A Game of Proof (The trials of Sarah Newby)

by Vicary, Tim

  ‘You don’t have to sleep in here, you know,’ he said after a while. ‘It makes me lonely too. Why not come back and join me?’

  ‘All right, maybe I will.’ She touched his hand to stop him, kissed his fingers, and straightened up. ‘I’ll come when I’ve finished this.’

  Two hours later, she crept into bed beside her sleeping husband.

  Chapter Forty

  SIMON WALKED quite calmly to the witness stand. His face was pale, but that was a prison pallor due to many weeks on remand. He read the oath in a clear, slightly subdued voice. Then he looked up, taking in the crowded public gallery, full of eyes that had been above him in the dock, and focused his attention on his mother.

  She began at the heart of the matter.

  ‘Simon, you have heard the prosecution claim that you murdered Jasmine Hurst. Is that true? Did you kill her?’

  ‘No, I did not.’ The voice was firm, a little louder than before. The jury, she knew, were watching and listening intently; not so much for what he said, but for the conviction with which he said it.

  ‘Do you know who killed her?’

  ‘No. How could I?’

  This was the answer she had planned and rehearsed with him. Simple, and true. But then, to her surprise, he glared pointedly at David Brodie. ‘I’ve got my ideas but no proof.’

  They had already discussed this idea and rejected it. Sarah feared that any further attempt to accuse Brodie was likely to backfire. She thought Simon had been convinced. Clearly not, however. They’d planned everything and here he was already striking out on his own.

  ‘Did you love Jasmine?’ she continued coolly.

  ‘Love her? Yes.’ He appeared to consider the idea for a moment, then repeated himself with more emphasis. ‘I did. Yes.’

  Careful, Simon, she thought. Don’t start acting now. She had warned him against this, but the witness stand did strange things to people, particularly those facing life imprisonment.

  ‘Would you tell the court, in your own words, exactly what happened on Thursday 13th May. From the beginning.’

  Simon drew a deep breath, and faced the jury, as she had suggested. If you can manage it, tell the story to them; if not, look at me. ‘Well, I was off work, so I had a lie in, like, until about nine thirty. Then I got up and went for a run.’

  ‘Where did you go for your run?’

  ‘Where I often go. Down the river opposite the Archbishop’s Palace. Past where she were found that night. So if there were mud and such on my shoes, that’s where I got it, see?’

  She sighed. His fake worker’s accent had become stronger. Idiot!

  ‘You were wearing these training shoes that were shown in evidence, were you?’

  ‘Course I were. They’re my shoes, aren’t they? What else would I wear?’

  For Christ’s sake, Simon, she wanted to scream, I’m not arguing with you, I’m here to help you. ‘All right. What happened then?’

  ‘Well, when I got back, I met her. Jasmine. She was by the river not far from my house.’

  Better now. Less accent, less truculence. Perhaps it had just been stage fright. She nodded encouragingly. ‘Were you expecting to meet her?’

  ‘Not exactly. She came to see me sometimes but I never knew when.’

  ‘Was she coming to see you then?’

  ‘She said she was. Yeah.’

  ‘How did she look?’

  ‘Stunning, like always.’ He glanced at the jury, then realized he’d misunderstood the question. ‘Oh ... well, a bit angry, or upset. I asked what’s up and she said she’d had a row with David, like. Anyhow, she came in.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I had a shower, she made some tea, and we talked for a bit. Nothing special, really.’

  ‘Had she visited you like this before, while she was living with David?’

  ‘A few times, yeah.’

  ‘What usually happened on these visits?’

  ‘Well, we’d chat for a bit, maybe have a meal, then we’d go to bed together, and sometime later she’d ... leave.’

  A shaven-headed male juror, she noticed, was nodding approvingly. This sounds normal to him, then, at least. ‘Is that what happened this day?’

  ‘Yes. We had a bite to eat, and then ... she took her clothes off ... you know.’

  ‘You had sexual intercourse?’

  ‘If that’s what you call it, yes. I shagged her.’

  There was a snort of suppressed laughter. Jesus, Simon! Of all the words to use, why pick that one? The point of this is not to shock your mother, but to ingratiate yourself with the jury. The younger jurors, she saw, looked amused, but several others looked distinctly disgusted. Phil Turner smiled ironically.

  Now another key question. ‘So, to be quite clear, Simon, was this sexual intercourse something you both wanted? Or did you force it upon her?’

  ‘No, of course not. She wanted it - why else did she take her clothes off like that? That’s why she came. She knew what was going to happen.’

  ‘So you didn’t rape her?’

  ‘No, not at all. Nothing like it.’

  She could almost hear the jury’s minds working. Is this man lying or not? All they had to go on was their experience of life - similar situations, similar young men to Simon.

  ‘The forensic pathologist has described some bruises which he found inside her vagina. Can you account for those?’

  ‘Not really, no. I mean, I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re saying. She liked it, she always did.’ He hesitated. ‘I mean, maybe it bruised her when she got excited but I wouldn’t know that, would I? She didn’t complain.’

  ‘Did you wear a condom?’

  ‘No. She were on the pill. She said.’

  Such questions for a mother to ask her son, in public. Sarah remembered the childhood photos she had found last night. ‘All right. What time of day was this?’

  ‘Early, mid afternoon maybe. Hard to say. We went to bed and I fell asleep. Maybe she did as well. Then we went for a walk, bought some Chinese. I thought ... I thought it was a real good day. Then when we came back it went wrong.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘Well, like I say we were getting on fine. She was saying what a pain David was with all his tidying and fussing, and I knew he couldn’t screw her like I did, she told me that every time, it was quite a joke with her really ... so I thought she might leave him and come back for good. She said she would, too; I remember it clearly. I was really happy.

  ‘But then, after the Chinese, she looked at her watch and said she’d have to go. So I said ‘go where?’ And she said, ‘to David, of course. You don’t think I could live in this pigsty, do you? He’ll have the bed made and the house all nice’ - you know, stuff like that. And I was so angry, then. It was like she’d kicked me right in the guts. So I yelled at her. I said she’d promised to stay and we’d had a great time, but she just laughed. She said that was part of the game, something like that, it would make it even better next time because I’d want her even more. And that made me sick because I saw she’d been doing this all the time and probably did the same to David too, she was just a bitch, I said that ... I wish I hadn’t now but I did ...’

  For part of this speech he had been talking to the jury, then turning back to her and even the judge and the people in the well of the court, as though he wanted to convince everyone of what he was saying. For the first time Sarah felt it might work, that people might really believe her son and understand him. But they might also realize he had just described a perfect motive for killing Jasmine. They had seen her mutilated body. Now here he was calling her a bitch. Pray God Jasmine’s mother’s not here.

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘She just walked out. I tried to stop her but she was too quick, she was outside. That’s probably when that old nosy git was cleaning his teeth and heard us shouting. Anyway I tried to pull her back in and she clouted my face with her bag - he didn’t see that, did he? But that�
��s why I hit her back, because it hurt. Anyway she was such a bitch, to go like that after all she’d said. So then I went back in and ... that’s the last I saw of her.’

  ‘You never saw her again?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a collective relaxation around the court, as though a key moment had passed. But what conclusions had people drawn, Sarah wondered. That was the mystery.

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘Nothing special. I just mooched around indoors thinking about how she’d behaved. I was all, like, churned up inside. Then after a while I went out and got in the car.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t stay there. I had to go somewhere.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Scarborough, in the end.’

  ‘Why Scarborough?’

  ‘Why not? It just happened, really. I turned left out of York and that’s where I ended up. I went for a walk on the beach in the middle of the night. Quiet, it was. Just me and a pair of seals in the dawn. I’d never seen a seal before. I didn’t know they had them in Scarborough.’

  ‘What did you do in the morning?’

  ‘Got breakfast, found somewhere to stay. Did a lot of thinking.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘What a mess my life was. How I could make a new start.’

  ‘Did you think about Jasmine?’

  ‘Yes. Course I did.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘How I loved her. How beautiful she was and what a bitch she was to me and probably every other man she’d ever met, and what could you do if you loved someone like that. Whether I could break the habit of her like giving up smoking. Every day I stayed in Scarborough I thought I’d maybe won something. I thought I’d proved I could live without her and also maybe she was knocking on my door in York and feeling the same hurt I felt. I thought if I managed a month maybe I’d be cured of it. I could start a new life and never go back.’

  ‘And you had no idea that she was dead?’

  ‘No, of course not. No.’

  ‘And you didn’t murder her?’

  ‘How could I? I was in Scarborough. I never saw her again after she left my house.’

  Phil Turner glanced up, ready to cross-examine if she had finished. But she hadn’t.

  ‘All right, Simon. Let’s examine a few details. You’ve told the court you wore your trainers to go running, and you’ve heard the forensic scientist describe how she found traces of Jasmine’s blood on those trainers. Do you have any idea how that blood could have got there?’

  ‘Well, all I can think is, it happened a few days before, on the Monday.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well, the same thing, she came to my house then too. And after we’d made love, she was walking round the house in my shirt and those trainers - nothing else. Anyhow she was in the kitchen and I heard her call out, and when I went down she was swearing and sucking her thumb. She’d cut her finger with the breadknife. So maybe some blood fell onto the trainers then.’

  ‘Was there a lot of blood?’

  ‘Not a lot, no. She ran it under the tap and I gave her a plaster and that was it really.’

  ‘Did the blood get on the breadknife?’

  ‘Yes. Some of it, anyhow. I noticed it next morning when I was washing up. There was a stain on the blade near the handle. I thought I’d washed it all off but, obviously not ...’

  Pity about that, Simon, Sarah thought cynically. If you’d washed it off and put your shoes in the washing machine we’d never be here, would we?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police about this when they interviewed you?’

  ‘I didn’t think. I mean it was nothing, just a tiny cut. I’d forgotten all about it. And then they were shouting at me and saying she was dead, for Christ’s sake ...’

  ‘All right, let’s talk about when you were arrested. What happened then?’

  ‘Yeah, well. I was asleep, and then - in the middle of the night - there were these men in my room. It was like a weird nightmare. Men shouting and yelling over my bed.’

  ‘What were they saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t get it, at first. Then one of them said Jasmine was dead but I didn’t believe him. How could I?’

  ‘Did they read the caution to you?’

  ‘You’re joking! They might have done, but I didn’t know what was going on. I was terrified. I thought they were going to kill me at first, then they were saying Jasmine was dead and I’d killed her and they dragged me outside and shoved me in this car.’

  Would the young men in the jury believe this? Sarah wondered. Surely some had had dealings with the police on a Saturday night. How well had they been treated? She continued with the standard questions with which a lawyer dissects a chaotic and confused situation.

  ‘Did you understand that they were policemen?’

  ‘They said they were but I couldn’t believe it. I thought they were burglars or something.’

  ‘Did they show you any identification?’

  ‘No. They just handcuffed me and dragged me downstairs.’

  ‘All right. What happened in the car?’

  ‘They kept telling me Jasmine was dead and that I’d killed her. They were shouting, asking me questions - why was I in Scarborough, how did I kill her, where was I when she died?’

  Lucy and Sarah had both insisted how important it was for Simon to emphasize this point. The lesson seemed to have gone home. The only danger was that he would overdo it.

  ‘What was your state of mind at this time?’

  ‘I was scared ... I mean shit scared. I didn’t know what was happening, it was like some awful nightmare. I just wanted to get out as fast as I could.’

  ‘Did you answer those questions?’

  ‘A bit, yeah. I said I hadn’t killed her.’

  ‘Did you say anything else?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know what I said, really, I was that scared. I was in a panic. I could have said anything; I just wanted to get out of there.’

  ‘All right. What happened at the police station?’

  ‘Well, Lucy - Mrs Parsons, my solicitor, came, and - I told her the truth. She told me to write a statement and sign it.’

  Good, Simon, well done. Nearly there now. She risked a faint nod of encouragement.

  ‘Did DCI Churchill show you another paper which he asked you to sign?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you sign it?’

  ‘Because it wasn’t true. His paper said I hadn’t seen Jasmine for weeks and that wasn’t true, I had. I saw her the day she died. But all I did was make love to her, I didn’t kill her, for God’s sake. I couldn’t do that!’

  That’s all, then, Sarah thought. I can’t end better than that.

  ‘All right, Simon, wait there. Mr Turner will have some questions.’

  She sat down, leaving him alone on the stand. Her hands began to tremble.

  When Terry’s phone rang, he didn’t recognise the voice on the other end at first.

  ‘Inspector Bateson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Miles Beelby, employment clerk at MacFarlane’s. You remember, you spoke to me the other day. About that Irish lad who once worked here.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Well, I was talking to a mate of mine at TransPennine, you know, the contractors for the designer outlet. He said a lad like that came in to him earlier this morning, asking for work.’

  ‘What?’ Terry sat up gripping the phone tightly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, your luck’s in. They need a bit of extra labour. So he’s starting tomorrow.’

  ‘Tremendous!’ A smile began to spread across Terry’s face. ‘He didn’t leave an address or phone number, anything like that?’

  ‘No, sorry, usual caper. But if you ring this mate of mine he’ll be able to tell you more. Frank Carrow, at TransPennine.’

  ‘Right, Mr Beelby. Tha
nks for your help. I’ll ring him straight away.’

  The usher took the paper from Phil Turner, and handed it to Simon.

  ‘Do you recognize that, Mr Newby?’

  ‘Yes.’ Simon shrugged. ‘It’s something the police asked me to sign. In the station.’

  ‘Would you read the last two sentences for me, please.’

  Simon had never been a great reader. Somewhat laboriously, he read out: ‘After being cautioned, Mr Newby stated that he had not killed Jasmine Hurst, and that he had not seen her for weeks. He repeated this statement several times.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  It was an ambiguous question, Sarah saw at once. Presumably Turner intended it to confuse the witness and make him appear deceitful, whatever answer he gave.

  ‘It, er ... well, part of it’s true. It’s true that I didn’t kill Jasmine. But the other part, no, that’s not true. That’s why I didn’t sign it.’

  Simon looked at Sarah, who nodded approval. Well done, you avoided the trap.

  ‘So it’s a lie?’ Turner persisted.

  ‘Part of it is, yes.’

  Turner sighed ostentatiously, as though he were already weary of being deceived. ‘To be clear, the part which you claim is a lie is where you say you hadn’t seen her for weeks. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘All right, Simon. But I’m still not quite sure I understand. Are you saying those words are a lie because you didn’t say them, or because you did say them but when you got into the police station you realized they were untrue. Which is it?’

  ‘I ... I’m not sure.’ The questions were like dogs running rings round a bull, Sarah thought, snapping at its heels to confuse and irritate it.

  ‘Let me help you. You see, both detectives agree that you did say those words, but that in the police station you changed your mind and admitted that you had seen Jasmine on the day she died, after all. Is that what happened?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Thank you. So your first response after you had been cautioned was to tell the policemen this lie. Then when you met your lawyer you changed your mind.’