This room had once been Simon’s. She sat at the desk they had bought for him to do his homework, checking her questions for tomorrow, imagining his answers, puzzling over the most effective way to present his case. She made notes, pressing the pencil hard into the paper.
Annoyingly, the lead snapped. She searched the desk drawers for a sharpener. Nothing useful, of course. The first drawer was empty, the second contained motorcycle magazines - the sort where the female riders wore boots and nothing else - the third contained an old brown envelope. Idly, she emptied the contents onto the desk.
It was full of old photographs. Surprised, she spread them out. They were almost all of Simon as a child. Simon aged five, going to school; Simon playing football in the park at Seacroft; Simon with bucket and spade in Blackpool, on a rare family holiday; Simon in Bob’s mother’s kitchen with his face covered with chocolate, trying to bake a cake. They were photographs she hadn’t seen for years.
The door opened softly behind her and Bob came in. ‘What are you doing?’
She sighed. ‘I was writing my notes. Then I found these.’
‘What are they?’ He came to look, over her shoulder.
‘They were in Simon’s drawer. He must have put them there, once upon a time.’
‘Are they all of him?’
She sifted through some more: Simon holding baby Emily in his arms; Simon and Bob reading a book; Simon in a Leeds United football shirt.
‘It looks like, it, yes,’ Sarah said. ‘I didn’t know we had so many.’
‘That’s because he’s put them here. They must have meant something to him, at the time.’
‘Yes.’ A painful thought struck her. ‘There don’t seem to be many of me.’
It was true. There were plenty of Simon alone; a few of him with grandparents or Bob; but only two of him with Sarah. One was of Simon as a baby, clutched in the arms of a mini-skirted Sarah who looked younger than Emily was today; and the other was of a gangly teenager, standing sullenly beside a beaming mother in mortar board and gown receiving her law degree.
‘Where are the rest?’ she murmured, distressed. ‘Surely there are more than this?’
‘Maybe he took them with him.’
‘Or maybe there weren’t any. I was always so busy studying, I didn’t have time. He said that to me in prison, a while ago.’
‘Well, you’re making up for it now,’ said Bob softly.
‘Yes, years too late.’ She shovelled the photos back into the envelope and picked up her pad, then threw it down in disgust. ‘What does it matter? I’m as ready now as I ever will be.’
She saw a stray photo under the pad, and pulled it out. It was of Bob, lying on the ground between two goal posts, having failed to save a shot from a triumphant ten year old Simon.
‘He was your project, in those days.’ She turned to face him. ‘What happened, Bob?’
‘He grew past the point where I could help him. Now only you can.’
‘
If
I can,’ she muttered, feeling the grey despair leak into her soul. ‘Bob, about today ...’
‘Let’s not talk about it. I shouldn’t have poked my nose in.’
‘I only did it for Simon.’
‘I understand that. You’re the lawyer, I’m not. Only ...’ He shook his head.
‘Only it was a cruel thing to do to David Brodie. Is that what you were going to say?’
‘Sarah, please. I don’t want to quarrel.’
‘Of course you’re right. I’m not so stupid that I can’t see that, Bob. The trouble is that being a lawyer makes you see morality ... in a more complex way than you probably do.’
For a while they sat silent. Emily’s bedroom door opened and footsteps went downstairs.
‘Well, there’s an admission. You mean you don’t really think Brodie did it at all?’
‘There’s no proof that he did, Bob, is there?’
‘So who did it then, if Simon didn’t?’
‘God knows. But all that’s left, now, is his assertion that he didn’t. Tomorrow he’s going to try to make the jury believe him. If he can’t do that, he’s finished.’
There was another, longer silence. Outside the window, they heard Larry and Emily talking quietly. Then Larry’s car door slammed and he drove away. Emily came upstairs and went into her bedroom.
Bob put his hands on her shoulders, kneading the tense muscles gently. ‘I’d hate to do what you do. You carry the whole world on these, don’t you?’
He used to be good at this, she remembered. Before they both became so busy, and the children tore them apart. She leaned into the massage, letting her arms relax.
‘You don’t have to sleep in here, you know,’ he said after a while. ‘It makes me lonely too. Why not come back and join me?’
‘All right, maybe I will.’ She touched his hand to stop him, kissed his fingers, and straightened up. ‘I’ll come when I’ve finished this.’
Two hours later, she crept into bed beside her sleeping husband.
Chapter Forty
S
IMON WALKED quite calmly to the witness stand. His face was pale, but that was a prison pallor due to many weeks on remand. He read the oath in a clear, slightly subdued voice. Then he looked up, taking in the crowded public gallery, full of eyes that had been above him in the dock, and focused his attention on his mother.
She began at the heart of the matter.
‘Simon, you have heard the prosecution claim that you murdered Jasmine Hurst. Is that true? Did you kill her?’
‘No, I did not.’ The voice was firm, a little louder than before. The jury, she knew, were watching and listening intently; not so much for what he said, but for the conviction with which he said it.
‘Do you know who killed her?’
‘No. How could I?’
This was the answer she had planned and rehearsed with him. Simple, and true. But then, to her surprise, he glared pointedly at David Brodie. ‘I’ve got my ideas but no proof.’
They had already discussed this idea and rejected it. Sarah feared that any further attempt to accuse Brodie was likely to backfire. She thought Simon had been convinced. Clearly not, however. They’d planned everything and here he was already striking out on his own.
‘Did you love Jasmine?’ she continued coolly.
‘Love her? Yes.’ He appeared to consider the idea for a moment, then repeated himself with more emphasis. ‘I did. Yes.’
Careful, Simon
, she thought.
Don’t start acting now
. She had warned him against this, but the witness stand did strange things to people, particularly those facing life imprisonment.
‘Would you tell the court, in your own words, exactly what happened on Thursday 13th May. From the beginning.’
Simon drew a deep breath, and faced the jury, as she had suggested.
If you can manage it, tell the story to them; if not, look at me.
‘Well, I was off work, so I had a lie in, like, until about nine thirty. Then I got up and went for a run.’
‘Where did you go for your run?’
‘Where I often go. Down the river opposite the Archbishop’s Palace. Past where she were found that night. So if there were mud and such on my shoes, that’s where I got it, see?’
She sighed. His fake worker’s accent had become stronger.
Idiot!
‘You were wearing these training shoes that were shown in evidence, were you?’
‘Course I were. They’re my shoes, aren’t they? What else would I wear?’
For Christ’s sake, Simon
, she wanted to scream, I’m not arguing with you, I’m here to help you. ‘All right. What happened then?’
‘Well, when I got back, I met her. Jasmine. She was by the river not far from my house.’
Better now. Less accent, less truculence. Perhaps it had just been stage fright. She nodded encouragingly. ‘Were you expecting to meet her?’
‘Not exactly. She came to see me sometimes but I never knew when.’
‘Was she coming to see you then?’
‘She said she was. Yeah.’
‘How did she look?’
‘Stunning, like always.’ He glanced at the jury, then realized he’d misunderstood the question. ‘Oh ... well, a bit angry, or upset. I asked what’s up and she said she’d had a row with David, like. Anyhow, she came in.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I had a shower, she made some tea, and we talked for a bit. Nothing special, really.’
‘Had she visited you like this before, while she was living with David?’
‘A few times, yeah.’
‘What usually happened on these visits?’
‘Well, we’d chat for a bit, maybe have a meal, then we’d go to bed together, and sometime later she’d ... leave.’
A shaven-headed male juror, she noticed, was nodding approvingly. This sounds normal to him, then, at least. ‘Is that what happened this day?’
‘Yes. We had a bite to eat, and then ... she took her clothes off ... you know.’
‘You had sexual intercourse?’
‘If that’s what you call it, yes. I shagged her.’
There was a snort of suppressed laughter.
Jesus,
Simon! Of all the words to use, why pick that one? The point of this is not to shock your mother, but to ingratiate yourself with the jury. The younger jurors, she saw, looked amused, but several others looked distinctly disgusted. Phil Turner smiled ironically.
Now another key question. ‘So, to be quite clear, Simon, was this sexual intercourse something you both wanted? Or did you force it upon her?’
‘No, of course not. She wanted it - why else did she take her clothes off like that? That’s why she came. She knew what was going to happen.’
‘So you didn’t rape her?’
‘No, not at all. Nothing like it.’
She could almost hear the jury’s minds working. Is this man lying or not? All they had to go on was their experience of life - similar situations, similar young men to Simon.
‘The forensic pathologist has described some bruises which he found inside her vagina. Can you account for those?’
‘Not really, no. I mean, I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re saying. She liked it, she always did.’ He hesitated. ‘I mean, maybe it bruised her when she got excited but I wouldn’t know that, would I? She didn’t complain.’
‘Did you wear a condom?’
‘No. She were on the pill. She said.’
Such questions for a mother to ask her son, in public. Sarah remembered the childhood photos she had found last night. ‘All right. What time of day was this?’
‘Early, mid afternoon maybe. Hard to say. We went to bed and I fell asleep. Maybe she did as well. Then we went for a walk, bought some Chinese. I thought ... I thought it was a real good day. Then when we came back it went wrong.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Well, like I say we were getting on fine. She was saying what a pain David was with all his tidying and fussing, and I
knew
he couldn’t screw her like I did, she told me that every time, it was quite a joke with her really ... so I thought she might leave him and come back for good. She said she would, too; I remember it clearly. I was really happy.
‘But then, after the Chinese, she looked at her watch and said she’d have to go. So I said ‘go where?’ And she said, ‘to David, of course. You don’t think I could live in this pigsty, do you? He’ll have the bed made and the house all nice’ - you know, stuff like that. And I was so angry, then. It was like she’d kicked me right in the guts. So I yelled at her. I said she’d promised to stay and we’d had a great time, but she just laughed. She said that was part of the game, something like that, it would make it even better next time because I’d want her even more. And that made me sick because I saw she’d been doing this all the time and probably did the same to David too, she was just a bitch, I said that ... I wish I hadn’t now but I did ...’
For part of this speech he had been talking to the jury, then turning back to her and even the judge and the people in the well of the court, as though he wanted to convince everyone of what he was saying. For the first time Sarah felt it might work, that people might really believe her son and understand him. But they might also realize he had just described a perfect motive for killing Jasmine. They had seen her mutilated body. Now here he was calling her a bitch. Pray God Jasmine’s mother’s not here.
‘And then what happened?’
‘She just walked out. I tried to stop her but she was too quick, she was outside. That’s probably when that old nosy git was cleaning his teeth and heard us shouting. Anyway I tried to pull her back in and she clouted my face with her bag - he didn’t see that, did he? But that’s why I hit her back, because it hurt. Anyway she was such a bitch, to go like that after all she’d said. So then I went back in and ... that’s the last I saw of her.’
‘You never saw her again?’
‘No.’
There was a collective relaxation around the court, as though a key moment had passed. But what conclusions had people drawn, Sarah wondered. That was the mystery.
‘So what did you do then?’
‘Nothing special. I just mooched around indoors thinking about how she’d behaved. I was all, like, churned up inside. Then after a while I went out and got in the car.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Well, I couldn’t stay there. I had to go somewhere.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Scarborough, in the end.’
‘Why Scarborough?’
‘Why not? It just happened, really. I turned left out of York and that’s where I ended up. I went for a walk on the beach in the middle of the night. Quiet, it was. Just me and a pair of seals in the dawn. I’d never seen a seal before. I didn’t know they had them in Scarborough.’
‘What did you do in the morning?’
‘Got breakfast, found somewhere to stay. Did a lot of thinking.’
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘What a mess my life was. How I could make a new start.’
‘Did you think about Jasmine?’
‘Yes. Course I did.’
‘What did you think?’
‘How I loved her. How beautiful she was and what a bitch she was to me and probably every other man she’d ever met, and what could you do if you loved someone like that. Whether I could break the habit of her like giving up smoking. Every day I stayed in Scarborough I thought I’d maybe won something. I thought I’d proved I could live without her and also maybe she was knocking on my door in York and feeling the same hurt I felt. I thought if I managed a month maybe I’d be cured of it. I could start a new life and never go back.’