“Oh,” said Tabitha, wishing she hadn’t asked.
There was a silence. Tabitha knew that Dudley was a professional. He would keep his answers short. He wouldn’t say anything he didn’t have to say. He didn’t need to.
“But you weren’t there when I was charged. Isn’t that unusual?”
“Not particularly.”
“But you were like . . .” Tabitha paused, looking for the right word. “Responsible for the case, right?”
“Yes.”
Dudley was standing with his hands on the edge of the box, the fingers of his right hand drumming silently. Tabitha looked down at her piece of paper and then back at Dudley.
“Was I your only suspect?” she asked.
“We always keep an open mind.”
“I don’t really know how to ask this,” Tabitha said. “I mean, when did I become the suspect, or the main suspect?”
Dudley’s expression turned to puzzlement and then to something like amusement. It made Tabitha feel slightly sick.
“Are you serious?” he said. “Do you want me to spell it out?”
“All right,” said Tabitha, her voice suddenly feeling dry. She took another drink of water.
“It just became clear as we went on. The body was found in your house, you tried to conceal it from the man who found it. There was enough evidence as it was. Then it emerged that you had a motive and that you had lied about it.”
“I didn’t lie about it.”
“All right, you concealed it.”
“I don’t think ‘concealed’ is the right word.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“I’m sorry,” said Judge Munday. “I need to say something at this point.” She turned to the jury. “This may be a difficult point to grasp, but you need to consider this: an innocent person is not required to give possibly damaging information about themselves. I hope that’s clear. Continue, Ms. Hardy.”
Tabitha wasn’t clear whether the judge’s intervention had been helpful or unhelpful. She looked down at her questions.
“You haven’t been in court. So maybe I can tell you some of what you missed—”
Judge Munday interrupted sharply. “You’re to ask questions, Ms. Hardy.”
“All right, all right, I’ll try and do it as questions.” She looked down at her piece of paper. “It’s obvious that right from the beginning you were so sure that it was me that it stopped you looking in other directions.” Tabitha paused and remembered that she needed to ask a question. “Is that right?”
“No, it isn’t right.”
“I want to ask you a couple of things about the evidence that the scene of crime person gave.”
“I can’t comment on scientific details,” Dudley said, with just a hint of uneasiness.
“These aren’t very scientific. The first is about the blood. Stuart Rees’s throat was cut. There was blood on his body, on the plastic sheet that had been wrapped around his body, on me and on my friend Andy. But the interesting thing is where the blood wasn’t, which is basically everywhere else. There was no blood on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling.”
“From what I remember there was blood on the floor.”
“Those were shoe prints from where we trod in the blood. But nowhere else. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange to you?”
Dudley gave a sniff. “Not really. Every crime scene is different.”
“Fine,” said Tabitha. She looked back down at her notes. “All the stuff you took away, you stored at a warehouse.” Dudley waited. “Not a police station or a government building or whatever. Just an ordinary commercial storage place.” Again Dudley waited. “Right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a bit risky? I mean, evidence could get contaminated, couldn’t it?”
“Not on my watch,” said Dudley.
“But I went there and there was other stuff in there as well as things connected to this case.”
“Your point being?”
“Things could have got mixed up.”
“Are you suggesting that happened?”
“Well, not really, I’m saying it could have.” A pause. “Is that right?”
“But it didn’t.”
Tabitha felt her cheeks burning. “It just suggests a slapdash operation,” she said. “No one cared really. You thought you just had me and it didn’t matter.” Dudley looked at her without speaking, and Tabitha, leaning forward, practically shouted: “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“No.”
“How about this? I just mentioned the plastic sheeting. My friend Michaela here did what you should have done: she found out where the sheeting came from. It was from a delivery company and it was used to deliver a sofa.”
Dudley shrugged. “All right,” he said.
“Yes, but not to my house. The sofa was delivered to Stuart Rees’s house. Does that seem interesting?”
Another shrug. “I suppose it was in Mr. Rees’s car.”
“That’s an idea,” said Tabitha. “So did you check the car?”
“We checked it, yes.”
“No, I mean a full search, blood and fibers and all that kind of stuff you see on CSI.”
Dudley looked hesitant. “I’d need to check the file.”
“We already did,” said Tabitha, “and—spoiler fucking alert—you didn’t.”
“Please, please, Ms. Hardy,” said Judge Munday. Tabitha looked over at the judge and her head was resting in her hands. She raised her head wearily. “In any other case, Ms. Hardy, I would have you hauled off to the cells. I know it’s a lot to ask, to keep on asking, that is, but could you treat this courtroom with some remnant of respect?”
Tabitha took a breath. “Sorry, I got carried away.” She looked down at her piece of paper and across at Michaela and back at her paper. There was only one question left. She had been thinking of it ever since Lev Wojcik had left the witness box. She had talked it over with Michaela. She was almost afraid to ask it. She needed to lead up to it.
“You sent an officer to interview Lev Wojcik, the man who delivered a package to Stuart Rees on the morning he died. Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I don’t do all the interviews. It’s not necessary.”
“Your officer just asked one question, which was basically, did he meet Stuart Rees and at what time. But she forgot to ask a second question: what did they talk about?”
Tabitha waited. Dudley looked
