False Witness (40 page)

A
WINTER’S CALM HAD SETTLED OVER THE
T
EMPLE
. The cobbled alleys were beginning to glisten with the falling temperature. Scattered lights shone from high windows, but
no one ventured out into the courtyards.

How must I have appeared? Trying to run, my tie trailing behind me like a leash, jacket slipping off my shoulders and so short
of breath that I thought my lungs would explode.

When I reached Justine’s chambers, I could see that the curtains were drawn in her room, two stories above. The light was
on and the window was open. Two figures stood opposite each other, like the shadows you make with your hands, silhouetted
and barely moving.

I ran through the open reception, past the empty clerks room and started to go upstairs as the central heating throbbed noisily.
As I reached the third step, I slipped and twisted my ankle. It was the same ankle I had turned over in the woods at Stonebury.
It was excruciating.

I knew I had to get to Justine’s room. I crawled up the second flight, each further step was agony. When I reached Justine’s
door, I could hear voices inside, but they were as calm as the dreamy squares of the Temple.

They were talking about me.

I needed to catch my breath, I needed to rest my ankle. Any normal person would have barged in, but I was restrained for a
moment by cowardice and my curiosity.

Justine said, “You’ve got Tom all wrong.” It sounded as if she was nearer to me, nearer to the door.

“He’s a fool. An ignorant fool.” It was a man’s voice, barely audible as it spluttered and wheezed.

“Whatever you have to do—to me,” said Justine, “don’t harm Tom.”

The man said, “Sarah might be alive if it wasn’t for him.”

“Alex, it was my fault.”

“You were both to blame, then. What do you lawyers say? Equally culpable? You see, Justine, there is crime and then there
is punishment. That’s the way it is.”

“What about forgiveness, Alex?”

“My sister’s dead. She can’t forgive you—and nor can I.” There was a scraping sound like something hard being picked up from
a table. “Wouldn’t it be ironic, Justine. If… if I used the same knife on you?”

I had to intervene. I didn’t know what I would do, but I had to burst in. The swelling on my ankle grew and my head began
to pound.

As Chapple continued, Justine was silent. “You see, Justine, Molly knew too much. Too much pillow-talk, I guess. If you call
it pillow-talk when someone’s between your thighs. She was a gossipy little girl. We had to stop her blabbing. You know, Molly
reminded me a lot of you. Took me back all those years.”

“Did you refer her to me?” asked Justine. “Did you, Alex?”

“She was young, she was there and she was available. But you can have too much of a good thing, I suppose. After a while,
even abuse becomes boring. That’s when the trouble starts. I should never have told her what happened to her father. But I
thought it would, you know, add a bit of spice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t play the innocent maiden with me, Justine.”

“The maiden?”

“ ‘And the maiden soon forgot her fear.’ The poem. Of course you remember our first time. A student-teacher relationship in
the finest traditions of the English public school.”

“How do you mean?”

“You came to me for consolation, Justine. You know, on the day your father—”

“Died,” she said plainly. “He passed away so suddenly.”

“Perhaps,” the man interrupted, “he couldn’t bear to think that other people would begin to… play with—”

“His daughter?”

“His property,” Chapple said. “Don’t you remember the rest of the poem?”

“No.”

“ ‘To her father white, Came the maiden bright. But his loving look, Like the holy book, All her tender limbs with terror
shook.’ “

There was a slight pause and then Justine spoke. “He never, you know, went… the whole way with me.”

“Any way at all is too far for a father to go, Justine.”

“It was how he showed his… love.”

“But that Sweet Love
was
a crime.”

“Alex, you’re hardly in a position to—”

“Come on, I did give you a shoulder to cry on. You can’t deny that.”

“It’s everything else you gave me, Alex. That was the problem.”

“You really wanted it.”

“I never said I did.”

“You never said you didn’t. You see, Justine, when does desire end and when does abuse begin?”

“When you start molesting a vulnerable girl, Alex. That’s a pretty good starting point. Have any of you ever thought of the
damage you’ve caused?” Justine asked.

“Damage? To whom?”

“To me. To Molly. To all the other girls.”

I could hear him walking to the far side of the room by the window, and his voice became muffled and I guessed he had his
back to the door.

I wrapped my tie around my ankle to provide a little support and tried the handle. It opened silently. Justine must have had
the clerks oil it.

“I tried to warn that boyfriend of yours,” Chapple said. “Sent him messages in
The Times
. You know, from beyond the grave, that sort of thing. Tried to warn him what he was dealing with. Nethersmere Woods. Summers’s
death. You remember all that. Payne and I tried to scare him off through that half-blind informer. But Fawley was a fool.
I bet he still doesn’t know who Molly was. Even now. The idiot… Justine, would you mind turning off the light?”

“Alex, please don’t.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Don’t make it any more difficult,” he shouted. Then with a gentler inflection, he said, “Come here, Justine.”

“Alex, please.”

“Think about your sins, Justine. Think about your sins and think what must happen to you.”

“Oh God. Alex—”

“I don’t remember the knife being this sharp.”

A click of the light switch. This was the time, swollen ankle or not.

I flung open the door and hobbled across the room, pushed Justine to one side, and as the lights from the Great Hall glinted
off his knife, I barged him with all my strength. Then I saw him sail through the window.

It was not a dramatic crack but dull thud that I heard, as his body fell two stories and hit the concrete outside.

Justine rushed up to me and put her hand to my side. “My God, Tom. What’s happened to you?”

“I know, my ankle. It’s agony.”

“No, Tom… you’ve been stabbed.”

I could feel nothing except the trickle of blood, like hot water running up your sleeve, not unpleasant if it wasn’t for the
wetness.

Then the anger built and clouded my mind and I wanted to see his face, this man who had abused Justine and had murdered Molly
Summers.

As I peered over the window sill, there was a deep pain, which felt like a handful of needles being driven into my side. It
shot up my arm, raced around my head and I cried out. Justine stroked my hair.

Lying in the cobbled yard, his body twisted and quite still, with the colors from the stained-glass windows playing over his
contorted face, lying there with his eyes staring toward the ancient round church, was Philip Templeman.

I
LOOKED AT MY WOUND.
I
T FELT AS IF A SHARK HAD
casually swum up the Thames and had taken a bite out of my side. And then, as well as blood, my reasoning flooded out. Hard
as I tried, I could not match the scrawny man I had throttled in Nethersmere Woods with the hideously twisted face two stories
below.

“He used many names,” said Justine. “I’ve even forgotten some of them.” She had placed me in a chair, the same chair from
which, many years previously, she had gazed at Ignatius Manly with wide-eyed naivete. “I better call someone,” she said.

“No, let him rot,” I told her.

“But Tom—”

“Let him rot in hell.”

Justine had her hand on my wound and I could feel her fingers, trying not to move, but slipping every now and then with the
amount of blood. I felt a part of her inside me and felt very close to her, in the room where we first made love.

“There’s a towel in the pantry,” she said.

“Don’t go.”

“I’ll only be a second, my darling.”

“Was Vera right?”

“Try not to speak, Tom.”

“About Chapple. Was she right?”

“Sort of,” Justine said.

“So she was sort of… wrong?” Each word seemed to produce more blood.

“Quiet, darling. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Justine left me. With the flowing of blood there was also a curious flowing of cares. I couldn’t understand Chapple’s—or was
it Templeman’s?—connection with Kingsley. But I didn’t care. The man was dead. I had killed him. There is crime and then there
is punishment, that’s what he had said. And now he was punished. It was like a cheap prophecy in an old movie that had come
true and now the prophet himself was dead.

I thought that Justine had been gone for hours but it could only have been a matter of seconds. When she returned with a dripping
towel, she tried to smile, but there was fear in her eyes as they reflected my wretched state.

The wet towel burned into my midriff and I could see the knife lying a few feet away, at the foot of the window. I tried to
speak but had to stop. With every breath I felt as though I was sucking the towel deeper into my bowels.

“What is it, darling?” Justine asked.

“The knife. I… I don’t understand how—”

“Alex must have got it from Payne.”

Of course. Whitey Innocent had seen Payne leaving Il Paradiso in a hurry and Payne, of all people, would have access to the
exhibits.

“How was Vera… sort of wrong?” I asked.

I looked at the knife and saw a fine streak of red at its tip and along its serrated edge. There was the instrument of murder
no longer with the blood of the murdered girl, but glistening with mine.

“I called an ambulance,” said Justine. “Won’t be long.” She stroked my hair. “You’re so brave.”

But I was not brave. I was stupid. Very stupid. How could I have missed something so obvious? As I looked at the knife, a
change must have come over my face, for Justine, I felt sure, sensed it. Suddenly the truth, brilliant, crystalline but ultimately
appalling, was revealed.

It was a different knife.

“You see, you never knew her,” said Justine, walking to the window. “She was common. Vulgar. No more than a slut. And
she
…” her voice rose to a crescendo and then fell back to her gentle jury tones. “And she was going to ruin it all?”

“Were you jealous of Molly? You know, because of her and Alex or something?” Now I felt a worse pain, a hurting so deep, so
complete that I could not imagine ever recovering.

“Alex was right. You are a fool, Tom.”

“I worked out the knife.”

“That was easy. No exhibit labels, not coated in fingerprint powder.”

“I still got it,” I said. “And I detected your feeble lie.”

“Congratulations.”

“So the knife in court—”

“Was planted by Payne at Kingsley’s as you said in court.”

But there was something that was puzzling me even more. “Why did you represent Chapple’s sister?” I asked. “After all that
he—”

“Sarah was another victim,” Justine said. “She’s not responsible for what her brother did to me.” But by now, Justine was
becoming impatient. It was all so obvious to her. She crouched at my knees and said, “A lot of bad things have happened, Tom.
But we can still have it all. It’s not too late.”

“For what?”

“For us.”

“Justine, come on.”

“For you and me.”

“It’s too late for Molly Summers. Isn’t that the point?”

She put her hands on my knees and used them to lever herself up. The pain was immense and I felt as though I would faint.

Justine looked down at me from what appeared an enormous height. “You always were weak, Tom. Like Daddy. Couldn’t resist a
woman. I mean, what chance did poor Daddy have? Living alone. And Annie did this for him and Annie did that for him. What
chance did he have? The
slut
.” Justine turned her back on me sharply and gazed down at the body below.

“Annie… the woman who looked after—”

“She was a slut, just like that daughter of hers.” Justine looked over her shoulder and was virtually smiling. “Can you believe
what the stupid little girl said to me last year? ‘I be’s your half-sister, Miss Wright. That’s what Mr. Templeman tells me.’
Can you imagine? That
orphan
and me, related?”

I remembered what I was told in the Tate about Albion: the source, the seed, the father of all things. In some way, was Justine’s
father the source of all this? And I remembered the strange myth about the King of Syria and his daughters with a taste for
castration.

It all started with the daughters. All the trouble started with the daughters
.

Justine now stood in front of me. “When I saw her in the village, Tom, I was… scared.”

“Scared?” I asked.