Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (56 page)

‘Look. It’s not saved on the phone as it would be if I’d taken it, is it? It’s in a text message I’ve received.’

Grudgingly, she realised that he was right. Her racing heartbeat slowed, from a wild gallop to a canter. ‘A text from Alison? But she’s dead.’

‘Yes, obviously. She didn’t take it.’

‘So who did?’

‘The man who killed her. Don’t you see? He must have taken it with her phone.’

‘And then sent it to you? But why would he do that?’

Michael sighed. ‘Because he hates me. Look, it’s a long story and I ... I can’t tell you, I’m sorry. It’s private, between me and Alison.’

‘But Alison’s
dead
, Michael. She was murdered.’

‘Yes, I know, but I still can’t tell you.’

Sarah stared at him, as coolly as she could. Her pulse was throbbing in her throat, like a drummer boy going to war, but she could see he was nervous too. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, shadowed, gazing at some distant, dreadful memory. I have to understand this now, Sarah thought; he can’t just shut me out and pretend this doesn’t matter.

She picked up the knife and phone and got to her feet. ‘If you don’t tell me what all this is about, Michael, I’ll take this to the police. I’ve no choice, really - it’s evidence of murder.’

‘But I didn’t do it, Sarah - I swear to you!’

‘Then who did? Explain it to me, Michael, or I’m going.’ She stepped towards the door, pointing the knife boldly at him in case he should rush her.

But Michael looked defeated, diminished, rather than violent. He spread his hands in appeal. ‘All right, all right. Don’t go, please. I’ll tell you if ... if I can find the words. It won’t be easy. You deserve an explanation, but you won’t like it much. Look, Sarah, you’re scaring me with that knife. I didn’t kill Alison, I promise - I’ve never killed anyone in my life. Why don’t you just sit down, and I’ll try to explain what’s happened. Or what I think has happened, anyway.’

60. Midnight Story

I
T WAS cold in the kitchen. The door was still open to the night air and all Sarah had on was Michael’s shirt, which she had picked up when she got out of bed, a hundred years ago it seemed. She stood with the carving knife in one hand, the mobile phone in the other.

‘Sit down, please,’ Michael said, indicating the chair opposite him at the kitchen table. ‘I can’t talk if you stand there like that.’

‘You stay there then.’ Cautiously she crossed the room and sat down, the knife on the table in front of her. ‘All right, I’m listening.’

Michael looked haggard, his eyes sunken, his face pale and lined. He met her eyes briefly, then looked down at his hands. Twice he seemed about to speak, then stopped.

‘It’s very difficult, Sarah. I don’t know how to say this.’

‘You could start by telling me why you had this phone, and why Alison sent you messages on it.’

‘Yes, well, that’s not so easy, you see.’

‘She was your girlfriend, your mistress, wasn’t she? Just like me.’

‘Nothing like you, Sarah! Nothing at all!’

‘Really? What was the difference?’

‘Well, for a start, I’d known her a long time ...’

‘Since you were students in York, right?’ The photo from the
Yorkshire Post
came into Sarah’s mind, the one she had found in the file in the other house. Young Alison clinging onto a younger Michael at the memorial service for Brenda Stokes.

‘Yes, since then. She was my girlfriend once, back then. And ... it never really ended, so when I got married, she used to come back to see me, write letters, make phone calls, and ... of course my wife didn’t like it, so ... I bought that phone.’ He pointed to the phone on the table in front of her. ‘I told her she could only ring me on that. It’s pay as you go, you see - no account, no phone records, nothing. So Kate wouldn’t know how often she rang. No one would. Or that’s what I hoped.’ He looked up to see if he was making sense to her.

‘You had a separate mobile, just to ring Alison? So your wife wouldn’t know?’

‘Yes.’

‘But Michael, you’re divorced! So the only person you’re deceiving now is -
me!
’

‘Not just you. Not you at all, really.’ A faint smile crossed his lips.

‘It’s not funny, Michael. It’s bloody deceitful ...’

He shook his head wearily. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Sarah. Really. At least it wasn’t until now. This has been going on for years. We just ... got into the habit of it. It seemed wise, in the circumstances.’

‘What circumstances?’

‘That’s ... just it.’ There was a long silence, so long that Sarah thought the conversation was over. She shivered in the draught from the door, and hunched her arms across her breasts for warmth. An owl hooted outside in the woods. Michael stared down at the table, so lost in thought that she wondered if he remembered she was there at all. At last he sighed and looked up.

‘I’ve never told anyone this, Sarah. No one. If you hadn’t found that photo on that phone I never would. Look, if I tell you, will you keep it secret?’

‘I can’t do that, Michael. It’s evidence in a murder case.’

He stared at her earnestly. ‘Please. You do care for me, Sarah, don’t you? A little, at least?’

I did
, Sarah thought.
Until all this happened.
Now, she wasn’t so sure. A few moments ago she’d been terrified of him, now he was pleading with her. The respect and gratitude she’d felt for him was leaking away. But she had to know the truth about that photo. So she said: ‘Yes, of course. You know I do.’

‘Then I’ll trust you. If I tell you, perhaps you’ll understand. And if not, well ... all life ends sometime.’

Sarah didn’t like the sound of that.
Not my life
, she thought.
Not yet. Not if
I
can help it anyway.
Her fingers touched the handle of the knife.

‘What I need to know, Michael, is why that photo is on your phone. You say the killer sent it to you as a picture message. Who is he? And why?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘You see, it’s all to do with me, and Alison, and Brenda Stokes - you know, the girl whose body they found beside the ring road before Christmas. You see, I know how it got there.’

‘What?’

‘You asked me before if I knew Brenda. And I told you I’d met her and your client, Jason Barnes, when we were students here in York. Well, Alison was my girlfriend then, as you’ve guessed. We were a couple, though she was fonder of me than I was of her - it happens like that, sometimes. Anyway, nothing would have come of it, probably - we’d have split up, met other people, and led perfectly normal lives, if it hadn’t been for this one terrible day which changed everything.’

He gazed past Sarah at the window, his eyes focussed on the memory he was about to describe.

‘You see, our affair was coming to an end, and I’d met this girl Brenda, who was very sexy, in a busty, provocative sort of way. Anyway, I fell for her - she was exciting, after Alison, and I was flattered that a stunner like her could fancy me, even for a moment. I didn’t realise what a bitch she was, I was blind to that, at first. So I made my big mistake. One day she told me it was her birthday, which turned out to be a lie, I only found that out later. But I panicked, and thought I have to give her something decent, so she’ll like me. And the only thing I could think of was a silk scarf, which I’d already bought for Alison, who really did have a birthday later that month. Brenda probably knew that, about Alison’s birthday, that’s why she lied about her own. That’s the sort of bitch she was. She’d pull guys just for the hell of it, to rub their girlfriends’ noses in it. Then dump the boys after.’

Michael sighed. ‘Anyway, I was too naive and besotted to understand all this, so I gave her the wretched scarf, which cost me a lot of money in those days, it was a good one. But what I didn’t realise was, Alison had already seen it - she’d found it in a drawer in my bedroom, and guessed I was saving it for her birthday. So when we went to that party, the day that changed all our lives, that scarf was at the heart of everything.’

Michael ran his hands through his hair. ‘You see, I went to this party with Brenda, proud as a little peacock, with about as much brain as a peacock as well - and she was wearing this scarf I gave her. But when Alison saw it, all hell broke loose. They had a catfight in the ladies’ loo - God knows what happened, but Alison came out with the scarf in her hand, and Brenda came out with a face like thunder and wouldn’t speak to me. By the end of the evening she was totally pissed and when I tried to talk to her she spat in my face and drove off with a young thug called Jason Barnes. Who you know.’

Michael spread his hands on the table, looking down. ‘So I slouched off home, full of self-pity, and that would have been that, just another teenage tragedy, if only ...’

An owl hooted outside, a gust of wind blew in through the door. Sarah shivered as she sat there in the shirt.

‘... if only things had been slightly different. I’ve thought about this so often. Only one thing had to be different, and none of our lives would have been blighted. Brenda would never have died, Jason wouldn’t have gone to prison, and Alison and I wouldn’t have tormented each other for the next eighteen years. That photo would never have appeared on that phone.

‘You see, I went home - I lived in a village outside York, called Stillingfleet, with a couple of guys who were away at a rugby match somewhere. So I went to bed, feeling sorry for myself, but about five in the morning I was woken by someone hammering on the front door. It was Alison, in a dreadful state. Hysterical, weeping and angry at the same time. She dragged me outside to her car, and there in the front seat was Brenda. Or Brenda’s body, rather.’

‘She was dead?’

‘Quite dead. It was horrible. There was blood all over her face and hair, one of her arms was broken, and her eyes and tongue were popping out.’

‘What had happened to her?’

‘Alison had killed her. Without meaning to, but she had.’

‘How could she kill her without meaning to?’

‘Well, it was another appalling coincidence. After the fight at the party Alison had gone somewhere else, to another party I think, and then at about half past four she was driving home to Naburn, where she lived, when she saw a girl walking alone along the road. She didn’t realise who it was at first, so she stopped to offer her a lift. And then Brenda got into the car. And somehow or other the fight started again. I don’t know who started it, I wasn’t there, but according to Alison Brenda picked the wretched scarf up off the front seat and put it on, saying it was hers and Alison had stolen it. Then Alison tried to shove her out of the car. When she thought she’d got her out she drove off, meaning to leave her there by the side of the road. But the scarf had got caught in the door as she pulled it shut. So when she drove on she pulled Brenda off her feet and dragged her along the road beside the car, with her head banging on the road and the scarf throttling her round her neck. The car must have driven over her arm too, which broke her wrist. Alison was accelerating away in a rage, so by the time she realised something was wrong, it was too late. She’d dragged Brenda a hundred yards along the road. She was dead, it was hopeless. So she heaved her into the car, drove to Stillingfleet, and hammered on my door for help.’

Michael shook his head slowly. ‘So it all had this dreadful inevitability.’

The story certainly explained a lot, Sarah thought. It explained why the police had been unable to decide between two possible causes of death, strangulation and blows to the head. It explained why the hand had come away from the wrist so easily. It also showed that the trainee nurse, Amanda Carr, had been telling the truth about the young woman she’d seen on Naburn Lane that night. If only
she’d
offered Brenda a lift before Alison came along, none of this would have happened.

It also proved, beyond any doubt, that Jason Barnes had served 18 years in prison for a murder he hadn’t committed. Something that Michael had clearly known all along. Sarah shivered, but not from cold this time.
This is the man I’ve chosen to comfort me. The man I’ve taken to bed.

‘What happened next?’

‘Well, I suppose you can guess that.’

‘Not really. You’d better tell me,’ Sarah said bleakly. Up to this point, the story could be construed as an accident. But not afterwards.

‘Well, it’s simple really. She was in hysterics and I was in shock - we both were. I mean, you never know what you’ll do in a situation like that until it happens, and then ... well, whatever you do stays with you forever. It can’t be undone, not easily anyway. Of course I thought of calling the police, we both did, but it looked so awful - I mean, even if it was just manslaughter Alison would go to prison. She was desperate, and in a way it was all my fault - I mean, if I hadn’t given Brenda the wretched scarf none of this would have happened, and we both hated Brenda at that moment, we could see what a bitch she had been, and in a way it was her own fault that she was dead, at least that’s what we told ourselves, so ...’ Michael drew a deep breath. ‘... I said I’d help her hide the body. As it happened I’d had a holiday job labouring on the road works, and I knew they dug a lot of trenches there which they filled in with concrete, so I thought if we just buried her in one of those we might be lucky and the body would never be found for a hundred years. So we found a couple of spades in the garden shed, drove there, and did it. And we very nearly got it right. After all, if that fox hadn’t dug up her hand, she’d still be down there now and no one would ever know. Next day we washed all the blood off her car, took it to auction, and sold it.’

He looked across the table at Sarah. ‘We swore each other to secrecy. We promised each other we would never, ever, tell anyone. And neither of us ever has, until now.’

‘So when Jason Barnes was arrested ...’ Sarah prompted, neutrally.

‘We said nothing. How could we, without incriminating ourselves?’

Sarah’s eyes met his. She touched a key on the mobile with her fingertip. The screen, with the shocking photo of Alison’s body, lit up. ‘What I still don’t understand, is how all that relates to this.’