With adrenalin now coursing through her veins, Jenny informed the jury that despite what Mr Sullivan might believe, their duty was only to the truth, whatever they found that to be. They would spend the morning hearing from police witnesses and the pathologist who had most recently examined Eva Donaldson's body. Later in the proceedings they would hear from her friends and colleagues, and finally from Paul Craven himself.
Sullivan and Fraser Knight exchanged a glance. They were looking forward to that.
Dressed in a crisp charcoal suit with a purple silk tie, Detective Inspector Vernon Goodison strolled to the witness chair with the air of a man only too happy to help. Jenny immediately marked him down as one of the new breed of media-savvy detectives, outwardly benign and aware that every word they uttered in public and published by the press would be forever recorded on the internet. Jenny watched the jury respond warmly to his trust-me smile.
With impressive fluency, Goodison recounted how he received a call early on the morning of Monday, 10 May to say that Eva Donaldson's body had been discovered by her cleaner. Together with four scene-of-crime officers, he had arrived twenty minutes later. The paramedics had had the good sense to realize she was irretrievably dead and had left the scene virtually undisturbed. Alison handed the jury copies of various police photographs showing the body lying on the kitchen floor, and views to and from the front door through the hallway. Jenny saw several of them flinch at the pin-sharp images: Eva curled up like a baby, her silky blonde hair trailing in a huge, sticky pool of coagulated blood.
Goodison confirmed that there was no sign of forced entry to the property, nor any indication that it had been ransacked. An extensive search had been made for the murder weapon - presumed to be a knife with a blade approximately seven inches long - but none had been found.
Jenny said, 'You must have seen many murder scenes in your career, Inspector. What was your initial assessment?'
'I thought it was a domestic,' Goodison said, 'a row with a boyfriend that had got overheated. But there again you take care only to respond to the evidence.'
'Was there evidence that anyone had been in the house with her?'
'Nothing that we could find. None of the neighbours had heard anything. There was a bottle of wine open on the counter, only one glass.'
'Where did you and your team conclude the stabbing had taken place?'
Goodison held up the photograph that was taken from just outside the front door. 'It's exactly twenty-seven feet from the threshold to where she was lying. There was no evidence of blood in the hallway, but some spots were found just inside the kitchen here. It's possible they could have sprayed out from across the room, but my best guess is it happened here, near the kitchen door. If I was forced to speculate, I'd say she was backing away from someone who'd come through the front door.'
'And there were no signs of sexual assault?'
'No.'
'Did that strike you as odd?'
Goodison said, 'When he got to the house, I don't believe Craven had the courage to go through with what he intended. She opened the door to him, he forced his way in, stabbed her and ran.'
'Not pausing to steal anything?'
'There was no evidence of that. Nothing of interest was recovered from his bedsit.'
'But there were items missing from Miss Donaldson's house you might have expected to find: a personal computer, a mobile phone.'
Goodison smiled patiently, as if to congratulate Jenny on spotting the obvious. 'We were informed by Miss Donaldson's employers that they had advised her to cease electronic communications in February of this year. We think she may have disposed of her laptop computer altogether. We do believe she possessed a mobile phone, though she hadn't retained a regular contract for more than a year.'
'Was it recovered?'
'No. But there are several possibilities. Craven may have taken it, or even an opportunist thief. Miss Donaldson may have mislaid it. We simply can't say.'
'Did you discover her phone number?'
'Yes. I'll have one of my officers provide it if you wish.' He nodded to Fraser Knight and his team. The police solicitor made a note.
Jenny said, 'You didn't recover the murder weapon either?'
'No. That was slightly more troubling. Craven said in interview that he threw it in some bushes, but he couldn't remember where. It's seven miles from Miss Donaldson's home to his address, and he