Now he had to wait until the end of the day to get the truth, and the package. And he had to find a way to talk to Moulson in private here, or else winkle her out of the infirmary once they got back to Fellside. None of it would have been easy, even without the Leeds detectives sniffing around.
In the past, Devlin had always managed to convince himself that his connection to Grace was invisible and deniable. That wasn’t true any more, if it ever had been. There was a trail, and it wasn’t made out of fucking breadcrumbs. It had Moulson in it, and Salazar. Sylvie Stock. Liz Earnshaw. That prick Lovett, and of course Grace herself. He had to sort this. He had to hold his nerve and sort it.
He rejoined Ratner. She’d brought Moulson through into the waiting area, where the two of them were now sitting. There might still be time for a little informal debriefing with Moulson before things got rolling, but this wasn’t a safe place to do it. Anyone could walk past. Even if they didn’t, the acoustics were amazing. You could eavesdrop from halfway around the building.
It irked the Devil to be right next to Moulson and not to be able to question her. The only consolation was that she too looked very far from her happy place. She was sunk in on herself, thoughtful and quiet and distanced from everything that was going on around her.
She really had been hoping to sell the drugs on, he decided. That was why she was so scared now. She was wondering if it was too late to scramble back out of the pit trap she’d dug for herself before someone filled it in and buried her alive.
Yeah, he thought. It really is. But it seemed like a bad idea to have her walk into the courtroom desperate and terrified. She had a big fucking audience here and she might get the idea into her head that she could use it. He opened his mouth to say something – a threat, a warning, maybe even a phoney reassurance – but right then the clerk of the court walked up. “We’re ready to start,” he said.
“On your feet, prisoner,” Ratner said briskly. “Come on.” They led Moulson over to the door and through it, Ratner on Moulson’s right side and the Devil on her left.
The steps of the courthouse had reminded him of a circus, but what they had here was the eager audience come to see the clowns and the fire-eaters. The public gallery was packed, with the front two rows staked out for the media – reporters with notepads, artists with sketchbooks. The crowd behind them all had church faces on, but you could practically smell the excitement.
Moulson stopped for a second in the doorway. Less than a second actually, because Devlin and Ratner bore her onwards, hands pressing firmly against her shoulders. Ratner put her in her seat and gave the clerk a nod. Over to you. Then she and Devlin went back to their station by the door.
Courtrooms were normally really dull places for Devlin, and for the first hour or so this one was no exception. Just endless blather, endless talking. Men with whiny voices trying to look clever by saying the same thing a hundred different ways. Moulson’s lawyer, Pritchard, was a jumped-up little prick about the size of a pint pot. The CPS men were robots who only came alive when the judge asked them if they had anything to add, as though they were frigging voice-activated.
Intent. Mental capacity. Motive. There was a consensus forming, and though they were taking their own sweet time, they were gradually coming to an agreement about the blindingly obvious.
But then Pritchard said something about calling a witness.
In a fucking court of appeal? What was this?
The clerk called John Street, who apparently was Moulson’s former boyfriend. He came to the stand, and from that moment everything began to change.
In Devlin’s opinion, it did not change for the better.
79
For Jess, the second day of the appeal was much worse than the first. It was a kind of death by a thousand cuts.
Everything that was being said about the night of the fire took her back there again and again, and she didn’t want to go. On the first day, the proceedings had been wrapped in a thick, protective layer of legalese. But she’d been shielded from it in a deeper way too, by Alex’s belief in her innocence. Now she knew that Alex wasn’t Alex. She couldn’t fool herself any more into thinking she’d been forgiven by the one person who had the right and the power to do it.
She stood alone, and the blows of memory rained down on her.
John Street was the hardest to bear. This was a man she’d loved, and then hated. The man who’d walked her down the dark road that had a dead child at the end of it. Even to look at his face was painful. It was a reproach to some part of her that went deeper even than conscience.
This was the first time she’d seen him since her original trial. She was surprised at how bad he looked. She’d taken it for granted that time inside was much harsher than time out in the world, but nobody looking at John could assume that the time he was doing was easy. There were hollows under his eyes and he was thinner than she remembered. He looked like a man who did most of his sleeping standing up.
His hands had healed a lot better than her face though.
“You understand why you’re here, Mr Street?” Pritchard asked in the slightly solicitous tone of a doctor who’s about to talk you through your X-rays.
Street nodded.
“Nonetheless, I’m going to explain it so that you have an opportunity to question me or to state any objections you may have. In Jessica Moulson’s original trial, you gave evidence for the prosecution. But your cross-examination by me as defence counsel was never completed. I intend to complete it today. Do you consent to this?”
It was a trick question, obviously. The CPS lawyers would have explained to Street that if he said no, there would have to be a full retrial. He nodded again. “Yes. But I’ve told you all I remember.”
“I’m sure you have. All the same, if you’ve no objection, I’d like to walk you through some of the pertinent points in your original testimony. To make sure the court is fully apprised of their significance.”
“Fine,” Street said. “Sure.” His eyes stole across to Jess for the first time, and shied away again almost at once. But that at least didn’t particularly hurt. She got the same reaction wherever she went, and she was hardened to it.
“On the night of the fire, you arrived at Ms Moulson’s flat at or about eight p.m.”
“That’s right.”
“Having left there two hours earlier to buy some drugs from an acquaintance, Gavin Matthews, known to you and to my client as Buster. The drugs in question were for your own and Ms Moulson’s use?”
“Yes.”
“And just to be clear, the drug we’re talking about is heroin?”
“Yes.”
“How much heroin, exactly?”
“Not a lot. Just enough for two good hits.”
Pritchard affected polite surprise. “Was it normal for you to buy in such small quantities?”
“No,” Street said. “But our credit wasn’t good. That was all I could get.”
“The trials and tribulations of addiction,” Pritchard sympathised, without any hint of irony that you could actually point to. “Mr Matthews has confirmed that account. ‘Two good hits’ were his exact words, in fact. Now, what happened after that, according to your original deposition, is that you and Ms Moulson injected the heroin. Then, after a while, she went through into the flat’s living room while you remained where you were.”
“Yes.”
“In the bedroom.”
“In the bedroom, yes.”
“And at some point you fell asleep.”
“Yes.”
“Obviously you wouldn’t be aware of when exactly that was, so there would be no point in asking you. When you slip from a waking state into a doze, even without having taken a narcotic drug, the mind becomes gradually fogged. Perceptions lose their clarity.”
One of the CPS lawyers, who had been scribbling in his legal pad, looked up at this point and tapped with his pen as though it was a judge’s gavel. “Objection,” he said.