by Vicary, Tim
‘You mean that? Hey, you’re on. Can I bring the wife, too? She eats for America.’
‘Sure. Bring the whole family - in-laws, dogs, horses - the lot. I’ll look forward to it.’
But even as he put down the phone Terry was thinking: anyone but her. I’m not looking forward to this. Kathryn Walters may be safe but she’s not going to thank me this time.
Miranda, next morning, approached the court in some hope - insofar as hope could survive in the toxic cocktail of tension, guilt and fear that she had come to regard as normal everyday emotions. She had slept for several hours last night, reliving in her dreams the way Sarah Newby had cross-examined that loathsome detective, Will Churchill. In her dreams it went even better at first: Churchill’s face, smooth and arrogant at the beginning, gradually developed new seams and lines with every question, black wrinkles which criss-crossed his face like a net, and began to ooze some foul dark liquid, until quite suddenly his head and then his whole body burst and became a dark pool on the courtroom floor. A pool which she dared not look into, and which, when she turned to leave, followed a few yards behind her.
She woke up shaking, as she often did now in the night, and told herself it was him who was destroyed, not me. Not me, it was him, and he deserved it.
Only a couple more days, she told herself, approaching the grim elegant courthouse with the statue of Justice on the roof. Then Mum will be acquitted and we can escape. Never see this place again.
There was a man standing beside the main entrance. A tall, lean man, in a loose-fitting double-breasted suit. As she came closer she recognised him as the detective who had given evidence in David Kidd’s trial. She had seen him once before at the court, but paid him little attention. But as she climbed the wide stone steps he seemed to be watching her, and when she reached the top he came up and blocked her way.
‘Miranda Ward?’
‘Yes.’
‘Detective Inspector Bateson. I’ve a few questions to ask, if you don’t mind.’
He put his hand lightly on her elbow and steered her through the foyer to a small conference room with a table and six chairs. It was horribly like the one in which she had waited with her parents for the verdict in the earlier trial, preparing a press release to tell the world how pleased they were at the conviction of Shelley’s murderer. If only Kidd had been convicted, as he should have been! Everything would be different. The detective pulled out a chair but she refused to sit, her first sign of resistance since he’d surprised her. ‘What do you want?’
‘I think you know, Miranda, don’t you?’
He stood a few feet from her, the grey-blue eyes in his lean, unforgiving face watching her intently.
‘No. Of course I don’t know.’
‘Why are you here, Miranda?’
‘For my mother’s trial, of course. What do you think?’
‘How does it feel to be watching her? Sitting in the dock for something she didn’t do?’
‘Terrible, of course. But it went well yesterday. That policeman lied about the hairs, the jury could see that. I think she’ll get off. I hope so, at least. Then ...’ Her voice, which had been running away with her, suddenly stopped. Those cold grey eyes sent a chill to her heart.
‘Then you won’t have to make a decision, will you?’ he said after a pause. ‘That’s what you’re hoping for, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Terry smiled; a thin smile which to Miranda looked as cruel as the grin of a crocodile. But it was only a surface reflex prompted by her choice of a phrase so common with suspects whose game was up. But this time, it was a particularly nasty game. Terry might look cold and unforgiving to Miranda, but the expression on his face was a sign of his own weary disillusion at the role he found himself forced to play. There was no satisfaction in this discovery, only despair.
He took a sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘You flew from Manchester to New York on Monday 14th October, flight BA 349. Correct?’
‘Yes.’ Miranda felt the blood draining from her face as she guessed what was coming.
‘Where did you go from there?’
‘I ...’ Her mind was racing. He must have phoned Bruce, she thought. So he knows I didn’t go home. ‘... stayed a few days in the city. Seeing friends, doing some shopping.’
‘I see. Did you stay with a friend?’
‘No, I ... stayed in a hotel.’
‘Really. A hotel in New York, you mean?’
‘Yes. I ... don’t remember the name, though. It was a small one ...’
‘Not a hotel in Paris?’
‘What?’ There was no blood in her face at all now. In a moment, Terry guessed, it would all come rushing back in a flood. ‘Paris?’ she said in a whisper.
‘Oh come on, Miranda, the airlines do keep records, you know. The same day, Monday 14th October, you flew from New York to Paris, arriving 8.37 p.m. at Orly. But you didn’t stay there long, did you? Because three days later you flew from Manchester to New York again, on the same flight, BA 349, from where you took the night flight home to Wisconsin. Quite the globe-trotter, aren’t you?’
Miranda stared at him, speechless. In her mind thoughts and emotions were running wild, crashing off the walls in panic - confess, escape, deny, cry, hide, scream, say nothing.
‘Want to tell me what you were doing?’
She shook her head. Her secret had encysted itself so deep it was hard to release, even if she’d wanted to. She had admitted her guilt to no one so far except her mother. And she had come here this morning in such hope! She looked into Terry’s eyes and saw something there flicker in response to the heightened consciousness in her own mind - pity, perhaps, doubt, reluctance, compassion, uncertainty. Something in her own brain screamed he doesn’t know yet, he’s not sure, don’t tell him!
‘I don’t want to say.’
‘I’ll bet you don’t. You see the thing is, Miranda, on the day you left Manchester the first time, the 14th, your sister Shelley’s killer was still alive. But by the 18th he was dead. And you weren’t in New York on the day he was killed, as everyone thought. You were in old York, Yorkshire, England.’
‘Was I? How do you know?’
Terry stared at her as the silence lengthened. The blood had begun to flow back into her neck, but her face was still blotchy, pale. So she was going to deny it! And she was right, he thought grimly, he had no proof she’d actually been in York. Only that David Kidd was dead, killed by a young woman with fair hair. Fair hair and a motive.
‘Do you know a lady called Martha Cookson?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘She knows you, she says. She taught a course you attended once. And someone used Martha Cookson’s name to get an introduction to David Kidd. On the 11th October.’
‘So? You can’t prove it was me.’
‘But it was you, wasn’t it, Miranda?’
‘Why would I go to see David Kidd? I loathed the man, he killed my sister.’
‘Just because he killed your sister. You went there to kill him.’
‘On 11th October, you say? He died five days later.’
‘When everyone thought you were in America, but actually you were back here in York.’
They stared at each other coolly, standing either side of the table. Miranda had one hand on the back of a chair. She was clutching it unconsciously, with a grip that would have broken one less solidly made. The turmoil in her mind was still swirling, thoughts going this way and that, but for the moment defiance was uppermost. The part of her that had brought her to England - the part that longed to confess, to end the tension and hiding and deceit, to stand up and bear the burden of what she had done - that part was still alive and breathing, but paralyzed, like a body that’s forgotten how to move, a prisoner buried so long in a cell that when the door is opened she flings her arm across her eyes against the sunlight and backs away, unable to face the world she longs for. And in front of her the guards of deception, the defences
she’d nurtured so long, sought to protect her as they’d always done, close the door and shut her secret away, deny it ever existed.
She realised, as she watched him, that there were weaknesses in his position too. The very length of his silence was more like a question than an accusation. He believed she was guilty, but he still wasn’t sure; he couldn’t be, or he’d have arrested her by now. He didn’t really know!
‘If you think I murdered David, you’ll have to prove it, won’t you?’
As she watched the effect of her words on him she marvelled at how calm and controlled her own voice sounded, how detached from the turmoil within. Terry shook his head slowly.
‘You’d let your mother be sentenced, would you? For a crime you committed yourself?’
‘What makes you think she’ll be found guilty?’
There it was, the final reason to keep up her defences. She remembered - her thoughts still racing for escape like rats in a maze - how she’d felt just ten minutes before. She’d been approaching this court not in fear but in hope, thinking her mother might easily be acquitted. And if that happened what would be the point of throwing everything away for a detective who had no proof, no real proof, that she was actually guilty? All he could prove were her strange, suspicious travel plans. That made her eccentric, certainly, but not a killer. She could say she had a lover in Paris! Now that the danger was here, in the open at last, there was a strange exhilaration in defying it.
‘Are you arresting me or am I free to go?’
Terry thought about it. This wasn’t his case; if he made the slightest mistake Will Churchill would be down on him like a ton of bricks. And the girl was right, he had no real proof, after all. Just very strong circumstantial evidence that, linked with her obvious motive, added up in his own mind to a certainty. A virtual certainty. But in a court of law that wasn’t enough, as Will Churchill was finding already. Churchill believed, with circumstantial evidence probably stronger than Terry’s, that this girl’s mother was guilty - and unlike Terry, he had real solid evidence, the DNA from those hairs, to put his suspect at the scene of the crime. How the hairs had got there, that was another matter entirely. But Terry had no hairs at all, nothing to prove that Miranda had been within fifty miles of the crime.
But he knew she’d done it. And she, surely, knew that he knew.
‘It’s a matter for your conscience, really, isn’t it?’ he said, watching her closely. ‘Whether your mother goes to prison, or you do.’
‘Or neither of us do,’ said Miranda, unclenching her hand slowly, finger by cramped finger, from the back of the chair. ‘We still have a good lawyer, don’t we?’ she added, quietly leaving the room.
A lawyer who I’m about to go and see, Terry thought grimly. God knows what she’ll make of this.
56. The Choice
‘ARE YOU sure?’ Sarah asked. ‘You’d better be sure.’
They were meeting in another conference room, half an hour before the case was due to resume. Sarah was dressed in a smart black trouser suit but had not yet put on her gown and wig.
‘Sure as I can be without her admitting it,’ Terry answered. ‘But she’s right. I haven’t got enough to make it stand up in court. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Even so.’ Sarah leaned against the side of a table, shaking her head slowly. ‘Her own daughter, Terry! What will that do to Kathryn, I wonder?’
‘She won’t want to believe it,’ said Terry. ‘I don’t, either. Anyone else and we’d have the perfect result. Your client goes free and Will Churchill gets screwed. But this way ... She’s not going to be happy, is she?’
‘Maybe she knows already. That would account for some of the things she’s said - and not said - to me in conference. But if she doesn’t know, it’ll knock her sideways. Still, either way I have to tell her. I’ve no choice.’ Sarah pushed herself away from the table, and made for the door, then turned back. ‘Terry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who else knows about this, so far?’
‘Just me. That’s all.’
‘Can you keep it like that, for a while? Kathryn’s going to have to make a decision about this, and it won’t be the easiest one. My God, I’d hate to be in her shoes now.’
Sarah had sat up late last night planning how best to lead Kathryn through her evidence, trying out one question after another in search of exactly the right tone to help Kathryn catch the sympathy of the jury, and avoid unnecessary expressions of hatred for David Kidd. She had intended to see Kathryn this morning, to warn her against the tricks Matthew Clayton was likely to use to provoke her.
Now, instead, she found herself describing Terry’s discovery. At first Kathryn sat on the bench, listening in stunned silence; but halfway through, the tension became too much. She sprang to her feet, hands over her ears as if she couldn’t bear to hear any more, and stood with her back to Sarah, facing the concrete wall at the end of her cell.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said as she finished. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this, but I had to.’
There was a silence, broken by the sound of a guard whistling cheerfully in the corridor outside. Sarah wondered if Kathryn was crying, but when she turned her cheeks, pale with shock, were quite dry.
‘It’s not true,’ she said simply.
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘Of course I don’t believe it. My own daughter? Anyway she was in America at the time.’
‘I’ve explained that,’ Sarah said patiently. ‘DI Bateson’s checked with the airlines. She flew back to Paris the same day she arrived. October 14th.’
‘Paris isn’t York, is it? Maybe she went to visit someone there.’ Kathryn brushed a hand across her face, as if bothered by an irrelevant detail. Sarah noticed the first hint of tears in her eyes.
‘Look, Kathryn, I know how painful this must be ...’
‘You don’t. You have no idea.’
Kathryn turned away, avoiding her gaze. Sarah persisted, keeping her voice as low, sympathetic and reasonable as she could manage. She felt like a doctor telling a patient she had cancer.
‘I can’t feel it myself, no, but I can see and imagine. What I am bound to say to you, as your counsel, is that this is new evidence which could help your defence. It might be difficult for me to get it admitted into court because DI Bateson isn’t part of the investigating team, but I can certainly try. And if the judge does allow it then it’s bound to create doubt - more than a little doubt - in the minds of the jury. So ...’
‘It’ll send Miranda to prison, won’t it?’
Sarah sighed. ‘Not immediately, but yes, I suppose if you’re acquitted because the jury believe your daughter did this, not you, then she’s quite likely to be charged at a later date, if enough evidence can be found.’
Kathryn paced anxiously across the narrow cell, once, twice, three times, shaking her head. She slapped the wall in frustration and turned to Sarah, her eyes wide and desperate.
‘You’re a mother, Mrs Newby. What would you do, if you were in my position?’
For once the correct professional answer coincided with the personal one. But even as she spoke the useless words Sarah hated herself, wishing she had more to offer.
‘I can’t answer that. I’m sorry, it’s impossible to say. It’s a terrible decision, I know, but it’s one that you’ll have to take on your own.’
Kathryn shook her head bitterly, indicating Sarah’s irrelevance. There are some divides which can never be crossed, some places where we’re always alone. She turned away, sat down on the bench.
‘Before I do that, I want to see my daughter.’
Dismissed, Sarah turned, and tapped on the door. ‘All right. I’ll see if I can find her.’
When she left Terry Bateson Miranda ran to the first place of safety she could find, the ladies’ loo. The face in the mirror frightened her; for a few moments she stood there torn, unable to look at herself, unable to look away. Those eyes: she wanted them to seem firm, determined, defiant, as she hoped
they’d appeared to the detective. And so they did at first; she held her expression triumphantly. I’m a killer and I lied and I’m still in control, she told herself grimly. I can do this and survive. But the moment didn’t last; mist rose on the mirror from the hot water tap, and when she brushed it away with her hand the determination on her face had dissolved. She could see too far into those eyes; they weren’t shields keeping the world at bay, they were windows into the terror of her soul.
I can’t do this any more, she thought. I can’t look. But where is there to hide? Then two women came in, loudly discussing something to do with knives and a brawl in a pub, and Miranda fled, out into the foyer and down the steps across the grass of the Eye of York towards the car park, against the flow of people visiting the Castle and the Castle Museum. But where can I go, she thought? I can’t just run back to the States, I have to brazen this out now, see it through. I didn’t admit anything to that man and he didn’t arrest me, so all that has to happen now is for Mum to be acquitted and we’ll both be free and safe.
That won’t happen. Yes, it will. Well, it might. No, it won’t, you know it won’t. It still could, you know it could. But it won’t.
Three times she walked around the circular mound of the Castle, as though it were a roundabout and she didn’t know which exit to take. But each time she came back to the Court, with the statue of Justice on the roof and the prison van outside and a barrister and policeman strolling on the stone balcony before the door. And next to it the Castle Museum which had once been the prison where Dick Turpin was kept before his execution, and female murderers had been hanged from the great gable opposite the car park. They don’t do that any more, Miranda told herself, thank God they won’t do that to me or to Mum, but it’s almost as bad. If this goes wrong one of us will be locked up for years and years in a cell like the ones in there.
And it will go wrong, I know it will. This is where I belong.
At the top of the wide stone steps under the columned entrance Sarah Newby was waiting for her.