Revenge (18 page)

"I don't know."

"You don't have much money anymore, do you?"

"No."

"You signed over your half of the business and the family home to your wife, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Why would you do that?"

"I did it to prove to my wife that I wanted our relationship to work."

"Your wife
own
s
all the assets now;
assets which were previously yours."

"Yes."

"How long have you been married?"

"Twenty one
years,” Mark bea
med proudly
.

“
Wh
at is
your relationship with Shon
a Morgan and Penelope Garrett?”

Mark coughed before answering
“They are business colleagues.”

“
Is that all? Is it not true that you were cheating on you
r wife with these two women, neither of whom knew about the other?”

“
Y
es,” Mark replied quietly. “
It's not something I'm proud of but Rebecca and I were going throu
gh a bad patch in our marriage.”

“
So you cheated on
her with not one but two women
. Was there anyone else?” A murmur of incredulity ran through the courtroom. Mark
’s shiny image was being well and truly
tarnished.

“
I don't think I need to explain the private matter
s between two married people.”

"Do you think your wife
has been humiliated?"

"I think if somebody was planning to kill me that I'd get over the humiliation. I know if someone was shown the amount of evidence that Rebecca has been shown about someone trying to kill her that I wouldn't let my pride get in the way."

"Did you discuss the evidence with Rebecca?"

"No, not really, but I know the police shared a lot of the evidence with her."

"Your wife hasn't appeared in the courtroom for several days."

"Can you
blame her, after everything
she's been put through?" Mark snapped.

"Is Rebecca a woman of secrets?"

"Isn't
everyone?"

"It seems you let the secre
t out of the bag.
Do you think that you had motive to kill these three women?"

"I do
not."

"Your diary was retrieved and in it you wrote that your situation was unbearable. Was it unbearable?"

"No."

"You also wrote that you were worried about "making a move." What did you mean exactly?"

"I was tryi
ng to work out if I should leave and start
over again. I had nobody to talk to so writing helped me figure things out."

"Why didn't you
get a divorce and walk away?"

"I could have left, but I didn't want to leave my home and my baby. Rebecca was in
poor health after our son
was born and I felt obliged to help her. I know I could have left and I would have done well out of the divorce settlement but I was finding it difficult to make a final decision."

"Did Rebecca verbally abuse you?"

"Sometimes, but I probably deserved it." Mark smiled wryly.

"You wrote in your diary that your wife was prone to black moods."

"Yes, she suffered with post-natal depression."

"How would these black moods manifest?"

"She sometimes threw tantrums and there were da
ys when she hardly spoke
and couldn't even get out of bed to look after the baby."

Mr. Clifford
was
n't about to give up easily. He pointed out the obvious. “The hatred of “devils-revenge”
for the women wa
s obvious in the emails sent to “assassin_hire.”. I would say that hatred is a powerful motive.”

Mar
k vigorously shook his head. “
It's not
a motive to kill three people.”

“
Did you and
your wife talk about
your affairs?”

“
Yes but I don't want to discuss the matter any furt
her. I don't see the relevance.”

“It’
s v
ery relevant,” Mr. Clifford insisted. “
This is a conspiracy to murder trial and for that a motive is required. It's far easier to order the killing
of
someone you hate and that's wh
at your emails seem to suggest.”

Mark shook his head again. A con
cerned frown creased his brow. “
I realise that a motive is usually needed to kill someone
but my disagreement with my wife was a
motive to leave. It wa
sn't a motive to kill. I most certainly do not hate Rebecca. Sh
e is the mother of my children.
If I hated her I would ha
ve left her, not killed her.
I may have disliked a quality or an action of hers, which is
to be expected after twenty one
years of marriage. It's possible to love someone but not necessarily like them all the time."

Mr. Clifford
shook his
head. “Hatred
wasn'
t your only motive. Money was another
major motive in
hiring an assassin.”

Mark leaned forward. “That's ridiculous!”

“
Rebecca tricked you into signing over your share of the family home and business to her wh
en she discovered your affairs.
She was after revenge so maybe you decided it was time
to exact a revenge of your own.”

Mr. Clifford
continued to question Mark about his diary and eventually he'd had enough and wasn't afraid of letting the court know how he felt. "I don't want to discuss my personal diary any further. I don'
t see how it relates to murder.”

“
Police retrieved an email where it was written "I want to inherit.
”
Perhaps your motive was inheritance."

"I would have been financially secure if I'd divorced Rebecca."

Eventually the questions c
ame to an end. Mark
stepped down from the witness box after his grilling and took his seat beside his legal team.

"How does he keep going?" Shona leaned across to whisper in Penelope's ear. It amazed them
both how he had remained so calm and collected
throughout the afternoon. The intense questioning seemed to have run off him with little or no effect.

"It'll be interesting to see how he reacts to his cross-examination tomorrow morning," Penelope
replied as she stared at Mark.

Chapter 15

Mark was on the stand for two da
ys of intense cross-examination which
resumed early the following morning. The allegations and suggestions which were made in the course of the trial were hard-hitting but one of the most dramatic aspects of the trial was Mark's overnight transformation. The cheerful, smiling, confident man who left the w
itness box the previous afternoon
was suddenly replaced by a quiet, sombre man.
The brashness and bravado were gone,
replaced only by sadness.
H
e seemed
tense
a
s everyone gathered for the
second day of evidence
. His f
ace was drawn and there was
exhaustion
showing
in the dark circles under
his eyes. He
seemed markedly older as he onc
e again took the stand and Mr. Clifford continued his
questioning.
The barrister
had no pity f
or him and immediately began his
relentless b
arrage of questions.
The drill on the second day was to be a detailed re-examination of the computer evidence.

"Why would anyone access your email
s
?"

"I don'
t know," Mark quietly replied
.

"Various searches were carried out on your office computer for such things as mortgages, travel companies and inheritance rights. Searches were also carried out for a hitman. Th
e
“
devils-revenge
” email
and your p
ersonal email account,
“
MarkMc
,
”
were
accessed on the same day."

"I didn't
go into the
“
devils-revenge
”
account. I never even
heard of that email
until the polic
e
told me about it."

"Music videos were also ac
c
ess
ed around the same time
. It seems you were relaxing after a day's work while searching for inheritance rights and contract killers."

"I never downloaded any music videos."

"Did you send money to Savannah Kingston?"

"I didn't send any money to Ms. Kingston. I sent money to stop the blackmail."

Details of various emails which were sent by "
devils-revenge
" were put to Mark but he repeatedly denied any knowledge of the email account. "I can't comment. It's dreadful but those emails certainly were not written by me."

“
Whoever set you up must
have been very devious indeed,”
Mr. Clifford repeated his
deduction
s from the previous day. “
It's amazing that this mystery person has exactly the same inter
e
sts as you; photography
eq
uipment
and flights to France.”

“It's not me.”

“
They seemed to have known you very well.
The Canon camera online shop was
a peculiar place to go for
a mystery man or woman who was
trying to
set y
ou up for conspiracy to murder.
Your scheme to murder the
women was based on pure greed,”
Mr. Clifford declared.
"One of the emails suggested that your wife might feel suicidal and jump off the building in France when she heard that her friends were involved in an accident. What's your reaction to this?"

"My reaction is that I didn't write that email. Anybody who knows my wife would know that she would never react in that way. It's crazy! I was absolutely shocked when I first read the email."

"You don't look part
icularly shocked to me."

"Well, I've read the email several times."

"So you've recovered from your shock."

"I'll never get over it."

"Are you trying to suggest that Penelope Garrett or Shona Morgan wrote the emails?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I didn't do any of this. I didn't set up "
devils-revenge
" and I did not write the emails."

"Did you want to get rid of your wife for the money?"

"I never felt like that about Rebecca."

"One of the emails refers to your wife's "miserable face," rather callous, wouldn't you say?"

"
I didn't write it," Mark in
sisted.

Mr. Clifford
decided to change
direction slightly.
"There was contact between "
devils-revenge
" and "assassin_hire" and within minutes the user accessed the
courier
website with a tracking number. Only you had that tracking number."

"I gave the tracking number to the blackmailer."

"You are lying and insulting the jury's intelligence."

"I didn't set up "
devils-revenge”
and I'm not lying."

"It's your mantra and you are sticki
ng to it, but it's wearing
thin in the fa
ce of the evidence against you. We know
there was contact from France to Savannah Kingston's phone around
the same dates
you were in France."

"I never spoke to Savannah Kingston. I spoke with a man."

"What do you know about the ricin?"

"I don't know anything about it."

"The hard facts of internet evidence are staring you in the face yet you continue to deny everything."