A Fatal Verdict (The Trials of Sarah Newby)

by Vicary, Tim

  So as soon as the remark had left her she tried, as quickly as she could, to retract it. ‘Anyway that doesn’t matter now. She’s still breathing, see? If she hasn’t lost too much blood and we get her in quick she has a chance, at least. You may have phoned just in time.’

  But her first remark must have gone deeper than she thought, for this only elicited silence. She finished the pressure bandage, checked the girl’s airway again and felt for the faint but still discernible pulse in her neck, then glanced over her shoulder at the boyfriend. He was watching her with a look of - what? Terror, she thought impulsively. And something like loathing too, as though the naked girl on the bathroom floor was some sort of monster that any moment might come alive and destroy him.

  ‘Do you mean she’s not going to die?’ he whispered. ‘She hasn’t killed herself?’

  ‘She has a chance,’ Sally answered. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Just a chance, if we’re quick.’

  ‘Then I want to come,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to come with her. To the hospital.’

  ‘Not in the ambulance,’ said Sally. He wasn’t the sort of relative she wanted to cope with while trying to save this girl’s life. ‘You’ll be in the way.’

  ‘But I’ve got to,’ the young man insisted. ‘She can’t talk, so I ...’

  ‘It’s not up to me,’ said Sally. ‘Ask them.’ She pointed to the door where Jim had just come in with the stretcher. And behind Jim, two uniformed policemen.

  2. Garden Party

  THE INVITATION to a garden party had been on the mantlepiece for a week. The man to whom it was addressed, Detective Inspector Terry Bateman, was pleased, even excited by it. But his two daughters, Jessica, 10, and Esther, 8, were not. Basically, they didn’t want to go.

  ‘It’ll be boring’ Jessica said. ‘Terminally dull. A lot of grown-ups yakking and patting us on the head - if they notice us at all.’

  ‘Why can’t we go to the sea with Trude?’ asked Esther. ‘I want to catch crabs.’

  ‘Because Trude’s going to Leeds with her boyfriend. She’s been looking forward to it for weeks. Anyway, it’ll be fun,’ their father insisted vainly. ‘You’ll enjoy it when you get there.’

  None of them believed this, but Terry felt he had to try. This sort of problem was one of the recurring themes of juggling his career with his life as a single parent. He was the senior detective on call that weekend so he couldn’t take the children to the sea, and if anything serious did crop up he had no one to leave them with either. He had made several phone calls to parents of his daughters’ friends, without luck - either they were going away to grandparents or it turned out that, unbeknown to him, the little girls had fallen out, and the mother he was speaking to was no longer the parent of Esther’s best friend as she had been last week, but of the person she hated most in all the world. Terry’s sister, Susan, was away in Newcastle and Trude, their Norwegian nanny, wouldn’t be back from Leeds until six. So they had to go.

  At first, it turned out well. Sarah Newby, the barrister who was hosting the party, had put her 17-year-old daughter Emily in charge of entertaining her youngest guests. Another barrister had brought his family as well, so Emily and her boyfriend Larry had organized an elaborate treasure hunt which took the children all over the house, garden and fields outside on the river bank searching for clues. After that there was food, and choice of croquet on the lawn, organized by Sarah’s husband Bob, or a rope swing which Larry had hung from the branch of an oak tree at the end of the garden, under which he had placed a plastic paddling pool which Emily had found in the loft.

  ‘There are plenty of towels,’ Sarah said, smiling, as they watched Esther and a six-year-old little boy run shrieking across the lawn in their knickers, covered with water and grass cuttings. ‘It’s good to see them having fun.’

  ‘Yes,’ Terry said. ‘They were dreading it, you know. Grown-up party, lots of lawyers - what could be worse, from their point of view?’

  Sarah wrinkled her nose, swatting away a fly. ‘Yes, well, even lawyers are human - at weekends, anyway. Maybe they’re learning that.’

  On the lawn, a dozen or so casually dressed middle-class adults gave every impression of politely enjoying themselves. Terry’s ten-year-old, Jessica, had teamed up with Sarah’s colleague, Savendra Bhose, in a fiercely competitive croquet match against his fiancée, Belinda, and Sarah’s husband Bob. Emily was involved in an intense debate with two handsome young lawyers about the importance of anti-globalisation protests. And Sarah’s solicitor friend, Lucy Parsons, a comfortable lady in a vast flowery summer frock, was sharing a huge bowl of strawberries and cream with a diminutive judge who seemed, like her, to be an expert on Yorkshire cricket.

  ‘How’s your son, Simon?’

  A frown clouded Sarah’s face, shadowing her pleasure at the afternoon’s success. Idiot! Terry thought. Why bring that up? But then it was Sarah’s son, Simon, who had brought them together, a year ago, when Sarah had successfully defended Simon against a murder charge, and Terry’s investigations had finally proved his innocence. A traumatic time, that none of them would ever forget. But even though the boy was innocent, Terry knew, he was not an easy character.

  ‘Oh, he’s ... fine, I think. He might drop in later, he said, with his new girlfriend. But ...’ Sarah shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s not really his scene, all this. Never has been.’

  ‘No.’ Terry wished he hadn’t mentioned it. Simon was Sarah’s son by a working class boy who had got her pregnant when she was fifteen. He’d been the reason she had dropped out of school, and had to work her way up to her present position through years of study at evening classes, fitting in her son, and later her daughter, Emily, where she could. Imagining the years of study that must have involved, with children clinging to her knees, Terry could only marvel at the iron determination that had enabled her to do it.

  I couldn’t do that, Terry thought. Not now. It’s all I can do to hang on to the job I’ve got. He had become a single parent when his wife, Mary, was killed two years ago in a car crash. At the time he’d been a successful detective inspector every prospect of rising higher. But since then, the relentless pressure of juggling career and family, of ensuring that there was always someone available to care for his daughters, and deal with their illnesses, their traumas at school, their excessively long holidays, their pets ... it had nearly driven him out of the service. Criminals didn’t work school hours, after all - quite the opposite. He had survived somehow, but he was not the detective he had once been; he knew that. So the idea of combining the care of young children with further study, as Sarah Newby had done for so many years - well, it was out of the question.

  Of course she’d had Bob’s help, Terry thought, watching the lanky, bearded head teacher miss his shot at a croquet hoop - but then he had a full-time job as well. Except for school holidays; that would have helped a bit. Terry tensed as the man leaned over Jessica to help her with her shot. Was that paternal jealousy, or something else? He had never liked Sarah’s husband. He remembered how the wretched man had panicked last year when his daughter Emily disappeared, and even, at one stage, informed against Sarah’s son to the police.

  How had she stayed with him, after that? Terry had often longed to ask her but dared not. Each marriage, after all, was a mystery individual to itself. And his dislike of Bob was inversely proportional to his attraction to Sarah. More than once since last year, the thought had crossed his mind that if her marriage were to break down ... a familiar daydream entered his mind and was dismissed sternly. After all, even if she were interested, what sort of stepmother would she make for his daughters, really? A career woman whose own teenage daughter had run away from home screaming about parental neglect, and sent the police, including Terry, scouring the county in search of her?

  Thank God she’d come back alive! Remembering that search, Terry looked across the lawn at Sarah’s daughter Emily. No sign of sulks or recriminations now - just a pretty teenage girl full of youth and life an
d laughter. Barefoot in a rather damp summer dress, she stood, champagne glass in hand, arguing passionately with two young lawyers. Will my Jessica grow to look like that, Terry wondered. If she does, how will I react to young men like these two, who are not really interested in what the girl’s saying at all, but in the way her left foot, wet and stained with grass from playing with the children in the pool, rubs unconsciously against the ankle chain on the right ...

  Sarah laughed softly, following his gaze. ‘Just you wait until your kids are teenagers, Terry. You’ve got it all coming.’

  ‘No, please! Things are hard enough already.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Sarah smiled as Esther let go of the rope swing and fell, screaming with delight, into the paddling pool, showering her sister with water. ‘Your kids are delightful. They’re at the best stage - all energy and innocence and no hormones. Enjoy it while it lasts. I wish I had, more than I did.’

  Before Terry could answer, they were interrupted. Savendra Bhose, a handsome young Indian barrister in his late twenties, stood in front of them, a croquet mallet slung casually over his right shoulder. ‘What are you wishing for now, old lady? More money? A more beautiful house? It’s hardly possible, surely?’

  Terry had crossed swords with this young man a few times in court. Like most barristers, he was bright, sharp and arrogant; an attitude difficult for older policemen to take. It was because they qualified so young, having known nothing but praise and success since school, Terry thought. They observed real life from a distance but it didn’t touch them, not in the way that it touched policemen who worked the streets. That was what was different about Sarah: real life had got its claws into her from the beginning, dragging her down as she heaved her way up the ladder of success, carrying her kids on her back. She’d achieved her first chambers tenancy when she was maybe fifteen years older than this smooth public schoolboy.

  Yet Sarah liked this Savendra, it seemed, and he had been jolly enough with Terry’s children today. He smiled at Sarah now, sliding his left arm affectionately around the waist of a slender brunette who followed him across the lawn, the heels of her sandals making her hips sway enticingly in long white trousers.

  ‘Belinda says if you and Bob have a house like this then she wants one too. As soon as we are married, she says.’

  The girl nestled affectionately into her fiancé’s shoulder, smiling up at him. ‘As a wedding gift. You’re a rich lawyer, Savvy, you promised.’

  ‘Rich? At the criminal bar?’ Savendra sighed. ‘You’re living in a dream, my dear. This woman has a highly paid husband.’

  ‘And a friendly bank,’ said Sarah. ‘They own most of it. Apart from the kitchen.’

  ‘Then you must find a nice juicy murder trial to defend,’ Belinda pleaded, affecting a little girly voice that irritated Terry deeply. ‘One that goes on for weeks and weeks, gets in all the papers, and earns you thousands and thousands of pounds.’

  God, the girl doesn’t know what she’s talking about, thought Terry. If she’d seen the photos, the bodies, the relatives ...

  ‘That would keep me up all night,’ said Savendra, smiling indulgently. ‘Up working, I mean. That’s not what you want, is it, honey?’

  Belinda blushed prettily, and a look, based on a thought similar to Terry’s, passed between Sarah and Savendra. Not quite such a fool then, this young man, Terry thought. It was something he had often hated about lawyers, the casual way so many of them treated serious crime, as though were an intellectual game - a game of proof, as Sarah had once called it, rather than the serious, painful, bloodstained matter it was.

  But this was a garden party, in a pleasant village home with beautiful lawns and willow trees, leading down to meadows where cows grazed next to a river bank. There was birdsong, friendly conversation, good food and wine, sunshine, a pleasant cooling breeze and the happy screams of children. The surface of life as it was meant to be. And this was all real, too, Terry told himself. Just as real as the grime of the streets. The young woman, Belinda, had no more conception of the reality of murder, probably, than his little daughter Esther did. Why should she have?

  He smiled at Sarah. ‘It’s a perfect afternoon.’

  Then his mobile phone rang.

  3. Knife and Flowers

  IT HAD not been easy for Terry to leave the party. The phone call had come just at the time when Esther had stung her arm on a nettle and decided she had had enough, so he had tears and a mini tantrum to cope with for starters. Jessica, bless her, had been very helpful and found a dock leaf for the stings, and Sarah Newby had been fine, saying of course they could stay as long as they liked and sending Emily to look for a box of choc-ices in the freezer, but she had been distracted just at that moment by the arrival of her son Simon with a new girlfriend with studs in her nose, and however jolly and friendly the other lawyers were they were a bunch of adult strangers as far as Jessica and Esther were concerned.

  Trude would pick the girls up soon after six, he assured Sarah, and he sent Trude a text message to confirm where they were. But it was all a familiar, heart-wrenching mess. He left Esther sitting on Emily’s lap, her face and dress covered with tears, chocolate and ice-cream. No chance now of talking about the fun they had had earlier; that was all for Trude. The girls would be in bed long before Terry got home.

  But on the phone, Detective Sergeant Tracy Litherland had been emphatic. An attempted suicide, suspicious circumstances, could be attempted murder. Incidents didn’t get a lot more serious than that, and Terry was the senior detective on call. He had to go.

  Bill Rankin, one of the two uniformed constables who had first answered the 999 call, let him into the flat. As he came in, Tracy Litherland glanced at him apologetically.

  ‘Sorry to call you out, sir, but it does look serious.’

  ‘It had better be.’ Whatever he did he was in the wrong place, he thought irritably - if he had stayed with his children, he would have been neglecting his job; but now he was here, he was neglecting his children.

  ‘This is where it happened, sir, from what we can make out.’ Noting the scowl on his face, Tracy Litherland adopted a quiet, businesslike approach. She led him through the tiny hall into the living room, where they stepped over a litter of scattered female clothing to the bathroom door. ‘The paramedics found her in there, sir. Wrists slashed and her face under water, they said.’

  Terry and Tracy contemplated the bathroom in silence. Under normal circumstances it would have been pleasant enough; the bathroom fittings were new, the walls tiled with attractive patterns of seaweed and fish. But pools of bloody water disfigured the floor, and the bath itself had a bright red ring around it halfway up where the surface of the water had been, and a long red smear of blood leading to the plughole. There was blood on the wall tiles too, and on the outside of the bath next to the basin. Always, when confronted with a scene like this, Terry had to consciously steel himself, close down the shutters in his mind against the memory of how his wife Mary had died, crushed in the wreckage of her own car. How much blood there must have been then, too.

  It was the work of a moment but Tracy noticed. The way his eyes closed, his body tensed, the deep breath that was let out slowly. She had seen it before, they all had. Some pitied him for it and thought he was over the hill, but for her own part she respected the strength that allowed him to face it and carry on. He made mistakes from time to time, they all did; but he had also been spectacularly right when almost everyone else, in particular their boss DCI Will Churchill, had been wrong. And for that reason there was a tension in the department. Churchill’s supporters longed for Terry to make a mistake, others fervently hoped that he would not. Most of them knew that if his wife had not died when she did, he would have got the job that Churchill now had; Tracy for one thought the department would be a better place if he had.

  On the floor underneath the basin lay a kitchen knife with a black handle. Terry picked the knife up with a plastic evidence bag folded over his hand, and sealed it in. />
  ‘She’s dead then, is she?’ Tracy asked the young constable.

  ‘Not when she left here, sarge, no. Still breathing, she was. That’s why her boyfriend wanted to go to the hospital with her. Nick took him in the car.’

  ‘He was the one who dialled 999? This boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes. Name of David Kidd. This is his flat.’

  ‘I see.’ Tracy knelt to examine the clothing on the living room floor. A girl’s jeans, teeshirt, bra, white socks and trainers, scattered here and there on a green, patterned carpet. Her panties were on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Any blood?’ Terry asked.

  Tracy stood up. ‘Not that I can see, no sir. It looks like she undressed here and then got into the bath.’

  ‘Where she cut her wrists with a kitchen knife,’ Terry said thoughtfully. He glanced at the window to his right. There was a dining table in front of it, with an empty wine glass next to a colourful bunch of flowers in a vase. Outside the window, at this same three story height above the ground, he could see people walking along the medieval city wall, twenty yards away across the back yard. Behind them, framed by sycamore trees, rose the magnificent tower of the 14th century cathedral, York Minster, its white stones suffused with a rosy glow in the evening sunset.