Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

‘It’s not me, sir, it’s Mrs Newby …’ Grimly, Terry described their interview with Sarah. It had not ended when Sarah had wanted it to: for a good half hour afterwards Terry had pressed her to change her mind. But she had not changed. It had been like arguing with a computer hologram that looked and moved like a human but was programmed beyond the reach of persuasion. And she was , after all, the victim; whether Terry liked it or not her feelings were neither illogical nor unclear. If that meant letting Gary go free, then tough. Let him go.

‘So that’s it?’ Churchill asked incredulously. ‘After what we all saw, and the fact that you’re now certain he raped Sharon Gilbert?’

‘Ninety five per cent certain, yes sir. We’ll be completely sure if anything comes back on the hood and clothes from forensics. Not that it matters anyway. We found it all too late.’

Churchill slumped onto a desk in the corner of the incident room. On the wall behind him were photographs of the unsolved murder of Maria Clayton, eight months ago. A few feet to his right, a similar collage of the assault on Karen Whitaker. Churchill thumped the wall in frustration. ‘You thought he did both of these, too, Terry, didn’t you?’

‘He’s still a possible for Clayton, yes, sir. But not Whitaker — the DNA didn’t match up.’

‘Nevertheless, you believe this man Harker may have killed Clayton as well as raping Gilbert. You told this Newby woman that, did you? That if he’s killed and raped already, he’s likely to do it again? You did mention that?’

‘I told her, yes, but it didn’t make any impression.’

‘What kind of a bitch is she?’ Churchill muttered. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it.’

Tracy Litherland intervened. ‘I think she’s a very determined, focused lady, sir, who’s under a lot of stress but won’t let anyone slap her down.’ Terry had always suspected that she shared his dislike for their new chief, but never before had she made it so plain.

Churchill rolled his eyes. ‘Thanks for the feminist perspective, Trace. But that’s precisely what we did see last night — Harker slapping her down. And now she won’t stand up to him.’

Stubbornly, Tracy repeated Sarah’s reasons; the very reasons that she and Terry had spent so much time arguing against, only a few hours ago.

Churchill sighed impatiently: ‘Yes, Trace, but there is such a thing as the public interest, or had you forgotten? You know, keeping murderers and rapists off the streets, that sort of thing. Aren’t lawyers supposed to be interested in that, too?’

‘Lawyers, sir?’ Tracy shook her head.

‘No.’ Churchill answered his own question with a grim laugh. ‘For them it’s all just a game, ain’t it? Just a sodding game.’

It hardly seemed like a game to Sarah and Lucy, just then. They had spent the afternoon in Lucy’s office, discussing Sarah’s decision not to give a statement. Sarah was relieved that Lucy seemed to understand; Lucy was wondering just how much more her friend could take.

Sarah, she thought, had already suffered too much in the past few days. She was pale, with a bruise along her jaw and her eye half closed. She looked exhausted too, which was hardly surprising. Not only had her son been arrested for murder, and she herself nearly raped, but Emily had run away from home and been feared murdered less than a month ago. All this in addition to the almost routine discovery that she was responsible for the acquittal of a guilty man.

Any one of these things would reduce most people to a gibbering wreck, crawling to a psychiatrist for post-traumatic stress counseling. All Lucy could offer was tea, talk and sympathy. To her surprise it seemed to work quite well. Sarah still seemed able to talk and think and lift a teacup without screaming and hurling it against the wall. Which helped, because they had serious questions to discuss.

Such as how to defend Simon. And his apparent connection with Gary Harker.

Sarah closed her eyes, and a childhood memory came to her, of a trip to the beach at Blackpool when she was small. She had been exploring a rock pool with her father and they had seen a small crab scurry for shelter under a stone. Sarah had been afraid to pick up the stone and so her father had lifted it for her. But under the stone, instead of the tiny crab which she expected, was a much, much bigger one. A huge crab, its shelly body as wide as her face, its vast serrated pincers raised in fury, its eyes on stalks swivelling intently towards her pink little toes, six scaly legs clattering sideways towards her while she screamed and screamed …

She shuddered at the memory, then glanced at Lucy doodling on a pad of paper. Outside, the evening rush hour was beginning.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve kept you. You’ll be wanting to go home,’ she said.

Lucy smiled. ‘Why now? I’ll just sit in a jam. They won’t expect me till seven.’

Sarah took a step nearer the stone in her mind. ‘The only thing I’d regret about Gary, would be if he’d really committed all these attacks, as Terry Bateson thinks he did.’

Lucy considered this. ‘There’s evidence to disprove that.’

‘In one of the cases, yes. They found some DNA on a hair from Karen Whitaker’s attacker that wasn’t a match for Gary.’

‘There you are then. It wasn’t him.’

‘He could still have murdered the first one. The prostitute, Maria Clayton.’

‘ Could have . But there’s no evidence. Come on, Sarah, you know this. They wanted to charge him with that before, but the CPS turned them down. They couldn’t prove it then and they can’t now. A hundred men could have done it.’

‘Including my son? Simon?’

This was the sort of remark that Lucy feared. She studied Sarah cautiously before answering. An answer that was intended to rebuild confidence.

‘Including your husband and my husband and any man without an alibi, if it comes to that. Come on, Sarah — suspicion and innuendo isn’t any sort of proof.’

But Sarah had her hands around the stone now. She was going to lift it. ‘The thing is, Lucy, Terry Bateson has always thought that these attacks are the work of one man; the Hooded Killer the Evening Press writes about. But he can’t prove it, because for a start, one of the attacks — the one on Whitaker — was definitely committed by someone else. So he’s wrong.’

‘So he’s wrong, yup,’ Lucy nodded. ‘Not the first time a policeman’s been wrong.’

‘He’s wrong about the idea that it was one man, Lucy, yes.’ Sarah’s next words came out in a whisper. ‘But what if it was two? ’

‘Two?’ Lucy wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. ‘Two men raping together?’

‘Not necessarily raping together, no, but … co-operating. You know, maybe one does it one time, the other the next. One acting as lookout for the other, that sort of thing?’

Not just onehuge crab under the stone, but two. Both with claws raised, both with faces that she recognized!

‘Oh come on, Sarah! Now you’re really in the realms of fantasy.’

‘Am I? Probably, I hope so. But look at what we know. We know — so long as the forensic examination supports it — that Gary raped Sharon Gilbert. We know he claims he was with someone else that night, this fellow called Sean whom no one could find …’

‘We proved he existed, remember? That was one of our better moments.’

‘True. But even if we accept that this Sean exists, it doesn’t mean it was him who was with Gary that night, does it? What if it was Simon?’

‘We don’t know that anyone was with him, Sarah.’ This was just the sort of reaction Lucy wanted to suppress. But Sarah’s imagination was in full flight.