‘No, of course not. She wanted it — why else did she take her clothes off like that? That’s why she came. She knew what was going to happen.’
‘So you didn’t rape her?’
‘No, not at all. Nothing like it.’
She could almost hear the jury’s minds working. Is this man lying or not? All they had to go on was their experience of life — similar situations, similar young men to Simon.
‘The forensic pathologist has described some bruises which he found inside her vagina. Can you account for those?’
‘Not really, no. I mean, I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re saying. She liked it, she always did.’ He hesitated. ‘I mean, maybe it bruised her when she got excited but I wouldn’t know that, would I? She didn’t complain.’
‘Did you wear a condom?’
‘No. She were on the pill. She said.’
Such questions for a mother to ask her son, in public. Sarah remembered the childhood photos she had found last night. ‘All right. What time of day was this?’
‘Early, mid afternoon maybe. Hard to say. We went to bed and I fell asleep. Maybe she did as well. Then we went for a walk, bought some Chinese. I thought … I thought it was a real good day. Then when we came back it went wrong.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Well, like I say we were getting on fine. She was saying what a pain David was with all his tidying and fussing, and I knew he couldn’t screw her like I did, she told me that every time, it was quite a joke with her really … so I thought she might leave him and come back for good. She said she would, too; I remember it clearly. I was really happy.
‘But then, after the Chinese, she looked at her watch and said she’d have to go. So I said ‘go where?’ And she said, ‘to David, of course. You don’t think I could live in this pigsty, do you? He’ll have the bed made and the house all nice’ — you know, stuff like that. And I was so angry, then. It was like she’d kicked me right in the guts. So I yelled at her. I said she’d promised to stay and we’d had a great time, but she just laughed. She said that was part of the game, something like that, it would make it even better next time because I’d want her even more. And that made me sick because I saw she’d been doing this all the time and probably did the same to David too, she was just a bitch, I said that … I wish I hadn’t now but I did …’
For part of this speech he had been talking to the jury, then turning back to her and even the judge and the people in the well of the court, as though he wanted to convince everyone of what he was saying. For the first time Sarah felt it might work, that people might really believe her son and understand him. But they might also realize he had just described a perfect motive for killing Jasmine. They had seen her mutilated body. Now here he was calling her a bitch. Pray God Jasmine’s mother’s not here.
‘And then what happened?’
‘She just walked out. I tried to stop her but she was too quick, she was outside. That’s probably when that old nosy git was cleaning his teeth and heard us shouting. Anyway I tried to pull her back in and she clouted my face with her bag — he didn’t see that, did he? But that’s why I hit her back, because it hurt. Anyway she was such a bitch, to go like that after all she’d said. So then I went back in and … that’s the last I saw of her.’
‘You never saw her again?’
‘No.’
There was a collective relaxation around the court, as though a key moment had passed. But what conclusions had people drawn, Sarah wondered. That was the mystery.
‘So what did you do then?’
‘Nothing special. I just mooched around indoors thinking about how she’d behaved. I was all, like, churned up inside. Then after a while I went out and got in the car.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Well, I couldn’t stay there. I had to go somewhere.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Scarborough, in the end.’
‘Why Scarborough?’
‘Why not? It just happened, really. I turned left out of York and that’s where I ended up. I went for a walk on the beach in the middle of the night. Quiet, it was. Just me and a pair of seals in the dawn. I’d never seen a seal before. I didn’t know they had them in Scarborough.’
‘What did you do in the morning?’
‘Got breakfast, found somewhere to stay. Did a lot of thinking.’
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘What a mess my life was. How I could make a new start.’
‘Did you think about Jasmine?’
‘Yes. Course I did.’
‘What did you think?’
‘How I loved her. How beautiful she was and what a bitch she was to me and probably every other man she’d ever met, and what could you do if you loved someone like that. Whether I could break the habit of her like giving up smoking. Every day I stayed in Scarborough I thought I’d maybe won something. I thought I’d proved I could live without her and also maybe she was knocking on my door in York and feeling the same hurt I felt. I thought if I managed a month maybe I’d be cured of it. I could start a new life and never go back.’
‘And you had no idea that she was dead?’
‘No, of course not. No.’
‘And you didn’t murder her?’
‘How could I? I was in Scarborough. I never saw her again after she left my house.’
Phil Turner glanced up, ready to cross-examine if she had finished. But she hadn’t.
‘All right, Simon. Let’s examine a few details. You’ve told the court you wore your trainers to go running, and you’ve heard the forensic scientist describe how she found traces of Jasmine’s blood on those trainers. Do you have any idea how that blood could have got there?’
‘Well, all I can think is, it happened a few days before, on the Monday.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Well, the same thing, she came to my house then too. And after we’d made love, she was walking round the house in my shirt and those trainers — nothing else. Anyhow she was in the kitchen and I heard her call out, and when I went down she was swearing and sucking her thumb. She’d cut her finger with the breadknife. So maybe some blood fell onto the trainers then.’
‘Was there a lot of blood?’
‘Not a lot, no. She ran it under the tap and I gave her a plaster and that was it really.’
‘Did the blood get on the breadknife?’
‘Yes. Some of it, anyhow. I noticed it next morning when I was washing up. There was a stain on the blade near the handle. I thought I’d washed it all off but, obviously not …’
Pity about that, Simon, Sarah thought cynically. If you’d washed it off and put your shoes in the washing machine we’d never be here, would we?
‘Why didn’t you tell the police about this when they interviewed you?’
‘I didn’t think. I mean it was nothing, just a tiny cut. I’d forgotten all about it. And then they were shouting at me and saying she was dead, for Christ’s sake …’
‘All right, let’s talk about when you were arrested. What happened then?’
‘Yeah, well. I was asleep, and then — in the middle of the night — there were these men in my room. It was like a weird nightmare. Men shouting and yelling over my bed.’
‘What were they saying?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t get it, at first. Then one of them said Jasmine was dead but I didn’t believe him. How could I?’
‘Did they read the caution to you?’
‘You’re joking! They might have done, but I didn’t know what was going on. I was terrified. I thought they were going to kill me at first, then they were saying Jasmine was dead and I’d killed her and they dragged me outside and shoved me in this car.’
Would the young men in the jury believe this? Sarah wondered. Surely some had had dealings with the police on a Saturday night. How well had they been treated? She continued with the standard questions with which a lawyer dissects a chaotic and confused situation.
‘Did you understand that they were policemen?’
‘They said they were but I couldn’t believe it. I thought they were burglars or something.’