The Widow (20 page)

But the star turn came that afternoon. Dulled by an institutional lunch, the jurors filed back in and slumped in their seats. They did not stay there long.

The mother entered the witness box, dressed in simple black with a red Find Bella badge blooming on her breast.

Sparkes smiled encouragingly at her, but he was unhappy she'd chosen to wear the badge and concerned about the questions it would raise.

The prosecutor, a reed of a woman alongside the bulk of her opponent, led Dawn Elliott through her evidence, in chief letting the young woman tell her story simply and effectively.

When Dawn broke down as she described the moment when she realized her child had gone, the jurors were transfixed and some seemed close to tears themselves. The judge asked her if she'd like a glass of water and the usher obliged as the barristers rustled their papers, ready to resume.

It was Sanderson's turn. ‘Miss Elliott, did Bella often go outside to play? Out at the front, where you couldn't see her?'

‘Sometimes, but only for a few minutes.'

‘Minutes pass very quickly, don't you find? So many things to do as a mum?'

The mother smiled at this bit of sympathy. ‘It can get busy, but I know she was only out of my sight for minutes.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I was just cooking some pasta, like I said before. That doesn't take long.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Well, I did the washing up as I went along. And I folded some of Bella's clothes from the tumble drier so I wouldn't have to iron them.'

‘Sounds like a busy afternoon for you. And there were a couple of calls to your mobile as well. Easy to forget that Bella was outside.'

Dawn began sobbing again, but Sanderson did not falter. ‘I know this is hard for you, Miss Elliott, but I just want to establish the timeframe when Bella disappeared. You understand how important this is, don't you?'

She nodded and blew her nose.

‘And we're relying on you to pinpoint this because the last time anyone else saw Bella was at the newsagent's at 11.35. Wasn't it, Miss Elliott?'

‘We bought some sweets.'

‘Yes, Smarties, according to the till receipt. But that means the window for Bella's disappearance is actually from 11.35 to 15.30. That's almost four hours. Because no one else laid eyes on her during that time.'

Voice dropping, Dawn gripped the rail of the witness box. ‘No, we didn't go out again. But my mum heard Bella when she rang in the afternoon. She told me to give her a kiss.'

‘Miss Elliott, please could you keep your voice up so the learned judge and jury can hear your evidence.'

Dawn cleared her throat and mouthed ‘Sorry' to the judge.

‘Your mother heard a child's voice in the background, but that could've been on the television, Miss Elliott, couldn't it? Your mother told the police she didn't speak to Bella.'

‘Bella wouldn't come to the phone, she ran off to get something.'

‘I see. And then she went outside a couple of hours later.'

‘She was only out of my sight for a few minutes.'

‘Yes, thank you, Miss Elliott.'

Dawn made to step down from the box, but Sanderson halted her. ‘Not quite finished, Miss Elliott. I see you are wearing a Find Bella badge.'

Dawn touched the badge instinctively.

‘You believe that Bella is still alive, don't you?' the barrister asked

Dawn Elliott nodded, uncertain where the question was going.

‘Indeed, you have sold interviews to newspapers and magazines saying exactly that.'

The accusation that she was making money out of her missing child made the press benches vibrate and pens paused for the response.

Dawn was defensive and suddenly loud. ‘Yes, I do hope she's alive. But she's been taken, and that man took her.'

She pointed at Taylor, who looked down and began writing on his legal pad.

‘And the money is for the Find Bella fund,' she added quietly.

‘I see,' the barrister said and sat down.

It was another week of neighbours, police experts, sick jurors and legal argument before DC Dan Fry entered the witness box to give his evidence.

It was Fry's big moment and he stood with trembling legs, despite the frequent rehearsals with his bosses.

The prosecutor painted the picture of a young, dedicated officer, backed by his superiors and the legal process and determined to prevent another child being taken. She lingered over the words used by Glen Taylor, looking at the jurors to underline the import of the evidence, and they began to glance over at the accused. It was going well.

When Sanderson rose to take his turn, there were no hands in pockets, no lazy vowels; this was his moment. The young officer was taken through the conversations he'd had as Goldilocks, line by ghastly line. He'd been prepared by the prosecution for the pressure he'd be put under, but it was much worse than anyone could have foreseen.

He was asked to read out his replies to BigBear's obscene banter and in the cold light of the courtroom the words took on a surreal, sniggerish air.

‘What're you wearing tonight?' the barrister, his face drink-mottled and his shoulders dusted with dandruff, asked. Straight-faced, six-foot-three Fry read, ‘Baby-doll pyjamas. My blue ones with the lace.' There was a suppressed bark of laughter from the press box, but Fry kept his nerve and read on, ‘I'm a bit hot. I might have to take them off.'

‘Yes, take them off,' the barrister intoned in a bored voice. ‘Then touch yourself.'

‘It's all a bit adolescent, isn't it?' he added. ‘I assume you were not wearing blue baby-doll pyjamas, Detective Constable Fry?'

The laughter from the public gallery bruised him but he took a deep breath and said, ‘No.'

Order was quickly restored, but the damage was done. Fry's crucial evidence was in danger of being reduced to a dirty joke.

The barrister basked in the moment before entering the most dangerous area of the cross-examination: the last email conversation with Glen Taylor. He addressed it head-on.

‘Detective Constable Fry, did Glen Taylor, aka BigBear, say he'd kidnapped Bella Elliott?'

‘He said he'd had a real baby girl before.'

‘That's not what I asked you. And was this after you, as Goldilocks, asked him to tell you that?'

‘No, Sir.'

‘He asked you, “Would you like that, Goldie?” and you told him you'd like that very much. You said it was a turn-on.'

‘He could've said no at any stage,' Fry said. ‘But he didn't. He said he'd found a baby girl once and her name began with B.'

‘Did he ever use the name Bella in your conversations?'

‘No.'

‘This was a fantasy conversation between two consenting adults, DC Fry. This was not a confession.'

‘He said he'd found a baby girl. Her name began with B,' Fry insisted, the emotion beginning to break through. ‘How many baby girls with names beginning with B have been taken recently?'

The barrister ignored the question and scanned his notes.

Bob Sparkes looked at Jean Taylor perched on the edge of a bench, below her fantasizing, consenting-adult husband, and saw the numbness. It must be the first time she's heard the whole story, he thought.

He wondered who felt worse – him with the case falling apart in front of him or her with the case piling up in front of her.

Fry was beginning to stutter now and Sparkes silently willed him to pull himself together.

But Sanderson continued his attack. ‘You coerced Glen Taylor into making these remarks, didn't you, Constable Fry? You acted as an agent provocateur by pretending to be a woman who wanted to have sex with him. You were determined to get him to make damning statements. You would do anything. Even have internet sex with him. Is this really police work? Where was the caution or the right to a solicitor?'

Sanderson, who was well into his stride, looked almost regretful when his victim finally stepped down from the witness box, diminished and exhausted.

The defence immediately called for an adjournment and, with the jurors safely tucked away in the jury room, made the case that the trial should be halted.

‘This whole case rests on circumstantial evidence and an entrapment. It cannot continue,' Sanderson said. ‘The Goldilocks evidence must be ruled as inadmissible.'

The judge tapped her pencil impatiently as she listened to the prosecution's response.

‘The police acted entirely properly in every respect. They followed procedure to the letter. They believed they had proper cause. That this was the only way to get the final piece of evidence,' the prosecutor said and sat down.

The judge put down her pencil and looked at her notes in silence. ‘I will retire,' she said finally and the court rose as she walked back to her chambers.

Twenty minutes later, the clerk called ‘All rise' and the judge delivered her verdict. She ruled out the Goldilocks evidence, criticizing Fry's encouragement and prompting and the exposure of such a junior officer. ‘The evidence is unsafe and cannot be relied upon,' she said.

Sparkes knew it was simply a formality for the prosecution team to throw in the towel and offer no further evidence and began packing his briefcase.

In the dock, Taylor listened to the judge carefully, the reality slowly dawning on him that he was about to be freed. Below him, Jean Taylor looked stunned. ‘I wonder what she's thinking,' Sparkes muttered to Matthews. ‘She's got to go home with a porn addict who has cyber sex with strangers dressed as children. And a child-killer.'

Suddenly it was over. The judge ordered the jury to return a formal verdict of not guilty and Taylor was taken down to the cells to prepare for freedom. In the courtroom, a press free-for-all began, with Jean Taylor the main prize.

She half stood, surrounded by reporters, white-faced and silent as Tom Payne tried to extricate her from the pew in the well of the court. Finally, the press parted and she struggled sideways like a fleeing crab, her legs knocking against the bench in front and her bag strap catching on edges.

S
HE GIVES EVIDENCE
, of course. Her big moment. She wears a black dress and a Find Bella badge. I try to avoid her stare but she's determined and in the end our eyes meet. I feel hot and the flush rises up my face, so I look away. It doesn't happen again. She keeps staring at Glen, but he's wise to her game and looks straight ahead.

I find my attention wandering as she tells the story I've read and heard a hundred times since she lost her baby – a nap, then playtime while she cooks tea, Bella laughing as she chases Timmy the cat out of the front door into the garden. Then realizing she can't hear her any more. The silence.

The court goes completely quiet, too. We can all hear that silence. The moment when Bella vanished.

Then she sobs and has to sit down with a glass of water. Very effective. The jury look worried and one or two of the older women look like they might cry as well. It's all going wrong. They must see this is all her fault. That's what Glen and I think. She let her baby out of her sight. She didn't care enough.

Glen sits quietly and lets it all wash over him, like it's happening to someone else. When the mum is ready, the judge lets her stay sitting down to finish her evidence and Glen cocks his head to listen to her story of running to neighbours, ringing the police and waiting for news as the hunt went on.

The prosecutor uses this special tone of voice with her, treating her like she's made of glass. ‘Thank you very much, Miss Elliott. You've been very brave.'

I want to shout, ‘You've been a very bad mother.' But I know I can't, not here.

Our barrister, a scary old bloke who had shaken my hand firmly at each meeting but gave no other sign that he knew who I was, finally gets his turn.

The mother begins sobbing when the questions get hard, but our barrister doesn't put on the understanding voice.

Dawn Elliott keeps saying her little girl was only out of her sight for a few minutes. But we all know now she wasn't.

The jury is beginning to look at her a bit harder now. About time.

‘You believe that Bella is still alive, don't you?' the barrister asks.

There is a rustle in the court and the mum starts sniffling again. He points out that she's been selling her story to the press and she looks really angry and says the money is for her campaign.

One of the reporters gets up and goes out quickly, clutching his notebook. ‘He's going to file that line to his news desk,' Tom whispers and winks.

It's a goal for us, he means.

When it's all over, when the police have been told off for tricking Glen and he's been freed, I feel completely numb. My turn to feel like this is happening to someone else.

Tom Payne finally lets go of my arm when we get into one of the witness rooms and we stand, catching our breath. Neither of us speaks for a moment. ‘Can he come home now?' I ask him, my voice sounding strange and flat after all that noise in the courtroom. Tom nods and busies himself with his briefcase. Then he takes me downstairs to the cells to see Glen. My Glen.

‘I always said the truth would come out,' he says triumphantly when he spots me. ‘We've done it, Jean. We've bloody well done it.'

I hug him when I get to him. It's been a long time since I've held him and it means I don't have to say anything because I don't know what to say to him. He's so happy – like a little boy. Pink and laughing. A bit out of control. All I keep thinking is that I've got to go home with him. Be on my own with him. What will it be like when we shut the door? I know too much about this other man I'm married to for it to be like before.

He tries to pick me up and whirl me round like he used to when we were younger, but there are too many people in the room: the lawyers, the barristers, the prison officers. They're all around me and I can't breathe. Tom notices and takes me out into a cool hall and sits me down with a glass of water.