by Vicary, Tim
‘I was your brief,’ she said. ‘Your barrister, at your appeal. Remember?’
‘Fuck me, so you are. What are you doing here, darling?’
‘Calling the police.’ It was a stupid thing to say, she realised that immediately. He was halfway across the room in a second, reaching for the phone. She flung it in his face, and ducked to her left, under his outstretched arm. He turned, trying to grab her as she backed away against the worktop. Her hands fumbled behind her and seized the first thing she found, a plastic kettle. She threw that at him too, spraying him with water, and screamed. ‘Leave me alone! I saved you, didn’t I? I set you free!’
He stood in the middle of the room, staring at her, shaking his head to clear his face of the water from the kettle. ‘It doesn’t matter, you stupid bitch, you shouldn’t be here. What were you, his dolly bird?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘My business is to stay out of gaol. You know I killed him now, so unless you’re prepared to keep your mouth shut ...’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Then I’ll shut it for you.’ He lunged for her again, and Sarah dived desperately towards the door. She was almost through it when his hand caught her shoulder, spinning her round, so that she crashed backwards against the door frame. But at the same time his hand let go as he fell flat on his face. He had stepped on one of the knives from last night and his foot slid from under him on the wet floor. He groaned; he’d hit his head on the fridge.
I should run, Sarah thought, he’ll be up in a minute. But if I run he’ll just catch me, he’s too quick. She glanced round wildly, snatched up a frying pan from the hob, and smashed it on his head just as he was getting up. He dropped like a log to the floor.
Oh my God, I’ve killed him, Sarah thought, standing there with the pan in her hand. No I haven’t, he’s still breathing. Perhaps I should hit him again.
But then he’ll really be dead, and what then?
A memory flashed into her mind, of a client who’d been charged with manslaughter for killing a burglar with a baseball bat, and she thought no, I mustn’t do that, I just hope he’s out cold. So she threw away the frying pan and ran.
The keys to her bike were in her house, just inside the front door. As she came out of the door she saw Jason, stumbling out of the windmill. He looked groggy and was holding his head, but when he saw her he broke into a shambling run. Sarah sprinted for her bike, fumbled the key into the ignition - what’s wrong with my fingers, why won’t it go in? - and turned it.
Nothing happened. What’s the matter, what now? She glanced over her shoulder and saw Jason ten yards away, moving faster. She looked down and realised she hadn’t disconnected the immobiliser. What the hell was the code? 157-3, was it, or 4? She often had trouble with pin numbers, especially in moments of stress. She closed her eyes, and let her fingers remember for her. Her muscles should know, even if her mind didn’t. 1573. She opened her eyes, saw the light change from red to green. Thank God! She turned the key in the ignition and the engine fired.
‘Come here!’
‘No!’ As she let in the clutch his hand grabbed her leg. She twisted the throttle but the bike skidded sideways around in a circle so she almost fell off. She looked round and saw him sliding, face down on the grass but still clutching her leg. She leaned away from him, twisting the throttle hard, and there was a wild lurch as his hand let go and she almost fell off the bike on the other side. Then she was away, skidding across the grass.
As she turned onto the track through the woods she glanced over her shoulder and saw Jason back on his feet, sprinting towards Michael’s BMW. Then she turned to look where she was going and screamed. Right in front of her was the smouldering wreck of a car. She swerved, trying to avoid it, but she was too late. Her front wheel bounced off its side and the bike fell over on the track.
Sarah lay under it, stunned. For a moment she thought her leg was trapped but with an enormous surge of adrenalin rushing through her she wrenched her leg free and heaved the bike up. She flung herself back into the saddle just as the BMW began to move towards her across the grass. She twisted the throttle and roared down the track, bouncing over potholes towards the road.
What the hell was that, she wondered. A burnt out car in the woods? Then she understood. It must be Jason’s car, the one he came in. That was the fire I saw earlier, which I thought was the sun coming up. He must have torched it when he saw the BMW and decided to nick that instead, the greedy little bastard.
She turned left at the gate and roared down the road as fast as she could. She had no helmet, no leathers, and the icy dawn wind knifed through her thin clothing as though it wasn’t there, freezing her hands and face and streaming her eyes with tears. The sky was lighter in the east, she saw vaguely, she could make out the blurry shapes of fields. But when she twisted round she saw the dark shape of the BMW, closer, much closer than she’d hoped.
She was heading down a steep hill which rose in a switchback on the far side. At the bottom, she remembered, there were two field gates where cows often crossed, leaving mud on the road. She throttled back slightly, not daring to put on the brakes, but as she did so, Jason came alongside. He swerved the car towards her, trying to drive her off the road. Sarah screamed, and twisted the throttle back as far it would go. The bike zoomed ahead, flying down the hill, faster than she’d ever been before. At the bottom she hit the mud, and felt the back wheel slide, left, right, then straight again, and she was still upright. She laughed with relief, and roared up the hill, the BMW a distance behind.
But at the top there was a tight bend and then another steep descent to a series of zigzags before a T junction. As she approached this there was a loud clang from her front wheel, and the bike slowed and swerved abruptly. Sarah wrenched it upright, but she couldn’t maintain her speed, and the BMW drew alongside again. I must have damaged something, she thought, when I hit that torched car. But I can’t stop now. She twisted the throttle again, and the bike roared ahead. The fault seemed to have cured itself. She leaned into the first zigzag as the BMW fell behind.
But when she shifted her weight to go the other way a shadow crossed the road in front of her. What the hell’s that? A fox. Instinctively, Sarah swerved to miss it, but she was already leaning over too far, she lost her balance and went into a skid. As her back wheel came round she felt herself turning sideways, and released the throttle, trying to wrench the bike upright, but it was too late. The bike hit the grass verge, ploughed into soft mud, and flung Sarah backwards into a hedge.
Afterwards, she tried to work out how long things had taken. In her memory it seemed like a dream sequence, lacking logic. The crash must have lasted milliseconds, yet the details of it - the jolt as she flew into the air, the shadow of the escaping fox - were printed on her mind in slow motion. That’s because you didn’t hit your head badly, the doctor said, you were lucky that hedge was so thick. She didn’t feel so lucky when her broken arm was in plaster for a month, though, or when she lay in bed and felt the myriad cuts and grazes on her back, legs, head, and arms itching like fire. She remembered lying in the hedge, trying to work out where she was and why there were twigs in front of her face, and blood dripping over one eye. But part of her mind kept telling her that the twigs and blood, close as they were, weren’t nearly so important as the man getting out of the car. In the dream that was really a memory she watched him take a large adjustable spanner out of the boot and limp slowly towards her down the road. Part of her mind told her this was important, she should get up and do something about this, but she couldn’t think what or why. After all it was comfortable here in the hedge and the man looked strong, he was swinging a heavy spanner in his hand so probably he had stopped to help her. She knew something had gone wrong but she couldn’t quite remember what it was.
Then the man came closer so Sarah could see his face and she screamed. She knew what was wrong now, this man meant to hurt her, she had to get away. Only something was wrong wi
th her body, it didn’t seem to work very well. She thrashed her limbs in the hedge, but she was trapped like a fly in a web. The man grinned like a spider, raising the spanner slowly above his head as she struggled.
Then a white van stopped with a screech of brakes. The man with the spanner hesitated and turned. Amazingly, the man who got out of the van was her son Simon. What was he doing here? Sarah couldn’t understand it, but Simon had no doubts at all. He ran at the first man and threw him straight to the ground. There was a fight, a threshing of limbs in the grass and mud in front of the hedge. Sarah couldn’t see it all, but there were groans and thumps and Simon seemed fiercer and angrier than he’d ever been in his life before, even when he was a teenager and fought Bob. Although she’d been afraid of the man with the spanner she felt sorry for him now, and when Simon stood up she could see he wasn’t moving at all.
Then, very gently, her son helped her out of the hedge, a process which hurt and seemed to take for ever. For some of this time, strangely, she heard sirens approaching in the distance, though she couldn’t think why. Then, as she stood up, as weak and wobbly as a rag doll with Simon’s strong arm round her shoulder, a police car drew up and Terry Bateson got out. A short time later an ambulance arrived. She couldn’t imagine why.
‘I called them, Mum,’ Simon explained gently. ‘You told me a man had died.’
Then the floodgates of memory opened, and Sarah broke down in tears.
63. New Start
IT WAS a sunny day in early April. Sarah stood on the balcony of her new flat, enjoying the spectacular view across the city. The flat was on the fourth floor of a modern block built on the site of an old warehouse beside the river Ouse. Immediately below her she could see swans and pleasure boats on the water; beyond them, just across Skeldergate bridge, was the Crown Court and the castle, Clifford’s Tower, its mound covered with daffodils.
Sarah drew a deep breath of the warm spring air, and leaned over to wave to her son, Simon, as he emerged with Lorraine onto the riverside walk below. Lorraine walked slowly, Simon’s hand in hers, but she smiled as she looked up. She’s less nervous of me now, Sarah thought. Perhaps that’s because she’s come to see me as more vulnerable. Sarah’s right arm was still in plaster after the accident, and Lorraine had been surprisingly helpful in organising the flat warming party that was just ending. Not long now, and they’ll be asking me to babysit, Sarah thought hopefully. If they trust me, that is.
She could hear the sound of Lucy Parsons washing up in the kitchen, chattering cheerfully to Terry Bateson’s two young girls and her own daughter Emily. That was another thing that Sarah was pleased about. The mortgage on this flat was costing half her income, but it had three bedrooms, one of which Sarah had given to Emily, for her to decorate with her own posters and memorabilia. Emily was delighted - she could glimpse York Minster from her bedroom window, and threatened to bring all her student friends to stay.
‘So I still have my family around me,’ Sarah said, to the man beside her. ‘That’s the most important thing, really, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is,’ said Terry Bateson, watching anxiously as his youngest daughter carried six cups piled on top of each other into the kitchen. ‘Those are the people who really matter, after all.’
He studied Sarah critically, seeing the arm still in plaster, a half-healed scar on the side of her neck. She looked pale, he thought, thinner than he remembered, and there were lines on her face he hadn’t noticed before. ‘How are you coping, really?’
‘Me?’ She turned to face him, a wry smile playing on her lips. ‘Not so bad, all things considered. I wake up screaming in the night now and then, but that’s par for the course, so they tell me. I’ve got rid of the bike, at least - wrong image for a granny, Simon says. I hardly need it here, anyway.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. But I really meant ...’
‘How I’m coping with Michael’s death? Yes, I know.’ She looked away, at the young leaves on the trees on the riverside walk. ‘It hurts, of course, and I sit here shaking sometimes, picturing the way he went. That’s the worst, but ... I’m still here, with my family, and friends, and my career. He’d lost all of that, you know. So had Alison too. One crazy moment when they were kids had poisoned the rest of their lives. They never really recovered from it, either of them.’ She turned back and smiled at him. ‘I’m not like that, Terry. Never will be, I hope. Neither are you.’
‘No.’ Terry remembered how Sarah had nearly lost all hopes of a career when she’d become pregnant with Simon at the age of fifteen, and thought of his own trauma, too - the death of his wife. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so they say.’
‘If you let it, it does. But Terry, since you’re here, I wanted to ask - what’s become of my client? Former client, that is.’
‘Jason Barnes, you mean?’
‘Yes. Since he tried to murder me, I’m excused from representing him further. It’s a rule the Bar Council have introduced. Very humane of them.’
Terry smiled. She hadn’t lost her sense of humour. ‘He confessed, as you know. But he didn’t give us the full details until last week, when he came out of hospital. Your son Simon wasn’t exactly holding back.’
‘Reasonable force, Terry. He was rescuing his mother.’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t get prosecuted, we’re not that stupid. After all, I wouldn’t have been there to arrest Jason if he hadn’t called in. But anyway, this confession was quite satisfying, in its way.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it explained where we went wrong.’ Terry sighed. ‘You know we arrested a young sex offender, Peter Barton - the one who’d been stalking women and pestering them all around the city? Well, he made a full detailed confession too. He didn’t just claim to have killed Alison, he told us exactly how he’d done it, and almost everything he said matched the evidence. So we had to take him seriously. The one thing that threw us was a scrap of cloth on the barbed wire fence which we sent to be tested for DNA. When Peter confessed, we thought it must be his. But when FSS eventually found the cloth, which they’d lost, and tested it, it had Jason’s DNA on it, not Peter’s. If we’d known that before ...’ He shook his head.
‘You’d have arrested Jason before he did all this damage.’
‘If we could have found him, yes. At least he would have been our main suspect.’
‘So what actually happened that night, when Alison died?’
‘Well, Jason stole a car in Leeds, drove it to Crockey Hill, crept across the fields, and broke into Alison’s house. Then he murdered her almost exactly as Peter Barton described. He found her in her bath, dragged her downstairs, and hanged her. She probably confessed to him before he died; that’s how he found out that Michael was involved in Brenda’s death as well. So he stole her mobile phone and took a picture of her which he sent to Michael later. Then he drove to Leeds and torched the car, hoping her hanging would look like suicide. But what he didn’t realise, of course, was that this sad little pervert Peter Barton was watching his every move through the windows. Which was why he broke into the house later, fantasising that he’d done it all himself.’ Terry shook his head wearily. ‘The older I get, the more I think there’s no limit to the evil that people can get up to.’
‘Not everyone, Terry,’ Sarah said after a pause. ‘Most people just get along. And some even try to do good.’
‘Yes, well.’ Terry looked behind him into the flat, where a sudden squabble had erupted between his daughters over the last slice of chocolate cake. He turned to go in, with an apologetic smile at Sarah. ‘We can always try, can’t we?’
If you have enjoyed this book you might like to read the other legal thrillers in the series 'The Trials of Sarah Newby'
A Game of Proof
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN/B005ALGIFK
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/B005ALGIFK
A Fatal Verdict
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN/B005C0YH48
US
http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/B005C0YH48
Tim Vicary has also written three historical thrillers
The Blood Upon the Rose
Love, rebellion and terror in Ireland 1920
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN/B005ET2050
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/B005ET2050
Cat and Mouse
Romance, rebellion and suffragettes in London and Ireland, 1914
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN/B005GA9B86
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/B005GA9B86
The Monmouth Summer
Rebellion, love and tragedy in England, 1685
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN/B0068G990C
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/B0068G990C
Website: http://www.timvicary.com
Blog: http://timvicary.wordpress.com
Table of Contents
1. Fox
2. Family Troubles
3. Jason Barnes
4. Fingers of Death
5. Hotel Bedroom Blues
6. Court of Criminal Appeal
7. School Project
8. Cross Examination
9. Afternoon in Court
10. A Helping Hand
11. Judgement Day
12. Ten o’Clock News
13. Mother and Daughter
14. Slip Road
15. Michael Parker
16. Broken Glass
17. New Recruit
18. Mother and Son
19. Peter Barton
20. Whose Hand?
21. Identity Parade
22. Body Search
23. First Date
24. Digging Up the Past
25. Riverbank
26. Mask and Mirror
27. Gone to Ground
28. On the Edge
29. Dividing the Equity
30. Body in the Hall
31. Sarah and Emily
32. Alison Grey
33. Seduction
34. Doctor and Priest
