A Fatal Verdict (The Trials of Sarah Newby)

by Vicary, Tim

  ‘I’ll do it, Kath.’ Jane Miller moved swiftly to her friend’s side. ‘You sit down.’

  Kathryn Walters sat down, quite abruptly, in a chair by the table, and stared across it at her husband, her eyes in the pale face wide and compelling. ‘He killed her, Andy. I said he would and he did.’

  ‘But she was found in a bath, they say.’ Andrew shook his head, miserably. ‘With her wrists cut. She bled to death.’

  ‘Yes, but it was his bath, wasn’t it? Shelley wouldn’t cut her wrists, Andy, you know that. She couldn’t kill a fly.’

  ‘No, but ...’ Andrew ran his hands through his hair. ‘We should have been there. If she was upset, she should have come to us.’

  ‘You were going to see her, weren’t you?’ Kathryn asked with surprising bitterness. ‘This evening?’

  ‘Yes, but not till later.’ Her husband darted a swift, anxious glance at Tracy. ‘I was in the library most of the afternoon, working. I was going to ring her from my room, but then ... this police woman came. I was going to ask if she wanted to have a meal with me in the college. She did that sometimes.’ His eyes rested on Tracy’s a moment longer, defying her to contradict him; then he turned back to his wife. ‘But if what you say is true, then it’s murder.’

  ‘Of course it’s murder. That’s what the police are investigating now, aren’t you, officer? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Litherland,’ Tracy said, pulling her notebook from her bag. ‘Look, it would help if you could tell me as much as you can about your daughter and this young man. For example how long had she known him? Where did they first meet, and so on? If you think you’re up to it now, that is.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Andrew said. ‘This is all a terrible shock, you know - and my wife ...’

  ‘I want to tell her, Andy. David’s always been a danger to Shelley. I told you he was bad news the moment I saw him, didn’t I? Only you had to shake his hand, suck up to him, the filthy creep!’ This to her husband, bitterly.

  ‘He seemed all right at first,’ said Andrew defensively. ‘And Shelley liked him too - that’s why I was prepared to give him a chance. She deserved a bit of luck, after all she’d been through, poor kid!’

  ‘Luck? For God’s sake! She didn’t deserve this!’ Tears flooded Kathryn’s eyes, so that for a moment she couldn’t go on. But as she fumbled for a tissue Tracy thought the tears were as much a sign of rage as grief. This was a woman who had not just been hurt - she felt mortally wronged, as well.

  Kathryn blew her nose and glared at her husband, her eyes ablaze with pain and anger. ‘And now she’s dead, because you were so blind! It’s Shelley’s fault too, of course it is. Only she was too young, too naive and stupid to see. Whereas you ...’

  More heat was being generated than light, Tracy thought, remembering her old supervisor on the detective training course. Establish the facts, leave the emotion until later. Otherwise you’re lost - wandering in a fog with no landmarks to show you the way.

  ‘When was this, actually?’ she asked, pencil poised over her notebook. ‘When did Shelley meet this man, David - what’s his name? - Kidd?’

  ‘Last December,’ Andrew Walters answered. ‘At the end of her first term at university. She brought him home for Christmas. My wife’s right, of course. She said he was trouble then, but I’m afraid it didn’t dawn on me until later. At that time, I even thought he might be her salvation, God help me.’ He shook his head slowly, meeting his wife’s eyes and then looking away. ‘We all make mistakes, don’t we, after all.’

  ‘Not fatal ones, Andy.’

  ‘Kath, please. This isn’t helping. Let’s just give her the facts, shall we?’ Andrew Walters reached across the table for his wife’s hand. She hesitated, then gripped it fiercely in both her own, shaking her head bitterly.

  ‘I know the facts. He killed her! What more do you need?’

  ‘I need to know the background, Mrs Walters,’ Tracy insisted. ‘If what you say is true, it’s more important than ever. Your husband’s right. Please, help me to understand.’

  Jane Miller put her arm round her friend, and Tracy wondered if this was all too raw, too early. But the questions had to be answered sometime. A clock chimed in the hall. Kathryn Walters let go of her husband’s hand and looked up, her face pale, bitter, determined. ‘Yes, all right. Of course you need to understand. Just so long as understanding doesn’t lead to forgiveness. There can’t be any forgiveness for him, ever, not after what he’s done.’

  Tracy shivered, as though a spider had crawled along the back of her neck. This was a vendetta she had walked into, it seemed. ‘All right. Tell me about Shelley, will you?’

  Slowly, between the two of them, elements of the story began to emerge. Shelley, it seemed, had been in her first year at York university studying English. The fact that she had got a place there at all was, both parents agreed, a significant triumph not just for the girl, but for all concerned. Unlike her sister Miranda, she had not been a natural student, and had had many problems at school. For a while she had had psychiatric treatment for depression. But her parents - the father a professor of medieval history, the mother a pharmacist with her own successful business in Harrogate - had persisted, sending her to private school, paying for extra tuition about Bleak House which she loathed, even tutoring her themselves when she would let them - and at last she had come out with the required two As and a B to scrape a place. She had chosen York, even though it was near to home, because it would keep her in touch with her long-term boyfriend, Graham, of whom both parents spoke with a combination of deep regret and bitterness.

  ‘He was a lovely boy, he worked hard, kind, had a sense of humour ...’

  ‘The sort of boyfriend you’d dream of for your daughter ...’

  ‘And she loved him.’

  ‘Yes, she really did, that was the tragedy. The start of it, anyway.’ Kathryn rubbed her eyes futilely with a wet tissue. ‘Everything was going well for her, at last. He took over from us, in a way. Gave her confidence to grow up. Then it all fell apart ...’

  ‘Why? What happened?’ Tracy prompted, guessing the answer even as she did so.

  ‘Well, he dumped her didn’t he? That’s the ugly word they use nowadays, like a girl or boy is just what - a sack of rubbish? Anyway, that’s what he did. Right at the beginning of her first year. Said he’d met someone else over the summer and they weren’t right for each other after all. It destroyed her, poor girl. You know what she said to me? It’s like a trapdoor has opened under my feet. I don’t know how to stand up any more.’ Kathryn shook her head slowly. ‘She trusted that boy, we all did.’

  Andrew took up the story. ‘That’s true, it destroyed her. I thought she was going to give up altogether. Her work went all to pot. And then, on the rebound, she met this David. She brought him out here at Christmas.’ He sighed. ‘My wife’s right. I should have seen through him then. He wasn’t right for her at all, really. I mean, you’ve seen him, haven’t you?’

  ‘Briefly, this afternoon, yes.’ Tracy remembered the confrontation in the hospital corridor.

  ‘Yes, well he must be nearly thirty, at least - a lot older than her. Which would be all right if he had a proper job and a career, but of course he hasn’t. He buys and sells African art, he says, and talks about adventure holidays, though I’m not sure I believe him. He’s full of all sorts of stories, really ...’

  ‘Like his career in the army,’ Kathryn burst in.

  ‘Like his career in the army, exactly. He had all these stories about his time in Afghanistan, for heaven’s sake. Shooting Taliban - sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Shelley lapped it up. Only we could never quite find out which regiment he was in or when he joined up and then when he finally let slip it was the Rifles, Kath phoned them to check. And what did they say?’ He looked to his wife to continue the story.

  ‘He had been one of their recruits five years ago but he failed the training course. Never went anywhere near Afghanist
an. Not with the army anyway.’

  ‘I see.’ Tracy scribbled the details swiftly. ‘And did you tell him you’d done this?’

  ‘I told Shelley. She didn’t believe me at first. Lost her temper and said I was spying on him behind her back. Until a week ago when she found out about the other thing.’

  ‘What other thing?’

  Kathryn drew a deep breath as though at last they’d got to the crux of the matter and she was marshalling her thoughts. ‘Well, you have to understand that for most of this year she’s been a virtual stranger to us. I mean, she came home every now and then with a bag of clothes to wash, that sort of thing. Or a request for money.’

  ‘Did David come with her?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes, unfortunately. But that only made things worse, because he’d just sit and talk - he can talk, you know, he’s good at that - and even if I’d ask her a direct question he’d answer it for her. It was like she was his little slave girl, almost. It was dreadful to see. Like he’d stolen her voice.’

  ‘She was always a bit like that, even with Graham,’ said Andrew judiciously.

  ‘Yes, but Graham didn’t monopolise the conversation, did he, with all his empty boasts that came to nothing?’ Kathryn shot back bitterly. ‘He had that ridiculous sports car, too, that he was so proud of. Anyway, one of his boasts was that he was going to take her on a trip to Africa in the vacation. He said he’d worked as a safari guide in Kenya - another of his lies, probably, I haven’t been able to check that. And she was looking forward to it, of course she was, so when she came round last week I was going to take her for her injections, and buy her the right sort of clothes. I’d taken the afternoon off to do it; I thought at last I’d have her to myself for a while, have a proper talk for once. But when she came, well, it was all off.’

  ‘The Kenya trip, you mean?’ Tracy looked up from her notebook.

  ‘No, not just that.’ There was a look of tearful triumph on Kathryn Walters’ face. ‘The whole thing was off - her affair, everything! She wasn’t ever going to see David again!’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘Yes. First thing she said when she walked in the door. She was in floods of tears of course, but she was angry, too. Angry like I hadn’t seen her in years. And it was difficult because I was disappointed for her but also pleased as well. Delighted, in fact. I thought I’ve got my daughter back again at last. We both did, didn’t we?’

  Andrew Walters nodded. ‘Yes. It was quite clear that evening that her affair with David was over. That’s why what’s happened today...’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘... seems so strange. Inexplicable, really.’

  ‘Which day was this, sir?’

  ‘It would have been Tuesday. May 16th.’

  ‘So why had the affair come to an end? What was Shelley so angry about?’

  Kathryn Walters smiled through her tears. ‘Oh, that’s simple, really. Banal, in fact. She’d called in to see him that morning in his flat - she had a key, you see - and found him in bed with another girl. Naturally there was a row. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out this girl isn’t just some casual fling, as Shelley thought at first. Oh no. God help the poor girl, she’s the mother of his child!’

  ‘So there was another girl?’ Terry said. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

  He was parked in the street outside his house. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night. He could see the lights were off in the girls’ bedroom upstairs. A glow flickered in the front room where Trude was presumably sitting up for him, watching TV. And Tracy, it seemed, was still out in the country somewhere, parked in a layby looking up at the stars while she phoned in her report.

  ‘That’s it, sir. Another girl with a baby. And he’s the father.’

  Terry shook his head in silent disgust. So David Kidd didn’t just break up other people’s families, it seemed, he abandoned his own. The distaste he had felt for the cocky young man during this afternoon’s interview broadened into contempt.

  ‘Did they give the name of this other girl? The mother of Mr Kidd’s child?’

  ‘Lindsay, Mrs Walters said. She didn’t know the surname, or where she lives.’

  ‘Well, no doubt lover boy can tell us. If he remembers he has a family, that is.’ Terry gazed at his own house. Was that a small shadow moving, behind the living room curtain? Surely the girls weren’t still up? He sighed. ‘But I suppose, to be fair to him, that gives Shelley Walters a reason for suicide, doesn’t it? Despair at being dumped by such a promising Lothario.’

  ‘His parents don’t believe it was suicide, sir. They insist the girl wasn’t like that, at all. They’re convinced that her boyfriend killed her. But there is a problem, nonetheless. The girl had some sort of psychiatric condition. She was on medication for - what do they call it? Bi-polar disorder.’

  ‘Oh great,’ Terry sighed. ‘So he found out she was a nutter and dumped her. That would drive anyone to suicide.’

  ‘Could be, sir, yes. But the parents don’t believe it.’

  ‘No. Well, they wouldn’t, would they?’

  For a moment, neither of them said anything. Terry looked up at the window where his own daughters were sleeping peacefully, and tried to imagine how he would feel if either of them ended up as Shelley Walters had today. It didn’t bear thinking about. The rage, the fury her parents must feel - coupled with guilt, perhaps, at not protecting their vulnerable daughter enough. ‘A difficult interview, then, Tracy?’

  ‘Pretty gruesome, sir, yes. I don’t know how anyone copes with a death like that. I’m afraid I did ... make them a sort of promise, sir.’

  ‘A promise?’ An alarm bell rang in Terry’s head. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that we’ll take their suspicions seriously, sir. I said that if it is a murder, then ... we’ll make sure the bastard’s locked away for good.’

  ‘Well, obviously.’ Terry relaxed. It was the sort of thing he might have said himself. ‘But you’re not a social worker, Trace, remember that. We just deal with the facts. The post mortem will help. See you at the morgue in the morning.’

  The moment he switched off the mobile he wished he hadn’t said it like that. But then, if you focussed too much on feelings you wouldn’t be able to deal with scenes like they’d witnessed this afternoon, or the visit to the mortuary they would both have to make tomorrow. You had to keep your own emotions under control.

  But that didn’t mean he had none. As Terry parked his car in his drive and opened his front door softly, he thought, this is my home, my nest, my place of safety. But how safe is it really? What if Jessica or Esther grows up and dies in the bath of a thug like David Kidd, what would I do? I’d string him up to the nearest lamppost, that’s what I’d do. Whether he killed her with his own hands or just drove her to do it herself, it’s still his fault either way, that’s how I’d feel. I’d want revenge - that’s how her parents probably feel now.

  He stood in the hall for a moment, thinking, while his professional mind censored the dreadful images and stored them away in his subconscious. Then he drew a deep breath and opened the door of the living room.

  A young fair-haired woman in jeans and teeshirt smiled up at him from the end of the sofa where she sat curled up watching TV. She put a finger to her lips, then pointed down at the tousled head of eight year old Esther asleep on her lap.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Terry sat down in the armchair and Trude muted the sound with the remote. ‘Was there trouble this evening?’ he asked softly.

  ‘A little. My fault. I told her a tale about trolls and she saw one in the wardrobe.’

  ‘I should have been here.’

  ‘Why? Can you arrest trolls?’ Trude stroked the little girl’s hair gently. ‘She’s very tired. They had a lot of fun at the party.’

  ‘Daddy?’ Esther stirred, and sat up. ‘Good. You’re home.’ She got up off the sofa and tottered across to Terry, trailing a battered leopard in her left hand. ‘Did you catch the burglars?’

  ‘
I did, sweetie. All locked up.’ He lifted the soft, trusting little body onto his knee, remembering the horrors at the hospital and the tough, cocky young thug he had released an hour earlier to go back to his bloodstained flat. ‘Why are you up so late?’

  ‘There was a troll. In my wardrobe.’

  ‘It was just a dream, honey. He’s all gone now. Come on, I’ll take you up.’

  ‘All right.’ The little girl was warm, with that lovely innocent smell of a sleepy child. He picked her up, and she leaned her head trustingly against his shoulder, stroking the back of his head with her free hand as if she was comforting him, not the other way round. He smiled down at Trude, who gave them both a little wave.

  ‘Up the wooden hill,’ he said, in the quaint English phrase that his grandmother had once used to him. ‘To Bedfordshire.’

  10. Hamster

  THE CASE conference, three months later, was nearly derailed by a hamster.

  Terry thought he had everything running smoothly. He had all the evidence, which he had read through carefully last night, neatly arranged in a locked briefcase just inside the front door. His car, which had refused to start twice last week, had come back from the garage with a large bill and a promise of perfect performance. Trude had Jessica and Esther up and dressed for school on time, hair brushed, homework in satchels, lunchboxes packed, socks matching, waffles toasting in the kitchen ...

  And then Esther let her hamster out.

  It was a new hamster, selected with great care only last week to replace Rufus, the beloved old one which had died suddenly and been buried, with tears and solemn ceremony, under the laurel bush at the end of the garden. Rufus had been old and slow and trusting but the new hamster, Rastus, was the opposite of all these things and when Esther had opened his cage, just for a second to say good morning, he had whizzed up her arm, jumped off her shoulder and vanished behind the sofa. Hence the family panic.

  Esther was convinced that the cat would kill him or he would get trapped inside the sofa or run down a mousehole where some monstrous rat with slavering jaws would tear him to shreds and nothing would persuade her to eat her breakfast or even consider going to school until Rastus was caught and safely installed back in his cage. Her elder sister Jessica was equally keen on the hunt but also desperate to get to school early because her class were performing a project about the environment for the school assembly and she had a key speaking role as a dolphin. But Rastus could not be found. Terry upended the sofa and caught sight of him scurrying between Trude’s legs into the kitchen, where he disappeared into the space between the kitchen cupboards and the dishwasher. And time, as Terry was only too aware, was rushing on, as swiftly as the traffic was pouring into York from all the outlying villages to clog up the route into the chambers where he was to lead a police team to present their case to a barrister for the murder trial.