Chapter 45
Are you OK? She sounded so concerned when she asked him how he was earlier.
He can’t even remember now why he had such a strong reaction to her in North Berwick.
He was being overly conscientious, that was all.
He does what he’s told, mostly. Some of the guidelines are there to save lives, after all.
But this isn’t like that. It’s not a game of life and death in the way that heart surgery is.
As with his research into the online discussions about the case, Matthew knows that his judgement is strong, his objectivity one of his most-prized attributes.
He wants to talk to her. He needs to talk to her.
She understands what this case is like. She won’t try and influence what he thinks, not like the other jury members.
All of them are closing their minds now, the evidence cut and dried for them.
Matthew’s worried that he’s doing the same, too.
It would be so easy to make a decision, switch off.
The prosecution has made it very easy for them, a brilliant sheepdog rounding up his obedient herd.
‘My lady, I could start with the police interview now,’ Mr Alexander says, ‘or we could pick up on it tomorrow morning and go through it in its entirety. I’m not keen that we should start and then stop, if your ladyship agrees?’
He wants to finish for the afternoon. Matthew doesn’t blame him.
He’s had enough, too. His head is aching, the blisters sore now and popped from his incessant scratching.
He didn’t have time to apply the cream that he bought and now all he wants to do is go back to the flat, strip off and have a soothing bath before rubbing on a layer of ointment and falling into bed.
Or he’ll try to speak to Gill. She’s inside it but outside, the perfect sounding board. Well, perhaps not perfect. But the only one he’s got.
The judge agrees that they should finish for the day, the defence advocates both nodding their assent, and they head out of the courtroom.
If Matthew hides in the gents for long enough, everyone should have left, and if Gill has any sense of what he’s feeling, any sense at all, she’ll be waiting for him outside, round the corner, somewhere only they will know.
He hasn’t even caught her eye, too paranoid to look over in case of Emma, but he has a strong feeling that she does know what he’s thinking; the same electrical current that jumped out at him from the Ouija board is tingling through him now as if they’re connected by it.
He just knows, if he leaves it long enough, it will all be all right. He’ll find her.
Emma watches him like a hawk all the time that they’re in the jury room gathering their belongings.
No one is keen to do a post-mortem – home is calling, the unexpected hour given to them at the end of the day a bonus that no one wants to waste.
Matthew says his goodbyes, and muttering under his breath about bathrooms, something he ate, makes his way into the gents, locking himself into a cubicle.
Normally he’d kill time by reading a book, but he’s stopped bringing it to court.
That distraction is lost to him. He sits on the closed loo, counting the tiles on the wall, tracing the patterns made by the cracks in the enamel, the stains.
As he stares, a shape starts to emerge, a face, two eyes, ears, a mouth, a nose.
It’s friendly to start with, but the longer that he looks at it, the more that it starts to take on a sinister appearance, the smile on the mouth turning into a jeer.
It’s laughing at him, Matthew can almost hear it.
He knows exactly what it thinks of him, what contempt it holds for him.
You’re just another sheep, going along with the herd.
Doing what you’re told like a good little boy.
Of course you’re going to find Isobel guilty – you’re stupid like the rest of them. Baa, baa, baa.
He shakes his head, trying to stop the noises that are now filling his ears. He’s surrounded by baaing noises, louder and louder. The white tiles around the face have black faces now, eyes staring out at him, muzzles wide as they baa baa baa BAA BAA BAA BAA BAA.
‘Stop it,’ he says. ‘Just stop.’ He jumps to his feet, puts his hand to the cubicle lock to let himself out but the lock is jammed fast, it’s stuck, the sheep heads getting closer and closer with their infernal BAAAA BAAA BAAAA.
‘Everything all right in here?’ a man says.
The lock moves smoothly back in Matthew’s hand, the door opens. He glances at the wall of sheep and it’s nothing but tiles, gleaming white under the fluorescent lights.
‘I’m fine,’ he says as he leaves the cubicle. ‘The lock jammed, that’s all.’
‘I’ll have a look at that,’ the man says.
He’s wearing a janitor’s uniform, a bucket and mop in his hand.
Matthew thanks him, washes his hands automatically.
The urge to wait for Gill has been replaced by an urge to get the hell out of here and to stay as far away as possible.
He’s had enough of this case and everything to do with it.
The cold air hits him as he walks out of the court building.
It’s a jolt, the immediate transition from claustrophobic courtroom to this open space full of tourists and wailing bagpipes.
‘Flower of Scotland’ segues into ‘Amazing Grace’ and the tightness in Matthew’s chest increases as the long-remembered words fill his head to the music.
I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see.
Does he see? Has he been looking at it all the wrong way? Isobel’s guilt seems so overwhelming. He’s no sheep, though. Matthew’s always prided himself on his ability to avoid thinking with the herd. He’s lost friends for it in the past.
A woman with a large umbrella followed by a procession of teenagers bashes into him.
He needs to get out of here, away from the court building, away from the fake tartan and fridge magnets that litter the street where once mobs bayed for the blood of witches as they were hanged, burned.
He looks up and down the Royal Mile and it’s as if the centuries have lifted, the history of it now evident to him, its dark beating heart.
He doesn’t know enough, though. The ghosts of the past might be more apparent, but they’re speaking in a different tongue.
A memory comes back to him of the evidence that they were shown earlier, the book that he’d looked at with such interest. The history of witchcraft trials.
With sudden decision, all thoughts of Gill out of his mind, he heads up towards the bookshop near the end of Chambers Street, determined to read and find out everything that he doesn’t know.
Mission accomplished in the bookshop, he heads into the Museum of Scotland. As he’d paid for the book, the woman behind the till had told him to go and have a look there. ‘If you’re interested in that kind of thing, they’ve got a whole display of it up on the fourth floor.’
Up to the fourth floor. He’s looking at something described as a talisman of protection, a calf’s heart studded full of nails.
Protection or not, his own heart beats uncomfortably fast at the sight of the grotesque item.
He feels a touch to his arm. He freezes.
The devil’s head, the face in the tiles – is this another attempt to trick him?
Make him think he’s seeing, feeling things that don’t exist?
Another tug, firmer this time, and a delicate smell of flowers that eases his fears.
He turns to face Gill, the woman real in front of him, so solid that he could actually put his arms round her and weep.