False Witness (13 page)

After that neither of us much wanted to talk. I tried not to look at him as he guzzled his whisky. For I feared that I was
becoming more like Jamie Armstrong. And I wondered whether in years to come I would bring a younger man to that place and
would tell him how it was with a bottle of malt.

Then I heard a clipped voice, bristling with irony. “Well, if it isn’t Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” it said.

When I screwed up my eyes, I could just make out the features of Inspector Stanley Payne. He was the officer charged with
putting Kingsley behind bars for life.

“I never thought you had it in you, Mr. Fawley,” he said. I nodded in his direction, feeling terribly embarrassed, like a
child caught red-handed pinching the custard creams. “Of course,” said Payne, “it’s nice to see you in here again, Mr. Armstrong.”

Jamie looked up at him with contempt. “Why don’t you crawl off and catch some real criminals?”

“Oh, but we’ve got one already, Mr. Armstrong. Haven’t you heard? Oh, yes. We got ourselves a real bad ‘un this time, haven’t
we, Mr. Fawley?”

I didn’t reply.

“Things look a little grim for poor old Kingsley,” Payne said, “now that we’ve found the second girl.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Payne carefully took off his long leather gloves, pulling at one finger at a time. He was a very pale man, viperous almost.
The veins stuck out on his neck as he spoke and his skin had a strangely luminous quality.

“What’s the defense then, Mr. Fawley? Wheelchair was punctured, was it?”

“Don’t speak to him,” said Jamie.

By then, however, I was lost somewhere between inebriation and unconsciousness. “Alibi,” I said.

Payne was delighted. “Come, come, sir,” he said. “A man of your”—he looked me up and down and smiled when he saw the wet yellow
stain on my shirt and the drunkenness in my eyes—“a man of your caliber can do better than that.”

“I’m warning you, Payne,” said Jamie. I was frightened of Jamie when he was like that.

“Alibi,” I repeated. “Philip Templeman. Our alibi.”

“But you can’t run alibi, Mr. Fawley.”

“Some… some law against it?” Jamie was rapidly losing both his temper and his power of speech.

Payne tutted to himself. He held his leather gloves in his left hand and stroked them as if he were holding a small kitten.

As Payne hovered in front of me, I asked, “What’s wrong with alibi?” I could make out his face and little else now.

“You got no witness,” he said. “Gone. Flown the nest. Scarpered.” Then he added in a melodic voice, “They seek him here, they
seek him there, those bobbies seek Templeman everywhere.”

He repeated this refrain twice as his voice slowly receded into the bar. Just before he vanished, he turned and said, “You
see, no one can find your witness and we’ve suddenly found ours. Strange how things work out. See you in court, sir.”

Jamie and I again sat in silence.

I finally said, “I don’t want this case.”

“What you want,” said Jamie, “is a swift nightcap. Set you up for tomorrow.”

A
S
I
FOUGHT THROUGH THE CROWDS AT
B
LACKFRIARS
Station on the third day of the trial, I had a bitter taste, like burnt almonds, in my mouth. I hadn’t slept well that night.
Nor had I expected to. I dreamt that I was falling and falling, but never reached the ground.

Throughout the tube journey I had short stabs of pain behind my eyes. Lurking somewhere just below the surface was something
I didn’t want to know.

Once I arrived at the Old Bailey, I barged to the front of the queue patiently waiting to enter. A girl in a faded denim jacket
protested. It was the young juror.

“Get to the back,” shouted one of the security guards.

“I’m counsel,” I said as arrogantly as I could.

“’Fraid everyone’s got to be ticked off.” The guard wore his peaked cap at an irritating angle. “Guvnor’s orders.”

“Listen,” I panted. “I’m late.”

“More than me job’s worth.”

“Judge Manly’s waiting and—”

“Orders is…” He paused and looked at me, digested my words and blushed suddenly. “You had better go through, sir.”

I didn’t bother to robe but dashed straight to Court 8, slipping on the newly polished stone steps. What excuse would I use?
I pushed past a solicitor’s clerk reading a copy of
Viz
. Suicide at South Kensington. Oh, M’Lord, you wouldn’t believe the chaos. I turned the corner past the lifts and was astonished
to see a quiet crowd milling outside Court 8. Davenport had his grubby hands on Justine’s shoulders, and she didn’t seem to
mind.

Emma rushed over to me as I put down my briefcase. I said, “You wouldn’t believe the mess at South Ken. Some idiot only goes
and jumps under the—”

“Shut up, Tom.” There was sadness in her voice.

“Was Payne lying then?” I asked. “Have they not found the second girl?”

It didn’t seem as if Emma was listening. The shorthand writer staggered out of court supported by Norman who was buckling
under the strain. He had his newspaper tucked under his armpit and his much-chewed biro tucked behind his ear. He hadn’t started
the crossword—something was seriously wrong.

“What’s wrong, Emma?” I asked again.

She did not reply.

“What is it, Emma? No witness?”

Her bottom lip quivered slightly. “No judge,” she said. “No judge.”

Hilary Hardcastle wore her familiar judicial frown in Court 4 as she muttered something to Leonard. Years before, Leonard
had come south at the same time as Hardcastle when she descended from the legal wastelands north of Stockport to dispense
justice to us soft southerners. Leonard said that Hardcastle’s greatest regret was that she was elevated to the Bench after
the abolition of the death penalty. Naturally, Leonard approved.

“Has the jury been brought in and discharged?” asked Hardcastle. That was the usual procedure after the death of the trial
judge.

“Yes, M’Lady,” said Davenport. “Mr. Justice Gritt did that when Mr. Fawley
finally
arrived.”

“Oh, none of this ‘M’Lady’ palaver, Mr. Davenport.” Hilary Hardcastle prided herself on being the salt of the earth, the people’s
judge, a grammar school in Blackburn and Manchester University, straight-talking, full of bluff northern common sense. “No,”
she said, making her magnanimous concession to the march of democracy, “just call me ‘Your Honor’—that will do.”

“Indeed.” Davenport bowed obsequiously.

“So what remains?” she asked.

I got to my feet. It was now approaching lunchtime and the trial was in tatters. “There still remains the question of bail,
Your Honor.”

Hardcastle fixed me with her reptilian eyes. If Hieronymous Bosch had turned his talents to gargoyles, Hilary Hardcastle would
have been one of his most treasured creations.

“I wasn’t addressing you,” she lashed. “What about the question of bail, Mr. Davenport? The Crown objects… I assume?”

Hardcastle’s court was in that ancient part of the Old Bailey. The courtroom was cramped and uncomfortable, full of dark wood
and unnerving memories. It was the set you saw in every Agatha Christie court scene; at any moment you expected Charles Laughton
to lurch across the room.

“Mr. Davenport?” repeated Hardcastle. “Where I come from, it is a common courtesy when people are addressing you to—”

“I suppose things have—altered somewhat,” he said. “And… taking into account the recent developments—”

“Oh, for goodness sake. Do you oppose bail or not?”

“Possibly,” said Davenport who was all at sea without Justine to prompt him. She was still outside.

The judge huffed mightily and moved her wig toward the space where her eyebrows should have been. “What do you say, Mr. Fawley?”
She always pronounced my name, Folly. I never really decided whether it was deliberate or not.

“In my submission, the defendant should be admitted to bail pending the retrial.”

“And when is the retrial to be?”

“In two weeks,” I said. “Or so the list office says.”

Hilary was unimpressed. “Hasn’t Kingsley been convicted of a number of sexual offenses?”

“He pleaded guilty,” I said.

“Perpetrated on young girls?”

“He’s spent a year in custody.”

“And he still faces murder?”

“The evidence is weak.”

“And he’s confessed?”

“He is presumed innocent, Your Honor.” I tried once more. If Kingsley was granted bail, he might have absconded before the
retrial and I would be free of the case. “This prosecution is very dubious.”

“So is your submission, Mr. Folly.” Hardcastle’s tongue was her sword and she ensured it did not rust. She lacked the art
of conversation but, sadly, not the power of speech.

“My client is a man of good character,” I said.

“
Previous
good character,” she snapped back. Her eyes flared, the lids palpitated.

I was angry at myself for giving her such an easy opportunity to score.

“Bail is refused,” she said.

“But I haven’t finished—”

“Yes, you have,” she said with her wig overhanging her face like a jagged rock.

I braced myself for a final assault. “One witness disappeared yesterday—”

“Sit down, Mr. Folly.”

“The other has lost her—”

“You have been warned.”

“The forensics are inconclusive.”

“Bail is
refused
,” she said. There was now little forehead between her wig and her eyes.

Emma got up beside me. “Your Honor, we are all a little upset.”

“I’m sure we all admired Mr. Justice Manly,” the judge said. But Leonard once told me over a pint of northern bitter that
Hardcastle resented a black man, such as Ignatius Manly, being elevated to the High Court Bench ahead of her. His death would
do nothing but advance her ambitions. “Yes, Miss Sharpe, we all admired Judge Manly,” she continued. “But common decency does
not fly out of the window at times such as these.”

“No, Your Honor,” said Emma, trying to elbow me into my seat.

“Thank you, Miss Sharpe.” Hardcastle blinked several times. Her wispy eyelashes were almost invisible. “Bail is refused.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Justine talking to Inspector Payne by the back door. “I wish to be heard,” I said.

“But I do not wish to listen.” Hardcastle enjoyed that.

“This is outrageous,” I said, waving one of Emma’s pens melodramatically.

“Not another word from you, Mr. Folly.”

“It is disgraceful.”

“Sit down.”

“I haven’t had the opportunity to—”

“This is your last warning.”

“I have a right—”

“You’ll have the right to be represented by counsel before the conduct committee, if you continue.”

“But I—”

“And stop pointing that pen at me.”

“But
you
,” I said, aiming the nib somewhere between her dilating pupils, “but you haven’t had the courtesy to listen to all my arguments.”

Hardcastle raised her nose and peered down at me coldly. “You will be reported,” she said.

“I’ve been in far higher courts than this and my conduct has never been criticized,” I replied.

“Perhaps you weren’t impertinent there,” Hardcastle said.

“Perhaps I had no need to be.”

Justine had by then come back into court with Payne. She conferred with Davenport, her eyes red and puffy. He stumbled to
his feet holding something that was obscured by his gown.

“Your Honor,” he said, “this was found in the defendant’s cell while he was up here in court.” Davenport passed me a scrunched-up
piece of paper with uneven, intense handwriting upon it. He said, “The words exactly… duplicate matters that the unfortunate
girl was cross-examined upon. Something about the past being a river of many streams.”

“The past being
what
?” Hardcastle did not follow.

But I knew it was the end. Kingsley must have put the typed version of the note in my papers when I had visited him in the
cells on the first day.

Davenport continued. “And this document caused the witness to, as Mr. Fawley put it, to lose her…” His voice trailed off but
he had said enough.

Hardcastle licked her colorless lips with a grainy red tongue. “Bail is refused.”

I sat down wearily and thought of how the sun shone so gently on the mountains in Ignatius Manly’s painting.