serious enquiries again.
And so two years had passed. Life went on, but he was not the same detective he had been before. He cut corners and turned down overtime to be at home with his children. He made mistakes, he forgot things. And worst of all he snapped at people for no reason, as he done with young Harry Easby just now. He had to get a grip on this.
If only he could stop thinking about Mary, seeing her face suddenly when he was looking at something else, remembering the feel of her beside him in bed, the small of her back lithe under the palm of his hand when they danced …
‘Here we are, sir,’ said Harry Easby, turning onto a farm track. ‘Bank House Farm.’
Sarah didn’t leave her office for another three hours, and when she did, very little about tomorrow’s cross- examination was left to chance. She had prepared her questions and tried to anticipate how Sharon Gilbert might respond. Much of this was logic, based on the written evidence in the prosecution file and Gary’s story; but the rest was intuition, based on her impression of Sharon’s character this afternoon.
She had an advantage here, for she had lived among women like Sharon. She was used to their brash, slightly resentful manner. She understood how they felt patronised by teachers and doctors, cheated by boyfriends and husbands, short-changed by employers and the DSS. She felt sure that Sharon’s assertiveness in court today masked a fear that somehow the police and lawyers were going to betray her again, as the authorities had always done in the past.
A fear that Sarah was determined to bring true.
The softer part of Sarah felt sorry for Sharon. Not just because of the rape — of course she deserved sympathy for that — but because of what she was. Sarah could so easily have ended up like that herself. But she had chosen not to. And for that very reason, a much stronger part of Sarah despised Sharon. The part of Sarah that had made that choice didn’t believe in luck or genes or social excuses. She believed if you worked, you could succeed. As she had done.
One by one the other barristers, the clerk and the secretaries called out their goodbyes and left the office. By seven thirty, Sarah looked up and saw that only Savendra had his light on across the corridor. His door was open; she could see him in his shirtsleeves and red braces, making detailed notes at his desk. She yawned, and stretched her arms over her head with her fingers linked, easing the joints in her stiff neck and spine. Savendra looked up and smiled.
‘Finished already?’
‘Yup.’ She crossed the corridor, leaning on his door frame curiously. ‘What’s your brief?’
‘Mass poisoning.’
‘What, you? Advocate for the Borgias?’
‘Hardly. My client’s a farmer who let his slurry pit overflow into a village borehole. Diarrhoea and vomiting all round.’
‘Charming. Still, you know what they say, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Where there’s muck there’s brass. A case like that should make you stinking rich.’ She ducked as he flung a paper clip at her. ‘I’m off home.’
She crossed the corridor to her own room, leaving her door slightly ajar, just to tease Savvy who knew what happened next. She kicked off her court shoes and took off her jacket, hanging it neatly on a hanger behind the door. Then she stepped out of her skirt. Savendra whistled softly. Sarah strolled across her room, took a black leather jacket from a hook on the wall, pirouetted as she put it on, and blew him a kiss. Then she sat on the edge of her desk and pulled on some black leather trousers, smiling as they creaked around her. Finally she pulled on some heavy black boots, locked her door, and waved to Savvy as she went downstairs.
Her office was on the fourth floor of an old Victorian building in Tower Street, a stone’s throw from the courts. The barristers had chambers on the top floors; the solicitors, where Lucy worked, were downstairs. The building had lots of disadvantages — the narrow stairs, the small rooms, the fire risk — but one good part of it from Sarah’s point of view was the servant’s passage leading to a small back yard, where the Victorians had once had a loo and a coal shed. Now the lawyers had transformed it. There was an array of potted plants, some expensive wrought iron garden furniture; and in the coal shed were two gleaming motorcycles.
One — the larger — belonged to Savendra; the other, a jet black Kawasaki 500, was Sarah’s. She regarded it with a mixture of amusement and excessive, secret pride. She had bought it first as a solution to the problems of traffic and parking, but it meant far more to her than that now.
It was a joy she only shared with Savendra, when they compared, with sparkling eyes, the beauty of the machines and their accessories. She had grown to love everything about the Kawasaki — the shining black paintwork and gleaming chrome; the smooth responsive purr of the engine and the bike’s sensitivity to the slightest shift of her weight in the saddle; the sensuous creak of leather; the glorious freedom of weaving through traffic and accelerating to speeds that, though perfectly legal, seemed to her risky in the extreme. She loved the style of it too — black helmet, black leather clothes, black bike — and the way it marked her out, made her at once anonymous and different, her own person, not like the rest.
Not like a wife or a mother. Like a free spirit, like no one at all.
It was something, perhaps, to do with her desire to become a barrister in the first place. A free spirit who was faster than others, who played to win. A similar instinct, no doubt, had led Julian Lloyd-Davies QC to drive a black Jaguar with LAW 2 on the numberplate. Sarah couldn’t afford that — in fact her bike was cheaper than a small car — but it marked her out as someone to be taken notice of, someone not to mess with. And that was how she wanted to be. Not a victim ever again, but a person who made things happen.
Whose life belonged to herself.
The car bounced along the track towards a solid, brick built farmhouse. Cows watched them from a field on their right, and a black and white collie streaked towards them. As the two policemen got out, the collie danced around them, barking hysterically. Terry put out his hand to it, to no effect. It danced away and growled ferociously at Harry Easby.
‘Come on boy. Where’s your missus?’
‘I’m over here!’ They looked up and saw a sturdy woman in gumboots and a torn, muddy coat coming towards them. She had iron grey hair and a brown, crinkled face.
Terry showed his badge. ‘Mrs Steersby? I’m Detective Inspector Bateson and this is DC Easby.’
‘’bout time too.’ The woman held out her hand and Terry shook it. Her grip was strong, the hand redolent of cow dung. Seeing that they were not enemies the dog leapt up too, planting two muddy paws on the trousers of his suit.
‘Get down, Flash, you daft bugger! Away now!’ The woman shoved the dog aside and glanced scornfully at Terry’s efforts to brush himself clean. ‘It’s only mud, it’ll dry. D’you want to see Helen, then?’
‘If she’s home from school, yes.’ Terry took an incident report out of his pocket. ‘Your daughter was frightened by a man two nights ago, Mrs Steersby. Is that right?’
‘’course it’s right.’ The woman turned her back, cupped her hands round her mouth, and in a voice loud enough to be heard in Lancashire yelled: ‘
Terry saw a girl riding a pony on the far side of a field. She popped the pony over a line of jumps and cantered towards them, pulling up in a flurry of mud.
‘What d’you want, mum?’
‘It’s the police to see you!’
‘Again?’ The girl looked bemused. ‘But they came yesterday.’
‘These are different. Inspector Bateson — top brass Sherlock Holmes feller — so you’d best answer his questions. That pony’s done enough for today, anyhow.’
‘Okay. But I’ve got to cool him down first.’
‘Right. Ten minutes then. I’ll put kettle on.’
Terry watched as the girl walked the pony quietly around the field, and pondered what he knew of her story so far. Someone had tried to attack her while she was riding alone in the woods. A man in a black tracksuit and woolly hat, similar to his image of the man who had murdered Maria Clayton, and assaulted Karen Whitaker. That was why he was here now.
It disturbed him. It couldn’t be Gary Harker this time, unless Group 4 had taken to letting their rapists out for
