Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (54 page)

‘I tied her hands behind her back with this scarf I found. I didn’t want no trouble, see, not after last time. Then I shoved her back on the bed, told her to spread her legs, and ... did it. I shagged her senseless. Bitch.’ His eyes met Terry’s, shining with triumph. ‘She couldn’t do owt. Not a thing.’

‘And how did that feel?’

‘Feel? It were great.’ For the first time, a shadow of doubt, a fear of mockery perhaps, or disbelief, flickered in his eyes. ‘What d’you mean, feel?’

‘I just wondered how it felt, to have shagged a woman like that. When she couldn’t fight back.’

‘It served her right.’

‘Served her right?’

‘Yeah. It felt good. She didn’t take all my strength.’

‘Take your strength?’ Terry frowned, puzzled.

‘No. Not that way. Like they do.’

‘All right.’ The kid’s insane, Terry thought. He had no idea what he was talking about, but he saw, or thought he saw, the boy’s fragility crumbling under the facade of his tale. Terry didn’t want to break it down, not yet. He affected a faint, reassuring smile. ‘You had your knife in your hand?’

‘Yeah. At her neck.’

‘Did you use any protection?’

Here, Terry thought, the story would crumble. There’d been condoms in Alison’s bedroom. A type called a
Tickler.
No rapist would bother with that.

‘Aye.’ A sick, cunning grin crossed young Peter’s face. ‘’Course I did. What d’yer think? I wanna get Aids or summat?’

Terry groaned inwardly.
Could this be true?
‘You used a condom?’

‘Yeah. Keep myself clean.’

‘What type was it?’

‘I dunno. Normal sort. What you buy in supermarket, like. You’ve seen ‘em.’

‘So what did you do with it afterwards, Peter?’

‘Flushed it down t’loo. What d’yer think?’

Terry glanced sideways at Jane, shaking his head slowly. The cottage wasn’t on mains drainage, as he remembered; it had a cesspit. The thought of asking someone to trawl through years of accumulated sewage to retrieve a used condom made his heart sink. Even if they found it, it would probably be too filthy to provide any useful evidence. He gazed back at Peter. His story
could
be true, a lot of it fitted. Almost fitted. Yet Terry was reluctant to believe it.

‘So what happened next?’

‘Well, then ...’ There was a long, thoughtful pause. Peter looked down at his hands, then up at the wall behind Terry’s back, then down at the table again. Somehow the sparkle seemed to leach out of him. He sagged, deflated, then raised his head. There was an appealing look in his eyes. Terry thought he was about to admit he was lying, but instead he said: ‘She had to die, you see. After that. I couldn’t help it.’

‘Why, Peter?’

‘She’d seen my face. And she knew ...’ He looked down again, struggling for breath. ‘She knew what I’d done.’

Or hadn’t done,
Terry thought grimly. But it wasn’t time to pursue that, not yet. ‘So how did you kill her?’

‘Well, I dragged her up. After I’d done it, like. Dragged her up to her feet.’

‘And she didn’t resist?’

‘Didn’t have no choice, did she? I still had me knife, see. Not like last time. Said I’d stick it in her tits if she moved. So she didn’t. Not till I said, like. Then when I were good and ready I told her to walk down t’stairs. In front of me, like, me holding end o’t scarf. Like a bitch on’t lead. With me knife in her back, ‘case she tried owt. Then I stopped her in front o’t mirror. Shaking she were.’ He grinned, relishing the image in his mind.

‘What happened then?’

‘I fastened t’scarf round her neck, like a noose. It were that long, it were easy. With me knife at her throat, like.’

Peter drew a deep, shuddering breath. He looked up, the sparkle returning to his eyes. He seemed to pump himself up with excitement at the thrill of the tale he was telling.

Or inventing,
Terry thought.
Can any of this be true?

‘She didn’t like that. She stood there weeping, staring at herself, the fat slag, in’t mirror. See what a great fat whore she were ...’

Beside Peter, the young solicitor’s face was pale, greeny white.

‘... then I got this chair from a room, put it in’t hall, and stood her up on it, in front o’t mirror. I fastened t’loose end o’t scarf through’t banisters, and pulled her head back tight, so she had to stand there on tiptoes, on top of this chair.’ He grinned. ‘It were too late then. She were weeping. She shat herself.’

Oh my God,
Terry thought.
He
was
there after all, he must have been. There’s no other way he could know. Not about that.

‘What happened then?’

‘I kicked the chair away.’ All the sparkle had returned to Peter’s eyes now. The confidence, the macabre delight. He smiled almost shyly at Terry. In triumph, it seemed.
I did this!

‘And then?’

‘She swung. Like a pendulum, you know. It were odd. I shoved her a bit, to make it last. You don’t think that’ll happen, do you?’

Silence filled the room. For over a minute, no one could find anything to say. For Terry, it was like being trapped in a dream. Not his own nightmare, but that of this young monster before him, with the sparkling eyes and shy, appealing grin. And superimposed on that face - quite an attractive face, in its way, despite the ingrained dirt and spots on his forehead - he saw that last, terrible image. A hanged woman swinging to and fro on her own staircase. A small, dumpy, middle-aged woman, with varicose veins on one thigh. Watching herself die in her own mirror. The woman he and Jane had seen dead in her hallway.

And suddenly Terry, like Jane earlier, could take no more. He got to his feet.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I think we all need a break. Interview ended at 1.47 a.m.’

He turned and walked grimly from the room.

58. Picture Phone

S
ARAH’S RELIEF at the knowledge that someone had been arrested was immense. Ever since she met Terry outside court, his suspicions had been preying on her mind. As time passed, she tried to separate her emotions from the facts. By this evening, she had decided there were two distinct questions that worried her.

The first was Terry’s suggestion that Michael had been having an affair with the murdered woman. Sarah’s initial response to this was jealous rage. Michael was
her
lover, no one else’s. If he’d been having an affair with this Alison, then he’d deceived her. But slowly, grimly, she had forced herself to look at this more logically. She and Michael weren’t married, they had made no vows to each other. The first time they had become lovers, in Cambridge, Alison Grey was already dead. And in fact their relationship had only really developed over the months since then.

So, in one sense, even if Michael
had
been having an affair with Alison, he had not been unfaithful to Sarah while doing it. She, Sarah, had come to fill the gap in Michael’s life that Alison had left. That was hardly a flattering way to see herself, but Sarah thought she could live with it. After all, whether the affair lasted or not, it had already given her a great deal. Michael was clearly fond of her, or he wouldn’t be so attentive, wouldn’t have cooked meals for her, wouldn’t have asked her to go to Spain with him. Wouldn’t have found her a house, wouldn’t make love to her the way he did. Wouldn’t have given her a life after her husband Bob had left her.

The more she thought about it, the more she realised how lucky that chance meeting on the train had been, and how much her life had changed because of it. She liked Michael, she was grateful for his affection, she owed him a great deal.

So this evening, when she had asked him about Alison, she hadn’t questioned him as thoroughly as she normally would. Thinking about it later, lying in bed beside him, she wondered at herself. It wasn’t like her, to allow someone to evade something like that. But there were at least three reasons, she thought, why she hadn’t asked him the direct question: ‘Were you having an affair with her?’

Firstly, because of moments like this. His warm body curled against my back, his strong arm round my waist, his breath whispering against my neck as he drifts off to sleep. I like it, I’m happy and content. I don’t care if he had an affair with Alison, she’s dead, she’s no challenge.
I’ve
got him now.

And then secondly, it would just have made him angry. When she’d asked him about Alison he’d become nervous. If I’d pressed him any more we’d have argued, she thought - we’ve never have made love, or had this blissful peace after. And I need it - it’s his gift to me, and mine to him.

The third reason was much the same thing. These suspicions aren’t mine, she told herself, they came from Terry Bateson. He put them in my mind because he’s jealous. He’s fond of me too, so he can’t bear to see me with Michael. So it would have been
his
questions that I’d have been asking, not my own. About an affair that doesn’t matter to me any more, because it’s over.

Not for the first time, she felt anger against Terry Bateson for having put her in this position. What had he asked her to do? Investigate her own lover, for heaven’s sake! And she, foolishly, had agreed.
Why?

Michael rolled over onto his back, and Sarah lay beside him, wide awake, her thigh pressed against his. His sleeping breath made a counterpoint to the steady rhythm of the sails turning outside.
Why
had she agreed? Because Terry had suggested that Alison’s lover - whoever he was - might also have been Alison’s murderer. And that of course put a quite different light on it. This lover - Michael perhaps - might have run Alison a bath, full of luxury bath salts, as Michael had done for her before now, then waited until she got out, warm and naked and presumably cleaned of all traces of male semen or hair from her previous lovemaking, and hanged her with a scarf in the hall.

Sarah shuddered. That might have been this man lying next to her - that’s what Terry had suggested. Only it wasn’t. That seemed certain now, and Terry must know it too. Michael had switched on the radio at ten o’clock so she could hear for herself the item on
Radio York
that he had heard earlier - a 24-year-old man had been arrested in an empty house in Crockey Hill, charged with a number of assaults on women in the York area, and was being interviewed in connection with the murder of Alison Grey.

So it was nothing to do with Michael after all, Sarah told herself. I can relax. Just as I relaxed my defences when he asked me to come up to bed. And I’m glad I did that. It was better than ever tonight; it seemed to matter more to him. Even if he leaves me and goes to Spain we’ve both had this. I’m happy here now. Warm and comfortable and safe.

But somehow, she couldn’t relax. The tension of the evening wouldn’t leave her. She lay awake, listening to Michael’s breathing and the steady swishing of the sails. They hadn’t drawn the curtains - no need out here, so high up - and the moon crept round the corner of a window and shone first on her pillow, then on her face.

She felt thirsty, and searched for a glass of water beside the bed. But there wasn’t one - in the heat of passion neither of them had thought of such things. It’s no good lying here, she thought, I can’t sleep anyway and I need a pee too. Carefully, so as not to wake Michael, she slipped out of bed, dressed herself in his shirt, and crept downstairs past the living room to the kitchen and the bathroom.

Coming out of the bathroom she put the kettle on and sat at the kitchen table listening to it boil. It was quiet and peaceful; just the low lights under the kitchen units. The kettle boiled, and she got up to make a cup of tea. She found cups, milk and teabag, then hunted around for a teaspoon to stir it with. She wasn’t used to this kitchen; she didn’t know which was the cutlery drawer. She pulled open one, full of dish cloths, then a second. It was full of batteries, candles, phone chargers, matches, an old mobile phone.

She was about to close it when she stopped, her heart pounding strangely.
An old mobile phone.
That was what Terry Bateson had asked her to look for, wasn’t it? The one item he had been specific about. The number of an unidentified mobile had cropped up frequently on Alison Grey’s phone bill, and the police wanted to know who it belonged to. Well, maybe it was Michael’s, Sarah thought, after all, he’s admitted he knew her.

Maybe he
was
her lover, and this is the phone they used.
So what, what does it matter, he didn’t kill her and the woman’s dead.
Her hand trembled as she reached for it, then drew back.
Leave it alone, why don’t you?

But she couldn’t. It’s better to know, she thought, then I’ll be certain. If there are texts on here I can read them, know a little more. Maybe it’s all innocent anyway.

She picked up the phone and pressed the
On
button. The screen lit up. Sarah gave a guilty start as a welcoming jingle played - louder than she had expected. She looked round nervously, but she was alone. She searched for
Inbox
, and found a string of little icons of opened envelopes. Beside each one was the same word -
Alison.

Sarah’s heart began to pound in her throat. This is like reading someone’s diary, she thought, it’s snooping, no good ever came of that.

Don’t look. Okay, Terry was right, Michael
was
having an affair with her, so what? It’s none of my business, put it back.

But she had to know. She pressed the button for the first message.

As she did so, the kitchen door opened, and Michael walked in.

‘Do you believe him?’ Jane asked, as they stood outside by the coffee machine. It was the middle of the night and they were both exhausted.

‘Not about the rape, no,’ Terry said, pressing the button for black coffee. ‘And the story about the scarf is odd, too. He doesn’t mention the whip marks either. But he knows most of the rest.’

‘What rest?’

‘The mirror. The chair, the way she lost control of her bowels. He couldn’t have made that up if he hadn’t seen it.’