The Pinocchio Brief

by Silver Abi

  “Yes, I see that. Another dead end. So let’s just focus on Mr Glover again, then. Even if he wasn’t involved, he must be concerned with all this publicity and the call from Miss Wilson that his private arrangements will come out. I just can’t quite see where this piece of the puzzle fits. Perhaps Davis stayed behind, not simply because he didn’t like rugby, although it was a small act of defiance against the head teacher he despised, but because he was keen to speak to his friend, the journalist, and finally get his revenge.”

  “You mean by getting the story published. You think it would have ruined Mr Glover’s career?”

  “Who knows? Of course it’s not an offence to have a foreign spouse with a dubious past, half our world leaders would be deposed if that were the case. But the English establishment is so stuffy and preoccupied, with good reason, about risks to young boys. The governors would have found some reason to ditch him, no doubt, and then Davis would have started again with a clean slate under a new head.”

  “Do you think we should say anything to Mr Glover?”

  Judith took a swig from the bottle of sparkling water Constance had purchased for her.

  “What, privately or in the witness box? He’s up next so we don’t have much time. Now that I think of it, unless someone wholly unconnected with the school killed Mr Davis then he is unlikely to keep his job in any event. I might just be tempted to use it if we thought we would get any traction with him, but I am unconvinced.”

  “Traction?”

  “Yes. I mean if we thought that telling Mr Glover we knew about his ‘other life’ would lead to him telling us something we don’t already know.”

  “You mean blackmail.”

  Judith shot Constance a sour look. “I prefer the word ‘traction’,” she replied.

  28

  MR GLOVER took the stand after the lunchtime break. This time he was sombrely dressed in a black three-piece suit and dark shoes. He coughed twice before nodding at Judith and she noticed, with interest, that he had deep blue bags under each eye. Presiding over a school where a vicious murder had been committed, particularly when the suspect was a pupil, was obviously taking its toll even on such a natural optimist.

  Mr Glover’s statement was short. He had been watching the rugby match, Mr Bailey had fetched him at around 3.20, well into the second half of the rugby game and he had followed him to Mr Davis’ rooms, where he had remained outside and seen Mrs Taylor and, later on, seen Maynard emerge in handcuffs. He knew of no motive for Maynard, or indeed any other boy, to wish to harm Mr Davis, who was an excellent maths and computer science teacher. His testimony was bland and weighted in favour of Raymond so far. In fact, Judith was wondering why Arkwright should have bothered with him at all, except that he could vaguely corroborate timings. Then Mr Arkwright asked a few of his own questions and his motivation for calling this witness became clear.

  “Mr Glover. Can you tell me what kind of boy Raymond Maynard is, please?”

  Mr Glover glanced over at the dock. Ray lifted his head amenably and allowed Mr Glover’s eyes to scan his face.

  “He’s a very intelligent boy. Top of the year in all the sciences and maths, very high IQ.”

  “And anything else at which he excels? Music? Art?”

  “No. Not that I know of. It’s the academic subjects really. That’s where his strengths lie.”

  “Sport?”

  “He isn’t very good at sport.”

  “Mr Glover, do you know Raymond Maynard well?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “When, specifically, have you come across him?”

  “Well I’ve had a number of meetings with him recently to talk over his ideas for maths projects the school should become involved with.”

  “Thank you. Anything else?”

  “I drop into lessons around school and just the week before the, the murder, I attended a lesson where I saw Maynard solving a formula for the rest of the class.”

  “And what kind of boy is he? Friendly?”

  “Well, I suppose so.”

  “That did not sound like a ringing endorsement.”

  “Well, he does have friends but not a huge circle as far as I can tell.”

  “He’s not a popular boy then.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Perhaps that is because he is so clever. People who are clever sometimes lose patience with those who are less blessed, with dramatic consequences.”

  The word “objection” was only halfway out of Judith’s mouth when the judge rapped the end of his pen down on his desk and fixed a stern stare on Arkwright. Judith wondered for a moment why on earth he should have asked such a blatantly inadmissible question but realised quickly that it was all part of his game. Arkwright had been told earlier in no uncertain terms that everything said in court remained on record and his truncated “lesson for the day” could have considerable impact on the jury.

  Mr Glover stared blankly at Arkwright, who smiled at him benignly. “Mr Glover, my apologies, you do not need to answer that question,” Arkwright said.

  “I can only comment on things I see,” Mr Glover replied.

  “Yes of course. Miss Burton wants us to believe that Raymond Maynard may not be ‘normal’. Do you agree with that assessment of him?”

  “No.”

  “She says that tests conducted by an expert – we’ll be hearing this from her later – direct us to judge Raymond differently from a normal person. What do you think?”

  Judith rose to her feet again.

  “Your Honour, first of all, I object to the suggestion that my client is ‘not normal’ in some way. It is pejorative and wrong and not what we will be submitting. And second, Mr Glover is not an expert in either PTSD or autism and should not be asked to give an opinion.”

  The judge nodded in Arkwright’s direction. “Mr Arkwright. This is now the second time. Please be more careful and rephrase your question.”

  “Yes, Your Honour. Did you see anything in the conduct of Raymond Maynard which would suggest to you that his behaviour may be unusual in any way?”

  “At Richmond Boys’ we don’t like to apply labels to any pupil. I can comment that he is fiendishly clever and that sometimes when he speaks it is very fast, as if his mouth is trying to keep up with his brain. And I know he is clumsy but, as Miss Burton said, I am not an expert and I can’t say anything else. That’s all I know.”

  Constance had disappeared for around an hour immediately after their lunch break. Now she returned and passed Judith a note which read: “Head of Hawtrees confirmed Glover was with him all the match until Bailey called him away. He received a couple of calls but always in his sight. Not visible on video.” Judith sighed once more, screwed the paper up into a ball and dropped it into her pocket. Another lead had come to nothing.

  She stood up towards the end of the afternoon, knowing that it was important to finish the day on a high, if at all possible. Then the jury would go off to dinner and bed with her words ringing in their ears.

  “Mr Glover. I won’t keep you for long. You seem tired,” she began.

  “Well, yes, thank you. I am rather.”

  “I imagine this is a very difficult time for you and your staff.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I mean quite apart from the shock of Mr Davis’ murder you have the uncertainty surrounding the circumstances of his death and lots of people contacting you from the press and the like. I imagine you will be very pleased when this is all over.”

  Mr Glover nodded apprehensively. He was astute enough to recognise that Judith was leading up to something, rather than just being sympathetic and her reference to the press made him uneasy.

  “Raymond Maynard is not just an intelligent boy, he is a member of MENSA, has an IQ of 135 and has already lectured once to some professors at Cambridge University. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those kinds of statistics would place him in, what, the top 0.5% in the country?”


  “Perhaps. I think so.”

  “It must have been a considerable asset to your school to have such a bright boy under your care.”

  “Yes, he is very bright.”

  “And during the times you have been in his company, which you helpfully listed for Mr Arkwright, have you ever seen signs of him being unhappy?”

  “No.”

  “Argumentative?”

  “No.”

  “Angry?”

  “No?”

  “Violent?”

  “No. I was thinking about what Mr Arkwright said earlier when you stopped his question but I don’t agree. Given his gifts, he’s a very even-tempered young man.”

  “When you say ‘given his gifts’ what do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean, given how bright he is. I didn’t see him behave impatiently with the others, like the time he was solving the maths formula. OK, he was wrapped up in what he was doing but that’s different.”

  “And can you tell me why else you might be short on sleep, Mr Glover?”

  Mr Glover cast around left and right, his eyes narrowing to tiny pinpricks of startled light. A feeling of dread was beginning to take him over. Might Judith Burton have found out about how he filled his holiday time? The journalist had not called him again since the murder. Was that the anxiety to which she was alluding?

  “Come, come, now. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Even for a private man like yourself.”

  Mr Glover gulped. Judith knew and in five seconds’ time the whole world would know. He took a deep breath and gripped the podium before him.

  “Isn’t it correct that, since Mr Davis’ death, you have put in place 24-hour security for the boys in your care, including yourself patrolling the grounds at night?”

  Mr Glover released his clutch on the flimsy wooden platform as his world returned to a semblance of normality.

  “Yes, yes it is,” he stuttered.

  “And tell us why you are doing this, despite it clearly affecting your own time to rest and recuperate?”

  Mr Glover stared at Judith. Oh, she was a clever one. She had caught him and he had no choice but to continue now.

  “Because I want to make sure the boys are safe,” he ventured, hoping this was what Judith wanted to hear.

  She rewarded him with an accepting nod.

  “But Mr Glover, why would the boys be unsafe with my client locked away?”

  Mr Glover turned towards the judge, his face strained and tense. Now he knew precisely what was expected of him and what he had to say.

  “Because I can’t be sure it was him,” he replied. “Even though he was in that room and I saw him come out with my own eyes and I saw the blood, I know that boy, I have sat with him and talked to him and watched him grow and I don’t in my heart believe it was him.”

  29

  MR GLOVER. You told some lies today, didn’t you? Mostly about Mr Davis. I can’t think why, as he’s dead. Maybe you don’t know that old saying “Never speak ill of the dead”. That’s what my mum says. She said that to Aunty Ruth when she complained that dad shouldn’t have ever allowed her to have more children after Marnie. Then she noticed that I had heard and pretended she had said something else but her face was all red. “I’m just worried about your mum’s health, that’s all,” Aunty Ruth said to me, her tongue clucking against the roof of her mouth.

  You said he was an excellent teacher? I looked up the accoutrements of an excellent teacher. In a recent article entitled “What makes a teacher great?” The Times identified four features as being present in the best teachers; (1) a love of their subject and in-depth knowledge (isn’t that two already?); (2) the right kind of personality. This “personality” apparently must include “theatrical ability”. Well, Mr Davis would have failed that one straight away. Not only did he generally exhibit fewer emotions than Terminator (apologies if you don’t think that’s a good one, it’s one of Jamie’s), when he did once step in and try and take a drama lesson it was a total disaster!

  The article says that they must also be able to keep discipline in the class but, apparently, they need to be “a velvet hand in an iron glove”. Someone should definitely have told Mr Davis that in his teacher training classes. He was more like a plutonium hand in a tennessine glove. Sorry, that’s my little joke about the newly discovered heaviest elements in the periodic table – I’ll let you look that one up; (3) they need “certain classroom skills” like “how to deliver a lesson with pace and interest, use digital resources effectively, mark work, write reports, teach difficult concepts and know how to elicit information from pupils”. That sounds like way more than four and we haven’t even got to their last category. And if by “how best to teach difficult concepts” they mean find someone in the class who’s cleverer than you and get them to explain it to the class, and whilst they are doing that read a magazine, then he certainly excelled at that one; and (4) finally they need to have “high expectations of their pupils”. Well, that one was certainly true of Mr Davis.

  I don’t think you liked Mr Davis much either, Mr Glover. When we all lined up for registration before the match I saw you looking around at all the teachers too. Mr Davis wasn’t there. Your face crumpled and you muttered, “Blasted, blasted man.” Of course you could have meant anyone but I can play detective too and I’m fairly sure you meant Mr Davis. And then you checked your watch and turned around and stared in the direction of his room, as if that was going to make him come out. Maybe you would’ve gone there to fetch him, but then Mrs Taylor came waddling across the field calling out “the away team is here”, so you followed her back to meet them off the bus. That’s the point at which I slipped away.

  But you told some lies about me too. First, when you said that you had had “a number of” meetings with me recently about maths projects. We met once precisely three weeks before I was incarcerated. The time before that was three months and 22 days earlier. I don’t call that “recent”. I don’t think you had forgiven me for the biscuit incident as when Mrs Taylor brought in your tea, you asked her to leave it outside “till I’ve finished with Maynard” and gave me a serious stare. You certainly listened to what I said and made a few notes but I don’t think you understood any of it. At the end you just said, “Very good Maynard. Make sure you keep Mr Davis on board but that all sounds very good.”

  Then, when you said you had watched me explain that formula in maths. I did notice you hovering by the door; I heard your trainers squeak along the corridor well before I spied you, but you didn’t even come inside so it doesn’t follow that you could sensibly pass comment on how I went about it or whether I was patient or not.

  That last bit from Judith was rather good though. Maybe she is finally coming into her own as things start to heat up. Sadly, we are going to need more than encouraging words from Mr Glover to save me now. But I think, with a few nudges in the right direction, she may get there after all.

  30

  “HOW DID you know that Glover patrols the grounds at night?”

  Constance was congratulating Judith on a fabulous day’s work, when they were safely back at Taylor Moses after hours.

  “Oh, I didn’t.”

  “What do you mean? I assumed someone had told you?”

  “No.”

  “So, what, it was just a wild guess then?” Constance was incredulous. She thought Judith did nothing without detailed planning.

  Judith turned to her, a light smile resting only in her eyes.

  “I rarely guess and certainly not wildly. I heard Mrs Taylor and Mr Bailey talking about it. Mr Glover has set up the security, wisely I believe, and he is reportedly wandering around at night. Whether the latter is to help the patrol or because he has insomnia for other reasons, I can’t say. But I had a fairly good idea that if I gave him a huge steer, which, frankly, I was very lucky to get away with, he would come up with the goods.”

  “How do you mean a steer?”

  “Well. You remember our discussion with Miss Wilson abo
ut Mr Glover’s foreign bride?”

  “Yes, of course. I couldn’t get it out of my mind all afternoon, even when I was chasing up his alibi. What a dark horse. But what has that got to do with it?”

  “I explained it to you then. Traction… or, if you prefer, a lucky guess.”

  Constance stared at Judith in amazement and then quickly scrolled through Mr Glover’s testimony on her screen, till she reached the exchange which they were discussing. She read it through from start to finish and then turned to Judith, all her former excitement now extinguished.

  “You made him think you were going to tell everyone, in court. That was a cruel thing to do,” she muttered.

  “Not really,” Judith replied. “I gave him, what, 30 seconds of discomfort and he gave me what I wanted; a massive show of love for our client. And I don’t think Arkwright will find out. He hasn’t shown himself particularly willing to burn the midnight oil on this one. And he wouldn’t really want to discredit his own witness either. Plus, we must not forget that we are defending Raymond and this was a necessary part of his defence. Let’s focus on tomorrow, the expert evidence, unless there is any other criticism you should like to level at me.”

  Constance sighed. “Judith, that’s unfair. I think you did amazingly well today, considering.”

  “Considering we have no defence for the boy other than we think he didn’t do it.”

  “They are also calling Jamie Benson tomorrow, remember that.”

  “Ah, yes. No doubt to try to pin some kind of motive on Raymond. And I told you they would lead with the material about the hockey game, that’s in his statement up front.”

  “What will you say?”

  “I’m not sure. I will see how it plays out. I may not ask him any questions at all. Sometimes that’s a good way of making people forget the witness altogether.”

  Constance lifted one hand to her face and stroked some stray hairs back to align them with the rest.

  “Sometimes I wish I thought like you,” she said wistfully. “You always seem to be one step ahead.”