A Fatal Verdict (42 page)

‘Was I? How do you know?’

Terry stared at her as the silence lengthened. The blood had begun to flow back into her neck, but her face was still blotchy, pale. So she was going to deny it! And she was right, he thought grimly, he had no proof she’d actually been in York. Only that David Kidd was dead, killed by a young woman with fair hair. Fair hair and a motive.

‘Do you know a lady called Martha Cookson?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘She knows you, she says. She taught a course you attended once. And someone used Martha Cookson’s name to get an introduction to David Kidd. On the 11
^th
October.’

‘So? You can’t prove it was me.’

‘But it
was
you, wasn’t it, Miranda?’

‘Why would I go to see David Kidd? I loathed the man, he killed my sister.’

‘Just
because
he killed your sister. You went there to kill him.’

‘On 11
^th
October, you say? He died five days later.’

‘When everyone thought you were in America, but actually you were back here in York.’

They stared at each other coolly, standing either side of the table. Miranda had one hand on the back of a chair. She was clutching it unconsciously, with a grip that would have broken one less solidly made. The turmoil in her mind was still swirling, thoughts going this way and that, but for the moment defiance was uppermost. The part of her that had brought her to England - the part that longed to confess, to end the tension and hiding and deceit, to stand up and bear the burden of what she had done - that part was still alive and breathing, but paralyzed, like a body that’s forgotten how to  move, a prisoner buried so long in a cell that when the door is opened she flings her arm across her eyes against the sunlight and backs away, unable to face the world she longs for. And in front of her the guards of deception, the defences she’d nurtured so long, sought to protect her as they’d always done, close the door and shut her secret away, deny it ever existed.

She realised, as she watched him, that there were weaknesses in his position too. The very length of his silence was more like a question than an accusation. He
believed
she was guilty, but he still wasn’t sure; he couldn’t be, or he’d have arrested her by now.
He didn’t really know!

‘If you think I murdered David, you’ll have to prove it, won’t you?’

As she watched the effect of her words on him she marvelled at how calm and controlled her own voice sounded, how detached from the turmoil within. Terry shook his head slowly.

‘You’d let your mother be sentenced, would you? For a crime you committed yourself?’

‘What makes you think she’ll be found guilty?’

There it was, the final reason to keep up her defences. She remembered - her thoughts still racing for escape like rats in a maze - how she’d felt just ten minutes before. She’d been approaching this court not in fear but
in hope
, thinking her mother might easily be acquitted. And if that happened what would be the point of throwing everything away for a detective who had no proof, no real proof, that she was actually guilty? All he could prove were her strange, suspicious travel plans. That made her eccentric, certainly, but not a killer. She could say she had a lover in Paris! Now that the danger was here, in the open at last, there was a strange exhilaration in defying it.

‘Are you arresting me or am I free to go?’

Terry thought about it. This wasn’t his case; if he made the slightest mistake Will Churchill would be down on him like a ton of bricks. And the girl was right, he had no real proof, after all. Just very strong circumstantial evidence that, linked with her obvious motive, added up in his own mind to a certainty. A
virtual
certainty. But in a court of law that wasn’t enough, as Will Churchill was finding already. Churchill believed, with circumstantial evidence probably stronger than Terry’s, that this girl’s mother was guilty - and unlike Terry, he had real solid evidence, the DNA from those hairs, to put his suspect at the scene of the crime. How the hairs had got there, that was another matter entirely. But Terry had no hairs at all, nothing to prove that Miranda had been within fifty miles of the crime.

But he knew she’d done it. And she, surely, knew that he knew.

‘It’s a matter for your conscience, really, isn’t it?’ he said, watching her closely. ‘Whether your mother goes to prison, or you do.’

‘Or neither of us do,’ said Miranda, unclenching her hand slowly, finger by cramped finger, from the back of the chair. ‘We still have a good lawyer, don’t we?’ she added, quietly leaving the room.

A lawyer who I’m about to go and see, Terry thought grimly. God knows what she’ll make of this.

56. The Choice

‘Are you sure?’ Sarah asked. ‘You’d better be sure.’

They were meeting in another conference room, half an hour before the case was due to resume. Sarah was dressed in a smart black trouser suit but had not yet put on her gown and wig.

‘Sure as I can be without her admitting it,’ Terry answered. ‘But she’s right. I haven’t got enough to make it stand up in court. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Even so.’ Sarah leaned against the side of a table, shaking her head slowly. ‘Her own daughter, Terry! What will that do to Kathryn, I wonder?’

‘She won’t want to believe it,’ said Terry. ‘I don’t, either. Anyone else and we’d have the perfect result. Your client goes free and Will Churchill gets screwed. But this way ... She’s not going to be happy, is she?’

‘Maybe she knows already. That would account for some of the things she’s said - and not said - to me in conference. But if she doesn’t know, it’ll knock her sideways. Still, either way I have to tell her. I’ve no choice.’ Sarah pushed herself away from the table, and made for the door, then turned back. ‘Terry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who else knows about this, so far?’

‘Just me. That’s all.’

‘Can you keep it like that, for a while? Kathryn’s going to have to make a decision about this, and it won’t be the easiest one. My God, I’d hate to be in her shoes now.’

Sarah had sat up late last night planning how best to lead Kathryn through her evidence,  trying out one question after another in search of exactly the right tone to help Kathryn catch the sympathy of the jury, and avoid unnecessary expressions of hatred for David Kidd. She had intended to see Kathryn this morning, to warn her against the tricks Matthew Clayton was likely to use to provoke her.

Now, instead, she found herself describing Terry’s discovery. At first Kathryn sat on the bench, listening in stunned silence; but halfway through, the tension became too much. She sprang to her feet, hands over her ears as if she couldn’t bear to hear any more, and stood with her back to Sarah, facing the concrete wall at the end of her cell.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said as she finished. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this, but I had to.’

There was a silence, broken by the sound of a guard whistling cheerfully in the corridor outside. Sarah wondered if Kathryn was crying, but when she turned her cheeks, pale with shock, were quite dry.

‘It’s not true,’ she said simply.

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘Of course I don’t believe it. My own daughter? Anyway she was in America at the time.’

‘I’ve explained that,’ Sarah said patiently. ‘DI Bateson’s checked with the airlines. She flew back to Paris the same day she arrived. October 14
^th
.’

‘Paris isn’t York, is it? Maybe she went to visit someone there.’ Kathryn brushed a hand across her face, as if bothered by an irrelevant detail. Sarah noticed the first hint of tears in her eyes.

‘Look, Kathryn, I know how painful this must be ...’

‘You don’t. You have no idea.’

Kathryn turned away, avoiding her gaze. Sarah persisted, keeping her voice as low, sympathetic and reasonable as she could manage. She felt like a doctor telling a patient she had cancer.

‘I can’t feel it myself, no, but I can see and imagine. What I am bound to say to you, as your counsel, is that this is new evidence which could help your defence. It might be difficult for me to get it admitted into court because DI Bateson isn’t part of the investigating team, but I can certainly try. And if the judge does allow it then it’s bound to create doubt - more than a little doubt - in the minds of the jury. So ...’

‘It’ll send Miranda to prison, won’t it?’

Sarah sighed. ‘Not immediately, but yes, I suppose if you’re acquitted because the jury believe your daughter did this, not you, then she’s quite likely to be charged at a later date, if enough evidence can be found.’

Kathryn paced anxiously across the narrow cell, once, twice, three times, shaking her head. She slapped the wall in frustration and turned to Sarah, her eyes wide and desperate.

‘You’re a mother, Mrs Newby. What would you do, if you were in my position?’

For once the correct professional answer coincided with the personal one. But even as she spoke the useless words Sarah hated herself, wishing she had more to offer.

‘I can’t answer that. I’m sorry, it’s impossible to say. It’s a terrible decision, I know, but it’s one that you’ll have to take on your own.’

Kathryn shook her head bitterly, indicating Sarah’s irrelevance. There are some divides which can never be crossed, some places where we’re always alone. She turned away, sat down on the bench.

‘Before I do that, I want to see my daughter.’

Dismissed, Sarah turned, and tapped on the door. ‘All right. I’ll see if I can find her.’

When she left Terry Bateson Miranda ran to the first place of safety she could find, the ladies’ loo. The face in the mirror frightened her; for a few moments she stood there torn, unable to look at herself, unable to look away. Those eyes: she wanted them to seem firm, determined, defiant, as she hoped they’d appeared to the detective. And so they did at first; she held her expression triumphantly.
I’m a killer and I lied and I’m still in control
, she told herself grimly.
I can do this and survive.
But the moment didn’t last; mist rose on the mirror from the hot water tap, and when she brushed it away with her hand the determination on her face had dissolved. She could see too far into those eyes; they weren’t shields keeping the world at bay, they were windows into the terror of her soul.

I can’t do this any more
, she thought.
I can’t look
.
But where is there to hide?
Then two women came in, loudly discussing something to do with knives and a brawl in a pub, and Miranda fled, out into the foyer and down the steps across the grass of the Eye of York towards the car park, against the flow of people visiting the Castle and the Castle Museum. But where can I go, she thought? I can’t just run back to the States, I have to brazen this out now, see it through. I didn’t admit anything to that man and he didn’t arrest me, so all that has to happen now is for Mum to be acquitted and we’ll both be free and safe.

That won’t happen.
Yes, it will. Well, it might.
No, it won’t, you know it won’t.
It still could, you know it could.
But it won’t.

Three times she walked around the circular mound of the Castle, as though it were a roundabout and she didn’t know which exit to take. But each time she came back to the Court, with the statue of Justice on the roof and the prison van outside and a barrister and policeman strolling on the stone balcony before the door. And next to it the Castle Museum which had once been the prison where Dick Turpin was kept before his execution, and female murderers had been hanged from the great gable opposite the car park. They don’t do that any more, Miranda told herself, thank God they won’t do that to me or to Mum, but it’s almost as bad. If this goes wrong one of us will be locked up for years and years in a cell like the ones in there.

And it
will
go wrong, I know it will. This is where I belong.

At the top of the wide stone steps under the columned entrance Sarah Newby was waiting for her.

‘Your mother wants to talk to you,’ she said.

Miranda nodded. ‘I know. But first, I’ve got a question for you.’ She turned and looked Sarah in the eyes, wondering, as she did so, what expression the lawyer could see in hers. ‘It’s a very important question, so I need you to tell me the truth, as best you can. I don’t want you to give me the polite answer or the encouraging one, but the true one. Can you do that?’

Miranda could hear the guards in the corridor outside her mother’s cell, but Kathryn had abandoned her fears that they might be taped or overheard. It was too late for that now. They would just have to take the risk.

She had tried, as soon as Miranda entered, to persuade her that nothing had changed.

‘Just keep on as you are, darling, that’s the best way.’

‘Mum, I can’t. I spoke to the barrister, that Newby woman, before I came in here ...’

‘You spoke to her! What did she say?’

‘Just answered my question, that’s all. I asked her to tell me honestly what chance you had of being acquitted if I didn’t ... if things stayed as they were yesterday, before the detective came up with this stuff about the air fares and so on. If the jury didn’t know about that.’

‘And?’

‘She said ... she said she thought you’d be convicted.’

‘She said that?’ Kathryn sat down abruptly on the bench, and Miranda sat beside her. She reached across and grasped her mother’s hand.

‘Not in so many words, no, she hedged it about like they all do, saying if the jury think this and if the jury think that, but in the end what it boiled down to was that juries usually believe the police. So she reckoned you had a twenty or thirty percent chance of being acquitted and a seventy or eighty percent chance of being convicted. That’s not good enough, Mum!’

Kathryn returned her daughter’s grip for a moment, then smiled, gently patted her hand, and pushed it away.

‘I still have a chance of getting off.’

‘Not much of one, though. One chance in four or five!’

‘She probably said that to put pressure on you, Miranda. She was trying to help me.’

‘I don’t know. I just think she was trying to be honest. Look, Mum,
you
didn’t do this.
I
did. And that detective
knows
I did. I might as well go and confess right now.’

‘No!
For heaven’s sake, Miranda, listen to me, please.’ Kathryn got to her feet, crossed the narrow cell, and turned to face her daughter, with her back to the wall. ‘This is so important and I mean what I say. If they find me guilty it’ll be hard, but I’ve thought about it and I can bear it. After all I’m in prison already and it’s - nasty but not impossible. But to think of you in there - that would be a hundred times worse. Look, darling, I’ve had my life. I’ve had two daughters, and lost one; had a husband and more or less lost him as well. I’ve got one daughter left - the best one, the bravest ...’

‘No, Mum, don’t say that! Shelley was much better, much braver than me!’

‘I put that wrongly, love, I’m sorry. Of course she was brave, she was a wonderful girl.  But so are you. Don’t forget that, I mean it. And you’ve got everything to live for - a fine husband and daughter, and probably more to come. Bruce wants a big family, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, but with all this ... how can I?’

‘You think like that now, darling, but you won’t always. You’ll see; time changes everything. So you mustn’t do anything stupid, not now, when we’re so near the end. Don’t even speak to that detective.’

Kathryn came back to the bench, sat down, and took both Miranda’s hands in her own. ‘Look, I may still get off - Mrs Newby’s a good lawyer, she was just being cautious when she spoke to you. But even if the worst happens and I’m convicted, I can still survive in prison knowing that you and Bruce and Sophie are safe, growing up free and healthy in all that sun and fresh air. That’ll keep me sane, I’ll be able to take it. Whereas if it was the other way round, you see, love ... if I was free and you were locked up inside, separated from little Sophie, your family broken apart - well, I couldn’t bear that. Don’t you see that, darling? I’d be free but in prison for ever.’

Miranda shook her head, desperately, staring round the cell. ‘But that’s just it, Mum. Don’t you understand - that’s what it’s like for me, too! I’m free, but I’m in prison all the time. All day, all night. Especially all night. I get such dreams.’

If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been as though she were a little girl again, Kathryn thought fleetingly. Like when Miranda had come into her room at night after a bad day at school. She put both arms around her.

‘I’m so sorry, love, but you did the right thing. I’m proud of you. The dreams will go one day, I promise. You’ve been so brave and kept this secret so long. Just keep quiet a little longer and we’ll be free, both of us. I’ll come and join you in Wisconsin.’

‘I don’t know, Mum.’ Miranda moved out of her mother’s embrace, shook her head sadly. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

‘It can if you just hang on a little longer.’

‘I’ll try, Mum, but I don’t know.’ Miranda got to her feet and moved towards the door.  ‘You say I did the right thing but I just don’t know any more. Perhaps it was right but I ran away from the results, didn’t I? If you’re convicted I’ll have run away again.’

‘No you won’t.’ Kathryn said desperately, sensing she was losing the argument. Miranda was moving away from her as she spoke. ‘You’ll be living for me. Every day I’ll think of you and be glad, knowing you’re free.’

‘But how will
I
be, Mum? That’s what you don’t think of. How will it feel to be
me?
’