A Fatal Verdict (The Trials of Sarah Newby)

by Vicary, Tim

  So how could she possibly be in hospital now with cut wrists, the mark of a suicide, a cry for help? It made no sense at all. It must be an accident or some stupid student prank unless ... well, what else could it be? Jane’s message had frightened Kathryn so much she hardly knew where she was or what to do next, except get to the hospital as fast as possible which she couldn’t do now, because she was stuck in a traffic jam on Lendal bridge. She drummed her fingers furiously on the steering wheel as people strolled by in the evening sunshine, talking, holding hands, kissing, pushing babies, leaning over the parapet of the bridge to admire the river view.

  My daughter may be dying in hospital, doesn’t anyone understand? She felt so alone, in a glass bubble all of her own with no one to talk to. Then remembered she had to ring Andrew. She pressed the button on her mobile which stored his office number, but it rang unanswered. In the library no doubt, she thought bitterly - among the medieval archives where he said a mobile phone would be out of place and disturb his concentration, the hypocrite! If he was there at all and not in bed with some graduate student like last time. God, where is the man when I really need him? She rang the answerphone at home and left him a message, it was all she could do for the present. By the time she had finished that she was moving along Gillygate where David had his wretched flat, and past the Salvation Army Hall to the hospital on the left, a vast grey city where life and death were decided, and there was a long queue outside the pay and display car park for Christ’s sake, with people carrying flowers and taking their grandchildren to visit, while my daughter may be bleeding to death at this very moment ...

  Grimly, to an accompaniment of horns and shouted protests, she overtook the queue and screeched into the Accident and Emergency car park where she pulled up beside a police car.

  Waiting for her at the entrance was her friend, Jane Miller. As Kathryn approached she could see in her face that the news was not going to be good.

  5. Accident and Emergency.

  ACCIDENT AND Emergency was always essentially the same, Terry thought. Ambulances and doctor’s cars outside, a receptionist asking someone to fill out a form, a collection of patients and their relatives on plastic chairs in the waiting room vacantly gazing at the television chattering mindlessly to itself between the vending machines. As usual, Terry marvelled at how many of these people seemed perfectly uninjured, malingerers apparently content to wait two hours simply to be treated for a headache or a tetanus booster injection. So trivial and mundane it seemed. And yet Terry could never walk through this place without fear. For at any time the most dreadful injuries could be wheeled though the door only few feet away, the paramedics buzzing with concentration and energy to stop their patient’s life ebbing away.

  But it was most painful, Terry thought, for the relatives who came in here in shock, their minds so inflamed with anxiety that they perceived everything with the sensitivity of someone who had lost two layers of skin. So it had seemed, at least, to Terry when he had come here for the death of his wife, Mary, whose body had been extracted from her car like so much butcher’s meat that was still, faintly, breathing. Three years later he could still vividly recall every word the doctor had spoken, every touch of the nurse’s hand, every embarrassed, sympathetic glance. He even remembered the two people arguing in the waiting room on the way out about changing the channel on the TV.

  A & E had no memory of Mary, of course, but Terry had forgotten nothing. Every time he came here he trembled. And today something similar would begin, he assumed, for the relatives of this young girl, Shelley Walters.

  He and Tracy were met at reception by a nurse who escorted them along a corridor with red and yellow lines to a doctor in a crumpled white coat, who was entering something on a computer. As he turned to face them Terry noticed streaks of blood on his coat, and the look of resignation and grey weariness on the absurdly young face.

  ‘Shelley Walters, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t save her.’

  Well, you should have tried harder, a voice buried deep in Terry’s subconscious screamed. You should never give up, never! This isn’t just a day’s work, it’s a life.

  ‘I see.’ Terry nodded slowly, glancing away from the doctor into a room full of medical technology, where a nurse was drawing the screens around a bed. ‘Was it suicide?’

  The doctor spread his hands apologetically. ‘That’ll be for the coroner to say, I suppose, after the post-mortem. But at first sight it looks like that, certainly. Wrists slit, massive loss of blood. Though she’d also nearly drowned in the process. We thought we’d recovered her from that when we lost her, unfortunately.’

  ‘So what did she die of, exactly?’

  ‘Heart failure, basically. Probably caused by blood loss and shock. Though the drowning couldn’t have helped either.’

  And so the main question. ‘Could it be murder?’

  The young doctor shrugged, again in a weary, off-hand way that made part of Terry want to pick him up and shake him hard. But then he’d probably been on duty for twelve hours already, seen other deaths and injuries.

  ‘That’s for you to decide, not me. It’s a possibility, I suppose. But as I say we’ll learn more from the post mortem ...’

  They were still talking when Kathryn appeared. Jane Miller had met her at the front door but Kathryn ran ahead of her, still in her dark blue tracksuit and trainers, until she saw the doctor talking to a man and a woman whom she knew, instantly, must be police officers. She was still half-running, partly to keep ahead of Jane and avoid hearing what she feared she might say, partly because if she kept moving, doing something, however futile, she might still be in time to save Shelley from ...

  She identified the doctor immediately and interrupted, cutting in on Terry’s conversation.

  ‘Excuse me, Shelley Walters? I’m her mother, I’m told she’s in here.’

  ‘Er, yes, of course. Just a minute, Inspector.’ The doctor’s face changed, in a way that Kathryn would remember all her life but which she didn’t want to believe, not now. Not while the words had not been said. Directing a reproachful glance at the nurse, he took Kathryn by the arm, leading her towards a room across the corridor. ‘If you’d just step in here for a moment.’

  Kathryn pulled back. This was not the way it was supposed to go. It must not be allowed to go like this. ‘I want to see her!’

  ‘If you’d just step this way I can explain everything.’ And she knew by his face and the tone in his voice, she knew almost certainly that all was lost. Numbly, she let herself to be led those few strides towards the waiting room. But then as he opened the door she saw the room was not empty, there was someone else inside. A uniformed police constable, sitting opposite a young man with short bristly hair, large muscular arms and hands that were clenched tightly together between his knees. The man she wanted to see least in all the world. The young man saw her too and stood up, the eyes in his flushed, oddly childlike hateful face bruised and red-rimmed with something that other people might take for grief.

  The doctor looked surprised, as though had forgotten the man was there, but recovered swiftly. ‘You’ll know her boyfriend, I suppose. Mr, er, Kidd, isn’t it?’

  Kathryn noticed that David’s white teeshirt was stained with blood. Shelley’s blood, it had to be hers. She started to tremble, she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘David, what’s happened? God, look at you - what the hell have you done, you little shit?’

  ‘What d’you mean, me?’ David protested. ‘I haven’t done anything - it’s not me, I just found her!’

  ‘You’ll have had something to do with it, you must have done!’

  ‘Look, I didn’t do it, of course I didn’t.’ He spread his hands wide, looking away from her to the doctor and police officers behind. ‘If anyone made her kill herself, it was you, not me. You pressed her too hard!’

  ‘Kill herself?’ The words burst in Kathryn’s mind, excluding everything else. ‘Christ, what are you saying, you monster?’ She
turned to the doctor desperately, appealing to him to deny something she already knew by his face, by his look of acute embarrassment and pity, that he would not. ‘She’s not dead?’

  Before the doctor could answer David stepped forward, confronting Kathryn directly. ‘Oh yes she is,’ he said bitterly. ‘And what’s more you drove her to it, didn’t you? She’s killed herself because of you, that’s what she’s done!’

  His mocking face filled her vision. She had never been so close to him, she felt unable to stand the bitter intensity of his gaze. She looked away, down at the blood on his clothes. In a faint but crystal clear voice, she said: ‘That’s Shelley’s blood, isn’t it? You killed her.’

  ‘Did I fuck!’ The accusation seemed to enrage him further. His big hands seized her shoulders, shaking her roughly. Tears flooded her eyes.

  ‘I’ve told you, she did it herself. I just found her, I tried to save her. And why do you think she did it? Because of you and all your bloody nagging, trying to get her away from me, when she’d made her own choice for once! Well, you’ve done it now, haven’t you? She’s killed herself! I tried to save her but I was too late. And now you come. Well, go home. You’re not wanted!’

  ‘No ... that’s not ... she’s not dead!’

  Kathryn tried to push him away but she was helpless in his grip; then he threw her contemptuously aside so that she stumbled, tripped and collapsed onto the floor. For a moment all of them - Terry, Tracy, the uniformed constable, the doctor, the nurse - were struck dumb with shock, unable to move or respond to the appalling drama exploding in front of them. Then, as Jane Miller bent down over Kathryn, Terry Bateson sprang to life.

  ‘All right, son, that’s enough.’ He stepped forward and put his hand on David’s arm, trying to guide him away from the woman. David gasped, and flailed at Terry with his other arm, but PC Newbolt caught that before it could do any harm, and the two of them frogmarched him out into the corridor, where they held him up against a wall.

  ‘Get off me, you fascist bastards! You can’t do this!’

  ‘All right, Nick, let him go.’ Terry and Nick slackened their hold but stood close enough to prevent him getting back into the room. Terry took a deep breath to keep his temper under control. ‘Look, sir. If the young woman’s dead we need to take a statement, and that has to be done at the station. I’ve got a car outside. We might as well go there now, and get it over with.’

  The two police officers towered over the young man, who was surprisingly short - only five foot six, eight perhaps. For a moment it looked as though he would put up a fight; then, like an irritated turkey cock, he shrugged and strutted to the door.

  ‘All right. There’s nothing left for me here anyway.’

  Nick escorted him out to the car, past nurses, patients on trolleys and those still waiting to be seen. Terry turned to Tracey who had followed them into the corridor. She looked shocked.

  ‘He’ll complain, sir, if you’re not careful,’ she said. ‘He’s just the sort who knows all his rights.’

  ‘Oh, sure. Rights and no responsibilities,’ said Terry, straightening his jacket. ‘No manners either. Christ, did you hear what he said to that woman?’

  Tracy nodded numbly. ‘What a way to learn a thing like that.’

  ‘There’s no good way,’ Terry said grimly. ‘But that was the worst I’ve ever seen.’ He walked away from the car to gather his thoughts, conscious of the ambulance drivers and an old man in a wheelchair watching him. Would nothing good ever happen in this place? He was conscious of a tide of anger surging through him - was it just because of the way the young man had behaved, or did it have something to do with Mary as well? He so wanted to avenge her, but this was not the way. If he was to do his job properly, he had to keep control.

  He drew a deep breath and smiled at Tracy apologetically. ‘All right, panic over. Look, Trace, go back inside and see if you can get that woman’s story, will you? She needs sympathy at the very least. You’re better at that than me. I’ll deal with this guy. If it is murder it must have been him. After all, she was alone with him in his flat, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Just her and him,’ Tracy nodded. ‘All right, sir, I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Walters,’ the young doctor said, when Kathryn had recovered. ‘I thought ... since he was her boyfriend ...’

  ‘I want to see my daughter,’ said Kathryn desperately, looking away from him to the nurse, Jane Miller. ‘Please, where is she? I need to know.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Tracy Litherland watched as the doctor led her out, across the corridor to the room with the medical machinery and the screened bed. He drew back the screens, bent over the bed, and smoothed the sheets back gently around her daughter’s face, as though it could make any difference now. ‘Please, Mrs Walters, stay as long as you want. Nurse Miller will see that you’re not disturbed. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Kathryn bent to put her cheek across her daughter’s forehead, as though to warm it with her own blood. It was already cooler than a living person’s, and pale, too, when she drew back to look. Shelley’s skin was white, not like the sheet exactly, but like - tripe. She shuddered as the image flashed across her mind. This was dead flesh, meat that had been bled, not her daughter at all, ever again. She reached for the girl’s lifeless hand, clasped it in her own, felt the flaccid eternal inability to respond. The skin stiffening slowly.

  ‘Oh Shelley, Shelley ...’ She bent her head and wept, and the tears fell on the hand that could never feel again, that could only decay. ‘Shelley, where have you gone?’

  Thanks, boss, Tracy Litherland thought, watching from the door. How on earth am I going to handle this?

  6. David Kidd

  IN THE car David Kidd was, as Tracy had predicted, sullen and resentful. ‘You’re not arresting me, are you? I’ve got my rights!’

  ‘So has that girl’s mother,’ said Terry firmly, driving the car out of the car park. ‘That was an assault, what you did to her back there.’

  ‘Get lost! I never touched her!’

  ‘You shook her and knocked her down. I could arrest you for assault and battery, if I wanted to. Quite apart from the brutal way in which you told her her daughter was dead. What did you think you were playing at, son?’

  ‘You don’t know what she’s like. You’ve never met her. Anyway it’s my girlfriend who’s died. How do you think I feel?’

  ‘Grief, I imagine. Do you?’ Terry studied him curiously in the driving mirror, wondering what the answer to this question was. He could just see the articles in the Press if a complaint was made against him for arresting an innocent boy moments after his girlfriend had committed suicide - Police Arrest Grief-stricken Boyfriend; Passed Over Inspector Takes It Out On Public. That would really improve his stock with Will Churchill. On the other hand, if this was a murder he was dealing with, the prime suspect was right there on his back seat.

  ‘Course I feel fucking grief. What do you think?’

  It looked more like rage to Terry. The surprisingly young, smooth face glared back at him in frustration and contempt. Surely if he’d really loved the girl this ‘fucking grief’ might be expected to manifest itself in a few tears, rather than outright fury? But then people were different, that was one thing he had learned in eighteen years as a police officer. He had seen people laugh at car accidents and fires, and met murderers who wept bitterly when told their victim had died. Sometimes he had the impression of operating in a foreign country.

  ‘You said she drove her own daughter to suicide, David. That’s a dreadful thing to say.’

  ‘So? It’s true. Why else would she do it?’

  As they passed along Gillygate, Terry saw a police Landrover parked on the pavement and forensic officers in white paper suits going inside. David Kidd saw them too.

  ‘What the hell’s all this? Is that my flat they’re going into? They can’t just do that!’

  ‘A young woman’s just died in your flat, Mr Kidd, in circumst
ances which need to be explained. It may be suicide, but it’s also possible a serious crime has been committed. So we have a duty to ...’

  ‘What if I want to go home? I need to change my shirt.’

  ‘You’ll just have to wait, son, I’m afraid. Until they’ve finished their investigations, you’ll have to keep out of their way. So you might as well come to the station and make your statement now.’

  The scowl on the stocky youth’s face looked oddly childish, petulant somehow. Terry drove on in silence, wondering if he had misjudged the situation. Was that performance in the hospital an attempt to divert suspicion from his own guilt? Or was the boy just behaving badly because he was in shock? Perhaps, when he calmed down, David Kidd would become a more appealing character, easier to understand.

  After a while David’s voice resumed from behind him. ‘All right, I’ll give you your sodding statement, for all the good it’ll do. Christ. You heard what that woman said. She thinks I killed her, stupid bitch. She drove her to kill herself, that’s what she did.’

  ‘Mrs Walters?’ Tracy said hesitantly when at last the two women came away from the bed. ‘I’m a police officer. I hate to intrude at a time like this, but there are a few basic details we need to know. If you think you can manage it, that is.’

  The nurse shook her head but Kathryn Walters turned to her almost with relief. ‘About how that monster killed my daughter, you mean?’