Final Witness

‘Come on, let’s go and find Court 9. That’s where we’re supposed to be meeting Miles.’

Greta injected her voice with a sense of purpose that she was far from feeling.

A small crowd was waiting outside the bank of elevators and Greta glimpsed the squat figure of Sergeant Hearns, the officer in the case. He smiled lugubriously when he saw her, and Greta couldn’t decide whether it was a greeting or a spontaneous expression of pleasure at seeing the object of his investigation inside the courthouse at last. In any event, she didn’t respond, turning suddenly on her heel and calling to her husband.

‘Come on, Peter, it’s too crowded. Let’s take the stairs.’

Peter turned obediently to follow his wife. He was determined to stand by her but there were some places, of course, where he could not follow. She would be alone in the dock. Alone when she gave her evidence. Alone when the jury came back with their verdict.

He worked his fingers into the wrinkled furrows on his forehead and hid his face momentarily behind his upturned hand.

At that very moment four floors above them Miles Lambert, Counsel for the Defence in the case of Regina v. Greta, Lady Robinson, was buying two cups of coffee in the barristers’ cafeteria. One white with two sugars for himself and one black with none for his opponent, John Sparling, Counsel for the Prosecution.

Miles Lambert was sixty-six and single. Forty years of drinking fine wines and eating rich food with other successful lawyers had earned him a florid complexion and a rotund figure that he kept encased within expensive, tailor-made suits, complete with waistcoat and gold watch and chain. Court etiquette required him to wear a wing collar and starched white neck bands; but outside court he was known for extravagant ties of wildly clashing colours that matched the handkerchiefs that poured from his breast pocket when he was not using them to dab his sweating brow. Although in recent years ‘Lurid Lambert’ had given way to a new nickname – ‘Old Lurid’ – opinion in legal circles was that Old Lurid might be sixty-six but as a defence lawyer he was at the height of his powers.

Miles’s pale blue eyes looked out on the world from behind a pair of gold-framed half-moon spectacles, and those who knew him well said that the eyes were the key to understanding his character. They were small and shrewd, and if you studied them carefully, you would see that they seemed to become more quiet and watchful as Miles became more exuberant. It was as if they took no part in his loud laughter and extravagant gestures. They remained detached and attentive, watching for weaknesses, waiting for opportunities.

John Sparling was as different from Miles Lambert as it was possible to be, given that they were two successful lawyers of roughly the same age dressed in approximately the same way. He was tall while Miles was short, and thin while Miles was fat. He wore no glasses, and his large, grey eyes looked out coldly on the world from above a long, aquiline nose. His mouth was small, with thin, straight lips, and he spoke slowly, forming his questions with careful decision and always pausing after the witness had answered for the extra fraction of a second that was enough to tell the jury his opinion of what had just been said. He was fond of telling juries that they must put pity and sympathy aside in their search for the truth. Sparling’s enemies said that this was something that he had no need to do himself, as he had had all pity and sympathy excised from his character at an early age.

John Sparling never defended, and Miles Lambert never prosecuted. They were polar opposites, and yet in a strange way they liked each other. You could almost say they were friends, although they never met outside the courthouse, where they spent their days in an unending struggle over the fate of their fellow human beings.

If pressed, Sparling might have described himself as an instrument of justice. It was an article of faith for him that nobody should escape the consequences of his actions – least of all the wife of a cabinet minister. Sparling had been looking forward to this case for weeks, but then so too had his opponent. For Miles Lambert, the criminal law was not so much about justice, it was about winning. It was something the two men had in common. They both hated to lose.

‘So, Miles, you’ve got Granger,’ said Sparling. ‘Her ladyship must be pleased.’ His lower lip raised slightly, the nearest he ever got to a smile.

‘Haven’t talked to her about it yet,’ replied Miles Lambert as he vigorously stirred the sugar into his coffee. ‘But yes, I’d prefer old Granger to one or two of those death’s head judges that sit on the first floor. Defence’ll get a fair crack of the whip at any rate.’ He would have liked to have ladled four spoonfuls into the cup, but his doctor had set strict limits on coffee and sugar since Miles had suffered a minor heart attack two years before. The instructions to reduce stress by taking on fewer cases, however, had fallen on deaf ears.

‘He’ll like your client, I expect,’ said Sparling. ‘Old Granger’s always been one for the ladies, hasn’t he?’

His Honour Judge Granger was known as a fair judge with something of a defence bias. Miles was secretly very pleased to have got him, although it wouldn’t do to gloat.

‘It’s not the judge that matters,’ he said diplomatically. ‘It’s the jury.’

‘Hoping for a few priapic jurors too, I expect.’

Miles smiled broadly, but behind his cup of coffee he was registering a slight surprise. It was unlike John Sparling to be so cynical about the legal process. Something must be bothering him. Miles needed to find out what it was.

‘You’re exhibiting an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, if you don’t mind me saying so, John,’ said Miles in a bantering tone. ‘Not what you need on a Thursday morning.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miles. Have you got those further statements?’

Miles’s smile gave way to a grin. It was the return of the killers to the murder scene the previous week that had got under his opponent’s skin. It was too much of a good thing.

‘Yes. I got them on Friday evening through the fax. The policeman at the scene, follow-up investigation by the omnipresent Sergeant Hearns. And the boy, of course. Your star witness.’

‘My star witness.’

‘Uncorroborated to the last.’

‘All right, Miles. We’ll let the jury form their own opinion about that.’

‘Oh, yes. The priapic jurors.’

Sparling gave another of his smile imitations. He looked determinedly tolerant.

‘Yes, the priapic jurors,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t them I was asking you about.’

‘No,’ Miles acknowledged. ‘You want to talk about the statements, don’t you, although I can’t imagine why. I’ve got them. You’ve got them. You’re calling these witnesses. What else is there to discuss?’

‘I want to call the boy last. Hearns says he needs time to get over what happened last Wednesday.’

‘If it happened.’

‘All right, Miles. I’ve read the police statements too, you know.’

‘No trace of any intruders whatsoever. No one saw the car come. No one saw the car go.’

‘It happened in the evening. The place was deserted.’

Sparling sounded defiant, but this only encouraged Miles to goad his opponent more.

‘You’ve got no forensic evidence at all. Admit it, John.’

‘I do admit it. But the prosecution still says that Thomas Robinson is a witness of truth, and there’s no reason to change that.’

‘Maybe not. But I reckon you could have done without his latest contribution. Lonny and Rosie. I wonder where he dreamed them up from. He’s been watching too much television.’

‘Not when they drove up, he wasn’t.’

‘No. Very convenient.’

Miles finished his coffee and put on his wig. He’d enjoyed his pre-court skirmish with John Sparling even more than usual. The wily old prosecutor would never admit to being unhappy with his case, but Miles would have bet good money that the new statements had not been welcome arrivals in Sparling’s chambers at the end of the previous week. The Crown’s case depended too much on the unsupported evidence of young Thomas already. This latest development made the case positively top-heavy, thought Miles, patting his own bulk contentedly.

Certainly the defence had more to gain than to lose from the new statements. He’d seen Lady Greta in conference on Saturday morning and obtained her assurance that she knew nobody called either Lonny or Rosie and that she had not told anyone about that hiding place in the House of the Four Winds.

‘I’m going to find my client,’ said Miles, getting up. ‘I’ll take her instructions, but I can’t see us objecting to you calling the boy last. Better make sure he turns up, though. Statements are one thing, evidence is another.’

Miles was gone in a swirl of wig and gown before John Sparling could think of a suitable response.

Peter and Greta were waiting outside Court 9 with Peter’s lawyer, Patrick Sullivan, a handsome Irishman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Liam Neeson. Patrick and Peter had been at university together, and it had been a natural development for him to become Peter’s lawyer when Peter had started to need one. The work had taken up more and more of Patrick’s time since Peter had become a minister, and Greta’s trial had made it virtually a full-time occupation.

Patrick was no criminal lawyer, but he had given Peter and Greta vital support in those nightmare days after Greta was first arrested. He had conveyed a sense that he was truly on their side, that he believed in them, and that was what Peter had craved more than anything else.

Greta, unsurprisingly, had retreated into her shell as the police began investigating Thomas’s allegations against her, and Patrick seemed to restore some of her confidence. Later, after Greta was charged, Peter had asked Patrick to find a top criminal barrister to take on her case. He appeared to have succeeded admirably. Everyone that Peter spoke to agreed that Miles Lambert was one of the best in the business.

‘I’ve reminded Peter that he can’t be in court during the trial,’ said Patrick.

‘That’s right,’ said Miles. ‘Not until after you’ve given your evidence. But Patrick’s told me he’s going to be here most of the time and so Greta won’t be on her own. No need to worry about that.’

He smiled encouragingly. They’d been over this many times already, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He’d had witnesses before who had disbarred themselves from giving evidence by sitting in court during the trial.

‘How are you feeling, Greta?’ he asked solicitously. Trial for murder was a terrible experience for anyone to go through and Miles knew that waiting for it to begin was one of the worst parts of the process.

‘All right, I suppose. It’s not easy, though. I felt like I was in a zoo when we got out of the car.’ Greta’s normally even voice shook, and Peter took hold of her hand and squeezed it. Not being able to be with his wife in court and share her ordeal was almost more than he could bear.

‘I know,’ said Miles. ‘I’m sorry about that. But look, the important thing to remember is that you’re not going to need to say anything until the middle of next week at the earliest. It’ll probably be the end of next week, in fact. The prosecution has got a lot of evidence to get through, and they’re calling Thomas as their last witness. They say he needs time to get over whatever happened last Wednesday.’

‘Nothing happened,’ Peter interjected. ‘He’s made it up just like everything else. He just can’t stop. Ruining our lives and his.’

‘All right, Peter,’ said Greta. ‘Not now.’ She drew a great deal of support from Peter’s anger against his son, but this was not the time for any loss of control.

‘Is this a problem?’ she asked. ‘Thomas going last?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Miles. ‘It’ll make the jury see how little the prosecution has got without him.’

‘Yes. Yes, I see that.’

Greta smiled, but this only made the tension in her face more visible. She looked perfect, Miles thought. She’ll make the jurors that aren’t priapic come over all parental when she touches her eyes with that little white handkerchief she’s got in her bag.

‘That was the usher,’ said Patrick, returning to the group and breaking the momentary silence. ‘We’re wanted inside.’

‘I’ll be here at lunch, Greta,’ said Peter. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ replied Greta as she turned to follow the lawyers through the swinging doors of the courtroom.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he added. ‘Just you see.’ But she did not reply. The doors had closed behind her, and he could not follow.

CHAPTER 6

The first thing that Greta was aware of on entering the courtroom was the sound of many voices suddenly becoming still. The benches on the left of the court were thronged with the same reporters who had surrounded her outside. There was to be no escape from them, although the cameras and sound equipment were absent.

Before her arrival the court had been just another room, but now there was the beginning of drama, the certainty of action to come. Everything was lit by bright artificial light because this was a place removed from the outside world. There were no windows and the soundproofed walls were bare except for the extravagant lion-and-unicorn emblem behind the judge’s empty chair.

Miles Lambert came to a halt beside the dock. This was a dark wooden enclosure at the back of the court, which Greta had had to occupy once before when she came to court in the spring to plead not guilty. Now a security woman with cropped black hair and a sallow face bent to open the low wicket gate and stood aside for Greta to enter the enclosure. The latch of the gate clicked behind her.

‘Now, Patrick’ll be watching to see if you need anything,’ said Miles in a soothing tone. ‘Have you got plenty of paper and pens? You can pass me a note if you think of something important, although I doubt we’ll get much beyond the prosecution’s opening statement this morning, and you don’t need to worry about that. It’s not evidence.’

Greta nodded and bit her lip. As if paper would help her. With all these people looking at her and strangers deciding her fate.

‘We ought to get a jury fairly soon. Remember not to look at them directly. They don’t like that. But let them look at you. There’ll be a bad minute or two with the photographs of the body. I can’t stop Sparling showing them those but it won’t last long. The judge’ll see to that. Granger’s all right. We could have done a lot worse.’

Greta smiled wanly. She was grateful to Miles Lambert for trying to make things easier for her.

The security woman tapped Greta on the shoulder, interrupting the conversation.

‘You need to surrender to custody. It’s the rules.’

‘But haven’t I just done so?’

‘No, I’ve got to search you. Check your bag.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Greta, offering her handbag up for inspection.

But this wasn’t enough.

‘It’s through here,’ said the woman, touching Greta’s arm this time as she guided her through a door in the side of the dock out into a small holding area. The once white walls were covered in obscene words and pictures drawn by rapists and murderers raging against their fate. Greta thought how strange it was that such a place should exist within a few metres of the judge, sitting in all his pomp and glory. But neither the graffiti nor the stale smell of urine emanating from a lavatory cubicle with a seatless toilet in the corner really bothered Greta. She’d seen worse.

It was the staircase in the far corner that sent a shiver down her spine. She couldn’t see more than the first three steps from where she stood near the door to the court, but it was enough to know that they went down and not up. Down to the cells below, from which there would be no escape. One word, one little word from the jury, and she’d be stumbling down those stairs with guards holding her elbows. Greta felt that it was like having the chance to see the scene of one’s own death before it happened. She was suddenly gripped by a wave of nausea and sat down on the bench that ran the length of the room as if she’d just been punched.

‘Come on now,’ said the security woman with a note of irritation creeping into her voice. ‘You can sit on your arse in court all day. But right now I need to search you. It’s the rules.’

Greta held herself rigid while the woman’s hands patted down her body. Shoulders, breasts, stomach, thighs; with each touch Greta felt herself being claimed by a system that was too big for her. Too impersonal. She kept her eyes fixed on the whitewashed ceiling until the search was over, never allowing her gaze to stray for a moment to the staircase in the corner.

‘All right, you’re fine,’ said the woman, holding open the door to the dock.

Back in the courtroom Greta breathed deeply. She took out her handkerchief and held it to her nose. The fragrant Chanel perfume allowed her to imagine the cool interior of the drawing-room at home. The chandeliers and the rich hangings. With an intense effort of will she forced the holding room and the descending staircase out of her consciousness. Then, opening her eyes, she ran her hands through her perfectly layered black hair and settled back into her chair as she began to take in her surroundings.

The reporters had gone back to talking amongst themselves, and in front of her the barristers were unpacking heavy files and law books on to the long tables. To Miles’s left a tall, distinguished-looking man in wig and gown was listening to the police officer, Detective Sergeant Hearns.

They made a strange pair, thought Greta. Hearns in his ill-fitting suit and kipper tie standing almost on tiptoe to whisper what he wanted to say to the barrister, who leaned slightly to his left, allowing Greta to see his profile; the long, thin face and the aquiline nose. This must be the man that Miles had told her about. John Sparling, Counsel for the Prosecution.

As usual Hearns was waving his crude, stubby-fingered hands about for emphasis. Greta remembered this irritating habit from the interview that she had had to undergo before she was charged.

‘I put it to you, madam, that you’re the brains behind this conspiracy,’ he had said then.

‘The éminence grise, Mr Hearns?’ Greta had asked, resorting at last to sarcasm.

‘Don’t bandy foreign words with me, madam,’ he’d countered. He always addressed her as ‘madam’; never Greta or Miss Grahame. Perhaps that was something they’d taught him at the training college. Interrogation techniques for aspiring detectives.

‘This is a very serious allegation, madam. A lady is dead and I’m putting it to you that you’re responsible.’

‘And I’m putting it to you that you’ve been reading too many detective stories.’

And so it had gone on. Hour after hour in the dingy police station in Ipswich. At least she wouldn’t have to hear all the interviews played back. Miles had managed to agree with the prosecution that a summary would be read to the jury at the end of their case.

Greta pulled her mind back to the present. Hearns had finished putting whatever he had to put to Sparling, and as the lawyer turned back to his papers his eyes met Greta’s for a moment. She could not read his expression. It was distant but knowing, cool but penetrative. She shivered.

A loud knocking on a closed door to the right of the judge’s chair brought everyone in the court to their feet. Immediately the door opened and His Honour Judge Granger swept in, preceded by the court usher. He was an old man with only a year or two left before his retirement, and yet he carried himself ramrod straight. His threadbare wig was perched forward on his head above a pair of bushy eyebrows. His face was very lined and his cheeks were sunken, but his bright grey eyes told a different story. They seemed as if they belonged to a much younger man as they darted around the room taking in everybody and everything, before he gathered his black robes about him and sat down heavily in his high-backed chair. There was a shuffling and scraping as everyone else in the courtroom including Greta followed suit, but she was only allowed to remain seated for a moment.

The clerk of the court, dressed also in wig and gown, rose to his feet.

‘The defendant will stand.’

Greta did so.

‘Are you Greta, Lady Robinson?’

‘I am.’

Greta tried to keep her voice up, but the words that came from her lips sounded small and distant. Not how she wanted them to sound at all. She needed to remember what her elocution teacher had taught her before she came south. ‘Projection’ it was called. She hadn’t worked as hard on that part of the course, as her attention had been focused on changing her accent. Losing the thick northern vowels and replacing them with the long a’s and o’s of the British ruling class.

The judge had heard her answer, at any rate. He treated her to a half-smile and gestured downward with his hands.

‘Sit down, Lady Robinson. Sit down.’ His voice was surprisingly high, and its almost feminine tone was accentuated by the courtesy with which he always spoke. Loudness and rudeness formed no part of Judge Granger’s judicial vocabulary.

‘Now, Mr Sparling.’

The counsel for the prosecution got slowly to his feet. ‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘What about bail?’

‘There are conditions of residence and reporting, my Lord.’

‘Reporting, Mr Sparling?’

‘Yes. On Wednesdays and Saturdays to Chelsea Police Station.’

‘Well, I don’t think we need persist with that now that the trial is under way. Residence should be quite sufficient.’

‘Very well, my Lord.’

‘Now, there is one other matter that I want to raise with you both at this stage, gentlemen. I’ve been looking at these photographs.’

‘Of the house, my Lord?’ asked Sparling. ‘Or the victim?’

‘Of the victim. There are five, I believe. Showing these very dreadful wounds. Now, I can’t see any need for them to be shown to the victim’s son. The medical evidence is agreed as I understand it. Death occurred as a result of two gunshot wounds to the shoulder and the head, with the second shot being fired at close range.’

‘That is correct, my Lord,’ said Sparling. ‘The photographs will be given to the jury during my opening statement this morning, but the Crown will not show them to Thomas Robinson, who will by agreement be giving evidence last.’

‘Oh, why is that, Mr Sparling? He should surely be your first witness.’

‘Ordinarily, yes, my Lord, but the Crown wishes to give him the maximum time to recover from the events of the 5th of July. Your Lordship has seen the new statements?’

‘Yes, I have. Well, I suppose that does seem sensible in the circumstances. Now, Mr Lambert, about these photographs.’

‘I won’t show them to Thomas Robinson, my Lord,’ said Miles Lambert, rising from his seat and pushing the table back a few inches as he did so in order to make room for his ample stomach.

‘There is one matter of admissibility on which we will need your Lordship’s ruling,’ added Miles, ‘but that is perhaps better done before Detective Sergeant Hearns gives his evidence.’

‘Yes, Mr Lambert, I agree. Let’s press on. Miss Hooks, we’re ready for the jury now.’

This instruction was directed at the court usher, a diminutive lady less than five feet tall. She looked out on the world distrustfully through an enormous pair of black-framed glasses with thick lenses that seemed to cover nearly half of her pinched little face. Her black gown fell almost to the floor, and Greta feared for a moment that she might stumble over it as she moved as quickly as her small legs would carry her towards the door in the far corner of the courtroom, behind which the jurors were waiting.

The strangest thing about the jury was their lack of strangeness, Greta reflected, as each of the twelve stood in turn to swear or affirm that he or she ‘will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence’.