The judges conferred and nodded. “Don’t tell the witness what his mental state was, Mr Pritchard,” Judge LePlastrier said.
“I beg your pardon,” Pritchard said urbanely. “Let us assume, by all means, that Mr Street’s perceptions were clear throughout these events unless he himself states otherwise. In fact, as we’ll see, he’s admirably precise about a great many things. For example…” – he consulted his notes – “He tells us that he woke at eleven o’clock. Is that true, Mr Street?”
“Yes.”
“How did you verify that? Was there a clock in the bedroom?”
There wasn’t. Jess could have told him that. She remembered going around the bedroom with a pillowcase in her hand, bundling the clock, the speaker dock, the bedside lamps into it all on top of each other. That had been a regular feature of their lives back then: turning household objects into cash, and then into smack. Junkie alchemy.
“I looked at my watch,” Street said, sounding faintly irritated. It seemed to Jess that Pritchard was needling him on purpose with his dry delivery and exaggeratedly formal tone.
But the lawyer didn’t press any harder on that point. “Very well then,” he allowed. “At eleven o’clock, as verified by your watch, you woke up?”
“Yes.”
“Perceptions clear? Muzzy?” The CPS lawyers looked up from their annotations again, but Pritchard raised a hand to forestall the objection. “Merely to build a picture, Your Honours. Not to cast doubt on the witness’s testimony.”
“Muzzy,” Street admitted. “I didn’t know where I was for a moment.”
“Perfectly understandable. Perhaps we can pick up the story at that point.”
Street frowned as he summoned the memory. “I didn’t know what was going on, but there was a terrible smell. Really sharp. Like, chemicals and burning. Then I saw all this smoke hanging in the air and I thought, ‘Oh my God, the place is on fire’.”
“And was that in fact the case?”
“Yeah, it was. Of course it was. The smoke was from the carpet, and the sheets on the bed. They were already on fire, and the hallway outside the bedroom… you… you couldn’t see a thing out there, just the smoke and this light like a big orange spotlight. The whole flat was going up.”
“What happened after that?”
“I jumped up and I started to… you know…” Street held up his hands and paddled them in the air.
“You tried to put out the fire with your hands?” Pritchard interpreted.
“Yes.”
“And how did that work out?”
“I got burned. Really badly.”
“Badly is a relative term,” Pritchard said. “My client lost half her face in that same fire. And Alex Beech, of course, lost his life. Can you show us your injuries, Mr Street?”
Street held up his hands. “They healed up, mostly. You can see the shiny bits where they did the skin grafts, but they look almost normal now.”
“Indeed,” Pritchard agreed. “Photographs were taken at the time though. Perhaps we can refer to them in support of your testimony.” Paul Levine handed Pritchard a small stack of photographs – eight by ten, full colour. Pritchard left the desk and strolled across to the witness box where he showed them to Street, holding each one up to him for a few seconds before flicking to the next. “Here they are. Your Honours have copies labelled 1 through to 9, although I’m sure the witness doesn’t need to have his memory jogged. Would you please confirm, Mr Street, that these photographs show the state of your injuries on the night of the fire.”
“Yes. They do.”
“Second-and third-degree burns to your hands and your forearms. Very severe on the right hand particularly.”
Street nodded wordlessly.
“But now here you are, a great many skin grafts later. You’ve made a wonderful recovery. In your own eloquent phrase, almost back to normal.” Street considered this and seemed about to make some reply, but Pritchard was holding up one of the photos again. “I’m curious about this one,” he said. “This burn mark here, this very angry one on your forearm just above your right wrist, in a crescent shape. What do you think that was?”
Street stared dumbly. “I have no idea.”
“Well, it’s a trivial detail. Possibly you brushed against something. It’s mainly significant because it’s on an area of otherwise undamaged skin. Separate and distinct from the other burns. It suggests you touched your hand against something hot at some point. Not a particularly unlikely event in a house fire, of course.” Pritchard walked back to the desk and put the photos down. But then he turned to face Street again. “And that was all the damage your body suffered that night?”
“Yes.”
“Apart, of course, from the damage that was self-inflicted.”
There was a moment’s silence. “I don’t know what you mean,” Street said, stony-faced.
“Your blood showed positive for heroin. Trace amounts but still, positive is positive. Remind me, Mr Street. How long have you been an addict?”
“I’m straight now.”
“My apologies. How long were you an addict?”
“Almost three years.”
“And after three years, what counts as a good hit?”
“I don’t know. Hard to say. You judge it by eye; you don’t measure it.”
“But bigger than when you started out?”
Street gave a hollow laugh. “Only about twenty times.”
“Because the body habituates to heroin, and it takes larger and larger doses to produce the same effect. I’m sorry, I interrupted your account. There you were, beating at the sheets to very little purpose. What then, Mr Street?”
“I got up and ran,” Street said.
“Ran where?”
“To the door. The front door of the flat.”
“Did you try to find Ms Moulson? Your girlfriend? You must have been surprised to wake up and find her gone from the bed. You must have been concerned for her, given that you’d woken up in the middle of this inferno.”
Street shook his head, but he wasn’t disagreeing. He seemed to be trying not to see what was in his mind. “I shouted out Jess’s name,” he said in a low voice. “Again and again. Lots of times. But I couldn’t see her. There was too much smoke everywhere. And she didn’t answer me. In the end, I thought she must have already got out.”
“So you did the same.”
“Exactly.”
“And then you called the emergency services. You told them there was a fire. Asked them to come and put it out.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
Street didn’t answer. He just stared at Pritchard, who was staring back at him with a look of polite enquiry. The silence lengthened. Pritchard let it.
“How do you mean?” Street asked at last.
“After the phone call, Mr Street. What did you do next? Obviously you knew by this point that your girlfriend had not, as you’d hoped, escaped from the flat. You might also, quite reasonably, have had concerns about the other residents. So tell us what you did.”
Another pause followed, and again Pritchard did nothing to fill it.
“I waited,” Street said. “For the fire engines.”
“Quite right,” Pritchard said encouragingly. “You did. We know this from the CCTV footage that was admitted in evidence during my client’s original trial. Let’s look at it now, shall we? With Your Honours’ permission…”
“Proceed, Mr Pritchard,” one of the judges said, sounding bored.
“A moment, Your Honours.” One of the CPS lawyers was on his feet – the same one who’d objected before. “Mr Street is not on trial here. If the drift of this questioning is to establish that he could have done more to mitigate the harm that arose from Jessica Moulson’s actions…”