Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (58 page)

‘A scarf.’

‘Yes, exactly - an expensive looking scarf, too. Not the kind of thing Alison would own; in fact she hated scarves, since Brenda’s death. But it’s exactly the sort of scarf that killed Brenda, isn’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I never saw it.’

‘Well, I’m telling you, it is, so far as I can make out on a small screen like that. Similar colour, similar style. Her killer must have brought it with him.’

‘But why ...?’

‘And the other thing you can’t see, but you’d know if you’d been in the house, is the significance of
where
she’s hanging. She had a mirror in the hall directly opposite the stairs, she was hanged facing that. So whoever killed her, wanted to humiliate her first. Let her see herself hanging in the mirror.’

‘It was a ritual execution, you mean?’

‘Her final punishment for what she’d done.’

‘But how would Jason know that Alison killed Brenda? It’s always been a mystery - he spent 18 years in prison convicted of it himself. If he’d known who really killed her he would have told his lawyers, wouldn’t he! I’d have used it in court, myself!’

‘He didn’t know then, don’t you see?’ Michael sighed sadly. ‘It was only when that fox found her hand that everything started to unravel. The police dug up her body and went on
Crimewatch
with the remains of the scarf, asking for information. As soon as I saw that I knew we were in trouble, Alison did too. I asked you about Jason, remember, and you said he’d disappeared. I hoped he’d gone to Australia or somewhere, but no, he must have seen
Crimewatch
just as we did and started to think. He knew Brenda had fought with Alison about the scarf, she couldn’t stop talking about it. And he knew Alison had snatched it back. So if the scarf round her neck had killed her, then the only person who could have put it there was Alison. Once he worked that out all he had to do was find Alison, and make her pay for what she’d done.’

‘But what about this photo on the phone?’

Michael groaned. ‘That’s what really scared me. I only saw it a couple of days ago, because I’d switched the phone off and thrown it in a drawer. I wish I’d never switched it on again, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation now!’

‘But if he killed her, why send the photo?’

‘Don’t you see?’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘After she died, I buried my head in the sand for while, thinking even if it was Jason, he’s only after her, not me. Maybe he thinks she killed Brenda all on her own. After all that’s what Alison was going to tell the priest, so perhaps that’s what she told him, if she got the chance to speak. Nothing about me at all. But obviously he found her phone, took a photo of her body, the sick bastard - and read some of the texts I’d sent her on it. Maybe she told him everything anyway, before she died. So he sent me this photo as a warning. A threat, probably, too. To say that he knew.’

He looked at Sarah with a bleak, hopeless smile. ‘That’s why I thought of moving to Spain. To get away and hide before he finds out where I live. But it’s probably futile. He’ll follow me there too, won’t he? Unlike you.’

There was a sad, pleading look on his face. Sarah gazed at him steadily, thinking of her client who’d spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. ‘You can’t be sure about all this, Michael. This could just be guilt and paranoia speaking. She may have been killed by that young man the police have arrested.’

‘Do you really believe that? After all I’ve just told you?’

Sarah struggled to be fair. ‘It’s not a question of what I believe; what matters is the truth. You have to take that phone to the police tomorrow morning. Tell them all you know. Let them sort it out.’

‘I can’t do that, you know I can’t. They’d send me to prison.’

‘You let someone else go to prison for 18 years.’

‘Yes, but he’s a murderer!’

‘Not then he wasn’t. Alison was, and you were an accessory. But if Jason did kill her, then it’s your duty to bring him to justice. You may even get credit for it, from the judge.’

‘If I give myself up, will you act as my lawyer?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? You defended your son, when he was accused of murder!’

‘That’s different, Michael. He was innocent. And he was my son.’

‘Come to Spain with me, Sarah. Please. Forget all this, leave it behind.’

‘We could never forget it. Michael, I’m not going to throw my career away for you or anyone else. I’m an officer of the court, and that phone is evidence. I have to take it to the police. Your best bet is to come with me. The worst they could charge you with is being an accessory to manslaughter, not murder. You’d be out in five years.’

‘I’ll never go to prison. I’ll kill myself first. Sarah, please. Come to Spain. You know all this now but no one else does.’

He reached across the table for her hand, but Sarah recoiled instantly.

‘I’m not coming, Michael.’ She picked up the knife and stood up. If he wants to stop me, she thought, this is when he’ll try to do it.

But he stayed slumped at the table, watching her walk to the door.

‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell anyone about this until the morning. Make up your mind by then. But if you leave, you leave without me.’

Outside, in the cold night air, she walked swiftly, her bare feet stumbling across the stones of Simon’s half-finished patio and the damp grass beyond. She glanced over her shoulder, feeling an urge to run, but she could still see him through the open doorway, sitting at the table. Inside her own house, she locked and bolted both doors, closed all the windows, and went upstairs to her bedroom. The light was still on in the windmill kitchen, she saw, and the door was still open.

I left my phone over there, she thought, with my bag and the clothes I was wearing. But I have the keys to the bike; I can escape if I want to. And I can ring for help on this phone, if I need to. Terry said I could ring any time.

But it’s late, he has kids, I can manage.

For half an hour she sat on the edge of her bed, staring into the dark, watching to see if Michael would get in his car, and drive away. Or come across the grass, bang on her door, smash a window even, drag her outside.

But nothing happened. The door to the windmill stayed open, no one came out.

At last weariness overcame her, and she crawled into bed to sleep.

62. Sailing High

W
HEN SARAH woke it was still dark. She fumbled for the clock beside her bed, and pressed the screen to light it up. 5.45. Something woke me, she thought. She lay still for a few moments, listening, trying to work out what it was. Someone in the house? No; the house seemed silent enough. No surreptitious footsteps on the stairs, no doors opening or floorboards creaking. Just a slight rattle of wind on her bedroom window.

Something outside then. A car perhaps? The memory of what had happened earlier came back to her in a rush. Maybe Michael was leaving. She swung her legs out of bed and peered out of the window. To her surprise, the lights were on in the windmill. Not just the kitchen - all of them, on every floor. The light blazing out in the darkness illuminated the grass between the buildings, and Simon’s unfinished patio outside the open kitchen door. But it cast the area nearer the woods into deeper shadow, so that she couldn’t see if Michael’s car was parked there or not.

He must have gone, she thought. I gave him that chance; he’s taken it. That’s what I heard - Michael driving away in the BMW, to Spain or South America or wherever he thinks he can hide. He switched on all the lights to pack what he needed, and left the door open because he’s never coming back.

She felt relieved and depressed, both at once. Relieved, because she wouldn’t have to face the trauma of persuading him to come into York and give himself up. She had wondered how to do that last night; should she risk getting in his car, or follow on her bike? Both plans had their problems, but it didn’t matter now. She felt depressed, though, because his flight diminished him further in her eyes. He was less of a man than she’d thought, she decided. All his life he’d been running from the truth, and here he was doing it again.

She’d fallen asleep in Michael’s shirt. She threw it off, and dressed quickly in jeans and a warm jumper. She was fairly certain he’d gone, but she wanted to make sure. Then I can ride into York and show Terry Bateson that phone, she thought. He’ll be pleased. Smug bastard; he never liked Michael in the first place. Oh well.

A sudden rush of pain constricted her lungs as she realised Michael had gone, and she’d never see him again. He’s a coward, she thought, but he had good qualities too, I liked him. He was kind to me, generous, a good lover - I wasn’t a total fool to fall for him, was I? She remembered how nervous and excited she had felt that first time they had made love in Cambridge, and the dizzy thrill of walking round York the next day, unable to concentrate on anything except the way he’d touched her, the way he’d felt. He gave me that, she thought; something I never expected to feel again. I even considered starting a new life with him.

But he wasn’t worth it. At the crucial moment, when he was forced to decide, he made a catastrophically wrong decision. The sort which defines your character for ever. And now, he’s done it again.

Or has he?
Halfway to the windmill, on the edge of the patio, she saw several things at once. Firstly, Michael’s BMW was still there. It was parked at the edge of the woods, a little further away than she’d remembered, in the shadows just beyond the range of the lights from the house. That’s why she hadn’t seen it. But something else was lighting it up now - a red glow somewhere behind the car in the woods. What was that? A fire? Surely not. The sun rising in the east? But it’s too early, isn’t it? In the west the sky is still black.

But when she looked to the west, she noticed the second thing. Which drove everything else out of her mind.

Something was hanging from one of the windmill’s sails.

She first saw it out of the corner of her eye and within a second she could look at nothing else. The sails were moving slowly in a light wind, with a hesitant, slightly jerky motion as if they were unbalanced; and as the lowest sail came into sight from behind the tower and rose, or tried to rise, to the horizontal, Sarah saw what was holding them back.

It was a body, hanging from the end of the sail.

The sail dragged the body across the lower balcony, around the first floor of the mill, and as it rose into the air a foot got caught on the balcony rail, so that for a moment the body was stretched between the sail, trying to drag it upwards by the neck, and the foot, holding it back. Then a shoe fell off the foot and the body swung free, swaying left and right like a pendulum as it rose higher into the air.

Sarah screamed. It was the body of a man, hanging by his neck from the sail. As the sail rose to the vertical his arms flopped loosely beside him and the light from the windows caught his face. His eyes seemed to be staring straight down at her and his tongue stuck out of his mouth, like a gargoyle. Michael, it had to be him.

Then the sail passed the vertical and the body vanished behind the mill in the night.

Sarah screamed as she ran into the mill, straight up the stairs to the first floor. She was screaming all the time without knowing, but her mind was racing as well.
I must stop it
, she thought,
he may still be alive, I must put on the brake. How do you do that? He showed me, there’s a cord, a rope, something you pull.
She dashed through the first floor room to the balcony door, opened it, and saw the dreadful sight of Michael, descending slowly towards her, swaying slightly in the wind.
I’ve got to stop it
, she thought,
where’s the brake, here, here, it’s this rope isn’t it, what the hell do you do?

She was fumbling with the rope when something brushed against her back. She turned and saw Michael’s face, a few inches from hers. Eyes protruding, tongue lolling, it jerked past her like a ghastly marionette, and began to rise again into the air, the legs flopping over the balcony rail.

Sarah screamed again, tugged futilely on the rope, then abandoned it in despair. Either she was doing the wrong thing or the sails were too strong, turning remorselessly with the power of the wind against everything she could do. Anyhow, what did matter? She’d hoped somehow she could save him but she was clearly too late. He was dead.

And I let him do it, she thought grimly. What did he say last night?
‘I’ll never go to prison. I’ll kill myself first.’
That was the one alternative she hadn’t thought about, that he might actually do it. But I should have, she realised, of course it was a real possibility. Remember that moment on the roof, when he joked about suicide - I thought it was a joke at the time, but it wasn’t. And the way he talked about death with Alison. Peace and silence for all eternity. It’s been on his mind the whole time.

Only I didn’t see it. And now this. She felt a sudden, desperate urge to vomit, and stumbled downstairs to the bathroom.

Coming out of the bathroom, Sarah thought, I need help. I can’t let his body carry on going round like that in the wind, it’s obscene. But I’m not strong enough to stop it; either that or I’m doing something wrong. Anyway I’m not sure I can face this for long on my own.

She remembered she had left her mobile in her bag with her clothes in Michael’s bedroom, so she climbed the stairs to get it. Her legs shook with each step, but she forced herself to climb. When she reached the bedroom, she stopped and stared. It was chaos. Clothes were flung everywhere, drawers were opened, bedclothes on the floor. That’s not like Michael, she thought, he’s usually so neat. But then he was in a terrible state last night, he must have had a breakdown or tantrum before he decided to do this. If I’d stayed here he might have killed me too.

Or not done it. If I’d stayed he might still be alive. Maybe he killed himself because I abandoned him.

Don’t think like that, it gets you nowhere. This was his own decision, not mine.