Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

The supermarket had been as stubborn and bloody-minded in bringing the charge as Sarah’s client had been in refusing to have it dealt with by the Magistrates, and so the packet of bacon, worth?1.79 and now ten months past its sell-by date, rested in lonely splendour on the exhibits table in Court One, while the matter was disputed at a cost to the taxpayer in excess of a thousand pounds.

Normally Sarah would have enjoyed this farce, playing the well-paid battle of wits like a game of tennis, but today, with Simon missing, she found it hard to concentrate. Her attempt to establish that the old lady was confused by her medication was skilfully countered by the prosecutor, Savendra, whose devious smile and exquisite good manners charmed Sarah’s client into admitting that she mistrusted her doctor, had poured her pills down the sink, and had hated the mini supermarket ever since it had driven her corner shop out of business ten years before.

The jury, being thus convinced that she was of sound mind and evil intent, convicted. The judge sighed, gave her a conditional discharge and told her not to be so silly in future. Sarah made her way moodily back to her chambers.

‘Buy you lunch?’ Savendra offered, catching her up. ‘Bacon sandwich, on the house?’

‘Ha ha,’ Sarah said. ‘Very funny.’

‘Cheer up. We all need cases like that, to bring home the bacon. What was your client’s name? Marge?’

‘Savvy, just shut up, will you? I’m not in the mood. I’ve got a son suspected of murder, in case you’ve forgotten.’

‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. They haven’t caught him yet, have they?’

‘Not yet, but they will. They always do.’

‘No they don’t.’ Savendra darted in front of her, forcing her to look at him. ‘They don’t always catch them, Sarah, you know that.’

‘Well, that isn’t the point, is it? We’re not talking about some professional crook here, on the run to Bolivia, we’re talking about my son, Simon! They think he’s a murderer. And just to convince them, he’s run away!’

‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’

‘No.’ Sarah shook her head wearily, as though bothered by a fly. ‘So don’t make jokes about it, Savvy. It’s tearing me apart.’

He fell into step beside her. ‘Seriously, come and have lunch.’

‘That won’t make things any better.’

‘It won’t make them any worse, though, will it? You look like you’re wasting away. Come on. Somewhere quiet where we can talk.’

At the forensics department Will Churchill met Dr Theobald Brewer, a slow-moving gentleman in his mid sixties, for whom retirement and a life devoted to growing the perfect Brewer rose, yellow with a blue fringe around the petals, was only a few months away. He contemplated the young DCI with benign detachment.

‘Yes, we’ve had some success with your trainers,’ he said. ‘There were traces of sandy soil consistent with the crime scene. And a number of grass seeds. Laila is working on them at the moment.’ He indicated a tall young woman with clear black skin and dreadlocks, elegantly perched over a microscope. ‘Oh, excuse me a moment, would you?’

Dr Brewer leaned out of the window, where a gardener was spraying roses with insecticide. ‘Hey, young man! You missed the Princess Mary on the left. It was infested with greenfly yesterday and that is after all the point …’

Exasperated, Churchill caught the gaze of the young scientist, who was smothering a grin.

Dr Brewer was incensed. ‘Look, I’ll have to go outside and deal with this, Inspector. Laila will take care of you. Honestly, young men nowadays …’

Relieved, Churchill approached the young woman. ‘Is there any blood on the trainers?’

‘A few small stains, Inspector, yes.’ She smiled, perfect white teeth and twinkling olive-brown eyes. ‘Several in between the indentations on the sole of the left shoe, and five drops on the upper surface. They look just like tiny spatters of mud, but it’s blood nevertheless.’

‘ Yes! You beauty!’ Churchill enthused. ‘And do they match the victim’s DNA?’

‘That takes time, sir,’ Laila murmured, fitting a slide delicately under the microscope. ‘We’ve sent samples away to Manchester. But the blood group is consistent with that on the breadknife.’

‘There’s blood on the breadknife too?’

‘Yes. Just a few stains, in the groove where the blade fits into the handle.’

‘That’s it then! All we need is for those samples to match the victim and we’ve got him!’

Dr Brewer was berating the gardener outside the window. Churchill grinned at the young black woman, who favoured him with a conspiratorial, bewitching smile. There was no doubt which of the two scientists he needed to work with, to move this case forward quickly.

Perhaps he should drop by tomorrow, to see how things had progressed.

‘So where could he have gone?’ Savendra asked. He and Sarah were sitting upstairs at the quiet corner table of an expensive Indian restaurant overlooking the river Ouse. Pleasure boats moved up and down, and tourists idled in the sunshine on the quay below them. Sarah picked sparingly at her korma, but it and the champagne earned from Savendra’s victory in this morning’s farce had warmed her nonetheless; she had eaten little for the past few days.

‘Even if I could tell you I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Much though I respect your discretion.’

‘This isn’t a professional consultation,’ said Savendra, twirling the stem of his wine glass. ‘Just friends, that’s all.’

‘I know, and thanks. But I don’t know where he is anyway. In one way I’m glad of it.’

‘Do you think he could — you know, have done it?’

For a long time she didn’t answer. So long, he thought she wouldn’t. But he could detect no hostility in her silence; just something reflective, silent, thoughtful. A loss of words.

At last she stirred. ‘Do you want to have children one day, Savvy?’

He smiled, remembering, as he often forgot, that she was nearly ten years older than him. ‘When I meet the right woman, yes, I suppose. It happens, doesn’t it?’

‘It happens, yes. And is Belinda the right woman?’

‘She thinks she is. I’m … almost convinced. But you haven’t answered my question.’

‘I was just getting round to it.’

‘Oh. By talking about Belinda.’

‘If … when you marry your Belinda, Savvy, as I’m sure you will, if she wants you to …’

‘Thanks very much. I have been warned.’

‘ … and you have children, your life will change for ever. You will no longer belong to yourself — this happy, charming, carefree young barrister that I see before me, with no allegiance to anything but his fees and his motorbike — he will disappear, and part of him will belong to Belinda, and part of him, perhaps more of him, I don’t know, to those children. Sometimes you will love them and sometimes they will make you angry. Really angry, Savvy, if you’re unlucky. More angry than you can easily believe. And of course in your anger you can betray them, and they can betray you, but you won’t let that happen if you possibly can …’

She stopped, running one finger softly round the top of her wineglass. She looked in his eyes, then away out of the window. He waited, but nothing more came.

‘So even if you thought he did it, you wouldn’t say?’

She smiled, and as she did so the tears came involuntarily to her eyes and she dabbed them with a napkin from the table.

‘That’s it, Savvy, exactly. I couldn’t possibly say. Lesson one in parenthood. You pass.’

The phone call came in the middle of the night. Two weeks after Simon had disappeared, an alert police constable in Scarborough noticed a blue Ford Escort, with the right registration number, parked outside a guest house. The message reached York at 2.15 a.m, and the duty sergeant phoned Will Churchill at home with a certain sardonic glee, which rose to pure sadistic delight when the new Detective Chief Inspector’s phone was answered by a sleepy young woman.