Grave Doubts Read Online Free Page B

posing as a courting couple, and another three playing football on the grass, but as the light went they had to leave. Four other officers were in the car park, two on benches in the rose garden – they were the closest – and the rest held a loose perimeter.’
    She felt the slightest tremor start in her throat. Despite the counselling, this was the most difficult part of her testimony. Memories of the attack infested her sleep, creating vivid nightmares overlaid with images of his other victims. She lost the momentum of her narrative and waited for him to ask a question.
    ‘You have a remarkable physical resemblance to the victims of the attacks you were investigating. Did that cause you any particular distress?’
    ‘No.’
    Nightingale sensed that he was changing tactics. Perhaps Stringer wasn’t confident that he’d be able to convince the jury the police had used THE GAME to entrap his client so now he was going to attack her account of the attempted rape. It was a moment that she had been dreading. Apart from the police account of the attack on her and the traces recovered from her fingernails there was no other physical evidence. The rapist had never left semen, saliva or even a hair follicle on his victims. When they’d searched his flat SOCO had found it pristine, without even fingerprints and with nothing to connect him to the crimes. Faced with such lack of evidence, the CPS had decided to concentrate prosecution on three rapes that were identical in method to the attack on Nightingale. Four others, including one that had resulted in the victim’s death had been left on file. In these the victims had been attacked in their own homes, not outside, and none of them had been able to pick the defendant out of a line up.
    ‘Let us turn to the “attack” in which the defendant, by the way, sustained material injuries. I put it to you that it was you who approached the defendant and encouraged him into a physical embrace, which you subsequently rejected, violently?’
    ‘No, that is not true.’
    ‘Do you exercise regularly?’
    ‘Pardon?’ She was thrown by the question. He repeated it tersely.
    ‘I run.’
    ‘Have you engaged in self-defence classes?’
    ‘Only as part of routine police training.’
    ‘But you are fit and strong, are you not? Quite capable of taking the fight to a man.’
    He was deliberately baiting her and would use any show of emotion to his advantage. The thought made her angry but in a way that sharpened her wits and drove all signs of emotion beneath the surface.
    ‘I didn’t attack the defendant. He leapt out at me and knocked me to the ground. There’s evidence to prove that he lay in wait within the bushes for some time.’
    ‘How tall are you?’
    ‘Five ten.’
    ‘How much do you weigh?’
    ‘I really don’t know.’
    ‘Come, come, Sergeant, I thought all ladies knew to the ounce what they weighed.’
    ‘I don’t.’
    ‘I see.’ His tone implied that she was avoiding the question.
    ‘Would you take a look at the defendant, please.’
    Nightingale licked her dry lips. She had avoided meeting his eyes since she had taken the stand. With a slight twist of her head she directed her gaze to the defendant’s chest. His chin and mouth were just at the top of her vision and she flicked her eyes down a fraction.
    ‘How tall would you say he was?’
    ‘A giant, ’ she thought. ‘I don’t know.’
    Another exasperated sigh.
    ‘He’s five foot nine, Sergeant, shorter than you are.’ He left a significant pause. ‘Hardly an overpowering assailant for a fit, tall woman like you.’
    ‘From the ground, with a knife at one’s throat, all men look tall…sir.’ Some of the women on the jury nodded in sympathy and Nightingale pressed her advantage. ‘And as for my attacking him, I was in no fit state to do so. I received a concussion – the X-rays show deep bruising to the back of my skull,’ she felt again the crack of her head as it made contact with the