The judges conferred once more. Pritchard waited with an impassive face, but his posture was tense. Paul Levine had his chin on his fist, the knuckles pressed up against his mouth.
“And is your thought, Mr Pritchard,” Judge Foulkes asked, “that if anything arises from Mr Street’s testimony that materially affects the safety of your client’s conviction, a mistrial would be declared at that point?”
“And the conviction therefore overturned. Exactly, Your Honours.”
“Do you consider that a likely outcome?” Judge Macclehurst asked.
Pritchard shrugged. “Evidence is evidence, Your Honour. Like water, it finds its level.”
The judges went into another huddle, but only for a few seconds.
“Yes,” Foulkes said at last. “It’s unorthodox at the very least, but this is a highly unusual situation and there’s little likelihood of establishing a wider precedent. We’ll allow it.”
“Thank you, Your Honours,” Pritchard said. “Then I’ve nothing more to add. If my learned colleagues have no issues to raise…”
They didn’t. The judges stood, the clerk called, “All rise!” and the day’s proceedings were over.
Jess was led out of the courtroom through the same door by which she’d entered, and back into the short corridor behind it. It smelled strongly of disinfectant now, where before it had smelled of dust and floor wax. She wondered if someone had scoured and disinfected the place where she’d sat to eat her lunch.
She could just walk away. She should. But another day or two… It might be enough. Paul Levine might already have the answers that she needed. And she could buy that time just by doing what she was told.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. Her voice shook a little.
“Go on, then,” Ratner said. “Make it quick.”
“I might as well pay a visit too,” Corcoran decided. She pushed the door open ahead of Jess and went into the bathroom. By the time Jess followed, Corcoran was already heading for the middle cubicle.
Jess took the left-hand one and waited in silence with her back pressed against the door. After a long interval, she heard the sound of Corcoran running the tap, and then the rumbling blast of the drier. She waited for the bathroom door to slam shut again so she could come out and go into the middle cubicle. But it seemed that Corcoran was waiting too.
“When you’re ready, Moulson,” she said from just outside the door.
“I might be a while yet,” Jess said. “I think I’m a bit constipated.”
“Oh please, spare me the details!” The door creaked as it opened, boomed as it closed.
Jess quickly swapped cubicles, locking the door behind her.
She reached up and groped behind the cistern. The bag was right there, but for a moment as she tugged at its bottom corner, it refused to give. Then it came free all at once and she almost dropped it into the toilet bowl, saving it with a frantic fumble.
She turned the bag in her hands and examined it. It was fairly bulky, but lighter than she would have expected given its size.
The disinfectant smell was fresh and strong, almost overpowering. Someone had been through this place while the court was in session. A caretaker or cleaner with a cart full of brushes and bags and cleaning products and total freedom to come and go between the restricted area and the rest of the building. Jess would have bet good money that that was how the bag had got there.
Now what? It came down to three choices. Tape the bag to her stomach as she was meant to do, and rejoin the guards outside. Put it back where she’d found it. Or rip it open and flush the contents down the toilet.
“Prisoner, get a bloody move on. Now!” Jess started violently. Ratner’s voice was so loud that for a second she thought the guard was right in there with her.
“I’m just coming,” she called. There was no time to think. Certainly no time to get rid of the package’s contents. And if she tried to tape it back up behind the cistern, she’d probably make a fair bit of noise. The training she’d been given by Loomis and Earnshaw kicked in. She slid the package inside her tracksuit top and smoothed the loose ends of the tape down on either side of her abdomen.
She remembered to flush the chain before unlocking the door.
Ratner was standing right outside with her arms folded and her face set. “I don’t get any overtime for this,” she said.
“Sorry,” Jess mumbled.
The guard herded her back outside with shooing motions of her hand. Corcoran ambled along behind, raising an eyebrow to show that she didn’t see any need for all this haste. In convoy they walked down the corridor and out into the little yard, where the van was already waiting.
Paul Levine was waiting too. “Could I please have a word with my client?” he asked Ratner.
“We’re on a tight schedule,” she told him coldly. “You’ll have to do it through channels, during proper visiting hours.”
“Oh, a few minutes won’t make any difference,” Corcoran said. “Just keep it short, okay?”
Ratner gave her a disapproving look, but she didn’t argue. The two of them withdrew to the rear of the van.
Paul turned his back on them, speaking too softly to be overheard even though they were only a few feet away. “How did you find today?” he asked.
“It was fine,” Jess said. She shrugged. “It didn’t feel like anything very much happened.”
“You’d be surprised,” Paul told her. “Anyway, tomorrow will be different. And I’m afraid that parts of it might be hard for you. But there’s no getting around it.”
She read concern in his face. It crossed her mind to tell him about Grace, but how could she? Willing or not, she was part of a drug ring. She had drugs taped to her belly right then. Bringing the roof down on Grace would bring the roof down on herself too, probably blowing her appeal sky-high in the process. And a lot of other things with it, since most of the Goodall inmates who’d been roped into Grace’s shifting, non-consensual workforce were women with appeals or retrials pending. No. Definitely not. If there was a way out of this trap, Paul wasn’t it.
He was still talking – explaining what he’d meant when he said the next day would be hard. “We want to go over everything you and John Street said in your original depositions. The sequence of events on the night of the fire. We’re going to put it under the microscope. I imagine some of that stuff will still be painful to you.”
“I’ll be fine,” Jess assured him. That was almost certainly a lie, but she thought she could stand it. Her relationship with Alex Beech wasn’t a one-off atrocity any more. It was ongoing. She was working out the terms of her atonement.
With some backsliding. The drug package clung to her flesh like some ghastly parasite. She could feel it moving, could almost imagine that it was burrowing into her.
She pulled her thoughts away with an effort. Alex. Alex was what mattered now. “The letter,” she said to Paul. “Did you manage to…?”
He breathed out hard. Almost sighed. It wasn’t an encouraging sound. “Yes, I did. You asked me to find out whether Alex Beech had been transferred from a different school to Planter’s Lane. I couldn’t get direct access to the relevant records, but there seems to be no reason why he should have been. The Beeches were long-term residents in Orchard Court – they moved in about eight years before you did, when Alex was still a toddler – and that would put them dead centre in the catchment area for Planter’s Lane school.”
“That’s not evidence though. It doesn’t prove Alex never went anywhere else.”
“I’m a lawyer, Jess. Believe me, I know what counts as evidence. I haven’t finished yet.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Go on.”
“Well, you said you were interested in one specific school – a school that had a goat and a flag on its crest and dum spiro spero as its motto. I found the school, after a lot of effort. It’s a lamb rather than a goat, obviously – the Lamb of God. But it’s real. It’s called Bishop Borley. It used to be a Catholic school, then went all-comers in the eighties. But there are a couple of good reasons why Alex Beech couldn’t have gone there. For starters, it’s not in London. It’s in Nottingham.”