Letters To My Daughter's Killer

by Cath Staincliffe

  ‘With your permission, your honour, I would like Mr Tennyson to demonstrate for the jury, using a model, how he tried to rouse his wife.’

  Miss Dixon jumps up. ‘Objection, your honour, theatrics have no place here.’

  ‘This relates to the evidence?’ the judge asks Mr Cromer.

  ‘Yes, your honour, directly to the forensic evidence.’

  ‘Objection denied.’

  A dummy is brought in. Faceless, like Lizzie was by the time you’d finished with her. There’s chatter while one of the ushers places it on the floor. Others lay white tape, following a diagram that Mr Cromer gives them. He explains to the jury, ‘The tape represents the furniture in the room: the sofa here and the television stand, at right angles with a gap between them. These are placed exactly as they were found that night, as is the model representing the victim.’

  I wonder where they got the dummy from. Is there a factory somewhere that churns them out for this sort of thing? Are they used in hospitals or research labs? Smooth, sexless, the limbs pliable, the left arm, the arm that was closest to the stove stretched out, the right arm, the broken arm, bent in place.

  Mr Cromer asks you to stand beyond the tape towards where the front door would be. ‘Now, Mr Tennyson, please show us how you approached and touched the body of your wife.’

  You come between the taped outline of the sofa and the TV. Does this remind you of rehearsals, when you are blocking a play? Did you know you’d have to act this out?

  You take two steps to reach Lizzie and crouch down, not kneeling. Then you reach out both your hands. It looks bizarre. One hand – the left, the nearest – would make more sense.

  ‘Was that how close you came?’ asks Mr Cromer.

  ‘I think so,’ you say.

  ‘Mr Tennyson, could you do it again, but this time remain as far away as you possibly can while still touching the right shoulder?’

  You nod and retrace your steps. This time when you crouch you can only just reach; the tips of your fingers graze the smooth plastic of the dummy. Someone less agile would lose their balance. Mr Cromer asks an usher to make marks where your feet are. The usher uses chalk and draws lines by your toes and heels. You are asked to return to the witness stand.

  Then Mr Cromer produces a large mat of translucent plastic, thick, flexible – like a giant mouse mat with curvy edges. There’s an oval marked on one edge of it, and the usher raises the dummy and adjusts the mat beneath it so that the oval matches the outline of the head. The rest of it forms a puddle shape around the head and upper body.

  ‘This represents the pool of blood at the murder scene,’ Mr Cromer says. ‘Members of the jury please note that the marks at the front of Mr Tennyson’s shoes are several inches in from the edge of the pool. If Mr Tennyson had crouched there as he just demonstrated, both of his shoes would have been covered in blood. The shoes he gave the police did not have any traces of blood on them. Mr Tennyson, have you any explanation as to how this can be?’

  ‘I must have been standing further away and then have leant right over,’ you say. I can hear a frisson of anxiety in your tone.

  ‘If you had been any further away, you would not have been able to reach, would you?’ Mr Cromer says. ‘I think that is obvious to everyone. Why did you use both hands?’ The question is swift, and despite Mr Cromer’s Devonian accent, it sounds sharp.

  ‘It was instinctive.’

  ‘I’d suggest to you that it would have been more straightforward to use one hand, the left, but you needed a way of explaining the bloody fingerprints from your right hand on the stairs and the bathroom door. So you cooked up this two-handed gesture. Isn’t that the case?’

  ‘No, I used both hands,’ you say.

  ‘And washed them upstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the sink?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t have a shower?’ Mr Cromer says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how did traces of diluted blood get in the shower cubicle?’

  ‘Lizzie must have had a shower while I was out,’ you say.

  ‘Yet the shower cap was bone dry? And having been to the salon that day, she would not need to wash her hair again, would she?’

  Her bright, bright hair.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I ask you again, Mr Tennyson, did you take a shower that night?’ Mr Cromer paces slowly around the floor of the courtroom, like a large animal circling its prey, pausing to ask each question.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how did that blood get there?’ says Mr Cromer.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know. Did you beat your wife?’

  ‘No,’ you say.

  ‘Did you beat her that night?’

  ‘No,’ you say.

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Mrs Tennyson told her friend Rebecca that you had. How do you explain that?’ says Mr Cromer.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Do you think she was lying to this court?’

  ‘No, but it wasn’t true,’ you say.

  ‘Why would Rebecca lie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Or do you think your wife lied when she told her friend that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ you say.

  ‘Mrs Tennyson was pregnant the first time she spoke about you beating her. She was pregnant again last September. Did you row about that? An argument that became violent?’

  ‘There was no argument.’

  ‘You weren’t angry? Scarcely managing on one wage and the prospect of more children, her working life disrupted and all the extra costs,’ says Mr Cromer.

  ‘I didn’t know she was pregnant,’ you say.

  ‘The pathologist estimated that your wife was seven weeks pregnant; can you think of any reason why she would not have told you?’

  ‘No, I don’t know, perhaps she hadn’t realized it herself.’ There is no anger in your responses, which is a good way to play it. No doubt your counsel has told you to always remain polite and calm lest we glimpse your dark side.

  ‘You claim that you left the house at eight thirty?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you arrived at the gym at nine?’ says Mr Cromer.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did you get the text from your wife?’

  ‘Just as I got to the gym, when I went to turn my phone off.’

  ‘It arrived then, or had you already received it and only just noticed it?’

  ‘It was already there,’ you say.

  ‘We have been told it was sent at eight-forty. Ten minutes after you claim you left home. How long does it take you to walk to the gym?’

  ‘About half an hour,’ you say.

  ‘You don’t drive there?’

  ‘Not that distance, no.’

  ‘You are certain you left at half past eight?’

  ‘Yes,’ you say.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Casualty had been on for about fifteen minutes. Lizzie liked to watch it,’ you say.

  Did she? I struggle to remember.

  You say, ‘I was thinking about watching it till the end but decided to go to the gym instead.’

  ‘Why did you go to the gym then?’

  ‘It’s a good time to go. Quiet,’ you say.

  ‘How would you know?’ says Mr Cromer, scowling, his head cocked to one side.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How would you know it’s quieter at that time?’ he says slowly, and I sense something significant coming. Mr Cromer –his girth, the drawl of his accent, his steady, stately movements – might appear a little simple, but he is clever and quick-witted.

  ‘Because people are busy Saturday nights, going out, meeting friends.’

  ‘So you assumed it would be quieter then for that reason?’ Mr Cromer says.

  ‘Yes.’ You sound slightly puzzled.

  ‘Because you had never been to the gym on a Saturday night be
fore, had you?’

  You are stumped. For one glorious moment. Whatever you prepared for, it wasn’t this. ‘I don’t know,’ you say.

  ‘The electronic swipe system shows members’ attendance. You’ve never been on a Saturday after five p.m. In fact the latest you have ever been there in almost three years of membership is seven o’clock on a week night. Can you explain why your pattern of use changed so dramatically on that very night?’

  ‘I felt like some exercise,’ you say.

  ‘I suggest you were creating an alibi, isn’t that the truth of the matter?’ says Mr Cromer.

  ‘No,’ you say, your face blanching and tightening, pulling your cheekbones into sharper relief.

  ‘Yes. I put it to you that your wife was already dead when you left the house. Isn’t that the case?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I further suggest that before you left, you used her phone to text yourself and your mother-in-law, Ruth Sutton, to make it appear as if the victim were still alive at eight forty p.m. Then you wiped your fingerprints from the phone. Isn’t that the truth?’

  ‘No,’ you say firmly.

  ‘I also put it to you that you left the house then, at eight forty, after sending the text messages, not at eight thirty as you claim. Later exaggerating to the court how long that journey takes. How do you answer that?’

  ‘That’s not true,’ you say.

  ‘You then did your circuit training and had your swim, took your shower, and returned home, buying milk on the way, and pretended to discover your wife. Is that the real truth?’

  ‘No.’ You keep shaking your head. Your hands grip the edge of the witness stand. ‘No, none of that’s true.’

  ‘Where did you dispose of your clothes, Mr Tennyson?’

  ‘Nowhere. There weren’t any other clothes,’ you say.

  ‘Why did it take you half an hour to make a fifteen-minute journey?’

  ‘It always takes that long. It’s not fifteen minutes.’

  ‘According to calculations, if you took half an hour to cover that distance, you would have been walking at about a mile an hour, a snail’s pace. You expect the members of the jury to believe that?’

  ‘That’s how long it takes,’ you repeat.

  ‘This is all a string of lies, isn’t it? You’d attacked your wife before, and on September the twelfth you did it again. With fatal consequences. You took her life and then you lied about it – to the police, to Mrs Tennyson’s parents, her friends. You lied and lied and denied your guilt. It’s all a pack of lies, am I right?’

  ‘No.’ Your mouth is taut, lips white.

  ‘Your account is full of holes. You did not attempt to rouse your wife. If you had have done, then your trainers, the ones you gave to the police, would have been steeped in blood. The truth is your wife was dead, you could see there was no hope, and you spent the time clearing up. You left your daughter alone in the house, with her mother dead downstairs, and went to the gym. Had you no thought for anyone but yourself?’

  ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Then how did your skin get under her fingernails as she sought to defend herself?’ Mr Cromer says swiftly.

  ‘It didn’t happen like that.’

  ‘Because it doesn’t fit your fiction? Your web of deceit?’

  ‘Because I never hurt her.’ Your voice quivers. ‘That’s not how I got the scratches; it was when we went shopping, she tripped.’

  ‘Do you recall what you were wearing, on that shopping trip?’ says Mr Cromer.

  ‘My grey jacket,’ you say.

  ‘This has long sleeves, am I correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you explain to the jury how Mrs Tennyson was able to clutch at your arm and graze the skin if your arm was covered with the jacket?’

  ‘I pushed the sleeves back, when I got warm,’ you say.

  A frankly inadequate explanation.

  ‘Members of the jury – I am now showing you several still images taken from CCTV footage of Mr and Mrs Tennyson at Asda on the day of her death. Please note that Mr Tennyson was wearing a charcoal-grey jacket with full-length sleeves and that his sleeves are not pushed back.’

  The grainy images of you and Florence and Lizzie fill my vision. No hint of the horror that is to come. Grief surges behind my breastbone.

  ‘Can you explain why her stumble is not shown on the CCTV footage?’ asks Mr Cromer.

  There is a fraction of a pause, then you say, ‘It happened at home, as we were unloading the car.’

  I never noticed those marks. You must have been rigorous in keeping them hidden. All part of the cover-up.

  ‘Then after you unloaded the shopping, Lizzie went to the hairdresser’s, she came home and cooked a meal. That’s what you said?’ Mr Cromer peers at you.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she practise good hygiene? In the house, in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes,’ you say.

  ‘She would surely wash her hands in the course of cooking a meal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you also claim Mrs Tennyson must have taken a shower while you were at the gym, yet you ask us to believe that the skin remained under her nails all those hours?’

  ‘It must have done.’ There’s a plea in your response, asking us to believe you, but your answers are unsatisfactory, paltry.

  Surely this if nothing else will convince the jury. Your flesh under her nails. I think of her hands, flashing shapes, telling stories, conveying ideas. And now, after her death, she is still signing to us, communicating the truth. Guilty.

  ‘I put it to you that it didn’t,’ says Mr Cromer. ‘There is a much simpler explanation, Mr Tennyson. As you began to beat your wife, she reached out to try and stop you. That’s how you got scratched. That’s how your skin got trapped under her nails.’

  ‘No,’ you say, ‘no.’ You swallow.

  It is all so clear to me. Do they see it, the jury, do they see it like I do? You hit her arm, her head, her shoulder, her face, her head, her head, and she is forced to her knees, you hit her head, her head. She falls on to her front. You keep hitting, blood on your face, your clothes, everywhere. You move round, step in it with your right foot.

  She is dead.

  Exhausted, elated, panic-stricken, you see the mark your shoe has made. Take the shoes off, stick them in the stove. Grab a baby wipe, clean the poker. Strip off and pile your clothes together. Run upstairs, shower, dress. Get in character, rehearse your lines, your moves. The role of your life.

  Ruth

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  17 Brinks Avenue

  Manchester

  M19 6FX

  Florence hasn’t eaten when I get to April’s house. ‘She didn’t want anything. We tried pasta and she wouldn’t have that. I offered her some chicken and rice but she said no.’

  At home she whines that she’s hungry, so I make beans on toast, cut the toast into triangles and place them around the edge of her plate, pour the beans into the middle. She throws a tantrum, bursting out with a cry so vivid I think for a moment she must have hurt herself. She wails that the bean juice is touching the toast. This sacrilege means she will not eat the toast at all, so I sling it in the compost bin.

  Sobbing, she slides the beans around the plate until they’re cold.

  My blood chills at the thought of you leaving her in the house while you went to create your alibi. You were a good father. I thought you were. What if she had woken and gone to find her mum? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

  There are no more witnesses, just the closing speeches to come. Mr Cromer begins. ‘On September the twelfth 2009, Lizzie Tennyson was bludgeoned to death in her living room. A shocking crime. The man in the dock, Jack Tennyson, is charged with that crime. He made strenuous attempts to conceal his actions but he made mistakes, and his account of the events of that night collapses under scrutiny. What does the evidence tell us?

  ‘That Jack Tennyson had a history of violence towards his wife. A well-kept s
ecret but known to Rebecca Thornton, Lizzie Tennyson’s closest friend. In common with the majority of women who are victims of domestic abuse, Mrs Tennyson was unwilling or unable to ask for help, or to disclose her suffering, to reveal what was really going on in her marriage. We cannot know how frequent the abuse was, but on that night, Jack Tennyson attacked his wife again. Lizzie Tennyson tried to protect herself, reaching out, grabbing her husband’s forearm, leaving scratches there and retaining some of his skin cells under her nails.

  ‘The blows kept coming, more than twelve of them, breaking her arm, her eye socket, her shoulder, crushing her skull and ending her life. Lizzie Tennyson fell on her front alongside the stove in the living room. She suffered massive loss of blood, as you have heard from the crime-scene reports. What did Jack Tennyson do then? Repentant, did he call for help? Realizing with horror that he had destroyed the woman he loved, did he admit his guilt?’ Mr Cromer pauses for effect. Looks over his glasses at the jury. ‘No, he set about saving his own skin. He needed to destroy the running shoes he was wearing, one of which had left a bloody footprint close to the victim’s body. He removed his running shoes and put them in the wood-burner. He fetched baby wipes from the kitchen to remove his fingerprints from the poker. He needed to get rid of the clothes he was wearing, which were all spattered with blood. He went upstairs, leaving a fingerprint on the wall and another on the bathroom door. He showered, leaving traces of blood in the stall. He dressed in clean clothes and a pair of Nike trainers.’

  Mr Cromer lowers his voice, and there’s a horrible intimacy as he lays out his case. ‘Jack Tennyson needed to create an alibi. He used the victim’s phone to text a message to himself and another one to his mother-in-law in an attempt to make it appear as though the victim was still alive, and to imply that he had left the house. He then made his way to the gym, disposing of his bloody clothes somewhere on the way. He spent an hour and a half at the gym before leaving for home and stopping for milk at the convenience store. He then played out the charade of discovering his wife and alerting the police.’

  Mr Cromer takes off his glasses and bows his head for a moment, I don’t know if this is a calculated gesture or not, but it gives the impression that the weight of the case is bearing down on him. He clears his throat. ‘Jack Tennyson’s claim to innocence is a bare-faced lie. My learned colleague has described the defendant as a good father, a good husband, but remember, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he is also a good actor. Trained and skilled in maintaining a false persona, able to bring all those skills to sustain a corrupt version of the events of that night. The only evidence points to Jack Tennyson. There is no unknown suspect, no other DNA on the victim’s body. In a brutal attack like that, the assailant would have left material at the scene: hair, fingerprints, saliva. Lizzie Tennyson’s murderer did: he left a bloody footprint, he left two fingerprints, he left traces of blood in the shower, he left skin under the victim’s nails. Lizzie Tennyson’s family – her daughter, her parents and friends – deserve justice. It is in your power to give them that. Put this liar, this coward, this killer behind bars where he belongs. Take into account all the evidence and find him guilty. Give them justice.’