by Gary Bell
‘Hear you’ve been to see my missus,’ he said. ‘She belt you one or what?’
‘No, I’m afraid she didn’t have that pleasure.’
‘Wouldn’t put it past her.’
‘Really?’ I laid my paper and pens out on the table between us. ‘She didn’t strike me as the type.’
‘Harder than she looks, our Sarah.’
‘I suppose she’d have to be, wouldn’t she? Living with you.’
The flash across the dark of his eyes told me he didn’t like that. I clicked my ballpoint into life.
‘Get into many punch-ups with the old lady, do you?’
I actually heard his jaw click from across the room while his skull kicked off to the left. ‘You married, Rook?’
I didn’t answer, just closed my naked left fist, which must’ve said it all.
‘Didn’t think so,’ he jeered. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. It’s not all happy families all the time. Marriage is –’
‘Complicated? Yeah, I heard. Is that why you spend your nights with prostitutes?’
He leaned back, summing me up through narrowed eyes, and folded his hands into boulders beneath his chin.
I caught myself checking that the light on the overhead camera was still blinking, for reassurance. We’d tried talking and the professional approach had got me nowhere. It was time to prod the bull, time to force his hand.
‘Migrant girls, aren’t they? Seems a bit hypocritical for a man of your principles. Is that where you went that night, Billy? Frightened your mates might kick you out of the Midlands Fascist Brigade if they find out about it?’
He was glaring now. ‘You’ve been busy,’ he growled. ‘Who you been speaking to?’
‘I’ve had some time to kill,’ I shrugged, ‘and since you’re not going to enlighten me on what actually happened that night, why don’t I tell you a story, and then you can let me know what you think about it?’
He only stared, so I went on.
‘It was Good Friday, and you were feeling sorry for yourself after getting dropped by an Asian lad half your age in the city centre. Must’ve been embarrassing, showing your age like that with nobody there to back you up, so you decided to go and lose some steam at the Welfare, where you sank pints for another six hours or so. Maybe you saw The Girl come in and it got you in the mood, maybe not. She was a looker. Maybe you just had some anger to take out on an immigrant, so you staggered to a pop-up brothel in Cotgrave run by Albanians. You hang out with lads half your age, so it only makes sense that they would’ve introduced you to the place through an online escort directory.
‘But fourteen hours of drinking didn’t do your stamina any favours, did it? I reckon you couldn’t perform. Frankly, I think you couldn’t get it up.’
He had a strange, bulging look to his scattered features, lost between disbelief and fury, but I was on a roll and wouldn’t be stopped. It was my turn to talk.
‘By then you must’ve been feeling totally humiliated. Your plan to relieve some stress had only gone and backfired in the worst possible way, so you started throwing your weight around. Maybe you turned your hand to whichever woman had shown you up, and that got you in a scuffle with the big bastard running the show, and he sent you stumbling home bloody and worse for wear.
‘Now you’ve got two knockouts in one day, and a public show of impotence, quite literally under your belt. So much for a quiet start to the bank holiday weekend. I’m not surprised you went home and burned your clothes in shame after all that. Must’ve been a genuine eye-opener for you. One of those pivotal moments when it really hits home, just how old and useless you’ve become. How am I doing?’
I found myself tensing against the back of the chair, ready for whatever response he was about to launch at me over the table.
As it turned out, he only smirked.
‘I reckon you ought to write for the Evening Post, making up stories like that.’
‘Yes? You could always be my fact checker. Fill in a few of the blanks?’
‘Here’s a fact for you to write down, fat prick. I always get it up. End of story.’
A few teeth on show, but he wasn’t biting yet. ‘What did happen then?’
He blinked a level stare. ‘Maybe I just went for a wander. You thought about that?’
‘In a storm, after fourteen hours of drinking? Pull the other one, Billy. You’ve got a nice little home, a family waiting for you. Most blokes would be thankful for that.’ Present company included, I thought. ‘Why the disappearing acts all the time?’
He lifted one shoulder in an evasive half-shrug. ‘You’re gonna talk to me about disappearing? Surprised you could still find the place after all this fucking time. How was that, going back as the big-time barrister? Not quite paved with gold up there, is it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but it was all right. Saw the new country park.’
‘Oh yeah,’ he snorted, ‘that’ll put food on the table.’
‘Or beer in your stomach?’ I countered. ‘Fags in your pocket?’
‘Another fucking pie in your stomach?’
I actually felt a small smile at one side of my mouth. ‘It’s good for the area, isn’t it? All that new housing they’re putting up on the pitheads, tearing up the brownfield sites. You must be able to see progress in that?’
He drew his brows together, nostrils flaring. ‘That’s right. All that new housing, and who do you reckon is gonna get it handed to them? The ones who don’t contribute a penny to our country or its economy, that’s who.’
‘And what’ve you been doing for work lately, Billy? Quite the tic you’ve got these days. You sure you haven’t been dipping into your own stock over the years?’
‘No idea what you’re on about,’ he muttered, instinctively scrubbing the heel of one hand up against his nose.
‘Must be difficult to keep a roof over your head, even without all those CSA payments, on just a few dribs and drabs of labouring. I’d guess most of your time has been spent dealing, or else sponging off the taxpayer, and yet you’ve got the nerve to sit there and begrudge genuine refugees? All right, so they closed the pit, but they didn’t bomb the village. You had options. You still do.’
‘The taxpayer,’ he smirked. ‘Remind me, how does legal aid work again?’ He had a point. Legal aid had been slashed, but I’d still made a decent living from it for a long time. ‘At the end of the day, we’re not too different, Rook. The taxpayer feeds us, clothes us and puts us both in the courtroom. You’re going to sit there, in your fucking suit, and give me a hard time about working for a living? Where the fuck was you in ’84?’
France? West Germany? Spain? I wasn’t sure.
‘It all came down to a choice,’ he growled. ‘Stick with the union and have some pride, or be a fucking scab, but a scab with food on the table. They spat on me, you know that? This, here –’ he turned his head and pressed one finger against the white scar of a long-faded gash above the right ear – ‘that was a brick, chucked at me from the line by my own uncle. And how did we get thanked for standing by the government? Which side was rewarded, after families had torn themselves apart? We all ended up in the same fucking place.’
His eyes dimmed.
‘They’re flooded now,’ he said. ‘Thousands upon thousands of tonnes of fine, usable coal given back to the ground. Thousands of hard-working blokes suddenly without work, and that didn’t leave many options. So yeah, I moved a bit of gear to make ends meet for a while. That makes me the criminal, while Thatcher’s got a statue up in Westminster … You’ve got no fucking idea what it’s like to be there, Rook. Without work, a man has to force himself to be something, even if it’s the something everyone else expects him to be, or else he’s nothing at all.’
He fell quiet, and I realised I was fidgeting; I knew what it took to hold on to an image or risk losing everything. If anything, I argued to myself, I’d have only worsened the problem by sticking around, one more on the register when their world came crumbling down.
‘You were round ours enough, weren’t you? More than I was, most of the time.’
I shrugged. ‘All I had at home were three little sisters who were more grown up than I was. It was nice, having somewhere to go and get tea cooked for me after school. Proper tea. Corned beef hash. Fried egg and chips. Liver and onions …’ My mouth began to salivate at the thought of food that would undoubtedly have made a man like Percy’s stomach turn, had he known it existed. ‘Christ, I haven’t had a fish-finger sarnie for years. Used to wind your brother up something chronic that you could fit four fish fingers from top to bottom, but always needed a fifth along the edge to fill the bread. He used to say that he –’
‘That he was going to write to Birds Eye and tell ’em to make them an inch bloody longer,’ he nodded. ‘Never did get round to it.’
‘Shame. That captain needed knocking down a peg or two.’
He almost grinned. ‘You should try the dog shit they serve in here. It’d do that belly of yours better than any Atkins crap. Saying that, you must be used to it, living in London. Surprised you’re not shitting through the eye of a needle.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, it’s like Little Asia now, isn’t it? I hear they’ve got shop signs in fucking Arabic over in the East End.’
‘Did you read that on the Internet?’ Of course, I thought, you’ve never left Nottinghamshire for anything but Her Majesty. ‘Does it honestly bother you? Bullshit aside, with nobody here to impress, just you and me. Are you really upset about a few shops 130 miles away from your front door?’
‘It’s worrying that it doesn’t bother you. How many terror attacks have we had this year? It isn’t just the Middle East no more. The holy war’s here, Rook. It’s us, and it’s them, and it’ll always be that way. Then a Paki gets killed and people act surprised! They pin it on me because, fuck it, that’s the easiest thing to do. They tell themselves I’m the outsider.’
‘Is that why you went for the Nazir lad in Nottingham? You decided to make a stand?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve got a temper drunk. It was bred into men like us. You can change your voice and dance round in a wig, but you can’t change who you are underneath, Rook. We’re the sons of drinkers built for darkness. You take an animal’s purpose away and what’s it got left? We’re like foxhounds after the hunting ban, and the breeders are sitting around wondering why the dogs got fed up and bit them in the end.’
We were losing track. I was losing track, listening too hard to the client. I had to steer the tone.
‘The trial,’ I said firmly. ‘We need to discuss the prospect of you standing up to provide evidence. It’s a chance to defend yourself, to give your side of the story, but the prosecution is going to push your buttons. They’re going to do whatever it takes to get a rise out of you, and any sort of rise, like the one we just had, could be fatal.’
‘I’m not standing. Just do your job.’
‘You know how this is going to go, don’t you?’
‘I have an idea.’
‘First thing Monday morning, security personnel from the prison service are going to transport you to the Central Criminal Court, where you’ll be held in a cell until they’re ready for you in the dock. The judge will enter and the jury will be sworn, ready for the trial to commence at ten o’clock sharp. The prosecution will give all of their evidence first, and then –’
‘You’re talking like I’ve never been on trial before,’ he snorted through chemically eroded nostrils.
‘This is murder at the Bailey, Billy, and your prosecutor, Harlan Garrick, isn’t going to fuck around. He’ll bring witness after witness until that jury is convinced of your guilt. Whatever happens –’ I leaned closer across the table, banging a finger down with each word – ‘do not lose your shit! No matter what the witnesses say. No matter how far you’re pushed. If you throw a tantrum in the dock, if you so much as cast a scowl, it could cost you the rest of your life. If they ask us to be upstanding, I want to see you on your feet with your tie done up to the chin before anybody else in the courtroom. You need to cover as many of those tattoos as you can, and you’d better show my junior the respect she deserves.’
His brow firmed into the usual glare. ‘I think you’re forgetting who’s pulling the strings here, Counsel.’
‘From here on out it’ll be the jury making all the big decisions, and unless you’re going to fill me in on what really happened that night, your future is entirely in the hands of those twelve strangers.’
‘And your future’s in mine,’ he snarled.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ I said calmly. ‘I’m not playing this game any more. Do you really think people are going to be bothered about a few empty fruit machines in 1983? You think they’re going to lock me up for chinning a couple of guys at the footy?’
‘They might be interested to know why one of the two lads that battered you ended up in a fucking wheelchair.’
I held on to my poker face, as if I was keeping it level with both hands, and refused to glance up at the camera. ‘You did that, Billy, all on your own. We just wanted you to scare them.’
‘Looked pretty fucking scared to me,’ he sneered, ‘and you’re afraid of me too, otherwise why the fuck would you be doing this?’
‘I’m doing this for Aidan,’ I snapped, and hearing it out loud like that, I knew it to be true. I felt a glow of pain, surely psychological, flash across the scar on my chest, and rubbed it with one palm.
For the first time he seemed genuinely taken aback.
‘He could’ve run,’ I said, standing to collect my untouched papers. ‘He could’ve left me behind when he saw the knife, but he didn’t. He never would.’
‘W-where you going now?’ His voice sounded strangely deflated, eyes following me to the door.
‘It’s Friday. I’m going to get myself a drink.’
‘Yeah?’ he nodded. ‘Keep a can in the fridge for me. Should be nice and cold a couple of weeks from now.’
‘See you in three days, Billy,’ I said simply, banging on the door for it to be opened from the other side. ‘Three days.’
PART THREE
THE TRIAL
24
For a long time, the Central Criminal Court, more commonly known as the Old Bailey, had seemed as distant to me as the Royal Albert Hall must to an overlooked busker on the street. I’d thought the only way I might end up there would be through a guest appearance inside the dock.
I’d first fallen for the tradition of the place, especially the old courts, during my years at Bar school, when I used to climb through the historic entrance on Newgate Street into the public galleries to watch trials with all the enthusiasm of a film buff in the Hollywood Chinese Theatre. The wigs, the gowns, the powerful orations; it soon became all I had to have.
The newer building’s modern courts might’ve been comfier, more suited to my size, but cramped legs had always seemed a reasonable sacrifice for the timeless allure of the wood-panelled walls and hard oak benches of the original rooms, even though the inkwells and ledgers had long been replaced by microphones and laptops.
Such enduring charisma did little to alleviate my mood on the morning of the trial, however, and as I looked up at the bronze statue of Themis, Lady Justice, atop the Bailey’s iconic dome, I wondered which instrument she held out for me. The scales or the sword?
‘I thought she wore a blindfold,’ Zara said as we passed the fountains beneath her shadow.
‘No, no blindfold. It’s supposed to be her maidenly form that shows blind impartiality.’
‘Huh …’ I heard her swallow a rattling bagful of nerves. ‘Guess whoever made it hadn’t gone out with many real women.’
To our right, a crowd of maybe thirty people had already begun to gather, almost all carrying home-made signs with Asian Lives Matter written in bold red and black. They were only the first of many to c
ome, and Zara kept her face turned pointedly away as we passed.
We left the pale October sunrise there at the main entrance, where it bathed Pomeroy’s statue of the Recording Angel, Fortitude and Truth in tones of amber and gold, its famous inscription – Defend the Children of the Poor and Punish the Wrongdoer – high above the doors and entered the building.
Inside the Great Hall there was the usual Monday-morning hustle of barristers, solicitors and clerks sidestepping one another in suits and shiny black shoes, arms full of papers, box files and briefs.
Though time and familiarity had got me quite used to the grandeur, I still recognised the buzz radiating from Zara as she cooed over the coloured marble and ornate decor, reading aloud the axioms emblazoned around the frieze.
‘“The law of the wise is a fountain of life”; “The welfare of the people is supreme”; “Right lives by law and law subsists by power”; “Poise the cause in justice’s equal scales”; “Moses gave unto the people the laws of God”; “London shall have all its ancient rights”.’
I pointed out which murals had been added after the Blitz, and the shard of glass left by an IRA car bomb in ’73, both preserved as symbols of the resolute laws of our land. I even thought about taking her to see the underground cells that remained of the Dickensian Newgate Prison, the route known as Dead Man’s Walk, but couldn’t face that cold, narrow passageway to the gallows this morning. The unsettling sense of doom was already close enough.
New barristers carry their wigs and gowns in bags of blue damask with tasselled draw cords, monogrammed with their initials; a senior junior who has done especially well when being led by a silk may be gifted a red bag monogrammed in gold fabric, with a personal message from the silk written inside. Zara, I noticed, was clutching her blue bag tightly to her chest as if it contained the planet’s final source of oxygen and might be snatched away from her at any second.
There are three robing rooms at the Bailey: one for men, one for women and a third for silks. While the new resident Judge Taylor of Southwark Crown Court had recently abolished the distinction between genders, allowing women into the much larger men’s robing room, no man had been inside the women’s room at the Bailey, where I left Zara, but I understood it to be poky. The silks’ room is accessed through a door at the rear of the men’s. As a junior, I’d conjured up images of marble fountains, valets and an exclusive champagne bar, so, after finally earning the right to go inside, I was severely disappointed to find only another cramped cupboard strewn with clutter and broken lockers.
