Innocent Graves

I

Wood creaked as those present in court got to their feet one rainy April day. Judge Simmonds entered, resplendent in scarlet moire and white linen. He was a wizened old man with reptilian eyes buried deep in wrinkles and folds of flesh. His face was expressionless as he looked around the courtroom before sitting.

The benches groaned as everyone in the crowded room sat down. Owen noticed that the courtroom smelled of the same lemon-scented polish his mother used to use; it made him feel sad.

“The prisoner will stand.”

So this was it. Owen stood.

“Is your name Owen Pierce?” asked the Clerk of the Court.

“It is.”

The clerk then read out the indictment and asked Owen how he pleaded.

“Not guilty,” Owen answered, as firmly and confidently as he could manage with all eyes on him.

He scrutinized the jury as he spoke: seven men and five women, all dressed for a day at the office. A pudgy man with a slack, flabby jaw looked at him with something like awe. A pursed-lipped young woman wouldn’t meet his eyes at all, but looked down at her hands folded in her lap. Most of them at least glanced at him in passing. Some were nervous; others looked as if they had already made up their minds.

It was irrational, he knew, but he decided to pick one of them to be his barometer throughout the trial, one whose expressions he would chart to tell how the case was going-for or against him. Not the frowning woman in the powder-blue suit, nor the balding chap who reminded him of his insurance agent; not the conventionally pretty girl with the pageboy cut, nor the burly wrestler-type with his brick-red neck bulging out of his tight collar. It was difficult to find someone.

At last, he decided on a woman; for some reason, it had to be a woman. She was in her late thirties, he guessed, with a moon-shaped face and short mousy hair. She had a wide red slash of a mouth and large eyes.

But it wasn’t her physical appearance so much as her aura that caused him to pick her out. For some reason, he decided, this woman was good and honest. What was more, she could tell the truth from lies. At the moment, she looked puzzled and confused to find herself in such a frightening role, but she would, he knew, as soon as the trial progressed, listen carefully, weigh, judge and decide. Her decision would be the right one, and he would be able to tell from her expression what it was. Yes, he would keep a close eye on her. He would call her “Minerva.”

Almost before Owen realized it, Jerome Lawrence, QC, had launched into his opening address. Lawrence was a small, dark-complexioned man with beady, restless black eyes and a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, shiny as shoe-polish on his cheeks and chin. Somehow, he seemed to fit perfectly into his robes, looking even more like a bat ready to flap its wings and take off into the night than anyone else in the room. Like Shirley Castle, he spoke with his hands a lot, and his robe swished about in a most distracting way.

“The Crown shall seek to prove,” Lawrence said in his oiliest public-school voice, “that the accused is guilty of the most heinous, the most despicable, brutal, inhuman crime of all-the murder of a child, an innocent, a mere sixteen-year-old girl with her whole life before her.”

And for the rest of the day, Owen could only listen, open-mouthed, to the depiction of himself as a barely human monster.

Though the parade of witnesses began dramatically enough, with Rebecca Charters tearfully recounting how she discovered Deborah Harrison’s body, several things became clear to him in the first days. Probably the first and foremost of these was that you could be bored even at your own murder trial.

Witnesses came and went, people he had never met, people who didn’t know him: vicars, shopkeepers, teachers, schoolgirls, policemen, pub landlords. Some of them seemed to spend hours in the box for no reason Owen could think of. Jerome Lawrence or Shirley Castle questioned most of them, but sometimes their juniors took over.

With unfailing regularity one lawyer or another would raise points of law that meant the jury had to be sent out, sometimes for hours, and all sides seemed to like nothing better than the kind of delay that meant an early adjournment for the day. Also, there were one or two days off due to illness of a jury member and another for a family bereavement. Every night, without fail, Owen was shipped back to his little cell at Armley Jail. He was becoming so used to it by now that he almost thought of it as home. He had forgotten what his real home looked like.

As far as Owen could tell, things seemed to be going quite well over the first few weeks. Shirley Castle made mincemeat of the policeman with the jug-ears for not explaining why he was visiting Owen in the first place. Detective Inspector Stott came out looking like a member of the Gestapo.

By the time Detective Chief Inspector Banks was called, Owen had lost track of the days.

II

“In the same situation, Chief Inspector, do you think you would bother to mention everyone you saw on the streets during a certain period?”

Banks shrugged. It was his second day giving evidence and Shirley Castle was cross-examining him. “I would hope I would do my duty and try to recall everything that happened around the crucial time,” he answered finally.

“But you are a policeman, Chief Inspector. You have special training. Such facts and fine details are part of your job. I’m sure I wouldn’t even remember most of the people I passed in the street. Nor, I imagine, would most members of the jury.” And here, Shirley Castle paused long enough to look over at the jury. Most of them seemed to agree with her, Banks thought. “Yet you expect Mr. Pierce to remember every face, every detail,” she went on. “I ask you again, Chief Inspector, do you really think this is reasonable?”

“Perhaps not on a busy thoroughfare at rush hour,” said Banks, “but this was a foggy night in a quiet suburb. Yes, I think I would remember if I had seen a particular person. And Mr. Pierce remembered as soon as-”

“That’s enough, Chief Inspector. You have answered my question.”

Banks couldn’t help but allow himself a slight feeling of satisfaction when he saw Shirley Castle reel from his answer. She had made a small mistake; she hadn’t already known the answer to the question she asked.

She hurried on. “Now, as Mr. Sung, proprietor of the Peking Moon restaurant, has already testified, and as my learned friend brought out during his examination-in-chief, Mr. Pierce used his credit card to pay for his meal there. If the timing of events is correct-and I stress if-this would have occurred shortly after the murder of Deborah Harrison, would it not?”

“Yes.”

“Now, in your professional experience, Chief Inspector, would you not say that a criminal, someone who has just committed an attack of the most vile and brutal kind, would be a little more careful to cover his tracks?”

“Most criminals aren’t that clever,” said Banks. “That’s why they get caught.”

The members of the gallery laughed.

“But my client is not stupid,” she went on, ignoring the interruption. “It is hardly likely that he would go and eat Chinese food and pay for it with a credit card after murdering someone, now, is it? Not to mention do it all wearing a bright orange anorak. Why would he be so foolish as to draw attention to himself in such an obvious way if he had committed the crime of which he is accused?”

“Perhaps he was distraught,” Banks answered. “Not thinking clearly. Mr. Sung did say he was talking to-”

“‘Not thinking clearly,’” she repeated, with exactly the right tone of disdain. “Is it not a fact, Chief Inspector, that perpetrators of such random crimes are usually, in fact, thinking very clearly indeed? That they rarely get caught, unless by accident? That they take great care to avoid discovery?”

Banks fiddled with his tie. He hated having it fastened up and could only bear it if he kept the top button of his shirt undone. “There are certain schools would say that, yes. But a criminal’s behavior is not easily predictable. If it were, we’d have an easier job on our hands.” He smiled at the jury; one or two of them smiled back.

“Come on, Chief Inspector Banks, you can’t have it both ways. Either they’re stupid and easy to catch, as you said earlier, or they’re unpredictable and impossible to catch. Which is it?”

“Some are stupid; some are not. As I said before, murderers don’t always act rationally. This wasn’t a rational crime. There’s no way of predicting what the killer would do, or why he did things the way he did.”

“But aren’t you in the business of reconstructing crimes, Chief Inspector?”

“Nowadays we leave that to ‘Crimewatch.’”

Laughter rose up from the gallery. Judge Simmonds admonished Banks for his flippancy.

“My point is,” Shirley Castle went on without cracking a smile, “that you seem to know so very little of what went on in St. Mary’s graveyard, or indeed, of what kind of criminal you’re dealing with. Isn’t that true?”

“We know that Deborah Harrison was strangled with the strap of her school satchel and that her clothing was rearranged.”

“But isn’t it true that you simply picked on the first person seen in the area whom you thought fit the bill, that Owen Pierce was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“I’d say it was Deborah Harrison who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Were there not certain elements of the crime scene that struck you as odd?”

“What elements?”

Shirley Castle consulted her notes. “As I understand it,” she said, “the victim’s school satchel was open. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“It could have come open during the struggle.”

“Hardly,” scoffed Shirley Castle. “It was fastened by two good-quality buckles. We’ve tested it, believe me, and it won’t open unless someone deliberately unfastens it.”

“Perhaps the murderer wanted something from her.”

“Like what, Chief Inspector? Surely you’re not suggesting robbery? From a schoolgirl’s satchel?”

“It’s possible. But I-”

“But what money could a schoolgirl have worth stealing? I understand Deborah Harrison had six pounds in her purse when she was found. If robbery were the motive, why not take that too? And wouldn’t it make more sense to take the entire satchel? Why hang around the crime scene any longer than necessary?”

“Which question do you want me to answer first?”

Shirley Castle scowled. “Why would Deborah Harrison’s killer remain at the scene and go through her satchel rather than take it with him?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was looking for a trophy of some kind. Something personal to the victim.”

“But was anything missing?”

“We don’t know. No-one knew exact-”

“You don’t know. We have heard a great deal of evidence,” she went on, “placing Mr. Pierce in the vicinity of St. Mary’s at the time of the crime, but let me ask you this, Chief Inspector: did anyone actually see Mr. Pierce enter St. Mary’s graveyard?”

“He was seen-”

“A simple yes or no will suffice.”

Banks was silent a moment, then said, “No.”

“Is it not also possible, Chief Inspector, that Deborah went somewhere else first and returned to the graveyard later, after Mr. Pierce had gone to the Peking Moon?”

“It’s possible. But-”

“And that Deborah Harrison was murdered by someone she knew, perhaps because of something she was carrying in her satchel?”

Exactly what I thought at first, Banks agreed. “I think that’s a rather far-fetched explanation,” he said.

“More far-fetched than charging Mr. Pierce here with murder?” She pointed at Pierce theatrically. “While you were busy harassing my client, did you pursue the investigation in other directions?”

“We continued with our inquiries. And we didn’t har-”

She sniffed. “You continued with your inquiries. What does that mean?”

“We tried to find out as much about the victim and her movements as possible. We tried to discover, through talking to friends and family, if she had any enemies, anyone who would want to kill her. We collected all the trace evidence we could find and had it analyzed as quickly as possible. We found nothing concrete until we came up with Mr. Pierce.”

“And after Mr. Pierce’s name came up?”

Banks knew that most investigations tend to wind down once the police think they’ve got their man. And much as he would have liked to pursue other possibilities, there was other work to do, and there was also Chief Constable Riddle. “I continued other lines of inquiry until it became app-”

“You continued other lines of inquiry? As soon as you first interviewed him, you decided on Mr. Pierce’s guilt, didn’t you?”

“Objection!”

“Sustained. Ms. Castle, please stop insulting the witness.”

Shirley Castle bowed. “My apologies, Your Honor, Chief Inspector Banks. Let me rephrase the question: what was your attitude to Mr. Pierce from the start?”

“We decided he was a definite suspect, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we proceeded to build up our case against him in the usual, accepted manner.”

“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” Shirley Castle said, sitting down and trying to look bored. “No further questions.”

“Then I suggest,” said Judge Simmonds, “that we adjourn for the weekend. Court will be in session again at ten-thirty Monday morning.”

III

On Monday morning, it happened: exactly what Owen had been fearing.

When he tried to reconstruct the sequence of events later, back in his cell, he couldn’t be sure whether Jerome Lawrence had actually managed to call out Michelle’s name before Shirley Castle jumped to her feet. Either way, Judge Simmonds listened patiently to the objection, then he dismissed the jury for yet another voir dire.

What followed was a legal wrangle that Owen, educated as he was, could only half follow, so mired was it in tortured English and in citing of precedents. As far as he could gather, though, both sides put their points of view to the judge. Jerome Lawrence argued that Michelle’s evidence was relevant because it established a pattern of violent behavior that had its natural outcome in Deborah Harrison’s murder, and Shirley Castle countered that the proposed evidence was nothing but vindictive fantasy from an unreliable witness, that it proved nothing, and that its prejudicial effect by far outweighed any probative value it might have.

Owen held his breath as Judge Simmonds paused to consider the arguments; he knew that his entire future might be hanging in the balance here. His mouth felt dry; his jaw clenched; his stomach churned. If Simmonds disallowed the evidence, Owen knew, there could be no reporting of what had gone on in the jury’s absence. Only a very few people would ever know about what had happened between him and Michelle. If Simmonds admitted it, though, the whole world would know. And the jury. He crossed his fingers so tightly they turned white.

Finally, Simmonds puckered his lips, frowned, and declared the evidence inadmissible.

Owen let out his breath. The blood roared in his ears, and he felt his whole body relax: jaw, stomach, fingers. He thought he was going to faint.

Shirley Castle flashed him a discreet thumbs-up sign and a quick smile of victory. The jury was brought back in, and Jerome Lawrence called his next witness.

Dr. Charles Stewart Glendenning made an imposing figure. Tall, with a full head of white hair and a nicotine-stained mustache, the Home Office pathologist carried himself erectly and had just the right amount of Scottish burr in his accent to make him come across as a no-nonsense sort of person. The serious expression on his face, which had etched its lines over the years, added to the look of the consummate expert witness.

He entered the witness-box as if it were his second home and spoke the oath. Owen noticed that he didn’t rest his hand on a copy of the New Testament and that the wording was slightly different from everyone else’s. An atheist, then? Not surprising, Owen thought, given the evidence of man’s inhumanity to man he must have seen over the years.

After spending what remained of the morning establishing Dr. Glendenning’s credentials and responsibilities, Jerome Lawrence finally began his examination-in-chief after lunch.

“Rebecca Charters has already described finding the body and calling the police,” he said. “Could you please describe, Doctor, the condition of the body at the scene?”

“The victim lay on her back. Her blouse was open, her brassiere torn and her breasts exposed. Her skirt had been lifted above her waist, exposing the pubic region, in the manner typical of a sex murder. Her underwear was missing. I understand it was later found nearby. On closer examination of the face, I noticed a reddish-purple color and traces of bleeding from the nose, consistent with death by asphyxia. There was also a small, fresh scratch by her left eye.”

“Could you tell us what you discovered at the post-mortem?”

“The girl was-had been-in good general health, to be expected in a girl of sixteen. There were no signs of toxicity in her organs. On further examination, I concluded as I had earlier, that death was caused by asphyxia due to strangulation.”

“Would you care to elaborate on asphyxia for the members of the jury, Doctor?” Jerome Lawrence went on.

Glendenning nodded briefly. “Some strangulation victims die from vagal inhibition, which means heart stoppage caused by pressure on the carotid arteries in the neck.” He touched the spot beside his jaw. “The victim in this case, however, died because of obstruction to the veins in her neck and the forcing of the tongue against the back of throat, cutting off her air intake. There are certain telltale signs. People who die from vagal inhibition are pale, those who die from asphyxia have reddish-purple coloring. There are also petechial hemorrhages, little pinpricks of blood in the whites of the eyes, eyelids, facial skin. Contrary to popular fiction, the tongue does not protrude.”

Owen glanced over at Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison, the victim’s parents, who had attended almost every day. Lady Harrison turned to her husband and let her head touch his shoulder for a moment. Both were pale.

Owen felt he glimpsed, at that moment, the cold-blooded logic of the prosecution’s strategy, like the dramatic structure of a play or a novel, and it sent a chill up his spine.

After hearing Rebecca Charters’s emotional account of finding the body and then Banks’s solid, professional testimony about the police investigation, if things had gone according to plan the jury would next have heard Michelle’s testimony. They would have seen only a sweet, innocent young girl in the witness box and heard how this monster in the dock had attempted to strangle her. (He was certain she would have touched her long, tapered fingers to her throat as she described the attack.) Then they would have heard the gruesome medical details of the effects of strangulation. And what would they have thought of Owen after all that?

“Thank you, Doctor,” Lawrence went on. “Could you tell, in this case, how the victim was strangled?”

“Yes. With a ligature. A satchel strap, in fact.”

“And was this found close to the scene?”

“Yes. It was still attached to the victim’s satchel.”

“In your expert opinion, do you have any reason to doubt it was used as the murder weapon?”

“None at all. We carried out a number of tests. The satchel strap matched the indentations in the victim’s throat perfectly. It was angled slightly upwards, cutting into the skin at the bottom part, indicating that she had been strangled from behind and that her attacker was taller than her. There was also blood around the edge of the strap.”

“How much taller was the killer?” asked Jerome Lawrence.

“The victim was five foot six, so I would put the attacker at least six inches taller, perhaps more.”

“And the accused is six foot two, as has already been established?”

“So I believe, yes.”

“Would it have required a great deal of strength?”

“A certain amount, yes. But nothing superhuman.”

“Would the manner of attack make it difficult for the victim to fight off her attacker?”

“Almost impossible. There wouldn’t be much she could do. She might manage a wild scratch, of course, or a backwards kick to the shins with her heel.”

“You mentioned a ‘wild scratch.’ Would this be possible if she were strangled from behind?”

“Oh, yes. It’s quite conceivable she might reach behind and scratch her assailant.”

“Was it possible to tell whether she had been killed in St. Mary’s churchyard or elsewhere?”

“Yes, by the extent of post-mortem lividity, such as it was. This-” he turned to explain to the jury without Lawrence’s prompting, “means that when the heart stops, the blood simply obeys the force of gravity and sinks to the lowest part of the body. It gathers and stains at points where the flesh is not in contact with the ground. Parts of the body that do remain in contact with the ground will remain white, of course, because the pressure will not allow the blood to settle in the capillaries. In this case, the staining at the back of the neck, small of the back and backs of the legs indicated that the deceased had been lying in the same position since her death. Also, as lividity was in its early stages, she couldn’t have been there for very long. It generally begins about thirty minutes to one hour after death, develops fully between three and four hours and becomes fixed between eight and ten hours. The lividity was still faint, and blanching still occurred.”

“Could you explain blanching for the benefit of the court?”

“Certainly. Before the blood coagulates in the vessels, if you touch an area of lividity it will turn white. When you remove your fingertip, it will resume its lividity. After four or five hours the discoloration hardens, becomes clotted, and pressure will not cause blanching.”

“And what does this tell you?”

“Amongst other things, it helps determine time of death. As I said, lividity had only just started and there was no sign of rigor mortis, which usually begins in the eyelids about two or three hours after death. I also took temperature readings, and based on a mathematical calculation, I came up with time of death somewhere between five o’clock and when she was discovered.”

“No earlier?”

“In my opinion, that would be very unlikely indeed.”

“And as the victim’s friend Megan Preece reports parting with Deborah near the bridge at six o’clock, and the evidence of Daniel Charters places Owen-”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.” Judge Simmonds pointed with a bony finger. “Mr. Lawrence, behave yourself. You ought to know better.”

Lawrence bowed. “Your Honor. Thank you, Dr. Glendenning. I have no further questions.”

Shirley Castle stood up to cross-examine. “I only have a couple of questions, Doctor,” she said briskly. “Minor points, really. I shan’t keep you long.”

Dr. Glendenning inclined his head and smiled at her in a gentlemanly way.

“I assume you supervised the collection of oral, vaginal and anal swabs at the crime scene?” Shirley Castle began.

“I did.”

“And did you find any traces of semen?”

“None.”

“None at all?”

“That is correct.”

“In your post-mortem examination, did you discover any signs of forcible intercourse?”

“I found no signs of any intercourse at all, forcible or otherwise.”

Shirley Castle frowned. “Yet you referred to this as a ‘sex crime’ in your earlier testimony. Does that absence of evidence not strike you as unusual in such a crime?”

“Not really. There are many kinds of sex crimes. The way the clothing was disturbed was reminiscent, in my experience, of a sex-crime scene.”

“And we have already heard your enviable credentials as an expert on such matters, Doctor. How accurate is your estimate of time of death?”

“It’s always an approximate business,” Glendenning admitted. “There are so many variables.”

“Could you give the court an example of how you might determine time of death?”

“Certainly. As I have already indicated, there are a number of factors, such as rigor mortis, lividity and stomach contents, but body temperature is often the most accurate. If the temperature at the time of death is normal-thirty-seven degrees centigrade-and it takes the body twenty-four to thirty-six hours after death to fall to the temperature of the environment, then one can make a back-calculation to the time of death.”

“Twenty-four to thirty-six hours,” said Shirley Castle, frowning towards the jury. “That’s between a day and a day and a half. That’s a rather broad margin for error, isn’t it?”

Glendenning smiled. “I did say it was an approximate business.”

“Yes, but you didn’t say how wildly inaccurate it was.”

“Objection.”

“Sustained, Mr. Lawrence.”

Shirley Castle bowed. “My apologies. Doctor, how long would it have taken Deborah Harrison’s body temperature to reach that of the environment?”

“Well, again it’s hard to say precisely. She was healthy, normal, slim, partially unclothed, and it was a moist evening, with a temperature of ten degrees centigrade. I’d say quicker rather than later.”

“Say twenty-eight hours? Twenty-six?”

“Around there.”

“Around there. Very well. Does the body cool at an even, steady rate?”

“As a matter of fact, no. It falls in a sigmoid curve.”

“And how do you arrive at time of death from temperature?”

“Glaister’s formula. In this case the victim’s temperature was thirty-five point five degrees centigrade. One subtracts this from the normal temperature of thirty-seven degrees and multiplies by one point one. The answer, in this case, is one point six-five hours. Taking the temperature of the environment into account, that becomes between one and two hours before I arrived on the scene.”

“What might affect the rate at which temperature falls?”

“It’s hard to say exactly. A number of factors.”

Shirley Castle took a deep breath and leaned forward. “But it is not hard to say, is it Dr. Glendenning, that thin people cool quicker than fat ones, and Deborah Harrison was thin. On the other hand, healthy people cool more slowly than weak ones, and Deborah Harrison was healthy. Naked bodies cool quicker than clothed ones, yet Deborah Harrison was only partially clothed. Bodies cool quicker in water than in air, yet in the humidity of the fog Deborah Harrison was subject to both. Am I right?”

“These are all relevant factors,” admitted Glendenning.

“According to evidence already given,” Shirley Castle went on, “Deborah was last seen alive at six o’clock, which rules out her being murdered earlier, wouldn’t you say?”

Glendenning raised his eyebrows. “I would say so, yes.”

“But the body was discovered by Rebecca Charters at six forty-five. Is that correct?”

“I understand so.”

“And the first police officers arrived at six fifty-nine?”

“Objection.”

“Yes, Mr. Lawrence?” Judge Simmonds asked.

“I’d like to know where Ms. Castle is going with this line of questioning, Your Honor.”

“The defense requests Your Honor’s indulgence. This will become clear in a short while.”

“Make it fast, Ms. Castle.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Deborah Harrison was last seen at about six o’clock, and her body was discovered in St. Mary’s graveyard at six forty-five. That leaves forty-five minutes during which she could have been murdered. Now according to your evidence as regards time of death, Doctor, she could have been murdered later than six-thirty, couldn’t she?”

Glendenning nodded. “Yes, she could have been.”

“In fact, death could have occurred even as late as six-forty, couldn’t it?”

“Yes. But I believe Rebecca Charters heard-”

“Please, Doctor. You should know better than that. Rebecca Charters has already admitted that what she heard could easily have been some animal or another. Now, given that nobody actually saw Owen Pierce enter St. Mary’s graveyard, and given that time of death could have occurred as late as six-forty, when Mr. Pierce was already in the Peking Moon, there is no direct evidence placing him at the exact scene of the crime at the exact time the crime was committed, is there, Doctor?”

“This is not-”

“And as no-one saw either Deborah Harrison or Owen Pierce enter the graveyard,” Shirley Castle charged on before anyone could stop her, “then it follows that Deborah could have gone somewhere else first, couldn’t she?”

“It’s not my place to speculate on such matters,” said Glendenning. “I’m here to testify on matters of medical fact.”

“Ah, yes,” said Shirley Castle. “Facts such as time of death. It’s a lot of leeway to give the definition of a fact, isn’t it, Doctor?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained. Will you get on with it, Ms. Castle?”

“I have no further questions, Your Honor,” she said, and sat down.

Very clever, thought Owen, then he turned to watch the juror who looked like a wrestler try to scratch an egg stain off his club tie.

IV

A week later, after more legal arguments and a succession of dull, minor scientific witnesses, from the fingerprint man to the officer responsible for keeping track of the forensic exhibits, Owen watched Shirley Castle intimidate the hair expert, who ended up retreating into scientific jargon and admitting that it was virtually impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that hair found on a victim’s or suspect’s clothing could be positively matched to its source.

The final prosecution witness was Dr. Tasker, biologist and DNA expert, a thin-faced, thin-haired academic of about forty, Owen guessed. He seemed to know his stuff, but there was a tentativeness about his delivery that threw Jerome Lawrence off kilter occasionally.

Owen wondered if the jury were as bored as he was by the interminable descriptions of autorads and enzyme scissors, by the testimony as to the scientific validity of polymerase chain reactions and the meaning of short tandem repeats, by the seeming hours spent describing the extreme care taken against the possibility of contamination of laboratory samples.

When Shirley Castle stood up to cross-examine the next afternoon, Tasker seemed a little in awe of her, and if Owen were not mistaken, perhaps a mite smitten, too. Maybe she realized this. Her tone, as she began, was relaxed, friendly, a little flirtatious even.

“Dr. Tasker,” she said with a smile, “I’m sure the court was most impressed yesterday with your account of DNA analysis. You would seem to have proved, without blinding us all with science, that the DNA derived from the bloodstain on Mr. Pierce’s anorak was indeed the DNA of Deborah Harrison. Is this true?”

Tasker nodded. “The DNA extracted from the dried bloodstain on Mr. Pierce’s anorak was fifty million times more likely to be hers than anyone else’s, and the DNA taken from the tissue sample discovered under the victim’s fingernail was fifty million times more likely to be Owen Pierce’s than anyone else’s. All we can say is how rare such a result is compared to the rest of the population.”

“Still,” smiled Shirley Castle. “Those are impressive odds, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes.” Tasker beamed. “I certainly wouldn’t bet against them.”

“Almost beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Shirley Castle said, “And that is, after all, what this is all about, isn’t it? However, Dr. Tasker, there are one or two points you might be able to clarify for me.”

Owen swore that Tasker almost flushed with pleasure. “Of course. It would be a pleasure.”

Shirley Castle acknowledged the compliment with a slight tilt of her head. “How much of Deborah Harrison’s blood did you find on my client’s anorak?”

“A small amount.”

“Could you please give the court some sense of how much that might be?”

Tasker smiled. “Well, not a great deal. But enough for polymerase chain reaction analysis, as I described earlier.”

“Yes, but how much? A thimble full?”

“Oh, good heavens, no, not that much.”

“As much, then, as might smear from a small cut or scratch?”

“Mmm. About that, yes.”

“A pinprick?”

“Possibly.”

“In other words, a spot of blood about the size of a pinhead. Am I right?”

“Perhaps a little bigger than-”

“Approximately the size of a pinhead?”

“I suppose so. About that, yes. But, as I said-”

“Now the court has already heard Dr. Glendenning testify that there was a small scratch beside Deborah Harrison’s left eye. Is this the kind of wound that might produce a similar amount of blood if some fabric brushed against it?”

Tasker shifted in his seat. “Well, I didn’t see the scratch so I can’t say for certain, but it was a small amount, definitely commensurate with a minor injury such as the one you describe.”

“Where did you find this blood?”

“On the accused’s anorak.”

“Where on the accused’s anorak?”

“On the left arm. Near the shoulder.”

“Now we have already heard that Deborah Harrison was five foot six inches tall and Owen Pierce is six foot two. Would this put Deborah Harrison’s left eye in the region of his upper arm?”

Tasker shrugged. “I suppose so. I couldn’t say exactly.”

“If Your Honor would allow me,” Shirley Castle addressed Judge Simmonds, “I would like the opportunity to demonstrate to the court that this is, in fact, so.”

Owen could see her holding her breath. Most judges, she had told him, hate anything that smacks overly of theatrics. She must, however, have convinced him that she was following an important line of questioning, because he granted his permission after hardly any hesitation at all.

It was a simple enough thing to do. A man and a young girl were brought in-where Shirley had found them, Owen had no idea-the girl markedly shorter than the man. They were officially measured at five foot six and six foot two, then stood side by side. The girl’s eye came level with the upper part of the man’s arm. Shirley Castle thanked them and continued.

“Was that the only blood you discovered on my client’s clothing?”

“Yes.”

Shirley Castle called for Owen’s anorak to be shown to the jury. One feature, she pointed out, was the zippered pocket at the outside top of the sleeve. “Did you, Dr. Tasker, find any of the girl’s blood on or around this zip?”

“Yes. In the vicinity.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“It was right at the end of the zip, actually.”

“Would you point to the spot on the exhibit, please?”

Tasker did so.

“The edge of the metal teeth is fairly sharp there,” Shirley Castle went on. “Does that not indicate to you that the girl may have scraped her cheek on the zip when she collided with Mr. Pierce after running backwards in the fog?”

“It could have got there in any number of ways.”

“But it could have got there in the way I suggest?”

“Yes, but-”

“And that was all the blood you found?”

“I’ve already said that. I-”

“Not very much, is it?”

“As I said, it was enough for PCR analysis.”

“Ah, yes: PCR, STR, DNA, ‘genetic fingerprinting.’ Magic words, these days. And what does that prove, Dr. Tasker?”

“That the blood on the defendant’s anorak is fifty million times-”

“Yes, yes. We’ve already been through all that, haven’t we? But the defense has never denied that it is Deborah Harrison’s blood. She bumped into my client and scratched herself on the zip of his anorak. Would you admit that the amount and location of the blood you found bear out that explanation?”

“I suppose so.”

“You suppose so. Did you find any traces of blood on the cuffs of the anorak?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t you expect to if the victim were bleeding from the nose as the accused strangled her?”

“Perhaps.”

“So he might be expected to get blood on his cuff if he did indeed strangle her from behind with the satchel strap?”

“Well, it’s possible, yes, but-”

“And did you find any blood lower down his sleeve?”

“No. But she could have twisted side-”

“Thank you, Dr. Tasker. You have answered my question. Now, given the life-and-death struggle that must have taken place, it would have been difficult to avoid some close contact, wouldn’t it?”

“Presumably.”

“And did you test the rest of anorak for blood?”

“Yes. We carried out a thorough examination.”

“But you found no blood other than this infinitesimal amount high on the sleeve, at the edge of the metal teeth on the zip?”

“No.”

The infatuation seemed to be on the wane, Owen noticed. Tasker didn’t even want to look Shirley Castle in the eye now. Owen glanced over at “Minerva,” who was regarding the doctor sternly. No more would she believe the “scientific tests have proved” commercials, if, indeed, she ever had.

“Dr. Tasker, do you know where Deborah Harrison’s hairs-what we have since learned only might in fact be Deborah Harrison’s hairs-were found on Mr. Pierce’s anorak?”

“No, that’s not my-”

“Then let me tell you. They were found on the upper left arm and on the upper left arm only. In fact, all three of her hairs were found in the teeth of Mr. Pierce’s zip, by the pinpoint bloodstain. What do you have to say to that?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my field.”

“Not your field? But would you not say it’s consistent with the scenario I just outlined for you? A minor collision?”

“I have already agreed that is a possible explanation.”

“How much blood and skin did you find under the victim’s fingernail?”

“A small amount. But enough for-”

“Consistent with what might be deposited from a light scratch?”

“Yes.”

“If Deborah Harrison had been fighting for her life, wouldn’t you have expected to find more, in your professional judgment?”

“Possibly. But again, it’s not my-”

“I understand that, Dr. Tasker. But we can’t have it both ways, can we? Either she did get the opportunity to defend herself by scratching, in which case she came away with a pitiful amount of skin, or she didn’t. Which is it to be, in your opinion?”

Owen saw Lawrence on the verge of an objection, but he seemed to think better of it and sank down again.

“It could have been just a lucky strike,” said Tasker. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Very well. Would you at least agree that the presence of a small amount of Mr. Pierce’s skin under one of her fingernails could have got there during a minor collision, if she put out her hand to steady herself?”

“Yes.”

“Then would you also agree that it is possible that Deborah Harrison’s killer could have been someone other than my client?”

“Objection!”

“Overruled, Mr. Lawrence. Witness will please answer the question.”

Tasker fiddled with his tie. “Well, theoretically, yes. Of course,” he gave a nervous titter. “I mean, theoretically, anything’s possible. I wasn’t there, I can’t tell you exactly what happened. The DNA was a good match to the defendant’s, so he can’t be excluded.”

“I submit that the DNA match is irrelevant. Is your answer to my question yes?”

“I suppose so.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

Shirley Castle turned to the judge and threw her hands in the air. “Your Honor,” she said, “I find myself exasperated that the prosecution’s case is based on so little and such flimsy evidence. No further questions.”

For the first time, Jerome Lawrence stood up to reexamine. It must be because it’s his last witness, Owen thought. He wants to leave a positive impression.

“Just two questions, Dr. Tasker,” he said. “You are fully aware of the nature of the crime, the nature of the victim’s injuries. Would you say, in your expert opinion, that the amounts of the victim’s blood left on the accused’s clothing were in any way too little for him to have committed such a crime?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Tasker.

“And could the exchange of blood and tissue have taken place during a struggle for her life?”

“Indeed it could.”

Jerome Lawrence gave an oily bow. “Thank you very much, Dr. Tasker.”