False Witness

by Dexter Dias

  “Really? Is that all it is? Molly once even cut her hair in my style. Did I imagine that, too?”

  “No. Look, you were similar but different. Like apples and pears. Like—”

  “Good and bad?” Justine said. “Well, I was the bad. I don’t care what you say, Tom, I felt—I knew—it would all come out.”

  “But Justine, old man Summers’s death was an accident.”

  “I willed my father to shoot Summers, Tom. That was no accident.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “And what about Molly’s death? What was that?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” I said.

  Justine again began to weep and this time she was inconsolable. “I was there,” she cried. “I wanted her dead. It was an accident that I was in Stonebury that night. But I wanted her dead, Tom. I wanted her dead. Doesn’t that make me guilty?”

  I finally realized who it was I had heard in the worst dream of all. It was the sobbing of a frightened girl, for Justine was in truth no more than that, a girl witnessing her sister being murdered. And Justine was the third person that I had imagined around the stones.

  “It was Payne and Chapple,” I told her. “You’re not to blame.” Was that true? It was certainly what I wanted.

  “How do you know, Tom? I can’t even be sure.”

  “Don’t you understand, Justine? I was there.”

  “There? You?”

  “In my dreams, I mean. I’ve seen it all and you didn’t kill her.” Although my dream wasn’t as clear to me as my desire, this was the closest to the truth that I could get.

  Then I felt as if I were hanging from the edge of a bottomless cliff and one by one my fingers were giving way. Justine very deliberately picked up the knife.

  I looked at her and was very sad. “It’s over, Justine.”

  She smiled faintly for a moment and then stopped. “We could have had it all, Tom.” She very slowly moved closer to me.

  I imagined another finger sliding off.

  “But what am I supposed to do with you?” she said.

  I thought I could feel a sea breeze, could taste salt—was that the blood?—could hear gulls screeching overhead. “Justine, it’s all over,” I said.

  Another finger gone. And another.

  “My darling, Tom,” she said as she raised the knife.

  Then I was gone. Floating. Spinning. Free and unafraid. Blues and whites and grays—and silence.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THERE WAS A HIGH-PITCHED TONE. LOUD, PIERCING, as sharp as the edge of a blade.

  “Right. My name is Detective Sergeant John Traynor.”

  “And I am Woman Detective Constable Roach.”

  Then the first voice continued. “The time is 0345 hours. We are in the interview room at Chancery Lane police station. In the room with us is—can you identify yourself, please?”

  Silence.

  “For the tape? Please?”

  “My name is…”

  The room was bleak. White walls and frosted glass. No bright colors, no features, nothing to look at—except them. That was the way it was meant to be. The chair was screwed into the floor at such a precise angle that there was constant eye contact, no way of avoiding them.

  “You must give us your name,” he said.

  “We can wait all night.” She was smaller but more menacing. “We can wait all day and all night.”

  “My name is…”

  “Yes?”

  “Tom Fawley.” I felt as if I had awoken from a nightmare.

  “Right,” said Traynor. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  But where? Some morbid Frenchman wrote a story about hell. And hell was simply three people locked in a room for ever. The table in front of me did not budge, the hands of the clock did not move, there was no sound except their words and the constant low whir of the tape-machine.

  Traynor had been talking but all I heard were the last few words. “And so, as you of all people know, those are your legal rights. Do you understand?”

  “What?”

  “Your legal rights, sir?”

  “Oh, those. Yes, I understand.” My lips moved but it was as if someone else did the talking. Someone a safe distance from my body. Someone whose side had not been bandaged. Someone who cared about what was happening. I didn’t like him.

  “You understand, Mr. Fawley, that you have the right to have a solicitor present and if at any stage—Mr. Fawley, are you listening?”

  The woman banged the table twice. “Look at the sergeant when he’s talking to you,” she snapped. She had narrow eyes and sharp features. I didn’t like her either.

  “Do you want a solicitor, sir?” he asked and I shook my head. “Sorry, the tape doesn’t register a nod. Can you confirm that you don’t want a solicitor?”

  “I don’t want a solicitor,” I said.

  “Fine. You’ve been bandaged at the hospital and you’ve been certified fit to be detained by the police surgeon.” Traynor looked at me with his big, oval eyes. Red-faced, earnest, good old Uncle John to someone, no doubt. “Can you confirm that you’ve seen the police surgeon?”

  “I—I can’t really remember.”

  “Are you saying the sergeant is lying?” snapped Roach.

  “No. But—”

  “So you feel well enough to continue then?” Roach asked.

  When I nodded, Traynor said, “Can you tell us, Mr. Fawley, why you are here?”

  “I’m being questioned about Alex Chapple.”

  “No, sir,” said Traynor a little wearily. “We’ve been over that. You’re being questioned about Philip Templeman.”

  “The attempted murder of Philip Templeman,” interjected Roach.

  I tried to protest. “But aren’t they the same—”

  “We can come to that, sir.” Traynor looked at the clock. The hands had not moved. “All in good time.”

  “We got plenty of that, you see,” said Roach. “We got all the time in the world.”

  “I have to tell you, Mr. Fawley, that you have not been charged”—he dropped his voice—“at this stage. Are you happy to help us with our enquiries?”

  How many cases had I done which were lost the moment the client opened his mouth in the police station? It was always fatal. Never help the police. They can help themselves well enough. Always make no comment. How many clients had we told?

  “You haven’t got anything to hide, have you?” Roach said without parting her teeth and the words were shredded the moment they reached the air. “Nothing to be ashamed of?”

  “No,” I said. “How dare you.”

  “Oh, I thought you might have been consorting with drug dealers again,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Then I remembered her from the Camberwell nightclub when she had arrested Emma’s friend, Danny.

  “Are you prepared to help us?” repeated Traynor.

  Despite all the advice, it is different when you are there. When it is you who is alone in a police station. You just want to go home. Tell us the truth, they say, or at least a part of it, and you can go. Tell us everything, anything, tell us at least something that we want to hear, and then you can go… perhaps.

  “I’m quite content,” I said.

  “Content to do what, Mr. Fawley?”

  “To speak to you.” I could hardly believe what I was saying.

  “Good,” said Traynor. “Well, we are making some progress. I should remind you that you have the right to remain silent. But anything you—”

  “I know all that crap,” I said. It’s what Danny the pusher had said when Roach arrested him. I thought it sounded rather good.

  Traynor seemed genuinely hurt. “I don’t think we’ve been rude to you, sir.”

  “No,” snarled Roach, staring at me.

  “I apologize.”

  “Very well, apology accepted,” Traynor said. “Let’s recap what you’ve already told us. Philip Templeman was found in a critical condition—”
<
br />   “Half dead,” said Roach.

  “At 2315 hours last night. He was outside the Great Hall in the Temple. How did he get there, Mr. Fawley?”

  “He fell,” I said.

  “Of course, he fell,” said Roach. “But how?”

  “I suppose I—”

  “Look at the sergeant when you’re talking,” she said. “Why are you looking at your fingers?”

  “We just want the truth,” said Traynor with half a smile, as if he were asking me for the time.

  I knew the technique well. I’d read articles on it, even attended seminars. He is the dominant persuader. The one you can trust. She is the vicious one, constantly picking you up on your behavior, making you self-conscious, uneasy. She constantly looks for nonverbal signs: a rumbling of the stomach, a slouch, sitting too rigidly, nervousness, weakness, fear. She’ll interpret them all as signs of guilt.

  They sat before me: tough and tender, nasty and nice.

  “Now how did he come to fall?” asked Traynor. A smile.

  “I pushed him.”

  “We know that.”

  “You do?”

  Roach shredded a few more words. “You admitted it when you came round in casualty. Why do you think you were arrested? You see, someone called an ambulance to the Temple.”

  Justine. What had happened to Justine?

  “Then the ambulancemen called the police,” Roach said.

  Traynor smiled again. “And you had met this man, Templeman, how many times before?”

  “Once.”

  “Where?”

  “Stonebury.”

  “And you assaulted him then?”

  “Well, I grabbed his neck.”

  “And you told him you would—”

  “Kill him,” I said. “Well, can I just change that? What I meant was—”

  “Sorry to interrupt, sir,” Traynor said. “Can you just answer yes or no for the moment? We can come to explanations—”

  “And excuses,” said Roach.

  “A little later.” Traynor appeared genuinely interested. “So did you tell Philip Templeman that you would kill him? Yes or no?”

  I knew that technique, too. It was one I had used in one hundred cross-examinations. Pin them down. Yes or no. Then crucify them.

  “Can I just explain something?”

  “Yes or no will do, Mr. Fawley.”

  I felt the tightness of the bandage and wanted to lie down. “All right. Yes,” I said.

  “And did you push him out of a second-story window the next time you saw him?”

  “It didn’t happen like that—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.” Then I thought of his face against the concrete and felt a strange satisfaction. “Yes, I pushed him. And he deserved it.”

  “And this has something to do with a case you’re doing?”

  “Don’t look surprised,” said Roach. She smiled for the first time, revealing the gaps between her teeth. “You see, we know all about you.”

  “All right. It had something to do with the case.”

  “And to do with the woman found in the building with you?”

  “You mean Justine?”

  “Justine Marie Wright, Sergeant,” said Roach.

  “Thank you, Leslie. Yes, Justine Marie Wright. Miss Wright has something to do with the case?”

  I never knew Justine’s middle name before. Funny what you discover when you’re being interrogated about a murder. I said, “Justine is prosecuting.”

  “But she knew of some forged documents.”

  “Yes.”

  “And misled the court?”

  “Well, she—”

  “They were used in court?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you found out about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you did what?”

  What could I say? That was a distortion. Those were the facts, but that wasn’t the truth.

  “And what did you do about it, Mr. Fawley?”

  “You won’t find the answer on the floor,” said Roach.

  I raised my eyes and said, “I did nothing.”

  “Not looking too good, is it?” said the woman.

  “Leslie,” hissed Traynor. He didn’t want his flow interrupted. He was a professional.

  “No, Miss Roach,” I said. “It’s not looking too good.”

  Traynor asked, “Why did you push Mr. Templeman out of the window?”

  “Because he was trying to hurt Justine.”

  “Was she injured in any way?”

  “I don’t—”

  “That you could see?”

  “No.”

  Traynor looked at the clock. It still hadn’t moved. The tape continued to whir and Roach’s eyes burnt into my face.

  “I just want to understand this part,” he said. “You went to rescue Miss Wright?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you ended up struggling with her over the knife?”

  “I can’t remember if we struggled. In fact, I don’t think we did.”

  But why, then, had Justine stopped? I certainly could not have fought back.

  “Mr. Fawley?” His voice started to recede and the walls grew darker and darker. I could see Roach’s hands moving up and down on the desk but heard no sound. Then Traynor came very close and whispered as if he were telling me a secret. “I have to tell you, sir, that at this stage it’s likely you will be… well, charged.”

  “Charged?”

  Roach’s lips opened and closed and I could read the “Yes.”

  “Charged with what?”

  “With the attempted murder of Philip Templeman. He hasn’t died.”

  “Not yet,” said Roach.

  Traynor looked at me. His eyes, still gentle, moved slowly over my face. What option is there, they seemed to say. You’ve made all the admissions, what do you expect us to do? Finally, he spoke. “Is there anything you want to ask us?”

  “Just one thing. Who told you Justine’s middle name?” “Well,” said Detective Sergeant John Traynor. He was embarrassed—what could he be hiding? “Well,” he said, “it was your wife.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  I COULD NOT SAY HOW LONG I HAD BEEN IN THE CELL. It seemed like weeks, days at the very least, but I suppose could only have been a matter of a few hours. I slept fitfully. But I saw nothing. It was as though the screen in my head had finally been switched off. Traynor had taken my tie away in case, he said, I was tempted to do “something silly.”

  There were a number of things that did not make sense. My last memory was of Justine standing over me. I remembered the knife with my blood already on it and then I woke up in that dreary little cell. Every time I asked about Justine, I was ignored or told that I was in deep enough trouble as it was.

  They hadn’t charged me. Was that a good sign? Or were they just waiting for Templeman to die? Then there was a clatter of keys and a dirty yellow shaft of light as the wicket gate was opened.

  “We want you,” said the voice. It was WDC Roach. She took me out of the cell and started leading me up countless flights of stairs.

  After about five minutes’ climbing, she paused on a landing and asked, “Want a brief, Fawley?”

  “What happened to the Mr.?”

  “It flew out of the window with Philip Templeman. Do you want a solicitor or not… Fawley?”

  I was too ashamed to tell anyone of my plight and merely asked, “What time is it?”

  “Time to tell us the truth,” she said.

  “What time is it?” It was dark outside.

  “Six thirty,” she said.

  “Morning or night?”

  “Morning, of course. We got a long day ahead of us, you and me.”

  Roach then led me into the interview room. The desk and chairs were modern. With its whitewashed walls, it looked like a classroom. Traynor sat behind the desk. To his right was a woman in her forties. Her head was down as she scribbled away furiously at the file of papers in fron
t of her. She was vaguely familiar.

  But Roach commanded my attention. She looked tired, her translucent skin drawn tightly over her sharp features, and her eyes continued to stare and stare.

  “Sorry to drag you back here, Mr. Fawley.” Traynor coughed and said, “Can we have another… chat?”

  I then saw Roach put on the tape-machine.

  “Don’t worry,” said Traynor. “It’s just for our records. Honestly, no need to worry.”

  But I did. I worried terribly. I knew from scores of clients over the years that the instant you’re treated well, the moment they show you a little courtesy or concern, that’s when you are most vulnerable.

  “I’ve decided,” I said. “I want a solicitor.”

  “You didn’t earlier,” said Roach through her teeth.

  “Leslie, now if Mr. Fawley would like legal representation, then he is entitled to it,” said Traynor.

  “Well, he’ll have to wait for one,” she snarled. “This time of day, could take—”

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s just get it over with.”

  “Well then,” said Traynor. “Perhaps we can shorten matters.” He looked to his side. “Can I introduce the lady sitting with us? Doctor?”

  “Mr. Fawley and I have met before,” she said, still scribbling and not looking up.

  Traynor, a stickler for detail, persisted. “Doctor, can you identify yourself for the tape?”

  She looked up for the first time. “My name is Doctor Jennifer Stone. I am a qualified psychiatrist.”

  Then it occurred to me: What was she doing there? A psychiatrist? Were they trying to commit me? What if I refused to cooperate? Could they commit me for that? I didn’t know.

  Hadn’t Jenny Stone once said that she thought I was neurotic or anally fixated or something?

  I stood up.

  “Sit down,” shouted Roach. “Don’t make it worse for yourself, Mr. Fawley.”

  I refused to answer most of Jennifer Stone’s questions, and pretended I was somewhere else, miles away, walking through the woods. But she persisted with one subject until I could bear it no longer.

  “It’s a simple question,” she said. “How would you describe your relationship with Justine Wright?”

  I was again silent.