Now it was about the distressing images the jury would have to see. Simon Brockbank’s voice dropped and he was looking at the twelve men and women compassionately. Tabitha felt rage bubble up in her. She rapped once more on the Plexiglas, as hard as she could. The performance came to a halt. Everyone stared at her.
“When he does that, I can’t hear properly,” she said in a loud, harsh voice. “How am I meant to defend myself if I can’t hear? I shouldn’t be sitting here. I should be down there.” A phrase belatedly swam into her mind. “My Ladyship,” she added, but that was wrong. “My Lady, I mean.”
“You are the accused and you sit in the dock,” said Judge Munday. “That is the rule of the court.”
“You’re the judge. You’re in charge. You’re like the monarch or the dictator or something and you can do what you want. So you can let me sit down there.”
“I am indeed the judge. And you will remain in the dock.”
“It’s not right. I need to hear what he’s saying.”
“Miss Hardy.”
Tabitha banged against the reinforced Plexiglas with her fist, shaking it. “Ms.”
“If you continue like this you’ll be removed.”
There was a high crack of laughter and she realized with a shock that it came from her. “Removed? How? What happens then?”
“At the very least, you will be handcuffed.”
“You can’t do that.”
“As you rightly pointed out, I am in charge of this court. You need to behave in an appropriate manner. Do you understand?”
There was a pause. Tabitha’s hands were shaking. “Yes,” she said at last. She swallowed. “My Lady.”
“Good.”
The prosecution statement continued. The fallen tree that cut off the village, meaning the police knew exactly who was there during the crucial hours. The CCTV evidence that fixed the time of murder after ten-thirty in the morning and before three-thirty that afternoon. Stuart Rees’s car at Tabitha’s house. His body in the shed. The way she had tried to prevent Andy going out there. The blood on her. Her strange behavior at the police station . . .
Tabitha made herself write down each point in turn, because she knew that what she was hearing were the essential bones of the prosecution’s case against her. The motive, the opportunity, the evidence. These were the things she needed to unpick. Her thoughts were jumbled, but her writing was surprisingly clear.
At last it was over. The smooth, over-enunciated voice stopped. Simon Brockbank sat down. Elinor Ackroyd whispered something in his ear and he nodded. Judge Munday looked at her watch even though there was a digital clock on the desk.
“We only have forty minutes remaining. Would you like to stop now, Ms. Hardy, and resume with your defense statement tomorrow morning?”
“No,” said Tabitha. The judge looked taken aback. “It won’t take long. Nothing like forty minutes. Five maybe. I’d like to get it over with, but I need my papers.”
She beckoned at Michaela, who rose, lifting the folders. She carried them toward the dock.
“She’s my McKenzie friend,” Tabitha said to the jury. She tried to smile at them but her lips were cracked.
She took hold of the folders. One dropped onto the floor and Michaela squatted to gather the scattered papers. There was a titter from the public gallery and Judge Munday frowned upward.
“Right,” said Tabitha once everything was in front of her. “Right.”
She cleared her throat. She opened the top folder then closed it again, because there was too much in there. She opened her notebook and looked down at it. She turned toward the jury, her eyes moving from face to face. There was a moment of complete silence.
“Well,” she said. Her voice was even gruffer than usual. She wished she was taller, more solid, less shabby. “If the prosecution really thinks this is such a slam dunk for them, how come they”—she pointed across at Simon Brockbank and Elinor Ackroyd—“yesterday offered to reduce the sentence to manslaughter? They can’t have much confidence in—”
“Stop!” The judge’s voice was a shout and her face was white with anger. “What on earth do you think you are doing?”
She turned toward the jury.
“I am very sorry that your time has been wasted in this way. You are discharged.”
“What have I done?” asked Tabitha.
The judge ignored her, addressing herself instead to the journalists. “All members of the press are under strict instructions not to report what the accused said.”
“But I—”
The judge pointed at her. “Be quiet,” she said. “You have done quite enough. You are in serious trouble.”
“What, more trouble than being on trial for murder? More than that?”
“I take it you understand that the trial will have to start again with a new jury.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Oh.”
“All rise,” said the court associate.
Judge Munday swept out of the court. The police officer took Tabitha by her arm and led her from the dock. As she left, she heard someone laugh.
Fifty-Four
It was very strange to be in a different prison. There were no faces she recognized, no one else in her cell, which was hot and whose little window didn’t show the sky but a gray-brown wall. This was a new prison but cheaply constructed and already starting to crack and peel. She almost missed Crow Grange.
She sat on her bed and tried to breathe steadily. Her head banged and her heart banged and her legs felt weak. She was exhausted. The day was like a dream or like a play that she had watched and also starred in: a small, scruffy figure in the dock, and all those grand, robed, wigged figures looking at her, talking about her, angry or smirking at the idiot she had made of herself.
She forced herself to eat the cellophane-wrapped cheese sandwich, which tasted
