Tim Vicary - A Game of Proof

‘Oh well. You did your best, I suppose.’ He glowered out of the window.

‘I carried out the identification parade in the correct manner, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Of course that’s what I mean.’

There had been an edge to Harvey’s voice which Churchill didn’t care for. By rights Harvey, a uniformed Inspector, should have called the new DCI Sir, but he hadn’t. Churchill wondered whether to make a point of it. Harvey was a well respected officer old enough to be his father. He decided against insisting on his rank. Instead he snatched up the report from the desk and skimmed swiftly through it. A copy of the photofit was attached.

‘Was he wearing this?’ Churchill jabbed his finger at the earring in the photofit.

‘I didn’t notice one, no.’

‘So did you say anything about it? Offer him one?’

‘We’d have had to fit earrings to all ten in the line up. We can’t do that. They all wore black woolly hats, though.’

‘Yes, well. Did she even look at Simon Newby?’

‘Very carefully, three times. But she was quite definite. Her attacker wasn’t there.’

‘Oh well. She’s only a kid, I suppose.’ Churchill said dismissively. ‘Thanks, Bill.’ As Harvey left Terry Bateson came in. Churchill thrust the report into his hands.

‘Here. Look at that for a load of useless gibberish.’

Terry read it carefully. ‘I see.’

‘Total waste of time,’ Churchill muttered irritably. ‘I’ll bet Mrs solicitor Parsons told him to take his earring off, and Dixon of Dock Green there never noticed. It seems this city’s full of smartass lawyers and half-witted policemen. Tourist attraction, is it, Terence?’

The young woman had a thin face, no hair at all, and a line of studs like a scar in her right eyebrow. She wore baggy jeans and a purple teeshirt, and her hands, like her clothes, were strong, practical, and stained with dirt. A strong whiff of dope hung around her like a miasma. She draped herself luxuriously across Sarah’s armchair, her left leg dangling over the arm, her right hand waving in the air as though in search of a joint or cigar, and talked.

She explained how global capitalism was destroying the environment, not just the physical environment like trees and fields and rivers, but the social environment too and the way people related to each other, and how much of this was supported by the traditional family which was really just a nursery producing children to feed the educational factories and workplaces of the exploiting classes, and how if anything was going to change this would have to change too, which was why it was vital that people on the tree protest came together to form new and ever-changing kaleidoscopic forms of social evolution which the pigs of fascist repression could never get their heads around or quite focus on, when …

Sarah finally interrupted her. ‘You came to tell me about Jasmine.’

Larry and Emily, who had brought this motormouth into her living room, watched from the sofa, nodding wisely as the diatribe continued. Had there been a twitch of amusement on Emily’s lips, Sarah wondered, or was she swallowing this tripe whole like medicine?

‘Yes, well I was coming to that, Sacha …’

‘Sarah.’ Or Mrs Newby to you, child, Sarah thought irritably, without saying it.

‘Sarah, sorry. Well, I mean, like that’s what Jasmine was after, attempting to liberate herself, I mean free her whole psyche from the socio-economic forces of repression. She was working on herself through direct action against the chains of how she’d been brought up, and the way men — I’m sorry to say this but probably your son too, Sach — I mean Sarah, sorry — had dumped it all on her.’

‘What I’m really interested in,’ Sarah insisted tediously. ‘Is who might have killed her.’

It had been a long day, and what she really wanted was a glass of whisky and the chance to put her feet up on the chair as this girl was doing. The difference being that it was her whisky and her furniture; and her legs weren’t stained with mud.

‘You said someone was following her,’ Larry prompted. It was kind of him and Emily to find this potential witness, Sarah thought; but surely they could have found someone a touch more focussed, less of a jargonaut.

‘Yeah, she said. It seemed like a joke at first, but in her case …’

‘Did she say who she thought was following her?’ Sarah asked.

‘Well again Sarah I’m sorry to say this but you’ve got to face that it might have been your own son. I mean like there were two of them but …’

‘I’ve only got one son,’ Sarah pointed out.

‘Two men in her life that were serving her, but I only met one, that Dave Brodie. He came to the protest but more to follow her, the way I saw it, and also because he thought the trees were pretty rather than understand them. I mean he was a typically repressed, anally retentive little shit, God knows what she saw in him but what she didn’t see was the real anger in him too, I mean he could easily have been on the other side of the barricade with a helmet and a chainsaw, I dunno what he was doing with us really, probably just trying to get into Jasmine’s knickers. Which he did, matter of fact.’ She laughed, and swung both feet over the arm of the chair.

‘You said he was angry?’

‘Yeah, sure, jealous of the other guy, your son. Basic male hang-up, ownership thing.’

‘Did he ever threaten her, anything like that?’

‘They had rows, sure. Screaming matches in the camp. We watched. Liberation theatre, let it all hang out.’

‘When?’

‘Couple of times. Once …’ she glanced at Emily. ‘The night before you came, it was.’

‘That would be what — the 11th?’ Sarah made a note. ‘What happened exactly?’

‘Just bitching and screaming. He asked her to come home and she wouldn’t. She said she was tired of him and the protest mattered more than his kitchen floor, and if she did go anywhere it’d be to her mum. He said he knew where she went because he followed her and it wasn’t to her mum, and if she ever went there again he’d do something.’

‘What do he say he’d do?’

‘That’s just it.’ The girl laughed. ‘She asked him straight out and he couldn’t say, could he? I mean he’s just a little nerd, really, a nice guy if you fancy that sort of thing but he couldn’t hurt anyone could he? He’s not big enough.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He went home and she stayed. Then next day you came, I think.’ The girl nodded at Emily. ‘You swapped coats with her, and … I think she took pity on him and went back. Probably thought he’d be all over her with gratitude, poor little prick.’

‘On the 12th?’ Sarah said. ‘The day before she died. Did you see her again on the 13th?’

‘No, sorry. Saw him though.’

‘You saw David Brodie that day?’

The young woman frowned, the studs along her eyebrow writhing grotesquely. ‘I think it was then — yeah, right. I was having a wash that morning when he came in — cheeky devil, must go with working as a nurse — and asked where she was, was she back in camp. Seems they’d had another row at breakfast. So I said no, she’d probably gone to look for a real man in town. He’s such a little jerk, I couldn’t resist. Well, he marched off with steam coming out of his ears. But I dunno if he ever found her …’

‘Did he say anything before he left?’

‘Just bullshit really — like he knew where she was, and if she wasn’t back that evening he’d sort her for good. It was a joke, really, macho crap like in the mouth of a wimp like him …’

Her voice trailed away as the implication of what she had said became clear. Sarah made a hurried note. ‘In that case we may need you, Ms — what was your name again?’