“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 Honor. 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 harbor 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 fulclass="underline" 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 Honor.”
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.