The Witness

by Jane Bidder

  The girls in the book club would have a field day, especially as she’d been foolish enough not to admit, right at the beginning, that she’d seen the scene in the park.

  The tennis club lot would make jokes (some had quite a raucous sense of humour) which would make her really embarrassed. A passionate scene on television was capable of doing that, so heaven knew how she was going to cope with something like this.

  Daniel, too, would come in for ribbing at the golf club and in the pub. He’d bear it manfully, she knew. In fact, she could just visualise his lips tightening while trying to smile at the innuendoes. “Hear your missus saw a couple having it off, did she? Gave her some ideas to spice up your sex life, did it?”

  It would give him an even keener sense of injustice as he climbed into bed with her at night. What irony! His wife, who had been unable to bring herself to have sex with him for years, was now a witness to an ʻindecent act in a public place’.

  Ironically, all this troubled her more than the thought of the man who would be in the dock. After all, he deserved to be there.

  Just as Garth surely didn’t deserve to be in prison in some foreign hell-hole.

  Meanwhile, Daniel and Brian were constantly conferring either on the phone or in Brian’s office. “Leave it to us,” said her husband when she asked what was happening.

  It made her feel stupid. As though she was the little wife at home. But what could she do? Brian was the expert after all. “Perhaps you could write to him,” suggested her mother, who had been surprisingly nice to her since they’d found out about Garth.

  Alice dismissed this initially but then, when she mentioned it to Brian, he’d declared it might not be a bad idea. “There’s no guarantee the letters will get through, of course.” Then he’d patted her lightly on the back. “But it might well help you get some feelings off your chest.”

  So she did.

  Dear Garth,

  We’re all thinking of you …

  No. That sounded like a sympathy letter.

  I wish you’d listened to me and been more careful …

  Don’t be daft.

  I hope you have enough to eat …

  But what if he hadn’t?

  Do you have your toothbrush on you …

  There are more important things than that, Mum! His voice was so clear in her head that she’d turned round to see if he was there.

  You’ll never believe what has happened to me …

  Alice’s hand paused over the writing paper with their address neatly and expensively embossed at the top. Garth had always been ‘wired differently’ as Daniel said. You never know. The whole thing might amuse him. Not, of course, that there was anything remotely funny about being a witness.

  In a strange way, Alice wanted to tell Paul Black about all of this. To describe the fear of being mocked and the dreadful every day terror about her son. But no. She mustn’t lay herself bare again; allow him to use her vulnerability and ask her how she’d feel if this was Garth in the dock. (If only he knew!). Time to be strong now, she told herself. So instead, she signed the paperwork and said yes. She would be there. At court. On the following Tuesday morning.

  It was on Saturday that she heard the letter thud through the post-box. Mungo had belted to the door, beating her to it as usual. Alice, who’d been was writing another letter to Garth (it was the only thing that helped), picked up the brown envelope with the childish writing.

  They’d already received the morning’s post, which had contained a hefty phone bill from all her calls to Garth (and that was before his arrest) so she initially presumed that something had been delivered to one of the neighbours by mistake.

  As she drew out the sheet of A4, Alice stared at the jumble of pasted-on words, clearly cut out from magazines and tabloid newspapers.

  IF YOU GO TO COURT, YOU WILL GET HURT

  Mungo pawed at her, sensing her confusion.

  The last word, ‘hurt’ was slightly askew on the page as if the writer had almost thought twice about putting it there.

  IF YOU GO TO COURT, YOU WILL GET HURT.

  Alice read it again. Was this some kind of joke? Quickly, she opened the front door. “Mungo. Come back!”

  The dog had ripped down the drive, suggesting that the person who had delivered it wasn’t far away. Alice followed him, running in her bare feet but as she reached the beech hedge by the gate, she heard an engine rev up. By the time she got there, the car – it had sounded like that, rather than a bike – had gone.

  “You shouldn’t have gone after them – you could have got hurt,” said Paul Black reprovingly.

  He had come round as soon as she had phoned the mobile number he had given her. There had been no point in ringing Daniel who’d left earlier that day for a ‘round’. Her husband never had the phone on at the golf club. It wasn’t considered etiquette – something that the younger members apparently had little regard for.

  Besides, this was police business. That was why she’d called Paul Black. Not because of the man himself and the strange emotions he aroused in her, that made her feel both protected and used at the same time. But because of his position. He was the policeman in charge of this case. He needed to know.

  As for not going after them, she’d done what felt right at the time. Just like now it suddenly felt right – despite what she’d thought earlier – to come clean about her own situation. Not totally clean of course. But part-way.

  “My son is in prison,” she said slowly, handing him a cup of tea. They were sitting in the garden, at her suggestion, because she’d found it hard to breathe inside after what had happened. “A South American prison. They found drugs on him at the airport.”

  Paul Black put down his cup and looked at her. Waiting.

  “He didn’t do it.” She focussed her gaze on a pot of azaleas which were drooping. It had been a hot month. In more ways than one.

  “Excuse me.” She stood up and walked slowly across to the garden tap, filling up the red watering can.

  “Distraction can be very helpful.”

  His voice came from behind her.

  “May I take that?”

  She shook her head. “I need to feel the weight, thanks. It makes me feel … normal. As though Garth isn’t in prison and as though that letter had never arrived.”

  He walked with her towards the azalea pot. The surge of water made a satisfying dent in the dry earth. She should have done this earlier but there’d been too much going on. The park. Phil. Garth. And now the trial.

  “He didn’t do it, you know,” she added, returning to the tap to refill. There were other pots too which she’d neglected. “I know he wouldn’t. But then again, maybe the mother of the man you’ve accused would say the same thing.”

  She turned to look at him. Something had changed in Paul Black’s face. It had hardened. “I’d like to think so. But I doubt it.”

  Alice was aware of water splashing her ankles. The can was overflowing. It had got Paul Black’s ankles wet too. “Sorry.”

  He smiled. “You know, I usually go swimming on a Saturday morning so it’s quite funny really.”

  “You go swimming?” Somehow she hadn’t ever thought of policemen swimming. A funny picture came into her head of an old-fashioned British bobby, fast crawling down a pool, still with his helmet on.

  “We are human, you know.” He smiled again and Alice felt her mouth lifting slightly at the corners; something that hadn’t happened since the news about Garth. For a crazy minute, she thought of telling him about Phil. No. He might think badly of her then, despite what he’d said about vulnerable girls and self-esteem. And somehow she couldn’t bear that.

  “Do you go on your own?” The question – a deflection from the temptation to tell him her own story – escaped from her mouth before realising its impertinence. “Sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  “No. It’s all right.” He watched her as she soaked the same azalea, forgetting she’d filled the can to relieve the others. “
I used to go with my son, actually.”

  Used to? Instinctively, Alice glanced at his bare left hand. So he was divorced. Probably only saw his son every other weekend or less. Maybe less.

  “I’m glad you were on duty today,” she added.

  He put his head to one side. “Actually, I wasn’t.”

  The significance hit her. So he had come out here in his free time. “I’m so sorry. Your son must be disappointed.”

  There was silence.

  This was even worse! She’d deprived the poor man and his son of each other’s company during a precious custody day. Occasionally, when Garth had been younger and Alice had contemplated leaving Daniel (just as he must have contemplated leaving her), she had come to the reluctant conclusion that she couldn’t possibly do so because she couldn’t bear to lose him even for a day a week in some custody arrangement. As for the thought of another woman taking her place, it was impossible.

  Does he have a stepfather, she wanted to know. For goodness sake, what was wrong with her? Didn’t she have enough to worry about in her own life without feeling for someone else?

  “It can’t be easy for you to go through all this,” said Paul Black, looking down at the letter with its garish sentence, “and cope with your son in prison.”

  She shook her head as the word ‘prison’ jolted her back to her senses. “It isn’t.”

  “How long has he been there for?”

  Alice put down the can. “It happened just after I saw … saw the couple in the park.”

  They both looked at each other for a second as if registering the significance. Then she realised. “You came round in person to make sure I wasn’t going to cop out, didn’t you? You’re still worried I might not take the stand.”

  He hesitated. But it was enough. “I was also concerned about you. As I said, we like to look after our witnesses.”

  “But you can’t stop this, can you?” She jerked her head at the letter. “What if it was a firebomb that torched the house and hurt your son or wife?”

  He winced and she could see she’d hit a nerve. “We could arrange for you to have protection, if you like. Someone could move in and be there for you until the trial.”

  Alice couldn’t imagine anything worse. A stranger witnessing the cold arguments between her and Daniel? Watching her anguish as she waited for news about Garth.”

  “No thanks. What about after the trial, anyway? Someone could try and hurt me then. What do you do about that?”

  “I’m going to be honest, Alice. We do our best but it’s a big thing to change your identity …”

  “I don’t want that,” she broke in, appalled. “I’m not a child murderer.” Then she thought of something else. “Hasn’t it ever struck you that ordinary witnesses like me have to cope with threats, maybe for the rest of their lives, whereas people who’ve done terrible things are sometimes given expensive rehabilitation programmes?”

  “Yes.” His eyes held hers. “Yes it has. But I can’t change the law, Alice. I can only try to make it work. And actually, experience has told us that in most cases when threatening letters or phone calls are made to witnesses, nothing ever happens to them.”

  He patted her hand. So lightly and quickly that she wondered if it had occurred at all. “I’ll do my best to look after you, Alice. I promise.”

  “How can he say that?” thundered Daniel when he got back from the club later that day. “Can’t you see he’s getting all chummy so you do what he says? And why didn’t you ring me instead of calling him when you got the letter?”

  His words – reinforcing everything she’d already told herself – made her angry out of guilt and self-recrimination. “I didn’t want to disturb you. It was the first time you’d had a break from all the work you’ve been doing with Brian. Besides, what could you have done?”

  They spent the rest of the day hardly talking to each other. Not for the first time, Alice thought of the sum of money which her father had left her. It wasn’t a great deal but enough to see her through a year or two on her own. Once, Alice had read a piece in a magazine declaring that every woman needed a secret ‘Running away’ money-pot. Of course, she’d never leave Daniel but the fact that she could, if she wanted, made her feel stronger inside.

  The following day, when sitting outside in the summerhouse, attempting to repair the vase she had shattered in her outrage a few days earlier, Mungo ran barking to the door. A letter lay silently simmering on the mat.

  Daniel got there before her. “Is this what the other one looked like?” he said, silently handing it to her. Alice took in the envelope with its first-class stamp and local franking mark before forcing herself to consider the garish cut-out letters.

  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

  She nodded.

  Daniel’s lips tightened. “That’s it. I won’t let you give evidence.”

  His words gave her a sense of relief – so she didn’t have to do it after all! – closely followed by a niggling feeling in her chest. “The girl,” she began. “She was so vulnerable. I have to help her. If someone was able to help Garth, wouldn’t you want them to?”

  There was a second of hesitation. Daniel never hesitated. “That’s not the point.”

  “Yes it is.” She followed him into the kitchen where Garth’s schoolboy photographs were still on the wall, grinning down at them. “See?” Her eyes filled with tears. “If someone was able to protect him, wouldn’t you give them anything – anything at all – to keep him safe?”

  Something gave in her husband’s face. “Look, Alice. If something happens to his mother, how do you think Garth is going to cope?” He had both his hands on her arms now. Tight enough to make a point. Yet loose enough to indicate affection. “I know we haven’t had an easy marriage, Alice, but if you think I’m going to stand here and let my wife put herself in danger, you’re wrong. Look at this.”

  He thrust today’s newspaper at her. It showed the face of a woman with horrific scars below a headline reading: ACID ‘HONOUR’ ATTACK.

  “That’s different,” she said weakly, thinking of her previous fears about exactly this. “That’s a woman whose brothers didn’t want her to marry someone.”

  “It’s all the same. Don’t you see? There are people out there whose minds are wired differently. If you won’t think of yourself or me, Alice, think of Garth. He needs you.”

  Maybe he had a point.

  Ironically, there was a small piece too in the paper about Garth.

  BRITISH GAP YEAR BOY STILL AWAITING TRIAL DATE.

  That had been Brian’s influence. He had a nephew who worked for a press agency. “The more we can keep Garth in the public eye, the more chance we have of not getting him lost in the system.”

  That night, Alice tossed and turned, with weird dreams about Garth and the girl from the park, lying together on a beach. When she woke, Mungo was barking wildly at the door. Instantly awake, she glanced at the bedside clock. 5.30. Far too early for the post.

  Daniel was still asleep. Racing down, she saw the brown envelope on the mat.

  THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.

  Alice’s heart raced. She could open the door. Run down the drive. Find whoever was there perhaps. But supposing she got hurt? Maybe Daniel was right. Her first duty was to be there for their son.

  Putting on the kettle – she was far too awake to go back to bed – she placed the letter in the kitchen drawer so as not to see it. Later today, she would go down to the station with it as well as yesterday’s. She wouldn’t ask to see Paul Black, just as she had refused to let Daniel ring him yesterday. If she did, she might change her mind again.

  Instead she’d tell the duty sergeant and …

  Alice froze. The telephone. At this hour? It had to be Garth! She just knew it was him. Someone, somewhere had allowed him to ring. His time was different from theirs.

  “Mrs Honeybun?”

  Alice’s heart plummeted at the sound of a woman’s voice.

  “I’m sorry to ring so ear
ly for you but I’ve just been reading the newspapers and I think I might be able to help you.”

  Alice looked at the drawer containing the letter. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Threatening you?” The well-spoken voice sounded offended. “Not at all, Mrs Honeybun. I hope I might be able to help you. My name is Sheila Harris. I was behind a young man at an airport in South America a few weeks ago and saw someone behind him slip something into his rucksack.”

  Alice gasped but before she could say anything, the caller rattled on. “I regret now that I didn’t say anything and then, I have to say, it slipped my mind. Afterwards, I had another trip and with one thing or another, I just forgot about it. Then, last night, I was up most of the night – insomnia is a devil at my age – catching up on the papers. Lucky I did! Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small piece about your son’s plight and looked you up. Just as well that Honeybun is an unusual name or I might not have found you. Anyway, here I am. Just thought my evidence might be helpful.”

  Alice’s eyes were still on the drawer with the threatening letters inside. She should be feeling elated, she told herself. Should be feeling relief. But instead, there was a weird sense of obligation. If someone else was helping her son, how could she not help someone else’s daughter?

  “Thank you,” she said, picking up a pen. “May I take your phone number?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Don’t go to court if you love your mum.”

  The words rang round and round Kayleigh’s head. Of course she loved her mum, even though common sense told her that she had every right not to. Hadn’t Mum thrown her out in favour of Ron? But something, deep down inside her, couldn’t throw Mum out of her heart.

  Just as she couldn’t get rid of the hope that a bit of Mum loved her too.

  Wasn’t that why she’d rung? Not just because she was scared of being hurt but because she was worried for her own daughter? That was it! Mum had never been great at showing affection, apart from all that lovey-dovey stuff she showered over the various men she brought back. But she proved it in different ways. Look at the time she’d come back from the market and casually tossed a pair of trainers over to her.