“No,” Pritchard said. “That’s not at all what I’m trying to establish. But Mr Street’s statement of his movements is absolutely key to establishing the actual sequence of events.”
He looked to the judges, who waved him on. The court clerk dimmed the lights a little, and the screen – a permanent fixture – folded down out of the ceiling. For a moment it showed a computer desktop with files and folders, because the image was being relayed through a projector from a laptop on the lawyers’ bench that Paul Levine was operating. Then it showed the front doors of Jess’s block of flats and the street outside. The angle was steep and the colours were muddy. Edge noise turned the image into a restless cauldron.
But John Street, when he emerged running, was unmistakable. He didn’t get very far. Levine froze the onscreen image just as Street slammed through the doors. Pritchard pointed to the time signature in the top left-hand corner of the screen. “23:00:58,” he said. “One minute past eleven.”
Levine unfroze the image. Street resumed his headlong run out of the burning building, but he slowed down as soon as he was out on the pavement. He was still moving, but with an asymmetrical lurch to his gait. His posture was unnaturally rigid. He was staring down at his hands, which he held at chest height, palms up and with the fingers spread. He looked as though he was cupping an invisible bowl, but actually he was in agony from his burns. He wore a bright blue shirt and red boxer shorts, hastily thrown on. He looked both absurd and pathetic.
“This is where you place the 999 call,” Pritchard said, off to Jess’s right. He moved across her field of vision to point at Street’s hands in the video clip – in motion now as Street laboriously fished his phone out of his pocket and held it in cradled fingertips, each stab at the keys followed by a violent, trembling recoil. The skin on his hands had all been burned away of course. Every contact must have brought a fresh jolt of pain.
“And this is where you wait,” Pritchard added in the same dry tone he’d used before. “Incidentally, Mr Street, I’ve watched this footage many times. I haven’t seen any point at which you check your watch. And you’re in full view throughout. It really is a mystery how you could be so specific about the time.”
Street mumbled something that Jess couldn’t catch.
“I’m sorry?”
“The stairs. I must have looked while I was on the stairs.”
“Running for your life? Through a burning building? Well, possibly. Shall we see?”
Street’s eyes widened. He started to speak, but choked on the first syllable, which was an ambiguous vowel sound. Pritchard seemed to enjoy the reaction. “Yes, Mr Street. Good news. Your role in this movie is a little bigger than a cameo after all.”
80
When Sally got to Fellside for the start of his shift, he found the car park full of police cars. Nausea twisted his stomach as he flashed his ID at the gate. “Something happen?” he asked the duty guard.
“Inmate was killed,” the guard said tersely. “Hell to pay.”
Sally felt dizzy, almost weightless. Blackness flickered behind his eyes for a moment. “Anybody know who?” he asked. Echolalia made him repeat who flew grew two new blue inside his mind.
“Loomis.”
“Big… Big Carol?”
“Yeah. Her.”
Sally went straight to the infirmary, walking as fast as he could, trying hard not to break into a run. But the place was empty, which told him nothing.
Moulson not being there was fine. If everything was running to schedule, her escort would have had her in a van and on the way to Leeds half an hour before. When he looked in the daybook to make sure that had happened, he found that a page had been torn out.
He looked for the missing page in the wastepaper basket, a little troubled now. He didn’t find it there, but he did find the release form that Stock had forged and then – on Moulson’s orders – torn up and thrown away.
It wasn’t a difficult jigsaw. She’d only torn the sheet into four pieces.
81
The overlap between night and day shifts at Fellside was two hours. Sylvie Stock thought she could spend that time hiding out at the aid station in Franklin block the way she had the night before, then scuttle for home. Maybe ask Ron to lead her in a prayer or two.
But Sally found her as easily as Devlin had.
He had the torn pieces of the release form in his hand. He shook them in her face. “Look at this!” he said. “What is this? You signed her back on-block!” He sounded ferocious, full of righteous rage. It would have been hilarious any other time. Any time when her job and her life weren’t hanging by a thread.
“She was fine,” Stock said. Shame and fear made her brutal. “Your diagnosis was bullshit. She didn’t have a concussion. The bruising wasn’t even fresh.”
“Sylvie, I told you—”
“You don’t tell me anything, Sally.”
“But I was trying to save her life. Grace wanted to hurt her. Probably to kill her. The only way to—”
“I said you don’t tell me anything!” The words came out in a breathless yell. Stock couldn’t help it. She’d been at snapping point all night, but the whole time she’d been hiding out, she hadn’t come across anything worth snapping at. Sally was catharsis in a pear-shaped package. “What, did she give you a hand job behind the screens? You like them well done with crispy bits, yeah? You’re not the fucking Pope. You don’t get to give sanctuary. And even if you did, not her! Not that! You side with that, you get what’s coming to you!”
She was right up in his face, spit from her rant flecking his cheek and his chin. Salazar backed away from her, speechless with shock. But not for long.
“What’s coming to me? What does that mean, Sylvie? That doesn’t sound like you; it sounds like Dennis Devlin. Did he put you up to this?”
Stock was exhausted by her own rage. She tried to push past Sally, but he outweighed her by a factor of two. “You have no idea what I sound like,” she told him through her teeth. “You know nothing about me, Sally. You don’t know anything about anything.”
She could have stopped there. There was no reason to carry on. And Sally probably would have stood aside and let her go. But his stupid, reproachful eyes were staring into hers as though he had some kind of a right to judge her. And she had to push him off that perch even if it meant fighting dirty.
“Dennis Devlin was doing a bayonet charge up your Leah for years,” she told him, not shouting now but measuring out every word. “He timed his shifts so he clocked off when you clocked on. He took photos of her with her kit off for bloody Fiesta Readers’ Wives, she was that besotted with him. You thought she pissed holy water, and for ten years you were getting Devlin’s sloppy seconds. If you were getting anything at all.”
Sally’s face registered blank astonishment. Then she could see him putting the pieces together – the cartoon shock of realisation.
“Devlin,” he said. Childish. Bewildered.
“Oh, now the penny drops.” Stock shook her head in bitter contempt. “You’re a real saint, aren’t you, Sally? A real Good Samaritan. Everybody loves the Good Samaritan. But have you ever noticed how little pussy he gets?”
It was easy to elbow her way past the doctor after that. Suddenly it seemed like there was a whole lot less of him.
82
With the image on the screen freeze-framed once again for ease of reference, Brian Pritchard told the judges and the CPS lawyers in exacting detail what it was they were looking at.
“This window here is Ms Moulson’s living room. And this one…” – he touched the tip of his finger to the screen, leaving no margin for error – “… this one is the landing in the building’s stairwell. We’re going to enlarge this portion of the screen in a moment, but before we do, I’d like to show you the layout of the space you’re looking at.”