Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby)

by Vicary, Tim

  ‘Oh come on, Peter - we’ve got proof. So if you want to save time, you can admit it right now. That might help you in court with the judge. Get you time off in prison. You assaulted that woman, didn’t you?’

  He tried to hold her gaze, but she was too intense, her face just inches away, her eyes boring into his own. He looked down at his hands, then at his solicitor, then back at Jane again. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead.

  ‘Let me tell you what else we know, shall I, while you think about it. We believe that the intruder approached the house on his bike. But he wasn’t wearing this mask when he rode through the streets; that would have drawn too much attention to himself. And it was a warm day - quite sunny in fact. Perhaps that was why Ms Bolan decided to go for a run. Anyway, the intruder didn’t wear gloves on his bike, when he was cycling. We know that for a fact too, you see, because of these.’

  She reached below the desk for another evidence bag, and placed it on the table. This one contained a sheet of paper, with some swirls and smudges on it, arranged side by side. ‘See these, Peter? They are photocopies of fingerprints. The ones on the left - these here - are the ones we took from you when you were arrested before, when you assaulted a young girl near Bishopthorpe. Remember that? Now look at the fingerprints on the right. Do you know where we found them? On the garage window sill outside this lady’s house. The lady who was assaulted by the man wearing this mask. So how did they get there, do you think?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Peter muttered. His voice was faint, hoarse, scarcely audible. Jane smiled coolly.

  ‘Well, we think the man cycled up to the house, you see. That’s how he came. And he wasn’t wearing gloves, as I said, because it was so warm. But when he arrived, he propped his bike against the garage and rested his fingers on the window sill for a second. By accident possibly, he wasn’t thinking clearly. Or he was excited by what he was going to do next. Either way, he left these prints on the window sill, and after that he put on the gloves and the mask before going into the house. That’s what happened, isn’t it, Peter? Remember?’

  Silence. Peter ground his teeth slowly, staring grimly at the paper.

  ‘And the thing is, Peter, the really interesting thing, is this. These fingerprints from the window sill match yours perfectly. Just like the DNA from the mask. They’re both yours, Peter, there’s no point in trying to deny it. You broke into this young mother’s house and assaulted her in her own bedroom, didn’t you? Wearing this mask which has DNA from your spit in it.’

  She paused, letting the hammer blow sink in.

  ‘Do you want to tell us about it?’

  Two hours later they had a full confession. Yes, Peter Barton admitted, the Scream! mask was his. He’d bought it at a Party Games shop in town. He’d liked it because it looked so scarey - and perhaps, though he didn’t admit this, because its portrayal of desperate loneliness spoke to something in his soul. But mainly it was the horror of the thing, and the thought of the panic it would induce in anyone who saw him wearing it. He had noticed the woman, Elizabeth Bolan, on one of his cycle rides to and from work. She’d been out running, and he’d followed her, without coming close. He often did that, he said, looking up appealingly. Nothing wrong with that, was there?

  ‘You mean you follow women without them noticing?’ Jane asked softly.

  ‘Yeah. It’s not a crime, is it?’

  Well, yes, it is, Jane thought grimly. But no need to emphasize that now. ‘Why do you follow them?’

  ‘To see where they live.’

  ‘And you saw where this woman lived, did you? Elizabeth Bolan?’

  ‘I didn’t know her name, like.’

  ‘But you guessed that she lived alone. Just her and her little boy?’

  ‘I went back to check, yeah. Looked through the windows.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Late at night. If there’d been a man there like, I’d have seen.’

  The sick nastiness of it filled Jane with fury. Here he was, this hulking, half-brained moron, skulking outside women’s homes at night. Probably tossing himself off in the bushes afterwards as well. And not just fantasizing about the women either, but planning to do something far worse. She glanced briefly at the young solicitor and saw her feelings were shared. Rachel Horsefall looked appalled, disgusted; she had unconsciously shifted her chair a couple of feet away from her client. No more interventions for a while from that source, then.

  Peter admitted assaulting Elizabeth Bolan just as she had described. He hadn’t meant to hurt her with the cord, he claimed; just control her so she couldn’t fight back. But she had fought back. He hadn’t expected that, and had been shocked when she threatened him with the scissors. He’d pleaded with her to be reasonable, he claimed; but she’d taken no notice. He’d been wondering how to get the scissors out of her hands when he’d heard the neighbour returning with her child from the nursery. He had panicked, run downstairs, and cycled away through the little wood onto the Knavesmire. He had torn off the mask, meaning to stuff it inside his jacket, but it had fallen in the ditch. He had thought of picking it up, but had seen a man approaching with a dog, and so pedalled away into the distance instead.

  ‘What would you have done, Peter, if you hadn’t been disturbed?’ Jane asked, as softly as she could. Her tone was gentle, but her aim was quite the opposite - she wanted to gain his trust, not to help him but to get him to admit to as much perversity and evil intent as she could. She wanted his statement read out in court, to get him locked away for as long possible. But Peter was too dim, or repressed, to help her. Or perhaps not so dim, after all.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have hurt her? You had a cord around her neck!’

  Silence. Peter stared down at his hands.

  ‘You wanted to have sex with her, didn’t you? Against her will?’

  He looked around the room - at the ceiling, at the floor, the table, his own hands. Everywhere except at the three people who were listening.

  ‘I wouldn’t have hurt her,’ he repeated at last, desperately. ‘Not really bad.’

  ‘She was in fear of her life, Peter. She thought you were going to kill her.’

  ‘No!’ He shook his head fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Never do that.’ He looked down again at his hands. ‘I’d have let her go. After.’

  ‘After what, Peter?’

  Silence.

  ‘After you’d raped her. Is that what you mean?’

  Slowly, Peter nodded his head. As Jane described this fact for the tape, she noticed tears - tears! - in his eyes. What kind of self-pity was this? She pressed on relentlessly.

  ‘You’re agreeing with me then, Peter, are you? You intended to rape this woman, and then let her go?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have hurt her. Not hurt her.’

  ‘I understand that, Peter, I hear you.’ Jane kept her voice calm, as unconfrontational as she could. She noticed the young solicitor shifting in her seat, as if screwing up her courage to intervene. But Jane needed this last admission. ‘You wanted to have sex with this woman, didn’t you? That’s what you intended to do?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Yes. But she wanted it.’

  Jesus! Jane drew a long, deep breath, counted to ten in her head. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four ... ‘She was in her own house, Peter, she was scared out of her wits, and you break in, wearing a mask and try to put a noose round her neck, and you say she wanted it? She was screaming, Peter, telling you to stop. Didn’t you notice that?’

  ‘Yeah, but ... you don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t understand? Explain it to me.’

  ‘She ...’ There was a long silence. ‘She weren’t really frightened.’

  ‘Not frightened? Peter, I’ve interviewed this woman. Trust me, she was terrified.’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Didn’t notice? Not when she picked up the scissors?’

  ‘Mebbe then, yeah.
Not before.’

  ‘Didn’t she say anything? When you threw her on the bed?’

  ‘She screamed a bit, like. Go away. Let me alone. It don’t mean owt, though.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked straight into her face for the first time. ‘You know that, don’t yer?’

  ‘Right, that’s it.’ Jane sat back, then got to her feet. Without consulting Terry Bateson beside her, she said, ‘Interview suspended at 16.43. I think we need a break. I do, anyway.’ She walked straight out of the door.

  55. Hut of Horrors

  AFTER TWO days of interviewing Peter Barton, Terry and Jane’s cup was half full. They had a detailed, believable confession to the assault on Elizabeth Bolan, and Peter had admitted, under pressure, that he had also burgled Sally McFee, and stolen her necklace and underwear. ‘So where is it?’ Jane asked, at the end of a long second day.

  ‘In my hut.’

  ‘Your hut,’ Jane asked. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Where you couldn’t find it, that’s where.’ A flicker of weary insolence crossed the boy’s face. It was the last thing, it seemed, he had over them. Or the last thing but one. ‘You’ve been searching for me for weeks, you lot. Never found nothing.’

  ‘We’ve found you, now, though, haven’t we?’ Jane said. ‘Look, Peter, you’ve admitted to this burglary. So the judge will probably look kindly on you for that, give you a shorter sentence for a guilty plea. But only if you do this last thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Give the necklace back, of course. If you’ve still got it. Have you?’

  A short hesitation. Then a nod.

  ‘Well then, tell us where it is.’

  After a few more minutes’ hesitation he agreed. A couple of hours later he directed their police car down a long country lane south of Heslington, then through a small coppice and across a field with a dyke along which Peter claimed he’d crawled to keep out of sight of the farmer. From there they progressed to another wood at the end of a disused airfield. Just inside this wood was a small brick shed with a tin roof. From the outside it looked disused and abandoned. The door was rotting and half off its hinges. There were bits of wire and broken branches strewn around, and tall weeds had grown through the concrete at the edge of the old runway.

  ‘I never knew this was here,’ Terry said.

  ‘No. No one does.’ Jane shook her head. ‘Except the motorcyclists, and they don’t care.’ The hut was out of sight of the nearest farm, and the only other buildings in sight were half a mile away, on the far side of the airfield. The disused runway, Terry knew, was used for motorcycle races at weekends, much to the annoyance of villagers two miles away. No doubt the bikes zoomed past this hut on their circuit, but the lad was right - none would stop or give it a glance. And since he hadn’t known where it was, he doubted any local constables had either. So it hadn’t been searched.

  They pushed open the door and stepped inside. The interior was dark, but quite different to the image of ruin conveyed by the outside. The concrete floor was swept clean, and there was a battered wooden table and chair against the wall on the right. On the table was a small camping stove, an old milk carton full of water, an aluminium saucepan, plate and cup, a torch, and several tins of food. Against the opposite wall was a mountain bike. Across the end wall was a camp bed, with a sleeping bag stretched out on it.

  There was a small window in the right hand wall of the hut, with a dusty metal grill across it. The glass was too filthy to see in or out, but let in a certain amount of light nonetheless. By the light from the window and the open door they could see the display on the opposite wall. There were two large posters, like the ones in Peter’s bedroom. The one on the right was of a big-breasted fantasy female warrior fighting a losing battle with a giant lizard. The one on the left featured another naked, big-breasted woman who was tied to a tree. In front of her gambolled a group of hellish, dwarf-like monsters, armed with jagged knives and blades, clearly intent on doing her harm. But what really caught Terry’s attention, far more than the lurid sadistic fantasy, was what was around the woman’s neck.

  It was an expensive gold necklace.

  Not a necklace that was part of the poster. A real gold necklace, that had been pinned on top of the poster. A necklace identical that described by Sally McFee.

  On the rest of the walls, pinned up roughly here and there, were a number of newspaper cuttings. They were all from the local newspaper, the Evening Press. They were reports of the assaults on the women living near the cyclepath in Bishopthorpe and Naburn. There was a detailed report on the assault on Lizzie Bolan. And there was a front page story of the house in Crockey Hill, where Alison Grey had been murdered. A house, Terry realised from his study of the map on the way here, that was no more than one or two miles at most from this hut.

  Peter Barton looked at them, a sort of shy pride on his face.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Never would have found me here, would you?’

  ‘Hi,’ Michael said. ‘I’m in Scarborough. Can you hear the seagulls?’

  ‘Maybe. Is that what that screeching is?’ Sarah answered. ‘Oh yes, there’s one.’

  ‘Lots of them. Great big buggers, sitting on the harbour wall and scavenging everything in sight. Including my ice cream if I don’t watch out. Listen, I’ve had a bit of luck.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘I was at the farm development and then I came down to the harbour just as a fishing boat was coming in. So I bought two sea bass fresh off the deck. I thought I could cook them for us tonight. What do you think?’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe ... I’ve got a lot on today, though ...’

  ‘You’ve got to time to eat, haven’t you?’

  ‘At your place, you mean?’

  ‘In the windmill, of course. I’m heading back there now.’ He paused, waiting for a response. ‘You don’t sound too sure.’

  ‘No, that’s fine.’ There was no point backing away, Sarah decided. Troubles only pursued you if you did. ‘I’ll look forward to it. What time?’

  ‘About seven? I’ve got an idea to put to you as well.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘Wait and see. It’s one best approached on a full stomach.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sarah drew a deep breath. ‘See you there then.’

  She clicked off the phone and leaned back in her office chair, thinking. Ever since she’d met Terry Bateson outside the court she’d been in a turmoil about her relationship with Michael. A cocktail of emotions swirled inside her - on one side anxiety, irritation, jealousy, and anger, battling with something like love on the other. No, not love, she told herself firmly - her attraction towards Michael wasn’t passionate enough for that, not yet, anyway - but she did feel warmth, gratitude, strong affection towards this man who had taken her under his wing. He’d not only offered her a house when she was homeless, but far more than that, he’d given her back a sense of herself as a desirable, attractive woman, just when she’d needed it most, during this traumatic period of her divorce. At a time when she could so easily have sunk in self-pity she’d found a new friend. Not just a sexual partner, but someone she could have fun with too.

  So at least she told herself in her better moments. Michael wasn’t perfect, she had seen that from the beginning. He’d divorced his wife, for a start, just like Bob, and for a similar reason, that he’d played away, just as her own husband had done. He had unpleasant moods, when he could be abrupt and distant, and others when he could be downright frightening, like that scarey moment on the roof of the windmill when he’d joked about suicide. For a moment she’d feared he might jump, and take her down with him. And try as he might to be pleasant to her son Simon, even employing him to lay a patio outside the windmill, she could tell the young man didn’t like him.

  But then Simon had seldom got on with Bob either. People are difficult, Sarah told herself, we all have rough sides as we
ll as smooth. Every day in court she saw how hard human relationships were, how seldom one person meets another’s every need. She herself was no angel. If she’d ever had any fantasies about her own moral perfection, her husband, Bob, had stripped them away long ago. She had a cold self-centred heart, he complained; she was obsessively focussed on her career to the exclusion of husband, family, or anything else which might get in her way. Once he’d even accused her of having no tongue in her mouth but a knife, so sharp and wounding were her arguments.

  ‘Aren’t you just describing yourself, Bob?’ she’d responded coolly. ‘Seeing me as a mirror for your own failings?’

  For in her own eyes, Sarah’s obsession with her career was a virtue, the one thing that had raised her from poverty and kept herself and her children safe in a cruel, uncertain world. Once Bob had admired her for that: he’d called her sharp and hard like a diamond, with qualities to be treasured, not despised. No longer, it seemed.

  But now she had Michael instead - a man who could be kind, generous, attentive, even amusing on occasion - what more could she want? However long this new relationship lasted, it was doing her good. Was it to end so soon?

  Everything had been going well until she met Terry Bateson outside court. Part of her wished she’d said hello briefly and walked on. But it’s no good building your life on a fantasy, she told herself sternly. Especially if the truth underlying that fantasy is as dangerous as well, murder.

  But what if the real fantasy is in Terry Bateson’s mind, and the truth about Michael is entirely innocent? That’s what I want to believe, Sarah thought. That’s what I hope.

  After all, Terry’s made plenty of mistakes before. He thought Simon was guilty once; I had to prove that wasn’t true. He’s a decent man but maybe he’s suspicious of Michael because he’s sweet on me. He admitted being jealous after all, the other day. I care for you, he said. That’s nice.

  Sarah smiled ruefully, recalling that one time she and Terry had almost made love. If I hadn’t been sick and made an exhibition of myself I would have, too, she thought. I wanted to all right, and so, I’m sure, did he. He’s a decent man - good-looking too. Who knows - perhaps if I’d met him on a train that week Bob walked out, instead of Michael, things might have turned out quite differently ...