Lev Wojcik’s evidence yesterday in court had given her a glimmer of hope that was almost terror. There was a chance, maybe only a small chance, and it almost hurt. The time of being free seemed far off, and all that seemed real was her sweaty cell and her journey to the court and back in the van that smelled of other people’s bodies, and the days, the weeks, spent in that high-ceilinged space where people with well-bred faces under bristly wigs used pompous words, while her own heart galloped with fear.
But whatever happened, she still wouldn’t know who had killed Stuart Rees. She wouldn’t know that it wasn’t her. The case against her might be less robust than it had seemed when she first stared at the bundle of evidence laid out against her, but the question remained, a fist round her heart: who else could it have been? She didn’t understand why the prosecution didn’t seem to realize what she herself so inescapably knew—that only she had been on the right side of the CCTV camera for long enough to kill Stuart. There was nobody else, just her.
Up and down, up and down, while she tried to find a way out. The film ran through her head, grainy black-and-white images of figures moving jerkily across the frame; of the branches of the tree swaying slightly; of a child staring down through the cracked window of the bus; of the vicar and her dog; of Rob Coombe gesticulating wildly; of Owen Mallon running past; of Stuart’s car passing and repassing; of herself dragging her unwilling body along the road; of herself, dazed with tiredness and defeat, looking unknowingly into the eye of the camera; of sleet and snow and darkness drawing in. Fast forward and rewind, and time passing and time frozen on sky and on tree and faces.
She stopped abruptly.
“What you staring at?” said a woman, shouldering her. “What’s so interesting?”
“There isn’t a coastal path,” she said dreamily.
“What? Are you on something?”
“Wait,” said Tabitha. “Wait a moment.”
She held on to a face. She closed her eyes so she might see it more clearly. A bell was shrilling somewhere.
“Time’s up,” said a voice.
“Wait.”
It took several hours for the discs to arrive and for the TV screen and the DVD player to be set up in the small room near the prison officers’ cloakroom that was full of metal lockers. But no one had objected to her request: it was common knowledge that Tabitha was conducting her own defense and not being utterly demolished in the process, and she was suddenly a figure of something that was almost respect. Someone even brought her a mug of coffee and a packet of digestive biscuits.
She began from the beginning, just as she had done all those weeks ago, when Mary Guy had handed her the stapled A4 envelope of discs: two little stacks, held together with rubber bands. Tabitha inserted the first one and pressed play. Once again, she was in Okeham on a winter’s day. The birch tree beside the bus shelter moving slightly in the breeze, two young girls in their winter coats walking into the frame, a car pulling up and Rob Coombe and his daughter arriving. Then it was her turn, half hidden in her jacket and scarf, head down. Then came the school bus, the boy staring out through the cracked window, his face looking like it was drawn on.
Like that first time, she slid in the interior disc and watched yet again the scene inside the shop: Rob, herself, then Sam. They all arrived, they left, the snow fell in flurries and then turned to sleet.
A bird. A cat. Laura’s car. Lev’s van. Owen Mallon sprinting past. The mothers and their toddlers, fingers pointing to the sky at the unseen helicopter. Andy, the return of Dr. Mallon, Mel and Sukie, Shona.
Tabitha’s eyes felt tired from staring. She didn’t write anything down, but she leaned forward as if as long as she concentrated hard enough, then she would see.
Stuart’s car passing. Returning.
The deliveryman and Mel once more. Shona and then Rob.
Luke bowed under his large rucksack. Tabitha watched as he trudged past, kicking up slush.
Mel once more—as if her job consisted of walking round the village looking cheerful and ready to help.
Laura’s car arriving. Lev departing in his van.
And the bus returning, sliding past the camera. A different child’s face clear at the window. Children running into the street, in Christmas spirits.
Rob collecting his daughter.
Andy walking past on his way to Tabitha’s house. Then the police car, blue lights in the darkness. Then the ambulance. Then another police car.
And then people gathering at the shop like flies round a carcass. Because someone was dead. Someone had been murdered.
She finally pressed pause and the film froze on the birch tree in the empty darkness. She could almost hear the sea, the shining black waves rolling in, curling down on the shingle and rock, and feel the bitter sting of salty wind on her cheeks. She was done. And she knew. At last she knew.
Tabitha thought she would feel exhilarated or at least relieved, but she didn’t. She felt drained of all emotion.
She sat on the edge of her bed and made herself breathe deeply, in and out like a tide ebbing and flowing, and gradually it came to her that she didn’t know what she was going to do.
It was a question, she thought, of how much she prized her freedom. When she had first arrived at Crow Grange, over six months ago, she had thought she would go mad in prison, that she would suffocate there. But now she had to ask herself if she valued her own
