False Witness Read online

Was this a reference to the home in Stonebury? And if so, then why? What was the connection between Kingsley, the contents of the notes and West Albion? However, the two policewomen had no such problems. They merely looked at each other, shrugged, tucked their white handbags under their unshaved armpits and pushed the man up the stairway.

  “Danny thinks there may be some kind of cult involved,” Emma said.

  “There is,” I replied. “The cult of the personality. His personality. A thoroughly pretentious one.”

  “He was just trying to help, Tom.”

  “No, Emma. He was trying to sell drugs. I wonder what the Greek is for five years in the slammer?” Although I tried to joke it off, a seed had been planted. The seemingly disparate pieces in the jigsaw might, after all, be connected. But what was the picture?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING WAS BRIGHT, WITH A CRISP SUN skimming off the Thames in an almost blinding way. The Middle Temple lawns were opal in color as I walked slowly toward chambers. No court work, but I still had plenty to do.

  I had been gazing at the river from my third-floor room for about twenty minutes, when the phone rang. Steve, my clerk, put through a call. The voice at the other end was round and soft, like a cheese that had been left out all night.

  “This is Dove,” it said.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, Dove. Gerald Dove. ‘Bout that report. Much as we thought.”

  “Really?” Had I missed something? What report? I tried to bluff it out and said more emphatically, “Oh, really.”

  “So that’s ‘bout it,” he said. “Guess you won’t be needing me after all.”

  “No, I don’t suppose we will.”

  “Right then, goodbye.”

  “Oh, just one thing, Mr. Dove.”

  “Fire away.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  I heard him tapping the phone at the other end. “Sorry, thought you said, What on earth—”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Another tap of the receiver. “Didn’t Miss Sharpe tell you then?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “’Bout me seeing the stuff.”

  “The stuff?”

  “The handwritten note Inspector Payne found in your punter’s cell.” It started to make sense. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  How I hated that game. “Go on,” I said.

  “Good news is, my conclusions are… well, pretty conclusive.”

  “And?”

  “And the bad news is, your man wrote the note.”

  Why then did Kingsley want a graphologist to check the handwriting? It was sheer lunacy. I consoled myself that one of the benefits of defending is that you are not obliged to disclose unhelpful expert reports to the prosecution. But the police would know that a graphologist had inspected the note from Kingsley’s cell, and it would be obvious why we didn’t dare call any evidence.

  “Can you be sure?” I asked rather optimistically. “I mean how certain can you be that Kingsley wrote it?”

  “Never can be certain. Not in our game. You see, nothing is certain. But to use a technical term—it’s as near as dammit.” He sniggered at his bon mot. All experts had one so-called joke, except the short-sighted heart-throb of the mortuary slab, Harry Molesey. “You see, Mr. Fawley, graphology isn’t an exact science.”

  “Well, what is it—exactly?”

  “An opinion. But an expert one.”

  “And what’s yours?”

  “That Richard Kingsley wrote that note.”

  The line crackled and I muttered under my breath, “Bloody idiot.”

  More vigorous banging of the receiver. “What did you say?”

  “No. Not you. Kingsley. Mr. Dove, is it… possible, just possible, someone else wrote the note, I mean impersonating Kingsley’s hand?”

  “Anything’s possible, Mr. Fawley.”

  An opening? Microscopic, but perhaps it would provide a little room for maneuver? “Well, how possible is this?”

  “Let me put it this way. Physicists say that in theory an elephant can hang off a cliff with its trunk holding on to a daisy. That’s technically possible.”

  “I see.”

  “And if I had the choice?” he continued.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d back Nelly the elephant against your client every time.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dove. We won’t need to trouble you at trial.”

  When he hung up, I buzzed the clerk’s room. “Steve, ring Goldman and Goldman.” I was in no mood to mention the third Goldman. “I need a con at Battersea prison this afternoon in the case of Kingsley.”

  Steve was as clueless in life as he was in the law, but he had learnt the first rule of administration: Procrastinate at all costs. “Bit short notice to arrange a prison con, Mr. Fawley. You sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’m as near as dammit.”

  I suppose I used to take a certain contrary pleasure in describing myself as the most ignorant excuse of a man to toss on a barrister’s wig. It did earn me what Emma called “street cred” with some of my clients. But, at times, it could be a nuisance. This was one of those times. If a little learning is a dangerous thing, none at all could be a decided disadvantage.

  I had no idea whether Danny, Man of the Streets—and the urinals—was talking complete drivel. He did know about the straw, but perhaps Emma told him that. So where did that leave me? A police informer trying to squeeze me for money and a message from a dead girl. And all this on legal aid. I needed a coffee.

  There was a little Italian cafeteria on the Embankment which, the sign above the door boasted, made the best cappuccino from here to Milan. The sandwich-maker was, in fact, Sicilian. Vinny had chestnut-colored skin and a neatly trimmed mustache.

  He always asked about my cases. Vinny couldn’t understand the fuss. If they were innocent, they would be acquitted. If they were guilty, they would go to prison—unless they had enough money and sense to bribe the judge and jury. The law was just another business like making salami sandwiches.

  “What’s wrong?” Vinny asked as I pushed my way past a tramp in the doorway who was looking at a copy of the Financial Times. “You look like shit.”

  “A cappuccino, Vinny.”

  “I got some lovely Danish.”

  “They look stale. No, Vinny, coffee’s fine.”

  “What’s a matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  And it was true. It was not just the case or Penny or Justine. It was something more. It was me—I just couldn’t seem to be around people. I annoyed them, they annoyed me, I annoyed myself—constantly. Nothing seemed to make much sense, but I could vaguely discern a force, or maybe it was a presence, just out of my grasp.

  Vinny handed me a white plastic cup with bubbles frothing under the lid, which reminded me of the sinks in the nightclub. My stomach turned—I needed some solids.

  “Give me a Danish, then,” I said.

  But Vinny had spotted a temp from the management consultants across the road and preened his mustache with a white plastic fork before handing over the pastry.

  The tramp had retired to a wooden bench just beyond the side gates to the Temple. As I passed him, he spouted out in a most perfunctory way his standard request. “Got fifty pence for a cup of tea, guv?”

  “Tea’s only thirty pence,” I replied.

  He neatly folded the newspaper. “Well, that’s inflation for you. Those interest rates, they’re a killer, ain’t they?” He scoured the share prices with the thoroughness of someone who had nothing to do for the rest of the day.

  I handed him a coin and gestured toward the newspaper. “Do you mind?” I asked.

  He gave it to me and proceeded to inspect my coin as though it were a forgery. He bit it. “Can’t be too careful,” he said. “Lot of sly ones around. Don’t know who you can trust.”

  I turned to the television listings and there it was:

>   “9:30 p.m. Real Lives. Tonight no-nonsense judge, Hilary Hardcastle, addresses the European Society of Christian Lawyers on how English judges strive to protect the rights of the innocent.”

  But who, I thought, would protect the innocent from Hilary Hardcastle? It seemed, then, that my clerk Rose had probably got it wrong. The message must have been Real Lives and not, Read Times. Did that mean that Rose had also got the name wrong? Did the message read Love Milly? Thinking again about it, as I chomped my way through the stale Danish pastry, it could not have been from Molly. Could it?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  As I SAT IN TEMPLE LIBRARY LATER THAT DAY, SURrounded by the brooding portraits of illustrious judges, I glanced through a book that made fascinating, if gruesome, reading. I had remembered what Rupert Livingstone had said about punishment, and decided to do some investigating.

  The pages of the book were full of the instruments of mutilation and punishment: whipping-posts, pillories, gibbets, racks, whirligigs, branding irons and stocks. Chapter Eleven: the Brank—a metal cage—for the head, used for gagging a brawling woman. I tried not to speculate whether Hilary Hardcastle’s head would have fitted into the cage in the picture.

  The book was called Punishments of Yore and had been written by some particularly ghoulish court clerk in Rochdale at the turn of the century. What, I wondered, prompts a man to write a book about scalding, burning, torture and transportation?

  I flicked through chapters on executions and witchcraft, on church sanctuary and laws of the Saxons, when I found what I was looking for.

  “The Stang. An ancient custom of ridicule.”

  I tried to remember the precise context in which Kingsley had shouted out those strange words, but could only resurrect the dismal vision of Legat strapped to the bed.

  “An effigy of the offender is mounted on a pole—a Stang—and—taken around the town amid boisterous abuse.”

  It seemed incongruous to have so banal a punishment in amongst that catalogue of ordeals. What game was Kingsley playing? I tried to remember his cell with its television and the putrid flowers, his manuscripts and the doctors running around him; I tried to picture Kingsley but now not only his eyes, but the very face itself was white and soulless and—

  “The Stang (the offense). Inflicted upon a husband who had been unfaithful to his wife.”

  It must have been Kingsley’s twisted idea of a joke. He had to demonstrate his acumen, his learning; he could not just… then I had a thought, and it was this: How did Kingsley know?

  I tossed down the book, causing the cover to fall off in a small puff of dust, and I rushed to the telephone outside the Common Room. I phoned the clerks.

  “Steve, what are the visiting hours at Battersea?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I already told you, Mr. Fawley. Couldn’t get you a con.”

  “What are the visiting hours at Battersea, Steve?”

  “Starts two thirty. But I—”

  “Ring the prison. Tell them I shall be there at two o’clock.”

  “They won’t like it,” he said defensively.

  “They’re not meant to keep people out. They’re meant to keep people in, for Christ’s sake.” I hung up on him which is something I had never done before.

  My chest was tight, my fists clenched. I knew I ought to think clearly, but was sure I could not. How could Kingsley know? I had told no one except Penny. Justine wanted to keep it quiet. Perhaps we had been seen? Maybe by one of the officers in the case? I sat in one of the rusty armchairs in the Common Room and waited for two o’clock.

  The Common Room itself was an indulgently comfortable area. On the tables in front of the armchairs were chess sets and unfinished games of backgammon. The furnishings were soft, faded, and the walls were covered with the finest literature and poetry. It was a place frequented by law students in awkwardly fitting suits pretending to be barristers, and barristers drinking warm beer and eating peanuts trying to relive their student days.

  I tried to close my eyes and rest. My sleep was becoming more and more troubled. But when I shut my eyelids, the images that flashed before me were far worse than my racing thoughts. Yet again I saw Stonebury. But now I was closer and stood at the outer circle. I could not keep still and suddenly found myself with an anthology of poetry.

  The poem on page ninety-three was familiar: those feet taking a walk in ancient times, green mountains, but—as I suspected—nothing about rivers and streams. Four verses in outdated typescript. But there was a footnote for the penultimate line; it concerned the word Jerusalem.

  “Lines from (Preface to) Book of Milton. Known commonly as ‘Jerusalem.’ Not to be confused with the long prophetic poem, Jerusalem.”

  There are two Jerusalems.

  Then the sweet odor of twelve-year-old whisky was unmistakable. Jamie’s gait was almost steady as he walked through the door, but his cupped right hand shook just a little. Insert a small glass and no one would have noticed the withdrawals. He looked as rough as I felt. Was this how I was beginning to appear to people?

  “Come to brush up your iambic pentameters?” I said.

  “Early bath,” he replied and sat down heavily opposite me.

  “Client didn’t turn up?”

  “Oh, he turned up all right, the little tea-leaf. So did his mother. Said I was drunk. Can you believe the effrontery. It’s an—”

  “It’s an outrage, Jamie. That’s what it is.”

  “Anyway,” he said, smoothing out a newspaper on his lap, “he can get his beloved mother to defend him.” He looked at me, pleading with the wide eyes of a child who knows he has been caught. “I swear, Tommy. This morning… I never touched a drop.”

  “I know,” I said. It was probably true. But I also knew that he did not need to. The recognized boundaries between morning and night had long since lost their clarity in Jamie Armstrong’s hazy world.

  He said, “I see that old bat Hardcastle is out pontificating again.”

  “Nine thirty tonight, isn’t it?” I said. “Too close to the watershed for my liking.”

  “No,” he said. “She’s droning on at six.” He handed me the paper open on the Court Circular page. Visits by dukes and duchesses, the closing of factories, the opening of job centers. Halfway down the page was this entry: “Lecture. European Society of Christian Lawyers. Hardcastle J. 6 p.m. Friends Meeting House.”

  “She is on the box later as well,” I said. They must have planned to tape her speech, considering it far too risky to unleash the firebrand wit live to the nation.

  While Jamie looked forlornly at the locked bar, I surveyed the page. It was an odd mixture. Births and Deaths, Flat-shares and Funeral Arrangements. The In Memoriam section was the saddest. It was headed “Private.”

  JD Always yours. RL LC Never forgotten. DC

  Who was supposed to read these? I almost felt as if I was intruding as I scanned through these messages of private grief. As I handed the newspaper back to Jamie, I noticed the next entry.

  Who’s met or seen red? M

  Then I saw the dedication. It was to TF. Then I realized that the newspaper, of course, was The Times.

  TF. Who’s met or seen red? M

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I FOUND A BOOKSHOP ON A SOUTH-FACING CORNER OF Fleet Street, not far from the round church of St. Mary’s in the Temple. In the eleventh century bands of crusaders set off to wrest the Holy Land from the “infidel.” By 1118, one band had assumed the name of Knights of the Temple and they built a round church which still stands. Of course, I could never hope to match their grandeur. But I, too, had a private search for Jerusalem. Not so much a quest as a grubbing around in the undergrowth trying to sniff out the truth.

  I imagined that a Greek dictionary would be rather intimidating for someone whose grasp of antiquity was limited to a couple of years of Latin, Up Pompeii and Frankie Howerd in a toga. But once in the bookshop, I used an index of Greek letters to translate drus into the funny symbols that Aristo
tle once used. I vaguely knew that our letter D was delta in Greek. The rest came quickly. Soon, I found the place.

  “Drus, oak tree.”

  So now I knew. Drus was Greek for oak tree. What is more, I knew that oak tree in Greek was drus. But how did that help? In my experience, oaks were about as English—and about as banal—as bangers and mash. They hardly resonated with mythical significance. Perhaps I was missing the point?

  I was more optimistic about William Blake. In a far corner was a shelf full of black-spined paperbacks claiming to be classics. I tilted my head to that ridiculous angle people adopt in bookshops, and scanned the Bs.

  Bacon, Balzac, Baudelaire, Beauvoir (de), more Balzac (why did he write so many novels?), Beckett, Bible (The), Blake.

  There were two books. The first was called Songs of Innocence and Experience. Hurriedly flicking through it, I was intrigued, if slightly repelled, by the poems, which were surrounded by gaudy pictures. I had never seen such images.

  Flaxen-haired children in nauseatingly colored smocks walked through strange woods with lambs at their feet and serpents in the trees. And the words were even more fantastic: tiger spelt Tyger, invisible worms flying through the night, poison trees, a little girl lost, beds of crimson joy.

  The second book was instantly more promising. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. That was something I could relate to, and inevitably thought of Penny.

  I was getting nowhere. Where was Jerusalem? However, there were no more books by Blake so I tried the New Companion to English Literature.

  J: Jabberwock, Jane Eyre, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (The Strange Case of Dr. Jeronimo, Jerusalem.

  Something, somewhere clicked.

  “Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion. A long prophetic poem by Blake.”

  Giant Albion. What was it Danny shouted as he was led away in handcuffs? Why did that word keep coming up? Who or what was Albion?

  There was a growing queue at the till, which was out of order. A secretary, purchasing her weekly Mills and Boon, waited for her change from a young assistant. He had clearly been brought up on credit cards and calculators and struggled with the sums. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was nearly twelve o’clock.