Verdict Unsafe by Jill McGown Read Free Book Online Page A

their opinion of when Drummond had come home; they had all been halfcut anyway, and their memory of something entirely unmemorable was best left alone. It had seemed better just to let their nonappearance on Drummond’s behalf speak for itself, he had said. Judy wasn’t so sure.
    “Would you tell the court what happened the night the police stopped you for reckless driving?” Harper said, moving on.
    “I’d been at the football match. It was this special match with celebrities and that. But it was too foggy, so it was abandoned. And I drove around in the fog for a bit. I was going fast—I didn’t have my lights on.”
    “Why were you doing that?”
    “I like it. And they stopped me and said they’d seen me before. That I’d got away from them that time, but I wouldn’t this time.”
    “Did you know what they meant?”
    “Yes. One of the times I took the bike on the dual carriageway I was speeding, and they couldn’t catch me, and they couldn’t get the bike’s number, because I didn’t have the lightson. But this time they caught me, and they knew it was me, because I was doing the same thing. They kept me there an hour and a half. Then when they couldn’t find anything wrong with the bike, and they couldn’t get me for drink or drugs or anything, one of them punched me in the face.”
    “Did you retaliate?”
    “No. I was too dizzy. Then he hit me a few more times, and punched me in the stomach. I fell, and he gave me a kicking until the other one got him off me, and they drove off.”
    “Did either of these officers question you about the assaults?”
    “No.”
    “What happened the following day?”
    “More cops came to the house and took me to Stansfield police station.”
    He was trying to make it sound like harassment, thought Judy, but it had just been straightforward police work. Motorcycle tire impressions had been found at the scene of Stansfield’s murder, so when they had heard about a motorcyclist who had been apprehended for speeding out of Stansfield and into Malworth, without lights, in the fog … naturally, they had been anxious to interview him. Colin Drummond had been brought in for questioning about the murder, but his resemblance to what description they had of the rapist had pushed the questioning on to a different tack. Because murder wasn’t the only thing that Bartonshire Constabulary had had to deal with that night. That was the night that Bobbie Chalmers had been raped. She had told Judy about it off the record; she had refused to make an official complaint.
    But what Drummond had seen as he had watched and waited in the shadows had turned out to be relevant to the murder inquiry; when he had described that rape in minute and abhorrent detail to Judy, he had been making a witness statement, not a confession. It had convicted a murderer, but it couldn’t even be heard at Drummond’s own trial, because officially there had been no rape.
    No matter, Judy thought, bringing her attention back to the here and now. We have enough to nail you without that, Drummond. More than enough.
    “I got asked about the rapes,” Drummond was saying. “And they said they wanted a blood sample, so I said all right.”
    “You freely offered a sample of blood?”
    “Yes. I was there for hours. They only let me go when I made a complaint about the ones that had stopped me the night before.”
    “Which brings us to the night you were arrested,” said Harper. “At what time did you leave the house that night?”
    “Late. I’d been in all evening, and I was bored, so I thought I’d give the bike a workout.”
    He had been out all evening, waiting for Judy to come home, according to what he had told her. But she had had company when she had come home; Drummond had had to pick on someone else. That poor little girl.
    “Where do you take your bike for a workout?” Harper was asking.
    “I go up the airfield. I’d never gone there at night, and I wanted to try it in the dark.”
    “Try