by Flynn Berry
I didn’t know whose job it would be to tell Rachel to dress decently. The court usher, the security guards. No one was up for it, apparently.
We had already visited the courthouse in York six times. Rachel believed she wasn’t the first person he had attacked and wouldn’t be the last. She thought he would be caught eventually, and we came to the court to look for him.
When asked, we said we watched trials because we planned to study law at Newcastle. “Me too!” said a boy our age once. Rachel stared at the floor and I turned to him. He wore a cheap, clean suit and a shiny tie. “At Durham, though.”
He beamed at me and said, “Have you heard any interesting cases yet?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
The guards pretended not to stare at Rachel while we went through security, until her back was to them and she lifted her arms for the female officer to pat her down. When the woman asked her to turn around, Rachel smiled at the sight of the men motionless on the queue. In the sunlight, the cotton of her top turned sheer in the triangle between her breasts, showing the skin beneath it.
As we walked down the marble corridor, I pulled on a loose jumper and put my hair back. I knew why the defendants were here and what they had done.
Today’s defendant was accused of following a girl into the toilets at a pub and raping her. He said it was consensual and pled not guilty at his magistrate’s hearing.
It wasn’t him, Rachel knew as soon as she saw him, but neither of us considered leaving. The victim was a fifteen-year-old girl. The public gallery was empty except for us, and when the girl went onto the stand, she stared as though hoping to recognize us.
It was the second day of the trial. We didn’t know what had happened on the first day, so we didn’t know why she looked so desperate. The defense barrister started with a simple line of questioning about where she had been the day of the assault, and with whom. He was in his forties, with round wire glasses and a crisp accent. I was relieved for her sake that he wasn’t aggressive like some of the other barristers we had seen, or the detectives who’d visited Rachel in hospital.
The girl was shaking, I thought from being in the same room as the defendant, an older teenager who ignored everyone in the room except his barrister and the judge.
The barrister gave a name and asked the girl if she knew him. She said yes, they were friends.
“Did you send photographs of yourself to him?” he asked in a level voice.
The girl hunched. “Yes.”
“What was in the photographs?”
Rachel leaned forward. She wasn’t looking at the barrister. She was intent on the judge. He had to stop this. The judge calmly regarded the girl, and the barrister. His face was so pale it seemed to have a layer of dust or chalk.
“I’m in them.”
“What are you doing in the photographs?”
The jury appeared interested in this development. None of them frowned at the barrister. Their expressions showed only focus, an eagerness to take this new information into account.
She didn’t answer.
“Are you nude in them?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why did you send the photographs?”
“I liked him.”
The barrister was quiet for a long moment, as though deflated by this revelation about her. Then he straightened. “How many boyfriends have you had?” he asked, and his voice sounded confident and refreshed.
This continued for another hour. A few of the jury members finally started to appear uneasy, but most of them seemed sunk in disapproval, their minds made up about her. The judge wasn’t surprised. That might have been what worried me most. He watched a middle-aged man ask a child how many times she’d had sex and if she masturbated often and if she took topless photographs, and never showed any discomfort. It must happen all the time.
The prosecutor showed photographs taken in hospital of bruises on the girl’s wrists and legs, but the jury’s faces didn’t turn sympathetic. The bruises didn’t mean it wasn’t consensual, the defense barrister argued. It might have been rough sex.
Rachel and I didn’t speak as we left the court. The defendant was declared not guilty. Later we tried to find the girl, but her name had been starred out of the court records because she was a minor.
That evening we rode home in silence. The sky was still light above the shadowy trees and utility lines. The air was balmy and soft. Cow parsley grew high along the road.
“I can’t do this on my own after you leave,” I told her. She was moving to Manchester in September for her nursing course.
“Why not?”
“I’ll be too busy. I have to study for my A levels.”
She didn’t look at me.
24
THE LIBRARY IS ONE of the painted-wood buildings on the high street in Marlow. I still have Rachel’s library card from the last time I borrowed it, and I need something to do at night at the Hunters. I pull out books at random. The Lover. Balthazar. King Lear.
Never, never, never, never, never. Kill, kill, kill, kill.
I can’t remember if that is the right quote. I keep pulling books but I can’t understand any of them, even the ones I have read before. The sentences don’t lock together. I climb the narrow stairs to the children’s collection and choose a book of German fairy tales with beautiful colored illustrations.
“You have two books overdue,” says the librarian at the checkout desk. He is young, with black hair and round glasses. He doesn’t live in Marlow, I’ve seen him waiting for the bus to Oxford with his bag on his lap.
“What are they?”
“The Nesbø and the Läckberg.” He waits. Her last books. “Do you want to renew them?”
“Yes,” I say, “thank you.”
• • •
After the library, I drive to Abingdon. A poster in the corridor at the police station promotes an early retirement scheme, and I look between it and the book of fairy tales.
“Why don’t you retire?” I ask Moretti.
“Ah,” he says, “you’ve noticed our voluntary redundancy program.” I wait. He takes off his glasses and wipes his eyelids. “It’s complicated.”
“You have a house in Whitstable.”
“I have a shack,” he says. I try to imagine him as a fisherman, in yellow waders, steering a boat through rocks.
“We didn’t find anyone at the hospital named Martin,” he says. “Are you sure that’s how she knew him?”
“She said he was a friend from the hospital. You didn’t find anyone at all? Isn’t it a common name?”
“No one in contact with Rachel, no staff or patients on her ward. What did she say exactly?”
“She said she had to hang up. She said she was going to meet a friend from the hospital named Martin.”
“When was this?”
“Sunday evening.”
“Where was she meeting him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she going to drive or walk to meet him?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“You said before that they were going to have dinner. What made you think so?”
“Just the hour. Half six, something like that.”
“The thing is,” says Moretti, “we’ve looked at her phone and e-mail. There were no recent calls or messages to or from an unknown person, or anyone named Martin. It’s likely she made a verbal agreement to meet him.”
“Is that strange?”
“You know better than I do. How did Rachel normally arrange social engagements?”
“Text,” I say. “And then she was always late, so she always sent a message apologizing for being late. Is there anyone in town named Martin?”
“Yes, but he’s nine years old.” Moretti lifts the end of his tie and tucks it back into nothing. “Your fathe
r asked where you’re staying.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“He’s living in a hostel in Blackpool. Do you want their number?”
“No. Did you tell him Rachel owned a house?”
“Not directly, no.”
He might want to move in. He might be there already, using her things, replacing her specific atmosphere with his. One of the rehabs, years ago, asked me to store his belongings. Three bin bags, which when I returned to my flat I discovered were filled with wire clothes hangers and papers and one pair of stiff, wrinkled jeans. Everything he owned.
He mostly ignored us when we were growing up. He was drinking then, though he still found jobs on building sites and kept the house in fairly decent order. Soon after we left home he lost the house, and began to drink more, and stay with friends. I don’t know why it became more severe, if an event triggered it or if he was just worn down from years of managing.
We used to try to rescue him. The two of us, turning up at a house in Hull or a track in Leeds. As soon as she started working, Rachel regularly sent him money. Nothing we did helped, though, and, with shame, we stopped trying.
Moretti promises that he didn’t give him Rachel’s address, and we talk for another hour.
“Why did your last relationship end?” he asks.
“He was unfaithful.”
“When did the relationship end?”
“In May.”
It doesn’t strike me as strange of him to ask. It doesn’t even seem like police work. We talked about the news earlier, a political scandal in London, and I had the sense that he hadn’t spoken about it with anyone yet and wanted to process it. The scandal in Whitehall certainly had nothing to do with the case. I still miss Liam. Every day I don’t think of him is a triumph.
“Who was the other woman?”
“He didn’t know her name. He was in Manchester for work, they met at a bar. They didn’t continue to see each other.”
“How did you find out?”
“I found a pair of black lace knickers in his bag. They must have gotten mixed up with his clothes when he left the hotel. I knew they weren’t mine, they were a brand I’d never heard of before.” The lace was the expensive kind, so delicate it’s almost ragged, spidery.
25
I WAIT ON a bench in the corridor of the same courthouse in York. It hasn’t changed in fifteen years. Guards, solicitors, defendants, and witnesses move past me. No one asks why I am here. A transparent justice system, though the motto is in French and the judges are almost all Oxbridge. Dieu et mon droit. I only know what it means because I looked it up.
The court usher calls, “Lee Barton,” and I find a seat in the public gallery. The only other person watching the trial is a middle-aged woman. A door opens and the jury files in, already wearing that expression, fixed, remote, as though to assure us they are worthy of the responsibility.
A bailiff enters escorting the defendant. I lean forward, with a catch in my throat. It could be the man who attacked her in Snaith. Brown eyes, narrow face. I can’t gauge his height from here. He runs his eyes over the crowd, passing over me. He and the other woman in the public gallery give each other a smile. His mother, I think.
The prosecutor and the defense are both women. Both appear to be in their forties, brisk and neat. They both speak quickly, though never too quickly for the jury to understand, and with a degree of urgency. I find that I like both of them, and I wonder where they go after their trials end for the day, if they return to their offices or meet their colleagues for a drink.
I’d rather watch them, but I force myself to study Lee. He is accused of beating a woman with a tire iron. Rachel might have read about it and paid him a visit. He was released on bail until the trial and was free on the day of her murder.
The defense barrister interviews a witness, an army corporal who trained Lee. The questions are about Lee’s temper, his character, and the work he did as a private and then a border guard. “What were the dates of his service?” asks the barrister.
“He served in the Yorkshire Regiment from 1996 to 1999 and as a border guard on Tortola, BVI, from 1998 to 2000.”
He was abroad when Rachel was attacked. I slump against the bench and rub my hand over my eyes.
During the recess, I find the woman from the public gallery smoking outside. I ask for a light and introduce myself. “I’m Caitlin, Alex’s girlfriend. He had work so he asked me to come and tell him what happened.”
It always surprises me how easily the old accent comes back, as though it’s been waiting, building up, growing stronger. She nods, distracted. I can’t tell if the name was a successful guess, but if her son doesn’t know an Alex, she’s too preoccupied to challenge me.
“I didn’t know Lee was sent to the Virgin Islands,” I say. She stares across the wet traffic circle. The columns loom above us. “Did he get home much?”
“No,” she says. “Only once, for Christmas.”
After she returns inside, I stub out my cigarette and pass between the stained columns into the drizzle. On top of the courthouse is a statue of a blindfolded woman holding a sword and a pair of scales. The blindfold makes her look like she is about to be executed.
26
WHEN I RETURN FROM York, the journalist is at the bar in the inn. I hurry past the open door, and there is a clatter behind me as Sarah climbs off her stool and follows me into the hall.
“Glass of wine?” she asks. I start up the stairs. “Nora, I was a court reporter at the Old Bailey for eight years. I’ve watched hundreds of police inquiries move to trial. I can help you.”
I come down the stairs and follow her into the bar.
“This is off the record,” she says. “Ask me anything you like.”
“What happens to the victims’ families?”
“If it’s a child, the parents divorce. Even if the child is grown. The families often go into debt. It can be difficult to hold a job, especially at first. If it’s a spouse, the surviving partner will often remarry, and if not, he has a high risk of an early death.” She looks at me and says, “Siblings generally recover. It’s not the same as losing a child.”
“If there’s a trial, will I be able to talk to him?”
“Sort of. You can make an impact statement, but the defendant doesn’t have to respond in any way. Once he is in prison, you can visit him, if he agrees to it.”
Sarah orders a glass of wine. She wears red lipstick and a loose cowl-neck sweater. In the leather satchel hanging on a hook by her legs is a scarf with a pattern of red Japanese gates, and a black notebook.
“Keith Denton was at her house that morning.”
“I know. I’ve been looking into him,” she says. “He doesn’t have a record. Everyone I’ve spoken to here adores him.”
I signal to the bartender and order a bourbon. She’s telling the truth. If she’d found any dark secrets of his, they would be published by now.
“When will the police stop looking?”
“The Thames Valley CID says they keep an inquiry open until they stop turning up new evidence. But that’s not true, since any information about her can be considered evidence. Really they stop when they have too many new inquiries.”
“How long will that be?” There’s so little crime here, I expect it could be months, a year.
“In this district, not long. Any day now.”
“What?” There were only four murders in the county last year, I remember from the article about Rachel.
“They investigate murder, manslaughter, rape, missing persons, serious assault, and child abuse. They have more cases than you might think.”
“Would they come back to it?”
“Yes, if there’s a similar incident in the area, or if someone confesses. Or someone on the review team might pick it up, but there are hundreds of other ca
ses for them to consider.” We sit in silence, and she straightens the links on her bracelet. “Can I ask you something?” she says.
I nod, though she seems far away, and the bar seems far away. Any day now. Then I notice Sarah’s expression. She’s going to tell me who she thinks did it.
“Where’s the dog?” she asks.
“What?”
“A lot of people in town have mentioned seeing Rachel with a dog. Where is he?”
“He ran away.”
She nods and sips her wine. “When?”
“The day Rachel was killed. Whoever did it must have left the door open and the dog escaped.”
German shepherds do not run away. Sarah doesn’t say this, and she tries not to look triumphant, but she is getting closer to whatever it is she needs. I can’t tell you what it will be like, Moretti said, if this becomes a national story.
27
I TAKE MYSELF TO the Miller’s Arms for breakfast. I only pretended to Rachel that I liked the Duck and Cover better. I order the Parmesan galette and a coffee and argue with Rachel in my head. I don’t want a sausage bap and instant coffee, I tell her. You’re skint, she would say, that is what skint people eat.
“Social climber,” she said when I was eighteen and losing my Yorkshire accent, and I was, but I also needed a change. That summer, our dad lost the plot, and by the time I got to university I was furious, and I changed my voice the way I would have chewed off my leg to get out of a trap. Every time I heard my cool, even accent, I thought—I’ve left, I’m gone.
It wasn’t difficult. Most of the people I went to university with spoke in the almost placeless tones of Received Pronunciation. Rachel kept her accent even after she moved south, but she had a beautiful voice, burry and low.
