by Lisa Cutts
Once the verdict was delivered, Harry and Doug took themselves off to a nearby pub for a pint to talk over the day.
‘That was interesting, Dougie, about the plastic car mats.’
Doug nodded and took a sip of his lager. ‘I thought I’d told you about that. Sorry, there’s been so much going on. They weren’t entirely sure because of the damage to the vehicle but it looked as though the mat got caught under the brake. It wouldn’t have been enough by itself to stop him putting his foot on it, except the plastic was fairly thick and his mobile phone was jammed under it.’
‘So the stupid sod was texting and driving,’ said Harry, shaking his head. ‘And he was texting Linda of all people.’
‘He didn’t actually press send though. That must have been when he dropped it. The message was Sorry about the row this morning. There’s nothing we can’t sort out. Love you.’
‘Fucking hell,’ said Harry. ‘If he’d gone home instead of texting her, none of this would have happened.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Doug. ‘You heard what that other witness said, the one who was driving in the opposite direction to Milton.’
‘Oh yeah,’ laughed Harry. ‘That was about Milton’s style, seeing a fit young woman in tiny shorts jogging towards him made him veer across the road.’
‘It was probably her that made him drop his phone, bend down to get it and hit the accelerator rather than the brake.’
‘It would be funny,’ said Harry, ‘if it wasn’t so bloody tragic. Want another pint?’
‘No thanks. I’ve got to get home. There’s a parents’ evening thing tonight and I’ll be in the doghouse if I don’t get back in time. You OK though? I haven’t had much of a chance to catch up with you lately.’
‘I’m OK. Just a bit weird not having the kids about. I suppose that the age they’re at now, they’d be out all the time anyway and it’d be me and her stuck at home on our own. Me listening to her whinge.’
‘How about Hazel? How are things going with her?’
‘Not so sure to tell you the truth.’ Harry scratched his stubbly cheek and contemplated what Doug had asked him. ‘I think that I’m a lot keener on her than she is on me. Can’t say that I blame her. I’m older than her, we haven’t had the chat yet about how she sees her future and whether I’m in it, and I think that she’s petrified I’m going to ask her if I can move in.’
‘Why, are you moving?’ said Doug picking up his almost empty glass.
‘The fucking blood-sucking leech wants half the house as well. It’s either find myself somewhere else to live or move in with my mum in her ground-floor maisonette. Neither appeals.’
‘You going to be OK if I leave you here?’
‘Course I will, Dougie. Get home and say hello to that gorgeous wife of yours.’
Harry got up to get himself another pint of bitter and watched from his space at the bar as Doug walked out of the pub, making a call as he went. He felt some resentment as Doug looked genuinely pleased to be talking to whoever was on the end of the phone. Harry assumed it was Doug’s wife. She was the kind of wonderful woman that a man like Doug deserved.
He handed the barman a ten-pound note and tried not to feel too jealous of his friend’s domestic set-up as he waited for his change.
He remembered all too clearly the twinges of jealousy he had felt during his last conversation with Milton when all along, he had no idea of what was going on beneath the surface of Milton’s private life.
Harry learned the hard way to be careful of what he wished for.
Chapter 79
Harry’s take on life had always been a simple one: treat others decently and play by the rules. Ever since he was a child, the world had been a straightforward place for him. Good behaviour was rewarded and bad behaviour was punished.
His best friend at school was Jimmy Matter. Jimmy Matter’s father was a thief, a good thief, but nonetheless a thief. The police came for Jimmy’s dad one day and he went away.
Harry thought that was how things should be. Mr Matter had broken the law and now he was being punished. What passed Harry by at the time, around his ninth birthday, was how difficult it must have been for Jimmy, his two brothers and three sisters, with no mother. The first time they met at infant school was in the playground watching the older children play British bulldog. His friend had told him, matter-of-factly, that his mummy was dead and his gran got their tea ready, but she wasn’t all that well.
For as long as Harry could recall, he thought that if he worked hard and did the right thing, he would be rewarded. Now he found himself in a pub alone on a Tuesday evening, an empty house to go home to and a Dalmatian-minding girlfriend at her own place, who didn’t really seem all that convinced about their relationship. If that wasn’t bad enough, his pint was cloudy.
He was certain that his life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, and couldn’t think of one single thing he’d done to have everything go so wrong.
Chapter 80
Crown Court – Wednesday 15 November
The once huge bulk of Travis, now diminishing inside a suit that no longer fitted him, sat beside Hazel. She wanted to hold his hand to stop him from crying out as he prepared to sit for another day listening to the evidence surrounding the murder of his mother.
Part of Hazel’s job was to get Travis there and to prepare him for what he was going to hear. What she had also taken care of was persuading the legal teams that he should give his evidence early in the trial so that he could sit in the court to watch the rest of the tragedy unfold.
Every police officer and civilian employee was primed to keep Travis away from any of the Bloomfields’ family during the trial, whatever the cost. Since his mother’s murder, Travis had turned twenty yet he didn’t seem any older to Hazel. If anything, he seemed to have regressed in years. The Coroner’s verdict for his father that he died as the result of an accident had knocked the fight out of him. She could see that his every pore leaked misery.
Whenever she looked at him, she couldn’t help but feel saddened, and it was getting to her. The only light in her life was Harry. He had become someone for her to look forward to seeing at the end of every day when work allowed, someone she couldn’t wait to tell good news to, and someone who whenever she shared bad news always put a positive slant on it.
Since the start of the trial, he’d kissed her each morning as she went out of the door and said, ‘Good luck today. It’s almost over.’
A beautiful little lie and she loved him for it.
Her heart sang a silent song on her daily walks along the driveway away from him, keeping her together for another tough day with Travis. He had never stopped being her responsibility, but none more so than at the start of the trial. He asked few questions, simply turned to her with pleading eyes on occasions too numerous to count whenever the defence counsel stood up to muddy the waters with their desperate attempts to stall for time.
The urge to stand up in court and scream, ‘Whatever you say, they’re going to prison,’ bubbled below the surface from the moment she walked in the doors and bowed politely to the judge to the moment she backed out of the court, pausing to bow again at the judge.
It was the legal system and her job was to understand it, tolerate it and take Travis through it with the least amount of damage to his mental health as she could. They would all come out the other side with a conviction for murder.
The problem was that Hazel was all too aware that there were two people on trial, and she had a sinking feeling that one of them would walk free.
Even if she’d been a gambling woman, she would have hated to say which one, and that wasn’t because she hadn’t been following the proceedings very closely from the jury selection and the opening speeches, to the witnesses and the experts brought in to explain about the cause of Linda’s death.
She sat stock still beside Travis as the pathologist explained how Linda’s skull had been hit with such force that it would have shattered. She
felt Travis shiver beside her as he explained that whoever hit her would have had to pull the hammer back outside her head taking fragments of bone, tissue and hair with it. She watched two women on the jury, one a young girl of twenty or so and another in her sixties, pale and look away to their notes.
Then came the day for the forensic specialist, Freya Forbes, to come to court. A petite blonde woman dressed in a smart black trouser suit entered the courtroom and made her way to the witness stand. By now the jury had got used to watching one witness after another as they came and went through the heavy double doors. Most of them had probably made up their minds about each individual before they got as far as taking the oath or affirming. Freya’s stride was purposeful but she stopped to give a short respectful pause in front of the judge. She looked confident and even the judge’s face softened slightly.
Hazel had seen Freya give evidence on two other occasions and knew how well she came across. However, what the court was about to hear was going to be unpleasant, especially for Travis.
First, Freya held the room as she listed her impressive qualifications and explained her role in forensics and specialities. Most of it washed over Travis but the words that he heard loud and clear above all others were ‘blood-pattern distribution expert’. Hazel felt him squirm in his seat beside her and followed his line of vision to the dock.
Jenny sat on the side nearest to the public gallery and Aiden sat beside his mother, head bowed most of the time while Jenny held her head high, looking straight ahead at whatever was going on around her. Throughout the trial, she had made notes as she sat in the dock, although rarely was she not scrutinizing whoever was giving evidence against her and her son.
Their time in prison since they’d been charged had altered them both in ways neither thought possible. Jenny had settled in and accepted her fate more easily than she might have, as if she knew she had done wrong and needed to be punished for it, so fighting it wasn’t going to achieve anything. Aiden however had disappeared into himself, petrified of what was going to happen to him and what the next fifteen or so years of incarceration for murder might do to him.
Either a custodial sentence for Linda’s murder or for attempting to pervert the course of justice was a thought that made him want to weep.
The black bag he took from the garage and slid inside the chute of a charity clothing bank didn’t only contain his mother’s dress – it contained other blood-stained clothing. And that clothing belonged to Aiden.
The court waited and listened along with the two defendants on trial for murder as Freya Forbes explained her findings of exactly how Linda Bowman’s blood got into the weave of Aiden Bloomfield’s T-shirt, jeans and trainers.
Even though Aiden knew exactly what those findings were going to be, he sat transfixed as the expert witness explained how there was every likelihood he was present when Linda Bowman had her head smashed in.
Chapter 81
‘Ms Forbes,’ said the prosecution QC, ‘please continue.’
‘Certainly,’ she said, nodding her head and looking at the jury. ‘Bloodstain-pattern analysis is used to support or corroborate other findings, such as the post-mortem results. So in this instance, the pathologist determined the cause of death of Mrs Bowman as being trauma to the head. When I examined the clothing, part of my examination was to establish whether the pattern and volume of the blood spatterings were consistent with the victim being struck on the head.
‘Again, I was made aware that the police had seized a hammer with blood and hair present on the head of the hammer and the injuries on the deceased were consistent with them being caused by such an instrument. The blood distribution on the dress would indicate that whoever was wearing it might have been in close proximity to the victim as some of the injuries to her head were inflicted.’
Only because she was sitting so near to Travis was Hazel able to hear him give the smallest of sighs.
As the witness paused to check her notes, Hazel took the opportunity to peek across at Aiden. He sat in the dock, eyes towards the floor, stealing an occasional glance at his mother, who was stock still feet from him.
The forensic scientist said, ‘Airborne blood was found on the women’s shoes, indicating that the victim breathed out, expiring blood onto the feet of the person standing close by.’
‘Are you saying,’ said the QC, ‘that whoever was wearing the Louis Vuitton shoes, court exhibit four, stood next to Linda Bowman’s mouth as she took her last breaths?’
‘That is a likely possibility.’
‘Are you able to say,’ he continued, ‘whether this same person inflicted the head injuries on the victim?’
‘No, I am not. The presence of blood on both the dress and the shoes indicated that the person wearing them was nearby and traces of blood were on the dress and shoes as a result of being in close proximity to the victim during or after the attack took place.’
Several of the jury members sat up taller in their seats and one or two glanced at Jenny Bloomfield. They looked puzzled by what they were hearing. So far, she had been made out to be a cold and vindictive woman, spurned by Milton Bowman, angered by Linda’s advances towards her son, but now they were hearing something new. Perhaps it had been Milton who had made a pass at Jenny. Perhaps she hadn’t swung the hammer at the other woman’s skull.
‘If you’d allow me to explain as easily as I can?’ asked Freya, looking towards the judge who gave her the briefest of smiles. ‘Blood-pattern analysis is taken into account along with everything else at a crime scene or from the victim. The clothing sent to the lab, in this case, Louis Vuitton shoes, a dress, a man’s T-shirt and jeans and trainers, are screened for blood. Once traces of blood are discovered, they are compared to the victim’s, Linda Bowman’s in this case, and then once it’s established that the blood is airborne, I carry out further analysis at the police’s request to explain the blood-pattern analysis.
‘So,’ she reiterated, encouraging the jury to follow her on the simplest explanation she could manage, ‘I look for blood, then find out who it belongs to and then if it’s come into contact with the clothing through the air, rather than a direct surface, I establish the blood-pattern analysis. That’s my area of expertise. However, in this case, I’m able to say that whoever was wearing the dress and shoes was nearby but I couldn’t say categorically that the wearer was the person who used the hammer. All I can say is that that person was in close proximity to the victim at the time or shortly after the attack.’
Two of the jury members were staring at Jenny. For the first time, Hazel saw what she thought was doubt in their expressions about the female defendant on trial for murder. It was unusual, but not unheard of, for a woman to take another woman’s life in such a brutal and personal way. Men and women alike wanted to believe that women weren’t capable of such violence and were the fairer sex. Juries were made up of twelve members of society and a couple of weeks in a courtroom, no matter how much attention they paid to the evidence and how careful they were to avoid being influenced by outside factors, couldn’t alter the fact that for thousands of years violence had been mainly perpetrated by men. The concern Hazel had now was that the jury really didn’t want to believe that Jenny had murdered Linda. They were listening and making notes, but juries were only human, and Jenny and Aiden’s futures were in their hands.
Once more, she could feel Travis moving in his chair beside her, restless with nowhere to go. He put his hand up to his forehead and wiped his brow. She looked across at his hand, clammy with the perspiration he had wiped from his forehead, and wondered, not for the first time, how much more of this he could take.
‘Do you want to step outside?’ she whispered to him.
‘No,’ he mouthed back at her and she fought the urge to hold his hand, despite the sweat he was now wiping on his suit trousers.
By now, the forensic scientist had moved on to Aiden’s clothing and was going through the same procedures that had been applied to Jenny’s.
The courtroom was filled with the sounds of the jury rustling through their jury bundle, a document containing dozens of pages of information and colour photographs and images depicting a myriad of horrors. The judge, counsel and Crown Prosecution did the same. Hazel was grateful she didn’t have one to hand and kept her fingers crossed that Travis didn’t ask to see one.
‘As you can see,’ said Freya, referring to her own copy of the paperwork in front of her, ‘from the amount of blood, the blood-pattern analysis on the T-shirt and jeans, taking into account the height and size of the defendant Aiden Bloomfield, the direction of travel the blood would have taken from the victim’s head as the hammer struck the skull would be in keeping with this diagram here.’
She held up the colour image, not a photograph that might upset the jury too much, but a picture of a nondescript asexual head devoid of hair, complete with several skull injuries and lines to demonstrate the trajectory of blood.
‘These lines here,’ she continued, ‘indicate that the blood would naturally go in this direction as the hammer connected with the victim’s skull.’ She pointed out the line on the diagram she was referring to before allowing the jury members any time to contemplate this as she then added, ‘And this second line here would indicate that the next blow was inflicted on the side of Linda Bowman’s head as she lay on the ground. Again, the blood pattern from the CSI photographs of the scene shows that, whoever struck this substantial blow, did it with a great deal of force, as the consultant forensic pathologist has confirmed, completely shattering the side of her skull. The concentration of the blood, its distribution and the direction it took are difficult to determine due to the overlap and messy patterns. In simpler terms, there is so much blood on court exhibit five, the men’s jeans, it is impossible to be definitive. It’s as though whoever was wearing the jeans literally kneeled in the blood from Linda Bowman’s injuries.’