Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

Sarah extracted her leg from the trousers, hoisted up her tights, and smiled encouragingly. ‘You look really nice, Em …’

‘Well, make sure you do. We’ve got to go now , mum!’

‘Five minutes.’ Sarah hurried upstairs, changed, brushed her hair quickly, and gulped four mouthfuls of dried baked beans before Bob and Emily hustled her into the Volvo.

‘You forgot, didn’t you?’ said Bob, reversing the car. ‘Again!’

Sarah sighed. ‘It’s an important case and I’m cross-examining tomorrow. Anyway …’

‘Stop!’ Emily screamed from the back. ‘Dad, go back — I’ve forgotten my music!’

‘For heaven’s sake …’

‘Why on earth they have a concert the week before their GCSEs I cannot understand,’ Bob said, as Emily dashed back into the house. ‘The poor child’s in a bad enough state as it is.’

‘She’s a clever girl. She’ll manage.’

‘How would you know?’ Bob snapped. ‘You never see her. She was in a dreadful state when I got home — tears, books and papers all over the place!’

‘She did well enough in the mocks.’

‘Yes, well.’ Bob fell silent as Emily ran down the drive, got in, slammed the door, and shouted ‘drive!’ in a voice whose nerves contrasted severely with the cool appearance she had presented on the stairs.

Sarah said nothing. Clearly they were both too wound up to accept comfort from her anyway. Despite what Bob said, Emily was a conscientious student who had got mostly As and Bs in her mock GCSEs a few months ago. If her work ethic lacked the intensity and rigid self-discipline of her mother’s, that was because her life was so much easier. Emily had a comfortable home, loving parents, no babies to look after …

Sarah remembered how phenomenally organized she’d had to be in those early years of her marriage to Bob. He’d had a full teaching job and she, with a toddler and a baby to care for, had begun studying two A levels. But it had always been worth it. As she began studying at a higher level, she felt as if wires in her head that had fused together with rust were being cleaned and pulled apart and tuned. It became a pleasure that she couldn’t do without.

When she got an A in both subjects her addiction was confirmed. Simon was six by then and Emily three. She began an Open University degree, getting up at five each morning to study. She even protected her desk from the prying hands of children by fencing herself in with a playpen. The sight of their mother in there with her books became such a common family sight that the first time little Emily saw a monkey in a cage at the zoo she proudly informed everyone that it was ‘studying.’

But to Sarah her studies opened up such vistas of freedom that it was those outside who were in prison. She learned to inhabit two worlds — one in which she cooked, cleaned, and cared for the children, and the other in which she studied and passed exams — always with the highest grades so that she could move on to the next stage. After the OU degree she read law at the university of Leeds, and then spent a year at the Middle Temple in London, coming home only at weekends on the train. By then Simon had been fourteen, Emily ten, and her constant study was a fact of family life. And finally it had paid off. She got a pupillage and then a place in chambers as a barrister.

And so she had climbed to the top of her ladder, only to find another stretching away above — the ladder to becoming a QC and eventually, perhaps, a judge. And the case of Gary Harker was one of the first squalid, slippery rungs.

She began thinking about the case in the car and resumed, guiltily, during the school concert. She had no ear for music and although she was proud that Emily had passed so many flute exams she couldn’t concentrate on it for long. Tomorrow’s questions began to replay themselves in her mind, and she imagined the responses Sharon would make. There were a couple of awkward points, she realised, which she would have to work on when she got home.

Emily stood up to play the flute solo she had been practising, and her mother smiled encouragingly. But Emily wondered, not for the first time, whether the mind behind her mother’s smile was really concentrating on her at all.

At breakfast that morning Terry’s youngest daughter Esther let her pet hamster out of its cage, and by the time Terry had retrieved it from behind the sofa the rush hour traffic was gridlocked across the city, so that he was late for the team meeting which he was due to lead. When he arrived at the incident room his new boss, DCI Will Churchill, was striding back and forth at the head of his new troops, some of whom were looking distinctly resentful.

‘And when it comes to police work, what I’m looking for is commitment, ’ he barked in his sharp Essex accent. ‘That’s what will finally nail the killer of Maria Clayton and the rapist who attacked Karen Whitaker.’ He waved at the photographs, maps, and articles about the Hooded Rapist displayed around then incident room walls. ‘I may be new here, but that has its own advantages. An outsider can often see more clearly.’

And annoy people more deeply, Terry thought bitterly. Before Mary died, I was in line for this job. And it would have been enough for me, I didn’t want to rise higher. But Churchill, a man ten years younger and six inches shorter than himself, had been fast-tracked within the service from the moment he joined. He would be with them for a few years, no more, trampling on everyone in this room as he scrambled to the next rung of the ladder. Seeing Terry sliding into a back seat he broke off his tirade.

‘Ah, DI Bateson, I presume. Good of you to join us. Forgive me, I have used the general’s absence from his post for a little pep talk. One serious crime solved, two more to go. Or three, if your visit to the farm girl proved anything yesterday.’

Terry signed, registering the implied criticism, and rose from his back seat.

‘Shall I brief the team about it now, sir?’

‘Of course, old son, you carry on.’

Churchill parked himself in a front seat to judge the performance of his second in command, and began picking his teeth with a match.

Terry looked around the room, feeling grateful for the moral support he detected in several faces. Unlike Churchill he knew these people, he had worked with them for years. Briefly, he outlined what he learned at the Steersby farm yesterday. All of them knew the details of the Clayton and Whitaker cases; most still believed, with Terry, that Gary Harker was the likeliest suspect for both. But clearly, he could have had nothing to do with this Steersby girl.

‘Most likely, then, it’s a copycat,’ he concluded. ‘But no hood this time, so at least we’ll get a photofit. In the meantime,’ he said, staring straight at Churchill as he spoke, ‘I know the amount of dedicated police work that has gone into the these investigations, and today we have our chief suspect up in court, thanks to the efforts of this team. But he’s only facing one charge. If Gary Harker is convicted this week — as we all hope and expect he will be — we need to go over the Clayton evidence especially with a fine-tooth comb. He’s still not ruled out of that. And if someone else attacked Whitaker then we need to find that person too. It’s our job to ensure that the women of York can sleep easy in their beds once again. Thank you. That’s all.’

As the meeting broke up Churchill approached Terry. ‘You’re still set on this Harker for the Hooded Rapist , than, Terence?’

Terry winced. Terence was his christian name but he hated anyone to use it. To him it sounded like some cheap gangster, not himself at all. Terry was uncertain if Churchill knew, or cared, much about the tragedy that had shattered his personal life; but he certainly did know which version of his name he preferred to be called by, because Terry had told him, several times. The man was persisting in this Terence business deliberately, to get under his skin. He decided to ignore it.