False Witness (44 page)

“Nor can I,” I said.

“So do you think his silence was a meal-ticket to the top?”

“Perhaps. I mean, what could Manly have done?” I said. “If he had released Kingsley at the first trial, the abuse would just
have gone on. Maybe Ignatius couldn’t stomach it anymore. But to have Kingsley convicted would have risked Kingsley breaking
the code of silence on the abuse. In a perverse way, a convicted Richard Kingsley was more dangerous than an acquitted one.”

Emma tried to smile, but instead she sneezed once more. “I guess that’s Kingsley for you. Perverse to the end. I mean, look
at his Gothic novel about—”

“A book is just another form of confession, Emma. And like anything else it can be true or false.”

“So Kingsley was innocent and Payne and Chapple were guilty?”

“Think it’s that simple?”

“What do you mean, Tom?”

“Well, do you think guilt plus innocence equals the truth? This wasn’t really about Payne and Chapple. They just wielded the
knife.”

“I understand they’re going to be charged.”

“That’s one type of justice,” I said.

“Is there another?”

“Look what happened to Justine.”

“So what was it all about?”

“It was about Stonebury, Emma. It was about that dial in our minds getting stuck.”

“The
what
getting stuck?” Emma burst into a fit of coughing. “You’re behaving very strangely again, Tom.”

“There was no such thing as innocence in Stonebury. Just degrees of guilt.”

“Still, I do think they were stupid to try to frame Kingsley,” Emma said.

“The glove fitted. Besides, how long do you think a convicted sex offender like that would stay alive in prison? And if he
survived, who would have believed him?”

“So why did they kill Molly Summers, Tom?”

“Because she might have talked about old man Summers’s death. I think Chapple told her about the cover-up.” And then I remembered
what Chapple had said to Justine. “Or perhaps it was simpler than that. Maybe she was killed just because she was there. Because
she was available. Perhaps that’s why she never fought back. Because there was no hope. I mean, what do you do when a whole
village is corrupt?”

“Hope the knife goes in deeply first time,” Emma said.

As we went to the lifts, we passed groups of bewigged men, and I turned to Emma. I said, “You know, I still don’t really understand
the Children of Albion bit. I suppose there was all that Blake stuff about children of a future age, and—”

“They weren’t Druids or anything like that, Tom.”

“Then what were they?”

“Complete and utter bastards. They abused young girls, Tom. The oldest ritual in the book. Men abusing women. Except in Stonebury
it was not just a ritual, it was a right. I suppose that’s why Justine’s father leased the old family semi-detached to the
local authority,” she said ironically.

“Perhaps it was guilt?” I said. “To make up for what he did to Justine? For what he didn’t do for Molly?”

“No. It was to ensure that the men of Stonebury had a constant supply of vulnerable girls,” Emma said. “That fits, doesn’t
it? I mean, look at the name. West Albion. The—”

“The source, the seed, the father of all things,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. So why were the girls abused, Emma?”

“Why shouldn’t they be?”

“That’s hardly a post-feminist explanation.”

“It might just be a true one, Tom. All the men did was to dress up in funny costumes and talk in a strange language so that
they could forget what they really were doing.” The barristers by the lift laughed loudly, full of their own importance. “A
little like them,” Emma said.

“A little like us,” I replied.

We passed through the revolving security doors and out into the London air. The streets teemed with people carrying on their
lives, oblivious to the Kingsley case, perfectly content to ignore the death of a girl.

As we approached the Temple, Emma stopped outside Johnson’s. “Fancy a swift drink?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. But as we entered, I again saw the quote from Dr. Johnson above the door.

Sir, I have found you an argument
,

but I am not obliged to find you an understanding
.

The arguments were finally over. But had I really found any understanding at all? I turned to Emma as she approached the bar.

“Look, Emma,” I said. “Some other time, perhaps.”

“Is something the matter, Tom?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. It’s just that—”

“What?”

“There’s someone I’ve got to visit.”

B
Y THE TIME
I
REACHED
S
TONEBURY, IT HAD STARTED
raining. I wandered around the stones as night sank very slowly over the village. I passed the Holestone, the Sepulchre and
the others. And when I reached the inner circle, I tried to imagine what a teenage girl would have thought as she was led
there for the last time. But the dream would no longer come. So I decided to walk the short distance from the village to the
church.

The gate at St. Stephen’s creaked slightly as I opened it. The graveyard did not frighten me. After all the talk of cults
and sects and chants and prayers, it seemed to me that the only real magic in the world is the mind and how it sustains its
precarious balance. Some people, like Kingsley, find a balance of their own and live their lives accordingly. But for others,
life with its unforgiving demands becomes too much and they fall. And again I thought of Justine.

In the far corner of the churchyard, behind a cherry tree and a few feet from the ramshackle wall, was a relatively fresh
mound of earth. Compared to the others, the gravestone was new, and the rain washed it clean of grime.

It said,
Here lies Molly Summers
.

And I wondered, who now weeps for her? Most of the stone was taken up with writing. I moved closer and began to make out the
angular letters in the gathering gloom.

We will fall into the hands of the Lord

And not into the hands of men

For as is his majesty

So is his mercy.

Ecclesiasticus

But who had paid for her gravestone? Perhaps it was Justine? Perhaps it was the only thing Justine had ever really done for
the girl who shared her father’s blood. When I had read the inscription for a second time, I felt as though I would never
stop dreaming about that place. Now it was part of me and I was part of it. I knew the face above the murdered girl, and it
was the face of someone I had loved and who was now lost, not only to me, but to the world.

I turned and again felt the wound in my side. It was, then, rather slowly that I walked past the Sanctuary Seat and the decaying
porch, past the tombstone where a magpie had once sat, and past all the graves of the faithful. Very soon it was dark. The
images dissolved into one another and I again imagined a sound. It was the gentle weeping of a woman. A woman who was witnessing
her sister being murdered. The sighs that I imagined were the sighs of Justine.

When I had closed the gate of St. Stephen and the Martyrs, I paused for just a moment before I walked into the ancient village
of Stonebury. I knew that I would return to London and to my wife. But as I reached the very center of the circles, I wondered
whether I would ever
really
leave.

Before being called to the Bar, Dexter Dias was educated at Sevenoaks School and the University of Durham. He is now a barrister
specializing in criminal defense. He practices from a set of chambers specifically created to represent people disadvantaged
by poverty and discrimination. He has already written on a variety of legal and political issues, but the real stimulus for
writing his first novel,
False Witness
, came when he met Ruth Rendell while he was defending a murder in 1993.

Heralded as Great Britain’s answer to Scott Turow, Dexter Dias—who brings his courtroom experience and storytelling genius
to the art of the legal thriller—presents his masterful debut novel, exploring the boundaries of sexual obsession and violent
death…

For once, Tom Fawley—the laziest and most cynical excuse for a wigged barrister—has the devil for a client, and he doesn’t
have a prayer. The accused is a crippled pulp novelist who has confessed to the killing. The deceased is a beautiful sixteen-year-old,
found stabbed in the ancient stone circle in a remote English village. For Fawley, the case will become a journey that will
lead him to the truth not only about a horrifying crime, not only about a world without innocents, but also about himself,
with a force as savage as the weapon that plundered a young girl’s life.

“E
XCELLENT
…

STRONG ON BLACK HUMOR

AND COURTROOM DRAMA
.”

—
Daily Telegraph

“T
HE PLOT IS CLEVER AND

UNPREDICTABLE, THE STORY IS

GRIPPING, AND FAWLEY IS AN

INTRIGUING ANTI-HERO
.”

—
Booklist