Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  She was the only person in the world her mother still recognized and called by name, and sometimes she found herself actually wishing that this was no longer so, and that made her feel even guiltier than ever.

  Margaret Meadows started to stir again. She sat bolt-upright in that sudden way she had and stared directly at her daughter. Then she gave a small weak smile. Karen felt like jelly. She forced herself to smile back, reached out and took her mother’s hand in hers. But what she wanted to do was to run. To take off. To hightail it out of the Old Manor and never return. Not ever.

  “Have you been to see Mummy and Daddy?” asked her mother abruptly.

  “Yes,” replied Karen immediately, embarking on another lie.

  “And are they all right?”

  “Oh yes, they’re fine.” Karen concentrated on smiling at her mother. Her grandparents had died almost twenty years earlier. Once she had told the truth, and reminded her mother that they were dead. Margaret Meadows had burst into tears and had sobbed uncontrollably until one of the nurses had come to the rescue by telling her that her daughter had made a silly mistake. Of course Mummy and Daddy were alive and well.

  After that Karen had allowed herself to become immersed in the web of deceit which invariably seems to surround dementia sufferers. More often than not it is centred on kindness, its purpose only to keep the sufferers at peace within their troubled minds. It was still deceit, though. It was still lying to the people you were supposed to care most about. But the alternative was to create turmoil inside already tormented heads.

  Karen stroked her mother’s hand.

  “Do you remember Richard Marshall?” she enquired casually. It was, after all, however much she tried to convince herself that she also wanted just to visit her mother, the question she had come here to ask that morning. The first of so many questions concerning that time so long ago that she would like to ask.

  Her mother stared at her blankly. Then her face acquired that look of panic which Karen was accustomed to, and which hurt her so much. It was the look she got whenever she was challenged, however mildly, when she was asked even the simplest of questions. Karen understood. She had seen enough of it now, with her mother and the others. It happened when her mother felt she should know something but then realized that she didn’t.

  “Richard who?” asked Margaret Meadows, her face contorted with the strain of trying to make her brain work, a brain that no longer did anything she asked of it.

  Karen squeezed her hand tightly. “It’s all right,” she murmured, trying to sound soothing. “It’s all right. You don’t have to remember him. You don’t have to remember anything.”

  Chapter Ten

  Back at the station Karen formally charged Richard Marshall. She had been greatly looking forward to doing so, but the man gave her little satisfaction. She had no idea what his true feelings were, as he gave so little sign of them. If charging him might weaken him in the way she had suggested to the chief constable and to James Cromby-White, then so far there was no indication of that. Marshall had let his mask slip once and he wasn’t going to do it again.

  “You will appear at Torquay magistrates’ court some time tomorrow to be formally charged,” she said. “I would suggest you contact a solicitor before then. If you do not have one you wish to represent you, we can provide you with one.”

  “I’ll bet you can,” said Marshall.

  “Take him back to his cell,” she said to the two uniformed constables who had brought Marshall into the custody suite where the procedure had been formally recorded by the sergeant in charge. Marshall looked back over his shoulder as they led him away.

  “You’ll never make it stick, Karen. You do know that, don’t you?” he remarked casually.

  “Detective Superintendent to you,” she responded sharply, and made no other comment, her face expressionless as she watched him disappear down the corridor to the cells.

  “What do you think, boss?” asked Phil Cooper. “We will make it stick, won’t we?”

  Karen smiled wryly.

  “Are you asking me for reassurance concerning the legal processes of this country, Detective Sergeant?” she asked.

  Cooper grinned back. “Sorry, boss. I should know better, shouldn’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Karen. “You damned well should.” Back at her desk Karen slumped into her chair. She suddenly felt very tired. She realized that she was experiencing an immense sense of anticlimax, and she supposed that she should not be overly surprised by that. The buzz of the past few days could not continue indefinitely.

  Now came the time for waiting, even though they were still working at building the case against Richard Marshall in every way possible.

  She remembered Bill Talbot then. She had failed to ring him back as promised to rearrange their cancelled meeting. Not only did she owe him that—Bill had been very much her mentor during the years they had worked together—but also if there was anybody who might be able to delve into the past and come up with something, anything, a bit extra that might be used against Marshall, it could well be Talbot.

  Also, this was the call she had been looking forward to. Talbot was just going to love the news she had for him, and she wanted to deliver it personally before the release of a statement which she had already authorized the press office to issue later that day.

  Her old boss did not disappoint. Talbot actually gave a whoop into the telephone when she told him that Marshall had been charged minutes earlier.

  “Look, if you want to meet up in The Bell tonight for a drink I’ll tell you the whole story. There were actually one or two moments when the bastard’s smirk slipped.”

  Talbot chuckled. “Can’t wait to hear about that,” he said. Then in a quieter voice he asked: “Is it going to stick, Karen?”

  “God, I hope so,” she replied. “It’s not copper-bottomed, but it’s strong. Any jury with half a brain between them really should send him down.”

  “Right, no chance then,” responded Talbot.

  “Don’t even say that in jest.”

  In spite of that ironic final exchange, she felt much more cheerful and positive after speaking to Talbot and launched herself with energy, if not with enthusiasm, into her remaining tasks of the day, almost all of which involved her least favourite activity, dealing with paperwork.

  Bill Talbot was waiting for her when she got to the pub and had already been there some time judging from the inch or so of beer which was all that was left in his pint pot. She was not surprised. This was as big a day for him as it was for her—maybe even bigger, since Talbot had headed the until-now unsuccessful Marshall investigation for much longer than she had.

  He asked her what she was drinking, ordered the bottle of cold Bud she requested and another pint for himself, then suggested they retreat to a quieter and more private corner of the bar where they could talk quite freely.

  First of all Karen cheerfully related the story of Marshall’s arrest. She had just moved on to describe to a thoroughly understanding Bill Talbot, who had himself suffered in this way all those years before, the so-far unenlightening series of interviews that had been conducted with Marshall, when she became aware, in that inexplicable way that people do, that she was being stared at.

  Swinging around in her chair she spotted John Kelly standing at the bar. It was undoubtedly his gaze that she had felt boring into her back. And as soon as he caught her eye the reporter began to walk towards her and Bill.

  “Congratulations, Detective Superintendent,” he said with a smile. “I thought I might find you here.”

  “Typical,” said Karen. It was, too. Kelly had a quite unfathomable knack of seeking out anyone he wanted to talk to when he was on a story, even if they didn’t want to talk to him. Or perhaps particularly if they didn’t want to talk to him, Karen reflected wryly. He certainly always seemed able to find her, anyway.

  “Can I buy you a celebratory drink?” Kelly continued.

  Karen opened her mouth to refuse—
this was one occasion when she really didn’t want Kelly’s company and she was quite sure that Bill Talbot wouldn’t want it either—when the retired detective butted in.

  “Thanks, John, mine’s a pint,” he said, to Karen’s astonishment.

  She then accepted the offer too, ordering another Bud, and, as the reporter made his way to the bar to buy the drinks, she turned to Talbot.

  “I didn’t know you even knew Kelly,” she remarked.

  Talbot smiled. “He was raising hell in Fleet Street during most of my time on the job, but I remember him as a cub reporter cutting his teeth on the old Torquay Times. And our paths have crossed a few times since he’s been back here on the Argus. Anyway, he’s up to his neck in the Marshall affair. He’s suffered because of it, too, just like so many of us, and that’s a bond, really. This day will have meant a great deal to John Kelly. He won’t have liked the idea of Richard Marshall walking around the world a free man any more than you or me, Karen, would he?”

  Karen was puzzled. She knew, of course, that Kelly had been employed by the Torquay Times at the time Clara Marshall and her children disappeared, and that he had worked on the story back then. But Talbot seemed to be referring to a greater involvement than that.

  “What are you getting at?” she asked.

  “Don’t you know?” Bill raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I thought you two were close.”

  “We are. Ish. But I don’t live in the bloody man’s head, thank God.”

  Before she could learn any more Kelly returned with the drinks. He was balancing his own tomato juice—Kelly was a recovered alcoholic whose only hope of leading a halfway normal life was not to touch drink at all—somewhat precariously between Talbot’s pint and Karen’s bottle of Bud. Just as he reached the table the glass of juice slipped from his grasp, thick red liquid splashed over Karen’s cream T-shirt and her grey linen trouser suit and the glass dropped onto the hard tiled floor smashing into many pieces and sending a further shower of red upwards.

  Involuntarily Karen jumped to her feet, brushing ineffectively with one hand at the red stains which seemed to be spreading all over her clothes.

  “Oh, shit,” said Kelly. “God, I’m sorry.”

  “Just get a fucking cloth or something, will you?” responded Karen. She couldn’t believe it. The grey linen trouser suit was one of her few outfits that could be considered suitable both for meetings with the chief constable and court appearances. And her cream T-shirt, which was actually rather a good silk one, was unlikely ever to recover from its tomato-juice soaking.

  “Oh, fuck,” she continued. She might be a top detective but she was also a woman who loved good clothes, and she took a lot of trouble over her appearance whatever the chief constable might on occasions think of her apparel.

  Kelly returned with a cloth. The barman joined in with another cloth, and a major mopping-up operation began. Karen was sponged down as effectively as possible, the table wiped over and the pieces of glass swept up off the floor.

  By the time she resumed her story of events of the past few days—rather more cautiously now that a reporter was present, even though he had immediately assured both her and Talbot that their entire conversation would be in confidence—her former boss’s rather intriguing reference to Kelly’s involvement in the Marshall affair had passed into the mists of time. It was not mentioned again.

  The trial began at Exeter Crown Court five months later, fast-tracked through according to the stipulations of the Nairey Report which a couple of years earlier had put an end to prisoners on serious charges being held on remand for sometimes as long as one or more years.

  Police enquiries had continued, of course, but little or no additional evidence had been acquired. Indeed Karen had spent most of those five months heading up an investigation into a white-collar building society fraud, which had seemed very dull and tame compared with the Marshall affair.

  And, as Karen had always feared, the prosecution’s case had not been strengthened by any revelations from Richard Marshall who had stood firm throughout the time he was remanded in custody in Devon County Prison at Exeter, and had not given an inch. The London forensic laboratory had, however, established from the remains recovered from the sunken U-boat that the body had been deposited in the sea between twenty-three and thirty-three years earlier which, although also not conclusive, did add some weight to the identification evidence. It was surely beyond all reasonable doubt that Clara Marshall had finally been found.

  One way and another, Karen, although not overly confident, had at least been extremely optimistic when she had escorted Sean MacDonald to the courthouse, so dramatically set within the medieval walls of Exeter Castle. For a start, she and the whole force had been pleased that Mr. Justice Cunningham was trying the case. This was a man she had encountered many times before, a red-robed judge not given to much liberalism of thought. Indeed it seemed that he regarded most acts of a liberal nature, certainly within the processes of the law, to be acts of supreme folly.

  As the lead counsel for the Crown, a youthful-looking QC called David Childs, imported from Bristol, made his opening statement. Karen reflected that he seemed to be a sharp enough operator. A lot sharper than some of the CPS counsels she’d encountered, she reckoned. Karen also thought, to her relief, that Marshall’s QC, although obviously extremely capable, did not seem in any way exceptional.

  The positive identification of the remains recovered from the sea as being those of Clara Marshall was fairly swiftly established, as indeed it should have been given the evidence produced, but there was no such thing as certainty in a court of law. Karen, sitting at the front of the court just behind the prosecution legal team, breathed a sigh of relief. The first obstacle had been successfully negotiated. Everything hinged on that positive identification. Without it, she felt, the police case would almost certainly have collapsed.

  At least the prosecution’s case was simple and straightforward, always some sort of advantage when dealing with a jury. It rested on two premises, the first of course being that the court should accept that Clara Marshall’s body had at last been found, which it thankfully had. And secondly, that the court should accept that the weight of evidence against Richard Marshall, although circumstantial, was such that he was, beyond all reasonable doubt, guilty of murdering her.

  On the fourth day of the trial, Marshall was called as the first witness for the defence. He stood very upright in the dock wearing a navy-blue blazer and what appeared to be some sort of regimental tie. Karen registered automatically that his style of dress had not changed at all with the passage of time. She could still remember from her childhood, albeit vaguely, that he almost invariably wore those kinds of clothes. And as usual, on the surface at least, he seemed perfectly cool and collected as he gave his version of events leading up to the disappearance of his wife and children, a story Karen was all too familiar with and one he invariably told convincingly.

  She watched nervously as Childs began to cross-examine Marshall. “You were seen taking your boat out to the deep water off Berry Head soon after your wife was last seen, and now finally, and against the odds, Clara’s body has been pulled out of the sea there,” Childs asserted. “I put it to you that you quite callously killed your wife because she was in your way. And that you then unceremoniously dumped her body in a place from which you did not expect it ever to be recovered. Is that not so, Mr. Marshall?”

  “No, sir, it is not.”

  Hours of interviewing Marshall had led Karen to feel that she had got to know him just a little. And as Childs continued with his dogged line of questioning, she could see, to her immense satisfaction, the tension building up in the accused beneath his outwardly ever-calm demeanour. There were stress lines etched in the heavy folds of flesh around his mouth and his hands trembled almost imperceptibly as he gripped the edge of the dock before him. Karen doubted if anyone else in the courtroom would notice that, but she noticed. Then she corrected herself. There was one other pers
on who might notice.

  Discreetly Karen glanced over her shoulder to sneak a look at Marshall’s girlfriend from Poole, Jennifer Roth, whom she knew was sitting up in the public gallery. Jennifer was smartly dressed in a pinstriped grey trouser suit, her chestnut hair pulled back from her pale face in some kind of a band. And that face, set almost stonily as she stared straight ahead, gave little away. Maybe she had learned the knack from Marshall, thought Karen, as she returned her full attention to the proceedings.

  The trial lasted only nine working days, a short time for a murder case. And when he gave his summing-up, Mr. Justice Cunningham left little doubt about his own view. Mr. Justice Cunningham did not like the idea of murderers walking free.

  “It may be, members of the jury, that the weight of evidence presented here in this court, despite the fact that much of it is circumstantial, is such that you will feel you have no choice except to find the defendant guilty,” he pronounced, ensuring that his own opinion on the matter was made abundantly clear.

  Things were starting to look good, Karen thought. And so it proved to be. The jury were out for less than half a day and duly recorded a verdict of “Guilty”.

  A surge of pure adrenalin coursed through Karen’s body. Still sitting just behind the CPS team, she turned at once and looked up to the public gallery. Sean MacDonald was right in the front. He seemed very still, but she saw that there were tears running down his cheeks. She had seen his eyes mist over before, but she had never actually seen him cry, not even in the worst moments. His mouth was moving, and Karen, although she could not hear him and was no expert lip-reader, somehow knew exactly what it was that Mac was saying to himself over and over again.