“I wouldn’t say friends.”
“She told me that she talked to you about things. Is that true?”
“We talked a few times.”
“What about?”
“I’m a doctor, I can’t talk about that.”
Tabitha thought for a moment. She felt she was just randomly throwing things at a wall, hoping something would stick.
“So Stuart Rees left and Laura Rees stayed?”
There was a long pause.
“No. Laura Rees left as well.”
“Why?”
“She said that her husband . . .” Mallon gave a helpless shrug.
“Insisted?”
“Something like that.”
Tabitha thought for a moment. “So obviously I won’t ask about when you were her doctor. I’ll ask about when you weren’t her doctor. Was she unhappy with her husband?”
“You can’t just answer a question like that yes or no.”
“Did she love him?”
“I don’t know. She stayed married to him for many years.”
“Was she frightened of him?”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” said Mallon, raising his voice now. “If you’re making some kind of accusation, just make it.”
Tabitha felt so startled that she couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She looked round at the jury and several of them looked visibly startled as well, or at least puzzled. She looked back at Dr. Mallon.
“She wasn’t in the village when it happened,” Mallon continued, almost plaintively.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Tabitha. “Who said she was? I’m asking you questions and you keep not answering them.”
“Please, Ms. Hardy,” said Judge Munday. “You’re walking a fine line here. As the accused person defending herself, you have to be careful in your treatment of witnesses.”
“He’s not a victim,” said Tabitha. “He’s a doctor. He should be able to look after himself.”
“Stop,” said Judge Munday. “This is my court.” She turned to Mallon and spoke to him courteously but firmly. “Nevertheless, I think this is a reasonable question. Was Mrs. Rees frightened of her husband?”
“Frightened? I don’t know. He was controlling.”
Judge Munday turned to Tabitha. “Any further questions?”
Tabitha looked at Dr. Mallon. He seemed a diminished figure. When she had arrived in the village and seen him running through the village, exchanged the odd word, he had seemed her sort of person. She could imagine him as a friend. That seemed a long time ago.
“That official complaint,” she said. “If it had succeeded, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“It wouldn’t have succeeded.”
Tabitha didn’t reply. She just stood there, waiting for him to realize that he would have to answer the question. She looked at him. The silence felt awkward to her, but she knew that it must feel worse for Dr. Mallon.
He gave a cough. “It would—maybe—be some kind of reprimand.”
“At worst?” said Tabitha.
“Well, obviously,” said Dr. Mallon in an angry, sarcastic tone, “the worst that could happen is that you’d be struck off but that couldn’t have happened in this case, so there’s no point in mentioning it.”
“You’re the one who mentioned it,” said Tabitha as she sat down.
The judge looked at Simon Brockbank, who just shook his head. More mud on the wall, Tabitha thought to herself, as Dr. Mallon shuffled out of the witness box and passed her, not meeting her eye.
Fifty-Nine
Rob Coombe was a big man, not fat but muscled, with broad shoulders, a jowly and slightly florid face and full lips. He had always made Tabitha feel a bit queasy. Whenever he stood near to her, she had caught a rich, pungent smell coming off him: of the farmyard and the gym and the bedroom.
He wasn’t wearing a suit, but a pair of dark trousers, a jacket and a tie that she was pleased to see was done up a bit too tightly. He spoke in a loud voice, but she could tell he was anxious. His Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed and he grasped the edge of the witness box in both his large hands.
After the traditional précis of who he was (a farmer, like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him), where he lived (in the large farmhouse above Okeham), and his relationship to Tabitha (none, except they lived in the same village and he had always tried to be friendly when they met, “though that hasn’t always worked,” he added with a smile that was meant, Tabitha imagined, to be ruefully charming), Simon Brockbank asked him about the “altercation.”
“It came out of the blue,” said Rob Coombe. “I met her outside the shop and I think I asked her about swimming or something, how cold it must be in the water. Just being friendly, the way you are if you live in a village like Okeham. We all have to get on with each other, that’s how it works. Except she doesn’t seem to understand that. And she punched me.”
“Fucker,” said Tabitha under her breath and she heard Michaela snort.
“Let me get this straight,” said Brockbank with a look of righteous indignation on his face. “You asked her about swimming and she punched you.”
“Yes.”
“That must have been very shocking.”
“It was deeply shocking.”
“What did you do?”
“Do?” He looked at the jury and the jury looked at him. Wriggly twitched and Blinky blinked and Beardy stroked his beard. “I’m a big man, as you can see. Well able to look after myself. But I would never hit a lady, especially not a lady who was frail, vulnerable.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” muttered Tabitha.
“So you’re saying you did nothing?”
“That’s right.”
“How do you explain what happened?”
“I can’t. I just think she’s always in a bit of a rage, a bit of a wild cat.”
Tabitha jumped up. “Wild cat?”
“I’ve told you how to proceed with your objections, Ms. Hardy,” said Judge Munday.
Rob Coombe’s dark eyes settled on Tabitha. “Always ready to boil over. Everyone says so.”
Judge Munday interrupted.
“Mr. Coombe, it’s important that you only talk about what you yourself witnessed, not what other people have said.”
“But I witnessed the way people talked about her.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
It took some time to settle this and at the end of it Coombe still didn’t seem convinced. Tabitha thought it probably made Coombe look bad, but she wasn’t
