Courtroom three is too big for the small in-camera case. A solicitor in an expensive suit stands in place behind the mahogany desk. Twelve-year-old Tori Jones sits listlessly in a wheelchair beside him. On the other side, a woman in a long pencil skirt, the public prosecutor, is bent over files with different-coloured post-it squares on each pile. In the public gallery, every seat is empty except for one. Audrey Jones sits as close to her daughter as possible, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, her spine straight. A few officers stand close to the back – on standby to be called as witnesses when needed. I recognise the bright-eyed officer from the day at Bayview apartments leaning against the wooden panels by the radiators. He nods at me in acknowledgement as I enter the room. The judge walks in and, as I slip into the space beside her, I see Audrey’s eyes are blood-shot, her cheekbones more hollowed out than the last time I saw her. She shoots me a look but neither of us speak. The judge has black-rimmed glasses and a pitying look as he shuffles his notes. A clerk announces the case and Tori Jones’s solicitor proceeds with his opening statement. It’s not a straightforward case. Cases that result in deaths rarely are. Both sides put forward their arguments. But when Tori’s school principal, a woman in her late thirties with dark hair and a gold hairband, arrives to testify around the child’s admission about her home life, the room grows quiet.
‘Tori felt as if she and her mother were in danger,’ the principal says, clearly nervous, leaning forward to speak into the microphone shyly. ‘Constantly.’
Keeping her arms folded self-consciously, she testifies the child had seemed afraid to go home after school sometimes. That she’d admitted to a friend that her father had made her sleep out on the balcony when she’d stood up to him. Bruises were noticed during gym class. She just wishes they’d taken action sooner.
‘I can’t imagine what that must be like,’ she says sadly. ‘Can you?’
She looks over at the judge who keeps his eyes on the notes in front of him. I watch Audrey, stiff in the seat next to me, her hands resting on her knees. Her breathing speeds up. Court can be re-traumatisation of sorts, but reliving things for the purpose of having a final ending brings closure too.
In that sad room, we hear of Eddie’s drunken nights out, of words exchanged with employees, of having to pull over to vomit, a neighbouring door battered late into the night in their old apartment in Limerick. A picture is painted of a mother paralysed with indecision and fear. Then they’d move house. They moved a lot. Every time they’d move, neither Audrey nor Tori could find the community support they’d needed. They had nobody to reflect how not okay any of this was.
Audrey’s expression hardens as the solicitor speaks. Her daughter’s future depends on what happens here today. And she wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Audrey’s inability to take action. That’s what she’d said to me when we met up a few times. We had made a connection – both understanding what we’ve each been through, both mothers. That’s why I want to be here today.
Then Tori herself is called. She’s sworn in where she sits, the microphone brought around for her to speak into. The judge looks down on the young girl kindly, asks if she’s sure she’s okay to speak today.
A side door positioned towards the back of the court opens. Mulligan slips in. Before court started, we had an interesting conversation. He told me that they were pushing for a year in the Juvenile Centre. He said that they’d be taking into account the physical and verbal abuse the child had been dealing with, but that they also had to look at the risk to the lives of the other apartment residents as a result of the fire.
‘It mightn’t be as bad as you think, Fields,’ Mulligan explained. ‘She’ll get counselling there, understand what she’s been living through. Plus, it gives Audrey the chance to get back on her feet. To process for herself the violence that she’d experienced in her marriage.’
But there was something else I’d been meaning to ask Inspector Ken Mulligan. Something about the Christmas fire all those years before. I’d been wondering how Barrows managed to fluff the report. And what about Jim Aylesbury?
‘You had oversight over the investigation. You were in charge,’ I’d said before the court had started, watching his face carefully. ‘You said yourself that you were at the scene that night.’
Mulligan had sighed and shaken his head.
‘Sometimes you shouldn’t bring things back up, Fields,’ he’d said. ‘Sometimes not everything that’s dragged out into the light needs examining. Sometimes you might find something you weren’t even looking for.’
But I think of all those who buried the file – of Gerald trying to help Vee, of Jim Aylesbury convincing everyone the fire wasn’t started deliberately.
‘Nancy wasn’t able to be the best mother to that child…’ he’d started to point out. ‘She had problems…’ He’d trailed off, but his judgement was clear.
I think of all the powerful men playing God I’ve met throughout my career and realise it mightn’t be so sinister at all. Maybe it was simply conditioning that caused some to dismiss things as hysterically female from the get-go. Maybe if people like Nancy or like my mother had been taken seriously, things could have been so different.
Under oath, Tori is crying, big gulping tears roll down her face. ‘Your parent isn’t supposed to hurt you,’ she’s sobbing.
And I see out of the corner of my eye that Audrey’s shoulders are shaking. Without looking directly at her, I put my hand on hers and wonder about the decisions we make, or we don’t make. And how sometimes not everything is as cut and dry as we would like to think.