by D. B. Martin
I went back upstairs from the gloom of the cells and stood sweatily in the crush of defenders and accusers in the reception hall leading to the courtrooms. Magistrates’ courts were always too busy in London. The junior Heather had pointedly substituted for my normal sidekick rustled the case papers officiously and the pink ribbons holding them together fluttered prettily. They cut across my vision like the flashes of a migraine. Through their butterfly whorls I saw Jaggers standing by the door to Courtroom 2 – ours. Win loitered nearby – as squat and pugnacious as ever, but significantly unable to look me in the eye – still waiting for my sign that he could hand the ‘evidence’ over. The sun went in as the courtroom doors opened and the usher waved the stragglers through. I let my new junior march on, mumbling I needed a moment to mentally rehearse my opening address.
‘Oh,’ she studied me curiously. ‘Is there anything I need to do?’ I debated what to say. Probably nothing. I would rather have had my old clerk, despite his ineffectualness, but Heather had insisted.
‘No, just follow my lead.’
‘OK,’ she nodded nonchalantly and disappeared through the doors. There were still five minutes before court was in session. I thought of Kat, soft-eyed and expectant. Little brown nut – yum, yum. And Danny – shifty-eyed and defiant, still clutching the book like his lucky charm. The boy in him was me. How could that boy become more than just the patchwork of pain and futility I’d been for forty years? A patchwork person – for that’s what we all are, cobbled together by the thread of life. What patterns do our patchworks comprise? Hope, optimism and morality or despair, wretchedness and dishonour? I’d aspired to be an Atticus but instead, for years had contemplated cowardice. The claim to be mentally rehearsing my opening address was a lie, just as my platitudes to Kat and Danny had been. I had no idea what words I would use, or what outcome there would be after I walked through that door. I had yet to choose my pattern.
It felt like I remained there, outside, for hours, undecided what to do, as I had in life. The pieces of the case were a collage of good and bad, light and dark, multi-coloured just like my life. Like the chart on the wall at the children’s home, my patchwork life had more red and black than yellow – the red of Margaret’s blood on the road and the black of my dishonesty. More than ever I wanted to move into the light – the yellow. I had lived in the dark too long, yet that entailed assembling all the pieces – the bad alongside the good. After all this time, did I even know how to be principled?
They would be wondering where I was inside the courtroom. I imagined Danny, lower lip jutting sullenly with the unspoken fear he’d always had about me – that I’d let him down, Win – waiting for revenge, and Jaggers – for payback. My patchwork of fear and despair. The only way to keep it all from falling apart was to unpick and re-sew – and yet still I hesitated. It was Lennox’s piece of advice that decided me finally. Keep everything separate; separate lives. That way the trouble of one life wouldn’t spill over into the other. The two versions. Fragmented. Advice can be good at the time, but time moves situations on and everything is changed. And to be a whole person the fragments have to be assembled ...
I pushed open the courtroom door and the sunlight from the arched window with the same motto as in the Supreme Court, ‘Justice cannot be for one side but must be for both’, flooded in with me. It was like a sign. I slipped into my place with a stray strand of sunlight neatly following me. It marked the point on the desk in front of me where I should place my papers. It dawdled over them like a lazy spotlight, telling me the moment could no longer be postponed. I opened the file. Sometimes the only answer is somewhere between the past and the present, the right and the wrong. Atticus knew that too.
I knew if I turned and scanned the gallery I would see Jaggers in one of the rows, smiling complacently. I didn’t know what it meant but that red nail meant something, and it had been planted in the evidence for me to find by someone who knew I’d have a reason to look. There were only two people that could be. Win – but he wanted me to do something completely different so I could discount him. And Margaret: Molly. There was something about Molly and her involvement that made Jaggers twitch. Whilst I found out exactly what it was – which version of the truth it was, I would have to pull the strings myself and make the puppet dance. It was the longest, most extreme shot I’d ever gone for, but then, I’d never been quite so much on the edge of extreme as now.
I motioned to my junior and instructed her to whom to pass the note. It said:
‘I will tell them everything – all the way back to the start, unless this goes the way I lead it today. I have evidence you won’t want them to see concerning Molly. We have a lot more game to play out before we’re finished.’
She frowned and hissed back, ‘This isn’t part of the brief.’
‘It is now.’
She looked disapproving but passed it to one of the ushers anyway. Whilst we waited for the session to start, I watched him receive it, read it, consider it. The eye contact was brief between us but I knew from it that I’d found the chink in his amour, if not how. How big a chink remained to be seen ...
The note came back a few moments later as the clerk shuffled his papers and prepared to open proceedings. It was endorsed on the reverse.
‘Better make sure you’re good at playing pot shots then, and don’t believe everything you are told. Assumptions can produce unpleasant surprises – like families.
And remember, I always win ...’
I looked up again but could no longer see him. The clock ticked over to ten before I could scour the whole court.
‘All rise. Court in session. Wednesday 21st July 1999: Mr Justice Crawford presiding ...’
Now life either fell apart in earnest or started over.
26: Appearance
I stuffed the notes I’d hastily made for the new junior under her nose and swung back round to prepare for the entrance of Mr Justice Crawford. She wouldn’t like what she read when she could get to them, but neither did I. Old Crawford was as long faced and lugubrious as ever. He must have been genetically modified for court, he fitted its ponderous solemnity so perfectly.
‘Indictment in the Inner London Crown Court, the Queen versus Daniel Jonas Hewson, charged with manslaughter as follows: – that on Wednesday the seventh of May 1999 you attacked and robbed Freda May Harris, stealing her handbag including the contents thereof, and subsequently causing her death from the injuries inflicted on her that day.’
I could see Danny in the dock, looking mutinous and flanked by a stern-looking WPC and Kat. The sun burnished the polished wood of the benches, and winked off the number of pips on the WPC’s shoulders like an SOS. To me Danny looked vulnerable, but the expressions of the jury showed they were already damning him. The nail bombings of the previous April gave any violent crime the immediate thumbs down now.
‘How do you plead – guilty or not guilty?’ I nodded at him encouragingly.
His voice could barely be heard even in the hush. ‘Not guilty.’ It cracked mid-point and his mouth turned down as if he were about to cry. Now he looked the child he was. One of the women in the front row of the jury softened and a man leant forward to listen more carefully.
The summary of evidence was fairly mundane – hanging on the witnesses. Jaggers’ witnesses. Win wasn’t amongst them. I was surprised. I’d anticipated controversy over him. That was why I’d included the information about him in the notes I’d given my junior, and which no doubt she was speed-reading in horror now. The notes comprised a summary of my complicated and unwanted past, replete with criminal brother, tortuous family connections to the accused, and a miserable and hitherto unacknowledged childhood in care.
Jaggers must have anticipated trouble or had a pre-arrangement with the witnesses for the prosecution because they were suddenly mealy-mouthed and uncertain about what they’d seen, even without him there to direct them. I could see the Defence barrister, Lloyd Wild’s irritation growing as he failed to scrape anything
definite from them to pin the prosecution to. Forensics produced a partial print belonging to Danny supposedly from when he wrestled the bag from the victim, but equally attributable to our claim that he’d merely picked the bag up after the attack, trying to be helpful.
It hadn’t been optimism on my part. The note I’d passed to Jaggers seemed to have worked, and his end of the bargain was being upheld. Honour amongst villains – an odd concept I was going to have to learn to live with, since I was one too now. I would go unpursued for a while longer, the bloodied car would remain garaged and Margaret’s killer left on the loose. I mentally vowed I would right that wrong for her – even if there were other wrongs she might have been responsible for – but only once the case against Danny was safely dismissed.
I largely switched off once Jaggers’ non-interference seemed established and it was clear Wild had nothing new to present. I barely cross-examined the two gormless witnesses. There was hardly anything to dispute – like taking candy from a baby. The case for the prosecution creaked to a conclusion barely an hour later – far too early to break for lunch.
Wild shot me a questioning look as he got up to close. I knew what it was asking.
‘This should have been cut and dried. What is going on?’
In the hiatus after Wild sat down and the clerk stood up I became aware of shuffling and flapping at my back, and half turned to see Ella, the substitute junior, glaring at me. She must have read all of the notes by now. As Crawford left and the clerk advised we’d break for a mere thirty minutes before continuing, I ducked past her, grinning apologetically. Holing up in the gents for the entirety of the break was a new experience – fraught with unfortunate implications, but I managed it without any accusations of loitering or importuning and slipped back into place barely seconds before we were charged to rise again. I could feel the heat of Ella’s curiosity still directed at my back but court etiquette kept me bomb-proof until I pushed the plunger of my own accord and created a different kind of explosion to the one she wanted; the climax, rather than the catalyst.
‘Mr Juste, I believe you are presenting the case for the defence?’
‘I am.’
I stood, sensing Ella’s consternation increase behind me as I began my opening address, but it was too late now. No amount of fluttering papers or daggered thoughts could stop me.
‘It’s a well-known fact that appearances can be misleading. Here we have a case in point. My client, Danny Hewson, would appear to have beaten an elderly woman to death for the coins in her purse. A callous and brutal crime. So brutal, we have heard how the victim’s jaw was broken, her teeth knocked out and her right hip shattered in the fall.
Sadly a blood clot from this last injury ultimately caused her death. Our sympathies for her family are without doubt, but I am going to ask you to also have sympathy for the boy accused of this vicious crime. A boy who has already suffered as much in his short life. A boy who, in fact, bears the marks of his suffering to this day – in bruises, scars and long-term and life-long vulnerability to many more of them.
‘So let me invite you to consider with me how appearances can be deceptive, assumptions wrongly made and peer pressure used to trap hitherto innocent individuals in situations where they are coerced, manipulated and used. Danny Hewson is one such victim and I will demonstrate how there is good cause to show him to be a pawn in a rather rougher game, not the instigator of the crime. And apart from that, there is another extremely good reason why Danny Hewson wouldn’t – couldn’t – have been the perpetrator of this vicious beating. He is a haemophiliac, so every knock, cut or graze could result in extensive bruising, potentially severe blood loss, and a serious risk to his health – even to his life – if the injury is grave enough.
‘Would such a child put himself at risk for a few measly pounds? No. And indeed, if he had, would such a brutal beating not have been apparent in serious injuries to him too? There was no weapon used – forensics have established that, as my learned colleague has already explained – other than the attacker’s fists. So Danny’s fists should, by rights, even now, be black and blue – scarred, damaged and battered. I think you will agree with me that little more will need to be said in his defence when you see they are untouched, apart from a few old scars.’
‘Mr Juste, do you have evidence to prove this claim?’
‘I do, my lord.’
‘And have you submitted it, because I don’t see it here?’ Here was the battle of the day. There’d be no getting anything unorthodox past old Crawford.
‘I haven’t as yet my lord. We have only just received confirmation of the diagnosis.’ I could imagine Ella rummaging desperately through the folder for the paperwork. It wasn’t there. It was attached to the back of the scribbled notes I’d given her as I slipped in front of her minutes before Court first went into session, but I couldn’t turn round and tell her that right at this moment. Court etiquette constrained me. Lloyd Wild glared openly at me. I imagined he probably would have liked to mouth ‘asshole’ at me for stealing his thunder – and the verdict – but etiquette constrained him too.
‘Approach please.’ We stood in line like naughty children. Crawford looked down at us, long nose pointing accusingly, but I was the only bad boy today. ‘This is most irregular, Mr Juste. I won’t have irregularity in my courtroom. Rectify it. You have thirty minutes to get this paperwork in order and then I will see you both in Chambers. Mr Wild, I presume if Mr Juste can prove this riotous claim, you’d like to take new instructions?’
‘I believe I would have to, my lord,’ Wild hissed.
‘Then get on with it. Court adjourned for thirty minutes.’ He rapped his gavel on the block and I was on starters orders.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Juste?’ Wild was coldly furious.
‘I’m not playing at anything, Lloyd,’ I replied smoothly. ‘On the contrary, I think someone giving evidence for the prosecution is doing that. Excuse me, but I must get this new evidence submitted as directed.’ I slipped back in front of Ella, now red-faced and thin-lipped.
‘Heather said to watch out for your little surprises,’ she greeted me. ‘If it’s all of these,’ she waved my notes at me, ‘you really have lost your mind.’
I laughed. ‘Is that what Heather says has happened to me?’ When Heather had deposited Ella on me ‘to help, because God knows you need someone to help you,’ I hadn’t taken much notice of her, other than as another body to be marshalled into position like a general arranging his troops – if I but knew where and how the war was to be fought. Now I wondered if Heather had foisted a mercenary on me – or even a potential mutineer.
‘Well, are you really going to tell them all this family background – and your murky past?’
‘Only the sections in red. They’re necessary.’
She read aloud in a low voice, ‘Win Juss – one of the witnesses who claims Danny beat the old woman up – is your brother, but being coerced by criminal elements linked to FFF, the adoption agency attempting to place Danny Hewson. Danny’s mother is supposedly your sister, and Danny’s parentage is now in question because of a genetic blood disorder his father’s family has never suffered with. It all stems back to the mastermind behind FFF.
Your links to them have been suppressed until now whilst the investigation has been under way in order to protect Danny, and only came to light because of interviewing Win Juss. Other elements involved possibly include John Arthur Wemmick, the business magnate behind the adoption agency FFF, who you knew as a child, and you suspect is using the agency as a cover for money laundering. He’s also related to Judge Wemmick, who left you the money to study for the Bar in the first place. There’s a lot of history between you in other words – bad history.’
‘John Arthur Wemmick, and the section about Danny’s parentage aren’t in red.’
‘They are to me,’ she replied tartly. ‘Is that who you passed that note to when you came in? The one whose reply you insisted on reading before you open
ed? Bribery?’
I would have liked to have slapped her sneering little face, but everyone – even Ella – had me by the balls for the moment, until we got a dismissal. ‘You are my junior, not my judge, Ella, whatever Heather may have led you to believe. You do what I tell you to. The letter with the formal diagnosis of Danny’s condition is attached to those notes. Get it submitted into evidence now please and then get me a copy of it so I can take it with me to see Crawford. Admin’s on the second floor. They’ll let you use their photocopier.’
She gave me a sour look, but obediently unclipped the two pages, separating the consultant’s crisp formal letter from my handwritten affair. ‘You said we’d only just got it,’ she said accusingly as she scanned it. ‘It’s dated 13th July – that’s over a week ago.’
‘Postal delay.’
She stared at me.
We were called back exactly half an hour later. Crawford looked down his nose at me, obviously still digesting what I’d told him and Wild during the recess.
‘I’ve accepted what you’ve now submitted in evidence, Mr Juste. Before I direct the jury do you have anything else to say in the boy’s defence or about the case?’
Now the rest – the barricade against Jaggers and his public version that could ruin me. ‘I have a short statement which affects my involvement with my client, so that the court is assured there has been no inappropriate behaviour.’ I read the sections of my notes not in red to a suitably hushed courtroom. Crawford cast me another curious glance and then directed the jury as I’d known he would. It was a relief to hear it anyway.
‘Case dismissed.’
Back to the police to decide if they wanted to pursue theft, and to the press if they wanted to pursue the revelations about my unexpected family connections. We might be lucky with the police, but there was little doubt I’d be all over the evening editions. It was twelve fifty-five. Not quite three hours since I’d opened the flood gates and turned my life upside down.
