by M. J. Hyland
Perkins attempts to object on the grounds that the questions aren’t relevant and his objection is overruled.
The judge goes so far as to roll his eyes.
Nielsen presses on. ‘Did he have romance on his mind, Miss Powell?'
Georgia’s got to speak loud now to be heard because there’s rain falling hard and it beats like a drum against the skylight.
‘That’s not exactly what—'
‘And in your statement, here on pages three and four,’ continues Nielsen, ‘you make it plain that he didn’t mention the cold-blooded attack but only his disappointment that you wouldn’t meet. He was angry, was he not, that your romantic tryst had been thwarted?'
Georgia sits up taller.
‘Yes. I suppose he was a bit angry, but—'
‘That’ll be all, Miss Powell.’
She looks at me and when she turns back to Nielsen she speaks to him with a steady voice.
‘Patrick is a good man and he’s not a murderer and he wanted me to—'
The judge intervenes.
‘That’s enough, Miss Powell. Thank you. That will be all.’
Perkins begins his cross-examination of Georgia.
‘I will also now refer to the statement you made to the police at South King Street. Could you please open that statement to page three.’
She does.
‘Did you not say, Miss Powell, that when the defendant called you from the police station he said, “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t mean to kill him, but he’s dead. I only hit him once”?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘And did you not also say, “He sounded sad and regretful”?'
‘Yes, that’s right. He kept saying, “I didn’t mean to kill him.”'
And on it goes like this and, for the first time, I get an optimistic mood going and when Georgia leaves the court and passes the dock we look at each other and she smiles and I’m sure we’ll meet again and that we might meet again soon.
But this better mood is short-lived.
Greg Hayes is called next and the prosecutor asks only three questions. The first is this:
‘Was there any reason, Mr Hayes, why the prisoner should bring his toolkit home?'
‘No, not unless—'
‘A simple yes or no will suffice.’
‘No.’
Hayes doesn’t look at me.
‘So, he might as well have left his tools at work?'
‘Yes.’
‘Do you carry your tools home at night, Mr Hayes?'
‘No.’
‘That’ll be all, your honour.’
Perkins cross-examines Hayes and he manages to get Hayes to tell the court that I was ‘very particular’ about my tools and that this might account for the fact that I carried them home with me. He also gets across the fact that I was a ‘willing and capable’ worker.
The jurors have started taking more notes.
Gardam’s already in the cell and he’s sitting on my cot, staring at the floor between his feet.
‘I’ve a favour to ask,’ he says.
I stand with my back to the door.
‘What?'
‘Can you smuggle your tie back into the cell on the last day?’
‘But it gets confiscated on the way down.’
‘You could roll it up and stick it in your pants.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You mean you don’t want to.’
‘No. I don’t want to.’
‘You’d be doing me a big favour.’
‘I can’t.’
‘It’s my life.’
‘I can’t do it.’
Gardam hugs his knees to his chest. I want him off my cot, but he’s not going anywhere. I stand with my back to the door and wait.
Shaun Flindall is called on day eight, first thing. He’s dressed as though for a dinner party: a pinstripe suit.
‘I heard him shouting,’ he says. ‘I heard him shout, ‘'Get out of my room, you fucking shit!'’ and I heard him bashing the walls.’
‘When was this, Mr Flindall?'
‘A few days before the murder. I distinctly heard him shouting.’
‘And who do you think he was shouting at?'
‘I didn’t hear Mr Welkin in the room with Mr Oxtoby, but it must have been Mr Welkin. There were no other boarders staying on the first floor and Mr Oxtoby didn’t ever bring a guest.’
‘Thank you, Mr Flindall, that’ll be all.’
The cop on my right shrugs and points at his watch.
The next morning Perkins visits my cell. He’s got another suitcase.
‘I think you should take the stand tomorrow.’
‘No.’
‘I think you should.’
‘I don’t think I should.’
‘It’s very important that we try this. You must trust my instincts on this.’
I’d like to know why he’s so blunt and forceful in this dark cell with me and why he’s got no stones in the courtroom.
‘If you don’t lose your temper,’ he says, ‘I think the jury will like you.’
‘Are you sure?'
‘I’m positive this is the right strategy. If we play our cards right, the jury will like you. You’ve got to get their sympathy and this is the only way to do it.’
I take a minute to think on it.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘But will you help me out?'
Perkins opens the suitcase.
‘Here’s a clean suit and a decent pair of shoes.’
The suit’s lined with silk.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ll help you out.’
He spends two hours with me.
25
On day ten, I take the stand. I’m the only witness for the defence.
The jurors look up at the hail pelting the skylight, shake their heads, probably worry about the fact they didn’t bring their umbrellas.
Perkins asks me easy questions, the ones we went over yesterday. I get a chance to talk about how well I did at school and how I scored very well to get into the grammar school and then university and I talk about my work as a mechanic and I get to paint a picture of myself as a pretty upstanding member of the community. I get to say over and over that I’ve been misunderstood and that what I did was stupid and I say the same thing about twenty times, ‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’
The jurors don’t take notes when I’m talking but they lean forward in their seats like the good bit of the movie’s just started, and the people in the gallery move closer to the rails so they can get a nice close look at me, and the judge puts his pen and yellow pad away and picks his nose with his thumb and forefinger and, even though he sees that I can see him, he’s not in the least bit embarrassed. It’s not real. Not any of it. It’s like a play and everybody’s acting in it and, at the end, I’ll walk out that big double door behind me and shake my head. But that’s bullshit. This is as real as it gets. This is how it goes.
The prosecutor begins his cross-examination.
‘I’m going to refer to your statement made on the twenty-ninth of August at South King Street.’
I’ve already drunk most of the water they’ve given me, and my mouth’s bone-dry.
‘Do you have a copy of this statement in front of you?'
‘Yes.’
‘I refer now,’ he says, ‘to page six of your statement. The jury also has a copy of your statement in their folders of evidence.’
He waits while the jurors find the page.
‘In paragraph three of this statement you say, “I don’t know why I hit him. He’d made me angry and it was just as though he was in my way.” Is this what you said?'
What I did lasted just a few seconds. The time it took to raise and lower a hand.
I look at the jury. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think so, but I also said—'
‘You think so? Could you please read the relevant paragraph and confirm for the court that these are in fact your words?'
I read: I don’t know why I hit him
. He’d made me angry and it was just as though he was in my way. And I thought he’d got away with too much and he was treating Bridget badly and I wanted him to answer my questions and I wanted his apology. I wanted to wake him up. I wanted to make him face things.
‘Is this what you told the police?'
‘Yes. I said this, but I also said—'
‘And did you then explain this idea further in paragraph eight: “I wanted to get on with things and he (the deceased) was in the way.”'
I want the skylight to crack open, let the water pour down, let it carry me out in a flood.
‘Yes. I said that, but—'
‘In your statement, you say you went back to your room, and took some time there, a few minutes, and in this time you made a decision to return to the deceased’s room with a weapon. You took some time. You said in your statement it was at least ten minutes. Time to drink a glass or two of water. Time to collect your thoughts. Why did you decide to return to the deceased’s room?'
I can’t respond to this. I don’t remember why. I don’t think I thought why I did. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s possible I didn’t think at all.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It was complicated.’
‘It was complicated and yet it was simple. Is it the case that you had time to think and time to calm down but you returned to the deceased’s room and you returned with a weapon?'
‘Yes.’
‘You also say in your statement that you didn’t think a blow to the head with a heavy implement could kill a sleeping man. Is that correct?'
‘That’s right.’
‘Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, but I don’t see how you could have formed that view.’
‘I didn’t want to kill him.’
My throat’s dry, but it’ll go against me if I stop this to ask for water.
‘So, you formed the view that a heavy and forceful blow to the unprotected skull of a sleeping man, with a weapon weighing more than two large hammers, couldn’t kill a man?'
One of the male jurors laughs.
‘I only meant to wake him up,’ I say.
Nielsen smiles like the cat that’s got the cream or whatever the hell that fucking expression is and he turns again to his audience to gloat.
‘One doesn’t ordinarily wake a man by clubbing his skull with an adjustable wrench.’
‘I didn’t think that the blow would kill him. I didn’t mean to kill him.’
Nielsen shakes his head.
‘That’ll be all.’
The judge’s got his head down and he’s scribbling on his yellow notepad and the jurors watch the judge.
I watch the judge.
We all watch and wait for the judge.
And then we all look up at the public gallery where there’s a madman hanging over the front rails and he’s shouting, ‘Hats off, strangers!’ He shouts the same thing over and over until he’s evicted by the usher.
When Perkins has his second round with me, it’s all downhill. I’ve been four hours in the stand and I can hardly breathe with the sadness and all my answers are just yes or no or I don’t know. He doesn’t really give me a single chance to say any redeeming thing.
He tries for a while to make something of the fact that if I had wanted to kill Welkin I would have used a great deal more force and violence than I did. I was in the room alone with Welkin. I had plenty of time and I had the right weapon. If I’d wanted to kill him, if I’d been in a rage, or if I’d had a motive to kill him, I’d have beaten him more thoroughly and there’d have been more than a single blow. He makes a big fuss out of the single blow.
After I step down from the witness box, the judge asks the usher to have the key exhibit, the weapon, passed round for the jury to feel its ‘heft and weight’, which as far as I know are the same thing. I go back to the dock and watch. The passing round of the wrench wakes the jury up good and proper and they take their time with it, raising it and lowering, fast not slow, much as they think I must have done.
Gardam’s lying on his cot, facing the wall. I tell him about my day in the box.
‘I don’t know why you’re so surprised people don’t care about you.’
‘I just expected a bit more,’ I say. ‘Considering what’s at stake.’
He turns round, sits up.
‘You have to wait the whole weekend for your verdict.’
‘I know it.’
‘When I copped my first sentence,’ he says, ‘the magistrate was this really pretty thing. She tracked me down after I got out of Borstal. I was fourteen and she said she wanted to help me. She knew I’d get roughed up in that place. And I did. She was a real nice woman. But I didn’t take her help.’
‘Maybe she could help you now?'
‘No. I wouldn’t want her to see me. She was very pretty.’
I look across and see, in the dim light, the features of Gardam’s face, softened and blurred. I see that he wasn’t always as ugly. There would’ve been plenty of people willing to help him.
I’m woken on Monday morning for breakfast but the guard tells me the jury’s still out deliberating, sequestered to a hotel in town, probably the Midlands, and I’ve got to wait for him to fetch me when they come back in. I might have to wait another day or two or even three. Just me alone in the cell while Gardam’s up in his trial. Just me and the book about the deep-sea fish. The longer the jury takes, the better. That’s what Perkins said. But I don’t know how much more waiting I can stomach.
At noon the cell door’s opened and I expect it to be lunch.
‘Jury’s coming back,’ says the guard.
I stand from the cot and he cuffs me and takes me up the stone steps to the dock.
Perkins isn’t here. He should be here. He should be here to talk to me. Everybody else is here. The public in the gallery and the journalists.
The usher goes to the door at the front of the courtroom next to the bench and he knocks three times then opens the door and the jury’s called in. As they walk into the jury box they all take a good long look at me. They look at me as though it’s the first time they’ve seen me.
Perkins arrives late and flustered, his black cape flapping, his wig on crooked. He apologises to the judge but doesn’t look at me.
The judge turns to the jury and asks for their verdict and, as the foreman stands with the piece of paper in his hand, the same madman who was evicted from the courtroom last week stands up in the public gallery and shouts, ‘The father eats sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
I don’t know whether the madman’s on my side or not and I’m still thinking about him when the foreman of the jury says, ‘We find the defendant guilty of murder.’
I almost don’t hear it.
The courtroom empties fast and Perkins comes to see me in the dock.
‘I’m very sorry, Patrick. I tried my hardest.’
I want to bawl but I fucking won’t. I’ll not let them see me cry.
I smile at Perkins. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You did.’
‘Nobody saw it coming,’ he said. ‘Least of all me.’
‘I did.’
He frowns, but says nothing.
I look away.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he says.
‘Yeah. I know it.’
‘We’ll be adjourning for the sentencing tomorrow,’ he says. ‘Try and get some rest.’
Gardam’s not in the cell and I’ve no idea if he’s coming back.
I’m on edge, can’t sit still, and can’t get breathing properly.
At six o’clock the guard brings my dinner, a pie and chips.
‘Where’s Gardam?’ I ask.
‘He’s been sent down. Gone in the van.’
‘Where?'
‘No idea.’
I can’t eat. I want a strong drug for the misery and the pains. A stiff drink at the very least. A shoulder to cry on.
I keep getting up and down, going to the bars and looking down the corridor. Ke
ep expecting Perkins to come and tell me he’s spoken to the judge and I’m going to be released due to good behaviour, or on account of the fact that it’s my first offence.
I can’t stop still. Every movement outside sets my heart thumping with blasts of hope and fear. And there’s the sickness too. I’ve had it since the first night in that cell after I was arrested and it feels now as though I’ll have it for life.
The next morning there are about a dozen journalists. Unlike most people, they don’t bow to the coat of arms when they walk in. They come and go, shaking the rain from their coats and umbrellas, and they talk. There should be a law against this kind of chatter when a man’s about to be sentenced.
Perkins scribbles notes on his yellow pad and, when the judge enters the courtroom to deliver the sentence, he puts his hand to his forehead and looks up at the bench as though shielding his eyes from the sun.
I’m told to remain seated until asked to rise. Here’s some of what the judge says:
Patrick James Oxtoby, you have been found guilty by a jury empanelled upon your trial in this court…
Murder is the most serious offence known to our criminal justice system, involving the intentional taking of the life of another person and the circumstances of this offence are such that I regard this as a serious instance of the crime of murder.
I now ask you to rise while I sentence you.
I stand and hold onto the wooden rail of the dock and close my eyes. I know what’s coming, and still I hope, like an idiot hopes, for a miracle. As the judge speaks, my legs shake and the skin on my hands goes cold.
This is all I hear:
Taking all those matters into account…I sentence you, Patrick James Oxtoby, to life imprisonment…Please remove the prisoner.
The judge stands, opens the door behind the bench, and doesn’t look back into the courtroom.
I’m carried down from the dock like a child from a car to a crib at night and then I’m taken out to the yard where the transit van, with its small high black windows, waits.
This is it.
It’s over.
I’m so sick of being sick and so tired of being tired. I haven’t even the energy for despair. There’s nothing left.
The drive to the prison is slow and the rain pelts down steady and hard on the roof of the van and I’m glad of this noise that drowns out the voices of the other prisoners.
