Walker looked at North. He must have left his mobile in the car.

  ‘Get me through to the Crown court – quick! They’ll have to adjourn now. We can’t try him twice. We got just the one shot at him.’

  *

  At about the time that the pink stain appeared on the filter paper in Mallory’s lab, Winfield wrapped up his speech and invited the jury to retire. As North’s message came through for an urgent word with Clive Griffith, one of the ushers was being sworn in as jury bailiff.

  ‘. . . I shall not myself speak to them, nor suffer any other person to speak to them, save to ask them if they have reached their verdict.’

  Griffith read the note and slipped out of court. But by the time he had used his phone, he knew it would be too late.

  North snapped her mobile shut and returned to the lab bench. Mallory had just completed a test on a second sample from the bottle.

  ‘Look – same blood group,’ he said. ‘AB negative. We’re getting there!’

  ‘Too slowly, I’m afraid,’ said North grimly. ‘I’ve just spoken to Griffith. Jury have retired. We’re too late.’

  ‘Shit!’ Walker clenched his fists. ‘What’s been going on down there? Rylands must have been going for the fastest fucking closing speech on record.’

  He was patting his pockets again and this time pulled out a packet of Marlboro. He said to Mallory, ‘You will finish the tests, won’t you? Whatever happens, you will do the DNA?’

  Mallory smiled. He was a selfish man but towards this impassioned policeman he felt as near as he ever would to kindliness.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll finish them. We all want to close the book on this, don’t we?’

  *

  At the Howarth Estate, Enid Marsh’s curtains twitched. She had no idea what was happening today at the trial. Television had an item on the news at dinnertime, all about closing speeches, summing up. But for all she knew it was finished by now.

  On the back of Enid’s door, the outfit she’d worn hung waiting for Ivy or Karen to come and claim it. When they did, Enid had planned a little tea party. There were some ginger nuts she could put out. It’d be nice to have a cuppa and a chat. But nobody had been near Enid since Wednesday except Mrs Wald and she didn’t know any more than Enid about the trial. All the rest of them had stayed away.

  She looked out across the estate. There were some people making their way out of the tower block below and going away towards the car park. One of them was that boy Jason, little Goldilocks’s naughty brother. He was being almost dragged along by his fast-walking stepfather, Peter James. Enid knew him, she’d seen him in court.

  Looking back she saw the boy’s mother coming along behind them, accompanied by a stranger. This was a woman with short grey hair, a pale mac and a shoulder bag. She had social worker written all over her and the mother carried a suitcase. Where were they going?

  Enid watched on. At the edge of the playground, the mother handed the suitcase to the social worker, who nodded her head and set off after Peter James and the boy, catching them up just before they reached the corner. She must have said something because Enid saw the kid twisting round, turning and trying to catch a glimpse of his mother. He called out, ‘I want my dad! I want my dad!’

  Enid could see Anita standing there, watching the departing group with her arms folded. What Enid could not see was that Anita was weeping. ‘Taking the little bugger away,’ Enid thought. ‘Good riddance, he’s always been trouble.’

  Anita didn’t call out. She just watched as Jason was helped into a car. At length a car engine started and Enid saw the young woman, the mother, give a solitary wave. Peter James came back, took Anita in his arms, and walked her back to the tower block and out of Enid’s sight. She never heard the mother, who had lost not one, but two of her babies, but was now sending a third away. Never heard the plaintive cry, ‘I love them.’

  CHAPTER 30

  FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER. AFTERNOON

  COLIN BARRIDGE sat on the bench in the Dockland Light Railway station, impervious to the trains going by. An hour ago, when he had walked out of Southampton Street in his civilian clothes, he had ceased to be the bearer of Her Majesty’s warrant. He no longer stood – or sat – in the office of a constable. He was no longer, even, in possession of the uniform of the Metropolitan Police.

  This was what suspension meant. It also meant hanging, didn’t it? If this was the old days, it could be Michael Dunn who was going to be hanged, not him.

  The jury were out on Dunn. He knew that. They would probably decide the guy’s fate before the day was out. His own fate would take weeks to resolve. There would be a disciplinary hearing, evidence, admissions, severe words, tears. His dad would tell him I told you so. His mum would cry and cry and not be able to face the neighbours.

  Barridge didn’t want to go home to his mum and dad. He wanted to stay here. He was drained of all desire, all need, all ambition. Once he wanted to be a detective inspector in the Flying Squad. Now he watched train after train go by without feeling the need to move at all.

  *

  Belinda Sinclair went down to sit with her client in the holding cell. She didn’t actually have to do this but, then again, there was no one else to do it.

  There wasn’t much conversation. Dunn was staring at the wall, humming to himself and smoking a roll-up.

  ‘How long’s it been?’

  ‘Fifty minutes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He went on humming tunelessly.

  Looking back on the trial, Belinda saw that her original faith in Dunn’s innocence had been rather dented by Smith’s failure to recognise Dunn in court. But this damage to her belief in the case had been mitigated by her own sense of responsibility for the cock-up. If only she had shown Smith a photograph of Dunn . . .

  Michael had been terrible in the witness box yesterday. She couldn’t understand it. He seemed so bright and personable, now that he’d got the booze completely out of his system. But as soon as Fletcher started to question him about things that happened on the day of the murder he’d fallen to pieces. Started looking shifty and then guilty.

  Fletcher had been bloody good, better than flash Harry Rylands, if truth be told. Their brief had been a little too brief in his closure, to her way of thinking. Then she remembered that Rylands’s advice had been not to call Dunn at all. God, how she wished they’d taken it.

  ‘How long now?’

  ‘An hour.’

  ‘Christ! How long’s it going to take them to realise the police case is a load of shit?’

  ‘An hour is nothing, Michael. Sometimes the longer they stay out the better.’

  Was that true? In an apparently cut-and-dried case a long jury deliberation would be interesting. But was this such a case? Once she had thought it was.

  ‘But you do think they’ll acquit?’ asked Dunn. He sounded pathetic now, forlorn, but that was hardly surprising in view of the fact that the sword of Damocles hung about an inch from his cranium. She remembered the last thing Rylands had said to her outside the court.

  ‘We’ve got him off, Belinda, never fear.’

  She replied, ‘Or you’ll eat your wig, Robert?’

  But Rylands had just smiled enigmatically before waltzing off to the bar mess. Instead of telling Dunn about this exchange, she just said weakly, ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  He was kicking the leg of the table now, swinging his foot against it rhythmically. She wondered what would happen if she asked him to stop, but he stopped of his own accord anyway. There was something he wanted to ask her.

  ‘Could I . . . well, let you know how I get on . . . afterwards?’

  She looked sharply at him. What was he asking?

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said guardedly. ‘You have the office address.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But you might leave, get married or something. So I thought . . .’

  Jesus, she thought. He’s asking if we can meet.

  Before Belinda could cut him short or devise a reply, there was a sharp rap on the door. A voice called, ‘Jury’s back!’

  She looked at Dunn, wishing he would hurry. His eyes were saucers but she was oddly unmoved.

  He said, ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  *

  It was a long wait for the jury and all the time a long, long private prayer by Helen that they would find him guilty. She wanted it over and it wouldn’t be, for any of them, until then.

  Helen was the only member of the family who’d been at the trial every day. Some of the estate people had come in for the first and last days but, out of the relatives, even Thomas hadn’t showed up for the verdict. Surely they’d have given him compassionate leave if he’d wanted it?

  Helen understood why Anita stayed away, but she was adamant about her own presence. There had to be someone the same flesh and blood as little Julie present at the—She nearly thought the phrase ‘at the death’, but no, the end.

  What had been hard, especially, was listening to the pathologist and then that fat scientist telling what happened to Julie. They used that clinical, soulless language. From time to time, in the middle of it all, Helen had been flooded with memories of Julie alive. Sitting alongside her on the bus, bouncing on the cushion and talking away to herself, or to complete strangers.

  ‘My dad’s a soldier,’ she’d tell them, ‘but he hasn’t got a gun.’

  And at Helen’s house after television: ‘I’m going to be a dancer on Top of the Pops, I am. I can do disco, Granny, look.’

  And at bedtime, when Helen babysat one time: ‘I love you best, Granny.’

  In court she’d had to listen to how her granddaughter’s tongue had protruded in death through clenched teeth. How her neck had been injured, the ligature indenting the neck tissues. How she had been bruised, how she’d been penetrated . . .

  ‘I love you best, Granny.’

  *

  Helen studied the members of the jury as they filed in. They knew the verdict but you couldn’t read anything in their faces, just seriousness. Michael Dunn never glanced at them. He stood in the dock, staring at the floor. Everyone in court could see how he was shaking.

  ‘Would the foreman please stand?’ asked the clerk.

  The woman who had led the jury into court rose to her feet. She was middle-aged and seemed to Helen educated, intelligent.

  ‘Madam foreman, answer this question – yes or no. Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?’

  The woman glanced at the judge then back at the clerk. She nodded her head. ‘Yes.’

  A perceptible thrill of anticipation flickered through the court then died to a profound silence. The court associate gave a slight cough.

  ‘Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty of murder?’

  There was a second’s pause in which nobody breathed. Then the jury foreman herself took an intake of air so that she could speak up.

  Helen continued to hold her breath.

  *

  Peter and Anita sat in their living room. Tony, his nappy a little sodden and its adhesive tabs coming adrift, was crawling around the floor with a long string of drool dangling from his mouth. Anita was impervious. She stared at her fingernails.

  ‘Come on, love, we talked it through. I know it’s hard but it’s best for Jason, it really is. They even said so.’

  He lapsed into silence when she didn’t reply or react. He sat watching Tony, who was trying to stuff a plastic block into his mouth. There would be a time to talk about Jason but this wasn’t it.

  The phone rang. Peter looked at his watch and then at Anita and she was looking at him now with eyes wide. They both knew.

  ‘This is it,’ he said.

  He went out to the hall and picked up the phone. Anita heard his responses, very quiet and short. She bit into a fingernail and it gave way with a loud snap. She heard Peter ring off.

  He didn’t come back instantly but lingered in the hall. She waited, holding the fragment of nail between her tongue and teeth. What was he doing?

  Then Peter was standing at the door. His pose was easy, casual, leaning on the door frame. He was smiling when he gave her the news.

  ‘It’s guilty.’

  Anita covered her face with her open hands and leaned forward to rest her head on her knees.

  *

  Belinda was shocked and Rylands too, perhaps, though he didn’t show it. There was no one in court to boo or hiss the verdict. In the public gallery they celebrated.

  Rylands was on his feet. Winfield raised an eyebrow.

  ‘There is nothing I wish to say, M’lord.’

  Rylands knew there was no point in mitigation, as Winfield was about to underline. The judge nodded to the associate who told Dunn to stand.

  ‘Michael Dunn,’ intoned Winfield, ‘as I am sure you know, you have been convicted of an offence for which the sentence is fixed by law. There is only one sentence I can pass and I sentence you accordingly to life imprisonment. In this case, I recommend that the minimum term to be served should be no less than twenty years. Take him down.’

  In the bustle and disturbance of the courtroom that followed the verdict. Belinda Sinclair had the odd feeling that she was in a kind of bubble of silence. It wasn’t shock or disbelief – she’d always known this reverse could happen – but a sense of detachment. She’d done her best but it hadn’t been enough and the jury had gone against her. Who was she, even silently, to criticise them?

  She felt a tap on her arm and it was Detective Superintendent Walker. She looked at him without warmth.

  ‘Miss Sinclair, I would like you to know this. We found something, a blue glass bottle. Tests carried out today have shown that traces around the neck of that bottle are blood – the same group as that of Julie Ann Harris – AB negative. It’s a rare group as you know. The bottle was found in a drain in Princess Elizabeth Park.’

  She listened to what the policeman had to say. And as soon as she heard it she realised that she already knew this. At some point, in the last twenty-four hours, she had unconsciously changed her mind about Dunn. And she realised that, if she had been a member of the jury, she would have found him guilty too.

  It was her duty to go down and see her client now. She made her way into the basement and was shown into Dunn’s cell, where she was told she had a couple of minutes. The transport was about to leave.

  He was sitting slumped at the table. Belinda took a packet of Silk Cut out of her bag and lit a cigarette, dropping the almost full packet on the table in front of him. He raised his head and looked at her. There were traces on his face of very recent tears.

  ‘What happens now?’ he asked. He looked more lonely, more pathetic than ever, but it didn’t touch Belinda even remotely. Not anymore.

  ‘New evidence has apparently been found by the police, Michael.’

  She looked steadily at him. She accused him with her eyes and he shrank away.

  ‘But I didn’t do it! I didn’t. I swear. I’m innocent. I didn’t do it!’

  A security guard hammered on the door – the transport was ready to take him. Belinda stood by the door as it swung open, then swivelled just for a moment.

  ‘Yes, you did, Michael,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, you did.’

  And she went out to look for some fresh air to breathe.

  *

  Walker was not a man to go fishing. He liked an occasional day at the races or a football match with his boy. But even then he never truly relaxed. On the day after the trial was over he’d managed to get some tickets at Spurs for the Newcastle match, but the whole ninety minutes he was thinking about Mallory and what the DNA would turn up next week.

  Dunn was safely banged up but Walker knew in his heart that they’d been lucky. There had been as many defensive mistakes as he was watching out there on the White Hart Lane park. Barridge’s own goal should have finished them completely but then Rylands put Dunn in the witness box and the Crown got one back. Fletcher was brilliant. Terry Smith’s failure to recognise Dunn was important too, but in the end it probably came down to the jury’s intuition.

  Which is why he still needed that DNA. The very last thing Walker wanted was a rematch at the appeal court with Rylands. Or a book exposing a so-called miscarriage of justice. Or – God forbid – a Rough Justice TV documentary.

  He’d told everybody to take a long weekend but he himself was back at Southampton Street on the Monday, trying to disentangle the chaos that was the budget for this investigation. The station Super wanted the Incident Room packed up by the end of the week, before which he had to make sure all the reports, statements, notes and audio tapes were tagged, docketed and filed along with car logs, overtime sheets and all the other paper palaver that had to be placed these days in long-term storage. Then there was the Barridge disciplinary to deal with. He’d spent all Sunday morning writing his report.

  Now Soames, Harrold, Macklin, Grimes and the others were humping files out to the AMIP van in the loading bay, while he furiously double-checked Mallory’s invoices. He was cursing forensic’s meticulous paperwork, with every procedure, even the most minute, timed and charged for, when the phone at his elbow sounded. It was the man himself on the phone.

  ‘I thought you’d like to be the first to know, Detective Superintendent,’ boomed Mallory.

  ‘You’ve got the DNA tests?’

  Walker signalled to North, Satchell and anyone else within earshot. They instantly stopped what they were doing and gathered round. The room fell silent.

  ‘I have indeed,’ said Mallory. ‘I have carried out the tests you requested on the blood deposits found on the bottleneck from Princess Elizabeth Park.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They prove without doubt that it was Julie Harris’s blood on the bottle. Congratulations, Mr Walker. You got the right man. There’ll be no books by leftie journalists trying to make a name for themselves. There’ll be no shouting about a miscarriage of justice. You’ll have my full report in the morning. Goodbye.’