A Place of Execution (1999) (38 page)

‘I dropped in, yes.’

‘You knew the study?’

‘I’ve been in it, yes.’

‘How many times, would you say?’

George shrugged. ‘Hard to put an exact figure on it. Before we executed the search warrant, maybe four or five times.’

‘And were you ever alone in there?’

The question came fast as a whip and with the same sting. Now it was clear what Highsmith was planning. ‘Only briefly.’

‘How many times?’

George frowned. ‘Twice, I think,’ he said cautiously.

‘How long for?’

Stanley was on his feet. ‘Your Lordship, this is supposed to be crossexamination.

My learned friend seems intent on a fishing expedition.’

Sampson nodded. ‘Mr Highsmith?’

‘Your Lordship, the prosecution is relying heavily on circumstantial evidence, some of which was found in my client’s study. I think it only reasonable that I be allowed to establish that other people had opportunity to have left it there.’

‘Very well, Mr Highsmith, you may continue,’ the judge grudgingly allowed.

‘How long were you left alone in the study?’

‘On one occasion, a minute or two at the most. On the second occasion, I must have been in the room for about ten minutes before Mr Hawkin appeared,’ George said reluctantly.

‘Long enough,’ Highsmith said, apparently to himself as he picked up another pad and flicked over a page or two. ‘Can you tell us what your hobbies are, Inspector?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘Hobbies?’ George demanded, caught off his stride.

‘That’s right.’

George looked at Stanley for guidance, but the barrister could only shrug. ‘I play cricket. I like to go fell-walking. I don’t have time for many hobbies,’ he said, sounding as baffled as he felt.

‘You’ve missed one out,’ Highsmith said, his voice cold again. ‘One that has particular relevance to this case.’

George shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Highsmith picked up a thin bundle of photostats. ‘Your Lordship, I would like these papers entered as defence exhibits one to five. Exhibit one is from Cavendish Grammar School for Boys school magazine for 1951. It is the annual report of the school Camera Club, written by the secretary, George Bennett.’ He handed the top sheet to the court clerk. ‘The other exhibits are from the newsletter of the Camera Club of Manchester University, where Detective Inspector Bennett was an undergraduate. They contain articles on photography written by one George Bennett.’ He handed over the papers to the court clerk. ‘Inspector Bennett, do you deny that you wrote these articles on photography?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘You are in fact something of an expert in matters photographic?’ George frowned. He could see the trap. To deny it would make him look like a liar. To admit it might fatally undermine the prosecution case for a committal. ‘Any knowledge I had is well out of date,’ he said carefully.

‘Apart from family snaps, I haven’t handled a camera for five or six years.’

‘But you would know where to go to find out how to fake photographs,’ Highsmith said.

George was wiser than Ruth Carter in the ways of barristers. He knew better than to leave a statement unanswered. ‘No more than you would, sir.’

‘Photographs can be faked, can’t they?’ he asked.

‘In my experience, not nearly as neatly as this,’ George said.

Highsmith pounced on the uncharacteristic slip. ‘In your experience? Are you telling the court you have experience of faking photographs?’ George shook his head. ‘No, sir. I was referring to attempts at faking that I have seen, not that I have produced.’

‘But you do know how photographs can be faked?’ George took a deep breath. ‘As I said earlier, my knowledge of photography is well out of date. Anything I know about any aspect of photography has probably been overtaken by changes in technique and technology.’

‘Inspector, please answer the question. Do you or do you not know how photographs can be faked?’ Highsmith sounded exasperated. George knew it was assumed to make him look shifty, but there was nothing he could do to alter that impression, short of admitting to being a skilled forger of photographs.

‘I have some theoretical knowledge, yes, but I have never ‘ ‘Thank you,’ Highsmith said loudly, cutting him off. ‘A simple answer will always suffice. Now, these negatives which the prosecution has entered into evidence. What kind of camera would you need to take them?’ Beneath the level of the witness box, where the jury could not see them, George clenched his fists till his nails left weals on his palms. ‘You’d need a portrait camera. A Leica or a Rolleiflex, something like that.’

‘Do you possess such a camera?’

‘I have not used my Rolleiflex for at least five years,’ he said, knowing he sounded devious even as he spoke.

Highsmith sighed. ‘The question was whether you possess such a camera, not when you last used it, Inspector. Do you possess such a camera? Yes or no will serve.’

Yes.’

Highsmith paused and flicked through his papers. Then he looked up.

‘You believe my client is guilty, don’t you?’

George turned his head towards the jury. ‘What I believe doesn’t matter.’

‘But you do believe in my client’s guilt?’ Highsmith persisted. ‘I believe what the evidence tells me, and so yes, I do believe Philip Hawkin raped and murdered his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter,’

George said, emotion creeping into his voice in spite of his intention to keep it battened down.

‘Both of which are terrible crimes,’ Highsmith said. ‘Any reasonable man would be appalled by them and would want to bring to justice the person who had committed them. The problem is, Inspector, that there is no solid evidence that either of these crimes was ever committed, is there?’

‘If there was no evidence, the magistrates would never have committed your client for trial and we would not be here today.’

‘But there is an alternative explanation for every piece of circumstantial evidence before us today. And many of those explanations lead us firmly to your door. It is your obsession with Alison Carter that has brought us here today, isn’t it, Inspector?’

Stanley was on his feet again. ‘My lord, I must protest. My learned friend seems determined to make speeches rather than ask questions, to cast aspersions rather than to make direct accusations.

If he has something to ask Detective Inspector Bennett, well and good. But if his sole intent is to deliver slurs and innuendo to the jury, then he should be stopped.’ Sampson glowered down from the bench. ‘He’s not the only one making pretty speeches out of turn, Mr Stanley.’ He looked over his glasses at the jury like a short-sighted mole. ‘You should bear in mind that what you are here to listen to is the evidence, so you must disregard any comments that counsel make in passing. Mr Highsmith, please continue, but to the point.’

‘Very well, my lord. Inspector, bearing in mind you should answer yes or no, are you an ambitious man?’

Stanley intervened again. ‘My lord,’ he exclaimed indignantly. ‘This has nothing to do with the matter before the court.’

‘It speaks to his motivation,’ Highsmith said briskly. ‘The defence contends that much of the evidence against my client has been concocted. Inspector Bennett’s motivation therefore becomes an issue for the defence.’

Sampson thought for a moment then said, ‘I am minded to allow the question.’

George took a deep breath. ‘My only ambition is to contribute to justice being done. I believe that somewhere out there is the body of a girl who was monstrously abused before she was killed and I believe the man who did it is sitting in the dock.’ Highsmith was trying to stop him, but he kept on to the end regardless. ‘I’m here to try and make sure he pays for what he’s done, not to further my career.’ He came to an abrupt halt. Highsmith shook his head in apparent disgust. ‘Yes or no, that was what I asked for.’ He sighed. ‘I have no further questions of this witness,’ he said, his face—turned towards the jury and away from the judge showing a contempt that was absent from his voice.

George stepped down from the witness box. He could no longer escape from the sight he’d been deliberately trying to avoid all the time he’d been in the witness box. Hawkin stared at him with a look that bordered on the triumphant. The smile that often appeared to hover on his lips was back and he sat as casually in the dock as if he were in his own kitchen. With murder in his heart, George strode past the dock and straight out of the courtroom. Behind him, he heard the judge announcing the close of business for the day. He hurried on, down the corridor to the Gents.

He dived into the cubicle, slammed the bolt home and bent over the bowl. He barely made it in time. The hot vomit splattered against the porcelain, the thin acrid smell rising to make him gag again. He jerked the chain then leaned against the wall of the toilet, cold sweat on his face. For a terrible moment in the courtroom, he had felt the horror of what Highsmith’s insinuations and accusations might do to him. All it would take would be a couple of gullible jurors with a grudge against the police, and not only would Hawkin walk free, but he’d take George’s career and reputation with him. It was an unbearable notion, the stuff of three
AM
nightmares and bowel-churning panics. He had stuck his neck out for this prosecution. Now, for the first time, he was allowing himself to understand how easily he could become the agent of his own destruction. No wonder Carver had been so magnanimous in his insistence George see the case through himself. He hadn’t so much been handed the poisoned chalice as wrestled it out of everyone else’s hands. But what else could he have done? Even as he stood there with the throat-rasping smell of bleach making his watering eyes sting, George knew there had never been any real choice for him. When he emerged, Clough was waiting, the familiar cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth. ‘I know a good pub on the Ashbourne road,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a jar on the way home.’

He was, George thought, a remarkable lieutenant.

The Trial 3

F
or the rest of the week, George sat at the back of the court, always contriving to arrive a few minutes after each session began and slipping away as soon as the court rose. He knew he was being ridiculous, but he couldn’t escape the idea that everyone was looking at him because they were wondering whether he was corrupt, or, even worse, because they’d already decided he was.

He hated the thought of being taken for one of those coppers who made up their minds to have somebody for a crime, regardless of the evidence. But he couldn’t stay away. The third day of the trial saw the Scardale witnesses appear. Charlie Lomas managed to repeat his unflustered performance at the committal, impressing the jury with his open manner and his obvious unhappiness about the disappearance of his cousin.

Next was Ma Lomas, dressed for the occasion in a rusty black coat with a spray of white heather pinned to the collar. She admitted her name was Hester Euphemia Lomas. It was clear she held the court in neither awe nor deference, responding to the two QCs precisely as she would have done to George in the comfort of her own living room. She insisted on a chair and a glass of water, then proceeded to ignore both. Stanley treated her with exaggerated courtesy, which she returned with utter indifference. ‘And you are absolutely certain that it was Mr Hawkin you saw crossing the field?’ Stanley asked.

‘I only need glasses for reading,’ the old woman said. ‘I can still tell a kestrel from a sparrowhawk at a hundred yards.’

‘How can you be sure it was the Wednesday?’

She looked at him with exasperation. ‘Because that’s the day Alison went missing. When something like that happens, everything else that happened that day sticks in your memory.’

Stanley obviously found nothing to argue with in that. He took her on through her knowledge of the lead mine from the book in the study of Scardale Manor. ‘Did Squire Castleton often talk to you about local history?’ he eventually asked.

‘Oh aye,’ she said, off hand. ‘I’d known him since he was a little lad. He never lorded it over his tenants, not the old squire. We’d often sit and talk, him and me. We always said, when we went, half the dale’s history would go with us. He was always on at me to write it all down, but I couldn’t be bothered with owt like that.’

‘But that’s how you knew where to find the book?’

‘That’s right. Many’s the time we’ve sat and looked at that book, the old squire and me. I was able to put my hand on it right away.’

‘Why didn’t you mention the old lead mine to the police earlier?’ Stanley asked, apparently casually.

She scratched her temple with a finger lumpy with arthritis. ‘I don’t rightly know. I forget sometimes that not everybody knows the dale like I do. I’ve lain awake often since, wondering if it would have made any difference to poor Alison if I’d have mentioned the lead mine to Inspector Bennett the night she went missing.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a terrible burden to me.’

‘I have no more questions for you, Mrs Lomas, but my colleague Mr Highsmith will need to ask you some things. So if you would wait there?’ Stanley gave the matriarch a slight bow before sitting down. This time, Highsmith waited for a few moments before he rose. ‘Mrs Lomas,’ he began. ‘It must be hard for you to see the nephew of your old friend in the dock here today.’

‘I never thought I’d be glad Squire Castleton were dead,’ she said in a low voice. ‘This would have broke his heart. He loved Alison like she was his own granddaughter.’

‘Indeed. If I might trouble you with a few questions, I’d be very grateful.’

She looked up and George, sitting at the back of the court, caught the wicked gleam in her eye. He winced. ‘Questions are no trouble to me,’ she snapped. ‘Tell truth and shame the devil. I’ve nothing to fear from your questions, so ask away.’

Highsmith looked momentarily taken aback. Her docile responses to Stanley’s questions had not prepared him for Ma Lomas in combative mood. ‘How can you be certain it was Mr Hawkin you saw cross the field that afternoon?’

‘How can I be certain? Because I saw him. Because I know him. The way he looks, the way he walks, the clothes he wears. There’s nobody in Scardale you could confuse with him,’ she said, her voice outraged. ‘I might be old but I’m not daft.’