Betrayal (31 page)

‘Psychiatric assessment?’ I was instantly defensive. Every time I thought I was getting to grips with the procedures something like this turned up, another bolt from the blue.

‘I did mention it,’ Tingwall pointed out delicately. He waited for some sign from me before continuing, ‘In serious cases they always ask for a psychiatric assessment, partly to establish whether the accused is mentally capable of facing charges—’

‘Sane, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

I couldn’t bear the euphemisms that crept in, the fine obfuscating language. ‘If you could keep it simple . . .?’

Tingwall took this reprimand on the chin, with a quick frown of contrition. ‘Also,’ he continued, ‘to assess whether the accused is likely to be a danger to him or herself.’

‘Suicide?’ I laughed dismissively. ‘Ginny wouldn’t do that. Not unless she’s forced to stay in that place at any rate.’

‘Maybe not.’ Tingwall felt his way carefully forward. ‘But, Hugh, I have to tell you that our man Robertson—’ He peered at me. ‘You remember, I said it was important to get our own assessment?’

‘He’s a psychiatrist?’ In my shock I could remember none of this.

‘Yes. He saw Ginny on Wednesday, and’ – he made a regretful face – ‘I’m afraid his findings aren’t as unequivocal as I would have wished.’

Suddenly I was full of pain. ‘He’s saying she’s unbalanced?’

‘What he says is, he feels he cannot vouch entirely for Ginny’s state of mind. Not at the moment, anyway.’

‘But who is this Robertson?’ I demanded, looking for an escape. ‘Is he the best person? Do we want a second opinion?’

‘He was recommended. But we could consider getting someone else in, yes. But before making a final decision I think we should be guided by Counsel.’

We had completed another circle. ‘What are we waiting for then?’ I asked. ‘Why haven’t we got a QC?’

‘The best QCs are very busy, Hugh. I’m making enquiries, I’m trying to find out which of the top names are available. It’s not always easy to get the person you want.’

I pushed myself to my feet and took my frustration to the window. ‘Okay,’ I said, descending into sudden weariness. ‘So how long is all this going to take?’

‘The bail application? I think we should hold it for another week. It’ll give us time to prepare really thoroughly, to get this second medical opinion, if that’s what we decide.’

Outside, the good burghers of Exeter meandered along the pavements, going about their errands, wearing their own troubles on their faces. I wondered how many had read about Ginny’s appearance in court and what they had made of it, whether they had skimmed the item or picked over it with avid curiosity. Whether they, too, had decided she must be slightly off her head. Picturing Ginny’s life being raked over in this way was almost more than I could bear. Yet I knew full well that the news coverage so far was as nothing to what would come if the case went to trial.

I turned back. ‘This psychiatric assessment – it’s standard, is it?’

Tingwall gave me an odd indecipherable look. ‘We
could
have refused it.’

I was incredulous. ‘Then why the hell didn’t we? Why didn’t we—’ A notion lodged in my head; it seemed so obvious that I couldn’t think why it hadn’t come to me before. ‘How many murder cases have you handled before this, Charles?’

Tingwall inclined his head to acknowledge the fairness of the question. ‘Perhaps I could answer that by mentioning that, contrary to what many people think, murder’s a fairly rare crime, and this region must have one of the lowest murder rates in the country. And most of the murders that do occur are domestic or fairly straightforward or both, by which I mean there’s usually very little doubt as to who was responsible. It’s more a question of why, and whether it was self-defence, and so on. There are very few – extremely few – cases in which the facts are . . .’ he chose his words ‘. . . rather more open to interpretation. So, to answer your question, this firm has handled three murders in the last eighteen months, which is a lot by local standards, in fact two more than any other firm in Exeter. Now if Ginny feels she would like to go to people with more expertise, then I would understand completely, and I would do my best to hand the case on to another firm in good order, if that was what she so wished. As for the psychiatric assessment . . . I can only say that I thought it was for the best.’

I dropped back into my chair and regarded Tingwall’s thin intense face. ‘What’s your opinion?’ I asked drily. ‘Do you think Ginny would do better elsewhere?’

Tingwall pondered this with his habitual diligence. ‘Some of the big London firms would certainly have greater experience in this type of case. Against that, a local firm has the advantage of local knowledge, and of being on the spot, with experience of the local courts. A big city firm might have more immediate access to the right experts, to specialist knowledge, but a small country firm, if it does its homework properly, wouldn’t let that be a problem. If at first you can’t find the right expert,’ he recited with a forefinger in the air, ‘then you keep looking until you track him down.’ He grew solemn again before cocking me a half-smile. ‘Being a small outfit, we might also try harder.’

Despite his youth and relative inexperience, despite the gaffe over the psychiatric assessment, my first instinct was to stay with Tingwall. Yet this was Ginny’s future we were talking about. Getting this decision right was probably the most important thing I could ever do for her. Before putting the matter to Ginny I decided to check it out with some lawyer friends in London. I said, ‘I’ll have to speak to my wife.’

‘Of course. It’s for her to decide.’ He gave a diffident smile. ‘Perhaps I should say . . . if she decided to entrust me with the case I would give it my very best shot. Everything I had.’

‘I’ll tell her that.’

A slight softening had come over Tingwall’s face, a shadow of his fascination for Ginny, grown distant now, and sadder.

‘You’re visiting her tomorrow morning?’ he asked, resuming a suitable briskness. ‘Give her my best regards, would you? And tell her I’ll see her before court on Monday.’ Behind him the calf-bound legal tomes marched brashly along the shelves, at his elbow a stack of files teetered precariously, and I wondered how many other cases he had on the go.

‘What’ll happen on Monday exactly?’

‘Not a lot. The Crown Prosecution Service will ask for a further remand, and I will ask that it be set for a week, and the magistrates will agree. And that’s it.’

‘We don’t question anything?’

‘The evidence, you mean? Not at this stage, no.’

‘When, then?’

Tingwall’s narrow eyes flicked away briefly, he pursed his lips. ‘It’s highly unlikely we would want to challenge anything before the trial. Though that can’t be decided, finally, until we see the prosecution’s evidence.’

I said with disgust, ‘And the trial’s eight months away.’

‘It could be six.’

‘And there’s no chance of getting the case stopped before then?’

Tingwall was looking uneasy, as he always did when I talked in this way. ‘I think we have to face the fact that it’s very unlikely.’

My frustration resurfaced. ‘It all sounds so
negative
.’

Tingwall considered this with detachment. ‘I would hope – realistic.’

I pulled my hands down my face and let my anger go. I knew I shouldn’t take my disappointment out on Tingwall, yet a part of me needed to challenge the frightening mood of inevitability which seemed to have attached itself to Ginny’s case.

‘You think the evidence is that strong?’ I hadn’t meant to ask this; I wasn’t sure that I was ready to hear the answer.

‘As laid out by the police,’ Tingwall stated cautiously, ‘as specified by them, the evidence would seem sufficient to take the case to trial.’

So far I had avoided discussion of the evidence. There are things that aren’t that easy to face. But now, finally, I braced myself to confront the facts, partly to test Tingwall’s knowledge against my own, but also – there was no denying it – to feed my own hunger for understanding, to embellish the reel of film that kept running through my head with images and colour.

‘Tell me what they have,’ I asked calmly. ‘As you understand it. The evidence so far.’

Tingwall shot me a questioning glance, then stood up. ‘Of course. Coffee?’ He went to a side table and, pouring two cups from a Thermos jug, brought them over. He pulled up a chair and, setting it at an angle to mine, sat on the edge of the seat, hunched forward with his arms resting on his knees, and began to speak in the gentle measured tones of a storyteller.

‘I asked the police for a summary of their main evidence immediately after Ginny was charged. And it was the same as the evidence listed in court on Monday. Now it’s possible they may be holding something back on the principle that you don’t give away any more than you have to at this stage of the proceedings, but I doubt it. In a case like this I think they’d produce everything they had, just to be sure. So . . .’ He clasped his hands together. ‘The first thing they stated was that several traces of the victim’s blood had been found on the floor of the
Ellie Miller
, thus establishing the boat as the scene of the crime. Now this was a categorical statement, based on forensic evidence, so we can assume that they have run DNA tests and so on. Then . . .’ He paused to take a sip of coffee and gather his thoughts. ‘Then they said that Ginny’s fingerprint had been found in a bloodstain on the boat, and that this blood was also the victim’s.’

I had meant to keep quiet, but I said, ‘This forensic stuff, it’s cut and dried, is it?’

‘Usually, yes. In the case of DNA, particularly so.’ He was like a cat on a precarious ledge, choosing the safest place to step. ‘With other forensic evidence, it can sometimes be . . . open to interpretation. Often it’s a matter of the individual expert’s opinion – and opinions can differ. Very occasionally they differ considerably. What we can do, of course, is hire our own expert to examine whatever evidence it is and run his own tests. If his findings give us a chance of challenging the prosecution’s expert, then – well, obviously we’d pursue that avenue rigorously, get a third opinion and so on. The first step – and I think I mentioned this to you the other day – is to get a pathologist to carry out a post-mortem for us. I’ve made enquiries and Dr James Bagnall could do it next week. He’s the best man, quite famous now. If the police pathologist has missed anything, he’ll find it. And his opinion would count for a great deal. He’s done a lot of murders – all the ones you read about.’

And now this one: another to be read about.

‘I’ll go ahead then, shall I?’ Tingwall asked. ‘With Dr Bagnall?’

‘Yes,’ I said, trying not to think of Sylvie’s body and what would happen to it under Bagnall’s knife. ‘I interrupted you. On the evidence.’

Tingwall’s disconcerting gaze flicked up to me, before fixing itself on the floor some five or six feet in front of him. ‘Next . . . The police are saying that they have a witness who saw Ginny rowing out to the boat on the
Saturday
afternoon, when she says she was only just starting out from London. Now identification evidence is always soft evidence, and if this was the only thing the prosecution had to go on we’d certainly consider challenging it at an early stage.’

But it was not the only evidence, and he moved quickly on. ‘Finally, they cited Ginny’s own statement, that she went to
Ellie Miller
the next day, the Sunday, and scrubbed the boat clean. The inference being that she was removing blood and so on.’

In the silence that followed I replayed that Sunday morning in my mind, as I had replayed it so many times in the last week. I saw Ginny in jeans and a loose top, packing a plastic bucket with cleaning materials to take out to the boat. I held her face close to my mind’s eye and searched her expression for signs of trauma and despair, I recalled snippets of our dialogue and scanned the casually uttered words for intimations of disaster, yet I found nothing, no hint at all. Casting Ginny in an innocent role, I saw someone keen to participate in the boat-orientated life at Dittisham from which I had excluded her for so long that summer, eager to muck in and show me what she could contribute, and, in so doing, make a go of our marriage again: Ginny the peacemaker, fraught with nothing more sinister than anxiety. Then I cast her as someone frighteningly different, a person I scarcely recognised, someone calculating and vindictive, cold and methodical, someone who was capable not only of committing such a terrible act, but of behaving as if it had never happened, and in this incarnation her mild agitation that morning finally took on a guilty significance.

Tingwall murmured, ‘Of course we must wait for the prosecution to serve their statements on us before we can be absolutely sure of what we’re up against, and that won’t be for some weeks yet.’

‘But at the moment it looks pretty bad?’ I said, staring straight into his crooked eyes.

‘I wouldn’t use a word like bad, Hugh. But there’s certainly a serious case to answer.’

This judgment, though I had been expecting it, was like a band tightening around my heart.

I braced myself to ask, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

‘The worst?’ He jerked his head back slightly, as though recoiling from an unpleasant task. ‘I really . . . That’s something for the QC to advise.’

I persevered, ‘If she was found guilty?’

He said with great reluctance, ‘For murder, it’s a mandatory life sentence. But Hugh, there are bound to be mitigating circumstances, the chance of a lesser charge—’

‘Bound to be?’

‘Of course! Ginny’s case is never going to fall into the same category as a cold-blooded gang murderer. There are so many ways to play this, Hugh. She could plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, for example. She could say she was under such intolerable strain that she lost her head. She could say she was severely provoked and reacted in an instant of madness. Or she might have been suffering severe clinical depression. There are so many ways to approach this, Hugh. So many ways to win a jury’s understanding.’

‘And for manslaughter?’