A Game of Proof (24 page)

Churchill waved this away. ‘Look. This is a lead for that attack on Helen Steersby, and you’re rubbishing it already. We’ve got an attempted assault in the same area as this murder, by a guy with a striking feature like that nose. What more do you want? Well spotted, Trace.’

He turned back to Terry. ‘What sort of lad is he?’

Terry thought back. ‘Strong. Fit. Short-tempered, maybe. But no record, sir - I checked. And if he had this girlfriend, Jasmine, a real beauty by all accounts, why on earth would he go round scaring schoolkids? It doesn’t add up.’

‘Yes, but she’d left him,’ Tracy said. ‘Six weeks ago.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Terry persisted. ‘That he got frustrated and started dragging schoolgirls off their ponies? We’re looking for a nutter for that, a psycho. This lad seemed quite normal to me.’

‘Normal? This is your impression when - Thursday morning?’ Churchill’s contempt was blatant. ‘But on Thursday evening, this
quite normal
young lad seems to have raped his girlfriend in the woods and cut her throat. Maybe your judgement’s not what it was, old son.’

Terry was silent. However cruelly put, Churchill had a point. Gary Harker was free, and now this. Maybe his own skills were waning. The others avoided his eyes. Once he’d been the blue-eyed boy with the sharp brain, on the fast track for promotion. Now his colleagues’ respect was changing to pity. Probably he still hadn’t got over Mary’s death; perhaps he never would.

Churchill flipped a cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a snap of his lighter. ‘Let’s run through the rest. What have we got from the crime scene, Jack? We know her throat was cut and there was blood everywhere. What about footprints? That’s what we need to know.’

Jack Middleton pointed to a photograph. ‘Look here, sir. This is the best print we’ve got so far. It looks like a trainer, just a couple of feet from the body. I’ve taken a cast, but I haven’t identified it yet.’

‘Well, have a look at these, then.’ Triumphantly, Will Churchill held up the evidence bag with Simon’s muddy trainers in. ‘Will they match it, do you think?’

‘What size are they?’

‘Nine. Nikes.’

Jack Middleton turned the bag over to look at the soles. A cautious smile spread on his face. ‘Maybe, yes. I’ll scan these into the computer. Is there any blood on the shoes?’

‘Not obviously, but there are a lot of stains. If forensics find something, then we’ve got him. We found this, too.’ He held up a second bag for every to see. Inside it was a large strongly made breadknife with a black handle.

‘The pathologist says the cut was so deep it almost took her head off. Now in order to do that you need a weapon that’s big, sharp, and very strong - an ordinary blade would snap under the pressure. But this isn’t an ordinary breadknife, it’s an expensive one - tempered steel nearly two millimetres thick, from young Newby’s kitchen. It looks clean, but if forensics find something ...’

‘Then we’ve got him,’ Tracy Litherland said softly.

‘Exactly,’ Churchill agreed. ‘Anything else from the crime scene, Jack?’

‘Not so far, sir. We’re combing it carefully for hairs and fibres, but that’ll take time.’

‘Never mind. The key evidence is in the body, not the grass.’ Churchill surveyed the room triumphantly. ‘Our man left his calling card, in the proper place. Semen, for us to identify him by. So if we catch him, boys and girls, that’s it. Tracy can take a sample of his sperm ...’

‘You what, sir?’

‘Joke, Tracy, joke. And if the DNA matches we lock him up for life. Even his clever barrister mummy won’t be able to break a case like that, eh, Terence?’

Terry Bateson rang the bell of a small terraced house to the south of the city. The front of the house was fifty yards from the tree protest at the new shopping centre, the back looked over fields to the river bank where Jasmine’s body had been found. A slightly built young man in a dressing gown peered out. ‘Yes?’

‘David Brodie?’ Terry showed his warrant card. ‘It’s about Jasmine Hurst, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh ... yes. You’d better come in.’

Terry followed him into a small but immaculate kitchen. All the surfaces were clean, the cups on hooks, the knives in a wooden block screwed to the wall. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she? Her mother rang me last night. I’ve not had much sleep.’ He sat down at the table, his eyes red-rimmed with tiredness.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Brodie. Would you rather I came back at another time?’

‘No, it’s OK, let’s get it over with.’

‘You have no idea who might have done this?’

Brodie shook his head. ‘No. He’d have to be a madman, wouldn’t he?’

‘I understand Jasmine lived here with you. Is that right?’

‘Yes. Most of the time. Except when she’s at the protest. She sleeps ... slept there sometimes. I go there too when I have time.’

‘Really?’ Terry looked at the young man in his neat, comfortable kitchen, and tried to imagine him in a treehouse. Brodie interpreted his look with smile. ‘Doesn’t seem likely to you, does it? Well, I agree, I hate the mess and the dirt, so I don’t sleep there. But it’s a principle those people are standing up for. So yes, I support them when I can.’

‘What about Jasmine? Did she sleep there this week?’

Brodie hesitated. ‘Once or twice, yes. I’m on the late shift, you see. I leave here about one and don’t get back until about eleven at night.’

‘So when you got back on Thursday night, and she wasn’t here, were you worried?’

Brodie looked away, out of the window, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Not really. I just thought ... hoped ... she was at the protest. My mistake, I see now.’

‘So when was the last time you saw her?’

‘Thursday morning. We  ... had a row, you see. She walked out.’

‘What was the row about?’

Brodie shook his head sadly. ‘I can’t really say. I’m sorry, this probably sounds stupid, but it was just ... one of those emotional things where you think everything’s fine, and then find it’s not, you know? It started about
cleaning
, for heaven’s sake; she said I was too fussy, but ....’

 ‘Was it about her other boyfriend, Simon Newby?’

Brodie’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Part of it was, yes. How do you know about him? Oh, I suppose her mother told you.’

Terry remembered the Simon Newby he had met two days ago. A fit, muscular young man, quite unlike the slight, almost delicate boy he was talking to now. There was something about this young man that repelled him slightly. Too clean, too sensitive somehow.

‘So what did she say about Simon?’

‘She said - oh, stupid things - that I wasn’t tough or strong, that I wasn’t a man like him. Well, we knew that already - he’s a yob, isn’t he, a lout. That’s why she left him in the first place, because he used to beat her up. I said if that’s what she wanted she could go back and welcome - to live in a pigsty with a yob instead of a decent house where somebody cared for her.’

‘He used to beat her up?’

‘Yes. He even threatened
me
, for Christ’s sake.’

‘When was that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, six weeks ago. When she first left him.’

‘Did he hit you?’

‘No, he didn’t, but he used to follow us around. It was weird.’ He paused, staring at Terry with those pale, red-rimmed eyes. ‘Sometimes we couldn’t see him but we could feel it.’

‘You could feel it? How do you mean?’

‘It’s hard to describe. We just knew. Or we’d see a jogger in the distance and she’d say it was him. She often felt she was being followed. I wrote down some of the times.’ The young man took out a diary. ‘There, see. On a Monday. And then again the next Sunday.’

Terry leafed through the pages. There were five or six entries:
Simon outside house. Jogger near protest, Simon? Simon(?) near river.
And so on. He thought of Helen Steersby, and shuddered. ‘Do you mind if I borrow this?’

David hesitated. ‘It’s ... got some private entries in too.’

‘I’m sorry about that. But this is important. I’ll photocopy it and give it back to you. It must have been very frightening for you, all this.’

‘It wasn’t very pleasant, not for me anyway. But you know, Jasmine was never scared of him. I even think she enjoyed it, in a way.’

‘
Enjoyed
it?’

‘Yes. I mean, having two men to choose between. That was what our quarrel was about. She’d seen him again and I called her a bitch - God help me! I didn’t know she was going to die!’

‘Jasmine went back to Simon? When was this?’

‘Last week. I didn’t think she’d go again but it seems she did. If I’d stopped her she’d be alive now, wouldn’t she?’

Terry looked at him thoughtfully. ‘So, when she wasn’t here on Thursday night, where did you think she was?’

‘At Simon’s, of course. Either there or at the protest.’

‘Did you look for her?’

‘Not that night. Yesterday morning, yes. I went to the protest, but she wasn’t there. Then I went to Simon’s house but she wasn’t there either.’

‘You didn’t think of informing the police?’

‘No. She’s an adult, after all. I went to work, hoped she’d be here when I returned. Then her mother rang.’ He wiped his eyes with a tissue, and blew his nose. ‘It’s hard to come to terms with, really ... I’m sorry.’

‘I understand, Mr Brodie. But if you could write all this down in a statement ...’

Sarah was defending in a shoplifting case. Her client was an old lady who had been stopped by a store detective outside a small supermarket. Inside her shopping bag was a packet of bacon which had not been paid for. Also inside the shopping bag were eggs, milk, and bread, all of which
had
been paid for. Sarah’s client claimed that she had taken the bacon by mistake, in a fit of absentmindedness. The supermarket, however, disagreed.

It was the prosecution’s case, based on the evidence of a tight-lipped, humourless store detective, that the bacon had been found
concealed underneath the old lady’s library book
, this being clear evidence of
mens rea
in a deliberate, malicious, and diabolically cunning criminal act in direct contravention of the Theft Act of 1968.

The supermarket had been as stubborn and bloody-minded in bringing the charge as Sarah’s client had been in refusing to have it dealt with by the Magistrates, and so the packet of bacon, worth £1.79 and now ten months past its sell-by date, rested in lonely splendour on the exhibits table in Court One, while the matter was disputed at a cost to the taxpayer in excess of a thousand pounds.

Normally Sarah would have enjoyed this farce, playing the well-paid battle of wits like a game of tennis, but today, with Simon missing, she found it hard to concentrate. Her attempt to establish that the old lady was confused by her medication was skilfully countered by the prosecutor, Savendra, whose devious smile and exquisite good manners charmed Sarah’s client into admitting that she mistrusted her doctor, had poured her pills down the sink, and had hated the mini supermarket ever since it had driven her corner shop out of business ten years before.

The jury, being thus convinced that she was of sound mind and evil intent, convicted. The  judge sighed, gave her a conditional discharge and told her not to be so silly in future. Sarah made her way moodily back to her chambers.

‘Buy you lunch?’ Savendra offered, catching her up. ‘Bacon sandwich, on the house?’

‘Ha ha,’ Sarah said. ‘Very funny.’

‘Cheer up. We all need cases like that, to bring home the bacon. What was your client’s name? Marge?’

‘Savvy, just shut up, will you? I’m not in the mood. I’ve got a son suspected of murder, in case you’ve forgotten.’

‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. They haven’t caught him yet, have they?’

‘Not yet, but they will. They always do.’

‘No they don’t.’ Savendra darted in front of her, forcing her to look at him. ‘They
don’t
always catch them, Sarah, you know that.’

‘Well, that isn’t the point, is it? We’re not talking about some professional crook here, on the run to Bolivia, we’re talking about my son, Simon! They think he’s a murderer. And just to convince them, he’s run away!’

‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’

‘No.’ Sarah shook her head wearily, as though bothered by a fly. ‘So don’t make jokes about it, Savvy. It’s tearing me apart.’

He fell into step beside her. ‘Seriously, come and have lunch.’

‘That won’t make things any better.’

‘It won’t make them any worse, though, will it? You look like you’re wasting away. Come on. Somewhere quiet where we can talk.’

At the forensics department Will Churchill met Dr Theobald Brewer, a slow-moving gentleman in his mid sixties, for whom retirement and a life devoted to growing the perfect Brewer rose, yellow with a blue fringe around the petals, was only a few months away. He contemplated the young DCI with benign detachment.

‘Yes, we’ve had some success with your trainers,’ he said. ‘There were traces of sandy soil consistent with the crime scene. And a number of grass seeds. Laila is working on them at the moment.’ He indicated a tall young woman with clear black skin and dreadlocks, elegantly perched over a microscope. ‘Oh, excuse me a moment, would you?’

Dr Brewer leaned out of the window, where a gardener was spraying roses with insecticide. ‘Hey, young man! You missed the Princess Mary on the left. It was infested with greenfly yesterday and that
is
after all the point ...’

Exasperated, Churchill caught the gaze of the young scientist, who was smothering a grin.

Dr Brewer was incensed. ‘Look, I’ll have to go outside and deal with this, Inspector. Laila will take care of you. Honestly, young men nowadays ...’

Relieved, Churchill approached the young woman. ‘Is there any blood on the trainers?’

‘A few small stains, Inspector, yes.’ She smiled, perfect white teeth and twinkling olive-brown eyes. ‘Several in between the indentations on the sole of the left shoe, and five drops on the upper surface. They look just like tiny spatters of mud, but it’s blood nevertheless.’

‘
Yes!
You beauty!’ Churchill enthused. ‘And do they match the victim’s DNA?’