False Witness

by Dexter Dias

  “In the same way that sludge is a product of pig farming?”

  “No, like adultery is the product of marriage.”

  I had again made the mistake of trying to compete with Kingsley. I was stung and I was angry. “Whether or not you killed Molly Summers,” I snapped, “you’re part of this, Kingsley. Now the jury might convict you or the jury might acquit you. I don’t know and frankly, I don’t care. But what I do know is that unless you level with me, the truth will come out about that girl… and if you mess me about, I’ll be the one who makes sure that happens. During your trial.”

  “Don’t make trouble for yourself,” Kingsley said.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Warning you.”

  “From what?”

  “From yourself.”

  I laughed at that, but did not much feel like laughing. “I can do anything that I want to in this case. You’re locked up with the bedpans and the nurse from hell, remember? So how can you stop me?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, I don’t need to stop you, Mr. Fawley. There are plenty of other people who will gladly prevent you from meddling around in Stonebury.”

  I stood up and moved toward the door. “What will I find when I go there?”

  “I warn you not to go,” he replied.

  “Will I find Philip Templeman? Is that what you’re worried about? What’s his connection to this case, Kingsley? Does he know of your other—indiscretions? Is that it?”

  “Take my advice. Don’t go to Stonebury.”

  “Why? What have you got to hide?”

  “I don’t have the monopoly of skeletons in the village.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I think our little chat is at an end,” Kingsley said.

  “And, of course, you know absolutely nothing about The Times.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Fawley.”

  “Or Whitey Innocent? Who just happens to be in the same nick.”

  “Nurse,” he called.

  “And what about William sodding Blake?”

  “Nurse,” he shouted. In the ward outside, I could hear Legat’s crazed voice echoing the call.

  The sister arrived with her sleeves rolled up like a bricklayer.

  “Mr. Fawley would like to leave,” said Kingsley. “Please show him the way out.”

  “You’ve dug your own grave, Kingsley,” I said as the sister laid her callused hands on my shoulders.

  “And you want to look in it?” he said.

  “I’ll find what there is to find in Stonebury.”

  “You just don’t understand, do you?”

  “Understand what?”

  “That when you look into the abyss, Mr. Fawley—”

  “Into the what?”

  “—the abyss looks into you. It’s Nietzsche,” Kingsley said. “A dead German.”

  Legat broke into insane laughter as the cell door was shut.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A QUESTION CRIMINAL BARRISTERS OFTEN ASK3 themselves is: How would I cope if it were me in the dock? Thanks to the petty-mindedness of Judge Hilary Hardcastle, my stubborn refusal to apologize, and the bureaucracy of the Bar, I was about to find out. That day.

  When I had left Kingsley the previous afternoon, I took a cab to Soho and wandered through the slumbering streets until dark. I debated whether I should abscond and fail to appear before the professional conduct tribunal. But I had never broken the law, never really defied authority, never done anything I should not. So at 2:15 precisely on a Friday afternoon in December, I entered the Grand Parliament Rooms, the Temple’s inner sanctum, to hear the proceedings in the case against one Thomas Fawley.

  “Are you ready to enter a plea?” the chairman of the conduct tribunal asked. It was usually presided upon by a High Court judge. The fates were clearly conspiring against me—I had drawn Mr. Justice Gritt, trial judge at the Sarah Morrow trial. The one member of the judiciary to detest me more than Hilary Hardcastle.

  “I’m ready, M’Lord,” I replied. Then I denied the charge of conduct unbecoming the profession of barrister.

  The conventional wisdom when hauled up in front of the hastily convened inquisition is to get an establishment silk to represent you, to grovel profusely, and to try to get away with a stiff ticking-off.

  “Do you wish us to wait for your counsel, Mr. Fawley?” Gritt asked.

  “No, M’Lord.”

  I had chosen to represent myself. I had no intention of groveling and fully expected to be disbarred, though only for a relatively short period. I intended to look upon it as a well-deserved break.

  Gritt was delighted at the prospect of having me attempt to defend myself, no doubt remembering the adage that someone who represents himself has a fool for a client.

  The tables and chairs of the room had been arranged for what looked like a prayer meeting. There was, of course, no dock. But nor, I feared, any pretense that I was innocent until proved guilty.

  Everyone was in dark suits. Gritt was flanked by two senior barristers known as Benchers and a Lay Assessor. This interested member of the public was Major General Arthur Ponsonby, veteran, it was rumored, of various firing squads in the war, a man for whom insubordination ranked with high treason and homosexuality in the forces.

  “Do you wish to open the case, Mr. Livingstone?” asked Gritt.

  Prosecuting me was the man who, on our last meeting at the Bar Mess, I had technically assaulted. If I were seriously contesting the absurd allegations, I would have objected to Rupert Livingstone for no other reason than denying him the pleasure of casting the first stone.

  As Livingstone got to his feet, he whispered to me, “Why don’t you surrender now? You haven’t got a hope, Fawley.”

  “How do you know?” I hissed back.

  “I know everything about everything, remember?” He stood up tall and effected his most obsequious voice. “May it please the court, this case is very straightforward. It is alleged Mr. Fawley was intolerably rude”—he stressed the word intolerably—“to a judge sitting in open court at the Old Bailey. And it is your task, once you have heard all the evidence to decide whether he is not guilty or—”

  “Yes, yes, whether he is guilty,” said Gritt. “We know our task. Get on with it. Not much evidence is there?” He looked at his pocket watch. “Only I’ve got another appointment. An important one.”

  “There is only one witness, M’Lord.”

  “Well call him.”

  “Her,” said Livingstone. Then rather solemnly he announced, “Call Hilary Hardcastle.”

  When the diminutive judge scuttled into the room, in the same ill-fitting suit and dangerously high heels that she wore to Manly’s wake, my heart sank.

  The usher picked up the Bible and was about to offer it to Hardcastle when Gritt threw down his pen.

  “My sister judge does not need to take the oath.” By some ancient convention judges were deemed incapable of uttering anything but the truth.

  Livingstone then began to lead Hardcastle through her evidence as to how she was forced to take over the Kingsley trial at short notice after the “tragic” death of her Brother Judge Manly.

  “Mr. Fawley lost his rag completely,” she said. “I’ve never seen the like in all my years on the Northern Circuit or sitting in London.”

  “What in fact did he say?” Livingstone had resolved to go for an early kill.

  “When I refused his client bail—”

  Gritt intervened. “The murderer?”

  I got to my feet. “The man accused of murder… M’Lord.”

  “Sit down,” shouted Gritt.

  “You see,” said Hardcastle with a well-practiced sigh of judicial exasperation.

  Livingstone paused a moment to ensure that all the members of the tribunal had grasped the point. They had. Then he repeated, but this time more slowly, “What in fact did he say?”

  “He said, ‘This is outrageous.’”
Hardcastle looked at Gritt and pretended to be on the verge of bursting into tears.

  “He said that?” Gritt was fuming.

  “In open court,” Hardcastle added.

  “And did he say anything else?” asked Livingstone.

  “He said, ‘This is disgraceful. I haven’t had an opportunity.’ He also babbled on about his rights.”

  “His what?” asked the major general.

  “His rights.” Hardcastle’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

  The old soldier shook his head incredulously, ruing the day conscription was abolished, the proles were given the vote and capital punishment was removed from the statute book.

  Livingstone had finished. He told Hardcastle to wait where she was. “There may be some more questions.”

  Gritt looked at me, defying a repeat performance of such colossal insubordination.

  “No question, thank you,” I said. I did not even get up.

  “Nothing?” asked Gritt.

  “No, thank you.”

  “At all?”

  “At all,” I said.

  “Not even… not even—an apology?”

  “No question, thank you,” I repeated as politely as possible. I even managed to effect a little smile which sent Gritt spiraling into an unspoken rage.

  Livingstone bowed as low as decency would allow. “That, M’Lord, is the case against Mr. Fawley.”

  Gritt muttered to his colleagues and then he addressed me. “I presume you wish to call evidence, Mr. Fawley?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “No evidence?”

  “No.”

  “Not even… with a view to mitigation?”

  “I haven’t been found guilty yet,” I said, and as soon as I said it, I knew it would add a couple of months to the ban. Agriculturists have striven with great ingenuity for decades to cultivate tomatoes as red in hue as the shade Mr. Justice Gritt’s face then became. Just when I thought his anger had reached its heights, the door opened.

  It was Justine.

  “M’Lord,” she said. “I know this is a little unusual, but may I be heard? As an amicus?”

  “As a what?” barked the major general.

  “As a friend,” said Gritt. “Of the court.”

  “Isn’t this very irregular?” The soldier was itching to get the rifles loaded.

  Justine moved a couple of paces forward, and although she did not look at me, she looked stunning. “I was there,” she said. “I fear there has been some terrible mistake. It’s my fault entirely.”

  Gritt was astonished. “Your fault?”

  Justine explained patiently. “A handwritten note was found in the cell of Mr. Fawley’s client.”

  “Found by whom?” Gritt demanded.

  “By the officer in the case, Inspector Payne.”

  “Obviously a most diligent policeman,” said Gritt.

  “I didn’t show the note to Mr. Fawley in time. That’s why he said: ‘This is outrageous.’ I suppose it was… an outrage, I mean. He should have seen it first. And that’s why he said, ‘I haven’t had an opportunity.’ You see, I hadn’t given him one. He did have a right to see it.”

  “Is this true?” Gritt looked at me.

  I said nothing.

  “I’m very sorry,” said Justine. “But it was all rather chaotic.”

  Gritt was confused now. “Do you wish to add anything, Mr. Fawley?”

  I shook my head.

  The tribunal muttered amongst itself and then decided that it wished to retire before delivering the verdict. As they left, Justine joined me at the opposite end of the room. She lightly touched my hand.

  “It is always with a sad heart,” Mr. Justice Gritt proclaimed, the stench of his briar pipe filling the room, “that this committee hears allegations of misconduct concerning members of this honorable profession. But we are entrusted with the duty to protect the good name of the Bar. We have heard from Miss Justine Wright. And, of course, we accept her evidence. She does justice, if we may say so, to an honorable family name.”

  “Fan of yours?” I whispered to Justine.

  “No, my father’s fag at school,” she replied. “Useless fag, excellent crumpet-rack.”

  “Miss Wright,” Gritt continued, “gave evidence to the effect that in the aftermath of the death of our Brother Manly, chaos and confusion reigned in court. That may be so. But this does not excuse Mr. Fawley’s behavior. Not at all. Not for an instant. Accordingly, we find this matter proved.”

  Livingstone gloated unbearably and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Stand up,” Gritt said to me. “You will be barred from practicing as a barrister for six months.”

  Justine gasped below me.

  “But solely because of the evidence of Miss Wright—and for no other reason—we are prepared to suspend the disqualification.”

  The major general grumbled audibly. Clearly he was outvoted. The firing squad would have to be stood down. The smile also vanished from Livingstone’s face.

  “You might know everything about everything,” I whispered to Livingstone. “But you really understand bugger all.”

  Gritt raised his voice and pointed the end of his pen at me. “But I warn you, Mr. Fawley. One more petulant or intemperate outburst from you in court and the ban will be enforced… with full severity. These proceedings are closed.”

  It was a spineless compromise. If they had any guts, they would have thrown me out. Just then, that was my most ardent wish.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  HAVING FINISHED EARLY, WE WENT TO THE PRE-THE ater sitting at II Gallo Nero. Justine wanted to celebrate my salvation from what to her was the unimaginable horror of having to earn an honest crust without a tatty pile of horsehair on one’s head. And whilst I could not help but be touched by Justine’s gaiety, I sat there among the piles of lightly oiled fettucine realizing it was merely a stay of execution. There was little more than a week until the retrial. And that was to be presided over by Hilary Hardcastle.

  My car was parked in a side street off Long Acre. In general, I frowned upon drink-driving. But that night the old boundaries began to disappear. I felt a strange sense of release, a certain light-headedness, in the way your head spins when you give blood. It was as if I had been mysteriously transported to the margin of things. I saw myself and I was on the outside, like someone half watching a down-market soap opera, when you want to know what happens next—but not very much.

  We walked out of the restaurant, past an abandoned cinema with tattered posters of Visconti’s Ossessione, past old bookshops and modern boutiques. When Justine thrust me against a wall.

  “Let’s fool around,” she said.

  “What, here?”

  “Why not?”

  I objected to kissing in public. I could not imagine that the unedifying spectacle of my tongue wriggling in another person’s throat could be of the slightest interest to the man on the Clapham omnibus. However, that night I kissed Justine.

  We walked up toward Covent Garden passing droves of painted young people in leather and chains. In the distance was a high-pitched wailing.

  “Will you come with me?” asked Justine.

  “Where?”

  “You know.”

  And, of course, I did. “Penny has sort of thrown down the gauntlet,” I said.

  “So you told her?”

  I was far too inebriated to articulate the niceties, if that is the word, of our impending breakup. So, as the wailing grew louder, I merely said, “Something like that. She said she would leave me. If I… you know, with you.”

  Justine looked at me desperately. “It’s your call, Tom. There’s still over a week till the retrial.”

  “Look, don’t tempt me,” I said.

  “Why not? That’s what I’m here for.”

  “I’d love to get away from London and the Bar and… well, everything—”

  “You don’t need to explain,” she said. “I understand. These things happen. Penny
’s a big girl.”

  “But Ginny isn’t,” I said. I had hoped that the last vestiges of my former loyalties would have vanished with my disappearing sobriety. But it was not as easy as that. I suppose it was something that I had always known. “There was a time, Justine, when I knew what I wanted. But nothing seems that simple anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, we hear so many lies in our job. I sometimes wonder if they’re… well, sort of contagious. I know this sounds stupid, but I sometimes wonder whether I’ll ever hear the truth again.”

  Justine burst out laughing as we neared the side street. “Just relax, Tom,” she said. “Don’t take everything so seriously.”

  “All right then,” I replied. “Are you telling me that you know what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what?”

  “You want me to tell you now?”

  “Right now, Justine.”

  “Well, right now, Mr. Fawley,” she whispered, all the time drawing me closer, “right now I—”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to fuck your brains out.”

  We finally entered the side street. There was complete chaos. Lights were flashing on my car, the side window was smashed, the alarm was screaming. Justine and I ran to the passenger door, but the radio had not been stolen and nothing was missing.

  “Someone must have caught him in the act,” she said.

  In the alcoholic haze that had descended around me, it all seemed rather amusing. When Justine suggested we should find a policeman, I found the prospect irresistibly funny and couldn’t stop laughing.

  Suddenly a car came round the corner and accelerated toward us. It was a Sierra and in the half-light was just a blur. I noticed a bag of powder on the front seat of my car. It was wrapped in see-through cellophane and the granular contents were clearly visible.

  “Don’t touch it,” shouted Justine.

  The Sierra got closer. It was fifty yards away and started to brake loudly. I reached, or rather fumbled, toward the package, the contents of which were rather like a couple of pounds of refined brown sugar.

  “Leave it, Tom,” Justine again shouted.