False Witness (3 page)

At first there were just flashes, the hint of a color, the ghost of a shape, which never lasted more than a few seconds. In
fact, I only started to worry when the figures began to emerge. They were wild, truncated: the top of a slim leg, the back
of a head, a hand clasping something. And through it all, I never saw a face. There were never any faces.

Initially, I tried to ignore the dreams. There is, after all, a lot of nonsense spoken about them. And then I read an article. I found it in a dog-eared color supplement while I was waiting
for my dentist to bore into my gums. I learnt that Aristotle classified dreams and that Alexander the Great never went into
battle without his dream-interpreter. It said that the waking world does not own us completely, that we retreat from it for
one-third of our lives, deliberately seeking a place that is quiet and still and dark, and that is the province of dreams.

The worst dream of all, the one I seemed to carry with me, had no images. There was just a dull grayness, like a television
screen after the programs have finished, and emerging from it, almost imperceptibly, was the weeping, a pitiful weeping. Who
was it who was crying so inconsolably? Was it someone else? Or was it me?

At 9:32, Kingsley again wheeled himself close to me in the cells.

“Shall I tell you what I’m really guilty of?” he asked.

“Look,” I said, wincing at a loose filling. “If you want to confess, get yourself a priest. Or do yourself a favor, and sell
your story to the tabloids. At least make some money from it. But don’t tell me.”

“But you’re my lawyer. Don’t you need to know the truth?”

“Save it for your memoirs. We’re on a tight schedule. The curtain goes up at ten thirty.”

Kingsley became silent and neither of us spoke for a while. I paced around the small room and Kingsley looked through my papers.

“Listen to me for a moment,” I finally said. “You just don’t understand, do you? We’re playing a game and you don’t know the
rules. That’s all it is. I know you haven’t done anything like this before.”

“You mean, I haven’t been caught before.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Is it?”

“Well, legally… look, I better explain.” The light flickered slightly but did not go out. “When you go through the doors of
the court, you go through—well, you sort of go through the looking-glass. And the truth doesn’t count. You see, us lawyers
need the truth as much as doctors need vaccines. A little is fine. Too much and we go out of business.”

“So what
do
you want to know?” Kingsley asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Or as near to nothing as your conscience will allow.”

“Not a particularly moral stance, Mr.—”

“You should read your Bible.”

“My what?”

“Your Bible, Mr. Kingsley. You know, that all-time bestseller.”

“That nobody reads. Except, of course,” Kingsley said, somewhat enigmatically, “in prison.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the Bible’s the one thing more widely available in prison than drugs. Everyone’s offered a free copy.”

“I didn’t know the Gideons did prison visits,” I said.

“Not the Gideons, the government. A particularly cruel form of mental torture. No doubt devised by some junior minister whilst
being whipped into a lather by his rent-boy.”

“No doubt,” I replied.

“The perks of high office, I suppose,” Kingsley said, sighing. “Still, most people take up the offer.”

“Why?”

“Comes in handy when the loo-roll runs out.”

“Well, did you ever take a peek at the Book of Ecclesiastes?” I asked. “I mean, before you ran out of Andrex?”

“Ecclesiastes?”

“You know, ‘The more we know, the more we suffer,’ and all that. You must be familiar with the quote. ‘The more we know, the
more—’”

“A cynics’ charter?”

“In the finest traditions of the Bar. You see, the less you tell me, Mr. Kingsley, the better it gets.”

Richard Kingsley seemed delighted with my answer, but I wasn’t sure why. Did he think he had found a kindred spirit? Or did
he sense my apprehension? Did he smell it and conclude instantly that I was weak and was someone to be used?

“I’m very glad I instructed you, Mr. Fawley,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because unlike those hypocrites who pretend to have morals, you’re proud to have none. Call me old-fashioned, but I like
that in a man.”

“Was that a compliment?” I asked.

“More of a diagnosis,” he said. “Besides, there’s something else.”

“What?”

“I know you won’t judge me.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you’re too busy judging yourself,” Kingsley said. “You know, I think we shall get along famously.”

And we did. By 10:03, the crumpled little man had decided not to contest any of the sex offenses. Guilt and innocence? They
simply did not come into it.

In those days, I think I could claim to be the most indifferent, cynical and lazy excuse of a man who ever dared to toss on
a barrister’s wig. I suppose I could spout all that
Rumpole of the Bailey
stuff about how brilliant a barrister I was. But I wasn’t.

Tom Fawley got by. Just.

I could pretend that I never lost a case like those sharp lawyers in American films. But that wasn’t true either. Like a pretty
average gambler, I lost and won in about equal measure. The result of a case had little to do with me. It seemed to be more
affected by the composition of the jury, the mood of the judge, and the defendant’s horoscope. I always used to read those.

And another thing: I hated the Old Bailey. For most criminal lawyers, a trial at the Bailey was the pinnacle of their profession,
the height of their ambitions. I detested the place. To me, the building always seemed full of headless corpses, severed limbs
and bloodstains. It was the closest thing in the law to an abbatoir. If ghosts existed, they would make a point of haunting
such a place.

As the morning wore on, Leonard read out yet another charge in Court 8. There was an uproar when he mentioned that the corrupted
girl was eleven years old.

“You’re evil,” shouted one woman.

“Animal,” shouted another.

Kingsley was also called a piece of scum which he ostensibly was not, and a monster which he possibly was. In fact, we were
treated to all the usual platitudes as the public pretended to be outraged. But I suspected that they enjoyed the spectacle.
After all, it was free.

Through the turmoil, Kingsley sat impassively, as if the abuse was aimed at someone else. When I looked at him, he even tried
to smile, but his eyes were as dead as ever. I glanced at the jury box and was relieved that it was empty, that I’d got a
deal, that there was to be no trial, that I wouldn’t have to pretend Kingsley was innocent. I was relieved that I wouldn’t
have to live the lie.

And that, I suppose, was my trade. I had spent my fifteen years at the Bar living out other people’s lies and I was tired.
So by the age of thirty-nine, my eyesight was failing, my waistline was expanding and strange things had begun to sprout from
my nostrils. There I was on the apprehensive side of forty, waiting for my libido to abscond and my hair to fall out.

When Kingsley finally pleaded guilty to all the sexual offenses, Leonard sat down and shuffled his papers frantically. I knew
what he was looking for. It was the Bill of Murder. And I thought, even if Kingsley was convicted, what difference would it
make? For in my experience, the criminal law was the art of trying to prevent crime, while finding it everywhere, judging
it incorrectly, and punishing the wrong people in the most inappropriate ways.

But it was a living. All those fancy words, the ones with the capital letters, like Justice and Mercy, just made me feel like
vomiting into my wig box. Lawyers saw the other side. We did society’s dirty work. The criminal courts were its moral dustbins.
We cleaned up the mess and they didn’t even give us gloves.

Silence had again settled over Court 8 at the Old Bailey. As Leonard stood up holding the murder indictment, I could see the
liver-spots on the back of his hands. His age was really beginning to show, and I wondered how many more murders he would
see, and whether any of them would be as appalling as this one. The document shook between his fingers as he began to read
aloud.

It was then that Richard Kingsley was accused of murdering Mary—also known as Molly—Summers.

E
VERYONE WAS ON EDGE
. H
OW WOULD HE PLEAD?

However, I did not so much as blink twice when Kingsley entered a plea of not guilty to murder. That was the plan. As I surveyed
the astonished faces in court, with their mouths opening and shutting, I hoped that Kingsley would remember the second part
of the plea, the difficult part, the part without which there would have been no deal.

Just before I left the cells at 10:17, Kingsley had almost seemed relieved that there was to be no trial. He sat in his wheelchair
and talked it through.

“So what
do
you want me to say when we go up to court?” he asked.

“Look,” I told him, “all you have to remember is to add,
But guilty of manslaughter
. That’s all. The Crown will accept that you… that you did it by way of diminished responsibility.”

I was very pleased, it was easy money. In seventy-seven minutes, I had persuaded one person to take the blame for killing
someone else. Not a bad morning’s work. “I can’t believe it,” I said.

“What? That I murdered Molly Summers?”

“No. That the prosecution agreed to the deal. It’s too good to be true.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Kingsley, “is if they accept I wasn’t
really
responsible, then who was?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, who or what made me do it?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” I said. “Leave that to the philosophers and the tabloids. They’ll sort it out. Articles will
be written about you, Mr. Kingsley. Tory backbenchers will rue the fact that you still have possession of your testicles.
Your sexual thrillers will sell out. Look at it as a bit of cheap publicity with rent-free accommodation thrown in.”

Kingsley’s eyes caught a spark of light from the corridor outside the cells. “What if… well, what if I didn’t
really
kill her?”

“With great respect, Mr. Kingsley,” I began. “That’s all very interesting, I’m sure. But the court will sit in about ten minutes.”
I was excessively polite to him, but then I always was polite when I was trying to persuade a client of mine to plead guilty.
“I mean, what defense could you run?”

“Defense?”

“Yes. Sorry to be all technical. But when people plead not guilty, they normally run a defense. It usually helps.”

“Well,” Kingsley said, “how about… alibi?”

“Do you have an alibi witness?”

“I could have.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Kingsley was silent.

“Well, who would it be?” I continued.

“Do I have to give a name?” Kingsley asked.

“We’ve got to give the prosecution advance notice of any alibi evidence. If you’re going to call your witness to testify,
I have to know everything. His name, his address, his inside leg measurement, which side he dresses on—everything. So tell
me, who is he?”

“Philip Templeman.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Not really.”

“So what do you know about him, Mr. Kingsley?”

“About the same as I know about you.” The little man crouched in his seat and stared straight at me.

“How do you know you can trust him?”

“How do I know I can trust you, Mr. Fawley?”

“Look. This is matter of the utmost gravity. If we put Mr.—”

“Templeman.”

“If we put him on a notice of alibi, the police will be entitled to interview him.”

“They would have to find him first.”

“So where does he live.”

“I can’t really say.”

“What does he do?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Is he of good character?”

“As far as I know,” Kingsley said.

“At least that’s something.”

“But then I was of good character before I was caught.” Kingsley smiled, but only a little.

“Do you think he will tell the truth?”

“Do you think I will, Mr. Fawley?”

“I hate to be rude,” I said, “but it does all seem rather farfetched. We might as well say you were water-skiing with Lord
Lucan in the Gobi Desert. It’s about as believable.”

“I can’t water-ski,” Kingsley said, shuffling in his wheelchair.

I realized how insensitive I had been. “Look,” I said, “why pin your hopes on this Templeman?”

“It’s not him I’m pinning my hopes upon.”

“Then who?”

“You, Mr. Fawley. I’m pinning my hopes upon you,” Kingsley said, undeterred. “You see, what if I didn’t murder Molly Summers
at the stone circle?” he said.

I could see that this would be a complication, and I had to quash any delusions of real innocence immediately. “You never
said you did murder her.”