False Witness Read online

  Dutifully, I rolled over. She ran her small fingers smoothly down my stomach, past my thighs. I ached for her and was melting. I thrust myself toward her palm but she withdrew it swiftly. Suddenly there was broken ice in her voice.

  “If you must accost women in their sleep,” she said, yawning, “if you must pester women, be decent enough to have a proper erection, Thomas.”

  She used my full name. That was a bad sign. Thomas meant I was in trouble. Thomas meant no groping, no fondling, no sex and no breakfast. It meant I’d cut your dick off with my nail-scissors if it wasn’t so pathetically small. I hated it when she used to call me Thomas.

  The light went off.

  I couldn’t stand it. I had no place in that house, in that bed. My bathrobe was still damp from the morning—nothing dried properly in those Arctic conditions. I flung it on and rushed toward the door.

  “Justine called round,” said Penny. “She left a note in your study.”

  “What about?”

  “Well, I didn’t read it. I’m not going to read a billet-doux between you and your—”

  “She’s not my—”

  “Of course she’s not,” Penny said. “Justine’s just up to her old tricks again. That’s all.”

  “What old tricks?” I asked.

  “Oh, leaving things in strange men’s studies.”

  “What on earth does that mean, Pen?”

  “Look, ask Justine about… Alex,” she said.

  “Who?”

  Penny did not reply but pulled the duvet over her head and curled up.

  When I crept along the landing, I had a desperate urge to look in on Ginny, my daughter. Her door was shut and I couldn’t bring myself to open it in case it woke her. So I edged my way down the stairs, feeling terribly alone.

  I had a little gas heater in my study. When I was forced to work through the night, getting up a brief, it was a source of comfort. Penny forbade the central heating’s use during the night. I tried to light a match but my hand was shaking too much. The matchbox fell to the floor, matches were everywhere.

  On the desk were various piles of case papers. Emma had photocopied the entire Kingsley brief so that I could work on it at home—not that I was bothered. There was a crisp white envelope tucked in the Kingsley depositions. I understood immediately what it was. I picked up a broken match and used it to prise open the rear of the note.

  Justine’s writing was deliberate, full of ornate letters, with deep strokes almost tearing through the paper.

  Dear Tom,

  Sorry to miss you. I’ve jotted down the name of a witness we do not intend to use. The police don’t want to disclose it (for some reason). I think you should have it—in fairness. It might help.

  Love, Justine

  Love, she wrote. She had never written that before. I’d known Justine Wright for many years. From the moment I met her at one of Penny’s old schoolchums evenings, she invaded an untroubled corner of my imagination. I didn’t resist. Did she really write Love, Justine?

  As I stared at the stacks of dog-eared papers and the unlit gas heater, my bedroom seemed very distant. I sat in my armchair with a damp bathrobe draped around me—wondering.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS THE SECOND DAY OF THE TRIAL AND I WAS late.

  For that night I had slept little but had dreamt a lot. And what I had dreamt was this: there was a great field. And in the field were numerous stones. But these stones were not scattered. They were arranged in three circles. And I thought: Why three? Three for luck, perhaps? But good luck or bad luck? And luck for whom?

  For some reason, I imagined myself walking around the circles, noticing a debris of acorns and straw. But I awoke with a start and realized that I would be late. And is this not the way of things? No sooner had I crawled out of my Fred Flintstone boxer shorts than I forgot about such insubstantial matters and worried instead about the very terrestrial terrors of being late in the court of Mr. Justice Ignatius Manly.

  When I reached the security doors at the Old Bailey, I remembered that crusty old sages in the robing room used to say that the great defense barrister, Edward Marshall Hall, used to keep the court waiting deliberately. He would stalk outside the courtroom with his cushion. He suffered from piles, which along with thinning hair and an overblown sense of one’s own importance, was an occupational hazard. There Marshall Hall would remain until the tension became unbearable. Then the doors would be flung open and he would march into court with a triumphant swirl of his gown.

  When I arrived at Court 8, I peeped my head through the double doors. I was in trouble—the court was in session.

  I delicately shut the door and scampered along the corridor. Every step echoed around the halls. I sneaked past statues of great legal reformers, solemn paintings of judges as my temples pounded and my tongue felt like sandpaper. What I wouldn’t have given to be back in bed. For ten minutes tucked up in my duck-feather duvet, I would gladly have sold that small knot of indigestion which I sometimes mistook for my soul. I needed to hide.

  I tried to recall the excuses I’d given Manly in the past when I’d been late, but couldn’t remember. I had a versatile repertoire: car broken into and brief stolen, burst water-pipe, daughter taken sick. I used to be particularly ashamed of the last one—but it worked. It was too risky, I decided. There was only one solution: I had to think of something new.

  Suddenly I came across a funny little man with a sheepish expression.

  “Are you involved in the trial in Court 8?” he asked.

  “Why?” I replied. “Are you a witness in the case?”

  The man laughed.

  “Prosecution or defense?” I asked.

  “That depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  “On which way you look at it.”

  Then I had an idea. “You’re not Philip Templeman, are you?”

  Again, the man laughed, “No,” he said. “I’m not Philip Templeman. Can you tell me where the public gallery is?”

  “The queue is outside,” I said. “Anyway, only barristers and witnesses actually giving evidence are allowed inside the building. I don’t know how you got past security, but—never mind. You better hurry.”

  But it was me who did the hurrying as I headed toward the staircase. I wasn’t sure what to do and then it came to me. For there is, I suppose, a certain low cunning in a drunk. And by climbing the stairs, I reached the small library attached to the Bar Mess at the very top of the building. From there I was able to buzz down to the reception on the internal telephone.

  “This is leading counsel for the defense in Court 8,” I said, trying to speak as impressively as I could. “Tell the court clerk to give a message to Miss Emma Sharpe of counsel. I am digging out some important legal authorities. For some reason—it really is most annoying—the wretched clock has stopped. Ask Miss Sharpe to hold the fort until I arrive.” The receptionist’s scribblings finally caught up with my lies. “Immediately,” I said. Then as an afterthought, “And send someone to mend the clock.”

  I put the phone down and exhaled with relief. There was a rickety armchair in the corner of the library. Its dark tan leather peeled off it like dried skin and when I clambered onto it, it was easy to pull out the electrical wires behind the clock and move the hands back to 10:20. I can’t remember whether I spared a thought for Emma, whom I had condemned to endure Davenport’s heavy-handed oratory, as I headed to the Bar Mess for a coffee.

  “Where on earth have you been?” demanded Emma.

  The court had risen for five minutes and I took the opportunity to sneak in.

  “Researching the law,” I said.

  Emma looked at me with a mixture of incredulity and irritation. “You haven’t looked up the law since your Bar exams—and I’m not sure you looked at it then. Where were you?”

  “All rise,” bellowed Norman, the usher. He loved that moment. Norman prided himself on having the loudest voice at the Bailey and in the days of Dick Whittingto
n and public floggings he would have been the town crier or the person who counted out the strokes of the lash.

  There was a rustling of winter coats and heavy suits as everyone got to their feet. Manly strode in with two Aldermen from the City of London, who sometimes accompanied an Old Bailey judge into court. I rather think Ignatius Manly enjoyed having all those white folks bowing to him.

  Manly took his place on the Bench directly behind Leonard, the clerk. Then the judge spotted me. I’d taken the precaution of carrying as many legal tomes as I could manage, and bowed deeply toward him.

  “Why were you late, Tom?” Emma was not satisfied.

  “Considering the brief,” I said. Her expression was unchanged, so I added, “Well, sleeping on it actually.”

  Norman called for silence in court, looked pointedly at me, and began to swear in the first witness. Once she had sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but, Norman snatched back the Bible. It was one of his favorite props; when juries went out he loved reading from the Book of Revelations. He turned to Judge Manly, bowed to an almost indecent degree, and returned to his crossword.

  Standing alone in the witness box, like a miserable stick planted in a large plant-pot, the girl surveyed the ceiling of the court. Something caught her attention and she tilted her almost shaven head backward at an acute angle. She wore black denim jeans and a black woollen shawl. Protruding through a crinkled white tee-shirt were two slender arms, gripping the rail of the witness box. She had a dried spot of blood on her left nostril where a nose-ring had once hung and looked so much like a member of the Manson family that you would have expected to see “helter-skelter” tattooed across her forehead. But there was something strangely gentle about this teenager with the alabaster features, something vulnerable, and I imagined that an unkind wind wafting through Court 8 would blow her clean away.

  Due to the sensitive nature of the trial and the allegations of under-age sex, we were not allowed to know the true identities of the girls. This one was called AA. They were each allocated a pair of letters like an exhibit and, in a sense, they did become just another piece of common property to be inspected. It worried me. But that was the way it was.

  “You reside at the address given to the court?” asked Davenport. His folded pink hands again rested on his stomach.

  The girl had spotted something in the far corner and cocked her head slightly like a bedraggled sparrow. Davenport gave the scruffy note containing her address to Norman who thrust it rudely at the witness.

  “Is that your address?” asked Davenport.

  She fingered the frayed edges of the paper.

  “Did you tell the police your address?” he asked.

  The girl nodded.

  I could see that the jury was captivated: no one doodled, no one yawned, no one dozed. There is nothing like a human being on display in the witness box, being prodded and poked, to bring a criminal trial shuddering to life. Live flesh, that’s what it was all about, live flesh.

  Davenport asked, “Did you know Mary Summers?” He tried his obsequious best to be charming, but failed.

  “Who?” asked the girl.

  “Also known as Molly Summers?”

  “Who?”

  “Molly.” Davenport put on his bedtime story voice. “Did you know Molly?”

  The girl gazed up at the ceiling again and said rather carelessly. “I know lots of Mollys.”

  “But we’re only interested in one, you see. Molly Summers. Did you know her?”

  “Can’t remember,” she said without looking down.

  “Is there something of interest on the ceiling?” asked Davenport.

  She didn’t answer.

  Emma leant over to me and showed me the back page of her notebook. There she had jotted, in large letters, “Going Bent??”

  I shrugged. It was too early to tell if someone had got to this witness. She didn’t testify in the preliminary hearing in the magistrates court, so had never given her story in court.

  “Have you ever met Richard Kingsley?” asked Davenport. His hands were still folded but clenched slightly.

  “Can’t remember,” said the girl.

  The judge immediately asked, “What page, Mr. Davenport?” He wanted to know where he could find her statement in the papers.

  “Third NFE page thirteen, M’Lord,” Davenport told him.

  The girl’s full statement was served upon the defense as a Notice of Further Evidence. Kingsley assured us she wouldn’t testify.

  “Do you know whether Molly Summers is dead?” asked Davenport.

  “Well, I ain’t seen her around.”

  “Where were you the night Molly Summers died?” Davenport was sweating now and began to speak more quickly.

  The girl’s mouth opened. “I… You sees…” She hesitated and looked from Davenport to the ceiling. “I… I can’t remember,” she said.

  “Do you know Richard Kingsley?” asked Davenport.

  The girl ignored him.

  “Well, do you?” He slammed down the glass he was holding. “Do you?” he shouted.

  The wretched girl turned her back on Kingsley and the court and faced the judge. From my seat I could see her arms trembling.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” she cried. “You just don’t.” She sniffed a couple of times deeply and wiped her nose.

  I noticed Ignatius Manly inspecting her very carefully. Then, in an extremely calm voice, without taking his eyes from the girl, he said, “Perhaps you might like to retire for five minutes, members of the jury.”

  Norman led the reluctant jurors out of court. When the thick wooden door slammed, Manly began to speak softly.

  “Now listen, young lady,” he said. “If you refuse to answer I will have to consider that a contempt.”

  She pulled the black shawl around her shaking body.

  “A contempt of my court,” said Manly. “I can and probably will send you to prison. Do we understand each other?”

  The girl stood there shivering.

  “Will you answer the questions?” asked Manly as gently as he could.

  How tiny she seemed to me standing there in the witness box.

  “I can’t,” she finally wailed. I still could not see her face properly as she sobbed and sobbed. Her fragile body convulsed as she pitifully cried. “Oh, I can’t.” The black shawl slid down her back.

  Manly wrote something in his notebook, looked at the girl, rubbed it out, and wrote at much greater length. When he had finished, he slowly put down his pencil but did not look back at the girl.

  “Take her down,” he said without a trace of emotion.

  Richard Kingsley smiled a little as the star prosecution witness was led to the Old Bailey cells.

  CHAPTER NINE

  PATHOLOGISTS ARE CURIOUS CREATURES. THEY saunter into court with just the hint of death in their briefcases and make the dissection of a human body sound little more than the carving of the Sunday joint. I was deeply suspicious of them.

  Harry Molesey, however, had given evidence in many of my cases. He was a squat little man, very nearly round in shape. You could barely see his feet move as he bowled his way out of the mortuary and into court. His spectacles were huge, each lens like a glass ashtray, and he always wore the same tatty brown suit fraying at the cuffs. There were jet black tufts on his head which were almost furry, and if he ever washed his hair properly, you would really wonder what sort of things might have come tumbling out.

  Harry Molesey encountered death every day, it sent a good stream of interesting work his way, and over the years, I imagine, they had grown rather fond of one another.

  “Can we have your qualifications please?” asked Davenport.

  The jury had been brought back. They were clearly bemused. Nothing had been said about the missing girl. When Manly ordered the prosecution to proceed, I agreed to have Molesey’s evidence out of turn. Harry had an appointment with a dismembered corpse at quarter past two.

  “I am a doctor of medic
ine. A doctor of pathology.” Molesey looked around the court squinting. He always seemed embarrassed about his achievements. “And… umm… I’m a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists.” He blurted out the last few words hoping, no doubt, no one would notice.

  “Where do you work?” asked Davenport.

  “I am attached to the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory. I am also consultant to the Devon and Dorset police, and have twenty-four years’ experience as a pathologist.”

  “Did you conduct a post-mortem on the deceased Molly Summers?”

  Molesey did not answer. He picked up his scruffy tan briefcase and rested it on the edge of the witness box. The locks made an oddly hollow sound as they clicked open. Harry’s head momentarily disappeared while he rummaged inside the bag, then he surfaced clutching an untidy pile of yellowing notes.

  “I was requested by Her Majesty’s Coroner to conduct a post-mortem on one Mary Summers.”

  Davenport asked, “Are these photographs of the deceased?”

  He handed a thick green bundle to Norman, who appeared annoyed at having to leave his Quick Crossword. Molesey grabbed the bundle with a little dark paw, held the first photograph right up to his lenses, squinted, moved the photograph around his face in a small semicircle and sighed.

  “Yes,” he said when he finally lowered the photographs. “This is the deceased.”

  “Shall we call that Exhibit One?” asked Manly.

  Davenport bowed. “I’m grateful, M’Lord.”

  The judge asked to see the bundle and inspected every photograph impassively. He asked, “There are bundles for the jury, Mr. Davenport?”

  “M’Lord, yes.”

  “Mr. Fawley?” asked Manly.

  This was the moment I dreaded. There was nothing like the jury seeing photographs of the body for themselves. In the bundles, there were pictures of Molly Summers lying twisted in the stone circle like a broken doll. There were others from the mortuary, photographs of the young girl on the slab, partly covered with a green sheet, photographs taken from every conceivable angle. The camera could not pry too closely, there was no part of her that was not violated. Davenport, despite Justine’s protests, had actually agreed to remove the most disturbing shots, so the jury were not going to be shown Molly Summers’s eyes reflecting the gray sky above Stonebury.