Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

Police enquiries had continued, of course, but little or no additional evidence had been acquired. Indeed Karen had spent most of those five months heading up an investigation into a white-collar building society fraud, which had seemed very dull and tame compared with the Marshall affair.

And, as Karen had always feared, the prosecution’s case had not been strengthened by any revelations from Richard Marshall who had stood firm throughout the time he was remanded in custody in Devon County Prison at Exeter, and had not given an inch. The London forensic laboratory had, however, established from the remains recovered from the sunken U-boat that the body had been deposited in the sea between twenty-three and thirty-three years earlier which, although also not conclusive, did add some weight to the identification evidence. It was surely beyond all reasonable doubt that Clara Marshall had finally been found.

One way and another, Karen, although not overly confident, had at least been extremely optimistic when she had escorted Sean MacDonald to the courthouse, so dramatically set within the medieval walls of Exeter Castle. For a start, she and the whole force had been pleased that Mr. Justice Cunningham was trying the case. This was a man she had encountered many times before, a red-robed judge not given to much liberalism of thought. Indeed it seemed that he regarded most acts of a liberal nature, certainly within the processes of the law, to be acts of supreme folly.

As the lead counsel for the Crown, a youthful-looking QC called David Childs, imported from Bristol, made his opening statement. Karen reflected that he seemed to be a sharp enough operator. A lot sharper than some of the CPS counsels she’d encountered, she reckoned. Karen also thought, to her relief, that Marshall’s QC, although obviously extremely capable, did not seem in any way exceptional.

The positive identification of the remains recovered from the sea as being those of Clara Marshall was fairly swiftly established, as indeed it should have been given the evidence produced, but there was no such thing as certainty in a court of law. Karen, sitting at the front of the court just behind the prosecution legal team, breathed a sigh of relief. The first obstacle had been successfully negotiated. Everything hinged on that positive identification. Without it, she felt, the police case would almost certainly have collapsed.

At least the prosecution’s case was simple and straightforward, always some sort of advantage when dealing with a jury. It rested on two premises, the first of course being that the court should accept that Clara Marshall’s body had at last been found, which it thankfully had. And secondly, that the court should accept that the weight of evidence against Richard Marshall, although circumstantial, was such that he was, beyond all reasonable doubt, guilty of murdering her.

On the fourth day of the trial, Marshall was called as the first witness for the defence. He stood very upright in the dock wearing a navy-blue blazer and what appeared to be some sort of regimental tie. Karen registered automatically that his style of dress had not changed at all with the passage of time. She could still remember from her childhood, albeit vaguely, that he almost invariably wore those kinds of clothes. And as usual, on the surface at least, he seemed perfectly cool and collected as he gave his version of events leading up to the disappearance of his wife and children, a story Karen was all too familiar with and one he invariably told convincingly.

She watched nervously as Childs began to cross-examine Marshall. “You were seen taking your boat out to the deep water off Berry Head soon after your wife was last seen, and now finally, and against the odds, Clara’s body has been pulled out of the sea there,” Childs asserted. “I put it to you that you quite callously killed your wife because she was in your way. And that you then unceremoniously dumped her body in a place from which you did not expect it ever to be recovered. Is that not so, Mr. Marshall?”

“No, sir, it is not.”

Hours of interviewing Marshall had led Karen to feel that she had got to know him just a little. And as Childs continued with his dogged line of questioning, she could see, to her immense satisfaction, the tension building up in the accused beneath his outwardly ever-calm demeanour. There were stress lines etched in the heavy folds of flesh around his mouth and his hands trembled almost imperceptibly as he gripped the edge of the dock before him. Karen doubted if anyone else in the courtroom would notice that, but she noticed. Then she corrected herself. There was one other person who might notice.

Discreetly Karen glanced over her shoulder to sneak a look at Marshall’s girlfriend from Poole, Jennifer Roth, whom she knew was sitting up in the public gallery. Jennifer was smartly dressed in a pinstriped grey trouser suit, her chestnut hair pulled back from her pale face in some kind of a band. And that face, set almost stonily as she stared straight ahead, gave little away. Maybe she had learned the knack from Marshall, thought Karen, as she returned her full attention to the proceedings.

The trial lasted only nine working days, a short time for a murder case. And when he gave his summing-up, Mr. Justice Cunningham left little doubt about his own view. Mr. Justice Cunningham did not like the idea of murderers walking free.

“It may be, members of the jury, that the weight of evidence presented here in this court, despite the fact that much of it is circumstantial, is such that you will feel you have no choice except to find the defendant guilty,” he pronounced, ensuring that his own opinion on the matter was made abundantly clear.

Things were starting to look good, Karen thought. And so it proved to be. The jury were out for less than half a day and duly recorded a verdict of “Guilty”.

A surge of pure adrenalin coursed through Karen’s body. Still sitting just behind the CPS team, she turned at once and looked up to the public gallery. Sean MacDonald was right in the front. He seemed very still, but she saw that there were tears running down his cheeks. She had seen his eyes mist over before, but she had never actually seen him cry, not even in the worst moments. His mouth was moving, and Karen, although she could not hear him and was no expert lip-reader, somehow knew exactly what it was that Mac was saying to himself over and over again.

“Thank God. Thank God.”

On the other side of the court Phil Cooper was considerably less restrained. The sergeant stood up and punched the air excitedly.

“We’ve got the bastard,” he shouted across to Karen who, only with a great effort of will, managed to prevent herself from responding in kind.

Mr. Justice Cunningham looked at Cooper disapprovingly, but the hubbub in the court was so great as the verdict was delivered that he probably had not been able to hear the exact words, and with a bit of luck he didn’t know Phil was a policeman as he had not been required to give evidence. This was a courtroom, not a football match, and police officers were not supposed to behave like that, but Karen felt pretty much like joining in. It was one hell of a day.

Karen leaned back in her seat, the relief washing over her like a warm bath as she listened to Cunningham sentence Marshall to life imprisonment, the statutory sentence for murder. She turned her full attention to the man whose dreadful crimes had haunted her for so long. And to her immense satisfaction, as sentence was passed, he slumped forward in the dock and buried his head in his hands. The aura of smug self-satisfaction that was so much a part of him had finally departed. For good, she hoped. Even with full remission it was reasonable to think that Marshall, now aged sixty-four, might die in jail. Karen sincerely hoped that would prove to be the case.