Verdict Unsafe by Jill McGown Read Free Book Online

pessimism as to the outcome of the trial was justified, Harper knew that he was simply going to fail. Period.
    “… and nothing but the truth.” Drummond handed back the testament, and slightly loosened the tie which his mother had doubtless insisted that he wear. Judy sat slightly forward in her seat.
    “Mr. Drummond,” Harper began. “The night you were arrested, you were wearing black Doc Marten boots, black jeans, a black sweater, black leather jacket, black PVC gauntlets, and a full face-mask. Why were you thus attired?”
    “I always dress like that.” Drummond looked down at his brand-new suit. “Usually,” he added.
    “And do you always wear a mask?”
    “No. I got it to look like him,” muttered Drummond.
    “To look like whom?” asked Harper.
    “The bloke that was raping women.”
    “Why?” Harper asked.
    Drummond looked down at his feet. “I wanted women to be scared of me,” he mumbled.
    “Why?”
    “Because they scare me.”
    It was all Judy could do not to join in the cat-calling that the judge quietened with a look. There was a whole gang of women in the gallery of the rapists-should-be-castrated school; she would doubtless be regarded as being among their number by some of her colleagues.
    “And did you also carry a knife?”
    “No.”
    Knives scare them witless, that was what he had told Judy. She glanced at the jury, tried to gauge what they were thinking, but they sat listening, their faces not giving anything away.
    “
He
carried a knife,” said Harper.
    “Yeah, but … I didn’t
do
anything to them. I just wanted to scare them a bit. I didn’t need a knife to do what I did.”
    “And what did you do?”
    “I’d follow them, if I saw them on their own. I’d follow them real slow on the bike. They’d start to walk faster, and then run. They’d see me and think I was the rapist. It put the wind up them. And sometimes I’d watch them, in parked cars and that. With men. You know.”
    He had had to admit to that, of course, thought Judy, because the police were aware of his Peeping Tom activities. Hotshot would have advised him to bring it up himself rather than let Whitehouse do it.
    “Why did you do that?”
    “So I could follow them after, when they got dropped off. They usually got out a bit of a way from home if they’d been—you know, with other men. Men they shouldn’t have been with. But I didn’t ever do anything. Just like … you know. Imagined I was him. What I’d do to them if I was.”
    “Did that excite you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So what did you do about that?”
    “I’d go to Rosa.”
    “Rosa was the prostitute whom you were in the habit of visiting?”
    Drummond flushed. “Yeah,” he said.
    “When was the last time you saw Rosa?”
    “It was September seventh. I remember, ‘cos it was my mum’s birthday, and she was mad when I came home late and missed the barbecue.”
    “September seventh. What time were you with Rosa?”
    “About half nine.”
    “How long were you with her?”
    He shrugged. “Twenty minutes, half an hour.”
    “And then what did you do?”
    “I drove around for a bit—took the bike along the dual carriageway and that. Fast. You know. Then I went home.”
    “What time did you get home?”
    “Just after eleven.”
    “So, on September seventh from half past nine until a few minutes to ten you were with Rosa, and from a few minutes after eleven you were with your parents and several other relatives and friends?”
    “Yes.”
    Rosa, of course, could not be found to confirm this, and oddly enough, only Drummond’s blood relations could recall at what precise time he had arrived home that night. The other party guests had thought that it might have been closer to midnight when Drummond had come home. The earlier time would, of course, have made it impossible for him to be raping Rachel Ashman, as Hotshot was busy pointing out. Whitehouse had felt that determined cross-examination would have got the other guests to revise