“You dropped out of school early, didn’t you? Why?” Tabitha asked.
“I had to get away from him. I felt badly about leaving Mum. It wasn’t her fault. She tried to stop him sometimes and then she paid for it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He didn’t just bully me. He bullied her too. I don’t think he hit her but he controlled her. She was scared of him.”
Tabitha glanced across at Simon Brockbank, wondering why he didn’t intervene. He was sitting back in his chair with his eyes half closed.
“Why did you come back?” she asked.
“I wanted to persuade Mum to leave him. I never got why she stuck it out. I mean, I know they were comfortably off and had a nice house and all the stuff that goes with it but she had a terrible time of it. I never saw her happy.” Again, he glanced up and away. “She didn’t laugh or even smile much. She just got through life, like a robot. It made me mad. I wanted her to leave and start again.”
At last Simon Brockbank rose to his feet.
“I fail to see what relevance there is in smearing the good name of a murder victim.”
“Really?” Tabitha put her hands on the table the way she’d seen him do and leaned toward him. “Really? One reason I’m on trial here is because I had a motive. But don’t you see, loads of people had a motive. I’m just showing the jury that Stuart damaged people. He made an entire village toxic. He ruined lives. Not just mine. Even his own son’s.”
She waved her hand toward Luke, who looked back at her with a small, ironic smile. And, Oh Christ, she thought, noticing his large pupils, he’s stoned. At eleven in the morning.
“Did your mother know why you were coming back?” she asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Did your father?”
“No.” He frowned. “Maybe. You know, he had a way of finding things out. Secrets and weaknesses and things that made you ashamed. He had a nose for them.”
Tabitha stared at him hard. “You’re saying that he collected secrets?”
He pushed his hands deep into his pockets and once more glanced toward Laura. Tabitha saw an expression she couldn’t read flicker across his face. “He liked controlling people. He liked them knowing he had something on them, seeing them squirm.”
“So do you think—?” she began, but he cut her off.
“Loads of people would have wanted him dead, or at least not be sad that he was,” he said. “You’re just in a long line of them.”
Tabitha took a sip of water.
“Did you?”
“Want him dead?” He looked suddenly young and vulnerable. “I’m glad I’ll never have to see him again.”
Seventy-One
Lev Wojcik looked like he was wearing a suit that belonged to someone else. It wasn’t too small nor too big but somehow both at the same time. The trousers stretched over his thighs as he walked to the witness box, while the sleeves reached to his palms. Tabitha looked at him for a moment before speaking. He was probably the last person who had seen Stuart alive—apart from the killer. The police had interviewed him, but the prosecution hadn’t called him. Was that simply because they didn’t think he had anything relevant to say?
She stood up.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how to pronounce your name.”
“Voy-chick,” he said with a slow weariness. Tabitha thought of how often he must have to go through this, pronouncing his name, spelling it out.
“Mr. Wojcik,” she said carefully, “you were interviewed by the police, right?”
“Yes.”
“What did they want to know?”
“What time I deliver package.”
“And what time was that?”
“He sign on my manifest so I have exact time.”
“Manifest?”
“Mobile thing. For signature.”
He took a piece of paper from his pocket and looked at it. “Nine hours and forty-six minutes.”
“Is that all the police asked you?”
“They just want the time.”
Tabitha paused. She really only had one question to ask.
“How did he seem?”
Wojcik gave a little shrug. “Nothing big.”
“And then you were stuck in the village. That must have been a pain.”
“Yes. Big pain.”
“When did you realize that the tree had blocked your exit?”
“When?”
“Yes.”
“When I go to shop and they say.”
“But aren’t I right to think that you went there on your way to Stuart Rees’s house, and then on your way back?”
“That is right.”
“So were you told about the tree before you went to the house or after?”
She tried to speak calmly, but she could feel beads of sweat on her forehead.
“The woman say before. When I buy cigarettes. It must have fallen just behind me.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Tabitha. Her legs felt funny. “You knew before you got to Stuart Rees’s house that you were trapped in the village?”
“Is right.”
“And, um.” She licked her parched lips. “Did you say anything about the tree to Mr. Rees?”
“Oh yes. When he is signing, I tell him I’m stuck in the village because of tree and they say it will be hours, and he tells me about the café.”
“So he knew.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Stuart knew that the tree had blocked the village.”
“I tell him so.”
“He knew,” repeated Tabitha.
Lev Wojcik looked at her in puzzlement. “I tell him,” he repeated slowly, as if to a child.
“And the police didn’t ask you about this?”
“No. Small thing.”
Tabitha hesitated. She looked round the court and didn’t understand why everyone wasn’t whispering to each other or staring in astonishment. She couldn’t think of what else to say. When she spoke it was almost reluctantly.
“All right,” she said. “Thank you.”
She leaned over to Michaela.
“There’s something I should have said,” she whispered. “There’s something—” And then it came to her. She didn’t have to ask. She just needed to remember. She wrote frantically on the pad in front of her.
Seventy-Two
It was the weekend. She had two whole days to think, to plan for the last days of the trial, to ready herself.
Tabitha walked up and down the prison yard. It was smaller than the one at Crow Grange and
