‘When Jason hit Thomas Garrington with a cast-iron lantern, what position was Thomas Garrington in?’
‘He was by Luke Murray, by his feet, kicking him.’
‘His back to Jason?’
‘Yes.’
‘So Thomas Garrington was not expecting the blow?’
‘No,’ said Val.
‘He wouldn’t have seen it coming?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Did you see anyone produce a knife?’
The sudden change of topic startled Louise and she sensed the same reaction in Val as Val’s head jerked up and she blinked before she replied. ‘No.’
‘Did you see anyone use a knife?’
‘No.’
‘Did you hear anyone speak of a knife?’ Mrs Patel asked.
‘No.’
‘You saw Jason arrive in the garden when you first went to the door. You observed everything up until he assaulted Thomas Garrington with the lantern?’
Val hesitated. Louise knew it was the word assaulted. There like an obscenity in that context. Laying blame on Jason. The same way the papers had smeared Luke.
‘Yes,’ Val replied in a steely tone.
‘Did Jason appear to be sober?’
Val blinked. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Was his speech slurred? Was he weaving about?’ said Mrs Patel.
‘There was a fight going on,’ Val protested.
‘He had been out drinking with his friends?’
‘Yes,’ Val said briskly.
‘For several hours?’ the barrister added.
‘Yes. He wasn’t drunk,’ Val said.
‘How could you tell?’ Mrs Patel said. Val didn’t reply.
‘And when you came back to the doorway, only Conrad Quinn was still fighting Jason?’
‘Yes,’ Val said.
‘Mr Quinn was the last to leave the garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he appear? Mr Quinn?’
‘Erm… out of control, enraged, like a madman. They all did.’
‘Mrs Barnes,’ the judge said, ‘please restrict your replies to the particular question. Members of the jury, please disregard that last reply.’
‘Mr Quinn appeared enraged? Did he seem at all frightened?’
‘No,’ Val said.
‘Or upset, or anxious?’
Louise saw that Mrs Patel was shifting attention from her client on to Conrad Quinn, casting him as the real villain. He was a villain; he had after all confessed to wounding Luke, but what his role had been in the murder was in dispute.
When Nicola Healy’s barrister began, he concentrated on trying to get Val muddled up about Nicola’s role in hurting Luke. How many times had Nicola kicked Luke? Which foot had she used? Where had she kicked him?
Again Louise barricaded herself against the tide of images, substituted a rag doll, a mannequin for Luke, refused to contemplate the visceral terror her son must have suffered. Distancing herself from the details, the jagged facts that were all the more horrible for the steady, workaday way in which they were laid out for the court.
Some of the questions were impossible to answer, and Val glared as she gave her replies, aware that the barrister was succeeding in inducing some doubt into the proceedings. Louise knew that it was all they needed. Enough doubt, enough uncertainty and the defendants would walk away scot free.
The final question for Val was about the weapon. ‘Did you see Nicola Healy with a knife at any point?’
‘No,’ Val answered, as everyone knew she would, and closed her eyes.
Louise understood that establishing who had stabbed Jason was crucial to the murder case; that the only people who had seen the fight, Andrew and Val, had no idea a knife had been used. That left the three attackers as the only witnesses. One of them had stabbed Jason. Conrad Quinn claimed he was innocent of that, and Thomas Garrington and Nicola Healy, too, were pleading not guilty. Someone was lying, one of the three was the killer, and Louise felt a wash of unease at how uncertain the outcome now felt.
Andrew
Val came back into the witness suite and sat beside him, looking shattered. She accepted the offer of a cup of tea from one of the volunteers.
‘How was it?’ Andrew said. ‘You okay?’
‘They were there,’ she said, ‘looking like butter wouldn’t melt. All scrubbed up.’
They had both been advised not to discuss their evidence, which seemed preposterous to him, given that they were man and wife and must have relived the events they had seen together many times in the months since it happened. Even so, Andrew asked her what it was like.
‘His barrister’s a right bitch.’ Val gave a swift shake of her head. ‘You know what she said?’
The volunteer returned with her drink and Andrew warned Val with a look. Val got the message and kept quiet. The woman told Andrew that he’d probably be called after lunch now. When she’d gone, Val said quietly through gritted teeth, ‘She had the audacity to suggest that Jason assaulted one of them. Jason!’
‘What?’
‘Because he hit Thomas Garrington with the lantern.’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘The bloody gall of it.’ Her anger twisted into sadness and she pressed her fist to her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut. Andrew put his arm around her, hoping she’d accept the comfort, lean into him, but she was stiff, unyielding. He could smell her hair, her perfume. He reached his hand to cover hers, stroking her fingers, her wedding ring.
Val straightened up, leant forward for her drink. He moved his arm. ‘She’s there,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Louise Murray. I assume it’s her, at the front, with a teenage daughter.’
‘Of course she’d be here.’ He didn’t know what Val expected him to say. Any further discussion was prevented by the arrival of three elderly women, witnesses in another case.
After the stifling wait over lunch, it was his turn to go into the witness box. Val left to find a seat in the public gallery.
He took in the court with a sweep of his eyes as he entered the box, feeling slightly giddy. The place looked full. In the public gallery he could see his parents, Val with Colin and Izzie, and Louise and Ruby in front of them. Other families too. The glimpse he got of Garrington in the dock sent a spike of adrenalin through him. He and the girl looked ridiculously young. Callow was the word. They were young; she was younger than Jason, he a few months older.
He turned to face ahead – to face the jury – and was sworn in. It was bearable at first, describing Val hammering on the shower door, and chasing them away. Less so as he related Jason’s desperate pleas about Luke: ‘I think they’ve killed him. Get an ambulance!’ Tasted again the raw desperation in Jason’s voice.
Andrew could hear the tremor in his own voice as he spoke about Luke. ‘His face, you couldn’t really make the features out, there was a lot of blood but he was still breathing.’
‘Did you notice the lantern?’
‘No.’
‘And then Jason went inside?’
‘Yes, there was a policeman who wanted to speak to Val. Jason… I could see something was wrong, the way he looked.’ Andrew took a breath. His hands clasped together rigid. If he’d known Jason was wounded at that point? If he’d got the paramedics to stop the bleeding straight away, could he have been saved? The treacherous thought, torturous, slithered through him.
‘Then he collapsed.’ Andrew clenched his jaw, damming the tide of emotion that threatened to engulf him. He cleared his throat, answered the remaining questions about the hospital, the death with short, practical replies, in a dry, flat tone.
Mrs Patel began with an expression of sympathy for his loss and a comment about how difficult this must be. On his guard after what Val had said, Andrew didn’t trust a word of it. She confirmed that he had given identifying information to assist in the drawing up of the e-fits.