The Hung Jury

by Robert Innes

  “Your mum is doing a good job of looking after her though,” Nicola reminded her. “She won’t let anything happen to her.”

  “That’s my Mum all over.” Rebecca smiled. “She’s icy, hard exterior, but nothing could ever get in the way of her family.”

  “Icy is one way to describe her,” Alex muttered.

  Rebecca did not seem to hear him. Her eyes seemed to glaze over as she spoke. “I remember when I was a little girl. I had this huge fear about a monster under my bed. I can’t remember where it started, some show on TV probably. One night, I was lying in bed and I could hear this scratching underneath my bed. There’s nothing more terrifying than being alone in the dark, scared and having no idea what’s going on around you. To be honest, I’d forgotten what that felt like till I ended up in here. When you’re hearing inmates screaming and arguing in the middle of the night with each other and the guards are rushing to sort it out and you’ve got no idea what’s happening, it sort of takes you back to those times. Anyway, that night I remember leaping from my bed, as far across the room as I could get so the monster couldn’t grab me. I ran into my mum’s room and just snuggled up to her. She stroked my hair and just kept repeating ‘There’s no monsters under your bed. There’s no monsters under your bed,’ till I fell asleep in her arms.”

  “Where was your dad?” Alex asked. Nicola could not help but glare at him for his insensitive timing of the question.

  Rebecca looked sadder than ever. “He died when I was quite young. Car crash. I barely remember him. I’ve got one memory of him, sort of. Just me running through the park holding his hand.” For a moment, she went quiet. Nicola could not help but feel sorry for her, even if she had killed her husband. She had the appearance of a woman who had just given up fighting, as if she had just accepted that this was her life now and Nicola was unsure as to whether they had managed to install any confidence in her for release.

  A loud bell rang throughout the hall. It immediately snapped Rebecca out of whatever memory she was enjoying. “Time’s up,” she said. “I hope I’ve been of some help to you. If you see my family, tell them I love them, please.”

  “We will,” Nicola replied as they stood up. “You take care of yourself. We’ll be back.”

  Rebecca merely smiled, without making eye contact with either of them. As she walked away and disappeared into the crowd of prisoners, Nicola exhaled. “Poor cow. Look at this place. It’s taken all the life out of her. I think I’d be depressed in her shoes. What do you think, then?”

  Alex pulled his coat on and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s fair for us to pretend that we’re going to be able to get her out of her. We’ve got nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Nicola replied as they made their way out of the room and towards the exit. “What was all that she was saying about Simon’s dodgy dealings in the building trade? Some disgruntled employee could have turned up at his house, having found out that he was being fleeced.”

  They finally managed to push their way through the rest of the visitors and out of the prison. Alex looked thoughtful until they were walking across the car park. “What would be the scenario there? Some big burly builder turns up at their house, just as Rebecca happens to be out at the shop, has a big argument with him, stabs him to death and then makes a run for it? I don’t want to stereotype here, but if you were a builder and you found out your boss was cutting you our of money you were entitled to, wouldn’t you at least punch him first or something before reaching for a kitchen knife? I dunno, it just seems a bit too opportunistic, not to mention a tad extreme. You’d just report him, wouldn’t you?”

  They reached the car and Nicola sighed heavily, resting her arms over the roof. “Then, what else have we got?”

  “I’d say the only other likely case is the one you don’t want to admit to yourself,” Alex told her. “That she did it. And she’s only now realising just how much her life is now wrecked. Look, we said we’d go and speak to her, and if it didn’t throw up anything new, we’d forget about it. And it hasn’t. This isn’t a game, Nicki. People are dying, and there’s no guarantee that you’re not on their radar. You want my advice? I’d keep your head down. You’ve got someone you say you care about in hospital. Why don’t you try concentrating on more important things now?”

  He climbed into the car leaving Nicola staring at the prison. Whatever she had hoped for with the meeting had not come to light, and for the first time, she was really starting to wonder if Rebecca Winters was actually guilty.

  12

  As they drove back to Eventide Bay, Nicola felt dejected. She could not believe she had been so foolish in thinking that she could prove that the wrong person had been accused of Simon’s death, especially when it now seemed that Rebecca may well have been unstable enough to commit the murder herself.

  “Time to face the music, do you think?” she asked Alex, sighing. “Go and tell the Winters that there’s nothing we can do?”

  “Just tell them the truth,” Alex replied. “That Bernice is in the clear and that you’re also in danger, and it’s simply not worth you risking your life for.” He shook his head and stared out of the window as the countryside flew past them. “What I don’t get is who is doing the hangings? I mean, at least after Gary, the police are finally paying attention. Not that it should have taken a fourth attack to make them think that something odd is going on. You hear about these media obsessed weirdos who fall in love with dangerous killers they read about. Maybe Rebecca has a fan, and someone is out there trying to punish the ones who got her sent to prison. It was certainly in the press enough. Anyone could have read about it.”

  “That would mean someone who was at the case all week then, surely?” Nicola said. “After all, if they are going after members of the jury, then they’d have to remember them all, follow them all, find out where they lived.” She took a deep breath and flicked up the indicator on the car to turn left, in the direction of the Winters’ house. “C’mon,” she said wearily. “Let’s get this over with.”

  ***

  When they arrived, Nicola was nervous. “I don’t know what to say to them,” she said. “They were pining all their hopes on us. We were their only chance of getting Rebecca out of prison. And now, we’ve got to just tell them we’ve given up?”

  “We shouldn’t even have been involved in the first place,” Alex retorted firmly as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “Come on. Let’s get this mess over and done with.”

  They walked up to the front door and Nicola knocked loudly. There was no answer. She looked through the living room window, but the curtains were closed. “They’re not here,” she murmured.

  “Ring her then,” Alex replied. “You’ve got Sylvia’s number, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t be so heartless, I can’t tell her this over the phone!” Nicola exclaimed. “I bet you’re the type to dump someone over a text aren’t you. Some poor girl, or boy, is probably sitting somewhere watching Bridget Jones and sobbing their heart over you.”

  Much to Nicola’s annoyance, Alex did not rise to the bait and clarify who his rhetorical beau would be, instead opting to roll his eyes and step back to look up at the upstairs windows.

  “You’re just going to have to come back tomorrow,” he insisted.

  “Why just me?”

  “Because all of this was your idea,” Alex replied. “Come on, I’ve got to be at work in an hour.”

  Nicola sighed and went to follow him back to the car, but then she spotted Ross at the end of the street, wearing a white vest and shorts, jogging towards them.

  “Wait, it’s Ross. Rebecca’s son,” Nicola muttered, pulling Alex back. “Should I just tell him?”

  “No,” Alex hissed. “You can’t put all that on him. It wouldn’t be fair. And you call me heartless. Just ask him where his gran is.”

  Ross looked confused as he approached them. He was glistening with sweat and was panting. Nicola could only imagine how far someone as fit as Ross would h
ave to have ran to get him in this state. She had been known to be just as worn out climbing all the stairs leading up to her flat.

  “Ross, I don’t know whether you remember me. I’m Nicola? This is Alex. We were here a few days ago about your mum?”

  “I remember, yeah,” Ross replied, standing on one leg to stretch his calves.

  “We were hoping to have a word with your gran. Is she about?”

  Ross nodded. “She’s at Mrs Atkins’ in the next street. She’s a friend of hers. Gran pops in now and again to check how she’s doing. Do you want me to go and get her?”

  “That would be great,” Alex replied.

  Ross was just about to set off down the street again, when Nicola stopped him by holding onto his arms. She took a second to marvel at his muscles. “Listen, sorry if this sounds out of place, but I’m dying for the loo. I couldn’t use yours while we’re waiting, could I?”

  Ross glanced at Alex and then back at Nicola, apparently debating whether they could be trusted in the house on their own for a few minutes. Eventually, he nodded and unlocked the door. “It’s top of the stairs, first door on the left.”

  “Thanks so much,” Nicola panted. It was not a lie, she had been needing to use the toilet ever since they had arrived at the prison, but their meeting with Rebecca had put it out of her mind. Ross let them into the house and closed the door behind him, running off down the street to go and get Sylvia. Nicola left Alex in the living room and hurried up the stairs to use the bathroom. She was just washing her hands when an idea struck her. This would be her only opportunity to see the room where Simon had been murdered. If there were any clues that the police had missed, this was her last chance to try and find them, before she told the Winters that she was stopping her investigations.

  She opened the bathroom door and crept along the corridor. Two doors were ajar, and she poked her head in each one. The first was clearly Ross’ bedroom – there were weights in the corner, a bench press by the side of the unmade bed and a large poster of a topless blonde model on the wall. The next room, Nicola assumed to be Estelle’s. It was painted in very dark colours, a photo collage of a gothic looking band on the wall and a skull shaped lamp in the corner. Nicola thought back to when Estelle had been on the stand being interrogated by Dennis Tate and he had questioned how happy she was. If he had seen this room, there would have been no question in his mind. It had to be one of the most depressing rooms Nicola had ever seen. Shaking her head with the knowledge that she would never understand the sort of music that the pictures depicted, she moved on to the end of the corridor and to the only closed door on the landing. It opened with an ominous creak.

  Nicola stepped inside and took in the room, knowing straight away that she was in the right place. It was a room that looked more untouched than the rest of the house. The bed was impeccably made, with the sheets tucked under the mattress. The large wardrobe in the corner of the room was full of a mixture of men’s suits and shirts and women’s blouses and skirts. Nicola looked around her, half slightly spooked that she was standing in the room where a murder had taken place and half wondering where to start looking for something that might help her.

  She pulled open the bedside drawer and rifled through it. Amongst all the odds and ends that she imagined couples tended to throw in top drawers that have a place nowhere else in the house, she found a photo album. She sat down carefully on the bed, so as not to disturb the sheets, and flicked through it. There were various photos of Ross and Estelle as young children, a few wedding photos, Rebecca and Simon smiling happily at the camera but then at the back were some folded up sheets of paper. As Nicola pulled them out to examine, she realised that they were all handwritten letters, four of them in total. As quickly as she could, she skimmed through them. The first three were clearly written when the couple had first met, full of, to Nicola’s mind, sickly sweet nothings, a young couple with years ahead of them, with no other worries other than when their next date would be. Thinking that she was going to find nothing of use before Sylvia returned home, she picked up the last letter from the bed, noticing that it seemed to have been written more recently than the others. As she began to take in the words, her mouth dropped open. She was holding in her hands the letter that Rebecca had mentioned in court that Simon had apparently written her detailing his affair with Bernice. But it was not Bernice that Simon was confessing to having an affair with.

  Suddenly, she heard the front door open downstairs. She quickly shoved the letter in her pocket before placing the others back in the photo album as fast and as carefully as she could, before bolting out of the room and closing the door quietly behind her.

  “Hello, Sylvia,” Alex’s voice trailed from the living room. “Sorry to drop in on you like this, but we were hoping to speak to you about…”

  Nicola ran down the stairs and smiled cheerfully at Sylvia. “Hello, Sylvia, sorry – I was just using your loo. You know what these long journeys are like.”

  Sylvia glanced up the stairs. Nicola wondered if she had left any tell tale signs about what she had been up to. “How are your investigations going?” Sylvia asked her. “Are you any closer to freeing my daughter?”

  “Yes, as it happens, we are,” Nicola replied cheerfully. She grabbed Alex’s arm and began pulling him towards the door. “As it happens, I have just received a phone call which is pointing towards a very interesting lead. We’ll be in touch. Come on, Alex.”

  With Alex protesting, she dragged him out of the door, leaving the bemused Winters standing in the living room.

  “What the hell?” Alex exclaimed.

  “Shut up, I’ll tell you in the car,” Nicola hissed as she frogmarched him away from the house. “I’ve just cracked this thing wide open.”

  “What the hell is this about? What was all that? ‘I have just received a phone call pointing towards a very interesting lead?’ What are you on about you mad woman?”

  Nicola smiled at him triumphantly as she pulled the letter out of her pocket. “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin:

  ‘Dear Rebecca. It pains me to write this, but I do not feel it is fair to lead you along any longer. By the time you read this, I will be gone, away from you, away from the house and, though it breaks my heart to say it, away from the children. They are old enough now to be able to accept what I have done, and yet young enough to be able to get on with their lives without me. I hope you too can learn to pick up the mess I have made, and get on with your own life, and find someone who treats you better, the way you deserve to be treated. But it is time I was honest. Though this might be difficult to hear, I am leaving you for another woman. We have been trying to fight our feelings for each other for a long time, but we can fight no longer. We first slept together five months ago, and since then, after years of inner turmoil and ever since then, I have been wracked with guilt. I do not expect you to feel sorry for me, but it is this guilt that has finally overcome me and moved me to end this now before I end up hurting you any more than is necessary. But it is probably the identity of this woman that will cause you the most pain. I am sorry to say that the woman I have fallen for is your mother. And she feels the same about me. Together, we have left to start a new life together. I hope, when the pain has finally subsided, you can find it in your heart to forgive us.’”

  “You are kidding me,” Alex exclaimed, his mouth falling open.

  “‘Once again, I am sorry for all this anguish I have caused you,’” Nicola continued. “‘Please remember that I will always love you, even if that love has changed. Yours, Simon.’ Very poetic.”

  For a moment, they sat in silence. Now she had the time to completely take in what the letter said, Nicola felt even more shocked.

  “That devious cow,” Alex gasped, staring at the house. “All this time, she’s been trying to point us in the direction of accusing Bernice, and it was her that Simon was having the affair with?”

  “I think Simon probably did have an affair with Bernice at some poin
t,” Nicola said thoughtfully. “Though it obviously wasn’t the love story we were led to believe.”

  “And if Bernice didn’t kill Simon, and they lied about this…”

  “Then the whole question of who did kill him takes on a whole new meaning,” finished Nicola. “So, now what? Still think we should wash our hands of it?”

  Before Alex could reply, Nicola’s phone rang in her pocket. “Hello?” she answered. To her relief, it was the hospital. According to the nurse, Gary had woken up.

  “That’s great news,” Alex said when she had hung up and told him. “Maybe he’ll be able to tell us who attacked him?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Nicola said as she started the car. “I’ll drop you off at work then go to the hospital. I have a feeling we are about to finally put this whole thing to bed.”

  13

  Gary’s eyes flickered weakly as Nicola stood over him. He seemed to recognise her, though the nurse had explained to her that his vision was likely to be blurry and he would not be able to say very much. When she had gone, and left them both in the room alone together, Nicola sat next to his bed and took hold of his hand.

  “I only met you a week or so ago, and you gave me probably the biggest scare of my life,” she said softly to him. “Not often I find a date hanging from his kitchen ceiling. Not unheard of, granted, but it’s still rare.”

  Her joke seemed to resonate with him as his eyes twinkled at her, a weak smile forming at his lips. “Thanks,” he managed.

  Nicola gripped his hand tighter. “You’re welcome.” They sat in silence for a minute, as Nicola watched him. Though they had only known each other for a short time, she could not remember a time when she had wanted to look after somebody more. At last she said, “You didn’t do this to yourself though, did you?”