A Game of Proof

anyway. That’s what my life is now!’

‘Good, well, stick to it then. I do know, Emily, I have done a few exams myself. Do the work, and you’ll be OK.’

‘Yes, but you’re different,’ said Emily, shaking her tousled hair and glaring at her mother bitterly. ‘You’re just superwoman, you can do anything, no one else is like you. I don’t even want to be like you, why should I? I’ll fail and be like Simon — he’s happy!’

A cold panic flooded through Sarah. Simon wasn’t happy, she didn’t believe it. The worst pain of her adult life had been when Simon dropped out of school to become a labourer. It had been a rejection of everything she and Bob had wanted for him. At least Emily had always been diligent, conscientious, found schoolwork easy. And now, at the first big hurdle, to talk of dropping out …

‘Don’t be stupid, Emily! Of course you’ll pass. Just stick at it for another few days, and you’ll do well. I promise!’

‘I can’t, mum! I don’t want to anyway!’

Sarah didn’t know how to deal with this. Nor did she have time. If she carried on talking now it was just going to blossom into a big discussion which would lead nowhere and make her late. She got up from the bed. ‘Of course you can, Emily, and of course you want to. Do your German revision this morning, and I’ll give you a ring at lunchtime, OK?’

‘If you must.’ Emily slumped dejectedly back on her bed as if she might go to sleep.

‘I will.’ Sarah smiled brightly, opened the door, and went out.

The conversation irritated her, filling her mind as she rode into town. Probably she should have been more sympathetic, but … it was irritation rather than sympathy that inflamed her mind. Why did the girl make so much fuss! After all, at her age, Sarah told herself, I had a baby, I had been slung out of school, I was a social pariah in a cold smelly house with damp walls and rotten plastic furniture but I didn’t cry, did I? Not until Kevin left, anyway — I just got on with it.

So why can’t Emily do that? All that panic and emotion — it just gets in the way. Bob’s too soft with her; she’s got to stand on her own two feet. I’ll ring at lunchtime like I said but I’ll keep the talk light; she’ll manage best if no one takes the fuss too seriously.

And with that, she closed the file in her mind on Emily, and opened the ones on Gary Harker and Sharon Gilbert.

These weren’t just mental files, but real piles of paper wrapped in red tape which she carried into court a few hours later. The day began well, with a significant victory for Sarah. Before the jury entered, there was a brief conference between the barristers and the judge, at which Julian Lloyd-Davies conceded that there was no longer any point in presenting the evidence of Sharon’s little boy, Wayne. He had intended to do this via a video link, with the little boy in a separate room chaperoned by a trained police psychologist, but in view of Sharon’s admission yesterday that she had probably called Wayne by name during the assault, and certainly talked to him about Gary afterwards, there was no longer any point.

So the first witness was the forensic scientist from the Rape Crisis Centre. She confirmed that Sharon had suffered extensive bruising to the vaginal area, entirely consistent with her story of forced, unlubricated penetration. There were marks on her wrists and throat consistent with having been bound; and bruising to her cheek and nose, entirely consistent with the right-handed blows to the face which she had described. Julian Lloyd-Davies extracted these facts with careful, polite questions, dwelling on every detail of the injuries to emphasise to the jury the brutality that must have caused them.

But the most important point, for Sarah, was what the scientist did not say. When Lloyd-Davies had finished she stood up confidently.

‘Dr Marson, I would like to take you back to your examination of Ms Gilbert’s vagina. You testified to bruising, did you not? But I heard no mention of semen. Did you not find any?’

The scientist, an intense young woman with short-cropped hair and steel framed glasses, shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid we didn’t.’

Sarah affected to look puzzled. ‘But you did look, I take it? I mean, evidence from semen is very important in cases of rape, is it not?’

‘Yes, indeed it is. In this case I took a number of swabs from the vaginal area, but I could detect no semen on any of them.’

‘And what conclusion do you draw from that?’

The young woman shrugged. ‘That the rapist withdrew from the victim’s vagina before an ejaculation took place. Either that or she had cleaned herself with a douche, but there was no evidence of that.’

‘Very well. But from your point of view as a forensic scientist this is a pity, isn’t it, because if there had been any semen you would have been able to send it for DNA analysis, which could have established the accused’s guilt or innocence beyond doubt. So no doubt you searched very diligently to find such a sample?’

‘I did my best, yes.’

‘So to summarise your evidence, Dr Marson, your findings confirm the victim’s story that she was forcibly raped, beaten, and bound. Am I right?’

The young woman nodded earnestly. ‘I would say so. Yes.’

‘But nothing in your findings can help us establish the identity of the man who did these terrible things. Is that also right?’

‘Well, no … that’s true, yes.’

The answer was hardly as clear as Sarah wanted. She tried again.

‘Just to make that crystal clear, Dr Marson, what you are saying is that you know that Sharon Gilbert was raped, but that you have no idea at all whether it was Gary Harker who did it, or my learned colleague Julian Lloyd-Davies here beside me, or his lordship up there on the bench, or any man walking around York today. It could have been any one of those people, couldn’t it, as far as you know? All you can tell us for certain is that it was — a man!’

The young scientist flushed. ‘Well … I’m afraid — yes.’

That had woken them up. Sarah smiled, noticing the raised, bushy eyebrows of the judge, the broad grin of a young newspaper reporter, and the wide, astonished eyes of several jurors.

‘Thank you very much, Dr Marson.’ Pleased with her coup de theatre, she sat down.

Chapter Nine

‘Hello, this is the Newby house. There’s no one home at present, but if you’d like to leave a message after the tone …’

Damn, Sarah thought. The tone beeped. ‘Come on, Emily, pick up the phone if you’re there. I’m just ringing to see how you’re getting on. Emily? Are you there …?’

No answer. She snapped the phone shut, instantly regretting the action. It was hardly an ideal place to show her irritation. She was outside the court on the main steps, where a policeman, a car thief and his solicitor were deeply enjoying the sight of the bewigged lady having a tantrum with her mobile. But Emily had left no message on it this morning. She had already tried her mobile with a similar result.

Where was the girl? All that fuss about staying at home to work and now no answer.

She dialled Bob’s number and persuaded the officious school secretary to trek to the school dining hall to fetch him. After a three minute wait she heard his voice, breathless from running. ‘Sarah? Yes — what now?’

‘Have you heard from Emily this morning?’

‘No. Why should I?’

‘I just rang and the answerphone’s on.’

‘So leave a message. She’s probably gone out to buy a Mars bar — refresh the brain cells.’

‘She was supposed to be revising, Bob, you can’t do that in a sweet shop. What was she like when you left