‘Yes.’ Ask her why she refused, I thought. Let the doctor tell the jury the state Beth was in. But it didn’t suit Price, so she didn’t ask.
‘So whilst we can’t determine that there were no internal injuries, neither can we say that she did sustain any?’
‘That’s correct.’ A single braid broke away from the coil of hair, and briefly bounced like an antenna before falling into the doctor’s eyes.
‘Dr Okenedo. How long have you been a doctor?’
‘I qualified in 1997,’ she said, tucking the braid behind her ear.
‘Congratulations,’ said Fiona Price, as though praising a Brownie Guide for her latest badge. ‘You trained with the Met Police?’
‘Yes.’
‘Since moving to Cornwall, in how many sexual assault cases have you been the sole examining doctor?’
‘Seven, including this one,’ said the doctor, a ripple in her cheek.
‘So, before you attended Miss Taylor, you had only overseen six rape cases?’
‘Yes.’
Price went through some papers on her desk, letting the doctor’s inexperience hang in the stuffy air. From a sheaf in her file, she drew a photograph, a beige blur from where we were sitting in the public gallery. ‘These tiny grazes on the complainant’s knees; could they simply have been pressure marks? The indentations made by a woman with the added weight of a man on top of her, during vigorous, consensual sex?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Okenedo with reluctance. Fiona Price cut through the doubt. ‘Did you find any bruising on the complainant’s arms, for example? Anything to suggest that she had been held down against her will.’
That band around my head began to throb again, like someone was tightening the bolts.
‘No. But again, freezing is a common response to rape. She might not have put up a fight.’
I studied the jury for signs of compassion. I got nothing, but they had barely had a chance to absorb the doctor’s words before Price countered with, ‘You’re a doctor giving evidence about the injuries, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not a psychological expert on victim behaviour?’
‘No.’
‘So let’s keep your evidence to your field of expertise, gained in your, what was it, three years of practice, shall we?’
How dare Price attack someone who spent her whole life helping victims? I knew that I could never do her job. ‘To wrestle a woman to the ground in the first place, as Ms Taylor says happened, would still take considerable force, wouldn’t it?’ said Price.
‘Yes,’ replied the doctor.
‘We have all seen Ms Taylor. She is physically fit and feisty, isn’t she?’ The mumsy woman on the jury was nodding in agreement; feistiness clearly wasn’t on her list of attractive qualities. ‘Even a healthy young man would not have been able to overpower her without a tussle. Did you find any bruising consistent with such a struggle?’
‘No.’
‘We have been told that the trousers were pulled aside with some force. The complainant wore nothing but a skimpy G-string underneath. My learned friend suggested that any welts caused by forceful tugging at these garments would have faded by the time you were able to examine Miss Taylor. But the kind of force Miss Taylor described would leave friction burns, would it not?
‘Possibly?’ My patience began to thin. Even I’d been more convincing than this, surely.
‘A friction burn would not, in fact, vanish after four hours, would it?’
‘No.’ Irene Okenedo leaned forward on the witness box, but for support rather than in emphasis. Lean back, I willed her silently. Stand up straight.
‘Were you able to find such marks on the complainant’s body?’
‘No.’
Nathaniel Polglase shook his head in derision. His perfect wig bounced precariously.
‘You also examined my client physically,’ continued Price. ‘A genital swab showed the complainant’s vaginal fluid. But that merely confirms what my client has maintained all along: that sex took place, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
The barrister’s voice had been slowly building in volume throughout this exchange. ‘Did your physical examination of the complainant upturn any forensic evidence that she was forced into sex? There isn’t a single physical injury, externally or internally, that rebuts the suggestion that there was nothing other than spontaneous sex?’
This time, she got the answer she wanted.
‘No,’ said Dr Okenedo. ‘I can’t say that.’
She looked like I felt; like she was watching a ball she’d kicked sail through her own goalposts.
‘Thank you, Dr Okenedo. Your Honour, I have no further questions for this witness.’
As she sat down, Polglase rose, the movement smooth as two kids on a seesaw. ‘Your Honour,’ he said in a voice with the fight knocked out of it, ‘That concludes the case for the prosecution.’
Chapter 19
LAURA
11 May 2000
The day Jamie Balcombe went into the witness box, the sky above Truro was a clear, even blue. The defendant was borne in to the lobby on his usual flotilla before handing himself over to the dock officer.
The journalist with the bobbed hair was back in the atrium. When the court announcer called all parties in Crown versus Balcombe to Court One, Ali winked at her and whispered, ‘Showtime.’
We filed in to the public gallery, Kit and I taking care not to nudge or touch any of the Balcombe party. Someone was wearing an overpowering floral perfume that reignited yesterday’s headache; my temples started to throb. The fiancée, Antonia, sat in the back row. Her outfit was calculatedly, almost parodically virginal, with a black velvet hairband and a frilly collar, little girl’s clothes from a bygone time: she was only a pair of stripy stockings away from Tenniel’s Alice. She craned to see Balcombe as he entered the dock. When he saw her sitting in the back, a hard, furious expression flashed over his face so quickly that I couldn’t trust I had really seen it.
‘Did you see that face he just pulled?’ I asked Kit in a whisper. He looked at Jamie, who appeared solemn and respectful, and shrugged.