“Ms. Hardy,” said Judge Munday severely, “you’re meant to be asking questions, not making statements.”
“All right,” said Tabitha. “Er . . . like, could the prints be there because Andy and I pulled the sheet off to see if he was still alive?”
“That would be one possibility,” said Belfry. “Not the most likely one in my professional opinion.”
“You’re not here to give your opinion,” said Tabitha.
“Yes, he is,” Judge Munday interrupted. She turned to the jury. “Dr. Belfry is absolutely entitled, in response to cross-examination, to offer his opinion, where relevant. Continue, Ms. Hardy.”
Tabitha was so flustered by this that she couldn’t think of what to say. She looked down at her notes.
“Blood,” she said.
“What?” said Dr. Belfry.
“There was blood on the plastic sheet,” said Tabitha. “And there were footprints going back into the house. And there was blood on the sofa in the living room. Anywhere else?”
“There was blood on your clothes,” said Dr. Belfry.
“And on Andy’s clothes. Because of finding the body.” She realized that wasn’t a question. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Anywhere else?”
“There were traces on the floor.”
“Those were the footprints, right?”
“Probably.”
“Stuart Rees had his throat cut, right?”
“Yes.”
Tabitha turned to the jury. “I’m sorry, this is going to sound really gross. But I can’t think of a non-gross way to ask it.” She turned back to Belfry. “There are arteries in the neck, aren’t there?”
“The carotid arteries, yes.”
“And if they were cut, wouldn’t they make a mess everywhere? I mean all over the floor and on the walls et cetera, et cetera.”
“But they didn’t.”
“But didn’t you think that was weird?”
“I just describe the scene as I find it.”
“It didn’t trouble you?”
“No.”
Tabitha felt she’d hit a brick wall. A question occurred to her and she asked it without considering whether it was a good idea.
“Did you find the murder weapon?”
“It hasn’t yet been found.”
“Does that seem strange?”
“You had plenty of time to dispose of it.”
Tabitha felt like she’d been struck. “Me? Did you say that I had plenty of time?”
“The murderer, I should say.”
“At what point did you decide that I did it?”
“I merely assess the evidence,” Belfry said stiffly.
“Were you thinking that right from the beginning? As you were going through the evidence? Were you fitting everything around that idea?”
“No.”
“Yeah, right,” said Tabitha loudly and sarcastically.
“Careful, Ms. Hardy,” said Judge Munday sternly.
Tabitha looked down at Michaela’s notes and tried to formulate a question.
“Could you tell me about the sheet?” she said.
“What?”
“The sheet the body was found in.”
Belfry thought for a moment, for the first time seeming at a loss.
“It was a heavy-duty piece of plastic sheeting.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There’s a label attached. It says ‘Reynolds Brown.’ And underneath it says . . .” Tabitha picked up the notes and read out: “‘FRC569332.’”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Belfry.
“What do you mean, you’ll take my word for it? That’s supposed to be your job. You’re meant to check things like that.”
There was a pause.
“I’m sorry, is there a question?”
“My friend, Michaela, did what you should have done. She googled it. Reynolds Brown is a furniture company. And the FRC thing is a reference number. So she phoned them up. This sheeting was used to wrap a sofa.”
As Tabitha paused to give Dr. Belfry a chance to react, Simon Brockbank stood up. He spoke warily.
“I’m sorry but the defense can’t just spring undisclosed evidence on a witness.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Tabitha. “This is evidence that this guy wrote his report about. I’m just asking him about it.”
Judge Munday waved her hand wearily.
“Just continue, Ms. Hardy, but please call him Dr. Belfry and not ‘this guy.’ It’s just a matter of courtesy. And please, at some point, ask a question.”
“All right. As I said, Michaela rang up the company, which is what you should have done. She quoted the reference number. It was delivered on the seventeenth of December to Cliff House in Okeham. Do you recognize that address?”
“No.”
“It’s Stuart Rees’s home address. Does that seem interesting to you?”
Belfry coughed and when he answered it was in such a low voice that the judge had to ask him to speak up.
“I can’t really comment on that.”
“But you didn’t find that out? Yes or no?”
“No, but I don’t really—”
“What else didn’t you check up on?”
“That’s an insulting question.”
“You know what I think?” said Tabitha.
There was a pause.
“That’s not really a fair question,” said Judge Munday.
“Sorry, it was like a preparation for a question. What I think is that you just assumed it was me and that you didn’t look at anything that went against it. Is that fair?”
“No. It isn’t fair.”
“That’s all I’ve got to say,” said Tabitha, sitting down with the feeling that there must have been more that she should have pressed harder.
Elinor Ackroyd started to get up but Brockbank put his hand on her shoulder, preventing her. He stood up instead and stepped forward.
“Just one more question,” he said. “Tabitha Hardy has been trying to confuse things and throw dust into the faces of the jury. So can I just make something clear in case the jury have forgotten it? Did your investigation find evidence of anyone else at the crime scene?”
“No.”
As Brockbank sat down, Tabitha leaped up.
“Since we’re all asking just one more question, I’ll ask one: was it even a crime scene?”
Dr. Belfry looked utterly confused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Exactly,” said Tabitha and sat down.
It was left to Judge Munday to tell him that he could go. As he passed Tabitha, he gave her a look of pure loathing. She forced herself to smile back at him.
Sixty-Six
“No no no no. Please no. Oh Christ. Don’t let this be happening.”
The voice filled the courtroom, slurred and guttural, and it went on and on, words and nasty sounds grinding out into the silence. It sounded like the voice of a hellishly drunken man, florid and abandoned, shouting at the voices in his head. But it wasn’t a man.
Tabitha propped her head on one hand and closed her eyes
