Free Blue Is the Night by Eoin McNamee Page B

uncomfortably in her seat, standing once as if she had cramp, and Patricia saw that she was pregnant. The girl had an engagement ring on her hand. She kept looking up at Taylor but he did not look back.
    ‘Up the duff,’ Hilary said later that evening. ‘Mr Babyface isn’t so innocent after all. At least he intends to make a decent woman of her. Was she pretty?’
    ‘From what you could see,’ Patricia said. The girl kept her head down when she wasn’t looking up at Taylor. Her veil covered her face but Patricia could see her eyes behind the fringe, moving ceaselessly about the courtroom.
    ‘I think she hates all of us,’ Patricia said. She did not understand why Lily had chosen to wear a veil. She stayed that way through the whole trial although it was warm in the courtroom and the girl must have felt the heat.
    ‘Bloody cheek,’ Hilary said, ‘a shopgirl or the like. Who does she think she is, Mata bloody Hari?’
    ‘Mr Curran, are you ready to call your first witness?’ Curran got to his feet. He waited until the courtroom fell silent before he spoke. He carried a mute authority and Patricia could see how the jury and the public gallery turned to him as though he was in fact the judge.
    Kathleen McGowan wore a black linen suit and a white cotton blouse with a plain collar. Her hair was pinned close to her head. She did not look at Robert or Lily as she walked to the dock. She wore no make-up. She looked plain-spoken, Quakerish. She passed in front of Harry Ferguson in the front row of the public gallery and he smelt coal-tar soap. Ferguson knew what Curran was about to do, Kathleen looking like some Protestant martyr closing in on God.
    The solicitor Lunn leaned back in his chair so that he was close to Ferguson and spoke softly.
    ‘Curran’s going to strip his own witness to the bone. If I were you I’d find another line of work, Harry. Or another boss.’
    Kathleen McGowan took the oath and stood in the witness box facing the bench. Robert Taylor sat in the dock behind her.
    ‘Do you recognise the accused?’ Curran said. Kathleen looked back over her shoulder.
    ‘Yes, that is Robert the Painter.’
    ‘Did he work for your mother?’
    ‘He came round with Mr Barrett of Sunnyside Street. They painted the house.’
    ‘The house in Newington?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How many times?’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘How many times did you see Taylor working at your mother’s house?’
    ‘I remember four times.’
    Curran motioned to a uniformed policeman who stepped forward with a heavy spanner. He placed the labelled spanner on the bench in front of the judge.
    ‘An American-gauge seven-eighths spanner,’ Curran said. ‘Is there such a spanner in your house?’
    ‘I have never seen one.’
    The policeman stepped forward again and placed a carving knife on the bench. The blade of the knife was bent, the steel grotesquely kinked halfway between the handle and the tip.
    ‘Do you recognise this knife?’
    ‘It is our knife,’ Kathleen said.
    ‘Our knife?’
    ‘From our kitchen. I saw my mother use it to cut bread that morning.’
    ‘Was it bent then?’
    ‘No, it wasn’t.’
    Curran nodded to the constable, who stepped forward bearing a cotton frock. The frock was stiff in his arms. There was a dark slurry of blood and dried stock in its folds and pleats. The front and bodice of the dress was rent with knifemarks. Sun fell upon the dress from the high windows, giving the material the appearance of some gorgeous apparel of deep red velvet, a brocaded princess of the dead presented to some dread ball.
    ‘Is this your mother’s dress?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘The one she was wearing on the morning of the murder?’
    ‘It is. We bought it. We went together to the city centre.’
    The girl’s voice was steady and her back was straight. The judge nodded approval at her demeanour. There would be no outbursts in his courtroom. Patricia’s face was white and she was staring at her father. Ferguson could hear