‘Yes.’
‘And the fact that a chest hair was embedded in one of the cuts?’
‘We know that intercourse had taken place and it’s very possible that chest hairs were on the bedding. There is no way of telling precisely how they were transferred to Miss Clarke’s injuries.’
‘So what you’re saying, if I understand you correctly, is that it is possible Evie Clarke cut herself, that the DNA was transferred to the wounds as she lay with her chest against Mark North’s back, and that the hair could have come from the bedclothes?’
The doctor nodded. ‘Yes, that’s all perfectly feasible.’
Harriet resisted the temptation to look at Evie. It could appear to the court that she was sharing a moment of doubt, so she remained straight-backed and attentive.
Devisha concluded her questioning and thanked the witness. Boyd pushed himself slowly to his feet.
‘Doctor Moore,’ he said. ‘You have told the court that there is no way of telling how the chest hairs and DNA were transferred to Miss Clarke’s cuts. So that assumes, I would imagine, that her statement claiming they were transferred as they made love after he had cut her could equally be true?’
The doctor’s gaze moved backwards and forwards between Devisha and Boyd. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s right.’
‘As you know, Miss Clarke has never claimed that she killed Mark North in self-defence. She never accused him of wielding a knife with the intention of killing her, either. It was more complicated than that, and as we will see when I call witnesses for the defence, there was a pattern of physical abuse in their relationship. So are these wounds consistent with cuts that could have been made as a form of punishment, or maybe just for the sheer pleasure of causing pain to another?’
Harriet looked at the jury and saw one or two of the women wince at the thought.
The doctor was silent for a moment, clearly thinking about the question. ‘If someone had stood behind Miss Clarke and held her hands above her head, he could have cut the inside of her arms by reaching round from behind, and cut her chest too. Or he could have laid her flat on the bed and secured her hands above her head, exposing the inner arms and holding them out of the way of her chest. That would make sense, if the wounds were inflicted by someone else.’
‘Thank you, Doctor Moore. I have no further questions.’
To Harriet’s surprise, the doctor carried on, although he appeared to be talking to himself. ‘The same could be said of the other scars on her body, too, I suspect.’
Harriet leaned forward in her chair and at the same time she saw Devisha’s head snap up. She hadn’t known about any other scarring. Why hadn’t Evie mentioned it?
‘You found evidence of previous scarring on Evie Clarke’s body?’ Boyd asked.
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’ The doctor’s eyes flicked around the courtroom, from judge, to jury, to defendant. ‘I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. I realise it’s not relevant to the case. I was just speaking my thoughts out loud.’
‘Where did you find this scarring?’
‘On her abdomen. I’d been asked specifically to report on the recent cuts only so I didn’t examine the rest of her body. I noticed the other scars as I was treating those on her chest.’
Harriet was suddenly desperate for Boyd to stop. Evie had said in her interview that Mark had never cut her before – the court had just heard that, and it was her whole justification for not being worried about taking the knife into the bedroom with her. Boyd needed to stop this line of questioning now. But Harriet had no way of interrupting him, and he was standing in front of her so she couldn’t catch his eye.
‘And would you say the previous scars were a result of similar injuries?’
‘Very possibly. It’s hard to say, though.’
‘Why would that be, Doctor Moore?’
‘Well, many of the scars had faded considerably. They were completely healed.’
Harriet’s head was spinning. What did it mean? She should have known about this – Evie should have told her. She knew what was coming – what line Devisha would take – and Boyd clearly realised that they were in uncharted territory too. He tried to close it down.
‘Thank you, Doctor. That’s very helpful. No further questions.’
Devisha was immediately on her feet, asking to re-examine the witness.
‘Doctor Moore, when you say the scars had healed, how old would you say they were?’
Whatever the answer, Harriet feared this could be a gift for the prosecution.
‘Impossible to say with any certainty. People heal at different rates and it can depend on all sorts of factors. After the scabbing process, the scar usually remains brown or pink for quite a long time. I didn’t study the scars in much detail but given her age and fitness I would say that the scars I saw were a few years old.’
‘By a few, does that mean two, or more than two?’ Devisha asked, her smile widening.
‘A minimum of two, I would say. In reality the injuries could have dated back a long time – even back to adolescence.’
‘So given that Evie Clarke didn’t meet Mark North until two and a half years ago, and moved into his house as recently as eighteen months ago, are you saying that it is unlikely that these injuries could have been – in terms of time – inflicted by Mark North?’
The doctor blew out a long breath and paused for a moment. ‘In view of the timescales, he’d have had to inflict the injuries more or less from the day they first met, and even then, I would say that they were older. I would need to take another look to be certain.’
‘And could they, like the other cuts, have been self-inflicted?’
‘I would prefer to take another look before committing myself.’
It didn’t matter. The damage had been done. Harriet once more resisted the temptation to turn to look at Evie. Instead, she looked confidently around the courtroom as if she had known all along about these scars.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the other scars?’ Harriet asked Evie. The judge had granted a brief recess, and the timing had given her a chance to talk to her client. ‘Honestly, Evie, you have to tell me everything.’
She tried not to show her frustration, but she knew that the chances of Evie being found not guilty of murder hung in the balance, however well Boyd was performing.
‘I’d forgotten they were there,’ Evie said. ‘They’re just part of me now, and I never think about them.’
‘Was it Mark?’ It had been fairly clear from the doctor’s statement that this wasn’t the case, but she had to ask.
‘There’s no point trying to pin this on Mark. The doctor would re-examine me and I would be proved to be a liar. So no, it wasn’t Mark. It was before him.’
‘Your husband, Nigel?’
Harriet knew that some women were addicted to abusive relationships. Their own sense of self-esteem was so low that they were attracted to people who treated them as worthless. If she put Evie on the stand and this came out, it might increase the jury’s sympathy for her, but only if she was prepared to explain it.
‘It wasn’t Nigel – he never touched me.’
It seemed Evie’s husband, Nigel Clarke, was proving difficult to locate. Evie hadn’t talked about him much, saying he was irrelevant. All Harriet knew was that they had married when Evie was in her late teens, and Nigel had treated her well.
‘It’s a dreadful thing to say,’ Evie had told her, ‘but I left him because I was bored. We weren’t going anywhere, and I felt there was more to life. I’m not proud of it.’
Harriet could sympathise. She had never had time for a man in her life, and having seen the devastation some of them were capable of causing she hadn’t been interested in any relationship that lasted more than a week.
The prosecution had tried to track Nigel down, but Evie had told Harriet that she thought he had left the country, and claimed she had no contact with him.
‘The truth is, Evie, that if you have other old wounds, you are going
to have to explain where they came from. The prosecution is already trying to suggest that your cuts were self-inflicted, and it’s essential that we can demonstrate without doubt that Mark was hurting you. It’s your only defence, and unexplained scars are not going to help with that. You have to tell me, Evie. I don’t want any more surprises.’
Evie stared at her and didn’t speak for a few seconds. Harriet was about to ask her again when to her surprise Evie stood up and took off her jacket. Turning her back on Harriet, she started to unbutton her shirt.
She spoke over her shoulder without turning round. ‘The doctor only examined the fresh wounds on my arms and chest. I didn’t realise he had seen the scars on my stomach.’
She dropped the shirt to her waist and Harriet stared, speechless, at the criss-cross pattern of white scars on her back.
‘Seen enough?’ Evie asked, pulling her shirt back on after a few moments. ‘Do you think I could have done that to myself?’
Harriet was silent while Evie dressed, waiting until the young woman sat down again.
‘What happened?’ she asked quietly.
‘If the doctor wants to examine me again, I think he’ll find that on closer inspection these marks were made by something other than a knife. They were in fact made by a leather bullwhip.’
‘Jesus, Evie – who did that to you?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s got nothing to do with any of this and I’m not going to talk about it.’
Harriet had seen every type of abuse – or so she thought – and there was sadly nothing that unusual about a woman being whipped.
‘Evie, this might help your case. I need to think about it, but it might be something we can use to our advantage.’
Evie pushed herself up from the chair and leaned on the table separating her and Harriet.
‘No!’ she said, snapping out the word. ‘You want everyone feeling sorry for me – the victim who has been abused not once, but twice in her life. This trial is about me and Mark, and I don’t want anyone to know about this. Understood?’
Harriet nodded slowly, although she didn’t agree. ‘I think that on the evidence of the doctor the prosecution will try even harder to find Nigel – whether he’s the one who hurt you or not.’
‘Well, wish them luck with that,’ Evie said, a lopsided smile lightening her bleak expression. ‘Even I don’t know where he is.’
35
I wish I hadn’t been forced to show Harriet my back. Why did that doctor have to mention the other scars? He wasn’t asked the question, so he shouldn’t have volunteered the information.
Harriet’s face became pinched when I refused to tell her how I got them. She doesn’t like me holding anything back but the only way I will tell the story is as a very last resort.
Thinking about it makes me want to curl up into a tight ball and hug my knees close to my chest. I can still feel the leather bindings digging into my wrists and ankles as I am stretched on the bed, face down, naked. I only showed Harriet my back – I spared her the rest.
The memory of his voice, raspy with too many cigarettes and too much booze, and the stink of his skeletal, unwashed body, nearly makes me gag.
‘You think you’re something special, don’t you?’ he asked, his lips close to my face. I twisted my head away from him so that I couldn’t smell his sour breath or feel the spittle spraying from between his rotting teeth.
I don’t know if it was the first lash of the whip that hurt the most, or the last. The first was a shock, the pain ripping through me, the skin splitting open. I tried to block all feeling from my mind as I had done so many times before as he experimented with new ways of hurting me. The whip was his latest idea – and when the thin nylon cord of the cracker hit the open sores of the previous lash I had to bite the pillow to stop myself from screaming. I knew he wanted me to beg for mercy, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
But it’s over. He’s dead. He can’t hurt me any more. Nobody can.
36
Cleo felt as if she had been spun in a washing machine and hung out to dry. Her body ached with the tension of holding herself taut throughout the day, and every ounce of energy had leached from her body. It had been a struggle to force her way through the hordes of press outside the court, trying to block out cries of ‘Cleo!’ or ‘Miss North!’ as hungry journalists vied for her attention, demanding a comment on the revelations about her brother. Her head throbbed and she longed to lay it down on a cool, soft pillow, but she was going to have to raise some energy for Lulu.
She drove like an automaton along the busy dual carriageway, noticing nothing and almost forgetting to turn off onto the narrow country lanes that would take her home. How she managed to avoid knocking down a cyclist who crossed in front of her as he signalled to turn right she didn’t know, but without conscious thought she swerved around him and ignored the gesticulations and abuse that followed her.
Finally she pulled up in front of Aminah’s house. She sat still in her seat for a few minutes, taking deep breaths and trying to calm herself until she saw the face of one of Aminah’s children at the window and knew she had to make a move. She wearily forced herself from the car and walked slowly up a path strewn with children’s toys to the front door.
Aminah opened the door. ‘Are you okay, Cleo?’
‘Not really.’ Cleo fought to control the urge to cry. Everything she had heard in court had almost felt worse than hearing that Mark was dead. She could hardly bear to look at Aminah, but when she finally raised her eyes she felt a brief stab of surprise at the sight of her friend. There were dark smudges below her eyes, and two deep lines between her brows.
‘Look, love – I’d like to ask you to come in, but it’s difficult. I don’t mind having Lulu for you, but you know we can’t talk about the case.’
Cleo felt her concern drain away to be replaced by anger. Maybe Aminah’s obvious stress was the result of a guilty conscience.
‘How are you going to be able to bring yourself to stand up in court and speak in Evie’s defence? It’s beyond me.’
‘We’ve been over this a hundred times, so don’t let’s fall out. I’m so worried about you, Cleo, and I can’t bear the thought of hurting you. But I don’t think that telling the truth indicates that I’m siding with either the defence or the prosecution. I’m only answering the questions I’m asked, and I will answer honestly.’
‘It’s all bollocks, you know that. Mark wouldn’t hurt a fly. She’s saying that he always hurt her in the dark – but Mark’s afraid of the dark!’
Aminah’s lips settled into a tight line.
‘For God’s sake, Cleo – I don’t need to know any of this. And apart from anything else, Mark wasn’t a small child. I find it difficult to believe that a man of thirty-seven was still afraid of the dark. You really never stopped thinking of him as a child, did you?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Cleo said, the anger draining from her. Nobody could understand what she had done for Mark.
‘Anyway, I’m pleased to hear that you’re keeping Evie alive in Lulu’s thoughts.’
Cleo said nothing but avoided Aminah’s gaze.
‘She’s been chuntering on in that language that only she understands today, but there’s one word that she seems to have grasped. Mummy. Or Mumma as she says. Well done, Cleo. I’m proud of you for that.’
‘Where is she?’ Cleo asked, suddenly needing to get out of there and away from Aminah as quickly as possible.
‘She’s playing with Anik. Zahid’s watching them. Are you going back to court tomorrow?’
‘Of course,’ Cleo said. ‘I’ll sort something for Lulu, though. I can see that it’s difficult for you, and it’s probably best if we keep out of each other’s way until it’s all over.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re happy to have Lulu whenever you like. She’s a cute kid and she’s no trouble.’ Aminah’s voice softened. ‘Cleo, you and I have been friends for a long time. We may not see eye to eye on th
is, but it’s separate to our friendship, isn’t it? I’m only going to tell the truth – not make any judgements – surely you can understand that?’
Cleo was saved the trouble of replying as Zahid walked into the hall carrying Lulu.
‘She must have heard your voice, Cleo,’ he said. Zahid wasn’t smiling, and that was unusual for this normally relaxed, cheerful man. ‘I think she was calling for you.’
Cleo held out her arms for an excited Lulu.
‘Mumma,’ Lulu said, reaching towards her.
It seemed to take forever to get Lulu into her car seat. Cleo had felt Aminah and Zahid watching her, but she had made no excuses. It was none of their business. She had avoided Aminah’s shocked stare and had simply turned and walked back down the path, stepping over a small bicycle lying in her way.
‘Cleo, come back and talk to me about this,’ Aminah had called after her, but she had ignored her.
There was no way she could explain her decision so that Aminah would understand. What was she expected to do? Lulu wouldn’t even remember her mother, and Evie was going to prison, locked up until Lulu was a teenager. Surely it was better for Lulu to believe Cleo was her mother? They would move away from here to a town where nobody knew them. Cleo would change her name. She wouldn’t be able to change Lulu’s without Evie’s permission, but if she wouldn’t give it Cleo would change her own surname to Clarke so that everyone would believe Lulu was hers. Evie had insisted that her daughter was a Clarke and not a North until such time as she and Mark were married. She had always said that if their relationship didn’t work out, she didn’t want her child to have a different name to her own. Well, if she was so concerned about her daughter’s well-being she could hardly object to Lulu believing she was the child of a loving mother, as opposed to someone rotting in prison for murder.
She would be glad to get home. The dark had descended early tonight. It was December, but the unseasonal warmth of the last few days had turned and a storm was brewing.
And So It Begins Page 16