Innocent Graves

by Peter Robinson

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. The witness’s opinion on such matters of what the court should or should not believe is not required, as you well know, Mr. Lawrence.”

  “I am sorry, Your Honor. I submit to you, Mr. Pierce, that you saw Deborah Harrison part from her companion, that you followed her into the graveyard, and that you-”

  “No! I did nothing of the kind,” Owen cut in.

  “And that you strangled Deborah Harrison with her own school satchel strap!”

  Owen clenched his fists and kept them out of sight. “I did not,” he said quietly, with as much dignity as he could muster.

  Lawrence held him with his black, beady eyes, then breathed, “No more questions,” and sat down looking pleased with himself.

  It was Friday afternoon, so Judge Simmonds adjourned for the weekend and Owen was escorted back to his cell.

  II

  Back in the dock on Monday, Owen tried to keep his eyes off Michelle and concentrate on Jerome Lawrence’s final address to the jury. From what he heard, it wasn’t much different from the opening remarks: Owen was a monster, hardly even human, who had brutally murdered a pure and innocent young girl. Most of the time he found himself looking towards Michelle. He sensed she knew he was staring at her, but she wouldn’t catch his eye.

  Lawrence went on for the best part of the day, piling atrocity on atrocity, outrage upon outrage, and it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that Shirley Castle got to make her closing speech. Again, Owen found himself watching Michelle most of the time, and the next thing he knew, Shirley Castle was wrapping up.

  “And, above all, remember the phrase beyond reasonable doubt,” she said. “It is the very foundation upon which our justice system is built. The burden of proof lies with the Crown. Ask yourselves, has the Crown proven its case beyond reasonable doubt? Are you yourselves sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that this man before you is anything other than an innocent victim? Do you not harbor doubts yourselves? I think you will find that you do, and that you can honestly do no other than agree with me, and say no, the Crown has not proven its case. For you see in front of you a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a man confused, worried and anxious by a police investigation he could not understand and which was not explained to him. But more than anything, you see in front of you an innocent man who has already been punished more than enough for a crime he did not commit. Look into your hearts, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m sure you will find there the certain knowledge that my client is innocent of all charges laid against him. Thank you.”

  After this carefully impassioned finale, Judge Simmonds’s summing up seemed perfunctory to Owen. At least he was fair, Owen had to admit. In a detached monologue, the judge reiterated the main points of the case, careful not to indicate any bias. As the old man talked, Owen kept switching his gaze between Michelle and “Minerva.”

  “Minerva” was clearly listening, but Owen could not help getting the impression that this final speech was superfluous to her, that she had already made up her mind. Once, she caught him looking at her for a second and turned away quickly, blushing. He could have sworn, though, that her eyes held no trace of accusation, of condemnation. When Michelle finally decided to return Owen’s gaze, she smiled, and he couldn’t mistake the cold, malicious glint in her eyes; it made him shiver.

  III

  While the jury was out, Owen sat in a cheerless room below the court with Shirley Castle and his guards drinking bitter coffee until his stomach hurt.

  He had experienced anxious waiting before-after a job interview, for example, or those long nights at the window watching for Michelle to come home-but nothing as gut-wrenching as this. His stomach clenched and growled; he bit his nails; he jumped at every sound. He tried to imagine what it must have been like when the death penalty existed, but couldn’t. Shirley Castle tried to make conversation but soon stopped after his terse and jumbled responses.

  Hours, it seemed, went by. At last, someone came and said the jury hadn’t reached a verdict yet, and as it was late, Owen was to spend the night back in his cell. He asked Shirley Castle about the jury taking so long, and she said it was a good sign.

  That night, he hardly slept at all. Fear gnawed at him; the cell walls closed in. In that nether world between sleep and waking, where memories take on the aspect of dreams, he actually watched himself strangle Deborah Harrison in a foggy graveyard. Or was it Michelle? He had been told so often that he had done it that his subconscious mind had actually been tricked into believing it. He thought he screamed out in the night, but nobody came rushing to see what was wrong. When he woke from the dream, he noticed he had an erection and felt ashamed.

  Morning came: slopping out, the stink of piss and shit that seemed to permeate the place, the supervised shave, breakfast. Then Owen sat around in his suit waiting to go back to the court and face the verdict. Still nothing. By mid-morning on Wednesday, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last without going mad. Just before lunch, his cell door opened and the warder said, “Come on, lad. It looks like they’re back.”

  In court, Owen gripped the front of the dock until his knuckles turned white. The gallery was full: Michelle leaning forward, thumbnail between her front teeth, as she often did during thrillers or when she was concentrating hard; the Harrisons; two of the detectives, Stott and Banks; the vicar, Daniel Charters and his attractive wife, Rebecca; reporters; morbid members of the public. They were all there.

  The jury filed back in. Owen looked at “Minerva.” She didn’t glance in his direction. He didn’t know what to make of that.

  After the hush came the legal rigmarole about charges, then the question everyone had been waiting for: “Do you find the defendant Owen Pierce guilty or not guilty as charged?”

  The split-second pause between question and answer seemed an eternity for Owen. His ears roared and he felt his head swimming. Then the spokesman, a drab-looking man Owen had guessed to be a banker, spoke the words: “We find the defendant not guilty, Your Honor.”

  There was more talk after that, but most of it was lost in the hubbub that raced through the courtroom like an explosive blast. Reporters dashed for phones. Owen swayed and clutched the dock for dear life. He couldn’t seem to stop the ringing in his ears. He heard a woman yell, “It’s a travesty!” Then everything went white and he fainted.

  Owen came to in a room below the court, a cool, damp cloth pressed to his brow, with Shirley Castle and Gordon Wharton standing over him. As he recovered, he felt the stirrings of joy, like the first, tentative shoots of a new plant in spring, overtake the gnawing anxiety that had burdened him before. He was free! Surely it would sink in soon. Shirley Castle was talking to someone, but when she stopped and walked towards him, he could feel the muscles in his face form a smile for the first time in what seemed like years.

  She smiled back, curled her fist and thumped the air triumphantly. “We did it!”

  “You did it,” Owen said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Winning is thanks enough.” She held out her hand. “Congratulations, Owen. And good luck.”

  He shook it, the first time he’d touched a woman in months, and he was conscious of the soft warmth under the firm grip. He felt her give a little tug and released her, embarrassed to realize he had held on too long. He wanted to kiss her. And not only because she had won his case. Instead, he turned to Wharton.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “What? Oh.” The solicitor glanced away from the disappearing figure. “Wonderful woman, isn’t she? I told you if anyone could do it, Shirley Castle could. It was a majority verdict, you know. Ten to two. That’s what took them so long. What now? Well, you’re free, that’s what.”

  “But…what do I do? I mean, my stuff and…”

  “Tell you what.” Wharton looked at his watch. “I’ll drive you back over to the prison, if you like, and you can pick your stuff up, then I’ll take you back to Eastvale.”

  Owen n
odded. “Thanks. How do we…I mean, do we just walk out of here?”

  Wharton laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s exactly what we do. Hard to get used to, eh? But I think there’ll be a bit of a mob out front, we’d better leave by the back way.”

  “A mob?”

  Wharton frowned. “Yes. Well, you’ve seen the papers. Those sly innuendos about the ‘evidence they couldn’t present in court.’ That not-guilty verdict won’t have sunk in with them yet, will it? People lose all sense of proportion when they get carried away by chants and whatnot. Come on.”

  In a daze, Owen followed Wharton through the corridors to the back exit. The sun was shining on the narrow backstreet; opposite was a refurbished Victorian pub, all black trim and etched, smoked-glass windows; under his feet, the worn paving-stones looked gold in the midday light. Freedom.

  Owen breathed the air deeply; a warm, still day. When he thought about it, he realized the trial had lasted almost two months, and it was now May, the most glorious month in the Dales. Back up near Eastvale, the woods, fields and hillsides would be a ablaze with wildflowers: bluebells, wild garlic, celandines, cowslips, violets and primroses; and here and there would be the fields of bright yellow rape-seed.

  As they walked towards Wharton’s car, Owen could vaguely hear the crowd outside the front of the courthouse: women’s voices mostly, he thought, chanting, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”

  IV

  “Fuck it,” said Barry Stott loudly. Then he said it again, banging his fist on the arm of the bench for emphasis. “Fuck it.” A couple standing by the pub door gave him a dirty look. “Sorry,” he said to Banks, blushing right up to the tips of his jug-ears. “I just had to let it out.”

  Banks nodded in sympathy. It was the first time he had ever heard Barry Stott swear, and he had to admit he didn’t blame him.

  They were sitting on the long bench outside Whitelock’s in the narrow alley called Turk’s Head Yard, drinks and food propped on the upturned barrel that served as a table. Along with his pint of Younger’s bitter, Banks had a Cornish pasty with chips and gravy, and Stott had a Scotch egg with HP Sauce, with a half of shandy to wash it down. They had just left Leeds Crown Court after the Owen Pierce verdict.

  It was a beautiful May day; the pub had lured students from their studies and encouraged office workers to linger over their lunch-hours. Not much light penetrated Turk’s Head Yard because of the high walls of the buildings on both sides, but the air was warm and full of the promise of summer. Men sat with their jackets off and shirtsleeves rolled up, while bare-legged women opened an extra button or two on their blouses.

  Banks took a sip of beer before tucking into the pasty. He watched Stott pick at the Scotch egg, dip little pieces in the sauce, chew and swallow, too distracted to taste the food. It was obvious that he had no appetite. He had only eaten half when he pushed his plate away. Banks finished his own lunch quickly and lit a cigarette.

  “I can’t believe he got off,” Stott said. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “I’m just as pissed off as you are, Barry, but it happens,” said Banks. “You get used to it. Don’t take it personally.”

  “But I do. It was me who cottoned on to him, me who tracked him down. We build a solid case, and he just walks away.”

  Banks didn’t bother reminding him how it was teamwork and hard procedural slog that had led them to Owen Pierce. “The case obviously wasn’t solid enough,” he said. “Dr. Tasker wasn’t very good, for a start. Even Glendenning wasn’t up to his usual form. Who knows? Maybe they were right?”

  “Who?”

  “The jury.”

  Stott shook his head. His ears seemed to flap with the motion. “No. I can’t accept that. He did it. I know he did. I feel it in my bones. He murdered that poor girl, and he got away with it. You know, if we’d got the evidence from Michelle Chappel in, then we’d have got a conviction for certain. The judge made a hell of a mistake there.”

  “Perhaps. Did you see her there, by the way?”

  “Where? Who?”

  “Michelle Chappel. In court. I don’t know if she’s been there all along but she was in the public gallery for the verdict. She’d let her hair grow since last November, too. Looked more like Deborah Harrison than ever. She was even wearing a maroon blazer. She was talking to that reporter from the News of the World.”

  “See what I mean,” said Stott. “If we’d been able to bring out that connection, her evidence of what he did to her, there’s no jury in the country wouldn’t have convicted Pierce.”

  “Maybe so, but that’s not the point, Barry.”

  Stott flushed. “Excuse me, but I think it is. A guilty man has just walked out of that courtroom after committing one of the most horrible murders I have ever investigated, and you tell me that’s not the point. I’m sorry, but-”

  “I mean it’s not the point I’m trying to make.”

  Stott frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  “Why is Michelle Chappel so keen to stick the knife in Pierce?”

  “Oh, I see. Well, maybe because he beat her up. Or perhaps because he tried to strangle her? Or could being raped by him after he knocked her out have upset her just a little a bit?”

  Banks sipped some more beer. “All right, Barry, give it a rest. I catch your drift. Perhaps you’re right. But why hang around after her evidence was declared inadmissible? Just to watch him suffer? Why take time off work?”

  Stott frowned. “What makes you think there’s a connection?”

  “It’s just odd, that’s all.” Banks stubbed out his cigarette and drank some more beer. “Her hair was short when we talked to her.”

  “Women’s hair,” said Stott with a shrug. “Who knows anything about that?”

  Banks smiled. “Good point. Another pint? Half, rather?”

  “Should we?”

  “Yes, we damn well should. Jimmy Riddle’s going to be out for our blood. Might as well put off the inevitable as long as possible.”

  “Oh, all right. I’ll have another half of shandy. Then I’ll have to be off.”

  Banks edged through the crowd to the bar, looking at his reflection in the antique mirror at the back while he waited. Not too bad for his early forties, he thought, still slim and trim, despite the pints and the poor diet; a few lines around the eyes, maybe, and a touch a gray at the temples, but that was all. Besides, they added character, Sandra said.

  He intended to part company with Stott after the next drink and visit an old friend while he was in Leeds: Pamela Jeffreys, a violist with the English Northern Philharmonic orchestra. About a year ago, she had been badly hurt in an attack for which Banks still blamed himself. She wasn’t back in the orchestra yet, but she was working hard and getting there fast, and this afternoon, she was playing a chamber concert at the university’s music department. It might go some small way towards making up for the disappointment in court this morning.

  He might also, while he was so close, drop in at the Classical Record Shop and see about the Samuel Barber song collection he had been wanting for a while. Listening to Dawn Upshaw singing “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” on the drive down had made him think about it.

  On the other hand, the not-guilty verdict changed things. While he was in Leeds, he would also phone DI Ken Blackstone and see about having a chat with one of Jelačić’s card-playing cronies. He might even have another word with Jelačić himself.

  Though the Crown would probably appeal the verdict, as far as Banks was concerned it was back to the drawing-board for the time being, a drawing-board he was beginning to feel he should never have left in the first place. And Ive Jelačić was certainly high on his list of loose ends.

  “Damn that judge,” said Stott when he had thanked Banks for the drink. “Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.”

  “I’m not convinced Michelle Chappel’s testimony would have helped as much as you think, Barry,” Banks said.

  “Why not? At least it proves he had homicidal te
ndencies towards young women of Deborah Harrison’s physical type.”

  “It proves nothing of the kind,” said Banks. “Okay, I’ll admit, I was as excited about the psychological possibilities it opened up as you were. And, yes, I was bloody annoyed that Simmonds excluded it. But now I think about it, looking at her in court, I’m not so sure.”

  Stott scratched the back of his left ear and frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because I think that defense lawyer, Shirley Castle, would have made mincemeat of her, that’s why. In the final analysis, she’d have had the jury believing that Michelle Chappel was lying, that she did what she did out of pure vindictiveness towards Pierce, for revenge, because she harbored a grudge for the way he treated her.”

  “And rightly so, after what he did to her.”

  “But don’t you see how it would discredit her testimony, Barry, make her seem like a lying bitch? Especially with such criticisms coming from another woman. That could be pretty damning. She’s good is Ms. Castle. I’ve been up against her before. She’d have made sure that Pierce convinced them with his version of that night’s events. And if they believed that he had simply been warding off the frenzied attack of a hysterical woman, then he could have gained their sympathy.”

  Stott took off his glasses and polished them with a spotless handkerchief. “I still think it would have helped us get a conviction.”

  “Well there’s no way of knowing now, is there?”

  “I suppose not,” Stott said glumly. “What do we do now?”

  “There’s not much more we can do.”

  “Reopen the investigation?”

  Banks sipped some beer. “Oh, yes. I think so, don’t you? After all, Barry, someone out there killed Deborah Harrison, and according to all the hallmarks, it looks very much like someone who might do it again.”