A long time ago when his children were young, Noble could have listed the reflexes by name. Hadn’t his wife made him read enough books before the birth of their first? As though parenting was something you could learn like French or Latin. The detective smiled at the memory. Someone next to him coughed, and he hid his smile behind his hand.
But every time the officer recalled the fragile head encased in a bin liner, its base clamped shut with a string, his blood would boil. What crime could the child commit to deserve this punishment? Had it cried too loud and too long? Although the death was not an ungentle one. The child had been sleeping, for the expression was one of repose and not one contorted by fear or infantile rage. The constricting band had been barely tight enough to leave an impression upon soft skin. Just enough pressure had been applied to ensure no air would reach it. In all likelihood, the child had not even been aware of what was happening. The very affection of the act confused him.
That the deed required a certain measure of premeditation, he had no doubt. Who would keep string or bin liners at a baby’s bedside? Both, if they somehow managed to make it into the infant’s cot, could be quite lethal even if there had been no ill-intent.
At this point the Detective Superintendent looked around the small assembly. Only a few people dotted the pews. They clustered in the groups – each leaning into others for support, their weeping muffled – well away from the police and their solitary prisoner. The father was conspicuously absent, but Noble couldn’t blame him for not wanting to confront this sad bundle or to gaze upon his wife’s face. It was said that he had something of a drink problem, and Noble could well imagine the man – his face slack with drink sitting in a darkened living room, marking this occasion in his own way.
There would be little love lost between estranged husband and wife. The husband had reported the crime, and his behaviour had been cold and distant – not with horror and shock – but rather as though his wife and her actions were beneath contempt. Although it couldn’t always have been so, for the woman was covered in bruises. He had beat her. Noble had not questioned it – then. What man would after such a discovery? Now Noble wondered how much time had lapsed between discovery and the call. Long enough to give the wife a sound thrashing, or had the beating preceded the crime?
At first, Noble thought the father’s callous demeanour was a natural reaction, a barrier he erected between himself and the incident. The officer believed that grief would come in its own time, and most likely in solitude, but since then he had seen little to indicate mourning. The husband was indifferent to the child and wife alike – as though even his daughter’s death was not worthy of comment – and the wife had already been supplanted, another woman moving in to take her place.
Knowing this, Noble found he could sympathize with the wife. The woman said not a word in her own defence. She sat mute through interrogation, staring at her feet. Not even flinching to questions shouted within inches of her ear. Unwilling to give by breath or sign any information that would either deny or edify. As if she accepted what was coming to her as her due. In fact, Noble surmised that if she had been willing to speak, she would have probably advocated the reinstatement of hanging just for her benefit, as though she longed to join her child.
And the detective was learning to admire the woman’s reticence. Her silence wasn’t sullen, recalcitrant, or stubbornly belligerent as often observed in criminals. It was acquiescent, even stoic. She simply had nothing to say. She had done the deed and that was all that need to be said. She would neither justify it nor rationalize it to anyone, not even the lawyer who would speak for the defence.
This case seemed to underscore the already distorted demarcation between offender and victim, for Noble sensed more than one victim. He couldn’t help but believe that there was something more here. Something more than what was immediately apparent. Perhaps, he didn’t like a case where the culprit was handed to them on a plate. It was a little too simple, a little too pat, and he had learned that life didn’t come in neat little packages, with crisp clean edges like the coffin that sat forlornly on the altar. It came with raged rim and overlapping lines where nothing was clear-cut or defined.
He examined the woman out of the corner of his eye. The purple bruises had faded to a greenish-yellow. Had the husband killed the child and then beaten the mother into accepting the guilt? No, Noble did not believe the father would have been so tender in the act if he had. Moreover, it seemed unlikely that she would compliantly accept guilt once the threat of violence was removed. Perhaps the beating had preceded the crime, but he couldn’t know for sure. The best medical science had to offer, besides the diagnosis of concussion, was: ‘recent’. And neither husband nor wife were willing to clarify. The husband mumbled vaguely about a fall, and the woman said nothing to contradict him.
Despite the enormity of the crime, the detective found himself wanting to excuse her behaviour. To locate some extenuating circumstance that would have absolved her. She could not plead poverty – it was strange the things a man can do in an economy both depressed and depressing but the couple were not one of the down-and-out who huddled in cramped bedsits throughout London’s east side. Neither were they one of the many whose bread-winner suddenly found himself out of work and their homes under siege from banks and creditors.
The husband had some high-pressure job in the City. Each day he passed into an area cordoned off from the rest of London by checkpoints, past the shattered remains of the building destroyed in the latest IRA attack. His offices were all chromium and glass where men in charcoal grey suits, sitting in front of high tech equipment that linked them to the economies of the world, behaved like children, shouting to one another as the market fluctuated erratically. Robert Simon must have been good at his job if he was still employed. His colleagues spoke highly of his skill, if not of him. He was, they said, one of the movers and the shakers in the City, and Noble detected the note of envy in their voices when they spoke of him. Simon seemed to have an instinct for which stocks to unload when, and which flagging stock might be bought for a fraction of its worth – right before its upsurge. He was like a wolf scenting blood. He capitalized on other people’s pain.
The Simons’ Docklands flat was spacious. Huge! So large that only the living areas were furnished. ‘Flat’ was probably not the right term to describe it – too down market. In one of the many new constructions, it was more like a penthouse and probably wouldn’t have been affordable even to Robert Simon except in this economic climate. The plate glass windows in every room gave panoramic views of London that took Noble’s breath away. Still, the officer didn’t like the place. More like a mausoleum than a home, the Docklands flat with its stark white walls left him feeling cold. The officer definitely preferred his own little mansionette in Greenwich. Right down to the fence that needed mending and the furniture that was worn by too many years’ use.
Everything about this case bothered him. The wife was not young enough to be ruled by passion, but then the act did not appear to be one of passion. Neither was she one of the uneducated. Margaret Simon had an advanced degree in economics and had also held a lucrative job in the City before leaving it for the fairy-tale image of home and family. Theirs should have been a marriage blessed.
With that thought, Noble swung to scrutinize the prisoner. He had asked for leave from remand, contacting the Prison Service at Holloway and obtaining permission which would allow her to attend the service. He had hoped that they would pierce the armour behind which she hid. Bracketed by guards, Margaret Simon moved as if one dead, unaware of her surroundings as they herded her into the pews. She sat where and when they told her. Her head turned neither left nor right. Only as the casket was carried up the short aisle did a cry escape her lips and a shiver run throughout her body, and again Noble wondered what had motivated her…