Val McDermid 3-Book Crime Collection: A Place of Execution, The Distant Echo, The Grave Tattoo. Val McDermid
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Название: Val McDermid 3-Book Crime Collection: A Place of Execution, The Distant Echo, The Grave Tattoo
Автор: Val McDermid
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Полицейские детективы
isbn: 9780007515325
isbn:
‘Very well, my lord. Inspector, bearing in mind you should answer yes or no, are you an ambitious man?’
Stanley intervened again. ‘My lord,’ he exclaimed indignantly. ‘This has nothing to do with the matter before the court.’
‘It speaks to his motivation,’ Highsmith said briskly. ‘The defence contends that much of the evidence against my client has been concocted. Inspector Bennett’s motivation therefore becomes an issue for the defence.’
Sampson thought for a moment then said, ‘I am minded to allow the question.’
George took a deep breath. ‘My only ambition is to contribute to justice being done. I believe that somewhere out there is the body of a girl who was monstrously abused before she was killed and I believe the man who did it is sitting in the dock.’ Highsmith was trying to stop him, but he kept on to the end regardless. ‘I’m here to try and make sure he pays for what he’s done, not to further my career.’ He came to an abrupt halt.
Highsmith shook his head in apparent disgust. ‘Yes or no, that was what I asked for.’ He sighed. ‘I have no further questions of this witness,’ he said, his face – turned towards the jury and away from the judge – showing a contempt that was absent from his voice.
George stepped down from the witness box. He could no longer escape from the sight he’d been deliberately trying to avoid all the time he’d been in the witness box. Hawkin stared at him with a look that bordered on the triumphant. The smile that often appeared to hover on his lips was back and he sat as casually in the dock as if he were in his own kitchen. With murder in his heart, George strode past the dock and straight out of the courtroom. Behind him, he heard the judge announcing the close of business for the day. He hurried on, down the corridor to the Gents. He dived into the cubicle, slammed the bolt home and bent over the bowl. He barely made it in time. The hot vomit splattered against the porcelain, the thin acrid smell rising to make him gag again.
He jerked the chain then leaned against the wall of the toilet, cold sweat on his face. For a terrible moment in the courtroom, he had felt the horror of what Highsmith’s insinuations and accusations might do to him. All it would take would be a couple of gullible jurors with a grudge against the police, and not only would Hawkin walk free, but he’d take George’s career and reputation with him. It was an unbearable notion, the stuff of three a.m. nightmares and bowel-churning panics. He had stuck his neck out for this prosecution. Now, for the first time, he was allowing himself to understand how easily he could become the agent of his own destruction. No wonder Carver had been so magnanimous in his insistence George see the case through himself. He hadn’t so much been handed the poisoned chalice as wrestled it out of everyone else’s hands.
But what else could he have done? Even as he stood there with the throat-rasping smell of bleach making his watering eyes sting, George knew there had never been any real choice for him.
When he emerged, Clough was waiting, the familiar cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth. ‘I know a good pub on the Ashbourne road,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a jar on the way home.’
He was, George thought, a remarkable lieutenant.
For the rest of the week, George sat at the back of the court, always contriving to arrive a few minutes after each session began and slipping away as soon as the court rose. He knew he was being ridiculous, but he couldn’t escape the idea that everyone was looking at him because they were wondering whether he was corrupt, or, even worse, because they’d already decided he was. He hated the thought of being taken for one of those coppers who made up their minds to have somebody for a crime, regardless of the evidence. But he couldn’t stay away.
The third day of the trial saw the Scardale witnesses appear. Charlie Lomas managed to repeat his unflustered performance at the committal, impressing the jury with his open manner and his obvious unhappiness about the disappearance of his cousin.
Next was Ma Lomas, dressed for the occasion in a rusty black coat with a spray of white heather pinned to the collar. She admitted her name was Hester Euphemia Lomas. It was clear she held the court in neither awe nor deference, responding to the two QCs precisely as she would have done to George in the comfort of her own living room. She insisted on a chair and a glass of water, then proceeded to ignore both. Stanley treated her with exaggerated courtesy, which she returned with utter indifference.
‘And you are absolutely certain that it was Mr Hawkin you saw crossing the field?’ Stanley asked.
‘I only need glasses for reading,’ the old woman said. ‘I can still tell a kestrel from a sparrowhawk at a hundred yards.’
‘How can you be sure it was the Wednesday?’
She looked at him with exasperation. ‘Because that’s the day Alison went missing. When something like that happens, everything else that happened that day sticks in your memory.’
Stanley obviously found nothing to argue with in that. He took her on through her knowledge of the lead mine from the book in the study of Scardale Manor. ‘Did Squire Castleton often talk to you about local history?’ he eventually asked.
‘Oh aye,’ she said, off hand. ‘I’d known him since he was a little lad. He never lorded it over his tenants, not the old squire. We’d often sit and talk, him and me. We always said, when we went, half the dale’s history would go with us. He was always on at me to write it all down, but I couldn’t be bothered with owt like that.’
‘But that’s how you knew where to find the book?’
‘That’s right. Many’s the time we’ve sat and looked at that book, the old squire and me. I was able to put my hand on it right away.’
‘Why didn’t you mention the old lead mine to the police earlier?’ Stanley asked, apparently casually.
She scratched her temple with a finger lumpy with arthritis. ‘I don’t rightly know. I forget sometimes that not everybody knows the dale like I do. I’ve lain awake often since, wondering if it would have made any difference to poor Alison if I’d have mentioned the lead mine to Inspector Bennett the night she went missing.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a terrible burden to me.’
‘I have no more questions for you, Mrs Lomas, but my colleague Mr Highsmith will need to ask you some things. So if you would wait there?’ Stanley gave the matriarch a slight bow before sitting down.
This time, Highsmith waited for a few moments before he rose. ‘Mrs Lomas,’ he began. ‘It must be hard for you to see the nephew of your old friend in the dock here today.’
‘I never thought I’d be glad Squire Castleton were dead,’ she said in a low voice. ‘This would have broke his heart. He loved Alison like she was his own granddaughter.’
‘Indeed. If I might trouble you with a few questions, I’d be very grateful.’
She looked up and George, sitting at the back of the court, caught the wicked gleam in her eye. He winced. ‘Questions are no trouble to me,’ she snapped. ‘Tell truth and shame СКАЧАТЬ