Chapter 11
Angus has had enough. He doesn’t want to scream any more, he wants to walk down the steps of the witness box, leave the courtroom.
He’s had enough of thinking about this case, running over and over the details.
Dreaming about it night after night. There’s no reason why this should have got into his head so much – he’s seen far worse.
But it’s lingered, stubborn as any miasma of death.
He wants it gone for good. Of course he wants to see the accused girls convicted; he believes in their guilt absolutely.
But for the first time since he started this job, the first time in decades, he just can’t face any more questions, the relentless prodding, the repetition of what why where how that’s drilling into his head.
No escape from Mr Alexander. ‘What did you do next?’
It takes a few seconds for Angus to recover himself.
Finally, ‘I secured the location and put in a call for the forensics team to come in. While there was no sign of visible injury, it was clearly an unexplained death, and I knew that it would require investigating even if it turned out not to be suspicious.’
‘Was there anything else about the scene that led you to a belief that it might not be a death from natural causes?’
‘Not at that stage, no.’ The inadequacy of the words.
‘What happened next?’
‘We had to wait for the forensic pathologist to arrive . . .’ Angus keeps talking, explaining the steps that were taken, the formality of the dance in which they all know the steps, the calls they need to make, the white-suited officers searching the surrounding area with fingertips, just in case.
No obvious cause of death but his gut said it was wrong, even more so after everything else he witnessed, the downright creepiness of it all .
. . He’s not saying that to the court, though.
Keep all the emotion out of it, the fact that rule-driven and procedure-bound as his job might be, a good proportion still relies on intuition.
The worst of it was that he had to keep the girl lying there like that for hours.
The sun was up, its rays gradually warming the morning air, but he touched her hand and it was cold.
Emotion again, but he had to fight the urge to take off his jacket and place it over her.
More than anything, he wanted to close her eyes, push the lids shut with his hand, secure them with coins.
Their wide blue stare seemed to follow him wherever he moved.
Sometimes he even sees them now, an accusation in them. Or a plea.
Passers-by kept flocking round them until he posted two constables in uniform to direct people away, closed off most of the park.
Rubberneckers, all of them, sticking their beaks into a tragedy that was none of their business.
An officious man in cycling gear got right up into his face and shouted that he had a right to pass through, it was his entitlement as a citizen.
Angus had a flash of intense anger but controlled himself.
The guy was exactly the type to register a complaint, make an already difficult job that bit more unbearable.
Sorry, sir, yes, sir, terribly inconvenient, sir, but the man and Angus both knew that he was only a heartbeat away from telling him to fuck off.
There was nothing on the body to identify the girl, not at that stage.
Once all the photographs were taken, they managed to erect a white forensics tent over the body so that there could be some privacy for them all.
That was a relief. It was mid-morning by now and the joggers had been replaced by women with prams complaining that their route to the playground was blocked.
Angus kept his tongue behind his teeth. Hid his snarl.
‘Was there a point when you came to identify the body?’
Mr Alexander’s question breaks through Angus’s reverie. He’s back in the courtroom now, blinking in the light.
‘Not immediately. Once the forensic pathologist had carried out her initial investigations and the body was being transferred on to a stretcher –’ the relief, to see that poor girl off the cold, hard ground – he can still feel it – ‘she asked me to have a look at the logo on the back of the girl’s hoodie.
It showed the name of a sports team, and the name of the nearby school.
St Jude’s, the big boarding school over the road. ’
The advocate depute gestures at the macer and the man goes to a long table on which the items are piled and picks up the hoodie, folded so that its back is visible and sealed in a plastic forensics bag.
He holds it up to the court and shows it to everyone, turning round slowly in a full circle so that the printed words are plain to read.
Then he takes it over to the jury, hands it to the woman who’s sitting in the far left corner and they pass it along between themselves.
Angus scrutinises their faces closely as they do so.
His initial impression of them hasn’t changed too much, pretty normal, though there’s a middle-aged woman in the front row he does not like the look of who grabs hold of the bag and clutches it to her heart for a moment in what looks to Angus like pure mawkish sentimentality.
He could swear she’s mouthing the words that poor girl, but he does his best to ignore it. There’s always one.
The rest of them look more sensible, a nice mix of ethnicities, young and old.
A couple of people who stand out as potential foreman material.
Forewomen too, come to that. An older man in a turban with a distinguished grey beard, a younger man sitting in the middle row wearing a suit with an attentive expression on his face, intelligent eyes.
A woman on the front row who’s leaning back in her seat in whose hooded gaze Angus can read alertness, concentration.
‘When you saw the school name, what did you do?’
‘I sent two officers over to the school to ask if any of their students were missing.’
‘Did they return with a response?’
‘They returned with a teacher. A form teacher, she said. She went into the tent and I heard a cry.’
If he’s honest, he still hears that cry sometimes, behind his nightmare of birds, always waking him at the same point.
‘She came out of the tent. She was very upset, but once she had stopped crying, she introduced herself as Rebecca Waites. She knew who the dead girl was.’
‘Did she give you a name?’
‘Yes, she said the girl was called Christian Shaw.’
‘We’ll hear more about Christian from other witnesses,’ Mr Alexander says. ‘For now, was this the end of your involvement at that time?’
Angus pauses.
‘No, there was something else that happened while we were waiting for forensics to finish up. A member of the public approached us and asked if we would go with her to the shed on her allotment, very close to where the body was found.’
‘Did you go with her?’
‘Yes. The scene was secured and there were two constables in attendance. I followed the woman through a gate at the side of the fence that surrounds the whole area of allotments, and she took me to the top left-hand corner, near to St Jude’s School.
She showed me the shed – there was a padlock hanging undone from a bolt, and the door was ajar. I went inside first.’
Chills in his fingers, prickling in his thumbs. Another thing Angus doesn’t like to think about.
‘What did you find inside?’
He bows his head. Then he tells the court what he saw that day.
What he’ll never get out of his head.