A Game of Proof

assaulted, no semen or body hairs were found on Maria Clayton’s body, but Terry’s team had been triumphant when they had found a male hair stuck to the tape used to bind Karen Whitaker’s hands. But their triumph turned to ashes when DNA analysis of the hair turned out not to match Gary, effectively acquitting him of the Whitaker assault. Despite the similarities between the cases, the evidence was simply not there to prosecute Gary for anything except the rape of Sharon Gilbert.

‘I hope you haven’t been harassing my client, Terry,’ Sarah said, half seriously.

‘I never touched him, Sarah,’ Terry protested, dryly. ‘Personally, I think someone should cut off the man’s dick and float it away on a weather balloon, though I’ll deny it if you ask me in court. But tell me — how can you ladies bring yourselves to defend a bastard like that? He’s a menace to every woman in Yorkshire. You do realise that, don’t you? Next time it could be someone like you. He’s killed already, you know.’

‘If you’re still trying to link him to the Clayton murder, Terry, he’s not charged with that here today,’ Sarah said firmly. ‘As you well know.’

‘Well he damn well should be!’ Terry snapped. ‘So the jury could see the similarities. Same cut in the neck, same method of bondage …’

‘Different women, different places, Terry. And no evidence that my client was even there.’

‘A client with a record three pages long, including four assaults on women …’

‘None particularly serious …’

‘Oh, sure? Until it’s your face on the end of his fist!’ Terry stopped, aware that he was losing his temper. Again. It was happening too often these days. This was not the impression he wanted to convey, of some emotional, out-of-control bully. Not to this woman of all people. But he did care, strongly, about convicting Gary Harker. He took a deep breath and began again.

‘Look, I hear you tried to get the case thrown out this morning. How can you, as a woman, square a trick like that with the search for justice? Tell me that.’

Sarah touched his arm softly. ‘I’m not a woman, Terry, I’m a barrister. My job’s to play the game in defence of my client. The game of proof. And when I play, I play to win.’

Terry shivered. Perhaps it was her hand, the delicate fingers gently touching his arm; but it was also the cynical, lightly spoken words, the opposite of all he believed the law should be about, that frightened him. The three attacks on women had been his main investigation over the past six months, and the single positive result so far was Gary’s appearance in court today.

Now Sarah Newby, of all people, was defending him.

He scowled. ‘Well, I wish you the worst of luck. The sooner the vile pillock’s banged up for life the better. You can tell him that from me.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Sarah smiled, and took her hand from his arm. ‘I might hurt his feelings. And that would never do, would it?’

Terry Bateson watched her go. It annoyed him intensely to see Sarah defending this case. He hated defence lawyers; he regarded them as a sort of parasite growing fat on the wounds of society. They worked in the courts of law but the one thing that seemed to concern them least was justice. If they could get a man released on a technicality they would, with no concern for the hard, sometimes dangerous detective work that had led to the arrest in the first place, or for the effect on the public of a smirking villain released to rape, rob or burgle once again. How would those two women feel, he wondered, if Harker broke into their homes and did to them what he had done to Sharon Gilbert?

Serve them bloody well right. But even as he thought it the idea made him ill. Not Sarah Newby, please God not her.

He had first met her when she had prosecuted two of his cases a year ago. The case against the first man had been thin, and the defendant and his expensive London barrister had come into court laughing, convinced he would get off. Terry’s heart had sunk, certain he was about to see two months of police work trashed. His first sight of the pretty, dark-haired prosecution barrister had discouraged him further. In her late thirties, and only recently qualified, he’d heard. Nice legs, but probably no brain. But in fact it was the expensive London brief — only an ageing junior rather than a silk, for all his Savile Row suit and Jermyn street shirt — who had failed to do his homework, not Sarah. The trial had ended with the defendant sweating in the witness box, snared like a fat fly in the web of his own lies. At one point a juror had actually laughed aloud. And her performance in the next case had been even better. Terry had become a fan. And, he thought, a friend.

But now she was on the other side, defending Gary Harker of all people. Her cynical words echoed in his mind. ‘My job’s to play the game in defence of my client. The game of proof. And when I play, I play to win.’

He respected her too well to think it was bluff — she really thought she could get the bastard off. All those virtues which had so admired in her as a prosecutor were to be deployed in defence of a violent rapist. She didn’t care that Gary was probably the biggest danger to local women for many years. It was her own performance she was interested in. She was just like all the other lawyers after all; a hired advocate, a hooker who would prostitute the truth for a fee slipped into the pocket in the back of her gown.

Let her cope with Gary Harker then. She chose him.

Gary was sitting on the blue plastic mattress in his cell. It was the same colour as the graffiti-scarred walls, and matched the tattoos of the grim reaper on his right bicep and the snake that writhed around his solid neck and appeared about to savage his left ear. He scowled at his lawyers morosely as they came in.

‘Well, what did I tell you? Lying bitch, ain’t she?’

Sarah folded her arms in her gown and leaned against the door. Lucy stood by her side. The only other choice was to sit on the bed beside Gary, and neither woman fancied that.

‘I tried to persuade the judge to dismiss the jury because she referred to your record, but I’m afraid he didn’t agree.’

‘No, well, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Gary looked unsurprised by the news. ‘What did you think of Sharon?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘She made a good impression. Any woman would, with a story like that.’

‘Aye. Well, she’s a lying bitch who made the whole fucking thing up!’

Silence. Neither woman could think of any response. At last, in a tone of weary disgust, Lucy said: ‘It’s no part of our case to say she wasn’t raped, Gary. It’s a fact that she was.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe. But it weren’t me. If she’s telling the truth then there’s some shite out there who needs his throat ripped out! And I’ll do just that if I ever find him, the little pisshead!’

‘Yes.’ Sarah contemplated her client with distaste, considering what would happen if she put him on the stand. What would impress the jury most — the sincerity of feeling with which he denied the charge, or the foul language he would use to do it? She imagined Julian Lloyd-Davies needling him with his deliberately languid, pointed questions. The man might run amok, bursting out of the witness box like a tethered bear snapping its chain, and try to kill them all.

He could, too, with those muscles. That would liven the court up.

She wasn’t obliged, of course, to put him on the stand at all. She could simply tell the court that he denied the charges and rely on her ability to cast doubt on the prosecution case. But she was unlikely to win like that, since the law now specifically allowed the judge to comment adversely to the jury about a witness’s refusal to give evidence on his own behalf.

But if he did give evidence, Lloyd-Davies would shred him into small slices, like salami.

‘Look, Gary,’ she began. ‘I need to know I’ve got everything right. Tell me again exactly what happened at the hotel, first of all.’

For a while she checked details. She doubted Gary’s innocence, but it was possible, after all. He certainly denied all guilt. It was the jury’s job to decide whether they believed him or not.

Anyway, tomorrow she had Sharon to deal with.

On the way out of the court Sarah nodded at a couple of the barristers from Court Two. They would know she was defending a difficult rape case on her own, which was a step up. If she did well, her status would rise. And she didn’t intend to lose; not without a fight, anyway. From her point of view, the prejudice and weight of evidence against Gary were a bonus. If she lost, few people would blame her, but if she won, more serious cases would follow.

She walked out into the afternoon sunshine. The eighteenth century architect had not designed the elegant court building so that people could look out of it, so it was easy to forget, in the windowless dome of the courtroom