If you have a complaint you make it to the High Court.'
'Then I request an immediate adjournment.'
'Out of the question.'
Prince's second assistant hurried to the door, phone in hand. Jenny had no doubt that within the hour a London QC would be in front of a judge pleading for an injunction to prevent reporting of the existence of Eva's dubious body art.
Jenny turned to the jury. ' "Daddy's girl" is what the tattoo says.'
Kenneth Donaldson fixed her with an expression of icy contempt.
Ignoring Sullivan, who remained stubbornly on his feet, she continued, 'In a moment you'll be hearing from the artist who drew it.'
In a matter of seconds, half the twenty or so reporters in the room had dashed from their seats and hurried for the exit to phone the revelation through to their editors. In a tight race against a possible injunction they could have their story on the internet in minutes and spread out across the social networks and blogs seconds later. Even if a High Court judge could be persuaded on spurious grounds to rule that the public had no right to know, it would be already too late to put the genie back in the bottle, and the lawyers knew it.
Calmly, Jenny said, 'You can sit down now, Mr Sullivan.'
The frustrated prosecutor slammed into his chair and turned to plot his revenge with a furious Ed Prince. Jenny didn't dare look at the Turnbulls and Lennox Strong, but she did catch a glimpse of Father Starr: for a fleeting moment he was smiling.
Jenny turned to Dr Kerr. 'Is there anything else you wish to add, Dr Kerr?'
'No, ma'am,' he said apprehensively.
Fraser Knight rose to his full imposing height and fixed the young pathologist with a look of disappointment tinged with disbelief. 'How long have you been a fully qualified pathologist, Dr Kerr?'
'Thirteen months.'
'I see. And Dr Aden Thomas?'
Dr Kerr reddened with embarrassment. 'I've only met him once or twice—'
'Thirty-two years,' Fraser Knight said. He looked down at his legal pad and cast a disapproving eye over its contents. 'You have seen fit to "speculate" - your word - in a way in which he didn't.' He delivered his question while looking at the jury: 'Do you think that in his thirty-two years of practice he may have learned that it's not a wise, let alone a scientific, thing to do?'
'I've no idea.'
'No,' Knight said, with an indulgent smile. 'Nor do you know the state of mind of Miss Donaldson's killer, or the exact manner in which he held the knife, or the exact sequence of events leading to her murder.'
'No,' Dr Kerr admitted.
'From the evidence gleaned from her body, all you can say for certain is that she was killed by a single, powerful stab wound.'
'Yes, but—' Dr Kerr hesitated in mid-sentence, losing courage.
'So you would accept, therefore, that your speculation does not help us to establish any key fact. It is only speculation.'
With an apologetic glance to Jenny, Dr Kerr answered, 'Yes,' his authority all but destroyed.
Sullivan asked only one question of the witness: 'You have no factual evidence whatever, do you, for suggesting that anyone other than Paul Craven murdered Eva Donaldson?'
'No, I don't.'
Sullivan gave a theatrical sigh and threw the jury a look that said he pitied them for having their time so needlessly wasted.
It was almost one o'clock, stomachs would be aching with hunger, but Jenny called the tattoo artist, Alan Turley, to give his evidence before the lunch break. With a shaved, tattooed head, and nose and ears peppered with rings and studs, he was a man Jenny would have crossed the street to avoid. But Turley, who practised his craft under the name Doc Scratch, was quietly spoken, and gave the impression that he was a gentle soul, devoted to his work.
Alison handed him a copy of the photograph of Eva's body. He looked at it briefly and lowered his head, visibly upset. Jenny took him carefully through the evidence he had given in a statement he had made to Alison the week before, making sure that he repeated every detail. He told the jury that Eva had booked the appointment by telephone several days in advance under the assumed name Louise Pearson. When she arrived for her appointment she wrote down the words she wanted tattooed and selected the font from a style book. It took no more than fifteen minutes to apply and she paid in cash: sixty pounds.
Jenny stole a glance at Kenneth Donaldson. What she saw