Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (55 page)

‘So it has to be him.’

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? The young bastard.’

‘So why lie about the rape?’ Jane asked. ‘She wasn’t raped, we know that. That proves he’s lying, doesn’t it? If he’d raped her the pathologist would have found semen, pubic hairs - got his DNA from that, weeks ago.’

‘No, he never touched her.’ Terry sipped his coffee, grimacing as it scalded his mouth. ‘Not that way.’

‘Then why tell us he did?’

‘Male bravado, I guess. He wanted to, poor sad sap. That’s what he said about Lizzie Bolan, isn’t it? He went there meaning to rape her, but he was interrupted. Couldn’t do it. So this time, he wants us to think he got his revenge.’

‘Only he didn’t.’

‘Not sexually, no. But you could say, he punished her for it in every other way. Poor woman. If he’s telling the truth.’

‘Punished her for what?’ Jane frowned. ‘She’d done nothing. Not to him.’

‘She was a woman, wasn’t she? That’s what she’d done. He hates women, that’s his problem. Any woman’s a target for him. Probably never had a girlfriend in his life.’

‘He’s sick. I can hardly stand being in there with him. Leering at you like he does.’

‘He wants to impress me. Make me think he’s a man.’

‘You’re all sick, the whole lot of you.’ Jane shook her head vigorously. ‘If that’s what being a man is, count me out.’ She met Terry’s eyes, and shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you.’

‘You think
I
like him? He needs mental help.’

‘That’s the worry, isn’t it?’ Jane said. ‘He’ll get away with an insanity plea. I could see the wheels spinning in that brief’s mind as you talked.’

‘That’s why we’ve got to nail him down to the details. Go through it all again, piece by piece. Build a case as solid as we can so there’s no way he can wriggle out of it by changing his plea. Because you’re right. That’s exactly what she’ll do. If she’s got any gumption.’

Jane sighed, looking at the clock. It was nearly two in the morning. ‘Now?’

‘It’s late. Start again tomorrow morning. If we go on any more his brief will claim harassment. Maybe the details will become clearer to all of us after a night’s rest. And I’ll ring that wretched laboratory again.’ Terry tipped up the paper cup, swigging the last dregs of his coffee, or whatever it was. ‘Cheer up, lass. We may have solved our murder case, at last.’

Guiltily, Sarah tried to hide the phone behind her back. She’d had no time to read the message. Michael’s hair was tousled, he wore a blue dressing gown loosely tied around his waist. ‘Sarah? What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Making a cup of tea. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. It was the moon, I couldn’t sleep.’ Stop babbling, she told herself, you’ve done nothing wrong. ‘Would you like one?’

‘Okay.’ He sat on a chair at the kitchen table. Sarah turned to make the tea and put down the phone casually beside the kettle. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed it, after all he was half asleep.

‘Where do you keep the spoons? I couldn’t find any.’

‘In that drawer there.’

She made the tea and joined him at the table. It was cold in the kitchen; she clasped her mug in both hands and watched the steam rise before her face. Michael sipped his tea, and then, to Sarah’s surprise, got up, opened the front door, and stepped outside. His voice carried in from the night. ‘Storm’s gone, at last. It’s a beautiful night. Come and see.’

She followed him to the door, and looked outside. He was right. The wind had dropped and the moon and stars shone down crisp and clear out of a jetblack sky. Far below in the valley, she could see the distant lights of remote farmhouses scattered in the darkness. Above their heads, the sails turned lethargically, almost motionless. An owl hooted from the woods behind.

Sarah felt cold and vulnerable standing there in his shirt. After a moment, she turned back into the kitchen. It’s okay, she thought, he was too sleepy, he didn’t see the phone. I’ll put it back in the drawer before he notices.

She picked it up and wondered whether to switch it off. If I do it’ll play that jingle again and attract his attention, she thought. But if I don’t he may find it switched on and realise I’ve touched it. Which to do? Leave it switched on and come back to switch it off later or ...

She hesitated, looked down at the phone, and her world fell apart.

There was no message on the screen. Just a photo of a naked woman, hanging from the banisters in the hall of her house.

59. Two Suspects

I
T WAS two a.m, and the station was almost empty. Jane Carter left, escorting the young solicitor out to her car. Terry Bateson took Peter Barton downstairs to the custody sergeant, who looked him away in a cell for the night. He watched as the boy was led away, pondering the details of the confession they had heard. There was a swagger in the boy’s walk that disgusted him. After all these years, he was still shocked by the depths to which human beings could sink. This is the world I try to protect my children from, he thought. My God, if I could only lock up all these bastards before Jessica and Esther grow up, that would be something worth doing.

But I never will, of course not. There are plenty more where he came from. Breeding in some swamp somewhere.

He shuddered, and went back upstairs. He longed to go home, but dreaded it too. The girls would be asleep, hours ago. Trude, not he, would have read them a story and tucked them in. He didn’t want to go in now and wake them, with the filthy aura of this murder still about him. He needed to chill out first, let his mind settle and recover some equilibrium.

He sat at his desk, thinking over the day. Jane Carter, he thought, had done well. Like him, she’d been appalled and disgusted by the lingering pleasure, almost pride, in Peter’s voice as he’d relived the details of his crime. But she seemed satisfied too. After all, she’d always suspected Peter, and now, it seemed, she was right.

Or was she? Terry leaned back in his chair, thinking. Most of the details of the confession were right, but not all - she hadn’t been raped, for instance. A defence barrister would make a great deal of that. But it wasn’t just that. Even though most of the boy’s story was accurate, there was something it that Terry found hard to believe. He closed his eyes, trying to pinpoint what it was. He thought back to the previous crimes the boy had confessed to - knicker theft, molesting a jogger on the cyclepath, the attempted rape of Elizabeth Bolan. They all seemed so muddled, so incompetent, in comparison. In each case Peter had fled, at the first sign of trouble. Whereas here, if he was to be believed, he had dominated Alison Grey from the start. She’d been terrified; well, that was understandable, but surely at some point she’d have realised she was about to die, and tried to escape. At which point Peter, if he was true to form, would have fumbled the knot, dropped the knife, knocked something over, run ....

None of which had happened.

But then, if Peter was lying, how did he know so much? An idea formed in Terry’s mind. What if only the first part of Peter’s tale was really true - the part where he sneaked out of his hut, late at night, to spy on women through their uncurtained windows? Terry could believe that. Was it possible that Peter had been there, outside Alison’s house, and seen
someone else
commit the murder in the way he’d described? And that he was now confessing to it out of the perverted sense of bravado that Terry had detected in the interview room? Because he’d seen another man do something that he, Peter, was not brave enough to do himself?

That would explain why he’d gone back later, to imagine what it might have been like. That would be when he’d seen the mirror, and the bathroom. It was all possible, Terry thought, but far fetched. Jane would be annoyed when he suggested it. But he’d put it to Peter nonetheless, Terry decided, when they interviewed him tomorrow morning before deciding whether to charge him. A confession alone, after all, wasn’t enough to secure a conviction. They needed evidence, to back it up. And there was still the issue of the red Nissan, and the scrap of cloth on the fence, to be cleared up.

It was too late to ring the forensic services now. Terry switched on his computer, and sent an angry e-mail for them to find first thing in the morning. Then he went downstairs and got into his car.

Driving home, he thought briefly about Sarah Newby. She’d been cold and distant with him last time they’d met. But that was hardly surprising, given the suspicion he’d tried to plant in her mind. He wondered if she’d found anything. She probably didn’t bother to look, he thought, given how besotted she is with that man.

Ah well, I was probably wrong about him. If she had found something, she’d have rung by now. Anyway, I’ll probably know more in the morning.

Sarah stared at the phone in horror. This was Alison Grey, it had to be. And here was a photo of her dead body
on Michael’s phone
! Terry Bateson had been right all along, she thought - more right than he knew. What had he said, that day in the coffee bar, when she’d asked him who killed this woman?
‘I think it was her lover,’
he’d said.
‘And it’s not completely impossible that her lover was Michael Parker.’

But I refused to believe him, Sarah thought. I gave Terry such a hard time. I accused him of being jealous and having no evidence, all because I wanted to take this man to bed, as I have done, to let him run his hands all over my body, inside my body, let him run warm baths for me and stand there smiling while he wrapped me in a towel just as he must have helped this poor woman out of a bath and - what did he do then?

Tied a scarf round her neck and hanged her from the banisters till she was dead.

Jesus Christ! And he’s out there in the darkness right now. If he sees me with this phone he’ll ...

‘Where did you get that?’

‘What? No, I ...’ Sarah leaped involuntarily backwards.

‘Give me that phone!’

‘No! Get away!’

But he was too quick. Even as Sarah backed away Michael grabbed her wrist, and yanked the phone out of her hand. ‘You mustn’t see - oh my God. No.’

He released her wrist and stood there, staring at the picture on the phone. As soon as he let her go Sarah backed further away, as far from him as she could. But there was nowhere obvious to go. He was standing between her and the open doorway, and the bathroom door was only a couple of paces to his left. No point going into the bathroom anyway, that’s just a trap. I might make it to the stairs, she thought, but how would that help? I’d be going up into the tower. He could just follow me up and up to the roof and what would I do then? Jump?

My only hope is get past him somehow, run out into the night, and either hide in the woods or get onto the bike. But how? The bike keys are in my house, on a hook inside the front door - I’d have to sprint over there, grab them, run back to the bike, climb on, and start it, all before he follows me and knocks me down. I can’t do it. I’ll have to use cunning.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a knife block by the fridge, a yard to her right. She began to edge her way towards it, watching Michael all the way.

He looked up from the phone. ‘I’m so sorry you saw this.’

‘Yes. You must be.’

‘You know who it is, don’t you?’

‘Alison Grey.’ She inched another foot to her right. ‘Your tenant. The woman you had an affair with. The one before me.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t lie to me, Michael. She was your lover, wasn’t she? Your tenant, your mistress, your victim - just like me. What happened - did you get tired of her?’

‘What are you talking about, Sarah? She was nothing like you.’

‘Because I’m alive and she’s dead. That’s the only real difference, isn’t it?’

‘Sarah, please! Let me explain ...’

He took a step towards her and she lunged wildly to her right. Her right hand seized the handle of the largest knife in the block and dragged it free so roughly that the rest of the block flew across the room, scattering knives over the floor. Sarah pointed the carving knife at Michael’s chest.

‘Stay away from me!’

‘All right, all right.’ He backed away, raising his hands with the palms towards her. One of them still held the phone, with the dreadful picture on the screen. ‘Look, this isn’t what you think.’

‘I know what it is, it’s a picture of a dead woman. A woman you murdered, and then took a photo of with your phone. Stay away from me, Michael. I’m not going to be your next victim. I’ll kill you first.’

Sarah hadn’t been in a fight since she was ten, and that was only screaming and pulling another girl’s hair. Her first husband Kevin had bruised her face and nearly broken her arm, but that wasn’t really a fight, just a beating, all over in a few seconds, which convinced Sarah of two things: men were far stronger than women, and speed is as lethal as strength. So if I’m to have any chance I must stab him first, she thought, before he grabs me. Which is the best place - the throat, or the stomach? Maybe the thigh - that’s a big target.

The blade trembled in her hand as the adrenalin coursed through her.

‘Sarah, I didn’t kill her.’

‘Don’t lie, Michael.’ He was backing away from the knife, she realised with relief - three more yards and she could reach the front door and run.

‘I’m not lying, for Christ’s sake! How do you think that photo got on the phone?’

‘Because you took it.’ Another step back. Two yards to safety.

‘No. It’s a picture message. It was sent to me.’

‘What?’

‘Have a look if you don’t believe me. Here.’ He bent down, and slid the phone across the floor to her feet. ‘Pick it up. I’m not going to hurt you.’

Carefully, keeping her eyes on him all the time, she bent down and picked up the phone. It’s a trick, she thought. He thinks I can’t look at him and the phone at the same time. When I stop looking at him he’ll rush me.

‘Look, I’ll sit down, okay? I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.’

Michael sat on a chair at the kitchen table. Cautiously, Sarah moved to the open doorway, and stood with her back to it, looking in. I can run any time I want, she thought. Slam the door in his face and sprint for safety. With the knife in her right hand, she held the phone in her left and pressed buttons with her thumb.