Letters To My Daughter's Killer - [37]

The pathologist describes the appearance of the body. That is hard to listen to. Then the procedures used. And the evidence recovered. ‘We found skin under the fingernails of the victim’s right hand.’

Mr Cromer asks him the significance of this.

‘These are typical of defensive wounds. Consistent with a blow from the poker. The victim, raising her hand in a protective gesture.’

She knew. Oh God. Bending forward, I shield my face and close my eyes. She knew you were coming at her, holding the poker. She knew you were going to beat her. My heart cracks at that thought. I had clung to the possibility that she was oblivious, turning away when you first struck, knocked out with the first blow. But she knew. The terror. She died in fear. She tried to fight. She felt the snap of bones in her arm. Then what? What next? Her shoulder? Her face?

There is a little murmur in the room as the pathologist describes her pregnancy. To the side of us, in another section of the court, people are busy writing, typing on tablets, using mobile phones to text or tweet. Press, I realize, filling their column inches with juicy copy.

Your defence does not have any questions for the pathologist. We discuss it as we file out. ‘They’re not disputing any of that,’ Tony says. ‘Only who did it.’

Anxious to reach Florence as soon as possible, I get a taxi. Ben is playing on the Wii, Florence sitting on the floor watching, when his mum April lets me in.

‘How’s she been?’

‘No trouble. Very quiet.’

I nod. School are worried. She is refusing to speak, refusing to join in with any of the rhymes or songs. Even one to one she’s silent there. A nod, a shrug, a shake of the head is all she’ll offer.

It didn’t seem appropriate to explain to Florence where I was going. Especially as she might think that I’d see Jack and she wouldn’t. Instead I told her I had meetings for work, not at the library but in town.

At bedtime she refuses to put on the pull-up nappies she’s been using. There’s no sign of the bedwetting stopping, and the accepted approach is to let it run its course. Which can be many years. Withholding drinks at bedtime or lifting children to wee during the night have little impact on the problem. Fed up with having to wash sheets every day, I’d resorted to buying the nappies. Is her mutiny an attempt to punish me for being absent, for not picking her up from school? I try not to let my irritation show, not to care much one way or the other, because I sense that if I make a big deal out of it, she will too and use it as a battleground.

In my dream I am paralysed, unable to move and pinned to the floor. You have your hand over my mouth and nose. The floor is wet and sticky, covered in blood. The blood is cold and I am shivering. I can’t breathe, your hand on my face, a weight on my chest. Nothing works. My legs, my voice. I know I must move, that I am in terrible danger. I wake gasping and Florence cries out, ‘Nana!’

‘It’s all right,’ I tell her. Except the bed is wet. I change her clothes, and the sheets. I offer her a nappy. She shakes her head. I put a bath towel over the sheet on her side of the bed. In the morning everything is wet again and I am running out of clean sheets.

* * *

When Mr Cromer introduces the next witness, he makes a big play of this person’s expertise and experience. How long has Mr Noon worked in crime-scene management? How many murder cases has he been involved with? How regularly does he retrain? What areas of crime-scene management does he specialize in? Mr Noon explains that his role is to minimize the chance of any contamination at the scene, to document and record the scene, to search and recover any evidence there. And in consultation with the senior investigating officer, to order forensic tests on potential evidence.

Mr Cromer has a habit of looking over the top of his glasses. Maybe he needs bifocals. Or perhaps, like me, his eyesight has passed the stage when those work. ‘What did you find at the scene?’ he says.

Mr Noon refers to a diagram of the living space, the items drawn on a floor plan. The two sofas form an L-shape, the shorter one in front of the back wall where the stairs go up to the left. This sofa faces the door and the television; the longer sofa is parallel to the kitchen-diner, facing the stove. An outline represents Lizzie’s body. ‘From the blood patterns on the walls and the furniture we were able to establish where the protagonists were during the attack. When a weapon is moved after drawing blood, there will be drops of that blood flung and that trajectory can be mapped; the shape of the drops can tell us where the perpetrator stood and how they moved the weapon. This, coupled with information from the post-mortem, tells us more about the sequence of events. At this scene, we can determine that the victim was between the large sofa and the wall where the log-burner is, and the attacker was between the end of that sofa and the television, closer to the entrance door.’

‘Were there any signs of a struggle elsewhere in the property?’