by Vicary, Tim
‘Why not? It’s not as though he hasn’t done this before. Think of how he exaggerated the statement of that shopkeeper Patel, for instance, in Kidd’s case. And Nick Bryant’s no idiot. His team had combed that site already. Churchill was the one who arrested Kathryn, searched her house. Easy to pick up a hair bobble.’
‘Terry, if you’re right, this isn’t a mistake. It’s a deliberate attempt to pervert the course of justice.’
‘I know. And if I could prove it, I would, but I can’t. So unless you can do something magic, your client’s going down.’
Sarah had walked back to her office deeply depressed. Churchill had interviewed Kathryn a number of times, been to her house - it would have been so easy to pick up a hair bobble, take it to the woods, and leave it for the SOCO team to find next day. Easy, and almost impossible to challenge. She and Lucy had spent hours checking the chain of evidence that led from the scene of crime to the laboratory. Almost everything suggested that it was exactly what it appeared to be - a piece of brilliant, painstaking forensic detection, locating this tiny, vital clue in a dirty and unpromising crime scene.
Over the next few weeks Terry had tried, in the time he had left from the minor cases assigned to him, to investigate David Kidd’s death on his own account. But it was difficult; it was not his case, and few people on the team would talk to him about it. There was a wary, pitying look in their eyes that Terry was becoming used to. Everyone understood about the conflict between him and his boss, and what was happening to his career as a result of it. It could happen to them as well.
Nick Bryant, the SOCO, had agreed, cautiously, that his team had conducted a thorough examination of the crime scene the first time, they always did. But it was a messy place, with mud from the tractor that had hauled the car out, leaves, insects, and animal droppings everywhere. They were not supermen, they got tired and bored like everyone else. It was not impossible that they could miss a small elastic hair bobble. No one had seen Churchill anywhere near where it was found.
So Terry went back to the beginning, trying to see who else might have killed David Kidd. Surely he must have had other enemies than Kathryn.
He went back to where Kidd had kept his car, in a garage under the city wall, fifty yards or more from his flat. Churchill’s team had found an elderly colonel who’d seen David on the night he died, driving his Lotus out of the garage. There’d been a woman with him, the old man said, in her thirties or forties, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. She had fair hair, he was sure of that. How long it was, he was less certain. He’d glimpsed her face under a streetlamp and had picked Kathryn’s photo as resembling it more closely than the others he’d been shown.
Terry checked all the other flats and houses with windows overlooking the garage, and struck lucky - a woman, younger than the colonel and with arguably better eyesight, had seen the same thing, but with a subtle difference. She didn’t know David Kidd, but she remembered the Lotus Elise. And she described the female she’d seen getting into the car as a girl - a young woman in her twenties, she insisted, certainly not her late forties. She was certain of the date because it was the night before she went away on holiday; that presumably, was why Churchill’s team had missed her.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He looked at the map, and went for a weekend walk in the countryside, wondering how the murderer, whoever she was, could have left the scene of the crime without being traced. He enquired at the bus station in Wetherby, to see if anyone unusual had turned up that morning. Again, a young woman, bedraggled, tired, this time with short fair punk style hair.
But who was she? And how had she arranged to meet him? One night, thinking about this, Terry remembered suddenly that David Kidd had worked for a travel agency, leading safari holidays in Kenya. A trawl through the files of the case yielded a name: Sunline Tours, with an office in Hammersmith. Next day he rang them and, to his surprise, a lead opened up.
Yes, they confirmed, after a long search through their records, a woman had arranged to meet him, as a matter of fact. A travel journalist had rung their office about an article she intended to write, and they’d fixed an appointment for her to meet David Kidd at the Slug and Lettuce in York.
‘Do you have a name?’ Terry asked, pen poised above his notebook.
‘Yes, I think so. Just a minute ...’ There was the sound of paper rustling on the other end of the line, and pop music playing in the background. ‘Here it is. Martha Cookson. She writes for the Washington Star. I’m looking for her article, but the cuttings agency don’t seem to have sent it, unfortunately ...’
‘Never mind,’ said Terry. ‘I’ll give her a ring, see if I can trace it that way.’
Matthew Clayton QC was approaching the end of his opening speech. Having described Kathryn’s failed alibi, he moved on to the question of motive.
‘But why, you may ask, would a woman like Kathryn Walters - a mother, a respectable businesswoman, a pharmacist - do such a terrible thing? What would drive her to hate David Kidd so much as to cause his death? Well, unfortunately, the answer to that is all too clear.’
Sarah switched off while he described the events of the previous trial, Kathryn’s outburst on the steps of this court, her arrest with a shotgun outside David’s flat. There was no doubt whatsoever that Kathryn wanted him dead; she’d been quite clear about that in their last pre-trial conference. It was the one point she’d been really animated about in their conversations.
‘I don’t hold with Christian forgiveness. Not now. I doubt if I ever did. That man took my daughter away from me, exploited her, and killed her. There’s nothing worse you can do to a parent, nothing. He didn’t deserve to live after that. You tried to send him to prison, Mrs Newby, and failed, so somebody killed him. I’m glad he’s dead; I hope he rots in hell. If there is a hell. There should be, for people like him.’
It was a line of argument unlikely to benefit her in the witness box. Yet despite Sarah’s warnings, Kathryn seemed determined to stick to it. Sarah shook her head glumly. If six months on remand hadn’t purged Kathryn of her bitterness, she doubted if the shock of finding herself in court would do it. Sarah glanced over her shoulder at her client, sitting pale and intense in the dock, then let her gaze rise upwards to the public gallery, where, to her surprise, she thought she recognized another face.
A young woman in her mid twenties, with wavy brown shoulder length hair, a dark blue coat, and a striking resemblance to her mother sitting below in the dock. Kathryn’s daughter Miranda, Sarah thought after a moment - the sister of Shelley who died. I thought she was staying in America, that’s what Kathryn said. Well, good for her. Perhaps she can talk some sense into her mother. Someone needs to, if she isn’t going to go down.
Sarah turned to the front, to listen with increasing gloom as the prosecutor outlined the final part of his case, the faulty stock control procedures at Kathryn’s pharmacy which could have allowed her to obtain rohypnol without anyone tracing it. She pondered the options open to her in defence.
They seemed less encouraging than ever.
52. Mother and Daughter
THE FIRST day of the trial passed in a haze for Kathryn. She hadn’t anticipated how lonely she would feel, isolated in the dock at the back of the court. The lawyers, clerks, ushers and jury busied themselves in the well of the court below her, leaving her raised on high in this strange wooden tower, conspicuous, alone. Behind her sat her guard, a dour burly woman in grey uniform with handcuffs, keys and sturdy sensible shoes; directly in front of her, across the valley where the lawyers toiled, sat the judge in his wig and red robes. His eyes were the only ones on a level with hers and once, when she caught his gaze resting on her, she had nodded at him out of reflex politeness, but met no response. She was here to be judged, after all, not acknowledged.
She had met Sarah Newby, of course, in the morning, but all she saw of her barrister for most of the day was her black gown and the wig at the back of her head. A succession of witnesses came a
nd went: the farmer who had found the body, the pathologist, the scenes of crime officer, a forensic scientist, the old colonel who had seen a woman resembling Kathryn get into David Kidd’s car. With the first two there was little to say, but Sarah worked hard with the last three, chipping away at crucial details: why exactly had the SOCOs not found the hair bobble on their first examination of the site? Wasn’t it possible that the mud and leaves on her trainers came from the fields near her house, or indeed other fields and woods twenty miles away? Did the seventy five year old colonel, wearing strong glasses in poor light late in the evening, really recall the face of the passenger who got into David Kidd’s car? Could he really be sure of her age, or even remember the date?
Kathryn followed the legal battle with the surface of her mind only. Isolated at the back of the court, it scarcely seemed to concern her. Her lawyer was doing well enough, but it didn’t matter any more to Kathryn.
What mattered, was that she had seen Miranda.
She had told her daughter not to come so many times, in carefully guarded phone calls and letters from the prison. The whole basis of her sanity was that Miranda was safe, four thousand miles away, out of reach. She had promised to stay away. But this morning, when Kathryn had looked up to the public gallery, she had seen her. All morning she had thought about that, and then, at lunch time, her cell door had opened, and there she was. Smiling anxiously.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Mum, I had to come.’
‘No, you didn’t. I told you to stay away. Go home, back to your family.’
‘Mum, you don’t know how it feels. I can’t just leave you here alone. If you’re convicted - I couldn’t live with that.’
‘Look, I’ve got a good defence team, a good barrister, she thinks she can get me off. So there’s no need for you to worry. I’ll be free soon.’
‘It’s not worry, Mum, I’ve got something to tell you. I have to say this ...’
‘I don’t want to hear it. Please, darling, no!’
‘What I did ...’
‘I don’t want to know what you did, or how you did it, or anything at all. Look, it’s my trial, I’m the one locked up in here, and for all we know these walls have ears. Tape recorders, hidden microphones, anything. So keep your mouth shut, Miranda, please, and listen to me. Listen, all right, please? If you love me.’
‘All right.’
‘Right. Now I’ve lost one daughter already, and you’ve lost a sister. We both know how badly it hurts. That man killed her for certain, so whoever killed him, Mandy, did a good thing, a right thing. Because he was a monster - if he hadn’t been stopped he would have gone on to do it again and again. He was a killer, and the world’s a better place without him.’
‘Mum, I know, I know, but that’s not how it feels. Promise me, if it looks like you’re going to lose, let me confess. It would be the right thing, you know it would. It would bring me peace.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. Look, just wait a few more days and I may be acquitted. Then we’ll both be free. I’ve been thinking about that, what I might do if that happens.’
‘What, Mum?’
‘Well, they have pharmacies in Wisconsin, don’t they? Maybe I could sell up and come out to join you. Start again. If you’d have me, that is.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘I wouldn’t live too close, don’t worry. It’s a big country, they say.’
‘Mum, that would be lovely. But ...’
‘Good. So go out of here, fly home, and stay there until this is all over. Then if it’s the right verdict I’ll put the business on the market and start things rolling.’
‘Mum, I’m not going. I can’t. Not unless I can take you with me.’
‘Well, you will, love, if I’m acquitted. I’ll be out of here in a couple of days anyway.’
‘Yes, that’s right, Mum, that’s what I’ve come to see. I’m not going now until it happens. Don’t you understand? I can’t. I’ve got to see it through with my own eyes.’
‘Then ... just sit somewhere quiet out of the way and keep your mouth shut, darling. Promise me that at least. I don’t want anyone here thinking about you. Not for a second.’
‘I’ll talk to Dad. He’s here too, you know. I’ve got to talk to him.’
‘Of course you must. But you haven’t told him, have you? I never breathed a word.’
‘Neither did I. Oh Mum, I’ve never told anyone, not even you, not properly. It’s so hard - sometimes I think my brain will burst. But you know, don’t you?’
‘Sssssh. Darling, don’t say it, not here. Not anywhere. Not until I’m free and we’re alone on a mountain somewhere. Just a few more days now, that’s all. You can manage that, can’t you? You can be strong, for me?’
‘I’ll try, Mum. But I can’t let you be convicted. I won’t.’
‘Then we’ll just have to make sure I’m not, won’t we? Hope that lawyer of mine does her job.’
But all that long afternoon, as she watched Sarah Newby battling with the prosecution witnesses, trying to build a shaky platform for reasonable doubt, Kathryn thought it’s not going well enough, she’s coming off second best. From time to time a juror would look up at her thoughtfully, trying to gauge her guilt from the expression, the tension in her limbs, her body language. And each time Kathryn had the impression she’d sent the wrong message; the juror would turn away dissatisfied, disapproving, no hint of sympathy on their face.
Sarah, coming down to see her at the end of the day, remained ebullient, forceful, combative. ‘No guarantees yet,’ she said, ‘but it went about as well as expected. The old colonel was good - very honest, decent man, I thought. No attempt to bluster or make his evidence better than it was; he admitted it could have been a woman of any age he saw.’
‘He said it could have been me, though.’
‘Yes. That was a smart trick for the prosecution to pull.’ A frown crossed Sarah’s face as she remembered the moment when Matthew Clayton QC had persuaded the judge to ask Kathryn to stand up while the witness confirmed that she looked not unlike the woman he had seen with David Kidd all those months ago. Not unlike in terms of identification meant virtually nothing, as Sarah had sought to establish at length in her cross-examination, but before she had a chance to do that Matthew Clayton had ensured that every single member of the jury had studied Kathryn carefully, standing nervous and alone in the public dock. ‘I’m sorry the judge allowed that to happen. It must have felt awful.’
‘It did. But I’m getting used to bad things, by now.’
‘Tomorrow will be better. That scenes of crime officer, Nick Bryant, was difficult, but he admitted enough in the end. So did forensics. The case isn’t proved yet, not by a long way. If I can just manage to shake their boss tomorrow - DCI Churchill - then we’ve got a good chance.’
‘A chance?’
‘Yes. You know I’ve always tried to be honest with you, Kathryn, I can’t put it higher than that. But it all comes down to him and you, in the end. If I can make the jury distrust him - and he’s the sort of man jurors can be suspicious of, with good reason - then all you have to do is go on the stand and not alienate them, like I said. Win their sympathy without saying you’re glad Kidd is dead, then the seeds of doubt are sown. All of their case rests on those hairs; if they doubt those, then the case ought to be withdrawn, and I’ll do my best to get the judge to do that. But otherwise, it’s going to turn on who the jurors trust most; DCI Churchill, or you. Just tell the truth, as clearly as you can, and it’ll be no contest.’
The two women stood silent for a moment, each assessing the sincerity of Sarah’s words. Both knew Sarah was trying hard to be encouraging; both knew there was more to the truth than Kathryn, so far, had told. But only Kathryn knew what that was.
‘I saw your daughter in court today,’ Sarah said. ‘Sitting with your husband.’
‘Yes. She came to see me.’
‘That must have been a comfort. Flew in from America, didn’t she?’
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‘Yes. I wish ...’ They heard men’s voices in the corridor outside, the rattle of a large bunch of keys. Kathryn stopped abruptly, turned her head aside.
‘It would be nice to see her in better circumstances. I know,’ Sarah said, standing aside as the cell door opened and the wardress came in, and handcuffed herself to Kathryn’s left wrist. ‘But it’s good that’s she’s here, to give you support.’ Sarah put her hand on Kathryn’s arm as she was led past. ‘Get a good sleep, if you can. I’ll do my best for you tomorrow, I promise.’
All I need now, Sarah thought, as she walked slowly upstairs to the robing room, is to find out who really did kill David Kidd. That would save Kathryn, for sure.
53. Martha Cookson
IT PROVED harder than Terry had expected to make contact with the American journalist, Martha Cookson. She had left the Washington Star three months ago, it seemed, either to go freelance or join another paper; their personnel department wasn’t sure. Several calls to the answering machine at her home address brought no reply. It was not obvious to Terry what else he could do, or indeed how relevant an American journalist, gathering material for a travel article, was anyway. A second call to Sunline Tours confirmed their impression that the woman had not asked for David Kidd when she called, or appeared to know that he even existed until they suggested she call on him. The chances of Kidd so offending a perfect stranger that she murdered him three days after they met, seemed highly remote. If they had in fact met at all. After some grumbling, the archivist at the Washington Star rang back to confirm that no story by Martha Cookson about Sunline Tours had ever been filed.
Terry’s other leads also led nowhere. He tracked down and interviewed Lindsay Miller, the girl Shelley had found in David’s bed. But she not only had a perfect alibi for the night of David’s death - she was being visited by an educational welfare officer who was concerned about her son’s behaviour at nursery - but also failed to come up with any suggestions about other women who might wish David dead. Yes, he had other girls, she admitted that, but he wasn’t the monster Terry seemed to believe. Shelley Walters had committed suicide because she knew that David would come back to her, Lindsay, and his kid. And if Shelley’s mother had accepted that, she wouldn’t be on trial for murder now. In Lindsay’s view, she deserved all she got.
