Mark Pearson - Blood Work

'I nearly felt like not turning up. I'm not sure, when I see him, how I'm going to react. I'm not sure I can do it.'

'He's a forceful man. I don't blame you, Helen.'

'But he deserves to pay for what he's done, doesn't he?'

Kate looked at the woman, could see the nerves running through her body like electricity, making her twitch and fidget. 'When we talked earlier this week, you said he was wearing a watch. That night, when he attacked you… you said he was wearing the watch you bought him as an anniversary present?'

Helen Archer nodded, a little puzzled by the question. 'That's right. He always wore it. He didn't care about scratching me. About hurting me.'

'That was the same night?'

'What same night?'

'As the rape?'

Helen stood up and gestured with her trembling hands, agitated now. 'Yes, of course it was the same night! Why are you asking me that?'

'He told me he sold the watch, Helen.'

'When?'

'The day after he moved out of the house.'

'He's a liar. He's always been a liar. When did he tell you this?'

'The night he stayed at my place. I am getting some of the memory back. Flashes of it.'

'Are you saying you don't believe me?'

'What about his wrist, Helen? What can you tell me about his wrist?'

'There's nothing to tell. He had his watch on.' She shook her head angrily. 'I don't understand why you are talking like this.'

'Because he had his wrist tattooed, Helen. The day after he moved out of the house.'

'He's lying.'

'To me? At that time, why would he? You made no mention about his watch in your police statement. It was only to me you mentioned it and that was after he told me about the watch. Only I didn't remember at the time.'

Helen Archer seemed to slump, she sat back on the chair and looked up at Kate, pleading with her sad eyes. 'What if it didn't happen that night? Not that one time. But what if it happened a lot before, when we were married? Does that make him any less guilty?'

Kate sighed. 'I don't know, Helen.'

'What if he made my life a living hell?' Her voice was more strident now and she stood up again. 'What if he phoned every day after he moved out? What if he kept leaving messages on the answerphone? Not threatening messages. Not anything you could take to the police. But I understood what he meant. I understood the subtext. With Paul it was his way, always. You didn't tell him it was over.'

Kate remembered the whispered words Paul Archer had said to her.

'So you set him up, you invited him over and let him have sex with you?' she asked.

Helen tore at her thumbnail. Her voice on the edge of manic. 'What are you going to do?'

'That was why there was no evidence of drugs,' said Kate. 'There never were any, were there?'

Helen looked at her, the desperation naked in her eyes. 'What are you going to do?' she said again.

But Kate couldn't answer her.

Back in the entrance foyer of the courthouse, Delaney stood up gratefully from the long wooden bench he had been sitting on as Kate approached. He could see how tense she was.

'What did she say?'

'She lied to me, Jack. She lied to everyone.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I have to do what's right. I'm going to have to testify. I'm an officer of the court.'

Kate Walker felt a tickle in the back of her throat. She coughed into her hand a little and realised she was sweating. She had been in court many times before, but this time felt different. She looked across, reassured to see Jack sitting in the public gallery. He gave her a smile. But she couldn't get the muscles in her face to smile back. She placed her hand on the Bible and promised to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

'Can you tell us in your own words what happened that night?'

Kate blinked, she had been lost in thought and had missed most of what the barrister had been asking her.

She looked across at Paul Archer. He was sat with his arms folded, looking at her with a calm, self-assured expression.

'We had been drinking. I had been drinking quite a lot, in fact. It was late. It was cold and I thought it unlikely Dr Archer would flag down a cab easily.'

'And so?'

'And so I offered him the use of my sofa.'

'Your sofa?'

'Yes. Nothing else. Dr Archer took advantage of my hospitality by coming unbidden to my bedroom and climbing naked into my bed.'

'Are you saying he assaulted you?'

'He assaulted my hospitality. He assaulted all acceptable norms of behaviour.'

'But did he touch you?'

'Not then, but he made it very clear that he intended to…' she gestured apologetically to the jury, '… in his own words "fuck me" at a later stage and what I wanted would have nothing to do with it.'

She looked at the jury and back at Paul Archer before he had a chance to wipe that smug smile off his lips and she knew the jury had seen it too. 'He made it clear he liked his women to resist him, Your Honour. He left me in no doubt as to his intentions towards me.'

Archer's brief stood up. 'My client is not on trial for things he may be imagined to do in the future.'

Kate pointed at Helen Archer. 'He raped that poor woman.' She turned again to the jury. 'And he should be made to pay.'

Archer's barrister leapt to his feet again, summoning some outrage. 'I object, Your Honour.'

'Sustained,' said the judge. 'The jury will disregard that last remark.

Which was like telling a drowning man not to breathe in.

Delaney leaned against a lamp post. He lit a cigarette and wondered how long it would be before smoking was banned in all outdoor public places too. As it was you could be fined fifty pounds for flicking a fag end into a drain. But the law was the law, you had to respect it.

The sky overhead for once had a remarkable amount of blue in it, the soft white clouds that dotted here and there were motionless and the sun was actually shining. It was a bright, crisp, chill autumn day. An autumn day like it should be. As it was in his childhood, when the seasons knew how to behave themselves.

It was a day for new beginnings.

Kate came out of the courthouse, her smile, the epicentre now of Delaney's solar system, as bright as the sun itself.

'What happened?'

'He got seven years and four months.'

'You don't feel guilty?'

'Not a bit of it.'

Delaney nodded. 'A certain degree of moral flexibility allows us to do what we do.' He grinned and flicked his cigarette into the drain at his feet watching it spark as it hit the grating below.

'I didn't perjure myself, Jack, I just didn't tell them I knew Helen Archer was lying.'

At that moment the woman in question came out of the courthouse, she was surrounded by friends and family. She looked across at Kate and gave her a small, quick smile.

Delaney pointed at the statue adorning the roof of the court building. 'Audrey Hill told me that there is no God and we all know that Justice is blind, so we just have to look out for each other, don't we?'

Kate linked her arm in his as they walked away. 'Seems to me that looking after you is going to be a full-time job.'

Delaney dropped his voice to the rich burr of his childhood tongue. 'That's because I'm all man, sweetheart.'

Kate laughed. 'All ego maybe.'

Delaney's phone trilled in his pocket and he flicked it out to answer it. 'Delaney.'

The voice on the other end of the line took him straight back to that childhood, almost as if he had summoned it. Took him back to a day of sunshine and wonders and joy at the world.

'Jack, it's Mary, your cousin Mary. I need your help,' she said.

And at that moment a crow took off from the roof of the court building behind them, its dusty wings flapping like shook canvas in the bright, still air, and its caw like the mockery of God.