TR01 - Trial And Retribution

by Lynda La Plante

  "Well, call me colour blind but in this light I'd swear that this piece of glass is from a blue bottle."

  A quarter of a mile away, a builders' security fence rattled slightly and, with a grating sound, a section of the galvanized mesh was pushed aside. A shadow slipped through and became a silhouette as it crossed a patch of ground lit by security lighting, then a shadow again as it passed into the gloom surrounding a stockpile of building materials.

  Anita was wearing leggings, a sweatshirt and strapless sandals. She had come out on impulse, a sudden feeling that the funeral, the trial, were not enough to bring an end to the terrible event that had come along like a (I careering truck and smashed into her life. Out here in the dark and away from people and the bits and pieces of everyday life, there was one part of it at least that could be finished.

  It was not a cold night. A breeze rustled the plane trees near the parade of shops. The remote drone of London's unceasing traffic came from almost every direction. The black rectangles of the two tower blocks, with a few lit windows, could be seen rearing up in the almost clear sky. Looking back, Anita could see her own bedroom window, from where a low light shone. Perhaps Peter was going to bed.

  A dog barked and she crouched down. She knew there was a security presence on the building site now and she didn't want a big Doberman leaping at her throat. After the barking stopped she waited for a few seconds then walked rapidly towards her objective, stumbling here and there on broken bricks and chunks of hardcore. Finally she reached the pipes. But which one was it? No one had told her which particular pipe Julie Anne had died in. She hadn't known how to ask.

  She fumbled around, a pallet nearly slipping on top of her as she disturbed its precarious balance. She knew only that she was looking for a narrow pipe couldn't be the larger diameter ones at the outside of the heap. What about this one, tucked away in between? At this moment, high above Anita, a nearly full moon chased clear a bunch of cumuli and a silvery light caught the end of the pipe. Anita saw the remnant of yellow police tape on the narrow pipe and knew this was the one.

  She huddled down and felt in her pocket, pulling out the small blue teddy bear that Julie had had in her bed every night of her life.

  Thomas had bought it at Wool- worth's on his way to the hospital on the day she was born. Anita pressed her nose to the cheap artificial fur.

  Reaching forward, smelling dampness and earth, she placed Julie's teddy inside the pipe and stayed crouching there, watching over the tiny object as it lay in the near darkness.

  "Bye, bye, Julie," she said.

  "Bye, bye, my darling."

  Quite suddenly a wave of pain crashed through her. She may have thought she'd grieved for her daughter but she hadn't, not truly. Now, as grief mowed into her, she started to sob uncontrollably. It was like a racking physical pain crossed with terror like the sudden cramps of sickness, the contractions of childbirth.

  The moon slid behind the clouds once more. The teddy bear could no longer be seen. And Anita's low, mewing, inarticulate voice, like that of some sorely wounded animal, mingled with the sounds of the night.

  chapter 29

  FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER. MORNING

  Walker had been on to Griffith's home number as soon as he realized there was probably more glass in the drain. It couldn't be investigated at night they needed daylight and proper equipment to excavate. They needed time.

  "So will you get on to Fletcher first thing in the morning and ask him to request an adjournment? New evidence with an important bearing on the case, etcetera."

  "OK, Walker," said Griffith drowsily. He'd been asleep for an hour.

  "I'll ask but don't hold out too much hope."

  When Winfield heard in the morning that there would be a request for adjournment he immediately sent the jury out.

  "M'lord," said Willis Fletcher, "I wonder if I might ask for a day.

  Some portions of a blue bottle have been discovered and there is at least the possibility that this might be the bottle mentioned by Mr. Smith in his evidence. There is the further possibility that this was the bottle used to assault Julie Anne Harris. "

  North, tired and dishevelled after being up all night, was the only one in court from Southampton Street. Walker had sent her down specifically to get Winfield's reaction when Fletcher made his request. She watched him considering it, turning back a few pages of his notes to refer to some piece of evidence, probably Smith's. North saw Rylands turn to Belinda Sinclair and confer urgently. The judge cleared his throat.

  "Mr. Fletcher, what exactly are you asking me for?"

  "A day's adjournment for the police to carry out further investigation."

  Winfield played with the pages of his notes for a few more seconds. He was no fool. North guessed the judge knew the police would want to fingerprint the glass they'd found and try and prove it was Ann Taylor's sherry bottle. But, even if they came up with Dunn's prints, what more would that prove? Everyone accepted that Dunn had used the Park. North watched closely as Winfield made up his mind. She just wished Fletcher had mentioned DNA in his request for an adjournment, to underline that they hoped to find a trace of julie Anne on some piece of the bottle. But it was too late now. The judge was thinking in terms of the accused's traces.

  T am sorry, Mr. Fletcher," Winfield said at last.

  "I imagine a person addicted to alcohol may handle a great many bottles in any one day, and I can't see any real justification for delaying the trial at this stage. We shall continue with Mr. Rylands's closing speech. Ask the jury to come back in please."

  The scene at the park was now one of intense and concerted activity.

  TSG had been brought in with the intention of opening up the entire underground conduit

  while other members of Walker's team were searching the open ground and undergrowth of the rest of the park.

  "I want this drain opened up. I want the pipe smashed open so we can look inside."

  "Guv, the Borough Surveyor's got to give the go- ahead."

  "Well? Where is he? He should be here."

  "Guy on the phone says he's off sick and--' But Walker had left him to meet North, who was almost running towards them.

  "He won't adjourn," she gasped.

  "They're going on and Rylands is closing now."

  "How long have we got?"

  "Till lunchtime, at least. Robert Rylands would listen to himself all day right?"

  Wrong. Rylands had drastically curtailed the closure he had originally planned. He knew that Walker had got on to the scent of something. He also knew that, once Winfield started his summing up, there was not much chance of him allowing whatever that something was to be given in evidence and none at all once the jury had begun considering their verdict.

  "I said when I got up that I would be brief, ladies and gentlemen," Rylands was now telling them. He had been on his feet all of fifteen minutes and had, to his own satisfaction, if with considerably more abridgement than was ideal, exposed Fletcher's argument on the forensics, identification and alibi to ridicule.

  "You may now feel that, far from having been presented with what the Crown would say is a clear evidential picture, you have in fact been presented with a ragbag of unrelated fragments.

  "And you may feel, too, that the full truth has not been heard from anyone in this case juries, I am sorry to tell you, often do. But you must keep in mind that Michael Dunn is not charged with telling untruths. He is charged with murdering a little girl.

  "Even if you do not believe that everything he has said, every word of the story, is true you must not without more proof convict him.

  For Michael Dunn himself need prove nothing. It is for the prosecution to prove their case and to satisfy you so that you are sure Michael Dunn murdered Julie Anne Harris.

  "The evidence you have heard, you may think, falls far short of that.

  In fact, it falls short by such a long way that the only verdict which is in good conscience open to you is one of "not guilty" Thank you.
"

  As he sat down it was apparent that even the judge had been caught on the hop by Rylands's unaccustomed brevity.

  "Well," he said, 'since Counsel have been so particularly succinct, I shall begin my summing-up now, without an adjournment. And I hope I shall follow their admirable example as to clarity and conciseness. "

  "Nita, get a bucket. We're going to get rid of this little bastard once and for all."

  Peter was standing in the kitchen, holding Julie's doll in his hand.

  Anita produced a plastic bucket and showed it to him.

  "Not that one the galvanized one. I'm going to cremate the bloody thing. Burn it."

  He started pulling the limbs off the doll, un popping the socketed legs, arms and head and yanking until the

  rubber ligaments snapped. He dropped the parts into the bucket which Anita had placed on the floor and rummaged in a drawer. Somewhere he'd got some fire lighters left over from that barbecue they'd had last summer.

  "When they come for him, it's best we've got rid of it. You know his big mouth."

  Anita was peering into the bucket where the dismembered doll lay in a heap, half covered by its gleaming blonde coiffure. Peter had found a fire lighter which he'd broken up and was dropping fragments into the bucket. She struck a match and dropped it on the hair, which began to burn, frizzling as the flame ate it up.

  "You get out of here! Get out!"

  It was Peter yelling at Jason, who had smelt the burning nylon and come wandering in.

  "Don't you touch him, Peter!" Anita yelled.

  "They'll be here any minute. Jason, get your bag. Jason!"

  But Jason wasn't listening. Jason had been told he was being taken away and put in a home and he wasn't listening to anything any of them said. He went up to his mum and punched her as hard as he could. His fist bounced off her arm. He struck her again in the stomach, his face distorting with fury. She tried to fend him off, flailing with her arms, but the boy hit his mother two or three times more before Peter yanked him away.

  And then the fire lighters caught and Julie's little doll, the one she always had with her, the doll she wanted a wardrobe of party dresses for, burned. First the hair caught light, then the pink plastic body began melting and the kitchen began to fill with toxic black smoke.

  The TSG officers, using sledgehammers and a drill, cracked the side of the drain four feet from the raised access cover and managed to open a jagged aperture a good eighteen inches long. There had been no permission from the Borough Surveyor, the water company, the environmental health or anybody else. Walker had just told them to do it and to blazes with `;,6,' the consequences.

  A TSG officer was now lying down, his arm inserted into the pipe up to the armpit. He had already dragged out the remains of a dozen crisp bags, cigarette packets, leaves and other debris, which lay sodden and putrid in a mound by his side. Now he was grasping some polythene waste, a carrier bag perhaps. He drew it out and held it up. Walker saw a large plastic food bag, the sort used in freezers. Its neck had been tied. It was filthy, with decayed leaves and dirt stuck all over it, but everyone could see that the contents included some broken pieces of blue glass.

  "Yes! That's it!" yelled Walker.

  "That's it, what we're looking for!"

  The officer handed up the bag very carefully and its glass contents clinked as the sour, nutty smell of a long- spilt Amontillado sherry met their nostrils.

  "The issue is not what sort of a person the defendant is, or whether he is always truthful, but whether he is guilty of the very grave offence with which he is charged."

  Winfield took seriously the injunction that, when summing up, the judge should risk monotony rather than to allow emotion to enter his voice. His own voice, solemn and deep, had little problem complying, for it scarcely fluctuated in pitch.

  "It is only if you feel that his reasons for lying tend to show he committed the offence that he has lied out of guilt and a fear of the truth that you should consider the fact that he has lied as relevant at all..."

  While remaining admirably impartial, the style of delivery made the speech a little difficult to concentrate on. There was a lot of coughing and shuffling in court and not a few suppressed yawns.

  Walker sent the bag under police escort to Arnold Mallory and, while it was still on its way, phoned the professor with the plea no, the demand that he drop everything just for this one day.

  "So, what is it you're sending me?" Mallory wanted to know.

  "Broken bottle. Found inside a polythene bag in a drain. It just might be the one Dunn used to assault the child. You got to do dabs and

  DNA. "

  "Do try not to tell me what I've got to do. Walker. I'll do what I can."

  And by the time Walker, North and Satchell arrived at the lab, Mallory and his team had already done a considerable amount. They had in fact reassembled the broken bottle.

  "We're good at jigsaws here and most of the glass survived."

  He showed them the object, clamped to a stand. The fault-lines where it had shattered were traced by the pale adhesive. The only missing piece now was the neck, which Mallory slotted into its place as they watched.

  Mallory then took a sheet of filter paper and folded it in four. His face set in a mask of concentration, he moved the bottle aside, then with a fine pair of tweezers he picked up the rim they had removed from the bottle. Holding this in his left hand he used the pointed corner of the folded paper and prodded at a tiny, dark clot of matter that was stuck to the rim. A little of it came off on the paper.

  Carefully, Mallory opened the paper and laid it flat on a glass petri dish. He opened a bottle of liquid chemical and, with a dropper, allowed a single drop of the chemical to fall on the sample. A colourless, circular, damp stain spread out around it. Replacing the stopper and returning the phial to its rack, he selected a second phial and repeated the procedure. This time the dampness instantly turned a bright pink.

  Mallory released his breath in a wheezing exhalation. He glanced round the circle of expectant police officers.

  "It's blood," he declared.

  Walker took a moment to register. Then he was patting his pockets as if for a cigarette but, in fact, for his mobile phone.

  "I can't tell you yet," continued Mallory, 'whether it's the girl's blood or not. The next step is to establish a blood group .. "

  Walker looked at North. He must have left his mobile in the car.

  "Get me through to the Crown Court- quick! They'll have to adjourn now. We can't try him twice. We got just the one shot at him."

  At about the time that the pink stain appeared on the filter paper in Mallory's lab, Winfield wrapped up his speech and invited the jury to retire. As North's message

  came through for an urgent word with Clive Griffith, one of the ushers was being sworn in as jury bailiff.

  '.. I shall not myself speak to them, nor suffer any other person to speak to them, save to ask them if they have reached their verdict. "

  Griffith read the note and slipped out of court. But by the time he had used his phone, he knew it would be too late.

  North snapped her mobile shut and returned to the lab bench. Mallory had just completed a test on a second sample from the bottle.

  "Look same blood group," he said.

  "AB negative. We're getting there!"

  "Too slowly, I'm afraid," said North grimly.

  "I've just spoken to Griffith. Jury have retired. We're too late."

  "Shit!" Walker clenched his fists.

  "What's been going on down there?

  Rylands must have been going for the fastest fucking closing speech on record. "

  He was patting his pockets again and this time pulled out a packet of Marlboro. He said to Mallory, "You will finish the tests, won't you?

  Whatever happens, you will doth eDNA

  Mallory smiled. He was a selfish man but towards this impassioned policeman he felt as near as he ever would to kindliness.

  "Yes," he sai
d, "I'll finish them. We all want to close the book on this, don't we?"

  At the Howarth Estate, Enid Marsh's curtains twitched. She had no idea what was happening today at the trial. Television had an item on the news at dinner time, all

  about closing speeches, summing up. But for all she knew it was finished by now.

  On the back of Enid's door, the outfit she'd worn hung waiting for Ivy or Karen to come and claim it. When they did, Enid had planned a little tea party. There were some ginger nuts she could put out. It'd be nice to have a cup pa and a chat. But nobody had been near Enid since Wednesday except Mrs. Wald and she didn't know any more than Enid about the trial. All the rest of them had stayed away.

  She looked out across the estate. There were some people making their way out of the tower block below and going away towards the car park.

  One of them was that boy Jason, little Goldilocks's naughty brother.

  He was being almost dragged along by his fast-walking stepfather, Peter James. Enid knew him, she'd seen him in court.

  Looking back she saw the boy's mother coming along behind them, accompanied by a stranger. This was a woman with short grey hair, a pale mac and a shoulder bag. She had social worker written all over her. The mother carried a suitcase. Where were they going?

  Enid watched on. At the edge of the playground, the mother handed the suitcase to the social worker, who nodded her head and set off after Peter James and the boy, catching them up just before they reached the corner. She must have said something because Enid saw the kid twisting round, turning and trying to catch a glimpse of his mother. He called out, "I want my dad! I want my dad!"

  Enid could see Anita standing there, watching the departing group with her arms folded. What Enid could

  not see was that Anita was weeping.

  "Taking the little bugger away," Enid thought.

  "Good riddance, he'd always been trouble."

  Anita didn't call out. She just watched as Jason was helped into a car. At length a car engine started and Enid saw the young woman, the mother, give a solitary wave. Peter James came back, took Anita in his arms, and walked her back to the tower block and out of Enid's sight.