False Witness

by Dexter Dias

  “Shh.” Her eyes were moist but not particularly so. “I spent my first day in pupilage here at this desk. It was originally my father’s. But when he… well, Ignatius took it over. I had a chair at the end.”

  “You rarely talk about your father.”

  “You rarely talk about your wife.”

  “True.”

  “You see, Tom, there are some things that are better left unsaid.”

  I tried to think of something to change the subject. But my imagination had been flooded with cheap German hock. So I merely asked Justine, “What sort of pupil master was Ignatius?”

  She paused to consider. “Interested,” she said and looked up at me childishly, biting her bottom lip. “How’s things with Penny?”

  “You mean the wife I rarely talk about?”

  “How are things?” Justine insisted.

  “The usual,” I said.

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  Through my white cotton court shirt I could feel that Justine’s hands were warm and damp, like mine, but her fingers were accurate and did not fumble with the buttons.

  “Tom, what’s this?“ she said teasingly. She sent shivers through my body. “Why, Mr. Fawley, you’ve grown a spine.”

  “Justine, you know I’ve always—”

  “I loved how you stood up to that old witch, Hardcastle.”

  And now I could feel her fingers moving lower, more slowly.

  “Do you think Kingsley did it?” she asked.

  I was finding it difficult to concentrate. “Possibly,” I said.

  Her feet were no longer swinging. “Has he told you what he did… to those other girls?”

  By now she had undone my belt. “Yes,” I breathed.

  “And do you think about it?”

  I stared at the velvet curtains, which were slightly parted. I ached very badly. “Justine, please.”

  “Do you dream about it, Tom?” Her fingers moved very slowly and rhythmically over me. “Do you?”

  At that moment I couldn’t speak.

  “And do you dream of me?” she asked.

  I nodded and noticed she had taken off her shirt and wore nothing underneath. Her breasts were hardly developed and she did look young. And I remembered again what Emma had said about Molly Summers and the Stonebury look.

  As she moved her head closer to me, I felt her moist breath on my stomach, and again I imagined I could feel the texture of a muslin gown, and then the moistness moved lower, and although I looked at the stained-glass windows of the Great Hall in the Temple, I only saw the ancient circle at Stonebury, and when her lips finally arrived, I only saw one thing, and was sick to my very soul, for I saw the face of the murdered girl, Molly Summers.

  PART II

  LONDON

  His gaze, going past those bars, has got so misted with tiredness, it can take in nothing more. He feels as though a thousand bars existed, and no more world beyond them than before.

  “The Panther” Rilke

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THERE WERE TO BE TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE RETRIAL. In the interim, Kingsley had been transferred to the hospital wing of HMP Battersea. This was supposedly due to an unspecified illness which seemed, to me, to have no physical manifestations whatsoever. Yet I sometimes perceived a kind of sickness, a disease that buzzed around his head like a swarm of wasps.

  I followed a prison officer, his peaked cap low over his eyes, through the corridors with camp bed on both sides. They would have been called wards, except for the newly painted bars on the windows.

  The trial had been aborted two days earlier. Benjamin Goldman, Kingsley’s solicitor, had arranged a conference at Battersea. The firm of Goldman, Goldman, and Goldman were Kingsley’s libel lawyers, instructed to scrutinize his populist works of sleaze and sexuality. He kept his lawyers busy. So busy, obviously, that Benjamin Goldman had not managed to attend the prison.

  The jailer and I pushed our way through thick sheets of translucent plastic which hung from the ceiling in place of doors. The dark stone floors had been scrubbed with disinfectant but there was a lingering smell of the sick.

  “Why, Mr. Fawley.” The voice to my right was mocking. “How nice of you to spare me your time.”

  There was Kingsley. Alone. Wheeling himself through the prison completely unattended.

  “Surprised?” he asked. “They allow me a free run of the place—more or less. Doctors say it’s good for me. ‘Get a little exercise, Mr. Kingsley.’ They call me that, you know.” He began to yawn meekly. “But I do get so tired. No one really worries about little old me,” said Kingsley. “I can hardly jump over the wall. Can I?”

  “Any problems from the other inmates?” I was worried that Kingsley wasn’t segregated off on Rule 43—the block for sexual offenders. But he preferred the freedom of the hospital wing.

  “Oh, Charlie,” said Kingsley to a young doctor with an ankle-length white coat. “Has my television been fixed yet? The picture keeps rolling so annoyingly.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kingsley. I’ll get it sorted out.”

  “You’re so kind,” he said as the doctor started to leave. “But you did say you’d do it yesterday. You did say that, didn’t you, Charlie?”

  The youth flushed the color of a young claret. He scribbled something down on his clip board and almost bowed as he moved away.

  “The staff are so good to me here,” said Kingsley.

  “And the prisoners?” I asked.

  “Either incapable or incontinent.”

  “But they haven’t caused you any problems?” I asked.

  “No, I haven’t been accidentally lowered onto the hotplate, Mr. Fawley.” Kingsley looked round at me. His eyes darkened. “Are you disappointed?”

  “I’ve done a written analysis of the evidence in the case,” I told him. In fact, Emma had done it. “Perhaps you’d like to glance at it?”

  As we approached his cell, there was a line of five or six beds on the right-hand side. Two of the men were strapped down. The first tossed his head from side to side in silent anguish, while the second smiled.

  Kingsley looked across to the second strapped-down man. “Morning, Legat.”

  The man was muscular, his skin weather-beaten, almost sepia, as if he had been tied to one of the stones at Stonebury and exposed to the elements. He strained at the straps but could only let out a low grunt.

  Kingsley’s cell reminded me of a tutor’s study in one of the older Oxford colleges. There were books and piles of manuscripts carelessly strewn over the floor. I saw two Dostoevsky novels, a critique of Roman law, and various books on the occult. There was a color television in the corner and next to the barred window was a plastic bottle of mineral water that had been cut in half and contained some wilting flowers, their blooms shriveled as they stood in water the color of urine.

  I picked up one of the occult novels by someone called Dyson and read the first page.

  “My Friends, the Age of Innocents is one that never was. For who amongste us was not borne in a State of Sinne? And which of this Parishe does not but reache the Grave in precisely the same Fashione?”

  I looked at Kingsley. “You don’t read this rubbish, do you?”

  “No,” said Kingsley. “I don’t really read it. Lately, I prefer to read the newspapers, actually.”

  I saw copies of The Times and The Telegraph by his bed. “And what about your writing? Haven’t lost your muse, have you?”

  “No, Mr. Fawley. I’ve lost my freedom. It’s surprising what incarceration does to dry the juices.”

  There was a gust of air that was sickly and warm and turned over my stomach.

  “You know, at Newgate Prison they used to have a windmill,” he said. He lay flat on his back and seemed about twelve years old in his blue-striped pajamas. As he stared at the wall behind his head, the pupils virtually disappeared from the eye sockets. “I’m sure the windmill did a better job than this useless air-conditioning.”

  “No d
oubt you’re right,” I said, trying not to look at him. I glanced at Emma’s jottings. “It seems to me that we will have to get a statement from your alibi—”

  “Philip Templeman?”

  “Unless you’ve got another,” I said.

  “Why do we need a statement?”

  “Calling a witness without a statement is a little like playing Russian roulette. It’s suicide. Didn’t Dostoevsky write a story about that?” I asked.

  “It was Tolstoy, in fact,” Kingsley said, as if he were giving me a tutorial in nineteenth-century Russian fiction. “A lawyer: rich, successful… suicidal. Because—”

  “Because what?”

  “Because he was committing adultery, Mr. Fawley. Not that lawyers do that kind of thing nowadays. Are you…”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to try to persuade me to plead guilty?”

  “No,” I said. However, it was at the back of my mind.

  “One last attempt, perhaps?”

  “I forgot my thumbscrews.”

  “No, no, no.” He hurriedly pulled himself upright using the leather straps hanging above his bed. “Thumbscrews were for extracting confessions.”

  “I’m sorry, I forgot—”

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “I forgot that you’ve already confessed.”

  “Ah,” said Kingsley, exaggerating the sound. “You like playing games, Mr. Fawley?”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I only enjoy those I will win.”

  “By fair means or—”

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” I replied.

  The light appeared to be fading from the room and Kingsley was getting excited, coming to life, always rubbing his hands eagerly.

  “Peine forte et dure—” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Oh, surely you’re familiar—pressing to death? A delight from the reign of Edward I.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “To force a man to plead guilty.” He rubbed his hands more quickly now as if the chill had suddenly sharpened. “I’m taken to a low dungeon, laid upon my back, token cloth around the loins—maybe they would dispense with that in my case?—and then I’m loaded with weights. A slow and rather painful death.” His eyes left the wall and pointed toward me. “Of course, take away my television and I’ll tell you what you want to hear.”

  I couldn’t even manage a grin.

  “Why are you so keen I plead guilty?” he asked.

  “It’s in your interests.”

  “Or in yours, perhaps?” Kingsley’s eyes moved slowly over my face. “Of course, Sarah Morrow didn’t plead guilty when you represented her. And look what happened to her.”

  I did not know how to reply.

  “Such a tragic death,” Kingsley said. “There seem to be so many in Stonebury. Now why do you suppose that is?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SARAH MORROW case?” I asked Kingsley.

  “Stonebury is a small place, Mr. Fawley. Five years in an old village passes in a blink of an eye. It’s because of that case that I insisted on instructing you.”

  “But she killed herself.”

  “Yes, but you fought it. And her case was more… hopeless than mine. You look tired, Mr. Fawley. Haven’t been sleeping well?”

  “I’ll survive.” In truth, the dreams were becoming more vivid and I felt a kind of need to have them, almost an addiction. I had noticed in the mirror that my face had become washed out. I had developed that pallor that people get when they spend too long in front of a computer screen. Only the images in my mind were in black and white. And I felt that with the dark rings under my eyes and the paleness of my skin, I was becoming more and more like one of the figures I saw at night.

  “Do you still want to know?” Kingsley said.

  “What?”

  “What I know about the stone circle.”

  I felt like saying, There’s little point. I’ve seen so much of it in my dreams, all you could do would be to provide a few faces. But that’s not our job, it’s the prosecution’s. It sounded foolish, so instead I told him, “I have a saying. Never listen to clients before the trial and never believe them after.”

  He was clearly interested and held a finger to his narrow mouth pondering the proposition. “I can see the wisdom of the first part, but I don’t understand—”

  “If they’re convicted, they tell you they’re innocent. And if they’re acquitted they tell you—”

  “That they did it?”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “And what about me? What will I be telling you after the trial?”

  “That you’re grateful—for my sterling efforts in your defense.”

  “Not a bad reply,” said Kingsley.

  An orderly knocked at the door and was summoned in. He was a huge pink man with a tiny head.

  “Your tea,” he said timidly.

  “Don’t be frightened, Billy. This is my barrister, Mr. Thomas Fawley.”

  Unlike Kingsley, the big man wore a prisoner’s uniform. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Put the tray down, Billy.” Kingsley touched the movable table at the bed. When the man had lowered the tea and had begun to back out of the room, Kingsley continued. “Oh, Billy. Tell Charles—I mean, Doctor Fogarty—to attend to my television… if he would be so good.”

  Uttering some kind of compliant groan, the orderly slid the door shut.

  “One of our prize specimens,” said Kingsley. “Wonderful with tea trays but lethal with little girls. Shall I be mother?”

  I deliberately looked at my watch. “Don’t know if I’ve got time.”

  “But we haven’t discussed my defense,” Kingsley said, pretending to be hurt.

  “Well, perhaps, just a little—”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Fawley,” he said, gaily dipping the camomile sachets, “gone are the days of bromide in the tea. They have a rather quaint name for it—the prisoners.” He spoke as though he were not one of them. “Liquid cosh, they call it. I quite like that.”

  Finally he tossed a steaming teabag into a red plastic bin at the end of the bed, and started on the second cup. “I didn’t do what they say, you know.” He lifted the sachet out of the water. “A little longer perhaps?”

  “No. That’s fine,” I said.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t really believe I’m innocent?”

  “Not my job.”

  “Come, come, Mr. Fawley. That might do for your shoplifters and burglars. But I’m up for murder. How can I trust you, if you don’t have faith in me?”

  “Faith?”

  “Yes, faith. I suspect that faith is not one of your strong points, Mr. Fawley.”

  “Well, I believe that a benevolent God would have given us a break between acne and hair-loss, if that’s what you mean.”

  Kingsley eyed me coldly. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “You lied to me about that note in court.”

  “Did I?” he asked, pushing the cup toward me.

  “That was foolish,” I said. “They’ll get the handwritten note examined. You know, the one Payne found in your cell.”

  “The one Payne said he found. Anyway, I would rather like a graphologist to see it.” He was smiling, his mouth full of corners and angles.

  “Did you slip the other note—the typed copy—into my brief?”

  “Why would I do a thing like that?”

  “If you lie to me, if you change your story, I could be professionally compromised.”

  “But I never—”

  “Don’t push it, Mr. Kingsley.” We had entered dangerous waters. These were the treacherous seas of legal ethics and morality. I said, “I had a friend once. Lizzie. Heartthrob of the boys at college. Wanted to be a nurse. I saw her one Christmas. I asked, How’s nursing? She said, Tom, I never want to see another
penis as long as I live. They’d placed her on the geriatric ward, you see. She was put off for life.”

  “So?” Kingsley hadn’t followed the story.

  “So that’s what the criminal Bar’s like. Cures a bad dose of moral curiosity. The truth is, Mr. Kingsley, I don’t need to know if you killed that poor girl.” And then I lied and said, “I don’t even care.”

  The door suddenly slid open. There was a gargantuan ward sister, her forearms as monstrous as those of any prison officer I had ever seen. The uniform she wore had a large brown stain by her midriff.

  “Two minutes,” she roared.

  “But, Sister, my barrister and I were—”

  “Two minutes, I told you.”

  I immediately put my notes into the briefcase at my feet. When she slammed the door even the flowers in the urinous water seemed to wilt a little more.

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” said Kingsley.

  “Not interested,” I said.

  “Then I’ll tell it to the court.” He tried to haul himself higher. “1 really will—and where will that leave you?”

  “One minute,” screamed the sister through the door.

  Kingsley’s eyes flitted nervously from me to the door and back again. “ ‘The first of punishments,’ ” Mr. Fawley.”

  I knew the quote from Juvenal, but didn’t rise to Kingsley’s bait.

  “ ’The first of punishments,’ ” he repeated, reaching a withered arm toward me. “ ‘No guilty man is acquitted—if judged by himself.’”

  I stared directly at his quickly moving eyes.

  “How about you?” he said.

  “Why don’t you sack me?”

  “What are you guilty of? Or are you too ashamed? Is that it? Those desires. Sometimes they hurt, don’t they, Mr. Fawley?”

  I took three steps to the corner of Kingsley’s bed. I was now within touching distance. “You know all about those Russians and Romans, but you know nothing about yourself. Do you know what you are, Mr. Kingsley?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re a sordid little pervert who’s going to prison for life.”

  I turned sharply on my heels and slammed the door.