‘Let me help you with some dates, Miss North. I believe your first dinner with Miss Clarke and your brother – as a couple – was the 21st February. Does that sound about right?’
Cleo shrugged. ‘It could be. I would have to check.’
‘And when was your niece, Lulu, born?’
Cleo closed her eyes. She knew where this was going and she had no way of stopping it.
‘August,’ she said quietly.
‘So this brother, who told you everything, had in fact had sexual intercourse with Evie Clarke on at least one occasion approximately three months before you became aware of the relationship, and they had very possibly been seeing each other in secret, keeping the truth from you for all of that time. Because your brother chose not to tell you.’
Cleo stared at this mild-mannered, overweight man who she had mistakenly thought was going to be gentle with her. There was nothing she could say, because she knew he was right. Mark had hidden things from her, and she didn’t understand why or how it had happened. It never used to be like that.
‘We know you were not aware that Miss Clarke is, in fact, an orphan and has been since her childhood. She also never mentioned to you that she was married. But given the fact that your brother had a history of hiding the truth from you, I don’t believe it’s safe to assume that he was ignorant of it. Do you?’
Cleo had no answer. She knew how important it was for the jury to believe Evie was a liar – that all her evidence was suspect. And she could find no way of putting this right.
‘In fact, it is possible that the only person who lied was your brother – to you. Do you agree?’
‘It’s possible, but I don’t believe it.’
If this was true, what else had Mark hidden from her? For one second the image of Mia lying dead at the bottom of the basement steps leapt into her mind and she quickly blanked it. Don’t go there, she thought.
The barrister leapt on her obvious confusion and launched into his next question.
‘You said that Miss Clarke had a series of accidents when your brother was away. What happened?’
‘She scalded her arm once. She said it was nothing, but I saw it. It was badly blistered. And then she caught her hand in the weights in the multi gym.’
‘When did these accidents happen?’
‘After Mark left for one of his trips.’
‘And how, precisely, do you know the timing of the accidents?’
Cleo looked down. How could she answer? She had never seen Evie between Mark leaving and the accidents happening. She knew this was a hole in her argument, but at the same time she couldn’t let the jury think there was any doubt.
‘Evie told me. She phoned me when she had trapped her hand. Mark had been gone for over an hour – I don’t believe she could have sat there for that length of time in so much pain if it had happened before he left. Why would she?’
Cleo glanced at Evie, wanting her to stand up and tell the world that it was all a lie and that Mark had never touched her.
‘How many abused women have you known, Miss North?’
Cleo was confused at the line of questioning. ‘I don’t know. None that I’m aware of.’
‘Precisely – and I’ve no doubt you are aware that statistically you probably know quite a few. I put it to you that you don’t know which of your friends and acquaintances are abused because they don’t want to admit it. Is it not possible that Evie Clarke didn’t want you to know that your brother was hurting her every time he was about to go away?’
‘No!’ Cleo felt her throat tighten and was terrified that at any moment she would burst into floods of tears.
‘When did Mark’s wife die?’
Cleo stared at him. She knew he didn’t mean what month or year. She knew where he was going with this questioning and she had to deflect him. Had he read her mind?
‘That was different altogether,’ she said, hearing the uncertainty in her own voice.
‘You found her, didn’t you? Am I not right in thinking that she fell to her death shortly after Mark North left for a business trip?’
‘Yes – but I spoke to her after he left that day. She was fine then. We agreed to have lunch.’
‘You agreed to have lunch with someone you have already told us you didn’t like? We will have to take your word for that, Miss North. But when injuries started to be inflicted on Miss Clarke within hours of your brother’s departure, did it never occur to you for one moment that they might be something other than accidents, and that they could have happened an hour or so earlier? When he was still in the house?’
Cleo hesitated for just a second. It was a second too long. Before she had time to respond, Mr Simmonds spoke.
‘Let’s get back to Miss Clarke’s injuries. You say she “caught her hand in the weights” – weren’t they your words? Isn’t that a bit of an understatement?’
The barrister turned to the jury. ‘I refer you to your screens. What you see is an x-ray of Miss Clarke’s hand after she “caught” it. Even with no medical knowledge at all, I think you can see that she did rather more than merely “catch” it.’
The court was silent for a moment as the jury studied their monitors and Cleo looked at the QC. How could she have been so wrong about him? He had lost the avuncular expression and now looked like a bulldog about to attack.
‘How did Evie Clarke say the injury happened?’ Boyd asked.
The members of the public who had packed out the gallery listened in fascinated horror to Cleo’s version of events, of how Evie had accidentally let go of the bar when her hand was between the weights.
‘I understand you are quite keen on fitness yourself, Miss North. Didn’t it seem to you that this was a most unlikely accident?’
‘Well it couldn’t have been anything to do with Mark.’ The words burst from Cleo. She had to stop them thinking like this. ‘He never went down into the basement – not since his wife died down there.’
‘Indeed,’ Boyd said, leaving a space for those listening to draw their own conclusions.
Cleo was silent and Boyd moved on. ‘And how did Miss Clarke scald herself?’
‘She was pouring hot water from the kettle into her mug. Her hand slipped – I think she sneezed or something.’
Boyd turned to the jury again and asked them to consult the photographs now on screen, submitted by the hospital.
‘Miss North, do you happen to know if Miss Clarke is right- or left-handed?’
Cleo thought about it for a moment. ‘Right, I think. Yes, I’m pretty sure she is.’
‘And yet she sustained these burns to her right arm. Does a right-handed person often pick up a full kettle of boiling water with their left hand? It’s not impossible, but unlikely I would have thought. And at the first splash, would it not be normal to withdraw your arm as quickly as possible, rather than run the boiling water up and down the arm so that it scalded the skin from elbow to wrist?’
Cleo looked down. She suddenly felt as though she was the one on trial. And she had been found guilty.
33
Stephanie wasn’t looking forward to being questioned. She had appeared as a witness many times, but it never got any easier. It was so important to get it right.
She and Gus were sitting next to each other in the witness waiting room and he reached out and gently took her hand in his. For once, she didn’t pull away. She had become more accustomed to his occasional touch over the last months and knew he was trying to give her confidence. Her time working with him would soon be over, and she would have to decide then whether it was a good idea for the two of them to have their own post-mortem on all that had gone wrong between them, or whether to leave well alone. Now, though, she had to focus on accurately and succinctly relaying the facts relating to Mark North’s death.
‘Sergeant Stephanie King?’ The court usher held the door open.
‘You’re on,’ Gus said with a quick squeeze of the fingers. ‘See you later.’
Stephanie
walked into the courtroom, swore the oath and took a couple of deep breaths. She tried not to look at Evie.
As Devisha Ambo stood, Stephanie was reassured by her wide white smile. The prosecutor eased her into the questioning by asking for facts – details of the call-out, how she and Jason got into the house, the role of the security guard. Stephanie’s mind flooded with images of that night; of the moonlight, the candles, and the two bodies on the bed.
‘What was your first impression when you entered the room?’
‘There was blood. A lot of it. It was on the walls as well as the bed, and I immediately thought it was arterial blood. I’ve seen that sort of spatter pattern before.’
Stephanie’s eyes flicked to the gallery, where she could see the bright hair of Cleo North, and she wished Mark’s sister had left after giving her evidence. Her cheeks had a gaunt look about them and there were dark circles under her eyes. Surely she wouldn’t want to listen as the prosecution attempted to prove that her brother had been ruthlessly murdered, while the defence claimed that he was a vicious brute and not the person she had believed him to be?
She dragged her attention back to her testimony, and tried to focus on describing those first minutes after she arrived at Mark North’s home.
The prosecution questioning continued smoothly, but Stephanie’s stomach tightened when Boyd Simmonds stepped up to the witness box.
‘Sergeant King,’ the defence QC said. ‘When you entered the room – apart from seeing the blood – what was your impression of the individuals in that room?’
‘I assumed they were both dead because neither of them was moving.’
‘And then?’
‘I heard a sound from the bed. I realised that one of them was alive and I needed to help them.’
‘Can you tell me how their bodies were positioned?’
Stephanie had prepared for this question. ‘They were tangled in the sheet so it was difficult to tell precisely, but they were both on one side of the bed.’
‘Close to each other, you mean?’
‘Yes, it seemed so.’
‘And Miss Clarke’s demeanour. Was she angry, aggressive?’
‘Neither of those. She was upset. She was in shock.’
‘You’re an experienced police officer, Sergeant King. You were able to observe the scene, the condition of the defendant and her obvious distress?’
‘Yes.’
‘Drawing on your experience, did you form a view that the defendant had planned and executed a carefully thought through murder?’
Stephanie glanced across at Evie. She hadn’t seen her since her police interview after Mark North’s death and then all she had seen was a distraught woman with bloodshot eyes and hair scraped back from her pale, blotchy face. The woman she saw now was dressed smartly in a navy blue suit, but despite her attempt to wear a little makeup, she had the sallow skin of a person who didn’t get out in the fresh air often. None of that counted to Stephanie. The fact was that when she looked at Evie Clarke, the only thing she could see was a victim.
She tore her gaze away. ‘I didn’t form a view. I had no basis for doing that and my only concern at that time was to ensure that the scene was preserved.’
She didn’t look at Evie again but the intensity of Harriet James’s gaze from the defence bench was disturbing, so Stephanie looked instead at the strangers crowding the public gallery. Her attention was grabbed by a man sitting in the far corner. His stare was firmly fixed on Evie in the dock, but she never once glanced his way. His brow was lowered, his mouth set in a grim line.
Who was this man? Stephanie had never seen him before, but he seemed too enthralled to be a thrill-seeking observer.
The rest of the questioning passed without incident, but throughout Stephanie found herself distracted as the man’s attention never wavered from Evie. He looked neither at Boyd Simmonds when he asked questions nor at Stephanie when she answered.
Finally, she was excused and felt a sense of relief as she made her way out of the courtroom. She wouldn’t be able to speak to Gus again until after he had been called, so she decided to head to the public gallery. There was something intense and very odd about that man and she wanted to know if he was still watching Evie.
She hurried to the gallery, hoping to find a seat that would give her good sight of the man, and quietly pushed the door open.
Glancing to her left she saw that he was still there, and she quickly took a seat next to one of her colleagues.
‘Who’s that man?’ she whispered, indicating with her head. ‘The one with the ginger hair.’
‘No idea – never seen him before.’
The man pulled a single sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. Even from a distance, Stephanie could see that it was starting to split along the creases as if it had been read and refolded over and over again. It looked like a letter. Stephanie could make out the blue ink of something handwritten. The man looked down at it, then slowly, deliberately, started to rip it apart, allowing the pieces to fall like confetti around his feet.
With a final glance at Evie, he stood up and pushed his way past other observers and out of the gallery.
34
In Harriet’s view, Boyd was doing an excellent job of damaging some of the prosecution’s arguments and there was a reasonable chance that the jury would disregard the attempt to paint Evie as a liar. But the fact that she had invented a father who didn’t exist was certainly a black mark on Evie’s character.
‘I know what I did was wrong,’ Evie had told her. ‘But I saw Mark’s photos in his gallery and I had to meet him. Have you seen the gallery, Harriet? It’s amazing. I saw one photo hanging in the window from across the road. It was the only picture on display, blown up to about six feet tall – a woman’s face, almost disembodied with all but her face in shadow, looking into my eyes, into my soul. I wanted so much for him to take my photograph – to see if he could make me look that incredible.’
Harriet looked at the passion in the woman’s eyes, and didn’t doubt her word for a second.
‘I had no idea how I was going to pay him. I did try to make some money from blog commissions and a bit of bar work so he wouldn’t need to know the truth, but it was stupid – I could never afford his prices. I told him what I’d done as soon as we became a couple and long before I agreed to move in with him. He knew everything there is to know about me, and he forgave me. He decided not to share it with Cleo because she and I were struggling to be friends and he didn’t want to make things worse than they already were.’
Boyd had made it seem far more likely that Mark had simply decided not to tell Cleo the truth about Evie, and it felt like a point to the defence. There were bigger obstacles to overcome, though, and it was too early to judge the odds.
Nick Grieves, the detective who had led Evie’s initial interrogation prior to charging her, was called to the stand and read out the content of her interview. The words he spoke were Evie’s words: her answers to the questions posed in her interview; her description of events on the night she killed Mark North.
Harriet risked a glance at her client. Evie sat motionless, her features clear of expression.
The crime scene technician was questioned and the prosecution made much of the tampering with the light fitting. But when pushed by Boyd, the girl admitted that it was impossible to say who had switched the wires. There were no fingerprints and Harriet knew that, despite a detailed check of all the computers in the house and their internet histories, no links to any useful sites explaining how to rewire a light fitting had been found. Evie’s statement to the police had included her assertion that Mark only hurt her when the lights were out. So their argument was that it was far more likely that he had tampered with the lights to guarantee darkness.
The prosecution had moved on to the injuries that Evie had sustained on her arms on the night of Mark’s death. The wounds had been carefully photographed and examined for Mark’s DNA while Evie was in hospital and the findings confir
med that she and Mark had intercourse before he died, and that his DNA was found in her cuts.
As the forensic physician who had examined Evie was called to the stand, Harriet could see he was fidgeting and unable to keep his hands still. She checked her notes and it seemed he was new to the role. She had to hope he was good enough at his job.
Once the doctor had been introduced to the court, Devisha pulled up an image of Evie’s inner arms and chest on the screen.
‘Would you describe these as defence wounds?’ she asked, smiling broadly in spite of the subject.
‘I think it’s unlikely because of the pattern of the cuts. If the defendant had been holding her arms up to protect her face or head, the angle of the cuts would be different. Also, when someone is protecting themselves against a serious knife attack, the wounds would typically be a lot deeper and would be on the outside of the arm. These are quite superficial and those on her arms are all to the soft skin between wrist and antecubital fossa – that’s the inside of the elbow.’
Harriet had been sure from the outset that it would be a mistake to plead self-defence, and now she was relieved she hadn’t recommended it to Evie.
‘And those on her chest?’ Devisha asked.
‘Again, superficial. If he had been slashing at her with a knife, I would have expected the wounds to have different depths, depending on how successful each stroke was. These are fairly consistent in their depth – measured, almost.’
‘Doctor Moore, given that these cuts were unlikely to have been sustained as Miss Clarke defended herself against an attack, is it possible that she could have inflicted these wounds on herself?’
‘It’s not impossible, although very painful, I would have thought. But there is nothing to suggest that self-harm should be ruled out.’
Devisha consulted her notes. ‘The forensic evidence tells us that Mr North’s body came into contact with the cuts at some point. We know that when the victim was found, the defendant was holding him, lying close, her chest against his back, her arms around his upper body. Would this have been sufficient for the DNA to be transferred into the cuts?’
And So It Begins Page 15