She never heard the mother, who had lost not one, but two of her babies, but was now sending a third away. Never heard the plaintive cry, "I love them."
chapter 30
FRIDAY 22 SEPTEMBER. AFTERNOON
Colin Barridge sat on the bench in the Dockland Light Railway station, impervious to the trains going by. An hour ago, when he had walked out of Southampton Street in his civilian clothes, he had ceased to be the bearer of Her Majesty's warrant. He no longer stood or sat in the office of a constable. He was no longer, even, in possession of the uniform of the Metropolitan Police.
This was what suspension meant. It also meant hanging, didn't it? If this was the old days, it could be Michael Dunn who was going to be hanged, not him.
The jury were out on Dunn. He knew that. They would probably decide the guy's fate before the day was out. His own fate would take weeks to resolve. There would be a disciplinary hearing, evidence, admissions, severe words, tears. His dad would tell him I told you so.
His mum would cry and cry and not be able to face the neighbours.
Barridge didn't want to go home to his mum and dad. He wanted to stay here. He was drained of all desire, all need, all ambition. Once he wanted to be a Detective Inspector in the Flying Squad. Now he watched
train after train go by without feeling the need to move at all.
Belinda Sinclair went down to sit with her client in the holding cell.
She didn't actually have to do this but, then again, there was no one else to do it.
There wasn't much conversation. Dunn was staring at the wall, humming to himself and smoking a roll up.
"How long's it been?"
"Fifty minutes."
"Oh."
He went on humming tunelessly.
Looking back on the trial, Belinda saw that her original faith in Dunn's innocence had been rather dented by Smith's failure to recognize Dunn in court. But this damage to her belief in the case had been mitigated by her own sense of responsibility for the cock-up. If only she had shown Smith a photograph of Dunn ..
Michael had been terrible in the witness box yesterday. She couldn't understand it. He seemed so bright and personable, now that he'd got the booze completely out of his system. But as soon as Fletcher started to question him about things that happened on the day of the murder he'd fallen to pieces. Started looking shifty and, then, guilty.
Fletcher had been bloody good, better than flash- Harry Rylands, if truth be told. Their brief had been a little too brief in his closure, to her way of thinking. Then she remembered that Rylands's advice had been not to call Dunn at all. God, how she wished they'd taken it.
"How long now?"
"An hour."
"Christ! How long's it going to take them to realize the police case is a load of shit?"
"An hour is nothing, Michael. Sometimes the longer they stay out the better."
Was that true? In an apparently cut-and-dried case a long jury deliberation would be interesting. But was this such a case? Once she had thought it was.
"But you do think they'll acquit?" asked Dunn. He sounded pathetic now, forlorn, but that was hardly surprising in view of the fact that the sword of Damocles hung about an inch from his cranium. She remembered the last thing Rylands had said to her outside the court.
"We've got him off, Belinda, never fear."
She replied, "Or you'll eat your wig, Robert?"
But Rylands had just smiled enigmatically before waltzing off to the bar mess. Instead of telling Dunn about this exchange, she just said weakly, "I sincerely hope so."
He was kicking the leg of the table now, swinging his foot against it rhythmically. She wondered what would happen if she asked him to stop, but he stopped of his own accord anyway. There was something he wanted to ask her.
"Could I ... well, let you know how I get on ... afterwards?"
She looked sharply at him. What was he asking?
"Yes, of course," she said guardedly.
"You have the office address."
"Yes, I know. But you might leave, get married or something. So I thought.."
Jesus, she thought. He's asking if we can meet.
Before Belinda could cut him short or devise a reply, there was a sharp rap on the door. A voice called, "Jury's back!"
She looked at Dunn, wishing he would hurry. His eyes were saucers but she was oddly unmoved. He said, "I'm ready now."
"Come on, then."
It was a long wait for the jury and all the time a long, long private prayer by Helen that they would find him guilty. She wanted it over and it wouldn't be, for any of them, until then.
Helen was the only member of the family who'd been at the trial every day. Some of the estate people had come in for the first and last days but, out of the relatives, even Thomas hadn't showed up for the verdict. Surely they'd have given him compassionate leave if he'd wanted it?
Helen understood why Anita stayed away, but she was adamant about her own presence. There had to be someone the same flesh and blood as little Julie present at the-- She nearly thought the phrase 'at the death'. The end.
What had been hard, especially, was listening to the pathologist and then that fat scientist telling what happened to Julie. They used that clinical, soulless language. From time to time, in the middle of it all, Helen had been flooded with memories of Julie alive. Sitting alongside her on the bus, bouncing on the cushion and talking away to herself, or to complete strangers.
"My dad's a soldier," she'd tell them, 'but he hasn't got a gun. "
And at Helen's house after television: "I'm going to be a dancer on Top of the Pops, I am. I can do disco, granny, look."
And at bedtime, when Helen baby sat one time: "I love you best, granny."
In court she'd had to listen to how her granddaughter's tongue had protruded in death through clenched teeth. How her neck had been injured, the ligature indenting the neck tissues. How she had been bruised, how she'd been penetrated ..
"I love you best, granny."
Helen studied the members of the jury as they filed in. They knew the verdict but you couldn't read anything in their faces, just seriousness. Michael Dunn never glanced at them. He stood in the dock, staring at the floor. Everyone in court could see how he was shaking.
"Would the foreman please stand?" asked the Clerk.
The woman who had led the jury into court rose to her feet. She was middle-aged and seemed to Helen educated, intelligent.
"Madam foreman, answer this question yes or no. Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?"
The woman glanced at the judge then back at the Clerk. She nodded her head.
"Yes."
A perceptible thrill of anticipation flickered through the court then died to a profound silence. The Associate gave a slight cough.
"Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty of murder?"
There was a second's pause in which nobody breathed. Then the jury foreman herself took an intake of air so that she could speak up.
Helen continued to hold her breath.
Peter and Anita sat in their living room. Tony, his nappy a little sodden and its adhesive tabs coming adrift, was crawling around the floor with a long string of drool dangling from his mouth. Anita was impervious. She stared at her fingernails.
"Come on, love, we talked it through. I know it's hard but it's best for Jason, it really is. They even said so."
He lapsed into silence when she didn't reply or react. He sat watching Tony, who was trying to stuff a plastic block into his mouth. There would be a time to talk about Jason but this wasn't it.
The phone rang. Peter looked at his watch and then at Anita and she was looking at him now with eyes wide. They both knew.
"This is it," he said.
He went out to the hall and picked up the phone. Anita heard his responses, very quiet and short. She bit into a fingernail and it gave way with a loud snap. She heard Peter ring off.
He didn't com
e back instantly but lingered in the hall. She waited, holding the fragment of nail between her tongue and teeth. What was he doing?
Then Peter was standing at the door. His pose was easy, casual, leaning on the door frame. He was smiling when he gave her the news.
"It's guilty."
Anita covered her face with her open hands and leaned forward to rest her head on her knees.
Belinda was shocked and Rylands too, perhaps, though he didn't show it. There was no one in court to boo or hiss the verdict. In the public gallery they celebrated.
Rylands was on his feet. Winfield raised an eyebrow.
"There is nothing I wish to say, m'lord."
Rylands knew there was no point in mitigation, as Winfield was about to underline. The judge nodded to the associate who told Dunn to stand.
"Michael Dunn," intoned Winfield, 'as I am sure you know, you have been convicted of an offence for which the sentence is fixed by law.
There is only one sentence I can pass and I sentence you accordingly to life imprisonment. In this case, I recommend that the minimum term to be served should be no less than twenty years. Take him down. "
In the bustle and disturbance of the courtroom that followed the verdict. Belinda Sinclair had the odd feeling that she was in a kind of bubble of silence. It wasn't shock or disbelief she'd always known this reverse could happen but a sense of detachment. She'd done her best but it hadn't been enough and the jury had gone against her. Who was she, even silently, to criticize them?
She felt a tap on her arm and it was Detective Superintendent Walker.
She looked at him without warmth.
"Miss Sinclair, I would like you to know this. We found something, a blue glass bottle. Tests carried out today have shown that traces around the neck of that bottle are blood the same group as that of Julie Ann Harris AB negative. It's a rare group. The bottle was found in a drain in Princess Elizabeth Park."
She listened to what the policeman had to say. And as soon as she heard it she realized that she already knew this. At some point, in the last twenty-four hours, she had unconsciously changed her mind about Dunn. And she realized that, if she had been a member of the jury, she would have found him guilty too.
It was her duty to go down and see her client now. She made her way into the basement and was shown into Dunn's cell, where she was told she had a couple of minutes. The transport was about to leave.
He was sitting slumped at the table. Belinda took a packet of Silk Cut out of her bag and lit a cigarette, dropping the almost full packet on the table in front of him. He raised his head and looked at her. There were traces on his face of very recent tears.
"What happens now?" he asked. He looked more lonely, more pathetic than ever, but it didn't touch Belinda even remotely. Not any more.
"New evidence has apparently been found by the police, Michael."
She looked steadily at him. She accused him with her eyes and he shrank away.
"But I didn't do it. I didn't. I swear. I'm innocent. I didn't do it!"
A security Guard hammered on the door the transport was ready to take him. Belinda stood by the door as it swung open, then swivelled just for a moment.
"Yes, you did, Michael," she said.
"Oh, yes, you did."
And she went out to look for some fresh air to breathe.
Walker was not a man to go fishing. He liked an occasional day at the races or a football match with his boy. But even then he never truly relaxed. On the day after the trial was over he'd managed to get some tickets at Spurs for the Newcastle match, but the whole ninety minutes he was thinking about Mallory and what the DNA would turn up next week.
Dunn was safely banged up but Walker knew in his heart that they'd been lucky. There had been as many defensive mistakes as he was watching out there on the White Hart Lane park.
Barridge's own-goal should have finished them completely but then Rylands put Dunn in the witness box and the Crown got one back.
Fletcher was brilliant. Terry Smith's failure to recognize Dunn was important too, but in the end it probably came down to the jury's intuition.
Which is why he still needed that DNA. The very last thing Walker wanted was a rematch at the Appeal Court with Rylands. Or a book exposing a so-called miscarriage of justice. Or God forbid a Rough Justice TV documentary.
He'd told everybody to take a long weekend but he himself was back at Southampton Street on the Monday, trying to disentangle the chaos that was the budget for this investigation. The station Super wanted the Incident Room packed up by the end of the week, before which he had to make sure all the reports, statements, notes and audio tapes were tagged, docketed and filed along with car logs, overtime sheets and all the other paper palaver that had to be placed these days in long-term storage. Then there was the Barridge disciplinary to deal with. He'd spent all Sunday morning writing his report.
Now Soames, Harrold, Macklin, Grimes and the others were humping files out to the AMIP van in the loading bay, while he furiously double-checked Mallory's invoices. He was cursing forensic's meticulous paperwork, with every procedure, even the most minute, timed and charged for, when the phone at his elbow sounded. It was the man himself on the phone.
"I thought you'd like to be the first to know. Detective Superintendent," boomed Mallory.
"You've got the DNA tests?"
Walker signalled to North, Satchell and anyone else within earshot.
They instantly stopped what they were doing and gathered round. The room fell silent.
"I have indeed," said Mallory.
"I have carried out the tests you requested on the blood deposits found on the bottleneck from Princess Elizabeth Park."
"And?"
"They prove without doubt that it was Julie Anne's blood on the bottle. Congratulations, Mr. Walker. You got the right man. There'll be no books by leftie journalists trying to make a name for themselves.
There'll be no shouting about a miscarriage of justice. You'll have my full report in the morning. Goodbye. "
Walker hung up and told his team. The cheer rattled the Venetian blinds and somebody's cap crossed the room like a frisbee. Walker went up to Pat North he knew Satchell too well to say anything to him. He shook Pat's hand.
"Congratulations, Detective Inspector," Walker said.
"I look forward to working with you again."
Pat North smiled. Yes, she thought, it's been a hell of an experience, and some of it was just plain hell. But she was glad she'd done it.
chapter 31
Dunn kicked at the hard-backed solitary chair, then he picked it up and threw it against the wall. He tore the mattress off the bunk-bed.
He tried to rip it apart, then he couldn't get his breath. He kept on clawing at his shirt where the tie they had given him had been. Even the open collar felt as if it was throttling him. It was the terrible rage of his own guilt slowly surfacing, and he began punching himself, slapping his face, ramming and hitting his head against the wall as the rage consumed him in agony. It was the same rage that had swept over him when she, Julie Ann, had begun screaming, she'd almost bitten his fingers as he closed her mouth. No one had heard his screams, so she had to be silenced, just as his abusers had silenced him. A rope round her neck, not too tight, only to frighten her, then he would carry her some place, hide her, as they had hidden him. There was nothing wrong. He hadn't done anything wrong. He had done nothing that hadn't been done to him. He was innocent. He didn't do it. His voice screeched into a howl. Spittle formed in globules at the edge of his mouth as he repeated over and over again: "I didn't do it. I didn't do it."
His own voice sounded hollow and empty, as empty as Belinda Sinclair's beautiful eyes when she had left his cell.
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