Sophie Boyack

Extract from the opening of Shamed

Hannah sat outside court number seven. She wore black; it was an anathema to wear anything else in this building. A deep paper cut on her index finger absorbed her. It probably needed a plaster, but she didn’t have one. Hearing purposeful footsteps on the stairs behind her, she didn’t turn to look. An usher perhaps, heading to the fifth floor to collect a jury or a barrister popping up to the mess room. In no mood for pleasantries with well-meaning colleagues, she leant forward, elbows on knees and looked at her watch. 

The floor to ceiling windows had been opened slightly at the top and the long gauzy curtains fluttered in the breeze. It was a fragile spring day outside. She skated over her statement again, but there was no need, it was etched on her bones. She only had to tell what she had seen and what she subsequently did, nothing more. Counsel for the prosecution would prod and poke with questions about bad character but she would hold firm. She brought the paper cut to her lips and worried at it with her tongue. Had someone told Christopher to brush back his hair and trim his beard? Had he been warned what to expect?

More footsteps and the gentle babble of voices on the stairs heralded what must be the arrival of another jury. This time she glanced over her shoulder. An assortment of twelve – several days, or even weeks into their trial from the way friendships and alliances had already formed. A lone outsider kept himself apart while the others hovered by the stairwell switching off their phones, finishing their coffees. Hannah longed for the weight of horsehair on her head, the weave of woollen gown on her back, a crisp white collarette around her neck as if the familiar garb might shroud her in objectivity. 

Someone appeared in the vestibule, but it wasn’t Lesley, the usher whom she had known for years, it was D.I. Pocock.

“They’re still not ready,” he said, holding the door shut behind his back.

She nodded.

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. You?”

“Good. Yes. Look, Hannah I know this is difficult …”

“Please – don’t start. There really is nothing you can say.”

He shrugged and slid back through the door. As if she needed to be told about the slow and steady pace of the law at work. 

***

Chris watched Pocock glide back into his seat. He wanted to catch his eye, to show how much he despised him, but the man was too busy shaking himself down, cracking his neck from left to right. Smug bastard. All those questions. All those assumptions. All those months ago. 

Already Chris had been in the dock for more than an hour while salt-and-pepper wigs nodded and whispered to one another and numerous boxes of documents were unpacked and carefully stacked. Now the jurors were being selected, their names called by the clerk, the judge steady in his insistence that it was a civic duty to serve. Chris worked at the palms of his hands with his thumbs, while a trickle of sweat ran from armpit to elbow. Did he smell? He probably did. 

Tom Bradley-Evans QC stood for the prosecution and cleared his throat. One of those boys who had always come top, a winner from the infant school egg-and-spoon race right through to bagging the smartest girl. Chris heard his mother’s address given out and the names of those he had considered to be his friends listed. None of the jurors showed a flicker of recognition and so six of the eighteen were dismissed. As they filed out, Chris looked up to the public gallery. His mother’s best friend, Gina, had positioned herself behind Simon since he last stole a peek. Uncle Robbie wasn’t there, although he’d written, urging him on as if it were a ball game, coaching from the safety of a different time zone. Simon slumped in his seat, thumb and forefinger rubbing at his chin, then he pulled himself upright and rustled up an encouraging smile, like the one his Dad used to give him on sports day. It hollowed him out.

A blanket of readiness settled on the courtroom. Chris’s nemesis was on his feet again, nodding to his junior, tugging at his waistcoat, pausing for effect. Chris picked at his thrice bitten nails and tried to remember the advice of his own counsel, Ushma. She had urged him to demonstrate something. Innocence? No. Remorse? Yes, that must be it.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” began Bradley-Evans. “On Friday 18th October last, a man known only to us as Daniel was brutally murdered. Let us not focus on the status of this unidentified man. It is perhaps the saddest part of this case that the victim’s true identity remains a mystery. It is a great source of disappointment for the police, who have worked tirelessly in this matter, that they have been unable to account for him. I know that it will be difficult not to make assumptions about who he may or may not have been, but I urge you to put those thoughts from your mind. The fact of the matter is that he was an innocent victim of a callous murder. As such he is entitled to the full weight of the law, regardless of whomsoever he may be.” 

Despite Ushma’s warning, nothing had prepared Chris for the intolerable burden of listening to this bullshit. Bradley-Evans spoke with a strength of feeling, a certainty which sent a shudder of panic through him. He thrust his hands between his legs, clenching his thighs. Don’t say anything. Don’t smile or look angry or show any kind of emotion. But sweat had broken out across his face now. He must look guilty as sin. It was all happening too quickly. The bastard wouldn’t shut up.

“Over the coming days the Crown will seek to prove that Daniel was lured to the defendant’s mother’s house, subjected to degrading acts and killed in cold blood. Mrs Nicholson, the defendant’s estranged mother, was left to the horrifying discovery of a dead body in her own house. The defendant then attempted to evade the police who were forced to pursue him over the length and breadth of the country. These are not the actions of a man who acted in self-defence as he will claim, they are the actions of a man who knew he was guilty.” 

Chris shifted his eyes to Ushma who looked unflustered, perhaps even a little bored. Her wig looked faintly ridiculous perched above her untameable thick black hair; her glasses sat at the end of her nose ready to be pulled off in that way she had. On her last visit to him in Belmarsh, she had cautioned him to, “look meek and mild-mannered at all times and above all penitent.” That was the word. He remembered it now. “The jury need to see it oozing from you. Some of them will continually sneak a look, try to interpret your reactions to what’s being said, others will avoid eye contact at all cost. Try not to get sucked down the rabbit hole of guessing what they are thinking – it won’t help. Look at the judge if you don’t know what else to do. Focus entirely on how you are coming across. Hold fast to your version of events. To the truth.”

Bradley-Evans was still droning on, patiently describing events for the jury with a hint of relish. It was as if he were talking about someone else. Mr Nicholson, the central player in a far-fetched drama. Despite Ushma’s advice, Chris looked to the jury but saw only a wall of indistinguishable faces, twelve pairs of eyes impossible to separate one from another. They sat in earnest silence, still blinking with the shock of a real-life murder, caught in the headlights of Bradley-Evans and his smooth fiction. Chris wanted to punch him, right on his aquiline nose and watch the blood trickle onto his bright white oh-so-pure shirt. 

But on he went, speaking calmly of train journeys and dates, of telephone calls and ambulances. It sounded even more like someone else’s story. From his goldfish bowl of bullet proof glass Chris stared at the judge, a slight figure dwarfed by the high-backed chair he sat in. His fingers moved swiftly as he typed into his silver laptop making his own sense of the sequence of events. Looking at him didn’t help either and so Chris diverted his attention back up to Simon who was staring down at Bradley-Evans, hanging on his every word. Even he looked convinced. Now the jury were being invited to look at the bundles they had been given by the usher. Chris had been provided with his own copies so that he could see the evidence upon which judgement would be made. Great oversized pages of maps and telephone logs. Endless photographs. His childhood bedroom, Daniel’s body photoshopped out and replaced with a big black empty space. Erased to protect the sensitivities of the innocent. Blood spatters on walls were numbered and marked. A photograph showed a pile of broken glass swept into a corner. These were dots to be connected, an incontrovertible truth to be uncovered. And then he heard the words, distinct from all the others, chilling in their brevity.

“The crown calls Mrs Hannah Nicholson.”

So soon? Wait everybody, wait. There was rustling and coughing. His mother walked in head held high. His own head was shaking. To and fro. To and fro. He couldn’t stop it. Please, no. Not yet. Just wait a little longer.

***

The court room was crowded. Too hot. Too many eyes on her. Hannah’s voice faltered at the familiar words of affirmation, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She looked towards the dock. He wore a button-down collar and a V-neck that she had asked Simon to buy for him, unconvincingly conventional. His hair was brushed back, his beard neatly trimmed, but despite his best efforts he looked sickly and sallow. He was fidgeting with his hands but he held her eyes briefly, before darting his attention up to the public gallery, then back to the judge. Restless. It didn’t look good. 

“Mrs Nicholson,” began Bradley-Evans. “I appreciate how difficult this is for you …”

His voice faded away. She didn’t need to hear the question in order confirm her whereabouts on the afternoon of Friday 18th October last. She saw the thrill ripple through the jury. They must have misheard. A barrister? Working in this building?

Her voice echoed inside her skull while she explained that she had left court at around four o’clock on the day in question. She was able to recall the precise level of precipitation, fine and misty. Later, it was raining stair rods, later when she vomited in the geraniums. But when she had left the train at St Albans, it was barely wet enough for her fuchsia pink umbrella. She had dithered between the third and fourth level of the car park unsure where she had parked the previous morning, but she didn’t tell him that. His questions continued, tight and specific, as agreed. 

“And what did you notice when you arrived at the house?”

She carefully described the way the key had resisted in the lock, the failed alarm, her slow and gradual realisation that things were out of place. The broken window in the utility room had escaped her notice, she explained. Then she told him about the biscuit tin. She remembered the dull thud of recognition. Christopher, home again. She recalled the sense of portent lurking behind his bedroom door, an ominous feeling, Shakespearian in scale. But she said nothing of these things. She told him only what she had found and not found, seen and not seen, understood and not understood. She told him only facts.

Bradley-Evans nodded, content with her answers. Then there was a hiatus. She reached for her water, caught Lesley’s eye and forced a smile in her direction. Pocock moved to one of the computers and searched out the recording of the call she had made that night to the emergency services. After a false start her abrupt and affronted voice ricocheted around the court.

“I’ve been burgled.”

“How long ago did this take place?” 

“Well, I don’t know exactly. I left home at seven fifteen yesterday morning and I’ve just come back.” 

“Are you in any kind of danger madam?”

“Danger?”

“Are you satisfied that there isn’t someone still at the property?”

“Yes … well, I mean I haven’t checked every room.”

“Don’t put yourself at risk madam. We’ll send someone out as soon as possible.”

“Yes. Right. Good. I am on my own you know.”

The woman had needled her, made her feel vulnerable, then as now. She remembered the slip of the handset in her shaking hand, the vomit already rising in her throat, or was that afterwards? There had been a nick in the wood of her desk. She saw it now, revealing the light oak beneath the dark. Chris stared at her from the dock, glowering in astonishment. What had he expected her to do? She looked at her hands, blue veins raised underneath thinning skin – her mother’s bulging knuckles. 

The recording finished and Bradley-Evans framed another question, but her attention was still held by the dent in the wood. Overwhelmingly, she wanted to know what had caused the damage. Then she remembered the red light blinking at her from the answerphone. The blank message she had told no one about at the time. It had slipped her mind then and she let it slip away again now.

“Mrs Nicholson? Mrs Nicholson?”

“Yes? I’m sorry. Could you repeat the question?”

“When you attempted to open the door of your son’s room- -”

“Old room. His old room.”

“Yes, of course. My mistake.”

“When you pushed the door of your son’s old room, did it open easily?”

“Up to a point but then, no. There was clearly something wedged up against it.”

“Would it be fair to say that you had to use force to open it?”

“Yes. Although I didn’t push it very far. I knew what was on the other side.”

“You knew?”

“Yes. There was a stench.”

“A stench?”

“Of death.”

“I see. And can you describe that stench to the jury?”

“Blood. Shit …” and then she stupidly added, “Fear.” 

“And did you see any part of the body?”

“No. I peered through the gap in the door and saw a blood-soaked trainer. I immediately ran down the stairs and out of the front door.”

Bradley-Evans didn’t ask about whether she had been sick. He didn’t ask about the rain lashing at her skin through her blouse, trammelling down her cleavage, dripping from her nose. She had thrown off her cardigan earlier and flung it on the bannister because the house was so hot. Was that relevant? She had assumed the error was hers; it was a new boiler and she still hadn’t fathomed its settings. She wanted to explain, but he had moved on.

“How long had you and your son been estranged, Mrs Nicholson?”

No …. No .... No. There was more to say about the night itself. Details about a raided larder, her missing jewellery and the stolen money. Facts that were unarguable and that he had skated over. He wasn’t playing fair. The jury needed to understand that she had been the victim of a co-ordinated attack and so had her son.