The Cry (22 page)

I’m in a rush. Chloe didn’t want to go to school today so after okaying it with her teachers I had to wait for Mum and Dad to arrive. She’s upset after being in court yesterday. Confused, too. Don’t know why they needed her to testify. Like so much else that’s happened, it’s so unfair on her.

I’m late: no time to get the tram.

‘Supreme Court, in Elizabeth Street,’ I say to the taxi driver.

‘You going to the Lindsay trial, by any chance?’ the taxi driver asks a few blocks later.

‘Um, yeah.’ Shit, I don’t want to talk to this guy about it.

‘Do you know her or something?’

‘No.’

‘You a reporter?’

‘No, just interested.’ I’m not going to engage. Stuff him.

He pauses, desperate to get something out of me. ‘I know a guy who worked with Alistair Robertson, some PR firm in St Kilda Road. Said he was a great man.’

‘Right at the next one, yeah?’

‘Right you are. You hear about the sighting?’

‘And then second left.’

‘Yeah, I know where it is. Some guy was in a garage holding a screaming baby – near Darwin. I have an uncle up there. Bloody hot, drinks a lot! Hard to see the man’s face on CCTV.’

‘Thanks. Here’s just fine.’

‘Hate to say it but the baby just looks like a baby to me. Just because he was crying doesn’t mean he was kidnapped, I mean he’d be – what now? – seven, eight months?’

I hand over a fifty and wait at his window while he counts the change as slowly as he can. ‘She’s mad as a snake though, eh?’

‘Thanks,’ I say, and run inside.

I join the coffee queue in the court café. A blonde woman with a Scottish accent is in the queue ahead of me. When she turns to leave I recognise her from my Facebook stalking days – Kirsty, Joanna’s best friend. She looks tired and drawn and her hair’s frizzy – nowhere near as pretty as in the photos she used to post. She smiles and holds my eyes for a moment. I think she must know who I am. She says ‘excuse me’ then heads off to court with her takeaway skinny cap. The smile I return her is a bit shamefaced. She’ll know why later, because I’ll be taking the stand. Chloe was much calmer than I am. She knew what she wanted to say, I suppose. I don’t have a clue.

Phil had been my courtroom spy yesterday. Last night he'd told me what Ms Amery, Mrs Wilson and the trucker had said; how confident Chloe had seemed over the video link. In the afternoon an air stewardess had been called. She’d painted an ugly picture of Joanna, apparently, throwing her dirty looks as she relayed what happened on the plane: Joanna had flown off the handle when told the baby was upsetting the passengers, she explained. She’d accosted several passengers, held the baby as if he was ‘some unwanted rubbish’, and been aggressive towards Alistair.

I recognise the air hostess from Phil’s description (neat red bob, grey roots). She’s whispering to her friend as I make my way to the stand, proud of herself after yesterday’s fifteen minutes. I wish I hadn’t insisted that Phil stay away today. I need him.

‘Ms Lindsay came to see you the morning of the car accident?’ the defence lawyer begins. I look directly at him, careful not to see anyone else – especially Joanna, whose stare I can sense. Her lawyer has the kind of face I’d never tire of slapping: young, dapper, definitely private-schooled, Scotch College or Geelong Grammar, probably.

‘She did.’

‘Why?’

‘She said she wanted to check if Chloe was safe and happy with me.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘She said she didn’t want Alistair to take her. She said she was going to help me.’

‘And how would you describe her behaviour that morning?’

‘She seemed completely sane to me.’ I’m not saying this to hurt her. I’m telling the truth. I accidentally look at her, and notice that she’s smiling at me. She gives me a small nod.

The young Matthew Marks steps to his table and flicks some papers, pretending to look for something. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise; are you a qualified psychiatrist, Mrs Robertson?’

‘It’s Ms Donohue.’ I say.

He lifts his eyes to the judge, who responds as he wishes: ‘Strike that last comment please. Ms Donohue is not qualified to assess the defendant’s mental health.’

I’m not saying what I’m saying to help the prosecutor make sure that Joanna is punished as severely as possible. I’m saying what I’m saying because it’s the truth.

‘So how did she behave, then, the morning she came to see you?’ the defence lawyer asks.

‘She was articulate. She made sense.’

Joanna’s smile is as big as the prosecutor’s. Unnerving. If the defence lawyer asked me how I think she’s coming over now, I would say she’s definitely mad. But she wasn’t, not that morning.

‘So Joanna Lindsay visited you at around 10 a.m. and said she did not want her husband to take Chloe away and that she wanted to help you. Did she mention anything about her relationship with Alistair Robertson?’

I wrack my brain. What did she say again? ‘Well, she said something about ringing her counsellor in Glasgow the night before and coming over a bit crazy . . . I think she was understandably stressed.’

I’ve said what the private-school wanker wants me to say. ‘I’d like to refer to a statement given by the counsellor in question, Mrs Anne Docherty from Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire,’ he says, reading from a sheet he’s lifted from the table, ‘who reports that Ms Lindsay called her the night before the alleged murder and sounded – and I quote‚ “bizarre and incoherent”.’

‘Well she wasn’t like that when I saw her,’ I say.

‘No, Mrs Robertson, but you’re unlikely to say she was mad, aren’t you? You’re unlikely to want my client to be deemed mentally ill when she stole your husband from you and then killed him, leaving your beloved daughter fatherless. You’ll be wanting the full force of the law. You’ll be wanting her to be convicted of murder, not manslaughter.’

‘Objection!’ I’m not sure who just yelled this. I’m sweating, shaking. I want to go home. Joanna looks like I do now: annoyed, upset. I can tell from her body language that she hates her lawyer as much as I do. Before the judge can respond to the objection, Joanna’s lawyer has taken his seat, victorious, and closed his folder with a ‘No further questions’.

The courtroom is deadly silent when I walk from the stand and take a seat at the back. To my surprise, Joanna’s friend Kirsty gives me an understanding smile as I pass. There’s a pause. Everyone is waiting for the clerk to speak. He does, eventually.

‘The court calls Joanna Lindsay to the stand.’

Joanna fidgets with her dress before standing.

‘Ms Lindsay, can you please make your way to the stand?’ The judge’s tone is kind because she obviously believes she’s dealing with a mad woman. That’s what this whole event has been about – her insanity – and I can’t deny she has been coming across as completely bonkers.

‘Of course,’ Joanna says. The artist at the front begins scratching away at her sketch pad. Joanna is wearing Antichrist clothes. It’s almost as if she wants everyone to hate her. Yesterday she wore a black miniskirt and tight white sleeveless top. Today it’s a short, shoulderless red dress with a slit at the side and a small rip. The artist laps up this murderous woman in her adulterous dress. Joanna stands and turns to smile for the artist. Then she looks at the judge and says: ‘I can do anything I set my mind to.’

Journalists are tweeting openly and onlookers are doing it secretly. I’m curious and sneak a quick look at the #joannalindsay thread as she walks slowly to the stand and takes her oath.

The tweets revolt me. I put my phone away just as the prosecutor asks Joanna if she understands why she’s here. She’s skeletal, eight stone at most. Her hair’s tied back severely. She has too much make-up on, including thick black eyeliner. She’s wearing the sluttiest dress I’ve ever seen. She’s smiling, or, yeah, smirking. She’s read the manual on how to look and behave in court and is doing everything wrong, everything. Yep, definitely a smirk.

She’s sitting down.

‘Ms Lindsay, you have already confessed to the murder of Alistair Robertson,’ the prosecutor states.

Joanna’s young male lawyer gets to his feet. ‘Objection! Ms Lindsay admits to the manslaughter of Alistair Robertson on the grounds of diminished responsibility. As evidenced in the psychiatric reports submitted to court yesterday, she was not and is not of sound mind.’

Judge: ‘Sustained. Rephrase, please, Ms Maddock.’

‘Very well, Your Honour. Ms Lindsay, as Mr Marks has just informed us, your defence is that you are not of sound mind, and cannot therefore take full responsibility. How do you feel about telling the world you are mad?’

Matthew Marks is on his feet again, but Joanna shakes her head.

‘I know what my lawyer says and what the psychiatrists argue – that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following . . . after Noah . . . after what happened to Noah. They say I was severely depressed, had flashbacks, that I was hallucinating, behaving oddly. Okay, so maybe, but that’s all irrelevant. I didn’t kill Alistair because of post-traumatic stress disorder. I killed him because I wanted to. Am I hallucinating now? No. I want to take full responsibility for this. I want to be punished,’ she says. ‘Convict me of murder because that’s what I did. Sentence me to life imprisonment because that’s what I deserve. It’s my fault and my fault alone. It’s not Noah’s fault because he wouldn’t stop crying, or the Emirates staff because they didn’t help me and it was not the fault of airport security.’

‘Airport security?’ the prosecutor says. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I want to take responsibility. Why is it so hard for everyone to understand that? Don’t listen to my clever young lawyer. Don’t listen to anyone but me. I killed him. Take me away. Put me away.’ She’s shaking now. ‘God, please!’

There’s a shuffling in the court. She’s making everyone very uneasy and I don’t think it’s because she’s completely bonkers, which she clearly is, I think it’s because her desire to take the blame leaves these venomous onlookers with nowhere to place their poison.

Joanna’s lawyer is smiling in his front-row seat. Hallelujah! His client is coming across as a total nutjob, just as he hoped.

‘You’re saying you knew what you were doing when you killed him?’

‘Yes!’ Fury takes her tears away. ‘Why do I have to say it so many times? How can it be so hard to be convicted of this? I knew he didn’t have his seatbelt on. I knew we were going at a hundred and forty kilometres an hour. I wanted to kill us both. I took hold of the steering wheel. I swerved the car into a road sign.’

‘But you had your seatbelt on?’

‘That’s where my cross ended up and I have to bear it. I forgot to take my seatbelt off. I’m forgetful. I’m an idiot.’

People shuffle uncomfortably at her answers.

‘And you confessed to the police that you murdered your partner?’ the prosecutor says.

‘Jesus. Am I speaking Swahili or something? Yes! I’ve confessed to everyone.’

There’s a fresh flurry of texting and tweeting. The artist turns the page and starts a new sketch.

‘Why, Joanna? Why did you kill him?’ the prosecutor asks.

She hesitates, thinking hard before answering carefully. ‘I killed him because I couldn’t stand to be with him for another second.’