Chapter 3
First, do no harm.
But there’s always a moment when it’s too late, the point past which the decision could have been made, the one from which no harm was done. So many smaller choices leading up to that moment, each a nail hammered into something we see only afterwards is a coffin.
Matthew Phillips doesn’t know that this is one of those moments.
As he walks through the door of the High Court, he’s not thinking about the forks ahead, the road less travelled that brought him here.
It’s all behind him – work, wife. Other woman.
The moment the jury citation arrived on his doorstep he knew what he wanted to do.
And now he’s here, every finger crossed that he’ll be one of the lucky ones actually drawn to sit on a jury trial.
The longer the trial the better.
He could have told the court straightaway that he had a holiday booked. The citation said explicitly they’d take that into consideration, he’d be able to move his jury duty to a different date.
He didn’t. Nor did he tell Rosalind he wouldn’t be going away with her on a long-awaited week away, the first holiday without their daughter now that she’s safely packed off to university.
The holiday he’d explicitly promised wouldn’t be cancelled because of work, regardless of what might be happening.
He didn’t discuss it with Rosalind at all.
Nor Olivia. Though he’s not thinking about her just now.
He could have cited work as another reason to be excused.
Matthew can’t be spared. Dominic made it very clear.
Mrs O’Neill is a triple bypass – Adam is far too cack-handed to trust with it, however keen he is – there’s a stent to fit and a dinner that night at the New Club at which he’s due to stand proxy for Dominic, the senior surgeon’s trip to New York with his new girlfriend (brunette, young, the opposite in every way from his soon-to-be ex-wife) taking priority over even such an honour as this invitation.
I can’t believe they won’t let you off. Haven’t you written to them?
Since when were doctors eligible, anyway?
They’re eligible. They’re also eligible for excusal as of right, if they bother to apply to the court within seven days of receiving the citation.
All Matthew needed to do was tell them what he did for a living and he’d be off the hook.
A rare benefit of always being up to his elbows in someone else’s blood.
He didn’t say that to Dominic though. He didn’t say anything.
No point. Dominic never listens, even at the best of times. Too many letters after his name.
Matthew knows perfectly well that in trying to escape, all he’s doing is piling up the problems that will be waiting for him when he returns to work.
He’s not a man who dodges his responsibilities; he takes his job seriously.
It’s always a matter of life or death. But opening the jury citation, he felt like he’d won a golden ticket.
If he’s stuck in court, no one can get to him.
And now he’s here. He waits outside the entrance for his turn to go through security, a queue to the only kind of holiday Matthew can permit himself to take.
A matter of civic duty, with only one responsibility, to determine whether someone is guilty or innocent?
Sign him up, please. It’ll be a welcome break from all the usual shit.
And God knows, he needs a break. He’s so tired .
. . Regardless of the sun, sea and sangria Rosalind was seeking, it was never realistic to expect a man in his position to spend a week lounging about on a beach as though there were nothing more important to be done.
She knows it, too, deep down. Or at least she will, once she’s calmed down. He’ll explain it all to her. Soon.
As soon as he’s through the metal detectors, he sees the court official he’s been told to expect, a man in a suit and a long black gown.
Matthew tells him who he is, shows him the folded piece of paper he pulls from his pocket.
Before Matthew can say anything else, he’s directed off to a small room, nothing in it but a few rows of chairs occupied by a couple of people already waiting.
The room is steadily filling up. All the potential jurors are keeping themselves to themselves, perched on hard seats, eyes fixed to their phones.
Every one a smartphone. Matthew thinks smugly about his basic brick phone, the way he’s avoided the addiction from which the rest of the world suffers.
An analogue man in a digital world, proud of it too.
He’s come prepared with a paperback, a reissue of an old classic with an introduction by a Scottish author he likes.
It seemed appropriate with its crime themes and Edinburgh setting.
But gripping as it is, it fails to capture him. He’s too on edge.
He puts it down to reread the instructions that were sent with the letter, though he’s read them so often he can quote most of it from memory, he’s been so keen to be involved.
He’s held hearts in his hands; Matthew wants to know how it would feel to hold someone’s liberty, too, delving into the depths of someone else’s dark desires for once, rather than constantly being confronted by his own.
He glances round the room, checking out the competition.
There’s around thirty people in the room now.
The chairs are nearly all full, the air beginning to thicken with conflicting perfumes, sweat.
A faint whiff of old cigarette smoke from a woman by the door.
With any luck he won’t get stuck next to her, the ashtray pall sickening him to his core.
He cut someone open the week before last who was on forty cigarettes a day and he could have sworn the same stench came off the man’s greying lungs, seeping through Matthew’s surgical mask, crawling into his mouth.
He shifts from side to side in his seat.
The caffeine from an espresso he drank earlier is jangling through him, his tongue thick and his foot twitching.
One of his eyelids, too. The man sitting opposite him doesn’t look comfortable, either.
He keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs, constantly in motion, as is his neighbour, a woman in her mid-forties with a fair, brittle bob and a large handbag through which she keeps rummaging.
Matthew glances at her only briefly but she catches his eye, her irises a washed-out blue, as pale as her sandy-coloured hair.
‘I’m not going to be able to do this,’ she says.
‘How do you mean?’
‘If they call me, I won’t be able to do this. I can’t. I need to be at home for my daughter. There isn’t anyone else.’
‘How old is your daughter?’
‘Sixteen. But she’s a very young sixteen.’
‘Right,’ he says. The man sitting next to her rolls his eyes as if he’s heard her say this a hundred times already this morning.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Matthew says. ‘You just explain it to them if they call your name.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I’ve told her this,’ her neighbour says. He stands up, stretches, wanders away.
‘He keeps saying it’ll be fine, but I’ve heard they’re strict.
They don’t care about anything other than their precious trials.
What if I can’t get out of it? What if I get caught up in something that goes on for weeks?
What if it’s a child abuse case? I really couldn’t cope with that.
I mean, as a mother it would kill me to have to look at any terrible photographs . . .’ Her voice trails off.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Matthew says again, the words automatic.
He’s looking at her more closely now, a prickle in his scalp.
Her voice might sound jumpy but there’s something calculating in the way her eyes are set, the tip of her nose pink, almost quivering.
Like she’s thinking about potential horrors, relishing the thought. Matthew stands up and moves away too.
A woman in a black gown comes into the room.
‘I’m the Clerk of Court,’ she says. ‘Before we go into the court for the ballot to empanel the jury, I’m going to read some names to you.
If you have knowledge of any of the people that I name, if you know them personally in any way, I’d ask you to speak to me privately.
Attract my attention and I will come over to you. ’
A pause, an intake of breath.
‘Isobel Smyth. Eliza Lawson.’
Girls’ names, not the neds he was expecting. There’s a ripple in the room, a gasp of recognition. Something stirs in the back of his mind, a vague sense of familiarity.
‘Does it count if it’s from the news?’ the awful woman says. Matthew glances over at her, repulsed by the excitement he sees shining in her eyes.
‘Beyond the news,’ the court clerk says. ‘If you know them personally, as I said.’
The woman shakes her head. No one else speaks.
Matthew’s wracking his brain but he can’t place the names he just heard, despite his normally excellent memory.
A headline he’s read, maybe? Not like he ever has time to spend reading the news, surfing the internet.
The others certainly seem to have heard of them, all of them sitting up a little straighter, heads alert instead of slumped down into their phones.
Matthew’ll find out soon enough, if he’s lucky.
Last chance. He could choose to make his excuses, get out of this. It’s not like his job isn’t important. A literal heart surgeon, as his daughter would say.
But he doesn’t want to. He wants the escape of this.
He wants to run away.
‘Please follow me.’ The clerk is now standing by the door.
No one has pulled her aside, all obediently lined up behind her instead.
The sandy-haired woman from before stands beside him, the calculating expression still on her face.
She licks her lips, the tip of her tongue flicking from one side of her mouth to the other.
She wants gore, Matthew can see that now.
She wants to pore over photos of pain, of extremity, twisted limbs and bloodied flesh.
Matthew is about to turn away, but not before she meets his gaze, an eyebrow raised as if in recognition.
For a moment it’s as if she sees his soul, greets it as like meeting like.
Shame writhes in his stomach, a tightening and twisting.
He might know her voyeuristic desires, her longing to wallow in the horrors inflicted by a crime, feast on the suffering of those hurt by it.
But with that one glance, straight into the core of him, she knows that these are his longings, too.