Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (46 page)

The rats heard him too, as he clambered clumsily across the fence. They heard him curse as he snagged his jacket on the wire. And they scurried quickly to their nests in the kitchen cupboards and under the beds, to wait in safety until he was gone.

Never thinking for a second that he would climb through the toilet window just like them. Never expecting him to flash a torch on their hiding places, open doors, expose their precious babies to the horror of his boots, his stick, his foul swearing. Never expecting to end up fleeing for their lives, out of the window, across the lawn, back into the woods from whence they came.

Leaving the man in the house alone.

50. Warning

‘F
LATTERER. I’LL see you tonight then. Bye.’

Sarah clicked off her phone and crossed the foyer of the court, still smiling from a conversation with Michael. The meal the other night had gone well; he had taken it as a challenge to cook even better for her next time. This new relationship, it seemed to her, was improving by the day. She felt lucky: somehow, at her age, she had managed to find a lover who was good in bed, interesting to talk to, and kind and generous in the way he treated her. He had spent the weekend looking at flats with her, but they found none she liked - perhaps, she realised, because she was enjoying her stay in Michael’s house too much. It was the perfect arrangement - alone on the hilltop, with beautiful views over the valley, and her lover in the windmill next door. She could invite him in when she needed company, be alone when she didn’t. And each evening together, it seemed to her, was a little better.

He still had strange moods which worried her. He’d been so cool and dismissive towards her questions about Brenda Stokes that she hadn’t dared bring up the subject of the file in his study. Perhaps he’d loved the girl, Sarah thought; if so, that would make his attitude and the morbid file of yellowing newspaper cuttings more easily understandable. What mattered at the moment was the warmth of the attention he was lavishing on her. There was a spring in her step, a sparkle in her mind. This affair is like a bubble in time, she thought. If I’m lucky, it will expand to encompass my whole future -
our
future together. But I must enjoy it while it lasts.

It could burst at any moment.

At the door, she bumped into a man. A tall, loose-limbed man, in a faded double-breasted suit. He put out a hand to restrain her.

‘Hello, Sarah.’

‘What? Oh, hi
- Terry!
I didn’t see you.’

‘No. You look busy.’

‘So - so. An easy case today for once.’

She stepped past him through the door into the sunshine, on the wide stone veranda overlooking the grassy circle called the Eye of York. To her right and straight ahead was the eighteenth century women’s prison, now the Castle Museum; to her left the Norman castle, Clifford’s Tower, on its circular grassy mound. Terry followed her out.

‘Lucky for some.’

‘Yes.’ She brushed a wisp of dark hair from her eye, looking up at him. He looked well, she thought. Fit, but quite tense. A little tired. ‘You busy?’

‘No peace for the wicked. Or at least, I hope there isn’t. Still running a murder hunt. Among six other things.’

‘Not that murder at Crockey Hill? Haven’t you got anyone for that?’

‘Not yet, no.’ Terry smiled ruefully. ‘So ... we’re still looking.’

‘Oh. Well, good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ His eyes studied her carefully, seeing the trace of a smile linger on her lips. It wasn’t a smile for him, he felt sure. ‘You look well.’

‘Thanks. So do you.’

‘I heard you split up with ...’ At the vital moment he couldn’t recall the name of the wretched man. ‘... your husband?’

‘He left me, yes. I’m getting a divorce.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. What’s done is done. My life’s started a new chapter, that’s all.’ She lifted her chin in that brave, unconscious movement of assertion that he remembered so well. It set off a symphony of memories inside him - the defiant mother who’d defended her son against all the world; who’d insisted, when he doubted himself, that he had to do better. She was the only woman, since Mary, who he’d ever seriously tried to seduce, and he’d almost succeeded. The only one he could never fully get out of his head, however seldom he saw her.

And now she was getting divorced.

‘So ... you’re all alone in that house, then?’

‘I’ve sold it, Terry. I’ve moved out.’

‘Oh, I see. So where ...?’

‘I’m staying with a friend. Michael Parker. You met him, I think. He’s renting me a house. Out in the country, on the Wolds.’ Her hazel eyes met his coolly.
Don’t ask, Terry, please
, was the message.
If you do I’ll bite your head off.

‘I see. Was that who you were phoning?’
And smiling for
, Terry thought bitterly. The news hurt, like a knife in the ribs. A light punch at first, spreading pain thereafter.

‘As it happens, yes.’ She raised an eyebrow at his impertinence. ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Your girls. They must be growing up.’

‘Yes, they are.’ Terry drew a deep breath, answering randomly, scarcely hearing what he said. ‘Jessica’s in her second term at Fulford now, loving it so far. Esther’s jealous of course, but she’s growing all the time. She’s got a guinea pig, and a rabbit as well ...’

‘That’s nice.’

‘It’s a lot of trouble. You’ve no idea ...’ He stopped, gazing at her sadly. He didn’t want to stand here talking about rabbits and guinea pigs. She probably didn’t want to hear about them either. She’d never been a very domesticated woman, as far as he could make out. She hadn’t even been a particularly good mother, from what he’d witnessed of the tempestuous arguments with her son and teenage daughter a couple of years ago.

Not a good mother, at least, until the chips were down. Then she’d been superb.

But then, a woman who could defend her son in court wouldn’t necessarily be any good as a stepmother helping a nine-year-old care for a rabbit and guinea pig, Terry told himself sternly. Even if there was the remotest opportunity for that. Which, clearly, there wasn’t.

But there was something, all the same, that she ought to know.

‘How about a coffee?’ he said, recovering himself. ‘If you’ve got time, that is. In your busy professional life.’

Sarah smiled at him fondly, comparing him to Michael in her mind. He came out of the comparison quite well, she thought - robust, manly, straightforward, with a few rough edges that appealed to her. She couldn’t imagine him fussing about having a shower before they made love. But then, there was no need to fantasise about making love to Terry, or anyone else. She had a lover already. One she was going home to tonight.

‘All right. I suppose I could spare a few minutes.’

Sitting at a table in Starbucks, Terry reverted to the point that was worrying him.

‘He’s ... a landlord, isn’t he, this Michael Parker? Property developer, that sort of thing.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘I met him. It’s his house this woman was killed in.’

‘I know that, Terry. He told me.’

‘Yes, well. We’re still looking for her killer.’

‘Well, I hope you nail the bastard,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s one of the reasons I moved. Not the main one, of course, but he contributed.’

‘What?’

‘Well, I was living alone in a house backing onto a public footpath, wasn’t I? Just like all these women who got attacked. It’s not a great feeling.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ Terry said. ‘I thought you were tougher than that.’

‘Tough? Well, maybe, but we all have our limits. Who knows, perhaps this woman who was murdered was tough as well. Or thought she was. Anyway, how’s your case going?’

‘Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Cautiously, he began to fill her in on the details of the case - the way Alison had been found hanged, apparently after taking a bath; the early suspicions of suicide, disproved by the tape marks on her wrists discovered by the forensic pathologist; the frustrating search for Peter Barton; the bruises on her buttocks; and the two remaining leads: the red Nissan, and the possibility that Alison might have been murdered by a lover.

‘It sounds intriguing,’ Sarah said. ‘Which do you think it is?’

‘Well, I keep an open mind, of course ...’

Sarah laughed. ‘Oh come on, Terry, this isn’t a public statement for the press. What do you
think?
’

Terry frowned. ‘I think it was her lover.’

‘And? What are you looking at me like that for?
Terry?’
Sarah smiled, perplexed. So far the conversation had seemed to her to be going well. ‘Come on, we’re still friends aren’t we? Spill the beans.’

Terry drew a deep breath. ‘You’re not going to like this, Sarah, but ... there’s something you should know.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s not completely impossible that her lover was Michael Parker.’

‘What?’
The friendly atmosphere froze. Sarah felt as if an icy waterfall had fallen on her head out of a clear blue sky. She stared at Terry in shocked disbelief.
‘Michael?
You can’t be serious!’

‘It’s only a possibility, you understand. One we can’t exclude.’

‘But you must have proof. Evidence. What is it?’

‘Well ...’ Her face was sharp, as intent as he had ever seen it. Those clear hazel eyes bored into his like lasers. Carefully, he began to count off the points. ‘... firstly, of course, he’s her landlord. So he knew her. In fact he was there two days before she died. He admits that himself.’

‘Why was he there?’ Sarah’s voice was cold, hard, intimidating - the tone she kept for a hostile witness in court.

‘To fix the central heating, he says. And his prints are all over the house.’

‘Well, they would be. It’s his house.’

‘Yes. On the radiators certainly. But they’re in the bathroom too. And on her bedside table.’

‘He might have used the bathroom. Touched the table when he furnished the house.’

‘He might. But it would have been smudged over time, or dusted off when she cleaned. This looked fairly recent.’

‘What else have you got?’

‘Well, he drives a black car, I believe ...’

‘A BMW, yes ...’

‘... and one was seen there quite often. And then, there’s the absence of any other plausible lovers. And the question of why she came to York in the first place. She spent most of her life abroad, you see, teaching, until she started writing school textbooks. She needed a house to rent but she could have found one in Spain or Morocco or anywhere if she’d wanted, somewhere sunny and warm. So why come to York? Her editor thinks it had something to do with an old boyfriend from her student days.’

‘Where was she a student?’

‘In York. She studied foreign languages.’

‘
Well, there you are then
.
That’s why she came.’

‘Michael Parker did a postgraduate course here too, in 1991. That was Alison Grey’s final year. He didn’t mention her to you, did he, by any chance?’

‘Only as his tenant, the woman who was murdered.’ Sarah stared at Terry coldly. For some strange reason the memory of the file she had found in Michael’s study the other night flashed briefly into her mind, confusing her. But that was about the murder of Brenda Stokes, 18 years ago. Nothing to do with this, surely.

‘Have you got any evidence whatsoever to suggest that this old boyfriend, if he actually existed, was Michael Parker? That she even met him here in York?’

‘Not so far, no. But ...’

‘You’ve tested the body for DNA, have you? Pubic hairs, semen, that sort of thing?’

‘Of course. But she’d had a bath. Quite a luxurious one, in fact, with bath salts and candles and so on, before she died. So if he did have sex with her he didn’t leave a trace. Just these whip marks on her buttocks.’

‘You found the whip, then?’

‘No. We looked, of course.’ Terry shrugged.

‘And that’s it?’

‘All we have so far, yes.’ Terry lowered his gaze for a moment, glancing down at the table to avoid the furious accusation in those blazing hazel eyes; then looked up again doggedly. ‘I have spoken to your friend Michael.’

‘And?’

‘He denies anything other than a purely business relationship. He last saw her two days before she died, he says. On the actual day of her death he spent the afternoon and most of the evening with building workers at a housing development near Scarborough. I checked. He was there. Till about ten in the evening.’

Sarah thought back. That was the night he cancelled their date, she remembered. The day before she met him in Cambridge. And took him to bed.

‘So that puts him out of the frame, does it?’

‘Not completely, no. The pathologist puts the time of death anywhere between about eight at night and one in the morning. So if he’d hurried back from Scarborough, he might just have had time. You don’t happen to know when he got back, do you?’

‘No. I was still in my old house then.’

‘Pity.’

‘But you’ve no proof. No one saw his car, for instance? Just this red Nissan?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Michael doesn’t drive a red Nissan, Terry, not his style. Anyway, how would he have got into the house?’

Terry described the downstairs loo window. ‘Could have been that way, who knows? But since he was her landlord, he probably had a key. Especially if he was her lover. He could have opened the front door, done the deed, locked it again on the way out.’

‘No burglar alarm?’

‘No.’

Sarah shuddered. Terry’s use of the word
lover
hurt her deep inside, as though she’d been punched just below the heart. ‘But
why
, Terry? What possible reason could Michael have for doing a thing like this?’

Terry shook his head. ‘Lover’s quarrel, perhaps. You know this man better than me, Sarah. Would he be capable of it?’

‘Oh come on, now!’ Sarah stared at him for a second, trembling. Then her fury flared up, like a vixen defending her cub. ‘Terry, you don’t like Michael, do you? Have you considered you might have got this totally, horribly wrong? That you might be accusing an innocent man of murder? You’re stretching this much, much too far. For a start he’s not a sadist - I think I’d know about that. Let’s look at it, shall we? What evidence have you got? A few easily explained fingerprints, and the occasional sighting of a black car - is that it? No DNA, no other forensic evidence of any kind. No proof that he ever had any relationship other than a business one with this woman apart from the fact that they once studied in York together, along with 5,000 other students. A pretty good alibi, and nothing to put him anywhere near the scene of the crime. Are you even sure it wasn’t suicide?’