by Jo Bannister
She didn’t begrudge him his small triumph. ‘Where’s Donovan now?’
Shapiro shrugged. ‘I saw him on Friday when he was on his way to meet them. Saturday I got a message via his neighbours – coded, he must have been being watched when he wrote it, but saying there was another job in the offing. But it hasn’t happened yet – nobody’s reported a big black 4x4 parked in their front window – so I assume he’s still with them.’
‘You don’t think something could have gone wrong?’ She meant, that he could be in trouble.
‘I don’t think so. They’ve no history of violence against the person. Remember Mrs Cunningham? They made sure she and the baby were safe before they went ahead. If Donovan makes a hash of it I think the worst that’ll happen is that we’ll lose them.’
Liz knew, because she knew him, that Shapiro was deliberately understating the risks involved to save her worry. ‘Bunch of pussy-cats, hm? Only took up ramraiding because the flower-arranging classes were full?’
‘Listen,’ he said in mock indignation, ‘he’s all right. It’s making money they’re interested in, not thumping coppers. They’re businessmen. I’d rather deal with professional criminals any day than enthusiastic amateurs who learned the job from watching television. Like those madmen on the train. Like the sod who dumped a dead dog on my path. Did I tell you about that?’
‘Yes, Frank.’
It made no difference. He told her again.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Oh, no,’ said Donovan with all the conviction he could muster. ‘No, you’re mistaken.’
But no doubt gathered in Patsy’s bitter eyes to reward him. Her voice was flat with certainty. ‘I knew I’d seen you before, and that’s where. You were the guy on the train. The one who knew a way out.’
OK, Donovan thought rapidly, just because she knows that doesn’t mean she knows everything. His voice dropped to a whine. ‘Jesus, Patsy, don’t tell the coach. I took this job in good faith. I didn’t know it was you people on the train till after I got here. It was too late to back out so I kept my mouth shut. You’d have done the same.’
‘I wouldn’t have lied to Tudor. Not if I wanted to keep my face.’ The bruises still rankled.
‘I didn’t lie. When he offered me the job I’d no reason to tell him, later I couldn’t. It doesn’t change anything. I was hired to drive, the fact I was on a train you robbed isn’t relevant. I didn’t try and stop you, I just tried to stop anyone getting hurt. Especially you. I thought you were in danger. I stuck my neck out for you.’
Moral blackmail was wasted on her. ‘If you’ve nothing to hide, why can’t I tell Tudor?’
Because he’s brighter than you, Donovan thought grimly, he’ll work it out and I’ll spend the next six hours tunnelling out of a shed. ‘Because it’ll make everyone jumpy and cost me a job, and there’s no need. What’re you afraid of – that I’ll tell the cops? Is that likely?’
‘I don’t know you,’ Patsy said obstinately. ‘How should I know what you’re likely to do?’
‘Well, I’m not going to do anything that’ll put me in jail, now, am I? You can trust me that far.’
That may have been a mistake. Even at Patsy’s age women have heard men say ‘trust me’ so often, and been let down, that the words automatically arouse suspicion. Her chin came up; it was the only way she could look down her nose at a man six foot tall. ‘I don’t have to trust you at all. Tudor can if he wants to.’
Donovan managed to shrug as if it didn’t matter. ‘OK. Then I’ll get my cards and he’ll get out of town. That’ll cost him time and money, and he won’t blame me: he’ll blame the shambles on the train and the only one left from that is you.’
That reached her; he saw her waver. The icy certainty that would have sunk him began to crack. ‘You said you worked for the railway.’
‘So I did, till they laid me off. I didn’t owe them any favours, that’s why I helped your friends escape.’
‘Did what?!’
‘It’s not my fault the Old Bill knew about the air-shaft as well! Be fair, I did my best to get them out.’
Patsy was trying to remember everything that had happened, everything that had been said. It was a week now and the details were fading. His explanation seemed to fit. ‘Harry said you called the police. On that mobile phone.’
‘Harry was wrong. The woman who owned it called them.’
‘He was ready to beat your head in! Why didn’t you say?’
‘So he could beat her instead? Call me old-fashioned but I’d sooner not see guys beating up on women. I tried to help you, too. OK, you didn’t need it but I didn’t know that. I could’ve got hurt helping you.’
‘Yes.’ She was still thinking, still torn.
‘Look,’ he said reasonably, ‘tell him if you’re scared not to. Maybe it’s for the best. But you’ll be in trouble and I’ll be down the road. Or you could forget we ever met. Who’s to know? No one’d expect you to remember everybody on that train; you probably don’t remember anyone else. For all our sakes, forget you remember me.’
Gates would have seen through it. But Patsy was thinking with her face and she was tempted. ‘I don’t know.’ She turned abruptly back to the kitchen.
If Gates had been there she might have gone to him. But he wasn’t, and she had an hour to think about it before he returned. An hour to anticipate his reaction. An hour for Donovan’s suggestion to start sounding quite sensible.
Donovan was trading snarls with Brian Boru when he heard the car return. He stayed where he was. Patsy would screw him now or not at all. If she did, if Gates worked it out and opted to terminate his employment with a degree of prejudice, he could come looking for him.
But it wasn’t Gates who came into the pig-sty, it was Charlie. ‘Coach wants to talk to everyone inside.’ Donovan scoured his face for subcurrents but found none. He followed the big man into the cottage.
Gates was still in his painter’s whites, the front splashed with blood. He was pale and his cheeks carried the silvery tracks of dried tears but his voice was calm. Of the dog there was no sign.
‘I want to apologize for this morning. My mistake put you all in danger. I don’t accept sloppiness from you and you shouldn’t have to take it from me. In the event all we’ve lost is time, but I let you down and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
There was an embarrassed silence before Charlie asked what they were all wondering. ‘What about Chang, coach?’
Gates gave a watery smile. ‘I shut the car door on his foot, all the little bones were broken. I told the vet it didn’t matter what the treatment cost. But he said with so much damage you couldn’t expect it to heal perfectly, that he’d always be lame. He thought it mightn’t heal at all and he’d have to amputate. I didn’t want that. Chang was special, I wanted to remember him at his best. I had the vet put him to sleep.’
A quiver of presentiment fluttered in Donovan’s belly. Not that he had more than a passing interest in the fate of Gates’s unpleasant little dog. But that was the point; it was Gates’s unpleasant little dog, the man thought the sun shone out of its bare behind. But he destroyed it when it was no longer perfect. It was a timely reminder that Tudor Gates wasn’t just an effeminate little man with a pleasant manner: he was the ring-leader of a criminal gang. His hobby was dog-fighting. He hurt people who let him down. He destroyed things that no longer pleased him.
Gates was regarding him oddly, puzzled that the dog’s fate should affect him so. He looked quite touched. He patted Donovan’s arm. ‘He had a good life, you know. Now we have to look forward. How does everyone feel about having another go tonight, after the shops close?’
The Burke case was called before the Crown Court rose for lunch. Liz arrived with ten minutes to spare. She didn’t need any more: she was familiar with the papers, knew how Mr Fenton would set out his stall and how she’d try to upset it. After that it was up to Cushy Carnahan, and he had as soft a spot for policewomen as for female defendants.
She expected to win but it wouldn’t break her heart to lose. As a fledgling detective she had taken defeats personally, as a reflection on her competence. But she’d grown out of that. She fought her cases but accepted that their resolution was in other hands. If Sharon Burke skipped the country it would be the system’s failure, not hers.
So there was nothing about the case which would explain the sensation under her breastbone like a food processor chopping swedes. The case, the place and the people here were, with minor variations, the same as always. Even the defendants were depressingly familiar.
But if it wasn’t any of them that was different then it was Liz. She hadn’t expected to feel so – exposed. So far as she knew, no one here was aware she’d been raped. There might be some speculation, but all Castlemere’s policewomen were having to contend with that. If she couldn’t cope she’d no right to criticize Cathy Flynn.
So she would cope, food processor or no food processor. How she felt wasn’t branded on her forehead, any more than what she’d been subjected to. All she had to do was go through the motions. If she’d been going to panic she’d have done so before this. It was already too late for anything to go badly wrong.
A touch on her shoulder made her start but it was only the defending counsel in the Burke case, checking that she hadn’t had a change of heart. ‘I’m prepared to push for this woman. She’s had a rough time, I don’t think she ought to be treated like a criminal.’
‘Murdering your husband is a criminal offence,’ Liz reminded him gently.
‘If it was murder.’
‘It was murder unless it was self-defence, and it wasn’t self-defence if she had an alternative. When Burke drank the Valium in his cocoa she had an alternative.’
Dan Fenton gave a tight smile. ‘Let’s not try it in the corridor, it offends the judge. I just wanted to be sure we’re still at odds on this.’
‘I’m afraid so, Mr Fenton, yes.’
He smiled again, more generously. ‘Well, it’s not the first time, I don’t expect it’ll be the last. I’d like to think we might still manage a twirl at the Civic Ball come Christmas.’
They’d cut a dash at the Town Hall last Christmas. Fenton was not a big man, neither as tall nor as broad as he seemed to think important lawyers ought to be. He compensated by assuming the attitudes and gestures of a big man, and attacking everything he did with gusto, whether defending a murderess or dancing the Gay Gordons. At the Town Hall he made a memorable figure in his white tuxedo and scarlet cummerbund, cheeks flushed with wine, thinning hair flying on the turns, as he danced the feet off every woman present who was sound in mind and limb and aged under sixty.
It was, thought Liz, the last determined expression of youth by a man who any day now would have to admit to being middle-aged. His wife had already crossed the threshold, watched from one of the little gilt chairs Davy May had set out with microscopic attention to nonchalance beside the dance-floor. Liz plopped down beside her when she made her escape. ‘Mr Fenton’s in good form,’ she panted.
Amy Fenton nodded knowingly. ‘I don’t even try to keep up with him any more.’ And she added, but somehow less as an afterthought than a summary: ‘Dan likes to do everything well.’
All lawyers prefer winning cases to losing them, but Dan Fenton liked to win more than any barrister Liz knew. He did win most of the time. He deserved to – he put everything he had into it, time and effort and body and soul. Sharon Burke could hardly have put her defence in safer hands. Fenton and Cushy Carnahan together made a lethal cocktail.
Remand proceedings are about the shortest event in a court. Defendant’s name is called, the prosecution asks for a continuing remand – a short one if he’s in custody, a longer one if he’s on bail – the defence agrees, the bench grants it and it’s time for the next case. A couple of minutes apiece is usually sufficient.
A contested bail application takes longer. The prosecution outline their case in order to demonstrate the risk that witnesses may be interfered with or the accused do a runner. Defence counsel sets out to show what a decent citizen his client really is and how, but for the vagaries of fate, he’d be in line for beatification.
Finally it’s the decision of the man on the bench, and he can’t win. If he agrees to custody he risks jailing an innocent person. If he allows bail and witnesses are intimidated or the defendant repeats the offence or absconds, it’s all his fault.
The responsibility had turned Cushy Carnahan into a wizened old man before he was sixty. He clutched the edge of the bench as if afraid that the tide of conflicting expectations would wash him away and followed sally and counter-attack from under brows drawn low by concentration, time and gravity.
Mr Fenton rose to make his application, thumbs lodged in the armholes of his waistcoat. Sharon Burke, he said, was an unhappy woman driven by circumstances to one terrible act of violence. Being ground to dust by a sadistic husband over a period of years had reduced her to such despair that she believed she was literally fighting for her life. There were no witnesses and no danger to anyone else. It would not be merely an act of mercy to release such a woman to the support of friends and family, said Mr Fenton, it would be an act of justice.
Liz opposed the application on the grounds that the fatal attack on Burke could not have occurred during a violent exchange as he had been rendered helpless by tranquillizers. Mrs Burke had an association with a foreign national and was arrested trying to leave the country, raising clear doubts as to whether she would remain within the jurisdiction of the court if granted bail.
Fenton rose to question her. ‘Detective Inspector Graham, are you aware that my client suffered numerous attacks by her husband during the twenty-two years of their marriage, requiring hospital treatment on five occasions, in the last three years?’
‘I’m aware that Mrs Burke was treated by Accident and Emergency at Castle General for injuries which could have been caused deliberately. But she didn’t make a complaint so we were unable to establish whether Mr Burke was responsible.’
‘She told friends that her husband beat her.’
‘But not us, sir. On the two occasions we asked about her injuries she said they were her own fault – that she was clumsy, she cut herself with the bread-knife; another time that she fell down the back step.’
‘Inspector!’ exclaimed Fenton derisively. ‘You believed her?’
‘Belief wasn’t the issue. We couldn’t act without a complaint.’
‘So because you failed to gain Mrs Burke’s confidence you consider there’s no evidence of domestic violence, even though the poor woman was in A & E so often she knew the staff by name! And without a formal history of abuse you’re unwilling to accept the painfully obvious truth that Sharon Burke was the victim of a violent marriage and suffered repeated episodes of mental, physical and sexual thuggery until she could take no more. Isn’t that the truth, Inspector?’
‘The truth is a matter for the jury to decide. My job is to ensure that they get the chance, and I believe Mrs Burke’s release on bail could be prejudicial to that.’
Dan Fenton frowned. He’d known the police would object to bail but hadn’t expected to have a fight on his hands. Most witnesses are made docile by their unfamiliarity with the situation. That’s less of a factor with professional testimony, but he still wasn’t used to losing arguments with people in the witness box.
It wasn’t the first time DI Graham had given him trouble. He realized she was only doing her job, but if she wanted to make a name for herself he wished she’d do it some other way. He liked women, but better as secretaries and dancing partners and wives than opponents. His eyes hardened while his voice grew soft. The judge wouldn’t like it but he too had a job to do.
‘Inspector Graham, you seem to have a distorted picture of my client. She’s not a bullion robber with an executive jet waiting. She doesn’t have a numbered bank account in Switzerland. She’s a woman of fifty who’s known nothing but brutality all her married l
ife. Yes, she killed her husband. She’s never denied that. In immediate terror for her life, reeling from his latest assault, in a state of shock and despair she snatched at the chance to save herself further punishment.
‘You say that once the attack on her was over she was no longer entitled to act in self-defence, and of course that’s right. I’m sure you’d have handled it better. You’d have left the house, called your solicitor and the police, and begun proceedings to protect yourself from this violent bully you’d been unwise enough to marry.’
He was pushing both his luck and the rules of criminal pleading. Another member of the judiciary might have asked him to save these remarks for a more suitable occasion. But Fenton’s reputation allowed him to get away with things for which a more junior barrister would have been taken to task.
But there was a limit to how much latitude he could expect so he kept moving, to say all he wanted to before he was stopped. ‘But it’s not you we’re talking about, Inspector, it’s Sharon Burke. Sharon has no financial independence. She left school at sixteen, married two years later. Her friends thought she’d done pretty well: Burke made a good living in the building trade, they had a nice house, took foreign holidays, ran a good car. It sounds a decent enough life, Inspector, doesn’t it?’
His voice rose to a dramatic stridency. ‘But then what can you – an intelligent, educated woman with a good job, social position, a decent home life – possibly know about humiliation? About being something for a man to wipe his feet on? Has she told you he raped her? Not occasionally, when he was drunk, but routinely, once or twice a week, any time he felt like it. His idea of foreplay, Inspector, was knocking her down.
‘Can you imagine what that does to a woman’s self-esteem? Can you imagine how hard it is to go on believing that you’re an important human being with all the rights and privileges that go with that? Police, solicitors, court orders – these things exist for other people’s benefit, not yours. Can you imagine how it must feel to be used like that?’