A Game of Proof (12 page)

‘Ask me and I will.’ She smiled. He thought, it’s just an offhand remark,
but I wish ...

‘How’s your daughter - Emily, isn’t it?’

Sarah sipped her lager, frowned. ‘Don’t ask. She’s a teenager, she’s got GCSEs next week, she hates her mother ... what else? You wait, Terry, you’ve got it all to come.’

But Terry was feeling like a teenager himself, on a date. That frown, he thought wryly, the way it crinkles her forehead, the little feminine gestures she makes as she sips her beer and pats her lips with the napkin - they’re such tiny, normal things yet I could watch them all day. This is how it was with Mary, all those years ago - so beautiful that it hurt.

Don’t be daft, he scolded himself, you’re forty years old. Still, any man can dream ...

‘What’s the joke?’ Sarah asked, her napkin patting the puzzled half-smile on her  lips.

‘What? Oh - nothing. Just you.’

‘Me? What did I say?’

Careful
, Terry. This is a married woman, a barrister, a dangerous lady who’s about to cross-examine you in court. Not a fantasy in your dreams.

‘Just - a look on your face. It took me back, that’s all. To a girl I once knew.’

‘Your wife, you mean?’ A look of careful sympathy crossed Sarah’s face.

‘No, no. Before that. Long ago. When I was a student.’
That’s it. Clever move, old son. Get her interested in your exotic past.

‘Where were you a student?’

‘Here in York.’

‘Oh.’ Sarah glanced at a group of students near the door. To her they looked like children, little more than Emily’s age. ‘Well, I’m flattered, if I remind you of someone as young as that. What were you like as a student? Long hair and flowered jeans?’

‘No, I was an athlete ...’

And for a while he told her about his running career, and his reminiscences of student life. His ambitions then had been to bed all the pretty girls on campus and win the Olympics, neither of which he had quite achieved. He knew very little of her background, but realised as they talked that she did not seem to have the same sort of carefree student memories. She had studied in Leeds, he gathered, as a mature student. There seemed to be some mystery about what had happened before, but before he could solve it she glanced at her watch.

‘Court resumes in ten minutes, Detective Inspector. I hope you’re ready for a roasting. I mean it.’ The sharp, ironic, smile irritated him somehow.

‘What for? Putting a serial rapist in the dock? As a woman you should be grateful.’

‘For providing a brief with so many flaws in it? Oh, I am, Detective Inspector, I am!’

This time the cynicism definitely got beneath his skin. She might be pretty and clever with words, he thought, but if she’d seen the things I’ve seen ... Sharon Gilbert shaken and bruised in front of her little kids ... Karen Whitaker sobbing in the woods ... Maria Clayton’s dead body ...

‘No, not that. For making the streets safer by getting scum like Harker locked up. Play your games in court if you like, Sarah, but his place is behind bars, because he’s guilty as hell. You know that as well as I do.’

Sarah flushed. She had enjoyed the banter over lunch, but she was in no mood to be lectured. She seldom was. ‘You may
think
you know that, Terry, but can you prove it?  The courtroom game, as you call it, means that you must prove his guilt to the jury. And my job is to defend him, in case you get it wrong. Which you have done, I’m sorry to say.’

‘Have I? How?’

‘You’ll see. In court this afternoon.’

‘I hope not.’ Terry’s anger made him clumsy. ‘I’ve worked hard on this case, you know.’

‘So have I.’ She shrugged and walked to the door. ‘We’d better not go back together, it wouldn’t look good. Anyway it’s a different world in court. We meet as strangers.’

Just how right she was, he was about to find out.

As she came back into court, Sarah checked her mobile. But there were no messages, from Emily or anyone else. Probably she was still in a sulk, or revising hard. And Bob would ring some time in the afternoon, if he remembered. Maybe her father’s voice on the answerphone would induce her to pick up the receiver.

The judge entered, and Julian Lloyd-Davies began to take Terry Bateson through his evidence. Terry explained how he had gone to Sharon’s house when she had called the police, at 1.22 a.m. Sharon’s friend Mary had been there with her. A female officer had stayed with Mary and the children while Sharon was taken to the rape suite and examined by a female doctor.

Both during and after the medical examination Sharon had stated clearly that she had recognised the rapist as Gary Harker. Terry had arrested Gary in his flat at five that morning.

Lloyd-Davies then played parts of the tape of Terry’s interview with Gary. He had asked the judge to allow this, because he believed that the tone of what was said was as important as the substance. The real reason, Sarah guessed, was to ensure that even if Sarah  kept Gary off the stand, the jury would still hear him speak in his own coarse, brutal fashion. Sarah had resisted, but not as strongly as she could have done. When he had won his point Lloyd-Davies had smiled smugly at his junior; and Sarah had been inwardly delighted, realizing he had made his biggest mistake so far.

On the tape Gary was surly, aggressive and uncooperative. After he left the Station Hotel, he said, he had been to another pub with a friend called Sean. There they met two prostitutes, and screwed them up against a wall for a tenner each. He could remember neither of their names. The older jurors looked appalled and disgusted, just as Lloyd-Davies had hoped.

On the tape Terry insisted that Gary had gone to Sharon’s house, broken in, and raped her in front of her kids. Gary denied it. ‘She’s a lying bitch if she says that.’

‘But that’s exactly what she says, Gary. She recognised the man who did it. It was you.’

‘Well, she’s lying then. She couldn’t have recognised me, the cow!’

‘Why couldn’t she recognise you, Gary?’

‘Because I wasn’t bloody there, that’s why!’ The retort was followed by a long silence, broken at last by a nervous Gary. ‘Do you hear what I said, copper? She couldn’t have recognised me
because I wasn’t there
.’ Silence. ‘Can you prove I was there, eh? Go on then, tell me how.’

And then came the statement which Sarah had noticed.

‘We know you were there because she recognised you, Gary. She saw your face!’

There was a silence which seemed, to Sarah watching the jury’s pained faces, to be longer than all the others. Gary’s voice on the tape was having the effect Lloyd-Davies had anticipated: it was loud, aggressive, mocking. ‘Silly bitch, that’s all crap, she’s lying! Recognise my arse!’

As the court clerk switched off the tape, Lloyd-Davies turned to Terry Bateson in the witness box. ‘Now, officer, I have a few questions about that interview.’

‘Very well.’ Terry glanced at Sarah, who sat watching him intently. There was nothing flirtatious or friendly about her eyes. They were as cold as those of a lizard watching a fly.

‘Did you look for this man Sean - Murphy, or Mulligan, or Moriarty?’ Lloyd-Davies was practised in the use of sarcasm and it oozed from him now. ‘The one Mr Harker claims to have spent the evening with?’

‘Yes, sir, we did. Without result.’

‘I see. Well, were you able to find these two prostitutes that he claims to have met?’

‘No, sir. We had no name or address, no real description ...’

‘So what is your opinion of Gary Harker’s
alibi,
as I suppose we must call it?’

‘I think it’s a pack of lies, sir.’

‘Thank you. Now, in the interview you repeatedly told the accused that he had been recognised by Ms Gilbert. How did he appear to react to that?’

‘Well, I think you can hear it on the tape, sir. He was really surprised and upset. But he wasn’t upset when I told him she’d been raped, or even that it had happened in front of her kids. That didn’t seem to worry him much. What really got to him was that she claimed to have
recognised
him. He went white when I said that. He couldn’t speak.’

Lloyd-Davies stood silent for a while after Terry had finished speaking, pretending to think, while Terry’s last words echoed in the jury’s minds. The silence continued until judge Gray raised a quizzical eyebrow and Lloyd-Davies reluctantly sat down.

‘Thank you, Inspector, wait there, please.’

Sarah stood up. She looked across the court at Terry Bateson. No flicker of recognition passed between them. The easy conversation of a hour ago was forgotten. They were strangers. As she asked her first question, the hair rose along the back of his neck.

‘Detective Inspector, you lied to Mr Harker, didn’t you?’

For a long telling moment Terry didn’t answer. ‘I ... don’t understand you.’

‘Let me help you then. Do you recall these words: “
We know you were there because she recognised you. She saw your face.”
You said that, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it true?’

‘Ms Gilbert recognised Gary Harker, yes. That’s why we arrested him.’

‘Was it true that she saw his face?’

‘No.’

‘So you lied to Mr Harker, didn’t you?’

Terry recovered himself slightly, and addressed his reply to the judge as the police were trained to do. It was a subtle way of insulting defence counsel, making them seem unimportant in the eyes of the jury. ‘She didn’t actually say she saw his face, my lord, that’s true, but she stated very clearly that she recognised her assailant as Gary Harker, and the reason I ...’

‘I didn’t ask you
why
you lied, Detective Inspector, I asked you
if
you lied. And the answer is yes, isn’t it?’

The judge leaned forward protectively. ‘Nevertheless, I think it might help the jury if the Detective Inspector were allowed to give his reasons, Mrs Newby. Inspector?’

Thank God for judges, Terry thought. ‘The reason was simple, my lord. I wanted to see what his reaction would be if he thought he’d been recognised. And his reaction was quite clear. He was silent, as you could hear on the tape, and he went very white. That convinced me that he was guilty.’

Sarah glanced at the judge. It seemed he had finished, for the present at least.  Once again she had the electrifying feeling that all eyes were on her. Mostly hating her, at this moment.

‘I see. What would you say, Detective Inspector, if I told this court that at lunchtime you put your hand up my skirt and indecently assaulted me?’

A collective gasp sucked the air out of the court. Someone in the public gallery began to giggle helplessly. Terry opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. 

Before he could recover Sarah went on, smoothly: ‘I think the jury can see exactly what you would say. Your face has gone white and you are lost for words. Well, let me reassure the jury straight away that that was a hypothetical question. The Detective Inspector did not assault me, members of the jury. But even though he knows the suggestion is untrue he is shocked and lost for words, as you see.’

A young jurywoman laughed and her neighbour grinned. The other expressions ranged from delight through dismay to disgust. She had their undivided attention, at least.

But it was not a line of attack she had planned - where did she go from here? When you’ve made your point, move on. In a quiet, reasonable voice she asked:

‘Detective Inspector, did you find a balaclava hood in Gary Harker’s flat?’

‘No, my lord, we didn’t.’ Terry’s voice was wooden, stolid, but underneath he was seething. What a bitch the woman was! Was she planning this in the pub? Her questions continued, swift and relentless.

‘Did you find the watch that Sharon Gilbert described?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘No hood, no watch. You
did
search the flat, I suppose?’

‘Yes, we did.’

‘But you found no hood and no watch. Did you find any evidence at all in the flat, to suggest that Gary Harker had raped Sharon Gilbert?’

‘No, my lord. But ...’

‘So your only justification for arresting Mr Harker at five o’clock that morning was Sharon Gilbert’s identification of a man whose face she had
not
seen. Is that correct?’

‘It ... was the main reason for arresting him, yes.’

‘Was there any other reason?’

‘No.’

‘So it wasn’t just your
main
reason, it was your
only
reason, wasn’t it? Tell me, Detective Inspector, when you interviewed Ms Gilbert that night, was she sober?’

‘I ... understood she had been drinking, my lord, but she didn’t seem particularly drunk. She was quite clear about what she was saying.’

‘Not particularly drunk, you say. Ms Gilbert has told this court that she drank five vodkas and a double gin at the party, plus a vodka just before you arrived. But she was not particularly drunk, in your view. Detective Inspector, how many units of alcohol can a woman drink without exceeding the drink drive limit?’

Terry hesitated. ‘Er ... one or two, I believe. Maybe three, if it’s consumed with food.’

‘You
believe
? You’re a police inspector. Aren’t you sure?’

‘It varies with circumstances and body weight. Anyway I’m not a traffic policeman.’

‘Let me tell you then. An average woman is unfit to drive if she has consumed more than three units of alcohol in three hours. Sharon Gilbert had consumed at least eight units of alcohol. She was nearly three times over the driving limit. And yet you say she wasn’t drunk.’

‘I didn’t say she was fit to drive. I said she could identify the man who raped her.’

‘Even though that man was wearing a balaclava hood?’

‘Yes. He was a man she knew very well.’

‘Well, look, Detective Inspector, it seems to me that you’re asking this jury to believe one of two impossible things.  Either you believe that a woman who has drunk six vodkas and a double gin is perfectly sober, or, if you accept that she wasn’t sober, you are saying that a woman who was hopelessly drunk can positively identify a man with a hood over his face. Which is it?’

There was smothered laughter from the jury box. It sounded like applause to Sarah, mockery to Terry, who sighed.