Prove it.
The words echoed in my mind as I stood in the witness box and recited the oath, as I had countless times before. But this time was different. This time, I was not there in a professional capacity.
This time, I was the victim.
‘I swear by almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
The prosecution barrister was a young woman, Emma Khan. I had seen her animated, out of court, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, throwing her head back to laugh at another barrister’s joke. Facing her in Court 3 in the palatial Victorian grandeur of Snaresbrook Crown Court was like being in front of another person altogether. Here she was composed and dignified, her face a serene light-brown oval under her wig. She had a trick of pulling her gown into place before she introduced a new line of questioning, and a calm manner that slowed my racing pulse to a manageable trot.
‘And what do you do for a living, Miss Kerrigan?’
‘I’m a detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police.’
There was a ripple of reaction from the jury box. I tried not to look across at them, aware of them only as a blurry entity in the corner of my vision.
‘What sort of crimes do you investigate?’
‘Murders.’ No way to say it without sounding dramatic. ‘I’ve worked on a murder investigation team handling complex cases since I became a detective constable.’
‘Is that a challenging job?’
‘At times.’
‘Do you enjoy it?’
‘At times,’ I said again, this time with a smile. I felt rather than heard the amusement in the courtroom.
The first part of my evidence was all about establishing who and what I was, and how I had met Seth. He was sitting in the dock, beside a dock officer who looked bored. I knew he was on bail and I had seen him earlier in the park that surrounded the court building. The shock of it had been like touching an exposed wire, but I was glad I’d been able to look at him before I saw him in Court 3. He was wearing an impeccable suit – not too fashionable, but very well cut – and his tie was sombre. He had had his hair cut. He looked like what he pretended to be, a handsome and confident solicitor, and he did not look at all like a man who could coldly and deliberately beat me unconscious, even though that was exactly what he was.
‘How did you meet?’
‘He was professionally involved in a murder investigation. His client was on trial.’
‘So you were on the other side.’
‘Yes.’
‘And even so, you fell for each other.’
‘He was injured and had to take time off work. I visited him. We started seeing one another more seriously about ten months ago now. Before Christmas.’
‘And were you happy?’
‘Yes. Very,’ I said, simply. ‘He was very attentive. He made a point of telling me how much he loved me. He gave me presents, often, until I told him to stop because I was embarrassed at his generosity. He took me out for dinner a lot. He encouraged me to be more aware of my health, taking more exercise and improving my diet.’
‘The ideal boyfriend.’
‘So it seemed.’
‘Did anything worry you?’
‘He disliked most of my friends and colleagues, and they had reservations about him which they expressed to me on a number of occasions. I felt as if I had to choose between him and my colleagues. I felt isolated, at times. I felt as if I had to get his permission to have any kind of social life.’
‘Did anything else upset you?’
‘He was highly critical of me. He kept warning me I wasn’t reaching the standard he expected in my conversation or behaviour.’ I swallowed, hard. ‘It was upsetting and unsettling. I felt as soon as I managed to do something properly, he would change the rules, until it was impossible for me to be good enough.’
‘He was violent towards you?’
‘Not at first. He liked to be in charge. He made all the decisions and plans. I went along with it because it seemed to be easier to live that way. Over time, I became worried about making any decisions without checking them with him.’
She led me through an account of the incident where we had argued in the street and I’d fallen and had to make my own way home, then moved on to the main event.
‘Tell us in your own words what happened that day.’ Her voice was heavy with sympathy.
I did my best to go through it calmly, setting the scene, explaining that we hadn’t seen each other for some days, describing the bruise on my neck and how he had jumped to the wrong conclusion about it. When it came to telling them how he had beaten me, I faltered.
‘Please speak up, Miss Kerrigan,’ the judge said sharply. He was a small, lipless man with cold eyes, and as I spoke I worried that he had taken Seth’s side, that he hadn’t believed me and nor had anyone else. The jury probably hated me, a voice said in my head. A police officer who had let herself be abused. A stupid woman telling lies about her handsome lover who had dumped her.
‘I remember him hitting my face with his open hand and then a fist. I remember my nose cracking. I remember him holding on to me so I didn’t fall because it was easier for him to hit me if we were standing up. I remember him kicking me on the floor. I don’t know how long it went on for – it felt like hours but that’s probably not the case. And then I blacked out. The next thing I remember is waking up on the floor, on my own.’
I described the flat, the lack of phones, the locked doors, the utter helplessness I’d felt. I described hiding, and my landlord – yes, he is a colleague – coming to see if I was all right because he had been concerned for my welfare. I described my injuries. The jury looked at their jury bundles, where the photographs from the hospital were reproduced in lurid colour. I was barely recognisable in them, my eyes glazed with shock and pain.
‘Do you suffer from any lasting side-effects from this incident?’
‘Not physically.’ I had healed well, my bones restoring themselves, the bruises fading. ‘I still feel devastated that it happened. I find it hard to trust people. I am more nervous than I was, especially when I’m on my own.’ I sleep with the house keys under my pillow and a spare set hidden on top of the bathroom cabinet, just in case.
‘Do you find it harder to do your job?’
‘I try not to think about it at work. We don’t tend to deal with domestic murders but when we do, I find it harder than I used to.’ And that was true. Every woman who was strangled by an ex-partner, every girlfriend who was beaten to death – I could have been any of them, or all of them. I had trusted the wrong person and paid the price, but they had lost everything. Those cases still kept me awake at night. Give me a nice straightforward gangland shooting any day.
The defence barrister had thirty years and eleven inches on Emma Khan, and the swagger to go with it. He gave me a small, patronising smile as he stood up to begin his cross-examination and I breathed out slowly.
Do not let him make you angry.
‘Is it professional, Sergeant Kerrigan, to find your boyfriends during murder investigations?’
‘People often meet partners through work,’ I said evenly. ‘My focus at work is not on my personal life.’
‘It’s not your first time to meet someone through work, though, is it?’
‘I had one other boyfriend who was a colleague before we became close.’
‘And was that a serious relationship?’
‘Yes, it lasted several years.’
‘When did it end?’
‘Two years ago.’
‘And since then, have you had many relationships? Of any length?’ he added.
‘No. Your client was the first.’ So you can’t try to pretend I’m always on the hunt for male attention.
‘Would you say you were quite keen to make this relationship work?’
‘I tried.’
‘Mr Taylor is a cut above most of the people you meet through work, isn’t he? He’s well off, ambitious, some would say handsome …’ he paused for a laugh that came on cue. ‘He was interested in you. He was “very attentive”. He told you how much he loved you. He sounds rather perfect.’
‘He did seem that way.’ I was trying to guess where this line of questioning was going.
‘But things weren’t working between you, were they? You had argued. He sent you roses to apologise. What did you do with them?’
How did he know? ‘I put them in the bin at work. I didn’t want them.’
‘Were you disappointed to receive a large bunch of flowers from him?’
‘I didn’t like being the subject of gossip at work. I like to keep my private life separate.’
‘Wasn’t it the case that you wanted him to propose to you? That other people at work assumed the roses were a sign that this had happened, and you were cruelly disappointed?’
I smiled at that, my composure intact. ‘No. People at work may have assumed they were a romantic gesture but I knew they were an apology and I took them as such. I would have preferred a less ostentatious approach.’
‘But you did want to marry my client.’
‘It was the last thing on my mind. We weren’t living together. We saw each other once or twice a week. I was certainly not waiting for him to propose.’
‘An eligible, attractive, successful man held no appeal for you, even at an age when many women would be keen to settle down.’
I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t something I’d considered.’
‘Isn’t it the case that he was unhappy in your relationship? He broke up with you on that day in May when these events took place, didn’t he? And you were furious.’
‘No, I told him we should go our separate ways.’
‘You attacked him, in a rage.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘You are trained in combat, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Before the incident in May, when was the last time you had done a course in self-defence and restraint?’
‘April,’ I said.
‘What sort of thing do they teach you on these courses?’
‘Safe restraint when someone is taken into custody. Situational awareness. Techniques for ensuring compliance. Self-defence.’
‘What techniques ensure compliance?’
‘Generally putting people into stress positions, where they are uncomfortable, so they lose interest in fighting back. The techniques are designed to avoid causing harm to the individual.’
‘If I can translate this for the jury, you know how to hurt someone.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know how to defend yourself from being hurt.’
‘I’m trained for that, but—’
‘And you are quite tall, aren’t you?’ the barrister said loudly, cutting me off.
‘Five foot ten.’
‘An inch or so shorter than my client.’
‘He weighs a lot more than I do,’ I said calmly.
‘Still, you were more evenly matched than many. You were trained in self-defence. You knew how to cause pain. You were arguing and you lashed out, intent on hurting him. My client was concerned to defend himself against your attack. By your account, you then did nothing to protect yourself. You were helpless.’
‘I was in my own home, with my boyfriend. I wasn’t expecting to be the victim of a physical assault.’
‘You couldn’t defend yourself.’
‘I tried to protect myself.’ I swallowed. ‘I wanted him to stop. I thought he would calm down if I didn’t fight back.’
‘With all your training.’
‘Yes.’
‘And all your experience of violent crime.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he hit you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kick you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Punch you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you did nothing. You allowed yourself to be his punch bag.’
‘I – I tried,’ I said lamely.
‘Isn’t it the case that you knew very well that being accused of this crime would have a devastating effect on my client’s reputation? That if he was convicted, he would lose his job?’
‘I was aware of that.’
‘Sergeant Kerrigan, we have heard your account of this relationship, this regrettable incident and the lasting effect it has had on you. You were angry that your relationship was ending. You decided to take revenge on him by provoking him into an unwise physical assault. You suffered significant injury around this time, you allege through my client’s actions although he disputes that. You created a narrative to suggest he imprisoned you in your flat, cut off from the world so you couldn’t ask for help, though investigating officers found that all of the things you alleged to be missing, such as the phone and your keys, were all inside the flat where they should be. You set out to trap him, to make his life a misery and take his career away from him. You knew the consequences of accusing him of this, and you did it anyway, so you could punish him by bringing him to court and destroying his reputation once and for all.’
‘I would have given anything not to come here and give evidence.’ I was trembling and hoped it didn’t show. ‘I’m here because I do my job so I can keep people safe. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. You keep saying I knew the consequences of accusing Seth of attacking me, but he knew the consequences too, and he still did it. I promise you, I don’t want anything like revenge. I just want justice.’