“You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think some of the jury are beginning to like you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That one in the hoodie who spoke to you, he was laughing. And the woman in the front row with the beads.”
“Blinky.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s what I call her. She blinks a lot.”
“Don’t say that in court. Anyway, when the trial started all of them looked grim, but now that’s changed. At least some of them are on your side.”
“Maybe.”
Sixty-Nine
Sam McBride was smaller and slighter than Tabitha remembered. He looked vulnerable in the witness box in a cheap blue suit that was baggy on him, with an orange tie that he had knotted too tightly. His voice wavered when he took his oath and when he took a mouthful of water Tabitha saw that his hands were trembling slightly. But once he got going, he answered steadily enough, though Tabitha felt so weary of everything that she barely had the energy to ask him anything.
He explained to the jury that he was a bus driver. He had only lived in the area for seven months—and at the time of the murder, had been there for five weeks. Before that, he’d been in the army. He’d come to Devon to get away from things. He was a stranger to the area and had been working for the bus company for three and a half weeks. He’d driven lorries in the army so it wasn’t that different. He described his average day: collecting kids up on his route, dropping them at school, picking up the old folk and taking them to their community centers for lunch, returning to the school for the home run, before taking the bus back to the depot.
He’d been in Okeham on December 21. It was a normal kind of day—except for the ice, he added, plus the kids were pretty hyped up because it was their last day of term. He’d got there at about a quarter past eight, his usual time. He’d gone into the village shop to buy cigarettes.
“I keep trying to give them up,” he said, shrugging his thin shoulders.
“Do you remember seeing me?”
“You were wearing pajamas.”
“Did I talk to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did I talk to anyone?”
He shrugged. “I guess you maybe said something to the woman, you know, the woman behind the counter.”
“Do you have any memory of me saying anything about Stuart Rees?”
“No.”
“What about Rob Coombe? Did he say anything about Stuart Rees?”
“I don’t know.”
Tabitha had been hoping for a different answer. She pressed on. “When you say don’t know, do you mean he might have done?”
Sam McBride shook his head. “I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he said something.”
“Can I put it the other way round? You didn’t hear me bad-mouthing him?”
“I didn’t.” He paused for a moment. “I think I would have remembered if you had. You were inches from me.”
It was more than he’d said before and Tabitha felt pathetically grateful. She asked for the CCTV to be played. First they watched the images filmed by the camera outside. The digits at the bottom showed it was 08:10. Two young girls walked into the frame in their bulky coats. Three more kids appeared. A car drew up and Rob Coombe and his daughter got out. A figure entered the frame in a heavy jacket and pajama trousers. Herself at 08:11:44. She knew all this almost by heart. She watched herself disappear into the shop. The bus pulled up; there was the face of the boy staring out through the cracked glass of the central window. Sam McBride appeared and also went toward the shop and out of the frame.
She asked for the interior clip to be played. There was the back of Terry’s head and Rob Coombe. Then came Tabitha. The bus driver came in and joined the little queue. Rob was gesturing angrily, briefly turning so that they could all see Tabitha’s face, smudged with tiredness. Rob Coombe left with a newspaper and cigarettes. She herself bought milk and exited. Sam McBride also bought cigarettes and some kind of chocolate bar, then he too left.
“There,” said Tabitha to the jury. “Does that look like I’m yelling about Stuart Rees? Doesn’t it look more like I’m saying nothing and that Rob Coombe is doing the shouting?”
She thanked the skinny figure in the witness box. She didn’t know why she suddenly felt so frail and weepy: perhaps it was that Sam McBride made her feel sad, because in his solitariness he reminded her of herself; perhaps it was simply the sight of herself on that icy December morning, heavy with exhaustion and defeat, blundering toward disaster.
Seventy
When Luke was in the witness box, Tabitha never once looked up at the public gallery, but she could sense Laura’s eyes on her and she saw the scene as if from above: her in the increasingly baggy and creased suit she had worn for weeks now, like a uniform, with wild hair that needed washing and cutting; Luke facing her, tall and angular, with his pale face and dark hair tied in a topknot. Of all the people who had given evidence, he was the only one who had made no effort to dress up for the occasion. He was dressed in old jeans and the same red tee shirt he’d worn when they first met in prison.
“Can you tell me about your relationship with your father?” she asked.
Judge Munday was practically quivering with vigilance. Tabitha knew she had to tread carefully.
“It wasn’t good,” said Luke matter-of-factly. He seemed unnaturally calm, much more so than the times he had come to see her at Crow Grange. “I wasn’t the son he wanted.”
“What kind of son was that?”
“Obedient. Traditional. One of the lads.”
“And you weren’t?”
“Look at me. I was a crybaby. That’s what he called me.” He lifted his face toward Laura. “I was bullied at school and I was bullied at home.”
He still spoke without anxiety, almost as
