False Witness (20 page)

The shadow again appeared at the doorway. “You better chip, spar.”

In confusion, I looked to Emma.

She translated. “I think we ought to leave.”

Danny tossed the syringe expertly out of the window, removed three silver-foil balls from his mouth and tried to flush them.

“So what’s this about?” I asked.

He had waded his way to the door. “The real clue is from the Greek.”

“What is?”

“The real clue,
Drus
.”

“Did you say Bruce? Who the hell is—”

“No,
drus
,” he said, spelling it out. “D-R-U-S.
Drus
. From the Greek.”

I grabbed his baggy white tee-shirt and could have sworn that the pattern on it was little different from the pattern shaved
into the witness’s head at the Old Bailey. Then Danny’s tee-shirt was tugged from the other side of the doorway.

“I’m Woman Detective Constable Leslie Roach. I am arresting you on suspicion of allowing these premises to be used for the
supply of controlled drugs.”

Danny tried to look amazed, but failed.

“You have the right to remain silent,” she began to caution him. I was quite excited, never having seen a live arrest. “But
anything you say—”

“I know that crap,” said Danny.

The two women escorted him through a funnel of jeering ravers toward the staircase.

As he reached the second step, he turned and shouted, “Children.” The jeering subsided. The ravers did appear young to me
but this seemed rather patronizing. “Children,” he shouted with a broken voice. “Children of Albion.”

Was this a reference to the home in Stonebury? And if so, then why? What was the connection between Kingsley, the contents
of the notes and West Albion? However, the two policewomen had no such problems. They merely looked at each other, shrugged,
tucked their white handbags under their unshaved armpits and pushed the man up the stairway.

“Danny thinks there may be some kind of cult involved,” Emma said.

“There is,” I replied. “The cult of the personality. His personality. A thoroughly pretentious one.”

“He was just trying to help, Tom.”

“No, Emma. He was trying to sell drugs. I wonder what the Greek is for five years in the slammer?” Although I tried to joke
it off, a seed had been planted. The seemingly disparate pieces in the jigsaw might, after all, be connected. But what was
the picture?

T
HE NEXT MORNING WAS BRIGHT, WITH A CRISP SUN
skimming off the Thames in an almost blinding way. The Middle Temple lawns were opal in color as I walked slowly toward chambers.
No court work, but I still had plenty to do.

I had been gazing at the river from my third-floor room for about twenty minutes, when the phone rang. Steve, my clerk, put
through a call. The voice at the other end was round and soft, like a cheese that had been left out all night.

“This is Dove,” it said.

“Is it?”

“Yes, Dove. Gerald Dove. ‘Bout that report. Much as we thought.”

“Really?” Had I missed something? What report? I tried to bluff it out and said more emphatically, “Oh,
really
.”

“So that’s ‘bout it,” he said. “Guess you won’t be needing me after all.”

“No, I don’t suppose we will.”

“Right then, goodbye.”

“Oh, just one thing, Mr. Dove.”

“Fire away.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

I heard him tapping the phone at the other end. “Sorry, thought you said, What on earth—”

“Yes, I did.”

Another tap of the receiver. “Didn’t Miss Sharpe tell you then?”

“Tell me what?”

“’Bout me seeing the stuff.”

“The stuff?”

“The handwritten note Inspector Payne found in your punter’s cell.” It started to make sense. “Do you want the good news or
the bad news?”

How I hated that game. “Go on,” I said.

“Good news is, my conclusions are… well, pretty conclusive.”

“And?”

“And the bad news is, your man wrote the note.”

Why then did Kingsley want a graphologist to check the handwriting? It was sheer lunacy. I consoled myself that one of the
benefits of defending is that you are not obliged to disclose unhelpful expert reports to the prosecution. But the police
would know that a graphologist had inspected the note from Kingsley’s cell, and it would be obvious why we didn’t dare call
any evidence.

“Can you be sure?” I asked rather optimistically. “I mean how certain can you be that Kingsley wrote it?”

“Never can be certain. Not in our game. You see, nothing is certain. But to use a technical term—it’s as near as dammit.”
He sniggered at his
bon mot
. All experts had one so-called joke, except the short-sighted heart-throb of the mortuary slab, Harry Molesey. “You see,
Mr. Fawley, graphology isn’t an exact science.”

“Well, what is it—exactly?”

“An opinion. But an expert one.”

“And what’s yours?”

“That Richard Kingsley wrote that note.”

The line crackled and I muttered under my breath, “Bloody idiot.”

More vigorous banging of the receiver. “What did you say?”

“No. Not you. Kingsley. Mr. Dove, is it… possible, just possible, someone else wrote the note, I mean impersonating Kingsley’s
hand?”

“Anything’s possible, Mr. Fawley.”

An opening? Microscopic, but perhaps it would provide a little room for maneuver? “Well, how possible is this?”

“Let me put it this way. Physicists say that in theory an elephant can hang off a cliff with its trunk holding on to a daisy.
That’s technically possible.”

“I see.”

“And if I had the choice?” he continued.

“Yes?”

“I’d back Nelly the elephant against your client every time.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dove. We won’t need to trouble you at trial.”

When he hung up, I buzzed the clerk’s room. “Steve, ring Goldman and Goldman.” I was in no mood to mention the third Goldman.
“I need a con at Battersea prison this afternoon in the case of Kingsley.”

Steve was as clueless in life as he was in the law, but he had learnt the first rule of administration: Procrastinate at all
costs. “Bit short notice to arrange a prison con, Mr. Fawley. You sure?”

“No, I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’m as near as dammit.”

I suppose I used to take a certain contrary pleasure in describing myself as the most ignorant excuse of a man to toss on
a barrister’s wig. It did earn me what Emma called “street cred” with some of my clients. But, at times, it could be a nuisance.
This was one of those times. If a little learning is a dangerous thing, none at all could be a decided disadvantage.

I had no idea whether Danny, Man of the Streets—and the urinals—was talking complete drivel. He did know about the straw,
but perhaps Emma told him that. So where did that leave me? A police informer trying to squeeze me for money and a message
from a dead girl. And all this on legal aid. I needed a coffee.

There was a little Italian cafeteria on the Embankment which, the sign above the door boasted, made the best cappuccino from
here to Milan. The sandwich-maker was, in fact, Sicilian. Vinny had chestnut-colored skin and a neatly trimmed mustache.

He always asked about my cases. Vinny couldn’t understand the fuss. If they were innocent, they would be acquitted. If they
were guilty, they would go to prison—unless they had enough money and sense to bribe the judge and jury. The law was just
another business like making salami sandwiches.

“What’s wrong?” Vinny asked as I pushed my way past a tramp in the doorway who was looking at a copy of the
Financial Times
. “You look like shit.”

“A cappuccino, Vinny.”

“I got some lovely Danish.”

“They look stale. No, Vinny, coffee’s fine.”

“What’s a matter?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

And it was true. It was not just the case or Penny or Justine. It was something more. It was me—I just couldn’t seem to be
around people. I annoyed them, they annoyed me, I annoyed myself—constantly. Nothing seemed to make much sense, but I could
vaguely discern a force, or maybe it was a presence, just out of my grasp.

Vinny handed me a white plastic cup with bubbles frothing under the lid, which reminded me of the sinks in the nightclub.
My stomach turned—I needed some solids.

“Give me a Danish, then,” I said.

But Vinny had spotted a temp from the management consultants across the road and preened his mustache with a white plastic
fork before handing over the pastry.

The tramp had retired to a wooden bench just beyond the side gates to the Temple. As I passed him, he spouted out in a most
perfunctory way his standard request. “Got fifty pence for a cup of tea, guv?”

“Tea’s only thirty pence,” I replied.

He neatly folded the newspaper. “Well, that’s inflation for you. Those interest rates, they’re a killer, ain’t they?” He scoured
the share prices with the thoroughness of someone who had nothing to do for the rest of the day.

I handed him a coin and gestured toward the newspaper. “Do you mind?” I asked.

He gave it to me and proceeded to inspect my coin as though it were a forgery. He bit it. “Can’t be too careful,” he said.
“Lot of sly ones around. Don’t know who you can trust.”

I turned to the television listings and there it was:

“9:30 p.m.
Real Lives
. Tonight no-nonsense judge, Hilary Hardcastle, addresses the European Society of Christian Lawyers on how English judges
strive to protect the rights of the innocent.”

But who, I thought, would protect the innocent from Hilary Hardcastle? It seemed, then, that my clerk Rose had probably got
it wrong. The message must have been
Real Lives
and not, Read
Times
. Did that mean that Rose had also got the name wrong? Did the message read Love Milly? Thinking again about it, as I chomped
my way through the stale Danish pastry, it could not have been from Molly. Could it?

A
s
I
SAT IN
T
EMPLE LIBRARY LATER THAT DAY, SUR
rounded by the brooding portraits of illustrious judges, I glanced through a book that made fascinating, if gruesome, reading.
I had remembered what Rupert Livingstone had said about punishment, and decided to do some investigating.

The pages of the book were full of the instruments of mutilation and punishment: whipping-posts, pillories, gibbets, racks,
whirligigs, branding irons and stocks. Chapter Eleven: the Brank—a metal cage—for the head, used for gagging a brawling woman.
I tried not to speculate whether Hilary Hardcastle’s head would have fitted into the cage in the picture.

The book was called
Punishments of Yore
and had been written by some particularly ghoulish court clerk in Rochdale at the turn of the century. What, I wondered,
prompts a man to write a book about scalding, burning, torture and transportation?

I flicked through chapters on executions and witchcraft, on church sanctuary and laws of the Saxons, when I found what I was
looking for.

“The Stang. An ancient custom of ridicule.”

I tried to remember the precise context in which Kingsley had shouted out those strange words, but could only resurrect the
dismal vision of Legat strapped to the bed.

“An effigy of the offender is mounted on a pole—a Stang—and—taken around the town amid boisterous abuse.”

It seemed incongruous to have so banal a punishment in amongst that catalogue of ordeals. What game was Kingsley playing?
I tried to remember his cell with its television and the putrid flowers, his manuscripts and the doctors running around him;
I tried to picture Kingsley but now not only his eyes, but the very face itself was white and soulless and—

“The Stang (the offense). Inflicted upon a husband who had been unfaithful to his wife.”

It must have been Kingsley’s twisted idea of a joke. He had to demonstrate his acumen, his learning; he could not just… then
I had a thought, and it was this: How did Kingsley
know
?