False Witness (41 page)

Justine did not answer at first. She knelt in front of me and began to weep. Clouds moved slowly across the sky and the room
went from darkness to light and then back to darkness.

Without looking up, she finally said, “I know I’m ill. Always have been. It’s just these bad thoughts. I don’t know where
they come from. But I can’t ignore them, I can’t pretend they aren’t real. You see, they seem to come true.”

“Justine, what are you talking about?”

“That so-called father of hers—”

“You mean Summers?”

“He tried to get money out of us once he knew who sired that bitch. And Daddy said it would ruin his career and I so wanted
the man to go away and leave us alone. Then suddenly, it seemed like magic—
pouf
. He was gone.”

“Justine, it was an accident.”

“And I had done it.”

“Look, he was a poacher, wasn’t he? His shotgun went off.”

“
Pouf
—he was gone. And I had willed it. Daddy paid Alex to be a false witness. He got him a job at the school. Then he promised
Ignatius the earth if he did nothing at the inquest. And Payne planted the gun on Summers. But that was the easy part. It
was her. She was the one I was scared of.”

“But why?” I asked. “Molly was just a teenager when she died.”

“I used to see her, Tom. All the time. There in the village. I just couldn’t stand it.”

“But what did she do?”

“It’s not what she did, it’s what she was. Every time I came down from London, she seemed to look increasingly like Daddy…
and like me.”

By now, Justine had really worked herself up. Her eyes were clouding over and it was as if she were being filled up with the
past. And as I looked at her face, I remembered the first trial. I remembered how Justine had the same gray eyes as the woman
juror. I remembered how the juror had the same gray eyes as Molly Summers. Should I have spotted the connection? I didn’t
know.

But what I did know was that I needed to divert Justine. She was tearing herself up with these thoughts, and I had to challenge
them. But at last I knew why it was that when the first time we made love in her chambers I had seen not just her face, but
the face of Molly Summers.

“This is all in your mind, Justine,” I said. “It’s just that all you Stonebury girls look alike.”

“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.

T
HERE WAS A HIGH-PITCHED TONE.
L
OUD, 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—”

“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.”