Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  Marshall sounded extremely sanctimonious and sure of himself. Technically, of course, he could have been prosecuted for withholding evidence, both initially the fact that Janine was alive and now the names of Lorraine’s alleged adoptive parents. In practice, the CPS had decided that any such prosecution would merely make matters worse and allow Marshall to appear even more saintly. In any case, he had been charged only with the murder of his wife, and not of either of his daughters.

  “I may have done the wrong thing, My Lords, I realize that now,” Marshall continued. “But the action I took all those years ago was because of my children. I wanted them to have the chance of a fresh start.”

  He bowed his head and wiped one hand across his eyes as if brushing away tears. Karen wanted to slap him, not for the first time. She tried to convince herself that the three appeal judges would see through him. To her horror, although not totally her surprise—he was so plausible and he did have one hell of a witness on his side—this did not seem to be the case.

  She watched the proceedings with an increasingly sinking feeling. Marshall was good, very good. He would not have stayed a free man for as long as he had were that not the case. She also felt sure that nobody in the court, including the judges, would doubt that Jennifer believed absolutely what she had said.

  And she was right. Richard Marshall’s appeal was upheld and his conviction quashed. He walked out of court a free man.

  There was a muffled cheer from the public gallery. Karen glanced up in surprise. She found it impossible to imagine Marshall having friends, but obviously he did, or maybe it was friends of Jennifer up there. The rest of the court, including Karen, sat in a kind of grim stunned silence. And it was somehow all the worse for Karen because of that extremely disconcerting visit to her mother. She was so certain of what her mother had been trying to tell her, and coming from someone in full possession of their wits it was the kind of evidence that could swing a case. Coming from Margaret Meadows in her condition, however, it was worse than useless. Karen had always wondered if the police investigation would have taken a different, more positive, course all those years ago if she had revealed to anyone that her mother had had an affair with Marshall, and she had always told herself that it would have led nowhere. Now she could no longer kid herself about that. Her mother had seen scratches on Marshall’s face the day after his wife was last seen, Karen was sure of it. And if that had been disclosed back in 1975 or even ’76, maybe, just maybe, it could have led to Marshall being put behind bars years ago.

  Karen’s load of guilt was heavier than ever. Her head ached. The muscles at the back of her neck had knotted and tightened like little cords of coiled wire. She could feel Marshall’s eyes on her as he walked from the dock. She tried not to look at him—she knew that was what he wanted—but she couldn’t help herself. Marshall was smirking at her. His lips curled unpleasantly. She struggled to keep her gaze level, to show no emotion.

  Marshall raised both eyebrows quizzically. Then he lifted his right arm in what was at first a clenched fist of victory, and then developed into a Churchillian V for victory salute—all the while looking directly at Karen.

  She was incensed. She couldn’t believe the cheek of this man. She stood up quickly, turned away from him and marched out of the court. She wanted to get outside before he did. She didn’t think she could stand watching him perform in front of the assembled press whom she knew would be outside clamouring for a statement.

  There was indeed a large group of them gathered on the wide pavement, but this time Karen refused to speak to them at all. She knew her thunderous look was not good PR. But she did not see how it was possible to put any kind of PR spin on anything that had happened that day. As far as she was concerned it had been a disaster.

  Only as she pushed through the press on the way to her car did she remember Sean MacDonald.

  “Damn,” she muttered to herself. But she just couldn’t leave without saying something to the Scotsman whom she liked and respected so much. She swung around and saw him making his way slowly out onto the pavement, his head bowed. She walked quickly towards him.

  “I am just so fucking sorry, Mac,” she began.

  The strain showed clearly in Sean MacDonald’s face, in the heavy lines around his mouth and the red rims around his eyes. For once he really looked like an old man.

  “Not as sorry as me,” he said.

  “No, I know.”

  “It’s all right, lassie. I don’t blame anyone. He is just such a slippery bastard. I told you, didn’t I? Like an eel. You think you have him in your grasp, but you don’t. Nonetheless, it seems impossible that he’s got away with it again.”

  “You still don’t have any doubts, do you, Mac?”

  “No, none at all. He murdered my Clara. I’d stake my own life on it.”

  “But,” Karen made her voice gentle, “that’s your granddaughter who just got him off. Your granddaughter whom you thought was dead.”

  “Aye, I know, and I have no explanation at all. Maybe she’s more her father’s daughter than her mother’s, but I don’t believe that either. Nobody could be as evil as him, nobody.”

  “I don’t think she’s evil, Mac. I think she’s brainwashed. Unfortunately, that’s neither an accepted medical nor a legal term.”

  “I know. I just can’t feel she’s really my granddaughter, not after what she’s done.”

  “You haven’t seen her at all, have you, not since we found out who she was?”

  “No.” Mac shook his head quite violently. “I just couldn’t bring myself to see her, not knowing that she was probably going to be instrumental in getting Marshall off.”

  “Do you want to see her now?”

  “No. I know it’s not fair, I know she must be under his spell in some way, or that she really is mentally disturbed like you think but can’t prove, Karen, but I can’t forgive her.”

  “I hope you can forgive me, Mac?”

  Sean MacDonald smiled weakly.

  “Oh, lassie, there’s nothing to forgive you for. You’ve never given up, none of ye have, and I’ll always thank you for that.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Oh, I’m straight off back to Scotland. I need some thinking time.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  He grabbed her by the arm, pulled her towards him and stared directly at her.

  “I’ll not give up, though, Karen. I promise you. I’ll not give up until I’ve got justice for my Clara. And if I can’t do it through the law I’ll do it another way.”

  Karen put her hand on his and squeezed.

  “Mac, you’ve always worked with us. Never against us. Don’t change now.”

  Mac gave a small derisory sniff. “I’ve learned a lot about policing and the legal system of the United Kingdom since this nightmare began, Karen. There’s nothing you can do now, is there? Whatever happens now he’s got away with it. The law of double jeopardy is still in place, in spite of all the talk from politicians. He can’t be tried again for murdering my daughter. He’s made fools of us all.”

  “It may be possible to try him for Lorraine’s murder one day.”

  Mac sniffed again. “What, with no body and him claiming she’s alive and well? We couldn’t make a murder charge stick even with my Clara’s remains finally lying in a morgue.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right, but double jeopardy will change, Mac, and it won’t be long now either, I don’t think. Then maybe we can have another go. There could be other charges, too. The illegal disposal of Clara’s body for a start…”

  “You’re an optimist, Karen Meadows, or rather, you’re pretending to be. I don’t think you really are inside. I’ve learned enough about the CPS over the years. They’ll never want to go ahead on that one, and as far as the chances of trying him again for murder, well, even if the law does change you’ll need substantial new evidence, and what on earth is going to be turned up now, after all this time? We had an extraordinary piece of
luck with this, with the divers finding her body and the watch and all that. It still wasn’t enough, was it? And do you know, if it wasn’t for DNA, I would believe that Marshall had invented the whole scenario, persuaded Jennifer Roth to make up a story and give evidence on his behalf. I really would. He’s capable of it. Well capable.”

  “I know how you feel.” As she said it Karen realized the words were a mistake.

  “Do you?” snapped Mac, his anger, she felt, directed at her for the very first time. “No, Karen, you don’t know how I feel. None of you do. I have lived with the loss of my daughter and the knowledge that the bastard who killed her has remained a free man for the last twenty-eight years. Out there enjoying his life when he’d taken my Clara’s life away from her. Now, just as I thought he had been brought to justice at last, just as I thought that at least I could say farewell to my daughter in peace, in the knowledge that her death had been avenged, now I have to live with the knowledge that Richard Marshall is going to be a free man again thanks entirely to the evidence of a young woman I have to accept is my granddaughter, the granddaughter I thought he had also killed. No, Karen, you have no idea how I feel. Not even you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karen began, feeling more inadequate than ever. She wasn’t quite sure what she could possibly say next but in any case she was interrupted by the hubbub behind her. Richard Marshall and the young woman she had been forced to believe was his daughter had walked out of the court. The press, having totally lost interest in Karen once she had made it clear she wasn’t saying anything, were all around them like flies around a honey pot. A couple of dozen motor drives whirred—the Nikon choir was in full mechanical voice—and a group of reporters, written press and broadcasting, were yelling their questions.

  Marshall’s lawyer stepped forward and raised a hand for silence. “My client has a brief statement to make,” he announced.

  Then a beaming Richard Marshall, holding a smiling Jennifer by the hand, began to speak.

  “This is a great day for me and for British justice,” he proclaimed. “I have been hounded by the police for three decades. Wherever I went to try to escape from them, they followed me. They have never stopped persecuting me because of a crime I did not commit. I have always proclaimed my innocence, through everything, but nobody ever believed me.”

  “It took the courage of my beautiful daughter…” He paused then, turned to Jennifer, hugged her demonstratively and kissed her on the cheek, at which point she kissed him back and clung on to him like the little girl Karen thought she so often resembled.

  “It took the courage of my beautiful daughter for my innocence to be finally and irrevocably proven in this courtroom today.”

  Karen turned away then. She couldn’t bear to watch what she felt was a carefully stage-managed little scene. She found it quite nauseating.

  Hurriedly she hailed a taxi to take her to Paddington Station. She had had enough. She just wanted to go home and hide. But as the taxi pulled away she was vaguely aware of DS Cooper, who had this time been called as a witness to give evidence concerning his enquiries into Jennifer Roth, running across the pavement.

  “Boss!” he yelled. “Hey, boss, hang on a minute…”

  “Just drive on,” she instructed the cabbie, who being a London taxi driver of many years’ experience had not, in any case, hesitated. She didn’t want to talk to anybody. There really was nothing to say. She had rarely felt so totally and utterly desolate. And she wanted to talk to Phil Cooper less than anyone else.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He phoned her on her mobile just as she arrived home.

  “Boss, I just wanted to say how bloody sorry I am.”

  Not again, thought Karen. She wanted to scream. Arguably the most important case she had ever dealt with had fallen apart. Richard Marshall was free again. She was not in a good mood. In fact, she was in a foul mood. Apart from anything else, she reckoned that if anyone should shoulder more than their fair share of blame, it should be her, not Phil Cooper. She wasn’t telling him that, though. Her personal feelings continued to overshadow her professionalism in her dealings with the detective sergeant. Their brief time together had meant too much to her, far too much. But she wasn’t telling him that either.

  Instead she railed at him, as had become something of a habit, almost a way of getting rid of her frustrations. In as much as anything could.

  “What the fuck are you after, Phil? Absolution?”

  “No, boss. Look, it’s not that. I know I fucked up, but I think anybody would have done. There were no clues, honestly.”

  “We’ve been over that. Over and over. Save it, Phil, I’m not interested.”

  There was a brief pause. Then when he spoke again Cooper was no longer apologetic verging on servile. Instead he sounded cold and determined.

  “Where are you, boss?” he asked.

  The question took her so much by surprise that she answered it.

  “I’ve just arrived home. Why?” she asked, adding almost as an afterthought: “And what the fuck’s it got to do with you where I am, anyway?”

  “Because I’ve bloody well had enough of this,” Cooper snapped. “I’ve driven back and I’ve just got to Torquay. I’m coming around to see you right now, whether you like it or not. I’m ten minutes behind you.”

  And with that the line went dead.

  “Oh, fuck,” muttered Karen. She was too weary for this, she really was. She knew somehow that Phil Cooper did not really want to see her to talk about the case, in spite of how important it was to both of them. No, Cooper had another agenda. And, just like before in the pub, when he had said he was sorry, she had not been at all sure what he was apologizing for. His professional or his personal conduct. It was all so confused, somehow.

  Karen went into the kitchen, rummaged in the fridge for an open tin of cat food and fed a loudly meowing Sophie who had been demanding sustenance ever since her mistress had come through the front door. Then she switched on the kettle and put a tea bag in a mug. A cup of tea would have to do. She badly wanted an extremely strong drink, but didn’t dare have one. Her brain was in too much of a whirl.

  The doorbell rang little more than five minutes later. Either Cooper had been a lot closer than he’d let on, she thought, or he’d driven like a madman.

  She was still holding her mug of tea in one hand when she opened the front door to him. He looked flushed and angry. He didn’t wait for her to ask him in. Instead he pushed his way past her.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s get a few things straight here, shall we? I’m as thoroughly pissed off as anybody is about this case going pear-shaped—but there’s no way I carry the whole fucking can. And you don’t think that either, otherwise you’d have me on a report.”

  He was pacing the room, shouting at her. In spite of herself she was almost amused. He was so angry and so determined. Very macho, she thought obliquely. She’d never seen him like this before. It was a bit of a revelation. Nonetheless, she kept the act up.

  “Would I?” she enquired laconically.

  “Yes, you fucking well would, and you know it. You also know that the reason you keep blowing me out all the time and doing your best to make my life a fucking misery has nothing whatsoever to do with this case.”

  “Do I?”

  “Will you stop being such a fucking smart-ass?” he almost screamed at her. “Of course you fucking do. And so does half the bloody nick by now, I shouldn’t wonder, with the way their minds work and the way you’ve been fucking well behaving.”

  He sat down abruptly. Again without being asked.

  Karen was taken aback. Cooper was a mild-mannered man. His language was usually nothing like as colourful as hers. She had rarely even heard him swear before. As ever, though, she did not intend to let her true feelings show.

  “Have you been drinking?” she asked, realizing as she did so that she was continuing to handle this every bit as badly as she had done ever since the night she and Cooper had gone to bed t
ogether.

  Cooper looked up at her, the anger still flashing.

  “No, I fucking well haven’t,” he stormed. “I’ve just driven back from London, for Christ’s sake. Do you think I’m barking mad? We don’t all have to be pissed out of our fucking minds in order to show a hint of genuine emotion, you know.”

  To her astonishment she saw that there were tears in his eyes. She sat down opposite him. Something about the rawness of him made her want to be honest for once. To tell the truth rather than to cover it up with that act she had so perfected.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, running her hands through her hair, trying to make sense of it all. “You’re right, of course. I didn’t know how to handle what happened between us, and how you were with me afterwards. I guess…”

  She hesitated. What she was about to admit was quite monumental for her.

  “I guess I was hurt.”

  His eyes opened wide.

  “You were hurt?” he queried.

  She managed a wry smile. “Don’t sound so surprised. Women don’t particularly like being fucked stupid and then ignored. Not even policewomen. It doesn’t make us feel very good.”