‘For fun, that’s all. For a bet, Sharon, because Gary was pissed with you, and didn’t have the guts to do it himself. Just like now. Only now, you know all about me, don’t you, Sharon? So you could tell everyone.’
He moved closer, the tip of the long, serrated knife flicking her left nipple. She clutched the scissors and stared at him, trying to think of something to say. Anything at all, to save her life.
‘Emergency services. Do you need fire, police or ambulance?’ the telephone asked.
Terry and Harry were stuck in slow-moving traffic. Terry edged the car to the middle of the road, to see if he could overtake. But there was a traffic island just ahead, and a steady stream of cars coming the other way. Frustrated, he drummed his fingers on the wheel.
‘Ask Tracy what’s happening now,’ he said. ‘Is Sean still inside the house?’
Harry dialled the number. The response stumped him.
‘No signal, sir. Either that or she’s got it switched off.’
‘Hell’s teeth! What the bloody hell would she do that for?’
‘No idea, sir, I’m afraid.’
Sarah found it hard to listen to the judge’s summing up. She had made such a mess of things, she had let Simon down. It had all been going so well, too - she had overcome her nerves, controlled her voice, had the jury’s attention focussed on her. She had made all the points she wanted to, and then ...
She couldn’t understand what had happened. She had choked, like an athlete in sight of the winning tape. She had forgotten her conclusion, lost all energy and conviction at that vital moment. She had never even meant to mention David Brodie and when Turner had interrupted her, she’d had no response. Simon would go to prison because she had let him down.
‘And so, members of the jury, the guilt or innocence of this defendant is entirely a matter for you. It is a heavy responsibility which I am sure you will approach with the utmost seriousness. There is no hurry; you should consider the evidence thoroughly, and take as long as you need. Your verdict should be one on which you all agree. Now, the usher will conduct you to a room to begin your deliberations.’
As the jury left, Turner caught Sarah’s eye. ‘That’s us finished. No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘They’re all hard, Phil. Always will be.’ She turned away, cutting him dead. It was not the way barristers were meant to behave but then barristers were not meant to defend their own sons. She understood why now, better than she’d ever done.
As the court emptied, she walked back to the dock. ‘I’m sorry, Simon. I blew it.’
‘What? No, Mum, you were great.’ His face, was tense, but not downcast.
She frowned at the security guards. ‘I’ll talk to you downstairs, then.’
‘Yeah, OK. We’ll have one of those five-star lunches.’
The fact that he was cheerful, even hopeful, hurt her more. She watched him go down to the cells below, the way he would go when he was convicted in few hours time. Then, dragging her wig from her head, she walked disconsolately out of court, with Lucy at her side.
At last the traffic cleared, and with some risky, assertive driving from Terry they reached the street. They parked a few spaces behind Tracy’s blue Clio. Terry called her on her mobile. This time she answered.
‘All right, Trace, we’re here. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing much, sir, since I phoned in.’
‘Nobody gone in or out?’
‘No, sir. Like I said, Sean if that’s who it is went in there about ten, fifteen minutes ago, and Gary’s still in that van ...’
‘Not now he isn’t,’ Harry broke in, looking over his shoulder. ‘He’s got out, look! He’s going up to the house.’
Terry looked, and saw Gary disappear through the front door. Now what, he asked himself. ‘Do you think he’s seen us?’
‘Could well be, sir,’ Harry suggested. ‘After all he knows you and me well enough.’
‘Damn,’ Terry muttered. What to do now? It was bad enough Sean being in that house with Sharon and her kids, but Gary too? The question was, should he wait for them to come out, call for back-up, or go in straight away? If they didn’t know they were being watched, he could wait, but if they did there was no sense just dithering about here any longer.
‘Come on,’ he said, opening the door as he spoke. ‘We’re going in.’
But as he did so Gary came out of the house, quickly followed by the other man, Sean. Gary pointed up the road, directly at Terry, and sprinted for the van, followed by Sean, who seemed to have something long, a stick or a knife in his hand.
Terry began to run, his long legs stretching over the ground as fast as he could make them go. But the van was twenty yards away, maybe more, and the two men were already inside it. Fifteen yards .. ten ... the van shuddered as the engine started and smoke came out of the exhaust. Terry knew Harry would be far behind him but he didn’t care. He ran up to the van as it started to move, and with a final lung-heaving stretch grabbed the driver’s door handle. He could see Gary’s face inside. He pulled the door open, but he was still running and the van was accelerating faster, pulling him off his feet as it swerved deliberately close to a parked car which swept Terry’s legs from under him and sent him slithering over the bonnet into the windscreen and down, loose and crumpled like a rag doll, onto the road.
There was a lime tree at the side of the road. Its leaves fluttered prettily in the breeze beneath a clear blue sky. It’s funny I never noticed this before, Terry thought, it’s such a nice picture on a lovely day. There was a ringing in his head and a face appeared between him and the tree, looking down.
‘Sir, are you okay?’ the face asked anxiously, in the voice of Harry, whom it resembled.
‘Yes, I ... what happened?’ Terry heaved himself up on his elbows. The road pitched and heaved like a ship out at sea. He staggered to his feet and clung onto a parked car whose windscreen was, for some reason, shattered. There was blood on his hands where he had grazed himself and the sleeve of his jacket was torn. He remembered.
‘Get after them, Harry. Call a squad car. Get their number.’
‘Tracy’s doing it now, sir. She’s phoned in. I think ... we should go into the house.’
As the ringing in his ears faded and the road settled down to something like normal behaviour Terry noticed a crying, a screaming like that of a child in distress. It seemed to be coming from Sharon’s house. He walked as steadily as he could towards the front door.
The crying came from the top of the stairs. As Terry climbed them, following Harry, he saw a little girl inside a bedroom to the right. She was howling, her mouth wide open, tears streaming down her face, pointing with her pudgy right hand at something further inside the room. Harry walked straight past her. Terry stopped to pick her up.
Inside the room there were clothes strewn across the floor and on the bed, sideways across the pillows at the top end, lay a naked woman. It was Sharon. She lay face up, her long blonde hair spread out, her breasts flopping sideways, blood streaming from a wound in her stomach just below her ribs. One hand twitched and fluttered feebly near the wound, as though trying to find the blood to staunch it and take away the pain.
‘Sharon?’ Harry bent over her, swept the hair from her face, looked in her eyes and felt her wrist. ‘There’s still a pulse, sir.’
‘Stop that bleeding, then.’
Terry fumbled for the phone in his pocket, but with the child on his hip, clinging to him with all the ferocious strength of utter terror, he couldn’t reach it. Then he noticed a phone by the bed near Sharon’s feet, only the receiver was off the hook, on the floor somewhere. He bent to pick it up and to his surprise heard a voice on the other end.
‘Caller? Caller, are you there? Answer me if you can. Do you need police, fire, or ambulance?’
‘The police are here already,’ said Terry. ‘Send an ambulance. Quick!’
Chapter Forty-Three
‘I
THOUGHT it was unfair. After all, Turner talked about Brodie in his own speech, didn’t he? That was what he closed with.’
Lucy’s voice echoed strangely from the concrete walls of the corridors below the court. This place, which she knew so well, today seemed weird to Sarah, almost dreamlike. Perhaps they were taking
her
to be locked away, she thought. She was sure she deserved it.
‘You’re right,’ she replied, with the part of her mind which was still functioning. ‘I should have noticed that.’
‘He took you unawares, that’s all.’
‘He did. But I should be ready for ambushes, damn it! That’s my job.’
‘Never mind. You did your best.’
‘No!’ Sarah stopped, while the warder opened the door of Simon’s cell. ‘That’s just it! On this one occasion when it really mattered, I
didn’t
do my best, Lucy! I let him down!’
As they went inside, Sarah saw that Simon had heard. He stood, pale and dismayed, as the door clanged shut behind them. ‘What do you mean, Mum?
How
did you let me down?’
‘I ... didn’t end as well as I could, Simon, that’s all. You must have noticed.’
‘Your speech, you mean?’ She saw fear in his face as the blow hit home. ‘You said everything, didn’t you? I thought you did.’
‘I said everything, yes. It was just ... he tripped me up at the end with that reference to Brodie. I should never have made it. The rest was fine.’
She touched his arm and felt the tension in it. He shook her off abruptly and sat, head cradled in his hands. Then he looked up, eyes wild.
‘But you had to talk about Brodie, didn’t you? I mean, if
I
didn’t kill her, who did?’
‘That’s what I wish we knew, Simon,’ said Lucy softly, sitting quietly beside him. They watched Sarah, pacing the cell like a trapped cat. ‘That’s what we all wish we knew.’
The paramedics eased the stretcher gently into the ambulance. There was a small crowd on the pavement outside the house. A policewoman tried to comfort the little girl in the doorway.
‘You go with her, Harry,’ Terry said. ‘Anything she says ...’
A paramedic frowned disapprovingly. ‘She’s not likely to say anything for a while, sir. And we’ll be very busy ...’
‘All the same,’ Terry insisted. ‘This is a major murder enquiry. We have to know.’
Cautiously, Harry climbed into the back of the ambulance and sat near Sharon’s head. The paramedic fitted an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose and busied himself with a drip to her arm. Despite the pads he had strapped tightly across her stomach the blood was oozing into the blanket. Her face, what he could he could see of it, was as pale as the sheet and her hair was flecked with blood.
The paramedic handed him a bottle. ‘Here, make yourself useful and hold this. Up in the air, make sure no bubbles get into the line. I’ll try some adrenaline.’
The ambulance lurched into movement and Harry heard the crackle of the radio as the driver called in. ‘ ... serious stab wounds to stomach ... major haemorrhage ... a full crash team ... ETA seven minutes, with luck ...’
The siren began to howl and the ambulance moved off. The paramedic was giving an injection into Sharon’s leg. Nothing happened. He felt for a pulse, then lifted an eyelid, and bent his mouth close to her ear. ‘Sharon? Come on, love, don’t give up. Open your eyes, honey.’
Shocked, Harry watched as the eyelid flopped back; then, ten long seconds later, it began to flutter. Her eyes opened and gazed around her, confused.
‘Sharon, are you with us? There’s a good girl. You’re in an ambulance, love, you’ll be in hospital soon. Now what I want you to do, is take deep breaths from this mask on your face, all right? Fill your lungs, really good, slow, deep breaths.’
The eyes closed again. After a moment, he saw her chest rise and fall. Once, twice, three times. He heard her breathing inside the mask. Her eyes opened.
‘That’s great, Sharon, just great. You’re doing fine. More deep breaths, now.’
She breathed deeply while they watched. The paramedic took her pulse again.
‘That’s brilliant, Sharon, brilliant. Now you just lie there and take deep breaths and we’ll have you in hospital in no time. I’m going to give you another injection. You just look up at the ugly policeman who’s come to protect you.’
As Sharon turned her head the oxygen mask slipped. ‘Harry?’
‘Don’t worry, Sharon, you’re going to be OK. We know who did it.’
‘Sean?’
‘Yeah. We’ll get him, don’t worry. Here, breathe this.’
Holding the bottle with his left hand, he replaced the oxygen mask with his right. She took a few more deep breaths, then pulled it away herself.
‘Harry ... my kid. Did he ...?’
‘No, she’s fine, Sharon. Just fine. She’s with a policewoman now. He never touched her.’
‘Thank God. And ... Wayne?’
‘He’s at school, isn’t he? We’ll send someone to pick him up.’
She nodded, put the mask back and took several long, shaky breaths. Harry swayed precariously on his seat as the ambulance, siren wailing, zigzagged through a set of red lights. She took off the mask again and tried a faint smile, her lips almost as pale as her teeth.
‘You should try this, Harry. Good stuff.’
‘Don’t talk too much now, Sharon,’ the paramedic warned. ‘Save your strength.’
But the adrenaline injections seemed to have revived her. She breathed from the mask a couple more times, then said: ‘He was the one who raped me before. Not Gary. He told me.’
‘What, Sean?
He
was wearing the hood?’
She closed her eyes, then nodded faintly. ‘That’s not all ... he did ... other things ...’
The effort seemed to be weakening her. She closed her eyes. The paramedic replaced the mask firmly over her face. ‘Come on now, Sharon. You can tell him all this later, when you’re better. You just lie still and save your strength, okay? Breathe in, there’s a good girl ...’
Harry glanced out of the window. They were crossing Lendal Bridge, weaving down the centre of the road through the traffic which was climbing the pavements to get out of their way. They should reach the hospital in three or four minutes. Sharon’s eyes were closed. She seemed paler than before.
He glanced questioningly at the paramedic. The man shook his head and began to unwrap a third pre-packed needle, larger than the others. He jabbed it into her chest, underneath the heart. She shuddered, then opened her eyes.