Verdict Unsafe (7 page)

“Where were they?”

“In my helmet, on the bike.”

“Oh—you had removed your helmet, too?”

“Yeah, well … I do that automatically when I get off the bike.”

“And where was the bike?”

“Up at the entrance to the alley.”

“Why were you wearing your mask?”

“I’d just never taken it off.”

“And yet you say Miss Benson approached you? Didn’t it ‘put the wind up’ her?”

“No. She knew it was me.”

“Not much of a disguise, then, was it?”

“She’d seen the bike!” said Drummond, his voice rising, his patience wearing thin. “She came along the alley, asked if I wanted a fuck, I gave her a tenner, and we did it. It was as simple as that.”

“Simple? But it brings us to another coincidence, doesn’t it?
That you have the same dubious—and dangerous—taste in sexual positions as the rapist?”

“It was her idea to do it that way, not mine.”

The silver eyebrows shot up, disappearing right under his wig.
“Her
idea?” Whitehouse paused for a moment. “Did that surprise you?”

Drummond frowned. “No,” he said. “She’s a whore. She asks more money for doing it that way.”

“But it was a foggy, damp night, and as she memorably told the court, the ground was wet and muddy, wasn’t it?”

Drummond shrugged. “She didn’t seem to mind that,” he said. “She wanted the tenner.”

“Do go on,” said Whitehouse.

“She heard these men coming, and told me to eff off. I wanted my money back, and she starts screaming at me, effing and blinding. So I put my hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.”

“My learned friend has said that that was how her saliva came to be on your glove,” said Whitehouse. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Drummond.

“But you weren’t wearing your gloves, were you?”

Drummond’s eyes widened a little at his elementary mistake. “I’d put them back on by then,” he said.

“But they were in your helmet, on your bike, at the end of the alleyway, weren’t they?”

“Yeah—but I’d been back at the bike. I was going, like she’d said. But then I thought how I hadn’t had my money’s worth, and I wanted my tenner back. So I went back and asked her for it.”

“And she was still there? Still hanging about in the middle of the alleyway?”

“Yes,” said Drummond.

“Still on all fours?” asked Whitehouse.

“No,” said Drummond, through his teeth. “She got up when she told me to fuck off, all right?”

“But the gentlemen who apprehended you saw her face down on the ground, her leopard-skin leggings around her
knees, with you kneeling over her, and then you ran away. How come?”

“That was after.”

“After what?”

“After I asked for my money back. She tried to run, but she fell over, and I tried to get my money from her when she was on the floor—that’s what they saw.”

“I’m not surprised she fell over,” said Whitehouse. “Women,” he said, smiling indulgently, shaking his head. “You would think with all that standing around while you walked fifty yards to your bike and put your gloves on, then walked fifty yards back again, she would have thought to pull up her leggings, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know or care what she did with her leggings,” said Drummond, stepping dangerously out of character.

“No—quite. Why should you?” said Whitehouse, still smiling. “And all this toing-and-froing and putting on of gloves and falling over happened
between
her hearing footsteps approaching and these two gentlemen arriving at the scene?”

“She must have heard them when they were a long way away,” said Drummond. “Sounds travel in the fog.”

“But not the sound of her ‘effing and blinding,’ which you were so anxious to quieten? No one but you heard that, Mr. Drummond. The two witnesses said nothing about anyone shouting, swearing—don’t you think that that would have been what caught their attention rather than the silent tableau they described?”

Drummond shrugged.

“Ah, well,” said Whitehouse. “Fiction is quite difficult—I know. I’ve tried my hand at it. So many things to think about at once, aren’t there? Do go on.”

“I left her to go back to the bike, and next thing I know I’m being dragged off it and she’s yelling that I raped her.”

“So it was yet another coincidence that you, who so admired this rapist, should go with a prostitute who takes your money and then just happens to accuse you of sexually assaulting her for some inscrutable reason of her own?”

“The cops put her up to it,” said Drummond.

“And it was merely a combination of circumstances that caused two independent witnesses to see her sprawled face down on the ground, her clothing pulled down, with you kneeling over her? Sheer coincidence that it should look exactly like someone sexually assaulting his victim in the grim silence which had been enforced by the threat of mutilation with a knife?”

“I never had a knife.”

“No. It was just another coincidence that a knife was found exactly where you would have thrown it on returning to your bike, wasn’t it?”

“You’d have to ask the cops about that, too.”

“Ah, yes. And this statement that you gave the police after you had been arrested—did they manufacture that? We can have it played to the court, if you wish, Mr. Drummond, if you are saying it’s a fake. Are you saying that?”

“No. But they told me all those things I was supposed to have done.”

“And you pieced them all together and came up with a blow-by-blow account of what was done to these young women, and in what order, and with what degree of violence?”

“I must have.”

“Another coincidence, no doubt. But—perhaps you can explain one thing about your statement, if you would?” Whitehouse picked up some papers, and put on his glasses. “It’s concerning the assault on Mrs. Carole Jarvis,” he said. “You began your statement thus: ‘I saw that one getting into her car in Malworth, and I followed her.’” He looked up, removing his glasses again. “Who told you that?” he asked.

Drummond frowned. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Who told you that she had been in Malworth? The police didn’t know that that was where she had been until some considerable time after you made this statement. Only
she
knew that. She, her gentleman friend, and the person who followed her, of course.”

“I just said it.”

“Why?”

“Because … I live in Malworth, don’t I? I wouldn’t be hanging around Stansfield. But I knew the first one had been in Stansfield. So I just said I’d followed her there.”

Whitehouse threw the papers back down onto the desk. “What a remarkable coincidence, then, that she had
indeed
been in Malworth,” he said. “And did you just ‘say’ that you had threatened to mutilate your victims if they made a sound? Did you just ‘say’ that you had cleaned them up, then cut away and removed the tape? More coincidence, Mr. Drummond?”

“I heard the cops talking,” said Drummond. “I heard them saying that was what he’d done.”

“And it was a coincidence, was it, that you should have about your person adhesive bandages of the type described by the victims as having been used to bind them? Or are you also saying that the police planted them?”

“They were in the first-aid kit—it comes with the bike.”

“And moist tissues of the sort used to wash the victims after the assaults?”

“They come with the first-aid kit.”

“And best of all—that you have the same DNA profile as the rapist,” said Whitehouse. “The odds, Mr. Drummond, are three million to one against that single coincidence alone—one shudders to think
what
giddy odds your version of events reaches.” He turned to the judge. “No further questions, my lord.”

“Do you wish to re-examine, Mr. Harper?”

Harper shook his head, and the court rose for the day.

So far Harper had called a couple of people to confirm that Colin Drummond had always dressed in black since leaving school, and a motorbike salesman to confirm that the bike came with a first-aid box which included moist tissues—evidence which hardly cleared his client of involvement, but which at least confirmed that he was telling the truth. Now, his father was about to go into the box.

Harper had had considerable doubt about including the alibi evidence; the Drummonds had insisted that they knew for a fact that Colin had been at home, stripping down his bike or whatever it was he did with the thing, on the occasion of the first and third rapes, and belatedly attending his mother’s birthday party when the second took place. The party was one thing, but there was no way the Drummonds could remember off-hand what Colin was or was not doing eight months ago on two otherwise unremarkable nights; Harper knew that they had devised the alibi evidence between them, and so would everyone else who heard it.

But in the end he had gone with it, since he had nothing much else to offer. Not even a character witness. Drummond’s total lack of friends made Harper feel almost sorry for him. He had never had a relationship, sexual or otherwise, with any female other than his mother and Rosa. And that wasn’t just sad. It was hampering his defense. Harper had had people scouring the county for sight or sound of Rosa once the police had established that she wasn’t after all a figment of Drummond’s imagination, but she had gone to ground and was staying there. Drummond was now very anxious that she should be found, given the supposed sexual dysfunction of the assailant; Rosa, he said, could tell them that he didn’t have any problem at all in that regard. He hadn’t given anyone much of a chance to look for her; he hadn’t even mentioned her until eight weeks ago. He hadn’t, he had explained to Harper, wanted people knowing that he had had to pay for it on a regular basis.

Rosa had turned up at the Ferrari, worked it for a few weeks, then had left, probably to go somewhere that didn’t have a rapist on the loose. She hadn’t had premises, hadn’t even had a surname that anyone knew. Drummond thought she had had a pimp; he’d seen a man approach her once or twice after he had left her, but he only saw him in the dark, couldn’t describe him, and didn’t know his name.

So the other little prostitute remained his only hope; there were facets to the police version of that drama in the alleyway that Harper had so far merely hinted at, and which didn’t entirely
ring true. But they would have to wait for his closing address, because he had no evidence to back up his doubts. He could voice them; he could give the jury something to think about.

For now, iffy alibi evidence, the irate resident who had seen Drummond at the airfield, one of the officers involved in the assault on Drummond, and a psychologist who would say that he was a harmless Peeping Tom comprised, God help him, the remainder of Drummond’s defense.

Judy had watched Drummond’s father lying his head off about how Colin was at home with him and his mother on three of the four occasions in question. Whitehouse had made mincemeat of him, and now he was doing the same to Mrs. Drummond, showing how their answers had been rehearsed, right down to their using the same words as one another.

Retired Major Harold Masterman was called next. He had been arriving home from an evening out when he had seen Drummond drive up to the old airfield, on to which the major’s house backed. He had put up with the screaming of the engine and the squealing of the tires for about an hour, but then he had phoned the police. Much good that had done him, he said. The noise went on for almost another hour, with no sign of the police doing anything about it. Almost half past one before he finally drove off, and never a policeman to be seen.

In the afternoon, Barry Turner was first on. Ex-Police Constable Barry Turner. He and PC Matthew Burbidge had stopped Drummond for reckless driving at thirty-two minutes after nine
P.M
. on Friday, October twenty-fifth last year. Drummond had been riding his bike at almost eighty miles an hour in thick fog with no lights; they had stopped him, and questioned him about his movements on the nights the rapes had taken place. He had laughed at them, said they would never catch the rapist. PC Burbidge had lost his temper. Turner had at first turned a blind eye, but then had stopped it before it got out of hand.

“Why didn’t you take him in for questioning if he had admitted assaulting these women?” asked Harper.

“Well … that was just it, really. He didn’t say he had. I mean—he wasn’t saying anything, not really. Just hints, and remarks. I thought Matt was just going to … you know, rough him up a bit. But he … well, I stopped it before he did too much damage.”

“Mr. Drummond had previously eluded you in a chase, hadn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And you had been frustrated in your attempts to find evidence of drink or drugs with which you could charge him?”

“Yes.”

“Could that perhaps have been why your colleague assaulted him?”

“It might have been partly why.”

“Not because he believed Mr. Drummond to be the rapist?”

Whitehouse was on his feet, objecting on the grounds that the witness could not know what Mr. Burbidge had or had not believed.

“Did
you
believe him to be the rapist?” asked Harper.

“No.”

The psychologist was wheeled on next, and was asked for his personal assessment of Drummond.

“Colin Drummond is a young man of surprisingly high IQ,” he started off, “given that the persona he projects most of the time is one of mumbling, inarticulate immaturity.”

Judy’s eyebrows rose in surprise. She couldn’t have given a fairer assessment herself.

“He reads little; he learned little at school. He is not particularly interested in anything except motorcycles, but he has a quick, receptive mind, and a capacity for learning about those things which do interest him.”

Like rape and its detection. Judy sneaked a look at Drummond, who looked appalled. Good. Sometimes even
your
mummy and daddy can’t buy you out of trouble, you little sod, she thought.

“Colin knows that he is capable of much more than serving in his father’s shop, and he knows that his hang-ups—to use a
colloquial term—about relationships with other people resulted in his being turned down by the RAF.”