False Witness (8 page)

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 Whittington 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.

P
ATHOLOGISTS ARE CURIOUS CREATURES
. T
HEY
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 medicine. 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.