“Come on, Chief Inspector Banks, you can’t have it both ways. Either they’re stupid and easy to catch, as you said earlier, or they’re unpredictable and impossible to catch. Which is it?”
“Some are stupid; some are not. As I said before, murderers don’t always act rationally. This wasn’t a rational crime. There’s no way of predicting what the killer would do, or why he did things the way he did.”
“But aren’t you in the business of reconstructing crimes, Chief Inspector?”
“Nowadays we leave that to ‘Crimewatch.’”
Laughter rose up from the gallery. Judge Simmonds admonished Banks for his flippancy.
“My point is,” Shirley Castle went on without cracking a smile, “that you seem to know so very little of what went on in St. Mary’s graveyard, or indeed, of what kind of criminal you’re dealing with. Isn’t that true?”
“We know that Deborah Harrison was strangled with the strap of her school satchel and that her clothing was rearranged.”
“But isn’t it true that you simply picked on the first person seen in the area whom you thought fit the bill, that Owen Pierce was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“I’d say it was Deborah Harrison who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Were there not certain elements of the crime scene that struck you as odd?”
“What elements?”
Shirley Castle consulted her notes. “As I understand it,” she said, “the victim’s school satchel was open. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“It could have come open during the struggle.”
“Hardly,” scoffed Shirley Castle. “It was fastened by two good-quality buckles. We’ve tested it, believe me, and it won’t open unless someone deliberately unfastens it.”
“Perhaps the murderer wanted something from her.”
“Like what, Chief Inspector? Surely you’re not suggesting robbery? From a schoolgirl’s satchel?”
“It’s possible. But I-”
“But what money could a schoolgirl have worth stealing? I understand Deborah Harrison had six pounds in her purse when she was found. If robbery were the motive, why not take that too? And wouldn’t it make more sense to take the entire satchel? Why hang around the crime scene any longer than necessary?”
“Which question do you want me to answer first?”
Shirley Castle scowled. “Why would Deborah Harrison’s killer remain at the scene and go through her satchel rather than take it with him?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he was looking for a trophy of some kind. Something personal to the victim.”
“But was anything missing?”
“We don’t know. No-one knew exact-”
“You don’t know. We have heard a great deal of evidence,” she went on, “placing Mr. Pierce in the vicinity of St. Mary’s at the time of the crime, but let me ask you this, Chief Inspector: did anyone actually see Mr. Pierce enter St. Mary’s graveyard?”
“He was seen-”
“A simple yes or no will suffice.”
Banks was silent a moment, then said, “No.”
“Is it not also possible, Chief Inspector, that Deborah went somewhere else first and returned to the graveyard later, after Mr. Pierce had gone to the Peking Moon?”
“It’s possible. But-”
“And that Deborah Harrison was murdered by someone she knew, perhaps because of something she was carrying in her satchel?”
Exactly what I thought at first, Banks agreed. “I think that’s a rather far-fetched explanation,” he said.
“More far-fetched than charging Mr. Pierce here with murder?” She pointed at Pierce theatrically. “While you were busy harassing my client, did you pursue the investigation in other directions?”
“We continued with our inquiries. And we didn’t har-”
She sniffed. “You continued with your inquiries. What does that mean?”
“We tried to find out as much about the victim and her movements as possible. We tried to discover, through talking to friends and family, if she had any enemies, anyone who would want to kill her. We collected all the trace evidence we could find and had it analyzed as quickly as possible. We found nothing concrete until we came up with Mr. Pierce.”
“And after Mr. Pierce’s name came up?”
Banks knew that most investigations tend to wind down once the police think they’ve got their man. And much as he would have liked to pursue other possibilities, there was other work to do, and there was also Chief Constable Riddle. “I continued other lines of inquiry until it became app-”
“You continued other lines of inquiry? As soon as you first interviewed him, you decided on Mr. Pierce’s guilt, didn’t you?”
“Objection!”
“Sustained. Ms. Castle, please stop insulting the witness.”
Shirley Castle bowed. “My apologies, Your Honor, Chief Inspector Banks. Let me rephrase the question: what was your attitude to Mr. Pierce from the start?”
“We decided he was a definite suspect, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we proceeded to build up our case against him in the usual, accepted manner.”
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” Shirley Castle said, sitting down and trying to look bored. “No further questions.”
“Then I suggest,” said Judge Simmonds, “that we adjourn for the weekend. Court will be in session again at ten-thirty Monday morning.”
III
On Monday morning, it happened: exactly what Owen had been fearing.
When he tried to reconstruct the sequence of events later, back in his cell, he couldn’t be sure whether Jerome Lawrence had actually managed to call out Michelle’s name before Shirley Castle jumped to her feet. Either way, Judge Simmonds listened patiently to the objection, then he dismissed the jury for yet another voir dire.
What followed was a legal wrangle that Owen, educated as he was, could only half follow, so mired was it in tortured English and in citing of precedents. As far as he could gather, though, both sides put their points of view to the judge. Jerome Lawrence argued that Michelle’s evidence was relevant because it established a pattern of violent behavior that had its natural outcome in Deborah Harrison’s murder, and Shirley Castle countered that the proposed evidence was nothing but vindictive fantasy from an unreliable witness, that it proved nothing, and that its prejudicial effect by far outweighed any probative value it might have.
Owen held his breath as Judge Simmonds paused to consider the arguments; he knew that his entire future might be hanging in the balance here. His mouth felt dry; his jaw clenched; his stomach churned. If Simmonds disallowed the evidence, Owen knew, there could be no reporting of what had gone on in the jury’s absence. Only a very few people would ever know about what had happened between him and Michelle. If Simmonds admitted it, though, the whole world would know. And the jury. He crossed his fingers so tightly they turned white.
Finally, Simmonds puckered his lips, frowned, and declared the evidence inadmissible.
Owen let out his breath. The blood roared in his ears, and he felt his whole body relax: jaw, stomach, fingers. He thought he was going to faint.
Shirley Castle flashed him a discreet thumbs-up sign and a quick smile of victory. The jury was brought back in, and Jerome Lawrence called his next witness.
Dr. Charles Stewart Glendenning made an imposing figure. Tall, with a full head of white hair and a nicotine-stained mustache, the Home Office pathologist carried himself erectly and had just the right amount of Scottish burr in his accent to make him come across as a no-nonsense sort of person. The serious expression on his face, which had etched its lines over the years, added to the look of the consummate expert witness.
He entered the witness-box as if it were his second home and spoke the oath. Owen noticed that he didn’t rest his hand on a copy of the New Testament and that the wording was slightly different from everyone else’s. An atheist, then? Not surprising, Owen thought, given the evidence of man’s inhumanity to man he must have seen over the years.