Dark Chapter

by Winnie M. Li

  “So you’re saying, she went from standing, and then she just reclined back? Onto the muddy ground right there?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And once she pulled you toward her, how was your body in relation to her?”

  “So’s then I’m lying on top of her.”

  “How were you lying on top of her? Facing away from her or toward her?”

  Christ, has your man even had sex before?

  “Facing her, of course. So’s we could kiss some more.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we just took off the rest of our clothes and just… started.”

  “You say you ‘took off the rest of your clothes’? So you took off all of them?”

  “Well, not all of them. Just some of them.”

  “Can you describe how much is ‘just some’? Were you completely naked at any point? Did you remove your socks and shoes?”

  “Aw, Jaysus, I can’t remember this stuff!” he shouts this out at your man, boiling. “I was high, I was caught up in it. I weren’t really paying attention to how much clothes we was wearing!”

  Fuck, he shouldn’t of shouted like that. Quilligan’s looking at him, shocked. Them jury too.

  Your man’s almost having a laugh. “Right so, evidently you can’t remember any details about the removal of clothing. Let me walk you through it: did your shirt get removed at any point?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Earlier you said she started to take off your clothes, but this didn’t mean your shirt?”

  “No, no. She had her hands down me trousers, like.”

  “So she wasn’t actually removing your clothes from your body, at this point? Not when you were both standing up, kissing?”

  “No.”

  “So, just to clarify for the jury, that’s a change from what you said before. Before, you said she was removing your clothes when you were both standing up, kissing. Now you say that didn’t happen until you were down on the ground.”

  Yeah, fuck you, old man. So you got me.

  “But at no point did she remove your shirt, the white jumper which she and the other witnesses described?”

  “No, guess she didn’t.”

  “During this sexual activity, can you tell me, were your trousers ever removed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what other articles of your clothing were removed?”

  “Me pants.” Obviously.

  “And who removed these articles of clothing?”

  “Both of us. She’d had her hand down me trousers from the start. Then we’re down on the ground, she’s feeling me and kissing me, she’s starting to take me trousers off, and I help her.”

  “So who removed your undergarments?”

  “Both of us, we both took that off.”

  “And your socks and shoes?”

  “Listen, I can’t quite remember about the socks and shoes. I had other things on my mind, y’know?”

  “Well, try and think. Can you remember if your bare feet ever touched the ground?”

  He’s about to burst, when Quilligan speaks up.

  “Your Honour, I believe my learned friend is pressuring my client to remember things he simply can’t recall.”

  “Mr O’Leary—”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine. Clearly Mr Sweeney can’t remember these details. So your trousers are off, and your undergarments, too. Your jumper stays on and possibly, possibly your socks and shoes, but you can’t remember. Now, how about Ms Tan. Surely, you’d be able to remember which parts of her body you saw naked. Can you tell me which articles of her clothing were removed?”

  “Well, her knickers, for sure. And her trousers.”

  “And again, who removed those articles of clothing?”

  “We both did.”

  “And above her waist? Can you remember?”

  Sure can. He remembers those tits, the weird brown nipples.

  “Yeah, her top came off. I think. And her bra.”

  “Can you tell me more about her bra?”

  “It was…”

  What fucking colour was it? He can remember this one.

  “It was black.”

  “And?”

  “What else you want?”

  O’Leary wants a proper lamping right in his smug face, is what he wants.

  “Fine, okay. I ripped her fucking bra off. Yeah, I did that, just like she said I did. Are you happy now?”

  O’Leary’s smiling. “No swearing, Mr Sweeney, or you’ll be found guilty of contempt of court. Well, at least on that point, both you and Ms Tan agree. Tell me, Mr Sweeney, why did you rip her bra off?”

  “’Cause it was getting hot just then, I was feeling it, and I just wanted to rip it off. The way it happens, y’know?”

  “So it was the passion of the moment, you mean to say?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “So did she want you to rip her bra off? Did she say it was okay to rip her bra off?”

  “No, of course, she didn’t say it. I just did it. That’s what happens sometimes.”

  Fucking O’Leary is still smiling. “Right. So… you’ve ripped her bra off, she doesn’t seem to mind, according to you. The two of you carrying on having sexual intercourse right there, in the mud. You’re half-clothed, you have your jumper still on, and she… How much clothing does she have on?”

  “Listen, I can’t remember exactly. But I think she had all hers off.”

  “So she was entirely naked?”

  “Almost. Maybe. I dunno.”

  “But her shirt was off, because you’d ripped her bra?”

  “Yes, her shirt was off.”

  O’Leary nods again. “Mr Sweeney, we appear to have another discrepancy here. You both agree you ripped her bra off, but you, Mr Sweeney, say her top, her blue hiking top, came off during your interaction with Ms Tan. But she says that despite you ripping her bra, her blue shirt actually stayed on for the duration of the assault.”

  “Well, how could I rip her bra off if her shirt stayed on?”

  Explain that one.

  “Well, we have photographs from the forensic exam, before Miss Tan changed out of her clothes.”

  He turns to the jury. “I refer you to Exhibit TM-5, photos of Ms Tan in the Rape Crime Unit care centre of the PSNI, shortly after the incident.”

  And the fucker actually hands him a photograph, while all them in the jury shuffle through their papers.

  The photo. There’s the woman, looking pretty minging and banged up, to be honest. Standing, staring straight ahead. Down to her knickers and bare feet. She’s still wearing her black bra, which is ripped right down the middle, hung together by a thread, but still covering up her weird brown nipples.

  “So? She coulda just put her shirt back on afterward.”

  “She could have, you’re right. But during the exam, it seems that all the scratches and dirt marks on Ms Tan’s body were from the torso down, on the lower half of her body. Her shoulders and upper arms and upper chest remained clean and virtually unscratched. Which indicates that her shirt stayed on during the assault. To the jury, I refer you again to the detailed report from the forensic doctor, Exhibit TM-3, where Doctor Phelan has listed one by one, each of the scratches, bruises, and injuries on Ms Tan’s body.”

  He just looks at O’Leary, quiet.

  “If you claim that she was lying back and that all these different positions were being used and that your intercourse got a little ‘raw’ as you say then surely, if her shirt were off, she would have picked up some dirt or some scratches on her upper back and shoulders, just like she had on the bottom half of her body. Correct?”

  “I dunno. I’m no expert at this stuff.”

  “Well, I suggest that you just made that up, about her shirt coming off. Because Ms Tan’s story and the evidence seem to point otherwise.”

  “So she’s got a better memory than me, so what?”

  “She’s got a better memory than you because she�
�s telling the truth. And you’re just making it up, desperately hoping that we’ll believe your pathetic lies.”

  Of course, always lies coming from us tinkers. He wants to kick the witness stand in, but steels his leg. Swallows hard.

  O’Leary’s pleased with himself, that he is. Your man takes his time, looking to the judge and the jury, then back to him. Jaysus, he can’t wait to get off this stand.

  “Just a few more questions, Mr Sweeney. You’ve explained repeatedly that you were under the influence of drugs, so that may have impaired your memory, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there any chance it may have impaired your judgment? That because you were under the influence, you may have misinterpreted Ms Tan’s behaviour?”

  He don’t quite get that question. Can’t your man just ask it straight?

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m asking if there’s any chance the drugs led you to believe Ms Tan wanted to have sex with you, when she actually didn’t. Were you 100 percent sure she wanted to have sex with you, according to the signs and the behavior she exhibited towards you, as you claim?”

  That didn’t help much. He gets the sense this is an important question, sort of. That if he answered one way, he could say it’s the drugs and not really him. But all that fancy solicitor talk is confusing him.

  “We’re waiting on your answer, Mr Sweeney.”

  That O’Leary all smug again. And then he don’t fucking care anymore, all these fancy-talkers, throwing these impossible questions at him, so many words in the way.

  “No,” he spits out. “Listen, I’m not stupid. Maybe I didn’t get my learning in no school but I know when a woman wants it, and she wanted it.”

  A slow smile spreads across O’Leary’s face, who glances at the jury like it’s something important. When he speaks, his voice is all big and grand, like.

  “Well, Mr Sweeney, it seems to me and all of us here, that Miss Tan did not want it. So maybe your learning’s a little incorrect.” He pauses, then looks to the judge. “No further questions, Your Honour.”

  *

  Her friends are on Vivian-watch. At least that’s what she terms it: this kid-glove handling of her, making sure she’s never alone in the courthouse. Already, she’s felt the urge to vomit several times this week, and rushed down the gleaming halls to the women’s room.

  The cool tile of the bathroom floor, and Jen or Barbara’s voice, from the other side of the stall door. “Are you okay? Let me know if you need anything.” The pitying looks of the other women who pass her in the bathroom.

  That physical nausea is humiliating enough. But counteracting that, there’s the anger. This distinct desire to snap the boy’s neck in two. It’s a new feeling, somehow energizing. Something she’s hardly felt in all these months of numbness and withdrawal. In all her conversations with friends since the attack, they have been the ones to speak of pummeling the boy, locking him up for good. She herself had moved to a place beyond anger: the grey, flat lake, where nothing moves and waves do not ripple. She’s lived on that lake for eleven months.

  Now, she’s found ground again. The anger is back. And it’s not just anger at the boy. The entire system is at fault.

  On the first day of the defence’s case, she studied what must have been the boy’s family. A middle-aged man, dark-haired and stoop-shouldered. Probably the father. He was there nearly all the time. And a young man, not dissimilar in looks to the boy, a few years older. Pale skin, blue eyes and brown hair – darker than the boy’s. A gold-looking chain gleamed around his white neck, and he had a cocky, shifty sort of air about him.

  That must be the older brother, she thought. Wasn’t there a brother’s DNA in the police system, a partial match to the DNA they found on her?

  She’s seen the way he interacts with the boy, giving him occasional winks and nods of approval. The way he slyly checks out the women in the room and appraises the jury.

  Once, the father caught her looking at him. He held her gaze for a moment longer than she expected, then looked away. She kept on staring. She doesn’t know what she saw in his gaze, maybe an apology, maybe guilt, maybe hatred. She’s never seen it again, because he’s made sure not to look in her direction.

  From the older brother, she’s never gotten anything. He pretends she’s not there.

  She sometimes wonders if her constant, glowering presence is helping the case or hindering it. Prosecution had explained that most victims only show up to give evidence, and then to hear the verdict. Some don’t even show up for that.

  Perhaps she’s being too serious. But what do they expect her to be? She is not that cowering Chinese girl they reported on the radio.

  No, she’s relentless. The same way she would pursue a trail, back when she hiked on her own. That refusal to be distracted or discouraged by an uphill climb, a vanished path.

  That’s what she is now. Relentless. Seeking one thing and one thing only.

  “Would all parties related to the case of Crown vs Sweeney, please come to Courtroom Eight?”

  She hears it over the tannoy, and that unbearable queasiness surges in the pit of her stomach.

  She’s sitting in the witness room, where she’s been trying to absorb a book of Thomas Hardy’s poetry, hoping his quiet images of rural tranquility can block out the stress of the trial. But her mind has inevitably wandered to what those twelve jury members are discussing.

  She shuts the book.

  “Well, looks like they’ve made a decision,” Detective Morrison says in a try-jolly voice, and stands.

  Unbidden, Jen and Barbara come to her side, guiding her forward with supportive arms. In days past, she might think this was pathetic, an overdependence on others to even take a step. But here, at this moment, she knows there is no way she could make it into that courtroom without her friends around her.

  “Good luck,” Peter, the Victim Support volunteer, says as they pass him. He offers a nervous smile.

  “Thanks,” she says in a quiet voice.

  They reach the threshold of the witness room, and she closes her eyes for a moment, feeling her heartbeat throb in her throat.

  In all these months, she’s never thought about how she’d react if he was found not guilty.

  Because to her, that never seemed like a possibility.

  *

  He’s sitting in his cramped cell, when he hears that voice on the system.

  “Would all parties related to the case of Crown vs. Sweeney, please come to Courtroom Eight?”

  About fucking time. He’s been hearing them announcements all morning, and all day yesterday. For this case, that case, but never his own.

  He knows he bollixed the cross-examination. That sly O’Leary had it in for him, and couldn’t wait to trip him up with all them fancy questions.

  Thing is, it’d be a lot easier to answer the questions if they just asked them normal, like. The police were better, spoke simple. But these fucking barristers, and the judge. Does your head in trying to catch what they’re saying. So many fucking words. All these people speaking some other language you can’t understand. Yet they’re the ones deciding your fate.

  So when he hears that voice announcing Courtroom Eight, he’s never been this nervous before in his life. Not when stealing bags from the buffers and trying to run off. All that he could get, it was real. You see a bag, you take it. You get caught or don’t.

  But here, this trial. You sit in a room, hear a bunch of people with wigs mumbling away, answer some fancy questions, at the end of it all, they decide if you’re going to prison for years and years, or if you get to walk free.

  Just like that. Your whole fucking life decided in moments. By complete strangers.

  The door clatters, as a peeler unlocks it, steps in.

  “Looks like it’s your moment.”

  This guard’s not too old. Around the same age as Michael. Blue eyes, blond hair, like he belongs on some advert for milk. He wonders if he could make a go of i
t, kick his stomach in, knee him in the face, and then just run down the hall, get the fuck out of there.

  But he knows five other guards would be on top of him in a flash. And even then, the door at the end’s bolted, there’s the security man at the front.

  Not worth it.

  No fucking way out of this one.

  *

  There’s a slight flurry of commotion when she enters. The public gallery is packed, not a spare seat in the house.

  The usher smiles at her, a broader grin than usual, as if to acknowledge that today is different from all the others that have come before.

  The same three seats in the front row have been reserved for her. She can sense everyone turning and watching as she makes her way forward.

  The air in the room is close, stilted. No one speaks.

  She passes the dock without looking at the boy. She passes his father and brother without looking at them. In her seat, she keeps gazing forward, and only when Jen winces, does she look down. She realizes she’s been squeezing Jen’s hand until her fingertips have turned red.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mouths, and relaxes her grip, but continues holding it.

  Barbara takes her other hand and she remembers what she said to her all those months ago, when she lay with her legs in the stirrups in the forensic exam, dreading the inevitable thrust of the speculum: You squeeze as hard as you need to.

  How many more times does she need to be flayed alive in this process? Every single step of seeking justice involves exposing herself, more and more. Until there is nothing left of her. And yet, everyone watches on, wanting to see how she’ll react.

  “All rise,” the somber-faced clerk announces, and everyone rustles to their feet as Judge Haslam walks in.

  Even the judge acts more formal this morning. He surveys the courtroom, the public gallery, his eyes wandering to the dock and then to her, and finally to the barristers. O’Leary and Simmons look at him, Quilligan and the defence counsel on the other side. Four white wigs, sitting awkwardly on these unmoving heads.

  “Are we ready to let the jury in?” he asks the clerk. The usher opens the door.

  The jury file in. They have been in deliberation for hours now – at least 3 hours yesterday, and another hour or so today. That can’t be good news.