Bethell looked pained. 'Oh be fair, Mr. Thorne. A bit of info is all well and good, but that's like doing your job for you. Like being a bloody detective.'
The waitress delivering Thorne's beer sniggered at Bethell's despairing squeak and hurried away. Thankfully Bethell didn't catch it.
'Think of it as another string to your bow, Kodak. You might fancy a change of career. The force is always on the lookout for eager young lads like yourself…'
'You can be a right sod sometimes, Mr. Thorne…'
Thorne leaned across the table and held a chopstick inches away from Bethell's face. 'Yes I can, and just to prove it, if you don't make a decent fist of this for me, I will come round to your dwelling slash business premises, take your zoomiest zoom lens and stick it so far up your arse, you'll be taking pictures of your large intestine with it. Pass the prawn crackers, will you…?'
Bethell sulked for a few minutes. Then he picked up the photograph and slid it into the pocket of his combat trousers.
'You really should try ore of these duck's feet, Kodak,' Thorne said.
'Did you know, they can actually make you swim faster?'
Bethell's eyes widened. 'Are you winding me up, Mr. Thorne…?'
Welch was standing, waiting in the doorway when Caldicott appeared at the other end of the landing with the mail trolley. As it got closer, agonisingly slowly, stopping at almost every door, it became clear that Caldicott's face still hadn't healed properly. One side, from mouth to forehead, was shiny, like it was slick with sweat, and the colour of something that might have been skinned. Against the raw, weeping red, the lines of tiny white rings stood out clearly, the ones on what was left of his lips looking like a row of cold sores…
The mail trolley squeaked that little bit nearer. Caldicott grinning as best he could, the mail round a nice cushy number. A sweetener from the caring sharing screws on the VP wing, after the weeks spent in hospital.
A couple of morons from B-wing had caught him in the laundry room. They shouldn't have been anywhere near the place by rights, should have been banged up, but someone, somewhere, had turned a blind eye. Left a door open.
One of Caldicott's women had actually been a girl. A fourteen year-old. Caldicott had told Welch, sworn to him that he thought she was older, that he wasn't into meat that tender. Surely, Caldicott pleaded, surely he must be able to understand. He must have been in a similar position. I mean, come on, some of the girls around these days! Welch had admitted that, yes, he knew what Caldicott meant and he had been there himself, several times, and he mentally thanked his lucky stars that the girl he'd been caught for had been over sixteen, if not by a great deal. Caldicott had probably told them as well, the animals down in the laundry room. He'd have pleaded, told them that he thought the girl was older, but they wouldn't have been interested in that kind of bollocks from a nonce. These were men who dealt in facts.
While one held Caldicott calmly by the cock and balls, the other had emptied the dryer, dropping the laundry neatly into the red plastic bucket. Then, his screams unheard or ignored, they had bent Caldicott over and forced his head and shoulders into the massive steel drum, pressing his face down on to the red-hot metal… Caldicott holding out a letter, a smile pulling the seared skin up and back across his yellowing incisors. Welch, thinking he looks like the phantom of the fucking opera, snatching the envelope and stepping quickly back behind the door…
The envelope has been opened, of course, but he's long past caring about privacy or any of that. He has a few precious minutes alone and the chance to read her letter, the last one he will be forced to read in a tiny room that stinks of his cellmate's shit. There's another photo. It's the first thing he looks for and he almost shouts out loud when he feels it tucked down between the pages of the letter itself. He pulls it out and slaps it down flat on his chest without looking. Then slowly he lifts it up, little by little, moaning out loud as he catches his first glimpse of her. The hood has gone, but this time her back is to the camera, her head lowered. Just a glimpse of shortish hair, the face hidden. She is sitting on her heels, her wrists fastened securely behind her, the shadows falling across her shoulder blades and beautiful, round arse…
The door opens and he is not alone any more. He quickly draws his knees up to hide the erection and presses the picture flat against his chest again. As his cellmate drops with a grunt on to the bed opposite, Welch is already closing his eyes, every last detail of Jane's nakedness clearly recalled and perfectly visible on the back of his eyelids.
7 MAY, 1976
'Ladies and gentlemen, you may find this surprising, but I wish, for the next few minutes, to concentrate on the evidence of a witness called by the de fence… I invite you to consider the evidence given here by Detective Sergeant Derek Turnbull. Sergeant Turnbull's record as a police officer is exemplary and I believe we should set great store by his testimony. We should take seriously the words we have heard him speak during this very disturbing case.
'I want you to remember these words…
'We should remember Sergeant Turnbull's words about the interviews he carried out with the woman who accuses my client of this serious offence. He spoke about the "confusion", about the "lack of focus'; he conceded under cross-examination that this woman's thinking "seemed to be all over e place". I ask you, should an incident that was, allegedly, so distressing not be easy to recall accurately? Should it not be seared into the memory? Yes, of course. And yet this woman cannot be sure about exact times. There is no consistent description of what my client was wearing at the time of the supposed attack. Just a good deal of hot air and a lot of irrelevant nonsense about aftershave…
'We should remember Sergeant Turnbull's words when he described the results of the physical examination. Nothing was found beneath this woman's fingernails. Nothing was found to suggest any resistance whatsoever. Sergeant Turnbull repeated to the court what she said when questioned about this fact. "I couldn't fight back," she said.
'Could not? Or did not want to?
'We should remember too, the Sergeant's words when describing the circumstances of the first interview, the first physical examination. This examination was, in his words, "'worse than useless", taking place as it did the morning after the alleged attack and after the so-called victim had showered. Remember his colleague's words when describing the dress which you have been shown as Exhibit A? "Too nice to wear to work." I put these things together, ladies and gentlemen, and I come up with an altogether different version of what happened in that stockroom in December of last year…
'Could not that dress have been torn during the frenzied, and consensual, bout of lovemaking to which my client freely admits? Could not the bruising be no more than the marks of excessive passion? Could not that shower have been taken, yes, to wash away the smell of my client, but only so as to hide the truth of her ongoing sexual relationship with him from her husband?
'I have asked you to remember the words of a police officer whose evidence was intended to damn the man I represent here today. Instead, unwittingly, I'm sure, he has done quite the opposite. I have asked you to consider these words and I can see that you are doing just that. I can see from your faces, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that these words have caused you, quite rightly, to doubt. If you doubt, as you surely must, the truth of what this woman claims to have happened, then I know that your deliberations in the jury room will be very short.
"The law, of course, is quite clear about reasonable doubt. I feel sure that this being the case, doubting as you must, you will do the right thing. You will do the just thing. You will do as His Honour must instruct you so to do, and acquit my client…'