House of Correction

by French, Nicci

  ‘Ms Hardy is absolutely correct. I think we’ll have to proceed. But’ – and she rapped her knuckles on the desk – ‘if you try this one more time, there will be trouble. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, My Lady.’

  She turned to Tabitha.

  ‘You’re entitled to a recess, if you want, to go over this evidence. Would you like that?’

  Tabitha looked at Michaela, who shrugged. She felt shocked and jangled and she could do with a rest. But Simon Brockbank looked a bit shaken as well and Mallon was probably worrying about what had happened. Besides, she knew what he was going to say.

  ‘We might as well go on,’ she said.

  * * *

  When Brockbank resumed his examination, it was in a more routine tone. He established that Coombe had been bleeding and Mallon had helped to staunch the bleeding and Coombe had been shaken by the experience and no, Dr Mallon had never seen an act of violence like that in the village before. Had it raised a concern in his mind about Ms Hardy’s psychological state? Yes, it had.

  Michaela leaned over and whispered in Tabitha’s ear:

  ‘So what did he do? Did he call the police? Call an ambulance?’

  ‘All right,’ Tabitha whispered back. ‘Good. All right.’

  She looked round. She realised that Judge Munday and the members of the court were looking at her. Brockbank had finished his examination. She stood up and stared straight at Dr Mallon. He glanced away and then back at her. He looked unhappy.

  ‘Did you call the police?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ said Mallon. ‘No.’

  She looked down again. ‘Did you call an ambulance?’

  ‘It was just a nosebleed.’

  ‘Nosebleeds can be serious.’

  ‘This wasn’t a serious nosebleed.’

  ‘Did Rob Coombe tell you what had happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long were you with him?’

  ‘I don’t know, a couple of minutes.’

  ‘And then you left him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weren’t you worried I might come back and hit him again?’

  Mallon gave the faintest of smiles but didn’t reply.

  ‘You’ve got to give an answer.’

  ‘I didn’t think about it.’

  Tabitha couldn’t think of any more questions about this. Michaela nudged her elbow and she looked round. On her pad, Michaela had written in capital letters: ‘2ND INTERVIEW. WHY?’ Tabitha looked questioningly at her but Michaela just nodded. Tabitha turned back to Mallon.

  ‘Why did the police do a second interview with you?’

  ‘You should ask them.’

  Tabitha felt a moment of panic, as if she had forgotten her next line, and then suddenly she had an idea of what Michaela had meant by her note.

  ‘Hadn’t they got enough from the first one?’

  There was a moment of hesitation before Mallon answered. ‘They didn’t say.’

  ‘Well, what did they say?’

  ‘They said to tell them anything I could think of.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell them about the thing with Rob Coombe in the first interview?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it.’

  ‘Because it didn’t seem important?’

  ‘I just didn’t think of it.’

  Tabitha felt she’d run out of questions again. She picked up her notebook and flicked through it. Somewhere she had made some notes about when Mallon had come to visit her in prison. She couldn’t find them. She remembered a few sketchy details. She wasn’t sure they’d be much help.

  ‘Were you Stuart Rees’s doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s kind of true and not true, isn’t it? I meant, were you Stuart Rees’s doctor when he died?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because he left you.’

  ‘He changed doctors.’

  ‘And was it a friendly changing of doctors?’

  ‘It wasn’t friendly or unfriendly.’

  ‘But he didn’t just leave. He wrote a letter of complaint, didn’t he?’

  Mallon gave a nervous smile. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘You have to answer the question,’ said Judge Munday.

  ‘He did make a complaint.’

  ‘But you stayed friends with Laura Rees?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say friends.’

  ‘She told me that she talked to you about things. Is that true?’

  ‘We talked a few times.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I’m a doctor, I can’t talk about that.’

  Tabitha thought for a moment. She felt she was just randomly throwing things at a wall, hoping something would stick.

  ‘So Stuart Rees left and Laura Rees stayed?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘No. Laura Rees left as well.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She said that her husband…’ Mallon gave a helpless shrug.

  ‘Insisted?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Tabitha thought for a moment. ‘So obviously I won’t ask about when you were her doctor. I’ll ask about when you weren’t her doctor. Was she unhappy with her husband?’

  ‘You can’t just answer a question like that yes or no.’

  ‘Did she love him?’

  ‘I don’t know. She stayed married to him for many years.’

  ‘Was she frightened of him?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ said Mallon, raising his voice now. ‘If you’re making some kind of accusation, just make it.’

  Tabitha felt so startled that she couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She looked round at the jury and several of them looked visibly startled as well, or at least puzzled. She looked back at Dr Mallon.

  ‘She wasn’t in the village when it happened,’ Mallon continued, almost plaintively.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Tabitha. ‘Who said she was? I’m asking you questions and you keep not answering them.’

  ‘Please, Ms Hardy,’ said Judge Munday. ‘You’re walking a fine line here. As the accused person defending herself, you have to be careful in your treatment of witnesses.’

  ‘He’s not a victim,’ said Tabitha. ‘He’s a doctor. He should be able to look after himself.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Judge Munday. ‘This is my court.’ She turned to Mallon and spoke to him courteously but firmly. ‘Nevertheless, I think this is a reasonable question. Was Mrs Rees frightened of her husband?’

  ‘Frightened? I don’t know. He was controlling.’

  Judge Munday turned to Tabitha. ‘Any further questions?’

  Tabitha looked at Dr Mallon. He seemed a diminished figure. When she had arrived in Okeham and seen him running through the village, exchanged the odd word, he had seemed her sort of person. She could imagine him as a friend. That felt like a long time ago.

  ‘That official complaint,’ she said. ‘If it had succeeded, what’s the worst that could happen?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have succeeded.’

  Tabitha didn’t reply. She just stood there, waiting for him to realise that he would have to answer the question. She looked at him. The silence felt awkward to her, but she knew that it must feel worse for Dr Mallon.

  He gave a cough. ‘It would – maybe – be some kind of reprimand.’

  ‘At worst?’ said Tabitha.

  ‘Well, obviously,’ said Dr Mallon in an angry, sarcastic tone, ‘the worst that could happen is that you’d be struck off but that couldn’t have happened in this case, so there’s no point in mentioning it.’

  ‘You’re the one who mentioned it,’ said Tabitha as she sat down.

  The judge looked at Simon Brockbank, who just shook his head. More mud on the wall, Tabitha thought to herself, as Dr Mallon shuffled out of the witness box and passed her, not meeting her eye.

  FIFTY-NINE<
br />
  Rob Coombe was a big man, not fat but muscled, with broad shoulders, a jowly and slightly florid face and full lips. He had always made Tabitha feel a bit queasy. Whenever he stood near to her, she had caught a rich, pungent smell coming off him: of the farmyard and the gym and the bedroom.

  He wasn’t wearing a suit, but a pair of dark trousers, a jacket and a tie that she was pleased to see was done up a bit too tightly. He spoke in a loud voice, but she could tell he was anxious. His Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed and he grasped the edge of the witness box in both his large hands.

  After the traditional précis of who he was (a farmer, like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him), where he lived (in the large farmhouse above Okeham), and his relationship to Tabitha (none, except they lived in the same village and he had always tried to be friendly when they met, ‘though that hasn’t always worked,’ he added with a smile that was meant, Tabitha imagined, to be ruefully charming), Simon Brockbank asked him about the ‘altercation’.

  ‘It came out of the blue,’ said Rob Coombe. ‘I met her outside the shop and I think I asked her about swimming or something, how cold it must be in the water. Just being friendly, the way you are if you live in a village like Okeham. We all have to get on with each other, that’s how it works. Except she doesn’t seem to understand that. And she punched me.’

  ‘Fucker,’ said Tabitha under her breath and she heard Michaela chuckle.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ said Brockbank with a look of righteous indignation on his face. ‘You asked her about swimming and she punched you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must have been very shocking.’

  ‘It was deeply shocking.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Do?’ He looked at the jury and the jury looked at him. Wriggly twitched and Blinky blinked and Beardy stroked his beard. ‘I’m a big man, as you can see. Well able to look after myself. But I would never hit a lady, especially not a lady who was frail, vulnerable.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ muttered Tabitha.

  ‘So you’re saying you did nothing?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How do you explain what happened?’

  ‘I can’t. I just think she’s always in a bit of a rage, a bit of a wild cat.’

  Tabitha jumped up. ‘Wild cat?’

  ‘I’ve told you how to proceed with your objections, Ms Hardy,’ said Judge Munday.

  Rob Coombe’s dark eyes settled on Tabitha. ‘Always ready to boil over. Everyone says so.’

  Judge Munday interrupted.

  ‘Mr Coombe, it’s important that you only talk about what you yourself witnessed, not what other people have said.’

  ‘But I witnessed the way people talked about her.’

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  It took some time to settle this and at the end of it Coombe still didn’t seem convinced. Tabitha thought it probably made him look bad, but she wasn’t sure it made her look good. The jury had got the (accurate) sense that the people of Okeham didn’t much care for her.

  ‘It might be thought,’ said Brockbank, ‘that after this regrettable incident you have a grievance against the accused. Is that the case?’

  Coombe shook his head. ‘Not at all. I felt sorry for her, not angry. I figured I was just in the way. I didn’t take it personally. I wished her well. I just hoped,’ he added virtuously, ‘that she would be able to sort her life out a bit. You only have to look at her to know she is clearly angry and unhappy.’

  Before Tabitha could react, Michaela stood up. ‘You can’t say things like that.’

  ‘Please sit down, Ms—’

  ‘Horvat. Michaela Horvat. And he can’t say things like that.’

  ‘McKenzie friends are not allowed to address the court. And I think the statement is allowable.’

  Coombe looked across at Tabitha and smiled nastily.

  ‘Now we’ve got that over,’ continued Brockbank blandly, ‘we can move on to the morning of the murder, which is why you have been called to give evidence by the prosecution. You say in your statement to the police that you saw the accused that morning.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you describe what took place?’

  ‘It was around eight,’ he said. Tabitha scribbled a note. ‘I was buying a paper and she comes in.’

  ‘The accused.’

  ‘Yes. And she starts going on about Stuart.’

  ‘For the record, Stuart Rees, the victim?’

  ‘Right. She was in one of her moods and she called him a bastard.’

  ‘A bastard,’ repeated Brockbank.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Can you remember in what context she made this comment?’

  Coombe shrugged his large shoulders. ‘It was morning. I was dropping my kid off. I wasn’t paying attention. I just remember that. She called him a bastard. I think she said other things about him too, but I can’t be sure. She wasn’t a happy bunny.’

  ‘You are absolutely sure that the accused called Stuart Rees a bastard.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you mention this to anyone?’

  ‘The police obviously. Before them, you mean? Why would I? I mean, if we told each other every time she went off on one, that’d be all we ever talked about. But she said it.’

  * * *

  They broke for lunch. Tabitha paced up and down the little cell while Michaela ate her chips.

  ‘I’d like to punch him again,’ she said.

  * * *

  ‘Right,’ said Tabitha. ‘Let’s start with the time I punched you.’

  He nodded and folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘I’m not disputing it,’ she said. ‘I did punch you. You did have a bloody nose.’ She tried not to smile. That wouldn’t look good. ‘You say you can’t remember what you said to me before?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But you think you said something about me going swimming and how cold it must be?’

  ‘Right,’ he said again. ‘Not much of a reason to hit me, was it?’

  ‘You did say that, it’s true,’ said Tabitha. ‘You said you knew it must have been cold because you could see my nipples through my jersey.’ A little murmur ran through the court and out of the corner of her eye she could see the jury slightly rearrange itself on the two benches.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Rob Coombe. ‘I wouldn’t speak like that to a lady.’

  ‘You don’t think of me as a lady, though, do you. You think I’m a wild cat.’

  ‘That’s just a figure of speech.’

  ‘Yeah. Then I told you to fuck off and you said you’d never thought of me as having proper breasts but my nipples looked like bullets and could you feel them to test their hardness.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  ‘You don’t remember that?’

  ‘I don’t remember it because it never happened.’

  ‘I hit you because you asked to touch my nipples.’

  ‘This is just desperate.’

  ‘And if I’m honest, I’m glad I hit you.’

  ‘Why would I want to touch someone as ugly as you?’

  Judge Munday intervened like someone trying to stop a pub brawl. When Tabitha resumed, Coombe’s voice was even louder and his face a beefier shade of red.

  ‘You say you were in the shop at shortly after eight?’

  ‘Right.’

  Michaela handed Tabitha the timeline she had made and she glanced at it.

  ‘I came in at eight-eleven, so that makes sense. And you say I was angry. That was your word, right? And I called Stuart a bastard.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Are you surprised that no one else heard me say that?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Or that I don’t remember it?’

  ‘That’s what you say.’

  ‘There was Terry and she hasn’t said anything about it, and the driver of the bus and he hasn’t said anythi
ng. And me. And I don’t remember.’

  ‘I’m just saying what I heard. You called him a bastard. I’m not going to change my mind, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not. But the jury might.’

  A ripple of laughter went through the public gallery. And the immaculate woman in the front row of jurors actually smiled. Tabitha felt a moment of giddy triumph.

  ‘Where was I?’ she said.

  Michaela tugged at her sleeve and whispered something.

  ‘Oh yes, I remember now. I need to show the CCTV footage,’ she said to the judge.

  Judge Munday nodded then looked at her watch.

  ‘We will break early,’ she said, ‘and meet again on Monday, when we will start with the relevant CCTV footage.’

  ‘What! Do you mean I have to come back?’ asked Rob Coombe. ‘I’m a very busy man.’

  Judge Munday looked at him for a few seconds. Her face was quite blank. ‘Yes, you have to come back,’ she said.

  SIXTY

  Tabitha’s mood of exhilaration seeped away quickly, leaving her drained and stale. The weekend was a strange interruption. She spent many hours in the library, which wasn’t as pleasant as the one in Crow Grange and had no view over fields and woods, trying to prepare for the week ahead, but she was so tired that she couldn’t focus on anything. Her thoughts were confused and her eyes heavy. Several times she fell asleep at the table, jerking awake to stare in bewilderment round the unfamiliar surroundings.

  She leafed through all her documents. She phoned Michaela. She slept alone in her cell and dreamed she’d had a baby, but a woman in wellington boots and a nun’s wimple was trying to take it away from her. Only when she woke did she think it was strange that she had dreamed she had a child.

  Then it was Monday, and she was both appalled and relieved that it was time to be in court again.

  * * *

  This time Rob Coombe wore a suit and shiny shoes. Tabitha thought he looked like a boxer, bulky and tense and waiting for the fight to begin.

  They started with the CCTV. Tabitha had asked for it to start at 08.05, so the court spent a few minutes looking at the grainy space of empty shop before the door opened and Rob Coombe came in with his daughter behind him, almost hidden by his bulk.