by Vicary, Tim
‘You sure he starts today?’ Harry asked the site manager, at his grimy desk.
‘That’s what he said.’ The man shrugged apologetically. ‘Maybe he’s got a better offer, gone racing, or just overslept. Who knows? For a lot of lads like him, work’s just an unwelcome interlude in a life of idle pleasure.’
‘Has anyone else not come in?’ asked Terry, peering at the rack of punchcards irritably.
‘A few.’ The man pulled out the unpunched cards. Adams ... Greer ... Harker, again ...’
‘Let me see that!’ Terry took the car, which confirmed exactly what he had feared: Gary worked here! Gary, who knew they were looking for Sean! And he was missing today, too ...
‘What does Harker do here?’
‘Labouring, mostly. Laying concrete.’
‘Could he have overheard you when I phoned yesterday?’
‘No, of course not. I was in the office!’
‘I hope so.’ Terry waved the card in his face. ‘Because this man Harker ...’
At that moment Terry’s mobile rang. Tracy spoke in his ear.
In most of Sarah’s cases, there had been a camaraderie between the barristers on either side. This was something that was frequently resented by clients but well understood at the Bar. Barristers were rivals, certainly, but not enemies. Friendly banter between them gave a veneer of civility to the contest.
But not now. Objectively, Sarah recognized that Phil Turner was a capable, honest man, good at his job and probably excellent company for his friends. All this simply made her fear him. If only he could have been smarmy, arrogant, callous - anything to make the jury distrust him. But he wasn’t. He was an excellent prosecutor with a decent, down-to-earth manner that no juror could fail to like. He terrified her.
Recognizing this, Turner treated her with studious, distant politeness. They sat at the same large table in the well of the court, a frozen wall of silence between them.
He rose to face the jury for the last time, his ancient wig askew as always, and the court settled back comfortably to listen. Sarah shuddered. The man was too good, too reassuring, too dangerous. She folded her arms over the tumultuous butterflies in her stomach, and glared at him.
‘Members of the jury, as I said at the start of this trial, it is my job to convince you, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Simon Newby is guilty of this murder. And as I said then, if after listening to all the evidence you still have doubts, then Simon must get the benefit of them. If you’re not sure, then you must find him innocent. You must only find him guilty if you are absolutely convinced, in your own minds, that he did commit this terrible crime.’
That’s got the formalities out of the way, Sarah thought. Now he’ll go for the throat.
‘So, what would convince you of his guilt? Well, we’ve heard all the evidence, and examined it in exhaustive detail. Mrs Newby has cross-examined all of the prosecution witnesses and tried to cast doubt on their conclusions, as is her right. Simon Newby has told you his story. And what is the result, members of the jury?’
He paused, letting the silence build. Sarah watched the jury anxiously.
‘The result, I suggest to you, is that Simon’s guilt is clearer than ever before.’
Two - no, three - jury members nodded solemnly in agreement. A middle-aged lady with a pearl necklace, a man and a young woman. Sarah felt sick. If they do convict, she thought, I may actually vomit. People do, in extreme shock. It’s good to be nervous but this is extreme.
‘Let’s recall that evidence, shall we? Firstly, the forensic ...’
Tracy had stayed in front of the white van all the way back across Skeldergate Bridge and along the Fulford Road. She had thought about turning off but then she would have lost them. She had feared they might overtake her and try to drive her off the road, but thank God, they had not done that either. To them, she hoped, she was just a dozy woman driver. Nothing more.
Then, without warning, they turned right into the streets by the river. Tracy had already passed the turning, but she swung into a garage forecourt, came out going in the opposite direction, and turned after them. Once again, the van was gone. She guessed and turned into a dead end. She did a U-turn, drove the other way in a panic, looking right and left, and then, to her great relief, came round a bend and saw the van parked outside a house. As she drove past she saw Sean get out and go up to the door. Gary stayed in the van.
Her heart pounding with excitement, Tracy drove about thirty yards beyond the van, and parked on the opposite side. She adjusted the mirrors to watch the van with her back to it. Gary hadn’t noticed her yet, she hoped. Cautiously, she picked up her mobile and phoned Terry.
Turner dealt with the forensic evidence in comprehensive detail. The semen, the vaginal bruising, the footprints, the blood on the knife and the shoe. It was a formidable list, he said, all pointing in one direction. And what of Simon’s story that the blood had got on the knife and shoe because Jasmine had cut her thumb in the kitchen? He looked each jury member in the eye.
‘Well, he had to invent something, didn’t he? So that’s what he’s done. A cock and bull story that a child could see through. I don’t think we need waste any time on it, do you? It’s a lie, members of the jury, pure and simple.’
Sarah seethed with anger. It was the most devastating response he could have made. This was a crucial part of her defence, but instead of engaging with her arguments and rebutting them he’d just dismissed it out of hand, as a lie. How could she revive it now?
‘So what about Simon’s story, his explanation of what happened? Well, members of the jury, you saw him for yourselves, in the witness stand. You know from your own lives how you judge whether someone is lying or telling the truth. What did you think of his performance? Let’s look at it, shall we?’ He hitched his foot up on the bench beside him, in the familiar manner of a farmer leaning on a gate, and rubbed his ear thoughtfully.
‘He says he made love to her gently, but there are bruises in her vagina. He says he only slapped her, but there’s a bruise on her face. He says he drove straight to Scarborough, but he didn’t book in at a guest house until the following day. And he says he was upset about how Jasmine had treated him, but he didn’t discuss this with anyone.’
Turner looked down cruelly at Sarah. ‘He didn’t go to his mother, did he? Or his father or his family or his friends. No one has come here to say ‘Simon was upset about his relationship with Jasmine. He rang me to ask my advice.’ No. Because you can’t ask someone’s advice about what to do with your girlfriend when you’ve already murdered her, can you? And that’s what Simon Newby had done. He’d murdered her, and gone to Scarborough to hide.’
Sarah remembered her nightmare about the judge swinging a ten-year-old Simon in a noose. That had been painful, but it was bliss itself compared to this.
Turner shuffled his notes as though he had finished. Then he looked up again.
‘Oh yes, I nearly forgot. There’s one other defence that was put forward. The idea that David Brodie murdered Jasmine, not him.’ He paused, stacking his papers. ‘Well, there’s no evidence for that at all, members of the jury. None. It’s just the panic reaction of a guilty child, pointing the finger at someone else, anyone else, saying it’s not me, sir, it’s not me, it was him.
‘You saw Mr Brodie on the stand, members of the jury. You heard his evidence. And you saw Simon Newby, too. You choose. Who do you think raped and murdered Jasmine Hurst?’
Abruptly, he sat down. And even that was a coup de theatre, Sarah realized. He’d done it before anyone expected. He hadn’t bothered to sum up in a final peroration, inviting them to convict, as most barristers did. He’d simply treated Simon’s story with contempt, as though neither he, nor any reasonable person, could be bothered with it any longer.
Follow that, she thought.
Hordes of giant wasps were murdering the butterflies in her stomach.
‘Tracy?’ Terry said. ‘What’s up?’
As Harry watched, Ter
ry’s face changed. ‘You saw who? ... but he didn’t see you, did he? You’d better be right. So where is he now? The registration of the van? Right, stay there. Don’t do anything, don’t go near him until we get there. Understand? We’re on our way.’
He switched off his phone and opened the portacabin door, all in one movement ‘Bloody hell fire! Come on, lad, quick!’
‘Yes, sir. But what is it?’
Terry was already outside. As he ran, he shouted: ‘I’ll tell you on the way. The main thing is to get there before anything happens to that woman. Come on, lad, run!’
‘Members of the jury, that was a pretty devastating speech, wasn’t it?’
Sarah paused, surreptitiously gripping the table with her fingertips. Her voice had cracked slightly in that first sentence, and it shocked her. Her voice never let her down. She didn’t intend to play for sympathy, not now, not ever. She was no good at it. The trouble was that the strength of her emotion made her feel dizzy. There is a difference between being properly nervous, to get your adrenaline going, and being so petrified that you can hardly speak. She tried again.
‘According to Mr Turner my son is a compulsive liar, a rapist and a murderer. Presumably a coward too, since he ran away. Well, it’s a point of view, and he’s entitled to it. But there’s another way of looking at the same events.’
She drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly, feeling the fear fade slightly.
‘The other view is that Simon Newby stands before you falsely accused of this horrendous crime. That despite being bullied and harassed he told the truth to the police from the moment he arrived in the police station, and yet has suffered the horror of being shut up in a remand prison for months, while he is grieving for the girl he loved. And now he has come to this court and seen the prosecution build a mountain of evidence out of bricks without mortar, a mountain that will collapse at the slightest push with a finger.’
At least they were all watching her now, she noted. The wasps were stiller now, the strength flowing back into her legs. Her voice had not cracked again.
‘Let’s look at the evidence again, shall we? And this time, perhaps we can do it without the bullying, the contempt and the cutting of corners which has been the hallmark of the police and prosecution throughout this case.’ She turned deliberately to face Phil Turner, her face cold as winter. He ignored her, tieing up his notes in red tape.
‘First, let’s look at the forensic evidence, on which the prosecution lay so much store. Look at it dispassionately, as it really is. The blood first, then. There was Jasmine’s blood on Simon’s shoe, and Simon’s knife. The defence don’t dispute that. Yes, it is Jasmine’s blood, found in Simon’s house. But then Jasmine had been in Simon’s house many times; she even lived there for some months. And how much blood was it? You’ve seen the photographs of the body, and the crime scene. Horrific, weren’t they? Blood, vast amounts of it, everywhere. It’s a nightmare to think of the way she must have died. Whoever killed her, you would expect, would be covered in her blood.’
It was all right now. She paused, looking at each member of the jury in turn, and realized her nerves had gone. She was at the still centre of the court, in control of her voice and her thoughts, in control of what they would hear.
‘So how much blood did the police find on Simon’s trainer? Two tiny smears on the sole, and five small drops on the upper surface. Nothing at all on the other trainer. And a minuscule amount under the handle of the knife. It hardly fits with the photos of the crime scene, does it? Even the forensic scientist admitted as much.
‘Nonetheless, it was Jasmine’s blood. The defence admit that. So how did it get there? Well, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Jasmine cut her thumb earlier in the week, when she was in the kitchen wearing Simon’s trainers. It was a tiny cut, so small that the pathologist, you remember, didn’t examine it as thoroughly as he should. In fact he missed an important piece of evidence. But since a highly respected forensic pathologist missed this cut, it’s hardly surprising that my son failed to mention it too, when he was first interviewed by the police. It was a tiny cut, the sort of thing that happens every day. He washed her thumb under the tap, gave her a plaster, and forgot all about it.
‘And that’s why such tiny, almost invisible amounts of blood were found on the shoe and the knife. Because the cut itself was tiny, insignificant, and nothing to do with a murder.’
She had their attention now, she noted, or the attention of most of them. The elderly woman at the back was fumbling in her handbag, looking for what? A tissue? A lipstick? This is my son’s life we’re talking about here!
‘And yet this perfectly reasonable explanation was dismissed by the prosecution with contempt.’ She glared at Phil Turner once again. ‘That’s what I mean by cutting corners. Bullying. Saying it’s a lie rather than examining the evidence in detail.’ She hoped he would stand up and object. But he simply sat there, his face composed, unimpressed.
‘So at the very least there is reasonable doubt about the blood. I would go further. Based on those photos and the evidence of the forensic scientist, I would say it is almost certain that those trainers were not the ones worn by Jasmine’s murderer.’
Now she’d said something. A murmur moved through the court, music in her ears.
‘So what about the semen? The only other piece of forensic evidence that connects Simon with this crime. Well, there’s a very simple explanation for that too, isn’t there, ladies and gentlemen? The simplest possible. Simon admits that he made love to Jasmine that afternoon. It happened regularly, he says. That’s why she came there. And we know she was in his house that afternoon, don’t we, because a witness saw her leave. There is no reason at all to suppose that this part of Simon’s story isn’t true. They made love, and they quarrelled. It happens all the time. And then she left his house.’
She drew another deep breath, aware that she herself was skimming over crucial details now. The old woman had found her tissue and was listening, a disdainful expression on her face.
‘The prosecution have no reason whatsoever to dispute this part of Simon’s story. The love-making - even if it was rough, even if it caused bruising - almost certainly took place inside his house that afternoon. Several hours before Jasmine was murdered, ladies and gentlemen. The sexual intercourse has no necessary connection with Jasmine’s murder.’
She had their attention all right now. They were thinking.
And that was the first step towards creating reasonable doubt.
When Terry ran, not many detectives could keep up. By the time Harry reached the car, Terry had already started it. As Harry clambered in beside him, panting, the tyres squealed and the acceleration slammed him back into his seat.
‘So what is this, boss? Who was on the phone?’
‘Tracy, that’s who.’ Briefly, Terry explained. ‘She followed Gary and guess what? He’s driven our lad Sean to Sharon’s! Sean’s gone inside and Tracy’s watching the door.’
‘My God! What’s the bugger gone there for?’
‘Search me, but it doesn’t feel good, does it? Not with Gary waiting outside. He’s already raped her once, for Christ’s sake!’
‘But it’s not Gary that’s gone in, you say?’
‘No. Not yet anyway. But you say Sean’s visited her before, so maybe he’s gone back for another try, to solve this sex problem of his. How’s Sharon likely to respond to that, Harry?’
‘Not well, sir.’ Harry’s face paled as he thought about it. ‘She said he scared her shitless last time. She never wanted to see him again.’
‘Exactly. And this is a possible murder suspect. Come on, come on! This is the time we need a blue light, for God’s sake!’ He swore at the traffic and pulled out to pass a delivery van, only to be stuck in a queue of vehicles waiting patiently for an old lady on a pedestrian crossing. ‘I just hope they haven’t spotted Trace. If they have, or if Sharon tells him about those photos you showed her, then ...’ He drew his hand acro
ss his throat, then slammed the car into gear.
‘So from the forensic evidence,’ Sarah said, ‘in my view, you cannot convict. It simply doesn’t prove what the prosecution want it to. There are too many doubts, and other perfectly reasonable explanations which you must consider.
‘What about the rest of the evidence, then? The witness evidence that puts Simon on the riverside path that night when Jasmine was killed? Well, that’s easily dealt with, isn’t it? There isn’t any. None at all. Nobody saw Simon on that footpath that night, nobody saw him within a mile of where Jasmine was murdered.’
This wasn’t going down so well, she could see. Two men were frowning and a young woman whispered something to her neighbour. Yet it ought to be such an obvious, easy point to get across. Grimly, she persevered.
‘Simon tells us he drove away to Scarborough that night and the prosecution have no evidence, no evidence at all, to show that’s not true. So I suggest that in fairness to him, we must assume that it is true.’
They didn’t like this, damn them. She’d done better with the forensic evidence, which should have been harder. It must be the impression Simon had created on the stand.
‘And if you accept that, then you must also accept that when the police came to arrest him, bursting into his bedroom in the middle of the night in that brutal way, then he had no idea that Jasmine was dead. He wasn’t just shocked and terrified, as any one would be, to be snatched from his bed in the middle of the night - he was also overcome by grief. Suddenly, in the cruellest, worst possible way, he learns that his girlfriend is dead. Murdered by some maniac with a knife. And the police think it’s him.
‘Imagine that for a moment, ladies and gentlemen. Imagine yourselves in the same position. Can you be sure you would behave rationally and sensibly, when the world seems to have gone mad all around you? Isn’t it possible that you might say something in a panic that you later realize was wrong, just to escape from this terrifying situation? Something like, ‘I can’t have killed her, I haven’t seen her for weeks’?