III
While the jury was out, Owen sat in a cheerless room below the court with Shirley Castle and his guards drinking bitter coffee until his stomach hurt.
He had experienced anxious waiting before-after a job interview, for example, or those long nights at the window watching for Michelle to come home-but nothing as gut-wrenching as this. His stomach clenched and growled; he bit his nails; he jumped at every sound. He tried to imagine what it must have been like when the death penalty existed, but couldn’t. Shirley Castle tried to make conversation but soon stopped after his terse and jumbled responses.
Hours, it seemed, went by. At last, someone came and said the jury hadn’t reached a verdict yet, and as it was late, Owen was to spend the night back in his cell. He asked Shirley Castle about the jury taking so long, and she said it was a good sign.
That night, he hardly slept at all. Fear gnawed at him; the cell walls closed in. In that nether world between sleep and waking, where memories take on the aspect of dreams, he actually watched himself strangle Deborah Harrison in a foggy graveyard. Or was it Michelle? He had been told so often that he had done it that his subconscious mind had actually been tricked into believing it. He thought he screamed out in the night, but nobody came rushing to see what was wrong. When he woke from the dream, he noticed he had an erection and felt ashamed.
Morning came: slopping out, the stink of piss and shit that seemed to permeate the place, the supervised shave, breakfast. Then Owen sat around in his suit waiting to go back to the court and face the verdict. Still nothing. By mid-morning on Wednesday, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last without going mad. Just before lunch, his cell door opened and the warder said, “Come on, lad. It looks like they’re back.”
In court, Owen gripped the front of the dock until his knuckles turned white. The gallery was full: Michelle leaning forward, thumbnail between her front teeth, as she often did during thrillers or when she was concentrating hard; the Harrisons; two of the detectives, Stott and Banks; the vicar, Daniel Charters and his attractive wife, Rebecca; reporters; morbid members of the public. They were all there.
The jury filed back in. Owen looked at “Minerva.” She didn’t glance in his direction. He didn’t know what to make of that.
After the hush came the legal rigmarole about charges, then the question everyone had been waiting for: “Do you find the defendant Owen Pierce guilty or not guilty as charged?”
The split-second pause between question and answer seemed an eternity for Owen. His ears roared and he felt his head swimming. Then the spokesman, a drab-looking man Owen had guessed to be a banker, spoke the words: “We find the defendant not guilty, Your Honor.”
There was more talk after that, but most of it was lost in the hubbub that raced through the courtroom like an explosive blast. Reporters dashed for phones. Owen swayed and clutched the dock for dear life. He couldn’t seem to stop the ringing in his ears. He heard a woman yell, “It’s a travesty!” Then everything went white and he fainted.
Owen came to in a room below the court, a cool, damp cloth pressed to his brow, with Shirley Castle and Gordon Wharton standing over him. As he recovered, he felt the stirrings of joy, like the first, tentative shoots of a new plant in spring, overtake the gnawing anxiety that had burdened him before. He was free! Surely it would sink in soon. Shirley Castle was talking to someone, but when she stopped and walked towards him, he could feel the muscles in his face form a smile for the first time in what seemed like years.
She smiled back, curled her fist and thumped the air triumphantly. “We did it!”
“You did it,” Owen said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Winning is thanks enough.” She held out her hand. “Congratulations, Owen. And good luck.”
He shook it, the first time he’d touched a woman in months, and he was conscious of the soft warmth under the firm grip. He felt her give a little tug and released her, embarrassed to realize he had held on too long. He wanted to kiss her. And not only because she had won his case. Instead, he turned to Wharton.
“What now?” he asked.
“What? Oh.” The solicitor glanced away from the disappearing figure. “Wonderful woman, isn’t she? I told you if anyone could do it, Shirley Castle could. It was a majority verdict, you know. Ten to two. That’s what took them so long. What now? Well, you’re free, that’s what.”
“But…what do I do? I mean, my stuff and…”
“Tell you what.” Wharton looked at his watch. “I’ll drive you back over to the prison, if you like, and you can pick your stuff up, then I’ll take you back to Eastvale.”
Owen nodded. “Thanks. How do we…I mean, do we just walk out of here?”
Wharton laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s exactly what we do. Hard to get used to, eh? But I think there’ll be a bit of a mob out front, we’d better leave by the back way.”
“A mob?”
Wharton frowned. “Yes. Well, you’ve seen the papers. Those sly innuendos about the ‘evidence they couldn’t present in court.’ That not-guilty verdict won’t have sunk in with them yet, will it? People lose all sense of proportion when they get carried away by chants and whatnot. Come on.”
In a daze, Owen followed Wharton through the corridors to the back exit. The sun was shining on the narrow backstreet; opposite was a refurbished Victorian pub, all black trim and etched, smoked-glass windows; under his feet, the worn paving-stones looked gold in the midday light. Freedom.
Owen breathed the air deeply; a warm, still day. When he thought about it, he realized the trial had lasted almost two months, and it was now May, the most glorious month in the Dales. Back up near Eastvale, the woods, fields and hillsides would be a ablaze with wildflowers: bluebells, wild garlic, celandines, cowslips, violets and primroses; and here and there would be the fields of bright yellow rape-seed.
As they walked towards Wharton’s car, Owen could vaguely hear the crowd outside the front of the courthouse: women’s voices mostly, he thought, chanting, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”
IV
“Fuck it,” said Barry Stott loudly. Then he said it again, banging his fist on the arm of the bench for emphasis. “Fuck it.” A couple standing by the pub door gave him a dirty look. “Sorry,” he said to Banks, blushing right up to the tips of his jug-ears. “I just had to let it out.”
Banks nodded in sympathy. It was the first time he had ever heard Barry Stott swear, and he had to admit he didn’t blame him.
They were sitting on the long bench outside Whitelock’s in the narrow alley called Turk’s Head Yard, drinks and food propped on the upturned barrel that served as a table. Along with his pint of Younger’s bitter, Banks had a Cornish pasty with chips and gravy, and Stott had a Scotch egg with HP Sauce, with a half of shandy to wash it down. They had just left Leeds Crown Court after the Owen Pierce verdict.
It was a beautiful May day; the pub had lured students from their studies and encouraged office workers to linger over their lunch-hours. Not much light penetrated Turk’s Head Yard because of the high walls of the buildings on both sides, but the air was warm and full of the promise of summer. Men sat with their jackets off and shirtsleeves rolled up, while bare-legged women opened an extra button or two on their blouses.
Banks took a sip of beer before tucking into the pasty. He watched Stott pick at the Scotch egg, dip little pieces in the sauce, chew and swallow, too distracted to taste the food. It was obvious that he had no appetite. He had only eaten half when he pushed his plate away. Banks finished his own lunch quickly and lit a cigarette.
“I can’t believe he got off,” Stott said. “I just can’t believe it.”
“I’m just as pissed off as you are, Barry, but it happens,” said Banks. “You get used to it. Don’t take it personally.”
“But I do. It was me who cottoned on to him, me who tracked him down. We build a solid case, and he just walks away.”
