He was so distracted by her presence that he didn’t hear Shirley Castle calling him to give evidence at first, then the judge called him to the box.
Shirley Castle spent more than a day taking him through the events of that fateful Monday in November, as smoothly as she had before in the interview room near his cell. He felt calm as he spoke, and he hoped the jury wouldn’t interpret this as lack of emotion.
“Minerva,” as far as he could tell, listened to him objectively, a slight furrow of concentration in her brow. Most of the others, he noticed, appeared to be paying attention too, but a couple had disbelieving sneers etched around their lips—that “come on, tell us another one” look he had become so adept at perceiving of late. Occasionally, he sneaked a glance at Michelle. Once in a while she turned and spoke behind her hand to the reporter next to her.
The next day, after Shirley Castle had finished eliciting a reasonable and believable account of events from Owen, or so he thought, Jerome Lawrence dragged himself to his feet. “There hardly seems any point,” Lawrence’s weary, long-suffering movements seemed to be saying, “in bothering with this, as you and I know he’s guilty, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but duty demands we go through the motions.” Owen looked at the gallery and saw Michelle was in court again.
Lawrence asked what seemed a lot of dull questions for most of the morning, and after lunch he finally began to zoom in on the crime. “Mr Pierce,” he said, “you have told the jury that between the hours of about six and six-thirty on 6 November last year, you simply walked around the area of St Mary’s, Eastvale, in the fog, and stood on the bridge for some time. Is this so?”
“Yes.”
“Were you intoxicated, Mr Pierce?”
“Not at all.”
“You drank, let me see, two pints of beer and a double Scotch at the Nag’s Head, is that right?”
Owen shrugged. “I think so.”
“And you weren’t intoxicated?”
“I’m not saying I didn’t feel the effects at all, just that I was perfectly in control. And I was walking, not driving.”
“You had more to drink later, didn’t you, at the Peking Moon?”
“Yes. With a large meal.”
“Indeed. And can you tell the court why you spent so long standing on the bridge before a fine view that you
couldn’t possibly see
because of the thick fog?”
“I don’t know, really. It was just what I felt like doing. I had one or two problems to mull over and I find fog helps contemplation.”
“What problems were these?”
Owen saw Shirley Castle making discreet warning signals. He looked Michelle in the eye. “Personal matters. Of no relevance.”
“I see. And was it this same
personal matter
that led you to drink so much?”
“I didn’t drink a lot. I’ve already told you, I wasn’t drunk.”
“And led you to hide yourself away in the corner of a restaurant and mutter to yourself?”
Owen felt himself flush with embarrassment. “That’s just a habit, like when I’m adding up. I’ve always done it. Sometimes a thought just comes out loud, that’s all. I forget that there are people around. It doesn’t make me a maniac. Or a murderer.”
“Are you sure you weren’t muttering in the Peking Moon about what you’d just done? Murdered Deborah Harrison?”
“Of course not. That’s totally absurd. I was just reasoning with myself, to calm down.”
“Calm down?”
There was no missing the verbal underlining in that repetition. “Why did you feel the need to calm down, Mr Pierce? What made you so agitated in the first place.”
“I wasn’t agitated. There’s a difference between being a little melancholy and being agitated, isn’t there? I mean—”
“Would you please stick to answering my questions?” Lawrence butted in. “If I need lessons in the English language, believe me, I shall ask for them.”
“I’m the one in the dock, aren’t I? Why shouldn’t my opinion count? You’ve asked everyone else’s, haven’t you? Why should I let you get away with distorting the meaning—”
“Mr Pierce,” Judge Simmonds grumbled. “Please answer Mr Lawrence’s questions as directly and as clearly as you can.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honour,” said Owen. He turned back to Lawrence. “The answer is no. I wasn’t agitated; I was melancholy.”
“Is it not true that you were upset and dejected about your break-up with a young lady some—”
“Objection!”
“Sustained. Mr Lawrence!”
“I apologize, Your Honour.”
What the hell was that little skirmish about? Owen wondered, his heart jumping. He glanced at Michelle again. Lawrence was trying it on; he knew damn well that evidence had been ruled inadmissible. The bastard was trying to slip it in regardless. He thanked his lucky stars Shirley Castle was so quick. Still, something had been lodged with the jury, no matter how much the judge might tell them to disregard it. He looked at “Minerva.” She seemed puzzled. Owen’s breath came a little quicker.
“Let us, then, move on to the scientific evidence,” Lawrence continued. “You don’t deny that Deborah Harrison’s hair and blood were found on your clothing?”
“It’s not for me to accept or deny,” Owen said. “I’m not a scientist. If your experts have identified these things, that’s their business.”
“And when faced with this fact by Detective Chief Inspector Banks, you gave him some story about bumping into the girl. Is this true?”
It was plain enough that Lawrence intended “cock and bull” to come before “story.”
“I didn’t bump into her,” Owen said. “She bumped into me as I was turning from the wall.”
“Answer the question.”
“I would answer it if it were correctly posed.”
Lawrence sighed and made a long-suffering gesture to the jury. “Very well, then, Mr Pierce. You told the police that the girl bumped into you. Is this correct?”
“I told them exactly what happened.”
“Why didn’t you tell them earlier?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
“Come on, Mr Pierce, the police had already told you how important everything that happened that day was the second time
they interviewed you. You knew you were in a serious situation. Why didn’t you tell them earlier?”
“I’ve already told you. I didn’t tell them about the time I had to bend down and refasten my left shoelace, either, or about stopping at the newsagent’s for an evening paper, which, by the way, they didn’t have. It just
didn’t seem important
.”
“Yet you remembered it well enough later. In fact, as soon as you were challenged with evidence of your physical contact with the victim, you suddenly came up with an explanation.” Lawrence laughed and flapped like a bat. “As if by magic. Really, Mr Pierce. Do you expect the court to believe that?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained. The witness’s opinion on such matters of what the court should or should not believe is not required, as you well know, Mr Lawrence.”
“I am sorry, Your Honour. I submit to you, Mr Pierce, that you saw Deborah Harrison part from her companion, that you followed her into the graveyard, and that you—”
“No! I did nothing of the kind,” Owen cut in.
“And that you strangled Deborah Harrison with her own school satchel strap!”
Owen clenched his fists and kept them out of sight. “I did not,” he said quietly, with as much dignity as he could muster.
Lawrence held him with his black, beady eyes, then breathed, “No more questions,” and sat down looking pleased with himself.
It was Friday afternoon, so Judge Simmonds adjourned for the weekend and Owen was escorted back to his cell.
II
Back in the dock on Monday, Owen tried to keep his eyes off Michelle and concentrate on Jerome Lawrence’s final address to the jury. From what he heard, it wasn’t much different from the opening remarks: Owen was a monster, hardly even human, who had brutally murdered a pure and innocent young girl. Most of the time he found himself looking towards Michelle.
He sensed she knew he was staring at her, but she wouldn’t catch his eye.
Lawrence went on for the best part of the day, piling atrocity on atrocity, outrage upon outrage, and it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that Shirley Castle got to make her closing speech. Again, Owen found himself watching Michelle most of the time, and the next thing he knew, Shirley Castle was wrapping up.
“And, above all, remember the phrase
beyond reasonable doubt,
” she said. “It is the very foundation upon which our justice system is built. The burden of proof lies with the Crown. Ask yourselves, has the Crown proven its case
beyond reasonable doubt
? Are you yourselves sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that this man before you is anything other than an innocent victim? Do you not harbour doubts yourselves? I think you will find that you do, and that you can honestly do no other than agree with me, and say
no,
the Crown has
not
proven its case. For you see in front of you a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a man confused, worried and anxious by a police investigation he could not understand and which was not explained to him. But more than anything, you see in front of you an
innocent
man who has already been punished more than enough for a crime he did not commit. Look into your hearts, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m sure you will find there the certain knowledge that my client is innocent of all charges laid against him. Thank you.”
After this carefully impassioned finale, Judge Simmonds’s summing up seemed perfunctory to Owen. At least he was fair, Owen had to admit. In a detached monologue, the judge reiterated the main points of the case, careful not to indicate any bias. As the old man talked, Owen kept switching his gaze between Michelle and “Minerva.”
“Minerva” was clearly listening, but Owen could not help getting the impression that this final speech was superfluous to her, that she had already made up her mind. Once, she caught him looking at her for a second and turned away quickly, blushing. He could have sworn, though, that her eyes held no trace of accusation, of condemnation. When Michelle finally decided to return Owen’s gaze, she smiled, and he couldn’t mistake the cold, malicious glint in her eyes; it made him shiver.
III
While the jury was out, Owen sat in a cheerless room below the court with Shirley Castle and his guards drinking bitter coffee until his stomach hurt.
He had experienced anxious waiting before—after a job interview, for example, or those long nights at the window watching for Michelle to come home—but nothing as gut-wrenching as this. His stomach clenched and growled; he bit his nails; he jumped at every sound. He tried to imagine what it must have been like when the death penalty existed, but couldn’t. Shirley Castle tried to make conversation but soon stopped after his terse and jumbled responses.
Hours, it seemed, went by. At last, someone came and said the jury hadn’t reached a verdict yet, and as it was late, Owen was to spend the night back in his cell. He asked Shirley Castle about the jury taking so long, and she said it was a good sign.
That night, he hardly slept at all. Fear gnawed at him; the cell walls closed in. In that nether world between sleep and waking, where memories take on the aspect of dreams, he actually watched himself strangle Deborah Harrison in a foggy graveyard. Or was it Michelle? He had been told so often that he had done it that his subconscious mind had actually been tricked into believing it. He thought he screamed out in the night, but nobody came rushing to see what was wrong. When he woke from the dream, he noticed he had an erection and felt ashamed.
Morning came: slopping out, the stink of piss and shit that seemed to permeate the place, the supervised shave, breakfast. Then Owen sat around in his suit waiting to go back to the court and face the verdict. Still nothing. By mid-morning on Wednesday, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last without going mad. Just before lunch, his cell door opened and the warder said, “Come on, lad. It looks like they’re back.”
In court, Owen gripped the front of the dock until his knuckles turned white. The gallery was full: Michelle leaning forward, thumbnail between her front teeth, as she often did during thrillers or when she was concentrating hard; the Harrisons; two of the
detectives, Stott and Banks; the vicar, Daniel Charters and his attractive wife, Rebecca; reporters; morbid members of the public. They were all there.
The jury filed back in. Owen looked at “Minerva.” She didn’t glance in his direction. He didn’t know what to make of that.
After the hush came the legal rigmarole about charges, then the question everyone had been waiting for: “Do you find the defendant Owen Pierce guilty or not guilty as charged?”
The split-second pause between question and answer seemed an eternity for Owen. His ears roared and he felt his head swimming. Then the spokesman, a drab-looking man Owen had guessed to be a banker, spoke the words: “We find the defendant not guilty, Your Honour.”
There was more talk after that, but most of it was lost in the hubbub that raced through the courtroom like an explosive blast. Reporters dashed for phones. Owen swayed and clutched the dock for dear life. He couldn’t seem to stop the ringing in his ears. He heard a woman yell, “It’s a travesty!” Then everything went white and he fainted.
Owen came to in a room below the court, a cool, damp cloth pressed to his brow, with Shirley Castle and Gordon Wharton standing over him. As he recovered, he felt the stirrings of joy, like the first, tentative shoots of a new plant in spring, overtake the gnawing anxiety that had burdened him before. He was
free
! Surely it would sink in soon. Shirley Castle was talking to someone, but when she stopped and walked towards him, he could feel the muscles in his face form a smile for the first time in what seemed like years.
She smiled back, curled her fist and thumped the air triumphantly. “We did it!”
“You did it,” Owen said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Winning is thanks enough.” She held out her hand. “Congratulations, Owen. And good luck.”
He shook it, the first time he’d touched a woman in months, and he was conscious of the soft warmth under the firm grip. He felt her give a little tug and released her, embarrassed to realize he had held on too long. He wanted to kiss her. And not only because she had won his case. Instead, he turned to Wharton.