Chapter 32
He’s shaved, showered, but still looks a mess.
Matthew glowers at himself in the bathroom mirror.
There’s something off about his appearance, his face not fully his own.
Even though he’s done everything he needs to scrub up, there’s still a dissolute air to the reflection, the look of a man who’s been living life on the lash.
It’s not fair. He hasn’t drunk any alcohol since the first night of the trial, and he’s slept long enough surely that these bags under his eyes should have diminished.
He smiles at himself, but the man in the mirror does not smile back.
This case is getting to him. That’s the truth of it.
If only it had been a straightforward murder, some gangland shooting over a drugs deal gone wrong.
Not this weird shit that’s taking him places he doesn’t want to go.
Still, this girl’s evidence should be finished soon.
At least they’ll get back to sensible witnesses soon, not ones who believe that this nonsense is real.
A brisk walk up to court, a double espresso from a café on George IV Bridge and he’s himself again, cobwebs blown away.
No more shadows lurking in the corners of his mind.
He greets the other jurors as they file into the jury room, most of them wearing the same expression of resignation that he feels.
They need to get through this, however exhausting.
Sasha is back in the witness box. How much more evidence can she have? Poor Christian is dead now. There’ll be cross-examination, though. Not that Isobel’s advocate will take up much of their time.
‘You told us last night that Christian ran out, and that you returned to school. Can you take us through that again, please?’ Mr Alexander says. He’s straight back to it.
‘I ran out almost immediately – it had gone too far this time. I couldn’t cope with it – I was really scared. I went straight back into school and went back to bed, though I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Did Isobel and Eliza return to the dormitory as well?’
‘Yes, about half an hour later. I didn’t speak to them, though. We didn’t speak about any of it again until after the school had told us.’
‘The school told you what?’
‘We all went to lessons as usual. I saw that Christian didn’t make it to registration, but I thought she might be hiding in the library or something.
I knew I should find her and check that she was OK, but I was still trying to get myself together as well.
After registration I had double English – still no Christian – and at lunchtime they called us all into the hall.
’ She pauses for a moment – she’s clearly finding it difficult.
‘They brought in all of our year. The headmistress was there and she told us that Christian had been found dead, and that while they didn’t know if there were any suspicious circumstances, the police were looking into it.
Anyone who knew anything could come and talk to her, day or night. ’
‘What was the reaction to that announcement?’
‘What you’d think.’ A note of scorn creeps into Sasha’s voice.
‘Gasps, cries of shock. Lots of hysterics. Three girls from the netball team had panic attacks – there was lots of hyperventilating. Audrey from Year Eleven started screaming and wailing, saying that she was scared. None of them were friends with Christian when she was alive – Audrey always looked down her nose at her. It was such bullshit. They were all being attention seekers.’
‘How did you feel?’
Sasha shakes her head once, twice. Opens her mouth, closes it again.
‘I felt like I wanted to die.’
After this Sasha’s voice becomes very quiet. The judge has to ask her to speak up at least twice while she rattles through the next tranche of evidence. Matthew can sense her pain.
Neither the police nor school had suspected anything of the girls – not to begin with, at least. Sasha thought that they should go and talk to someone, tell them what they had been doing, but neither Isobel nor Eliza would allow it.
‘“They won’t understand,” that’s what Isobel kept saying.
“They’ll think we did something to cause it, when all we were doing was telling her what we’d been told.
”’ Sasha pauses, swallows. ‘They were pretending that they hadn’t lunged at her with the knife, and I went along with that when I talked to them.
I felt so guilty – I knew I needed to tell someone what we’d been doing.
I was so scared. If they were prepared to do that to Christian, what would they do to me? To my mum?’
She promised them that she wouldn’t tell anyone what they’d been doing. For a week or so, this had been good enough, or so she thought. But it turned out that Isobel and Eliza had different plans.
‘We had an inset day,’ she says. ‘A day off school while the teachers did some course. I couldn’t go and see Mum as she was in the US that week, so I agreed to have a day out with the girls. They said they had a surprise planned, a special outing. I wasn’t excited, though. I was terrified.’
‘Where did they take you?’ the advocate depute says.
‘We went to North Berwick, on the train.’
‘Was there any particular significance to North Berwick?’
Sasha nods. ‘Yes. It was an important place in the history of Scottish witchcraft. It’s where some of the witches confessed to meeting the Devil.’
The advocate depute nods as if Sasha has said something rational. Matthew is seething. Why can’t the man tell her to stop talking shit? But a faint drumbeat of dread thrums underneath his outrage, a pair of amber eyes staring at him unblinking.
‘I didn’t think about it until we got to the harbour.
There’s a ruin there of the old church, that’s where they said it all happened, where they held the Witches’ Sabbath, kissed the Devil’s behind.
Isobel held me by the wrist – she was hurting me, I told her to get off but she just gripped harder.
Then she said she’d made a deal with the Devil.
She’d promised him that nothing would be said as long as I kept my mouth shut.
But if I didn’t, he’d get me. He’d get my mum. ’
‘Did you believe her?’
‘I believe that she meant to hurt me if I didn’t keep quiet. By any means possible.’
Stick applied, the girls had given her some carrot by way of lobster and chips from the shack beside the harbour.
They’d eaten their food overlooking the sea, the boats bobbing up and down as the tide came in.
Bass Rock was in the distance, faint specks of birds to be seen swirling around it.
But the peace didn’t last. When they got back to school, they were told that Christian was found to have died of a heart attack, and that it was thought that something had terrified her in the moments preceding her death.
‘I felt so guilty when I heard,’ Sasha says.
‘I knew what it was. They’d been building up to this for months, telling her she was going to die.
Then they threatened her. Christian was terrified.
That’s why she ran away – between the running and the fear, it’s obvious why she had the heart attack.
It would never have happened otherwise. I’m sure of it – it was so obvious to me.
I said to the girls we needed to come forward.
It wasn’t fair on Christian’s parents. But that’s when everything got even worse. Way worse.’