Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

After almost two minutes of weeping Sarah stepped back, shaking her head slowly.

‘Where in hell have you been?’

‘At the tree protest, Mum. With Larry. This is Larry.’

Sarah ignored the young man as though he were a log which Emily had dragged home and dumped on the sofa.

‘You have no idea , have you …? We thought you were dead!’

‘Oh Mum, don’t exaggerate. I mean I know I didn’t phone but …’

‘Why do you think I’m here with a policeman? I’ve just been to the mortuary, Emily. There was a body there. They thought it was you.’

In the stunned silence a flush of increasing embarrassment mottled Emily’s face. ‘But that’s just stupid, Mum! How could it be me? I’m just fine …’

‘It’s not stupid, Emily. The body was wearing your coat.’

‘My coat? Oh … Oh no.’ Watching, Terry thought he’d never seen anyone’s face go from red to white so quickly. She swayed, and he stepped forward to catch the girl under her arms and lower her to the sofa as Sarah continued, looking at Bob for the first time.

‘It was Jasmine. Jasmine Hurst. She’s had her throat cut.’

When Emily recovered Terry found out what he needed to know, for now. Numbly, with her new boyfriend’s arm around her shoulder, Emily explained how she had met Jasmine that first night, at the protest camp. They knew each other, of course, but according to Emily not particularly well; Jasmine had been Simon’s girlfriend, that was all. Emily didn’t see her brother often, didn’t get on with him that well. She shuddered and looked away.

‘Emily?’ Terry prompted gently. ‘Is there something else?’

The words were too quiet at first, so he asked her to repeat them. ‘Neither did Jasmine,’ she murmured defiantly. ‘ She didn’t get on with Simon either. They quarrelled. She told me.’

‘Emily, for heaven’s sake!’ Sarah whispered.

‘When was that, Emily?’ Terry asked.

‘A while ago, I think. That’s why she left him. She isn’t … wasn’t his girlfriend any more. She had another bloke, one of the protesters. Dave, I think?’ She looked to Larry for confirmation.

‘Dave … Brodie, his name is,’ Larry agreed. ‘He’s a nurse, I think.’

‘Address?’

‘No, sorry.’ The young man scratched his wispy beard, then shook his head. Bob found himself having to suppress a deep, irrational hatred for this boy, as though all this were somehow his fault, and could be put right if he would leave now, and never come back.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find it.’ Terry turned back to Emily. ‘So why did she have your jacket?’

‘We swapped. This is hers.’ Emily looked at the grubby fleece-lined denim jacket she was wearing with sudden horror, and almost took it off before hugging it tightly round herself instead. ‘She said she wasn’t going to sleep out and if I was this’d be warmer, and anyway I never really liked that red and blue jacket. Sorry Mum, I know you gave it me but …’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sarah quietly.

‘When did you change the jackets, Emily?’ Terry persisted.

‘That same night. Wednesday, was it? Yes, Wednesday.’

‘And where was Jasmine going?’

‘Back to her boyfriend’s, I suppose. I can’t remember.’

‘Did you see her again?’

‘No.’ Emily began to cry and Terry got up. ‘That’s all for now,’ he said to Sarah and Bob. ‘I’ll need proper statements later, for the inquest, but that can wait. At least your daughter’s back. I’ll let myself out.’

‘So what have we got, doc?’

To Terry’s irritation, Will Churchill was cleaning his teeth with a match. His very presence at the initial post-mortem report was an implied criticism, without that.

‘As you see the cause of death is obvious. Massive haemorrhage due to the fact that someone’s had a go at cutting her head clean off. Severed the neck right back to the vertebrae.’

‘Anything you can tell us about the weapon?’

Dr Jones shrugged. ‘Big, sharp. Possibly serrated.’

‘Serrated? You can tell that?’ Terry asked.

‘Can’t be certain yet, but it’s a possibility. Look at these marks on the bone, here. I’ll know more when I’ve had them under a microscope. Maybe a bayonet, hunting knife, something like that. A long blade anyway, six inches at least.’

‘So he went prepared,’ Will Churchill said.

‘Unless he needed a six-inch knife for self-defence, by the river,’ Dr Jones said wryly. ‘Have you found a weapon yet?’

Terry shook his head.

‘Well, if you do find one pop it in here. I’ll see if it matches the wounds. There’ll be bloodstains too unless it’s been thoroughly washed. On his clothes too almost certainly.’

‘What about the bruise on the face?’ Terry asked. ‘Did he beat her up beforehand?’

Dr Jones frowned. ‘Some time before, if he did. That bruise is a few hours old. Didn’t happen at the time of death. This did, though — or just before.’

He whisked away a sheet from the lower half of the girl’s body, and Terry looked at her hips and genital area, the focus of so much attraction in life, so waxen and meat-like in death. Once a lithe young woman, now a carcass on a butcher’s slab, defaced by their cuts and probes, prying into her most private place of all, sliced open now for ease of inspection.

‘Bruising to the external labia, here and here. Internal bruising too. These bruises aren’t very developed though. Must have been done within half an hour of death, I’d say.’

‘Any semen?’

Dr Jones actually smiled, and produced a microscope slide with a triumphant flourish. ‘Taraaa! Just a trace, but quite conclusive nonetheless — you find the wicked laddie, gentlemen, and I’ll send him down. No room for doubt.’

Churchill smiled. ‘That’ll make a nice change, at least. Now all we need is a suspect.’

When Terry left, the four of them sat silent for a while, staring at nothing, like survivors of a bomb blast. Bob was still taking in the fact of Jasmine’s death, and the horror of what he alone knew. Simon hadn’t been quarrelling with Emily outside the old man’s house — it had been Jasmine, it must have been! And that was hugely, horribly important. Why had hadn’t he told Terry Bateson just now?

And what would Sarah say if he had? She had always been protective of Simon. She was protecting him now. ‘You shouldn’t have said that, about Simon quarrelling with Jasmine,’ she was saying to Emily.

‘But it’s true, mum. She told me.’

‘Yes, but don’t you see? They’ll think he killed her!’ Sarah started walking nervously up and down. ‘That’s how the police work — any little hint like that sends them rushing off in the wrong direction — towards Simon, for God’s sake!’

‘Don’t be silly, mum — of course he couldn’t kill her.’

‘Of course not, no — but you see how important it is what you say.’ Suddenly her attention was distracted by the sight of Emily’s young man. What’s he doing here, she thought. We don’t need him. She attempted a polite, hostess-type smile. ‘I think you’d better go.’

‘Er, yeah, okay.’ The young man began to get up. ‘It’s a bad time.’

But Emily dragged him down again beside her. ‘No! I want him to stay. I’ve just come home and you’re thinking about Simon again, aren’t you, mum? At least Larry cares about me .’

‘And we don’t, I suppose? We’ve been looking for you for two days, Emily! And Jasmine’s dead!’

‘I do know that, Mum. It’s awful.’

‘You don’t know it, not really. I’ve just seen her body, wearing your jacket. Emily, I thought it was going to be you! ’