and passed it to Annette.
With trembling, hopeless hands she tried to drink, a cascade of droplets staining dark circles on the carpet tiles.

From aloft on the bench the judge watched, silent and unmoving. But eyes never resting. Over the foreman, the Newmans and the Edwards.

The players on the stage of justice. For this, the final act.

One of the solicitors began to cough, quickly stifling the sound.

Behind the glass of the dock the Edwards sat hand in hand, both intent on the foreman. Brian jiggled a knee. Martha was still, that green gaze set on the man who would decide her fate.

Beside the dock a prison guard shifted her weight. A heavy fob of keys jingled.

And the clock ticked on towards the hour.

***

Amongst the hacks, the consensus was for a not guilty verdict.

Proof
beyond reasonable doubt
was what the law required in that delightful legal way of leaving a galaxy of scope for expensive dispute. The more analytical of lawyers took the words to mean two thirds convinced, or 67 per cent. The journalists’ view was that the Edwards were certainly guilty, but the evidence against them wasn’t quite strong enough – perhaps adding up to 55 or 60 per cent.

What they all agreed on was that it was a close call. The jury might well see it differently. They often did.

For the first time in his life, Dan had been called to give evidence. He’d tried to convince himself it would be a straightforward experience. He broadcast live to half a million people with a nonchalant regularity. What could possibly be the problem in telling a roomful of maybe a hundred about what he had witnessed?

“Some advice,” Adam said, on the morning before Dan was due to take the stand. “Just answer the questions, but watch out for the defence. He’ll try to discredit you. Make out to the jury you can’t be relied upon. Just stick to what you know and don’t get involved in a row. And no matter how much it might go against your grain, on no account whatsoever try to be smart.”

“I think I can manage that,” Dan smiled.

The look which came back was far from convinced. “Just remember what I said. Whatever you do, don’t try to be clever.”

That morning, Dan found himself unusually preoccupied with his attire. It wasn’t normally a prerogative. In his personal list of priorities, the purposes of clothes were – (1) warmth, (2) modesty, (3) comfort, and (4, by far) fashion.

“What do you think?” he asked Rutherford, as the dog thrust his nose into the rarely explored depths of the back of the wardrobe. “A suit? Or does that look like I’m trying too hard? Just my usual trousers and a jacket? Or does that look like I don’t care enough?”

Rutherford sniffed at the clothes and sneezed. “There’s no need to be so rude,” Dan chided. “What about a tie? Do we go bright, or does that look untrustworthy? Or darker? Or does that make me look like I’m going to a funeral?”

The dog padded off to deal with the more important business of curling up in the sunshine of the bay window. Eventually, Dan chose a light blue shirt, dark blue jacket and a plain, mid-blue tie. At Lizzie’s behest, he’d once suffered one of those colour assessment courses.
A heavily made-up woman had fussed over him, held various swatches of ridiculous shades next to his cheeks, clucked a little and finally pronounced that blue was undoubtedly his hue.

Since then, Dan had bought little else. It was the fashion equivalent of not knowing much, but knowing what you like.

***

The art of throwing skunks is well-practiced in the legal profession, in particular the champions of the lawless. And Piers Wishart QC could have been an Olympian. The purest of waters, the most clear cut of cases, could be muddied by his creative tampering.

Dan stood in the witness box, trying not to look at Adam, and definitely not Claire or Katrina. Instead, he kept his eyes set on Wishart’s well-fed, cigars and port features.

“So, you were with the police for the entirety of the operation to rescue Annette?” the barrister began.

“Yes, sir.”

“The whole of it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You saw absolutely everything that went on?”

“I believe so.”

“Right up to the moment Annette was rescued?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And as the footage in that remarkable video we’ve seen shows, you were actually there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And in the aftermath? When the police searched the area?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wishart paused, flicked a ginger curl back under his wig and gestured to the dock. “And did you see any sign of my clients?”

“Err… no, sir.”

“None at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Not a trace?”

“No.”

“No hint whatsoever?”

“No, sir. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”

Wishart’s face warmed. Behind him, Dan could see Adam had closed his eyes.

“Really, Mr Groves?” the barrister boomed. “I do apologise, I must have misheard. What is your profession again?”

“I’m a reporter, sir. A journalist.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you must be an experienced detective. An accomplished investigator, no less.”

“No, look, what I was saying—”

“It’s just…” the barrister interrupted smoothly, “No one saw my clients there. As the trial has heard, there was no evidence they were there. No fingerprints, no footprints, no forensics – nothing. But your special insight into the case means you can stand here and tell us they may have been there?”

“Well, they could have… err… fled.”

Wishart turned to the jury and raised an arm.

“Fled?” he mocked. “
Fled
? Past a hundred police officers? Who were on high alert, busily searching for them? Past police dogs? Past roadblocks? Past a helicopter? I think perhaps the only way they could have fled successfully is if they had one of those devices in which Dr Who travels through space and time – a Tardis, I believe?”

Even some of the jury chuckled. Dan caught a warning glare from Adam and just about succeeded in biting back a retort.

He spent the rest of the day seething, but managed to secure at least some revenge when Wishart left court that evening. He was suffering a nasty cold sore on his chin and Dan made sure Nigel filmed a close up of his face to feature in the day’s report.

***

Even Adam agreed that the case was finely balanced. Fifty-fifty was his estimate of the chances of a conviction.

The fire in the white van had consumed any forensics there and they’d found nothing useful in the cottage. The combination of the voracious blaze and thousands of gallons of water from the firefighters’ hoses had destroyed any evidence. The forensics officers had done their best, but eventually had to concede the scene was hopeless.

The recording of the ransom demand provided no assistance. That there was someone in the background when Annette spoke was clear, but exhaustive analysis came up with the unhelpful conclusion that it could have been anyone.

The kidnappers had been clever. Adam worked up a theory about how they’d got away, but that was all it was, just a suspicion.

With only one road into East Prawle, he thought Martha had been hiding somewhere, watching it. When she saw the police approaching, she’d called her brother. They used untraceable pay-as-you-go mobiles, discarded later when they had escaped.

They had petrol and kindling ready to destroy the van. Brian had probably been living in it to avoid the risk of leaving any traces in the cottage. Together, the Edwards had dumped Annette in the storeroom. Martha left to watch the road and Brian camped in the van, returning occasionally to check on Annette, to give her water and force her to make the ransom call.

Dan had wondered whether they intended to kill Annette? It was a moot point, the subject of some heated rows between the detectives and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Adam thought they probably didn’t mean to kill her, that Martha would have expected Annette to be found before the fire razed the cottage. But even so, he argued strongly that it was tantamount to attempted murder to be so reckless as to start the blaze with her lying tied up in the storeroom.

Adam originally wanted that to be the charge, but the CPS had vetoed the idea. It would be hard enough to secure a conviction for kidnapping on the available evidence.

How had Brian escaped? It wasn’t by car, the only road out of East Prawle was sealed. He was physically very fit and had possibly fifteen minutes head start on the police.

He could, Adam suggested, have simply walked. The area was networked with paths. It was a fine day and he would have blended in with the hundreds of other ramblers enjoying the Devon countryside. The warm weather meant a hat and sunglasses wouldn’t have looked out of place; an excellent disguise.

A rowing boat had been discovered, sunk in a creek near the town of Salcombe, around four miles from East Prawle. Adam suspected Brian may have taken that and rowed to safety. But the boat had long been scuttled by the time it was found and any evidence destroyed. It was another theory that could never be proved.

The case fell back on circumstantial evidence. The Edwards had disappeared for the couple of days of the kidnapping, only resurfacing afterwards and professing astonishment at being arrested. They refused to answer any questions, just as Adam predicted.

Silence had served them well when interrogated about the attack on Albert Fisher. They expected it to do the same now.