Pritchard was up at the bench, arguing with the judges and the CPS lawyers about times. Places. Procedures. The lawyers were nodding a lot but not saying very much. From the look of things, whatever Pritchard said was fine by them. Jess could only just hear him over the continued yelling from the public seats. And was that weeping? Was someone crying back there?
“Today,” Pritchard was saying for perhaps the third time. “Now. I’m sure everyone here understands the workings of habeas corpus. If the conviction falls, you don’t have any right to hold her.”
No. No no no. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t be free while Alex was still trapped in Fellside – locked behind someone else’s face and name. She had promised him. If she didn’t come back, he’d be alone again, probably for ever, and lost to himself.
The judges were leaning in together, speaking too low for her to hear. Her fate was being decided. She had to say something, and the truth was no use at all. The truth was broken and unserviceable.
But perhaps she could salvage some pieces of it. Put them to use.
She stood on shaking legs.
Nobody noticed her at first. Then one of the judges did, the woman, but she said nothing. It was only when all three of the judges and the CPS lawyers and Pritchard turned to face her that the hubbub died down far enough for her to be heard. Not completely. Not at first. But as she opened her mouth, cleared her throat, the last few voices faltered and tailed off. Only the sobbing was still audible. A woman’s voice. Jess didn’t turn around. She knew it was Mrs Beech who was crying.
“Can I speak?” she asked. “I’d like to speak if I’m allowed to. It’s relevant. To the case.”
The female judge, LePlastrier, nodded permission. “That would appear to be the very least you’re owed,” she said. She sounded sad, or perhaps just tired. Her job must hold few surprises, and almost no pleasant ones.
Jess nodded thanks to her. But it took her a few moments to scrape the words together in her ransacked mind. Her voice sounded hoarse and strange to her. “I didn’t think I’d ever see… this,” she said. “I didn’t think it was possible. I believed what everyone believed. That I set that fire and killed Alex. That it was right for me to be where I was.”
She had to stop and suck in a breath. She thought there would be more yells, more protests and curses. There was nothing. Almost no sound at all. Even the crying had stopped now.
“People said I was a monster, and I… I thought they had to be right. For a long time. Then I started to think they were wrong, but I never thought…”
She shook her head. It was all coming out twisted, ridiculous, but she had to push on anyway. She wanted Pritchard and Paul Levine – especially Paul – to understand what she was about to do. “I never thought the truth would… that anyone could ever find it out. And I’m so grateful – so very, very grateful – to Mr Pritchard, and Mr Levine, for proving…”
She went on, forcing the words out. “I thought I’d done a thing that couldn’t be forgiven, and I didn’t. I’m free of that now.”
She looked across at Paul. A last, beseeching look. This was going to hurt him. She wanted him to know she didn’t do that lightly.
“But I am a murderer. Last night I was in a fight with another woman. Another inmate at Fellside prison. I beat her to death. I broke her skull in with the end of a fire extinguisher. So send me back to Fellside. Please. That’s my home now and it’s the place where I belong.”
That was all she had to say. She sat down again and waited for the pandemonium to start. She turned away from Levine now, afraid of what she might see in his face. Unfortunately, that left her staring across the courtroom at Dennis Devlin.
Devlin’s arms were folded across his chest and he didn’t move them. But he slid the raised thumb of his right hand from right to left across the skin of his throat.
You’re dead.
83
When it was finally over – when all the arguing and grandstanding and horse-trading had narrowed down to one anticlimactic nod of consent – the two guards took Jess Moulson away. Paul sat stunned, unable to process what had just happened on any level.
Moulson kept her head down as she walked by, but he would almost swear she smiled.
He stood.
“I could do with a hand here,” Susannah Sackville-West said, hefting stacks of paper in both hands. Paul ignored her. He walked across the courtroom floor to the door through which Moulson had just made her exit. He caught it as it closed and slipped through.
“Jess!” he shouted. The female warder turned and stared at him. He pushed right past her. The man must have gone ahead to make sure the prison van was waiting where it should be.
He was a second or two behind Moulson as she walked down the corridor towards the back door. He ran to catch her up.
“Hello, Paul,” she murmured. Her good eye was wet, her drooping one bone dry.
“Just tell me why,” he said. He sounded angry, which was fine, because he suddenly realised that he was. He was almost crying too. “After everything we did, you just… what? Are you scared, Jess? Are you just scared of being free, is that it?”
“No.” She shook her head. She didn’t turn to look at him and she didn’t stop walking. They were through the doors now and out in the little yard where the prison van waited. The male guard loomed up and put a hand on Paul’s shoulder to pull him back. Paul spun round and smacked the hand away.
“You want to assault me?” he asked the guard. The man towered over Paul and most of his mass was muscle, but that didn’t seem to matter much right then. “I’m a lawyer. I’m her lawyer. Back off or lose your job.”
He turned his attention back to Moulson without waiting for an answer. “What?” he asked her. “What then?”
She looked desperately unhappy, but he couldn’t tell if that was for herself or for him. “I’ve got things to do in there,” she said, her voice so low he almost couldn’t hear it. “In Fellside. If I come out now, I don’t know if I’ll ever get back in.”
“Things to do?” He was appalled. “You can say your goodbyes by post, Jess. Or go back on visiting day. You just threw away…” – he flailed for words – “… everything.”
“No,” Jess said again, calm now, or almost calm. “That’s not true. You got my verdict overturned. I’m free now. That’s what you gave me. But if it’s a gift, you don’t get to say what I do with it.”
“I love you,” he told her. It came out before he could even think. He only heard it in retrospect, when the echo of it was hanging in the air.
“No,” Jess said. She smiled. A sad, bleak smile that was there and gone in a heartbeat. “You don’t, thank God. Why would you want to? I’d just mess your life up and set your things on fire. But you’ve been a good friend to me when I haven’t done anything to deserve it. I’m going to ask you one last favour.”
A lot of answers, most of them sarcastic, boiled up in his throat. He only said one word. “What?”
“Tell Brenda what happened. I don’t know what I’m going back to now. What’s going to happen to me. It might be bad. Tell her—”
“That you’re innocent.”
Jess nodded. “Yeah. That. And that I love her very much. And that… I didn’t throw myself away. I’m answering to myself, the way she said I should. Not to anyone else.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Jess leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
Then stepped back quickly, out of his reach. For ever.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for everything. I won’t forget you.”
She climbed into the van and the doors slid closed between them. She looked away from him, then down into her lap.
He stood there for a long time after the van drove away.
Eventually Brian Pritchard came and stood at his side. Put a hand on his shoulder.
“Take your triumphs where you find them, Mr Levine,” he said gently. “You’ll never have to look far for a tragedy.”
“She was…” Levine said, and gave it up. If he said any more, he was going to start crying in front of his boss.
“Our client,” Pritchard finished. “Look. Look at me.”
Paul turned. The older man held up his hands, side by side, and then folded the palms in together.
“Case closed,” he said.
PART FOUR
WE MAKE THE THINGS WE NEED
84