by Vicary, Tim
Sarah nodded quietly. ‘Exquisitely painful, I should think.’
‘It was. Sometimes when I spoke to her on the phone I could hear him in the background, whispering and muttering about me, even kissing her once to distract her because he knew I was on the line, he knew I could hear. He wanted me to know he’d taken her away from me, she didn’t rely on me, didn’t belong to me any more. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to control her like a little sex slave, a puppet almost. And it was easy for him, because she was so loving, so trusting, so innocent. She believed everything he said. But I found out about him, all his lies. His claims to have been in the army, when he hadn’t. And his convictions for beating his former girlfriend. The police told you about those. You’ve read about them, haven’t you?’
‘They’re in the brief, yes.’ Sarah noted the way the look of distrust had returned. ‘Really, Mrs Walters, I have done my homework, believe me. But it’s useful hearing these things from you, all the same.’
‘You’ll tell the jury, then? Make it all count?’
‘I will if I can.’ Sarah sighed. ‘There are rules of evidence, legal niceties that can make some things difficult when it comes to character. But anyway, the basic facts of the case should be enough to get a conviction, even without that. Unless Mr Bhose comes up with something totally unexpected, which I doubt. This young man belongs in prison.’
‘I think I could sleep at night, then.’
‘You don’t sleep?’ Sarah studied the woman in front of her thoughtfully. There were lines around the eyes and cheeks, certainly, but she had dressed with care, her make-up was good, the skin of her neck and arms healthy and firm.
Kathryn noticed the look and smiled faintly. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not wasting away. But sleep - no. Three or four hours at a time before I wake. I cherish those moments, you know. Sometimes when I wake there are times - I don’t know, a minute or two, maybe longer - when I forget what’s happened. I’m drowsy, half-awake, and all of it’s gone. And then it comes back; it’s so painful. I just think, when he’s in jail, locked away, maybe those times will be longer. There’ll be nothing to do, it’ll be over. At the moment I feel I have to carry it with me all the time, even at night. If I forget for a moment, I’ll have betrayed her, he’ll go free.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘That’s just how it feels.’
‘You don’t need to feel responsible,’ Sarah said carefully. ‘You’ve got the police after all. And now me.’
‘I know.’ Their eyes met across the table, searching, cautious. ‘But forgive me, that makes it worse, somehow.’
‘Worse, how? You don’t trust us?’
‘No, it’s not that. I’m sure you’ll do your best, I saw you in court this morning. But ... you see, it doesn’t belong to you. However well you do your job, that’s what it is, a job - and Shelley was my daughter. Sometimes at night I wish we lived in a more primitive society. You know, an eye for an eye. So I could kill him myself. Strap him to an electric chair and pull the lever.’ Tears came to her eyes and she stared away, out of the window again. ‘I know it sounds awful but that’s what I think.’
‘It would be awful though.’ Sarah chose her words carefully before continuing. ‘You might find you couldn’t do it and even if you could, you’d have that memory to keep you awake at night as well.’
‘Maybe.’ Kathryn turned back, her eyes still glistening with tears. ‘Or maybe not. He killed my daughter, after all. Maybe if I killed him, that would help me sleep.’
Silence fell between them. We’ve come a long way from the evidence now, Sarah thought. But this is the power of what we’re dealing with, in court. ‘I expect if the truth were told, a lot of people think like that. But that’s why we have the system that we do, to protect you from the need to commit such a crime. I represent the Queen, you know, the state. You’ve suffered a wrong and it’s my job to put it right, if I can. It’s justice, not revenge. We’re there to protect you from yourself.’
‘Just make sure you do it properly then. Lock him up and throw away the key. I’m sorry, Mrs Newby, I know it sounds bad. But I’ve tried to believe in Christian forgiveness, and I can’t.’
17. Professional Doubts
AS SARAH entered the robing room after lunch, Savendra was adjusting his wig in the mirror. He scowled at her with mock ferocity. ‘Ah, the wicked witch of Endor! Where did your pathologist learn his trade? Treblinka was it, or Auschwitz?’
Sarah took her gown from a hanger and shrugged it on. Reluctantly, she turned her mind from the picture Kathryn Walters had painted of the young Shelley, to the pathologist’s unfortunate comments about her dead body. ‘When he talked about experiments on people dying from pierced arteries, you mean? He was referring to atrocities he hadn’t committed, not to ones he had. Unlike your client, I might add.’
‘My client says it’s suicide.’
‘You look at his record. Lies, assaults on women - this isn’t Christopher Robin you’re representing.’ She took her wig out of its black and gold tin and picked a piece of fluff from it with her fingers.
‘Nonetheless, he says he didn’t kill her.’ There was a thoughtful look on his face which Sarah, knowing him well, recognised as a prelude to negotiation. ‘Look, what strikes me is the possibility that we’re missing something here. Both of us. You say it’s murder, we say it’s suicide. Both of us can explain how it might have happened, but neither can really explain why. You’re prosecuting, but do you have a motive? Why would he murder her?’
‘Because he’s a nasty inadequate male chauvinist control freak who couldn’t bear the idea that his poor little sex slave had a mind of her own, that’s why.’ Sarah opened her handbag to search for a lipstick.
‘Well maybe, maybe ...’
‘There are lots of men like that, Savvy. I should know. I married one, for Christ’s sake.’
Savendra stared, nonplussed. ‘Not Bob, Sarah, surely ...’
‘No, of course not. Kevin - Simon’s father. Beat me black and blue, the little thug. Didn’t you know?’ She watched him coolly in the mirror before pursing her lips for the gloss. ‘Bob rescued me from all that. The civilized older man.’
She raised an eyebrow ironically at her reflection in the mirror, thinking how far she’d come since then. At sixteen she’d been a tearful teenage divorcee, struggling to restart her GCSEs in night school. She’d been doped out on valium to ease the depression caused by the demands of her mother and the social services to give up her baby, Simon, for adoption. Bob, ten years older, a gentle, bearded young English teacher, had not only befriended her but offered to bring up the child himself, if only she’d do him the honour of marrying him. He’d got down on his knees to propose, like a lanky romantic poet, beside a greasy formica-topped table in the college canteen. And so he’d saved her - from losing her child and failing to learn, both at once.
Their marriage, begun in such desperate circumstances, had every appearance of success, at least to Savendra, soon to take a similar step himself. Sarah and Bob had busy, thriving careers and a luxurious house in the country. They had more or less successfully brought up two children - Simon, admittedly only an apprentice bricklayer but more settled now since the trauma of last year, and his seventeen-year-old half-sister Emily, who was studying A levels and planning to save the planet with the help of her boyfriend Larry. And they had stayed together when many couples of their acquaintance, marrying later in more promising circumstances, had divorced.
So far, Sarah thought, so good. All through her long uphill battle from the slums of Seacroft to the glory of being called to the ‘utter Bar’ in the ancient Elizabethan hall of the Middle Temple, she had drawn strength and support from Bob. He was not, perhaps, the greatest lover in the world, but after her exhilarating, catastrophic initiation to sexual love with Kevin, the randy, cruel, faithless little gamecock who was Simon’s father, Sarah had come to distrust passion; she valued Bob’s qualities of gentleness, reliability, and loyalty far higher.
Or
at least she had done, until recently. His announcement this morning that he had had the house valued without even consulting her first was symptomatic of the distance that was opening up between them. Touching her lips with the lipstick, she breathed in and felt a sharp familiar ache somewhere below her breastbone. It was a pain so real she had even consulted the doctor about it once, but he’d found nothing; it was not her body that was wounded, but her heart. Her marriage was not one to be envied, not any more. Not since Bob had let her down over Simon. Kevin’s fist might have bruised her face, but Bob’s cruel words had frozen her heart. She doubted if it would ever recover.
She watched Savendra in the mirror as he casually proposed his deal. ‘So you wouldn’t be interested in a plea of manslaughter?’
‘I doubt it, no. What are you saying - he cut her wrists by accident? Do me a favour, Savvy.’
‘No, she cut her wrists, then drowned because her head fell under water. The question is why.’
‘Okay then, why?’ She dropped the lipstick in her bag and took out an eyelash brush, smiling indulgently. ‘Go on, you tell me.’
‘Look, I’m not speaking under instruction now, right. Just exploring a possibility, in the interests of ...’
‘Getting your client off.’
‘No, justice, Sarah. That’s what we do here, isn’t it? Make justice.’
Sarah finished her lashes and hunted for a eyebrow pencil, aware that something, either her words or the makeup business or both, was getting under her colleague’s skin. ‘All right, go on then. Surprise me.’
‘Well, look, suppose we admit my client’s not the great Lothario he thinks he is. Far from it, in fact. But on the other hand his victim, this poor girl Shelley, had all sorts of problems with self esteem and depression which I can and will prove, giving her a tendency to commit suicide under extreme pressure ...’
‘You mean her mother disliking her boyfriend? A few bad essay marks? Is that cause for suicide?’ Sarah finished her makeup and snapped her bag shut.
‘Well, maybe. Such things happen. Not everyone’s tough like you, you know. But what if my client admits that some pressure came from him? On the one side there’s her mum, telling her to give him up, and on the other there’s him, only the second real boyfriend she’s had. It’s tearing her apart. Then she gets this shock, finding him in bed with the other girl, and she decides to dump him. But then when she goes back to his flat something happens; they have a blazing row and then he seduces her ...’
‘Rapes her, Savvy.’
‘Seduces her, Sarah. There is a difference. He sweet talks her into doing what she’d told herself she wouldn’t do any more. It doesn’t have to be rape.’
‘You mean he won’t admit to it.’
‘No. Well as you can see he’s a cocky little bastard who thinks a quick fuck makes everything fine. So she gets in the bath and he goes whistling out to buy her some flowers, trying to be nice for once, and comes back to find she’s so appalled by what she’s done that she’s killed herself. Well, what does the court make of that? It’s not murder is it? She cut her own wrists, he wasn’t even there at the time. But he has some sort of responsibility, he might manage to admit that.’
‘And will he say this in court?’
‘He might, if you’d go for manslaughter instead of murder.’
Savendra was in earnest now, Sarah could see that; and he had a point, of course. Sarah thought back to the lunch she had just had, and the confidence the dead girl’s mother had placed in her. ‘I might go for it, Savvy, if the victim was left-handed. But she isn’t. I’ve checked with her mother, friends, everyone. She held her pen in her right hand, she cut bread with her right hand. If she’d wanted to kill herself she’d have picked up the knife in her right hand first and slashed her left wrist, where she would have done the most damage. But that’s not what happened. The artery was pierced in her right wrist, not her left. And that means someone cut it for her, Savvy, clear as day. She didn’t do it herself. All the rest is detail.’
‘I see,’ Savendra sighed, disappointed but not particularly surprised. She had never been an easy woman to convince. ‘And that’s what you’re going to tell the jury?’
‘That’s it, Savvy.’ Sarah smiled, as they made their way to the door. ‘Nice try, but this is a murder. And your client did it.’
18. Tentative Cuts
IT WAS clear to Savendra, as it was to Sarah, that the pathologist’s evidence was crucial in this case. If he couldn’t cast doubt on it, he might as well pack up and go home now. So he began by challenging the time Dr Tuchman had claimed Shelley could have survived with a bleeding artery.
‘Is it usual for people to survive for half an hour with a pierced artery?’
‘Not usual, no. As I said, half an hour is probably a maximum time.’
‘So what would be a minimum time?’
Dr Tuchman shrugged. ‘Five or ten minutes, maybe.’
‘Five or ten minutes?’ Sarah grimaced, and Savendra glanced down at her triumphantly. This was better than he had hoped. ‘That’s a big difference, Dr Tuchman, isn’t it? This morning you told my learned friend that she could have been lying in that bath for up to half an hour, but now you say she could have been there for only five or ten minutes. Which is right?’
‘I didn’t say that she was likely to have to have been there for five or ten minutes,’ the pathologist protested irritably. ‘I said that was a minimum time. Miss Walters clearly survived longer than that because she was still alive when the ambulance team arrived.’
‘So which is more normal? Five minutes, or half an hour?’
To Savendra’s satisfaction, the pathologist looked annoyed, even flustered. A quick glance at the jury confirmed that they were following the exchange with interest.
‘Somewhere in between, of course. The half hour figure would typically be for a large fat person with a slow heartbeat and a lot of blood.’
‘But Shelley Walters was a slim young woman. So presumably it would take less time for her to bleed to death. What would be the maximum time, for a girl of her age and condition?’
Dr Tuchman scowled at his young tormentor. ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes, perhaps. Unless of course the artery healed itself.’
‘Is that possible?’ Savendra looked stunned.
‘Certainly it’s possible, particularly when a small artery like the ulnar is pierced rather than severed, and where the blood flow is not aided by water.’
‘But ... that didn’t happen in this case, did it?’
‘The artery didn’t heal itself, no.’
‘Very well then.’ Savendra drew a deep sigh of relief, coupled with annoyance at this deliberate red herring. ‘Then since the artery did not heal itself, Dr Tuchman, this young woman would have bled to death in fifteen or twenty minutes. That’s your best guess, is it?’
‘That, young man, is my educated opinion.’
So far, so good, Savendra thought. For the next ten minutes he worked away at this point, dragging further damaging admissions from the elderly pathologist. The ambulance had arrived after seven minutes, so if Shelley could have died from blood loss fifteen minutes after David Kidd had cut her wrists, he would have had to leave the flat, walk to the shop, discuss football with the shopkeeper, buy olive oil and flowers, return from the shop, and ring 999 - all in under 8 minutes. Surely that was impossible?
‘I know nothing of that,’ Dr Tuchman answered stiffly. ‘As I said, she may well have survived longer. It is impossible to be sure.’
‘Quite.’ Savendra paused, to let the jury take this point in. He glanced down at Sarah, a faint smile playing round his lips as he anticipated her reaction to his next question.
‘Then let us turn to another issue, shall we? The tentative cuts. You told Mrs Newby that you found no tentative cuts on the victim’s wrists, which inclined you to regard this death as murder. But perhaps I could suggest another way of interpreting this evidence, Dr Tuchman. You also claim, do you not, that if this w
as suicide the wound to the left wrist would have been inflicted before the one to the right?’
‘Since this girl was right handed, yes.’
‘So isn’t it possible, doctor, that the wound to the left wrist - a much shallower, less fatal wound than the one to the right - is in itself the tentative cut you are looking for? Miss Walters had never cut herself before, so she cut her left wrist first, as you say, but didn’t really cut deep enough. It was only on her second attempt, to cut her right wrist, that she nerved herself to press hard enough to do lethal damage.’
Sarah groaned inwardly. It was a typical Savendra point - smart, unexpected, appearing to completely turn the tables on the expert witness - and therefore highly likely to delight any smart alecks and wise guys there might be among the younger jurors.
The pathologist sighed, making a conscious effort to balance his irritation with objectivity. ‘It is a remote possibility, I suppose. Very remote, in my view.’
Nonetheless, Sarah thought ruefully, the damage is done, another doubt lodged safely in the jurors’ minds. With Savendra on this sort of form, this trial may not be so easy after all.
Savendra moved on smoothly to his third point, the subcutaneous bruises on Shelley’s head and neck, which the pathologist had claimed were typical of someone being forcibly drowned. ‘These bruises to her head and neck which you mention. You cannot say that they were necessarily caused in the bath, can you?’
Dr Tuchman stared at him, surprised. ‘Not if you look at the bruises on their own. But ...’
‘Isn’t possible that they were caused before she entered the bath, doctor? In a previous argument of some kind?’
Dr Tuchman sighed, his commitment to objectivity fighting with his increasing dislike of this supercilious young barrister. ‘Possible, yes, if you consider them on their own. They could have been caused by an incident up to an hour before her death.’
