Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (3 page)

But it was one thing to throw away a jacket, quite another when the jacket rejected you. With a huge effort she controlled her rage and spoke. Her voice was husky with tears that must come -
but not yet! Not until he’s gone and can’t see me.

‘If that’s how you see it, Bob, then I think you should go.
Now
, tonight, straight away. Go to this Sonya of yours and tell her I sent you.’

He looked shocked. Whatever response he’d expected, this wasn’t the one.

‘Only promise me one thing, Bob, will you - for all the years we’ve had together. When she throws you out, as she probably will one day, don’t come crawling back to me. Don’t demean yourself like that.’

3. Jason Barnes

‘S
O YOU threw him out, just like that?’

The solicitor, Lucy Parsons, settled back in her seat opposite Sarah Newby, as their train pulled out of York station. A comfortable, round woman with a vast fund of Yorkshire shrewdness, Lucy had spotted the signs of strain when Sarah arrived at the station. Her skin looked pale and lined, the bounce was gone from her normal brisk stride. She’d explained as the train came in, heaving her bag into the first class carriage with a defiant shrug.

‘Bob’s having an affair. I told him to leave.’

Lucy gazed at her friend with concern. She was one of Sarah’s closest friends and colleagues. She had been the first to entrust her with a steady stream of cases without which a young barrister becomes simply a highly qualified member of the unemployed. When they first met, Sarah had just completed her pupillage. As an ‘elderly’ novice in her mid thirties, she was exactly the type whom many solicitors avoided. But Lucy had seen something in the clear hazel eyes and determined face that others had missed.
This one’s like me
, she’d thought.
She deserves a chance, at least.

So she’d sent her a few cases and her trust had been amply repaid. Lucy’s clients began to experience an unexpected run of success. Sarah’s sharp eye for detail and incisive courtroom manner left lying witnesses exposed and badly prepared counsel humiliated. The two women - Lucy short, cheery, and circular, Sarah slender, smart and brisk - began to appear regularly around the courts in York, Leeds and the North-East. Their cases became more challenging, their successes more satisfying. Two years ago their relationship had been tested in the fire of Sarah’s controversial defence of her own son, a case which Lucy feared might end her friend’s career for good, in a blaze of tabloid publicity and professional disapproval. But they had come out stronger than ever.

Since then they had prospered. Lucy was now a partner in a firm of solicitors in Leeds, and thus able to send a stream of increasingly complex - and lucrative - criminal cases Sarah’s way. Hence now, these first class seats, an extravagance they would once have shunned. The comparative comfort made it easier for them to spread out their papers in relative privacy.

But Lucy had no intention of starting work without hearing the full story of Sarah’s quarrel with Bob. Sarah gazed out of the window for a while, as the train picked up speed. Then she turned back to Lucy. Her smile was strained, she wore more makeup around the eyes than usual. The sharp lift of her chin, though, was as defiant as ever.

‘Well, yes. I told him to get out, and leave me to mourn in peace. Which he did, somewhat to my surprise. Perhaps it’s me, I look fiercer than I feel.’

Sarah attempted an ironic, self-deprecating smile. It worked quite well for a second. Then an unwanted, renegade tear trickled out of the corner of her eye. She stared out of the window, and fumbled for a tissue in her bag.

‘And this happened when?’

‘Monday. Two days ago.’

‘And you haven’t heard from him since?’

‘He sent me a
text
- for Christ’s sake - to say he’d be seeing a lawyer about the divorce, and when could he come round for his clothes?’

‘Did you answer?’

‘I sent him one word -
Wednesday
. Today, while we’re in London. Anything left when I get back is going to Oxfam. Every last sock.’

‘I’d have done that already. Or cut off the sleeves and shredded his Y-fronts.’

A faint smile crossed Sarah’s face. ‘I was tempted, Lucy, believe me. But I’ve had enough publicity. I didn’t want to end up in the
News of the World
. Again.’

Their eyes met, remembering the press pack that had pursued them up the steps of York’s Crown Court every day of her son’s trial. Sarah shook her head slowly.

‘I’d no idea of the depths of rage it would rouse. My hands shake when I think of him. It’s the betrayal, Lucy. After all these years. The callous self-centred betrayal.’

Her voice, usually so controlled, shook slightly. She attempted another smile.

‘So I’m a free woman, for the first time in my life. Or about to be. Kids gone, no pets, now no husband either. It’s a new experience. I’ll have to learn to enjoy it.’

It was true, Lucy realised. Sarah had left school at fifteen to have a baby, been married and divorced within a year. She’d married Bob and had her second child, Emily, the year after that. While her contemporaries had been finding their independence, Sarah had been battling with the relentless details of motherhood - nappies, ear infections, vaccinations – and simultaneously struggling to catch up with the studies she had missed - GCSEs, A levels, university, finally the Bar exams and Inns of Court School that had qualified her, in her early thirties, as a barrister.

Supported all the way by her faithful husband Bob.

‘Were there no signs?’ Lucy asked.

‘Well, yes, looking back, of course there were signs. For a start, when he believed Simon was guilty, remember? That was hard.’

Simon was Sarah’s son by her first husband, Kevin - a randy little gamecock of a lad who had got her pregnant, married her, and lived with her for a year before punching her in the face and running off with an older woman. Bob had tried to be a good stepfather to the boy, but had had little success. Simon hated school and teachers. When he dropped out of school to work on building sites, Bob washed his hands of him. Since Simon’s friends were thugs and petty criminals, Bob was shocked but not surprised when his girlfriend was found dead and the lad was charged with her murder. While Sarah had fiercely defended her son, Bob had urged her to stand back and let the law take its course.

‘We never really recovered from that,’ Sarah said ruefully. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you can easily forgive or forget. And then of course, there was his affair with that wretched Stephanie. I should have slung him out then, looking back on it. Only he looked so hurt and pathetic when she dumped him. I thought he’d learned his lesson. And after all, I wasn’t entirely free of blame.’

‘Terry Bateson, you mean?’ Lucy raised an eyebrow quizzically. She had often wondered about Sarah and the handsome, widowed detective. There was a certain chemistry between them; maybe Bob had seen that too.

‘Mm. There was a moment ... but if I’d let it go further, who knows where we’d be now? My reputation in the trashcan, I suppose, for starters.’

Lucy smiled. Despite the shocks Sarah had endured in her life, her attitudes could be surprisingly conventional. But she had learned early how harshly the world could condemn.

‘That was then, this is now. He’s a widower, Sarah. Needs someone to look after him.’

‘With two little girls who’ll soon be teenagers. You think I’m looking for that sort of burden? Anyway, I don’t need a man, Lucy, do I? Look at all the trouble they cause. This is our time, the women’s century - you read about it in all the papers. It’s men who find loneliness difficult, not women. Look here, I read it yesterday.’

She pulled a newspaper clipping from her briefcase and thrust it across the table. It looked odd, Lucy thought. Sarah usually kept her papers clean and neat; this was folded and crumpled, as though it had got wet and been dried.

‘See? I’m bang up to date.’ She smiled brightly and stared out of the window while Lucy read quickly. Men, the feminist writer suggested, were surplus to female requirements. Happiness meant independence and freedom. ‘The trouble is,’ she continued as Lucy looked up. ‘It may take a while to get used to. But then, there’s always work to keep me going.’

‘Yes. Including this,’ Lucy said, looking at the bundle of papers on the table between them. ‘The appeal of Jason Barnes.’

For the next two hours they worked diligently through the case they were travelling to London to present. It was an exciting opportunity - their first case before the Court of Criminal Appeal. It had come to Lucy out of age and desperation. Jason Barnes had been convicted of murder 18 years ago, and his original appeal had been dismissed. Despite that, Barnes had stubbornly persisted in maintaining his innocence, making it impossible for him to be released on parole. His original legal team had retired, holding out little hope of success. And so the case had come to Lucy, the newest partner in her firm, no one else expressing any interest.

Jason Barnes had been convicted of the murder of a girl called Brenda Stokes, a student at York university. Brenda had been 20, Jason a year older. It was an unusual case because Brenda’s body had never been never found. But she was last seen driving away from a party in a car with Jason. Jason had been quite drunk and aggressive at the party, and Brenda had a reputation for being promiscuous.

When Brenda’s flatmate reported her missing the police interviewed Jason, who claimed he’d dropped her off near her lodgings in Bishopthorpe. They saw some scratches on his face which he said were caused by a fight with a cat. They asked whose car he’d been driving. ‘My mate’s,’ he said. ‘He lent it to me for the night.’ He gave the name of a friend who’d initially lied to support him. The police had examined the friend’s car and found nothing suspicious.

But unfortunately for Jason, he’d knocked over a motorbike in the university car park as he left the party. When the owner saw him, he’d laughed and given him the finger. The furious owner had noted the car’s number and told the police. It matched, not the car Jason said he’d been driving, but a stolen car which had been found torched near Jason’s house in Leeds, that same night.

So Jason was interviewed again. This time he changed his story. Okay, he admitted, he had nicked the car and torched it. And his face had been scratched by Brenda, not a cat. After the party he’d driven Brenda to Landing Lane, a quiet place by the river Ouse, and asked her to have sex with him (not an unreasonable request given her reputation) When she refused, a row had erupted. She’d scratched his face, stormed out of the car and flounced off into the night. That was the last he’d seen of her, he claimed.

But the police found a torch, stained with blood, in the bushes beside the river where he claimed to have left her. This was before the days of DNA but it matched Brenda’s blood group. The owner of the stolen car recognised the torch. He kept it in the glove pocket, he said, for emergencies. In the blood on the torch was Jason’s fingerprint. As a result he was charged with her murder.

Despite a massive police search, Brenda’s body was never found. This, clearly, weakened the police case. But then, while Jason was on remand, his cellmate, Brian Winnick, made a statement. Jason had boasted to him about killing Brenda, he said. He’d hit her over the head with the torch because she’d refused to have sex with him. When he’d realised she was dead he’d thrown her body in the river and watched it float away. After that he’d driven home to Leeds and torched the car to hide the bloodstains. Jason denied all this, but Brian Winnick stood by his statement in court. This, together with the murder weapon - the bloodstained torch - and Jason’s lies about the stolen car, convinced the jury of his guilt. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. His first appeal failed and, because of his continued protestations of innocence, he’d never been eligible for parole.

The basis of this new appeal that Sarah was travelling to London to present was the evidence of a solicitor, Raymond Crosse, who had visited Brian Winnick in hospital last year, shortly before he died. Mr Crosse claimed that Brian Winnick told him that his evidence against Jason Barnes was a lie. He had made it all up, he said, so that the police would let him off a serious charge of drug dealing. He had seen nothing wrong with this at the time but now he wanted to put things right before he died.

‘Tell me about this witness,’ Sarah said. ‘Raymond Crosse. What’s he like?’

‘Middle-aged criminal solicitor. Bald, baggy suit, worn down by the job. Talks to ten different liars every day.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘Don’t we all?’

‘Will he impress the judges?’

‘Should do. He seems honest. I think he believes what he’s saying, why wouldn’t he? It’s whether Winnick was telling the truth, that’s the question.’

Sarah grimaced. ‘It would help if this man Crosse had got Winnick to sign this statement, on oath, before he died. What was he thinking of, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Expecting his client to live, I suppose. They often do.’

‘Yes, well this one didn’t.’ Sarah studied the papers. ‘What about this other witness, Amanda Carr? What’s she like?’

‘Perfectly decent, reliable. Married, two kids. Senior nurse at York District. Just a trainee back then, of course.’

‘Likely to make a good impression in court?’

‘If she’s called. Your first problem is to get them to consider her evidence at all. Since it was dismissed in the original appeal.’

‘Oh, I think I we’ve got a fair chance of that. Rules on disclosure have tightened up a lot since then. But whether they let her take the stand, that’s another matter. You can’t put much reliance on anyone’s memory after 18 years. It’s her statement at the time that matters most. And the fact that the police suppressed it. Or lost it, as they claim.’

The two women re-read the statement carefully. On the night when she disappeared, Brenda Stokes had been wearing a school blazer, white blouse, and a short black miniskirt. Amusing and provocative, no doubt, on a well-developed nineteen year old. She had left the party with Jason apparently drunk and happy, in the stolen car. At four a.m. that morning, Amanda Carr had been driving home from a different party at Naburn Maternity Hospital when she had passed a young woman with long dark hair, wearing a schoolgirl outfit, walking towards her on a country road.