A Room Swept White (21 page)

Simon had familiarised himself with her case as best he could. She’d been charged with the manslaughter of Beatrice Furniss, a six-month-old for whom she had babysat regularly. Beatrice – or Bea, as she was known – was the child of Pinda Avari and Matt Furniss. Before she was arrested, Sarah was a hair stylist, and Pinda, an IT audit manager for a chain of bookmakers, was one of her longstanding clients as well as a friend. On the evening of 15 April 2004, Pinda and Matt went to a party, having dropped Bea off at the Jaggards’ house. Sarah put on a Baby Mozart DVD for Bea, which they watched together. Glen Jaggard and three of his friends, who were also his colleagues at Packers Removals, were in the next room playing poker. Bea had never had a set bedtime, as Pinda and Matt were against imposed routines for babies, but at about nine o’clock she fell asleep on Sarah’s knee.

Sarah put her down on the sofa and settled in to watch TV. An hour later, she glanced down at Bea beside her and noticed that the baby’s skin had a blue-ish tinge and she thought, though couldn’t be sure, that there was something funny about her breathing. She tried to rouse Bea, succeeded in waking her, but was frightened by how floppy she was. At one point Bea’s eyes rolled back in her head and that was when Sarah feared something was seriously amiss. Carrying Bea gently, trying not to panic, she took her through to the kitchen to Glen and his friends. They took one look at Bea and told Sarah to phone an ambulance. By the time it arrived, Bea had stopped breathing. The crew was unable to resuscitate her.

The post-mortem found the cause of death to be extensive bleeding in the brain and eyes. The paediatrician who had performed it took the stand at Sarah’s trial and said she believed Bea had died as a result of being shaken. Dr Judith Duffy, called as an expert witness, backed her up. Nothing, she agreed, would cause the sort of subdural and retinal haemorrhages Bea Furniss had suffered apart from violent shaking. The defence disagreed, and produced a research paper, published in the
British Medical Journal
and referred to in court and subsequently in the press as Pelham Dennison, to prove that the symptoms many doctors believed to be indicative of shaking could occur naturally. Even better, Sarah Jaggard’s lawyers produced Pelham and Dennison in person to explain their research. Both doctors told the court that bleeding in the brain and eyes needn’t be caused by inflicted trauma, and could as easily be the result of a non-induced hypoxic episode – in other words, a period during which a baby is deprived of oxygen owing to a breakdown of one of its internal systems.

Both Dr Pelham and Dr Dennison pointed to a history of heart arrhythmias in Bea’s family; her maternal grandfather and her uncle had both died of a disease called Type 2 Long QT syndrome, which affects the heart. If Bea had also been a Long QT syndrome sufferer – and it was a genetic defect, so likely to be passed down through the generations – this might be sufficient to cause hypoxia, which might in turn cause death. Judith Duffy poured scorn on this hypothesis, pointing out that tests had conclusively proved Bea Furniss hadn’t suffered from Type 2 Long QT, or from any of the six other identified variants of the disease. In response to the suggestions made by Pelham and Dennison that there might be other as-yet-unidentified forms of Long QT syndrome and that Bea Furniss might have suffered from one of those, Dr Duffy said that obviously she could not prove this was not the case, but that somebody ought to explain to the jury about the difficulties of proving a negative. Furthermore – and Dr Duffy took this to be the most significant point – there were clear stretching injuries to the nerve roots in Bea’s neck, which were found at post-mortem to be swollen and torn. This damage could only have been done by shaking, said Dr Duffy.

The prosecution’s theory was that Bea had been crying or screaming, and Sarah had shaken her in a fit of temper. Glen Jaggard and his three friends who had been in the house that night testified that Bea hadn’t cried at all. The prosecution tried to claim first that the men might not have heard the crying over the combined noise of their poker game and the TV in the next room, and then that Glen Jaggard and his friends had a vested interest in protecting Sarah. One of the poker players, Tunde Adeyeye, took exception to this line of
questioning and told the court in no uncertain terms that he had no interest in protecting people who killed babies, and that he was as certain as he could be that Sarah Jaggard had done nothing of the sort.

Pinda Avari and Matt Furniss, though ‘visibly devastated by grief’ according to one reporter who’d been in court, gave moving evidence in support of Sarah. Pinda said, ‘If I believed somebody had killed my darling baby, I would want that person brought to justice more than anything and wouldn’t rest until I made that happen, but I have no doubt whatsoever that Sarah loved Bea and would never have harmed her.’ Matt Furniss said more or less the same thing.

The prosecution changed tack, and hypothesised that Sarah Jaggard had shaken Bea to death while she, Glen and the baby were alone in the house, before Glen’s friends got there. That, argued counsel for the Crown, would explain why Tunde Adeyeye and the other two poker players had heard no noise from the baby. Did they make a point of assessing Bea’s condition before commencing their game? Did they get a good look at her, before Sarah brought her into the kitchen in an apparent panic? All three men had to admit that they had called out hello to Sarah when they arrived but paid no attention to Bea, and couldn’t swear that she hadn’t died earlier, when they weren’t present. Dr Judith Duffy seized on this when she was called back to the witness box, saying that the time window for Bea’s death was consistent with this possibility; death could have occurred at any time between 7 and 10 p.m., and Glen Jaggard’s friends had only arrived at 8. The defence argued that, since Pinda and Matt had only dropped Bea off at 7.45, it was highly unlikely that Sarah would have
so quickly lost her temper with the baby. It was simply not credible, Sarah’s barrister maintained, that a woman with Sarah’s gentle and patient temperament, a woman with no history of violence whatsoever, would lose control of herself and become a baby-shaking monster within the space of fifteen minutes.

Dr Duffy wasn’t a popular witness. More than once, the judge threatened to clear the courtroom if the heckling didn’t stop. Laurie Nattrass was among the hecklers, and was quoted in one newspaper as saying he was happy to be held in contempt of any British court when those same courts were in the habit of making a mockery of justice.

After a trial that lasted six weeks, and during which Sarah Jaggard fainted several times, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty. On hearing this, Sarah fainted again. Simon knew he ought to feel sorry for her. He oughtn’t to be thinking about the stretching injuries to Bea Furniss’s neck that could only have been brought about by shaking.
According to Judith Duffy, who was about to go up before the GMC for misconduct
.

‘I heard Paul Yardley asking you about Laurie,’ said Sarah. If she wanted or expected Simon to respond, she showed no outward sign of it. ‘I let him down. We all did. That’s why he doesn’t want anything to do with us.’

Simon found himself wishing Glen Jaggard hadn’t left them alone. He could have done with a feeble Lockbusters quip round about now, to dilute the bleak, oppressive atmosphere Sarah had brought into the room with her. She seemed . . . Simon struggled to find the right word.
Hopeless
. Entirely without hope, as if her life was over and she didn’t particularly care. ‘How did you let Laurie down?’

‘I told him I’d changed my mind about the documentary. About being in it, and . . . After Helen died, I begged him not to go ahead with it. So did Glen, so did Paul. We were all scared of drawing attention to ourselves, in case . . .’ Sarah grabbed her mouth with her hand, as if to stop herself from crying, or from saying more.

‘You didn’t want a documentary linking you to Helen in case the killer made the same link and went for you next,’ Simon guessed.

‘I felt like such a traitor. I loved Helen like family, I
worshipped
her, but I was scared. There are people out there, sick people, who’d give anything to get their hands on women like us – me, Helen, Ray Hines. I’ve always known that. Helen never believed me. She said everyone knew we were innocent, Laurie had proved it – she was like him, she believed in good winning and evil being stamped out, but that’s not the way the world works.’

‘No,’ said Simon. ‘It isn’t.’

‘No,’ Sarah echoed bitterly. ‘And part of the reason it isn’t is because of cowards like me.’

Simon could hear Glen Jaggard whistling in another room: the theme tune from
Match of the Day
. ‘So Helen and Laurie are your heroes,’ he deduced aloud, looking again at the framed photo on the wall.

‘Laurie’s not scared of anything or anyone. Neither was Helen. You can see their courage in their faces, can’t you?’ For the first time, Sarah sounded animated. ‘That’s why I love that picture, even though—’ She grabbed her mouth again.

‘Even though?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Even though what, Sarah?’

She sighed. ‘Angus Hines took that photograph.’

‘Ray’s husband?’ That didn’t sound right. ‘I thought he was a newspaper editor.’

‘He is now, at
London on Sunday
. Before that he was a press photographer. He hated Helen for being more loyal to his wife than he was. He visited her in prison once, to taunt her – no other reason. He wanted to torment her.’

Mentally, Simon added an item to his list: find out what Angus Hines was doing on Monday.

‘Imagine what a shock it was for Helen to see him there, outside the court, when she’d just won her appeal. I’d have collapsed, but not Helen. She was determined not to let his presence spoil such an important moment. Look, you can see her determination.’ Sarah nodded at the picture. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead. Not that I wasn’t scared before – I’ve always been scared – but it’s so much worse without Helen, and now Laurie’s not ringing . . .’

‘You’ve got Glen,’ Simon pointed out.

‘I’m even scared of being swabbed, or whatever it is you’re going to do to me.’ Sarah ignored the mention of her husband. ‘Isn’t that crazy? I know I didn’t kill Helen, but I’m scared the test’ll come back positive anyway.’

‘That won’t happen,’ Simon told her.

‘Even before Helen was murdered I was frightened of Laurie’s film and the effect it would have. The thought of being back in the limelight made me feel sick, but I didn’t dare tell Laurie I wanted out. And then when Helen was killed . . .’ Sarah let out a loud sob and buried her face in her hands. ‘I was shattered, but I had the excuse I’d been waiting and hoping for. I thought I could persuade Laurie to give up on the film, I thought he’d understand my fears. Even if we
never found out for sure that Helen was killed by some crazy child protection vigilante, if there was even a chance that was why . . . But Laurie sounded so cold when I tried to explain, so remote and distant. That was the last time I spoke to him. I don’t suppose he cares what happens to me now.’ Sarah sniffed. She picked up one of the mugs from the table, took a sip, then held it against her face as if it was a comfort blanket. Simon was on the point of steering the conversation away from Laurie Nattrass when she said, ‘Now he’s leaving Binary Star and someone else is making the film, some woman called Fliss. I don’t understand it. Why would Laurie hand it over to someone else?’

Fliss Benson. Simon had left her a message and was still waiting for her to get back to him. So she was making the cot-death documentary, was she? And she’d had a card with the same sixteen numbers on it, Helen Yardley’s sixteen numbers, if Laurie Nattrass’s word could be relied upon.
Four rows of four. 2, 1, 4, 9
. . .

Simon reached into his pocket for the small Ziploc bag he’d brought with him. He held it up in front of Sarah Jaggard’s face so that she’d have no difficulty seeing it through her tears. ‘Do these numbers mean anything to you?’ he asked.

She dropped her tea in her lap and started to scream.

Part II

9

Friday 9 October 2009

‘Cream coloured. Sort of ribbed,’ I say, for what must be the tenth time. ‘You know, a bit stripey, but not stripes of colour, more like . . . texture stripes.’ I shrug. ‘That’s the best I can do, sorry.’

‘And you don’t remember the numbers?’ DC Waterhouse asks. He’s hunched awkwardly over his notebook in the middle of my sofa, dead centre, as if invisible people are squashing him in on either side. Every so often he looks up from his note-making and stares at me hard, as if I’m lying to him, which I am. When he asked me if I’d received any other unusual communications, anything that had worried me, I said no.

I should tell him about the second and third anonymous envelopes, but the prospect fills me with dread.
In case he tells me that three is
so
much worse than one, three constitutes a real risk
. He might look even more concerned than he does now, and the worry on his face is making me feel quite paranoid enough at its present level. Besides, there’s no point saying anything – it’s not as if I’ve still got the second card or the photograph to show him.

Yeah, right. The pieces of the picture are in your bag. How hard would it be for him to put them together and identify those fingers as belonging to Helen Yardley
?

I wish I was better at self-deception. It’s dispiriting, constantly listening to myself calling myself a liar.

‘2, 1, 4, 9 – those were the first four numbers, the top row,’ I say. ‘I don’t remember the others. Sorry.’ I glance discreetly at my watch. 7.30 a.m. I need DC Waterhouse to leave, quickly, so that I can get to Rachel Hines on time.

He turns over a page in his notebook and passes it across to me. ‘Could those have been the sixteen numbers?’ he asks.

The sight of them makes me queasy; I want to push them away. ‘Yes. I . . . I’m not sure, but I think . . . Yes, they could be.’ Seeing him nod and open his mouth, I panic and blurt out, ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’