A Game of Proof (28 page)

The house was cold, dirty, and untidy. It reminded her of the council house she and Kevin had moved into nineteen years ago, before Simon was born. Basic, battered, grimy, but a home for all that. Somewhere you could make a start. Which was what Simon had tried to do, she supposed. When he’d met her outside court he’d talked of wallpaper and new shelves and decent furniture ... and now this. A half painted wall, a heap of beer cans in the corner,
Loaded
and
GQ
magazines on the floor, a mouldy curry container beside the CD player.

No wonder Jasmine hadn’t wanted to stay. They surely had something to argue about, if he asked her to live in a tip like this. But that doesn’t mean he murdered her, though.

She put the fish and chips in the oven to warm up. Then she slung the curry container into the bin with the magazines and hoovered the carpet. She found a mop, bucket and unused bottle of bleach in a cupboard, and got rid of a series of stains on the floor and worktop. Then she sat at the kitchen table, eating the fish and chips while the floor dried around her.

He
is
like his father Kevin, she thought. Our house in Seacroft had a chance because we both moved in together with our baby, Simon. And so Kevin expected me to start nest-building, to make it neat and tidy and a proper home. That was my role, and he had a place in it too, the wage-earner and handyman. So he played along, until the baby got too demanding and I was too boring and we were too poor, every day scrimp and save without end.

And we were both too young - he was anyway. He wanted to be out with the lads, spending his money on himself instead of me and the baby.

Now what? Sarah washed up her plate and sat in the battered, filthy armchair, staring at the video and expensive CD player underneath. Simon’s priorities. Several of the videotape covers, she saw, were quite blatantly pornographic.

Like father, like son. Kevin would have fitted in here well, she thought. The Kevin she remembered, the nineteen year old boy with the beautiful silky hard body, the best lover she’d ever had, the toughest little gamecock on the street, the most selfish bastard she’d ever shared a house with. If he’d lived alone, his house would have been a tip like this. And if I’d come later and tried to clean it up he’d have hit me; he was like that.

But he would never have killed me, surely?

In her mind she replayed the times Kevin had hit her. She remembered her fear, the sudden explosion of his anger, the sadistic pleasure in his eyes. And then it had been over: a minute or two of horror, then done. Perhaps, if he’d gone on ... but he never had. His rage had died, he’d flung her contemptuously on the floor, and left. The last time, for good.

The memory frightened her. In the corner, she saw a bottle of whisky. It’s been a terrible day, she thought; I need some comfort. She found a tumbler in the kitchen and half-filled it. I came here to think, she remembered, that’s what I told Bob. What is there to think about?

Is my son a killer?

The whisky burned its way down her throat and she thought
No, of course not
, it can’t be true. I didn’t carry a killer in my body for nine months. Things like that can’t happen. Not to me.

It’s true his father was a sadist, but that doesn’t make him a murderer, does it?

You wouldn’t want to tell a jury about that, would you?

No. Nor would you want a jury to think about the pain and jealousy which must have consumed this violent, unpredictable youth after this exquisitely beautiful girl had lived with him, rejected him, come tantalizingly back into his life, and then rejected him all over again. That’s the oldest motive in the world.

Yes, maybe, but it’s all circumstantial. To convict him we need
evidence
, hard irrefutable evidence that it was really Simon who cut her throat, raped her and left her there for the insects and dogs to eat. Not someone else.

His semen was in her vagina
.

Did he rape her here and then murder her later? Is that what happened?

The police think it all happened on the path by the river.

She could picture that more clearly. In her mind she saw a girl walking alone on the river path, a dark figure following a short distance behind her. Suddenly the girl saw him and tried to run - but it was too late, he knocked her down, pinned her beneath him. She fought, but he twisted her arm, and a knife blade gleamed in the moonlight, paralyzing her with fear. He shoved her in front of him into the trees, her arm twisted behind her, the knife at her throat.

And then in her imagination they were gone, mercifully hidden from sight, and she didn’t want to see what happened next, what he did to her, how long it took, how it hurt. But later in her mind she saw him come out onto the path, a black figure in the moonlight, and she tried to see his face, to see if this monster could be her son - but the face was invisible, black as the night.

Sarah shuddered, and groped for the bottle. She seldom drank much but tonight the whisky seemed essential. Could it have happened like that? The vision had seemed so real, until the crucial moment when she’d been unable to see the murderer’s face. Could the murderer have sat in this grubby armchair like me? Been in my body as a baby?

She stared at her empty glass solemnly. Then poured herself another.

In the morning she was woken by bright sunlight pouring though the bedroom curtains. She sat up, and a lump of pig iron lurched sideways inside her skull. She fell back, stunned, and for a while - a few seconds, half an hour, a week - watched the birth of the universe, from big bang to supernova, unroll behind her eyelids. Then she became urgently aware that her stomach wished to leave her body and reached the loo just in time to help it on its way. Sometime later she gazed with horror at the pale, trembling face of a sick woman in the mirror on the wall.

She hadn’t felt this bad since she was pregnant. Not even then. Slowly, taking several aeons to complete the task, she opened a bottle of paracetamol, crawled to the kitchen to whisk up an egg in warm milk, then crept upstairs on her hands and knees, and went back to sleep.

Hours later she awoke to discover that the pig iron in her head had shrunk to a musket ball behind her right eye. Cautiously, so as not to dislodge it, she sat up, swallowed some more paracetamol, and crept to the bathroom for a cold wash. By twelve o’clock she was dressed, and eighty per cent conscious. Disgusted with herself, she slung the empty whisky bottle into the bin.

So this is how I behave when I try to sort myself out. Bob would be appalled.
I’m
appalled. I’m a mother, a wife, a barrister. Get a grip, woman. Get out of here.

She went out to the Kawasaki in the shed.  The bike gleamed comfortingly.  She patted its saddle and looked around. She was not surprised by the mess; if Simon couldn’t tidy his own bedroom he was unlikely to make a fetish of an outside shed.  There was a battered table under the window, a broken chair, a pile of half-empty paint tins, brushes with rock-hard heads jammed into a saucepan, some plastic chairs, several bin bags, and a pot with a brown, dead plant in it.

She picked up the bin bag which had fallen as she wheeled the bike in last night. A woolly hat dropped out, and something clattered down the side of the bike and lodged between the exhaust and the chain.

Cautiously, trying not to revive her headache, Sarah searched for it with her fingers. What was it - a coin, a metal washer perhaps? Whatever it was, if she left it there it would jam up the chain somehow and wreck the bike; that always happened with her and machines.

After several attempts the thing fell out. She picked it up and brushed off the dirt. It was a small golden ring, set with tiny stones in the shape of a snake, or an
S
. Sarah held it up to the light. A woman’s ring, an engagement ring perhaps.
S
for what?

Simon?

She slipped it on her finger. Who would have a ring with
S
for Simon on it? Jasmine, obviously. She had been a tall girl, strong, athletic as well as beautiful. But why was it here, in a bag in this shed? Another of Simon’s failures, perhaps - he’d proposed to her with it and she’d dumped him. Or ... what else was in the bag?

She picked up the other thing, the black woolly hat which had fallen out at the same time, and laid it carefully on the table. It wasn’t a woolly hat, as she had thought. Not quite. As she unfolded it she saw the two holes cut in it for eyes. Nothing for the mouth. The sort used by terrorists. And robbers.
And rapists.

The sort of hood that Sharon Gilbert had described. Here - in Simon’s shed.
Why?

Sarah’s knees felt suddenly weak. She grasped the edge of the table and stared down at the repulsive thing. The blank eye slits gazed back up at her. What did it mean?

Jasmine’s ring. A hood.
What else was in this bag? Trembling, she fumbled inside. A pair of black jeans, a jumper. Nothing else.  She put on her motorcycle gauntlets and examined the clothes more closely. Would there be blood -
please no.
So far as she could see there was none but forensics, she knew, could trace specks invisible to the naked eye. The police should  have searched this shed but they obviously hadn’t.
What did it all mean?

Her head was still fuddled with the hangover. She found it hard to think clearly. But one thing seemed obvious. This balaclava was found in Simon’s shed with Jasmine’s ring. It must be his. The police may say he wore it when he killed Jasmine.

No one said anything about Jasmine’s murderer wearing a balaclava.

How could they? There were no witnesses.  Only Jasmine, and she’s dead.

It’s not Simon’s, this thing. I’ve never seen him wear one. Why would he?

It’s here in his shed. At the very least it’s evidence.

If the police want evidence they must find it for themselves. That’s their job.

It doesn’t matter, it’s my duty to give it to the police. I have no choice.

No!!

But it’s evidence, isn’t it? And I’ve found it. If I’m caught concealing evidence I’ll be struck off, I’ll never practise as a barrister again. I’ll just be a mother.

You’re a mother first and last
.

The lawyer’s voice in her head was firm, insistent, rational, but the mother’s was more persuasive. Sarah gripped the edge of the table, staring at the wretched balaclava and ring. Why did I ever come in here? If I hadn’t looked I would never have found them. No one would.

If Adam hadn’t eaten the apple he’d never have known good and evil. But he ate and I looked so we both know something, though God knows what it means. Probably Adam was confused, too. Who did he talk to? Eve? I know who I’ve got to discuss this with right now.

Sarah stuffed the hood into her saddle bag, unlocked her bike, and rode towards Hull.

It’s not a question of being
just a mother
, she told the lawyer’s voice in her mind. That’s not a role or a career choice you can try out for a while. It’s a life sentence.

The prison was as depressing, the queues and searches as long and humiliating as before. She left the balaclava with the bike, to avoid the search; the ring was on her finger.

‘You came without him then?’ Simon glanced at her warily.

‘Without Bob? Yes. He’s teaching today.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Simon shrugged. ‘I doubt he wanted to come anyway.’

‘It’s difficult for him, Simon. He’s not used to places like this.’

‘You think
I
am? Christ, Mum! Do you know how small the cells are? They lock you in all night with a stranger and this stinking bucket. It’s gross. It’s fucking medieval.’

‘I know, Simon, and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Really.’

He took a deep breath, to control himself. ‘Look. I’ve been thinking ... about that blood.’

Something in his eyes made her shiver. It was a look she had seen so often before - the infinitely cunning look of a rat caught in a trap, a criminal about to change his story because his life depended on it. ‘The blood on the shoe and the knife, you mean?’

‘Yeah. Look,
if
it’s hers - they don’t know for certain, do they?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘Then I’ve remembered. There’s a way it might have happened.’

She waited, a well of infinite sadness rising inside her.

‘You see, it wasn’t that day, it was earlier in the week. We spent most of that afternoon in bed too, making love. But one time she got up, to make tea and toast. Well, she wore my shirt - she often did that, she looked good in it. She wore my trainers too. You know, like slippers. Well, when she came upstairs she’d wrapped a tissue round her thumb because she’d cut it. It wasn’t a big cut but it was bleeding. So I got her a plaster and put it on. That’s it.’

He stopped. His mother said nothing.

‘Don’t you see? Maybe she cut herself with the breadknife and some blood fell on my shoes. That’s why it’s there!’

It was a remote possibility, Sarah thought. Either that or a good lie - hard to prove either way. ‘Just a few days before? So the cut on her thumb must still be there?’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded earnestly. ‘With a plaster on it. I put it there myself.’

‘Well, I can check. We’re not even sure it’s her blood yet. All these things take time.’

‘How much time? Until the trial?’

‘Six months, at least. Maybe more.’

‘Six months, in here?
No!’

She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Simon, it’s out of my hands. Look, there’s something I came to say. I’ve ... got some questions.’ She glanced around cautiously, lowering her voice to ensure they were not overheard. ‘This morning I found two things in your shed which I can’t explain. One was a black balaclava hood. You know, the sort terrorists wear, that you can pull over your face, with two holes for eyes.’

‘So?’

‘So?
Don’t be stupid, Simon
Is it yours?
’

‘How should I know?’