Justice Mirror

by Simon Hall

  ‘Adam?’ Dan prompted. ‘Adam?’

  No answer. Slowly, the detective turned around, his narrowed eyes taking in each detail of the storm he had unleashed. He was with every one of the officers, sensing what they sensed, seeing what they saw.

  ‘We’d better follow the cops and get more action,’ Nigel said.

  ‘Yeah, but which ones? How the hell do we know where Annette is?’

  ‘If she’s here at all.’

  ‘She’s here.’

  Dan was surprised at the certainty in his voice. He had no time to wonder if it was true faith or an attempt to convince himself.

  ‘When they find her, that’s the shot,’ he continued. ‘The picture that’ll be splashed around the world. If we’re here and we don’t get it, it’ll be humiliating. We’ll be the nearly men. So near and yet so far.’

  ‘Very lyrical, very you,’ replied the practical cameraman. ‘So – what do we do?’

  ‘Adam?’ Dan prompted again.

  And now the detective spoke. ‘We wait.’

  Claire and Katrina headed off to join the search. They went separate ways, Claire down the hill, towards the coast and a group of bungalows. Katrina made for the pub and cottages behind.

  As they ran, both women looked back. Dan quickly busied himself wiping a grain of dust from his eye.

  The helicopter banked and headed west, to the edge of the village and the open countryside, rising higher into the sky. A cop was leading a woman towards an old-fashioned garage, white stone and black wooden gates. She unlocked them and he disappeared into the darkness.

  Nigel took a step forward, the camera trained. ‘This is it. I can feel it.’

  They could hear the sound of metal moving, grinding and groaning. A line of officers jogged past, heading for the northern end of the village. All were sweating hard in the day’s heat.

  Another noise from the garage. This time a dull thud. Nigel edged closer.

  A car chugged past, heading out of Prawle, an older woman driving. A detective stepped into the road, stopped her, checked the boot and waved her on. With these stakes, no one was beyond suspicion.

  From the garage the cop emerged, brushing dust from his shoulders. He was shaking his head.

  ‘So much for your hunches,’ Dan muttered.

  His mobile rang. ‘Yes, there is an operation going on in East Prawle,’ Dan replied. ‘I know because I’m in the middle of it. Yes, Lizzie, we are filming it. Thanks for the tip, I would never have thought of that.’

  Beside him, Adam shifted position and peered into the brightness of the sky. To the north and east, no more than a quarter of a mile away, a thin trail of dark smoke was rising above a line of trees.

  ***

  Adam was away, running, moving fast. Dan didn’t hesitate. He followed.

  They crossed the road, dodged a couple on bicycles and found a gap between a line of houses. A dry mud track, just wide enough for a car, led over the brow of a small hill. It was lined with trees.

  From above, Dan thought he heard the song of a cirl bunting. He tried to pick out a shape in the foliage, but there was no sign of any birdlife.

  Nigel was panting hard with fighting the slope. Dan reached out and took the camera.

  To either side were the back gardens of houses. A child careered down a slide. A woman watched while talking into a mobile phone.

  They were nearing the crest of the hill. The smoke was thickening, a fattened smear on the blueness of the sky.

  ‘What’re we doing?’ Dan gasped to Adam.

  ‘A hunch.’

  ‘But – should we be leaving the main search? Most of the houses are back there.’

  Adam just kept running. Dan stumbled on a clump of thick grass, the dense weight of the camera nearly dragging him over.

  ‘Surely it’s just a farmer burning rubbish?’

  ‘A fire’s the best way to destroy evidence. As someone who’d studied forensics would know.’

  They rounded a corner. Now the green lane was filled with smoke. Its acrid tang prickled the tongue and stung the nose. Through a barrier of bushes loomed the hazy outline of a cottage.

  The thatch of its roof was aflame, orange spears rising into the air, circling the stone of the chimney. The fire was spreading fast, roaring out its hunger. More flames danced from an upstairs window.

  Nigel took the camera, hoisted it to his shoulder and began filming. Overhead the helicopter swooped, sending flames leaping and smoke swirling. Adam waved frantically and the great beast banked away.

  ‘Help’s coming,’ Dan yelled.

  ‘We can’t wait. She could be dying in there.’

  Next to the cottage was a garage. Adam lurched towards the double doors and pulled them open. Black smoke bellowed out, enveloping him. The detective began choking and coughing as he squatted down to escape the fumes.

  Inside, swathed in smoke and with flames leaping around it, was a white van. Paint was starting to blister and peel from its bonnet and the windscreen was blackening. As they watched, it cracked with a whipping snap. The stench of burning rubber and petrol was like an attack. Dan felt his body shake with a burst of wracking coughs.

  Adam spun and headed for the door. All of the thatch was alight now, greedily sucking in the air. The heat assailed them, beating at every inch of exposed flesh, singeing eyes, throats and lungs.

  The door was ajar. Adam kicked out. It smashed into the wall, a pane of glass breaking with the impact. They tumbled inside.

  The cottage was fast filling with murderous smoke. The momentum of the fire was growing relentlessly. Embers of burning straw floated past.

  Ahead was a staircase, a threadbare carpet with pictures lining the walls. The way was blocked by a bank of flames. It was impassable.

  ‘Shit,’ Adam moaned. ‘If she’s up there…’

  He pivoted left, along a stone-flagged corridor. A barometer crashed to the floor, tiny spheres of mercury speeding from it.

  They were in a small lounge. A sofa, an easy chair, a television and a rug covering the floor. A leaning standard lamp. But no sign of Annette.

  From above came a low creaking, followed by a thud, then another. Flaming straw fell past the window.

  ‘The bloody place is coming down!’ Dan shouted. ‘Adam, we’re going to die in here!’

  He clutched for his friend, but too late. In the far corner of the room was a small door. Adam leapt for it, pulled it open. Shelves, a vacuum cleaner, some pillows and blankets. He spun and headed back for the corridor. The merciless heat was everywhere and growing always more intense.

  They burst into a kitchen. Adam pulled open a row of cupboards. He groped blindly inside, arms flailing. Cans, pots and pans tumbled out, clattering a discordant rhythm on the stone of the floor.

  Dan leant back against the sink and tried desperately to catch some breath. The air was full of singeing, cloying smoke. A bottle of wine dropped and shattered. Another groaning thud echoed from the roof.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ Adam panted, lunging for the end of the kitchen, glass crunching under the hard soles of his shoes.

  Another black wooden door faced them. It was a store room, also stone floored, the shelves full of packets and tins and the air blissfully cool. And on the floor, on a tartan blanket, was the curled shape of a person, hair seeping onto the flagstones. It was motionless, no sign of life.

  ‘It’s Annette!’ Adam yelled. ‘Help me! For fuck’s sake!’

  Dan tried to breathe, felt his stomach heave with the effort. He bent down, battling to fight the bile of the rising nausea. The air was clearer by the ground, free of the sticky, suffocating smoke. He gulped it in.

  ‘Her legs!’ Adam ordered. ‘Come on man!’ His voice rose to a scream. ‘Now!’

  Dan fumbled to get a grip, managed to grab a fold of jeans, then an ankle. He felt the warmth of Annette’s body through the material and had to concentrate to force himself not to let go. Clouds of dense smoke billowed around them, stinging his eyes. T
hey were watering so hard that he could barely see.

  ‘Lift!’ yelled Adam. ‘For Christ’s sake, lift!’

  It felt like an immense, immovable weight. He managed to half lift, half-drag the flaccid legs towards the door, following Adam and shuffling towards the hazy light. Ahead was the sweetness of the clean air, the breeze like the most rejuvenating of balms.

  Dan urged his leaden muscles to take one step, then another, to wade through the hellish smoke and heat and stench of fire. He was vaguely aware of arms helping to pull him, Nigel’s contorted face looming. Someone was shouting, but the words made no sense.

  He nearly fell but steadied himself, forced another couple of steps from his faltering legs and they were out in the light. The blessed, beautiful sunshine. Dan collapsed onto the lawn, struggling to breathe in the shock of freedom.

  Adam sunk to his knees beside Annette. He tapped gently at her cheek, then harder. But there was no reaction.

  The spirit of the reaper chilled the air. The darkness of his outline lurked in the corner of each set of eyes, beckoning to the young woman trapped in the twilight between life and death.

  Another flare of fire arced from the cottage roof, smoking fronds filling the sky. Adam leant back, let out a low groan, grasped Annette’s shoulders and shook them, then again, harder now.

  There was still no reaction. He tried once more, then stopped and stared at the prone figure lying lifeless on the grass.

  And Annette’s eyes twitched and opened.

  In all of his lifetime, Dan never forgot that sight. Choking for breath on his hands and knees amid a perfectly cultivated lawn on a beautiful Devon day, a raging fire devouring the cottage and sirens screaming around him, all he could see were the eyes of a young woman.

  He spent long weeks trying to understand what it was he found in them. Finally, many months later, when all was at last done with the story of Annette Newman, when he could summon the courage to revisit that day, Dan decided.

  Her eyes were filled with new-born demons.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Annette’s face froze, lingered and disappeared. The television screens faded to blackness, only the red glow of the standby lights showing in the darkness.

  The flames that had filled the inside of the cottage, which had leapt from the monitors, were gone. The roaring of the inferno that had sounded from the floorboards and walls was quietened. The blinds were drawn back and the lights in Courtroom Number Three turned on once more, a horde of the shadows of the past running before them.

  The pictures Nigel filmed that spring day, six months ago, had made for one of the most dramatic parts of an extraordinary trial. And now, at last, they had reached the end.

  The eleven in the jury box sat silent. Only the foreman remained standing. He took off his glasses and polished them with his thin, acrylic tie. Around him, all waited to see where the man would look.

  The old saying was everywhere… at the Edwards, or elsewhere.

  Guilty or not guilty.

  But still the man was resolutely staring downwards, rigorous in the pursuit of the slightest speck of grime on those oversized, outdated spectacles.

  And the courtroom waited.

  Eyes automatically found that one, vacant seat. And the father who sat beside it, bent double now, a polished shoe turning on the carpet tiles.

  On the press benches Dan squirmed as a sweat spread across his back. Ahead sat Adam, his dark hair newly cut for this final week of the trial and his flushed neck turning ever redder. Beside him Claire toyed with a pile of folders.

  Still, six months on, they hadn’t talked. The occasional walk, yes, the odd drink, yes, always on the neutral territory of moorland or a pub, but never the conversation which threatened. Always he was too tired, or she too preoccupied by a case.

  To Adam’s other side Katrina sat back, her arms folded. Her hair was a little longer than six months ago, perhaps with the hint of a shading of colour. On her shoulder lay that legendary symbol.

  Dan found his pen sketching an outline of the tattoo. He knew what it was now, he had made the discovery precisely ten days ago. And in what extraordinary circumstances.

  The foreman finished buffing his glasses and was replacing them carefully on his nose. At last he was starting to look up.

  And then a noise as shocking as a thunderclap. A hammering at the courtroom doors. A random, relentless beat. Panicked hands with pummelling fists.

  And the sound of a cry. The voice of a young woman.

  ‘Let me back in! I have to know!’

  The doors shook under the attack. Judge Templar tapped a finger on the gavel, balanced upon the bench.

  Another rocking of the doors. ‘Please! Please!’

  Furrows pitted the judge’s brow. ‘Such an occurrence is most irregular at this point so pivotal in the trial,’ Templar announced. ‘The doors of justice are locked only occasionally, but always for good reason. However, the young lady is understandably distressed and the court will make allowances.’

  The usher slid over, unlocked the doors and in tumbled Annette. Her face was blurred with tears and taut with lines of misery. Her father rose and she collapsed into him. There they stood, intertwined, Roger’s arms squeezing the breathless moans from his daughter’s body.

  One final anguished wail emerged, the sound of a spirit close to breaking. And as for Roger Newman, his eyes had closed as if no longer able to fight the weight of such an infinite burden.

  Rays of sunlight streamed into the court. It was growing ever warmer. The usher stepped carefully across and handed Newman another plastic cup of water. He took a sip and passed it to Annette. With trembling, hopeless hands she tried to drink, a cascade of droplets staining dark circles on the carpet tiles.

  From aloft on the bench the judge watched, silent and unmoving, but eyes never resting. Over the foreman, the Newmans and the Edwards. The players on the stage of justice. For this, the final act.

  One of the solicitors began to cough, quickly stifling the sound. Behind the glass of the dock the Edwards sat hand in hand, both intent on the foreman. Brian jiggled a knee. Martha was still, that green gaze set on the man who would decide her fate.

  Beside the dock a prison guard shifted her weight. A heavy fob of keys jingled.

  And the clock ticked on towards the hour.

  ***

  Amongst the hacks, the consensus was a not guilty verdict.

  Proof beyond reasonable doubt was what the law required. The more analytical of lawyers took that to mean two thirds convinced, or 67 per cent. The journalists’ view was that the Edwards were certainly guilty, but the evidence against them wasn’t quite strong enough; perhaps adding up to 55 or 60 per cent.

  What they all agreed on was that it was a close call. The jury might well see it differently. They often did.

  For the first time in his life, Dan had been called to give evidence. He’d tried to convince himself it would be a straightforward experience. He regularly broadcast live to half a million people. What could possibly be the problem in telling a roomful of maybe a hundred about what he had witnessed?

  ‘Some advice,’ Adam said, on the morning before Dan was due to take the stand. ‘Just answer the questions, but watch out for the defence. He’ll try to discredit you. Make out to the jury you can’t be relied on. Just stick to what you know and don’t get involved in a row. And no matter how much it might go against your grain, on no account whatsoever try to be smart.’

  ‘I think I can manage that,’ Dan smiled.

  The look which came back was far from convinced. ‘Just remember what I said. Whatever you do, don’t try to be clever.’

  That morning, Dan found himself unusually preoccupied with his outfit. It wasn’t normally a problem. In his personal list of priorities, the purposes of clothes were – (1) warmth, (2) modesty, (3) comfort, and (4, by far) fashion.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked Rutherford, as the dog thrust his nose into the rarely explored depths of the bac
k of the wardrobe. ‘A suit? Or does that look like I’m trying too hard? Just my usual trousers and a jacket? Or does that look like I don’t care enough?’

  Rutherford sniffed at the clothes and sneezed. ‘There’s no need to be so rude,’ Dan chided. ‘What about a tie? Do we go bright, or does that look untrustworthy? Or darker? Or does that make me look like I’m going to a funeral?’

  The dog padded off to deal with the more important business of curling up in the sunshine of the bay window. Eventually, Dan chose a light blue shirt, dark blue jacket and a plain, mid-blue tie. At Lizzie’s command, he’d once suffered one of those colour analysis courses.

  A heavily made-up woman had fussed over him, held various swatches of ridiculous shades next to his cheeks, clucked a little and finally pronounced that blue was undoubtedly his hue.

  Since then, Dan had bought little else. It was the fashion equivalent of not knowing much, but knowing what you like.

  ***

  The art of throwing skunks is well-practiced in the legal profession, and Piers Wishart QC was a master. The purest of waters, the most clear cut of cases, could be muddied by his creative arguments.

  Dan stood in the witness box, trying not to look at Adam, and definitely not at Claire or Katrina. Instead, he kept his eyes set on Wishart’s well-fed, port and cigars features.

  ‘So, you were with the police for the entirety of the operation to rescue Annette?’ the barrister began.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The whole of it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You saw absolutely everything that went on?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Right up to the moment Annette was rescued?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And as the footage in that remarkable video we’ve seen shows, you were actually there.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And in the aftermath? When the police searched the area?’