‘My treat.’
‘Oh no. I’m not having my meal subsidised by a prosecution witness. Besides, you’ll want your money back when I’ve finished with you this afternoon.’
‘Sounds ominous.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to a long painful sentence for Mr Harker.’
‘Terry! One more word and I’m out of here. No shop, remember?’
‘I remember.’ The waitress brought the pasties with white napkins, gleaming knives and forks and gravy in a jug. Terry poured for them both, smiling. ‘This place is one of our few rewards for bringing villains to court. Every time we fail I have to eat in the police canteen.’
‘Shame.’ Sarah tucked in her napkin carefully. ‘You should learn to cook for yourself.’
‘Our nanny does that.’
‘Oh yes.’ Sarah knew a little of Terry’s personal circumstances, but not much. ‘Norwegian open sandwiches, isn’t it?’
‘Sometimes. You should try them.’
‘Ask me and I will.’ She smiled. He thought, it’s just an offhand remark, but I wish …
‘How’s your daughter — Emily, isn’t it?’
Sarah sipped her lager, frowned. ‘Don’t ask. She’s a teenager, she’s got GCSEs next week, she hates her mother … what else? You wait, Terry, you’ve got it all to come.’
But Terry was feeling like a teenager himself, on a date. That frown, he thought wryly, the way it crinkles her forehead, the little feminine gestures she makes as she sips her beer and pats her lips with the napkin — they’re such tiny, normal things yet I could watch them all day. This is how it was with Mary, all those years ago — so beautiful that it hurt.
Don’t be daft, he scolded himself, you’re forty years old. Still, any man can dream …
‘What’s the joke?’ Sarah asked, her napkin patting the puzzled half-smile on her lips.
‘What? Oh — nothing. Just you.’
‘Me? What did I say?’
Careful, Terry. This is a married woman, a barrister, a dangerous lady who’s about to cross-examine you in court. Not a fantasy in your dreams.
‘Just — a look on your face. It took me back, that’s all. To a girl I once knew.’
‘Your wife, you mean?’ A look of careful sympathy crossed Sarah’s face.
‘No, no. Before that. Long ago. When I was a student.’ That’s it. Clever move, old son. Get her interested in your exotic past.
‘Where were you a student?’
‘Here in York.’
‘Oh.’ Sarah glanced at a group of students near the door. To her they looked like children, little more than Emily’s age. ‘Well, I’m flattered, if I remind you of someone as young as that. What were you like as a student? Long hair and flowered jeans?’
‘No, I was an athlete …’
And for a while he told her about his running career, and his reminiscences of student life. His ambitions then had been to bed all the pretty girls on campus and win the Olympics, neither of which he had quite achieved. He knew very little of her background, but realised as they talked that she did not seem to have the same sort of carefree student memories. She had studied in Leeds, he gathered, as a mature student. There seemed to be some mystery about what had happened before, but before he could solve it she glanced at her watch.
‘Court resumes in ten minutes, Detective Inspector. I hope you’re ready for a roasting. I mean it.’ The sharp, ironic, smile irritated him somehow.
‘What for? Putting a serial rapist in the dock? As a woman you should be grateful.’
‘For providing a brief with so many flaws in it? Oh, I am, Detective Inspector, I am!’
This time the cynicism definitely got beneath his skin. She might be pretty and clever with words, he thought, but if she’d seen the things I’ve seen … Sharon Gilbert shaken and bruised in front of her little kids … Karen Whitaker sobbing in the woods … Maria Clayton’s dead body …
‘No, not that. For making the streets safer by getting scum like Harker locked up. Play your games in court if you like, Sarah, but his place is behind bars, because he’s guilty as hell. You know that as well as I do.’
Sarah flushed. She had enjoyed the banter over lunch, but she was in no mood to be lectured. She seldom was. ‘You may think you know that, Terry, but can you prove it? The courtroom game, as you call it, means that you must prove his guilt to the jury. And my job is to defend him, in case you get it wrong. Which you have done, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Have I? How?’
‘You’ll see. In court this afternoon.’
‘I hope not.’ Terry’s anger made him clumsy. ‘I’ve worked hard on this case, you know.’
‘So have I.’ She shrugged and walked to the door. ‘We’d better not go back together, it wouldn’t look good. Anyway it’s a different world in court. We meet as strangers.’
Just how right she was, he was about to find out.
As she came back into court, Sarah checked her mobile. But there were no messages, from Emily or anyone else. Probably she was still in a sulk, or revising hard. And Bob would ring some time in the afternoon, if he remembered. Maybe her father’s voice on the answerphone would induce her to pick up the receiver.
The judge entered, and Julian Lloyd-Davies began to take Terry Bateson through his evidence. Terry explained how he had gone to Sharon’s house when she had called the police, at 1.22 a.m. Sharon’s friend Mary had been there with her. A female officer had stayed with Mary and the children while Sharon was taken to the rape suite and examined by a female doctor.
Both during and after the medical examination Sharon had stated clearly that she had recognised the rapist as Gary Harker. Terry had arrested Gary in his flat at five that morning.
Lloyd-Davies then played parts of the tape of Terry’s interview with Gary. He had asked the judge to allow this, because he believed that the tone of what was said was as important as the substance. The real reason, Sarah guessed, was to ensure that even if Sarah kept Gary off the stand, the jury would still hear him speak in his own coarse, brutal fashion. Sarah had resisted, but not as strongly as she could have done. When he had won his point Lloyd-Davies had smiled smugly at his junior; and Sarah had been inwardly delighted, realizing he had made his biggest mistake so far.
On the tape Gary was surly, aggressive and uncooperative. After he left the Station Hotel, he said, he had been to another pub with a friend called Sean. There they met two prostitutes, and screwed them up against a wall for a tenner each. He could remember neither of their names. The older jurors looked appalled and disgusted, just as Lloyd-Davies had hoped.
On the tape Terry insisted that Gary had gone to Sharon’s house, broken in, and raped her in front of her kids. Gary denied it. ‘She’s a lying bitch if she says that.’
‘But that’s exactly what she says, Gary. She recognised the man who did it. It was you.’
‘Well, she’s lying then. She couldn’t have recognised me, the cow!’
‘Why couldn’t she recognise you, Gary?’
‘Because I wasn’t bloody there, that’s why!’ The retort was followed by a long silence, broken at last by a nervous Gary. ‘Do you hear what I said, copper? She couldn’t have recognised me because I wasn’t there.’ Silence. ‘Can you prove I was there, eh? Go on then, tell me how.’
And then came the statement which Sarah had noticed.
‘We know you were there because she recognised you, Gary. She saw your face!’
There was a silence which seemed, to Sarah watching the jury’s pained faces, to be longer than all the others. Gary’s voice on the tape was having the effect Lloyd-Davies had anticipated: it was loud, aggressive, mocking. ‘Silly bitch, that’s all crap, she’s lying! Recognise my arse!’