The Professor of Truth (14 page)

I was dimly aware of a man in a light raincoat sitting down at the other end of my bench. I hardly glanced at him. Instead I stared at the shabby pigeons and the tramp, and the new arrival sat staring at whatever he was staring at. After a while, feeling an aching weariness creep up my legs and into my back, I gathered myself to leave.

The man said, quietly enough but I didn’t miss a word, “Something’s very wrong, Dr Tealing. Don’t look at me. The court hasn’t heard the half of it. Don’t look at me. I’ll be in touch.”

I raised myself. The pigeons poked the air, the tramp snored on. I walked away. But of course when I was at a distance I did look, and he was still sitting there, the policeman who had turned his back on me.

EORGE BRAITHWAITE WAS A LECTURER IN JURISPRUDENCE
in the Faculty of Law. Before the trial I knew him only by sight, a small, neat man of about sixty, with a round pink face and a hurried walk that suggested he was on the hunt for truffles. He had been a solicitor for ten years, working in criminal defence, before entering academe—a career move that made me wonder if he was any good at law in either practice or theory. But Jim Collins knew him well, and thought him both intelligent and decent. “A little cold,” he said, “but you’ll get no nonsense from him.” A week after the trial, I contacted Braithwaite through Jim, and requested a meeting. I had said, when asked by journalists for my reaction to the verdict, that I was confused by the fact that Mahmed had gone free while Khazar had been convicted, but I had not gone into further details. It was generally assumed that I, and the other relatives, were disappointed that Mahmed had “got away with it.” I had told Jim Collins that I had misgivings about the trial, but again had not discussed them in any depth. This was why I wanted to talk to his cold but decent, no-nonsense legal acquaintance.

George Braithwaite suggested we go for a drink somewhere after work. “Nowhere too public,” I said. “Come to my
flat, then,” he said. He lived near the castle, in what was left of the old medieval quarter. He showed me into a room with commanding views over the whole town, and went to fetch some wine. The room was full of dark antique furniture, two deep-red leather armchairs and a sofa, heavy Victorian oil paintings and bookcases containing large volumes on art, architecture, photography and design. The room was uncompromisingly masculine. I had not speculated whether there was a Mrs Braithwaite, but it seemed there was not. Not, of course, that that meant anything.

He returned with two glasses and a decanter of red wine on a silver tray. “Do you drink claret?” he asked. “I bought a couple of cases of this a few years ago and it’s just coming into its own.”

I said that sounded fine. I indicated the bookcases. “You don’t seem to have any books on law,” I said.

“Oh, I have, but not here,” he said, pouring the wine. “I have all the law I need at the University. This is my home.” He gestured towards one of the leather chairs. “Please. I gather from Jim that you want to pick my brains about the Khazar conviction?”

“I am unhappy about it,” I said.

“I’m not surprised,” he said.

“I mean, because I don’t trust the verdict,” I said.

“I mean that too,” he said. With his elbows on the arms of his chair he brought the tips of his fingers together and rested them against his lips. “Tell me why.”

I didn’t know how much detail I needed to go into but it transpired he had been following the trial closely and
already had his own ideas about it. Occasionally he interrupted, asking to be reminded who this or that individual was, but mostly he remained motionless, breaking his prayer-like attitude only to reach for his glass. When I had finished, he said nothing for a minute or two, but let his gaze wander about the room as if he had only just noticed the books, the paintings, the dark furniture. At last he spoke.

“You are unhappy with the outcome,” he said. “But what is it you are looking for? Justice? The truth?”

“Either of those would be a start,” I said. “Both would be good.”

“It is naive of you to think—” Braithwaite began, then broke off. “Maybe I should finish that sentence right there. No, I apologise, I’m being facetious.” He stopped again. “The thing people always do—people who are not lawyers—is confuse the law with justice, evidence with truth. What goes on in a courtroom is not a search for truth. It really isn’t, although the mythology suggests otherwise. A courtroom is a venue for a fight between two sides, each trying to persuade a jury, or in this case the Bench, that an accused person did or did not do something. That’s all it is, a fight. As in a boxing match, points are scored by delivering punches on target. It may even be that a knockout punch is landed. And when it is all over, one side wins. But the outcome of any trial is not that justice has been done, or that the truth has come out, any more than the outcome of a boxing match is that the better, nobler, finer man has triumphed. Justice
may
have been done. The truth
may
have come out. But neither of these things is necessary in the application of
the law. They are actually irrelevant. Yes, I’d go as far as to say that. Irrelevant. We might wish it were not so, but that is the nature of the law. And why is that? It’s because truth and justice are only ever principles at best, and more often mere aspirations. They are what we aim for, what we hope for in ideal circumstances. But we never get ideal circumstances because none of us—solicitors, advocates, judges, jury, witnesses, the accused—none of us, in the end, I am
not
sorry to say, is perfect. We are all only human.”

“That word ‘irrelevant,’ ” I said. “Lately I’ve been wanting to strip out everything to do with this whole affair that is irrelevant, all the speculation and confusion and emotion. Concentrate on the hard facts. I feel then, despite what you say, that what would be left would be the truth.”

“You might feel it but you’d be wrong.” He stood up, lifted the decanter and refilled our glasses. “You’re missing the point. What
are
the hard facts? What you say is irrelevant in this affair is not irrelevant in life. What is irrelevant is what
makes
life. If you strip out the irrelevant, the truth won’t be standing there like a gleaming sword. There won’t just be no truth, there’ll be nothing.”

“You mean, there
is
no truth?”

“I mean it is not pure and separate. It is dirty and decayed and has frayed edges, and holes and tears in it. The last thing the truth does is gleam.”

“You suggested that image, not me. But I’m glad I’m not a lawyer, if this is how you end up thinking.”

“Without idealism? It’s the only way to think, if you want to stay sane. The lives that come before lawyers in the course
of their work, the lives that are paraded in front of magistrates every day of the week, all over the world, are scruffy and soiled and stupid, and a million miles from idealism. And I’m not just talking about criminal law, I mean civil law too, buying and selling houses, legacies and divorces, commercial law, the whole kitbag. Do you think anybody involved in those processes could go home and eat his dinner, or go to the theatre, or enjoy a game of golf or a drink or a joke with friends, or even the quiet of a room like this with its books and pictures, if he took the—well, you might call it the nobler view, but I call it the naive view? It just wouldn’t be possible.”

It was early spring. The evening light had dulled, and the room was murky. Braithwaite’s face had become indistinct, and I was not even sure if his eyes were still open. Then he spoke again.

“I did once know someone in the law, a sheriff, who tried going down the road you’re on, the noble road. He too decided that justice and the law must be one and the same, despite all the evidence”—he cleared his throat—“to the contrary, or what was the point? And what happened to him? I’ll tell you. First he took to drink, then he went mad, and finally he threw himself off a bridge.”

I had no recollection of such an event. “Really?” I asked.

“Really,” Braithwaite said. “Many years ago. We had our disagreements, but I was very fond of him.”

Something, I wasn’t sure what, had been revealed in the half-dark. We both drank. Braithwaite cleared his throat again, reached for a table-lamp and switched it on, then
walked round the room switching on other lamps strategically placed to illuminate but not glare. He refilled the glasses.

“In a way,” he said, “he thought he was above the law, or immune to it. But of course he was not immune.”

“Nobody should be above the law,” I said.

“We’re all above it, or think we are from time to time,” he said, “whether for noble reasons or base ones. Every one of us. Some of us fiddle our expenses, or don’t declare all our earnings. Drivers break the speed limit, just a little, or a lot.” He tut-tutted, like a man going at 75 mph being overtaken by another going at 90. “We all think we’re above the law, and most of the time it doesn’t matter. Then there are times when it might. The Catholic Church thinks it’s above the law with its sanctity of the confessional. Journalists protecting their sources say that if they named them, even under oath, it would destroy the freedom of the press. And then there are the times when it definitely does matter: when an institution like the Church protects its priests just because they’re priests, for example. Or when an organisation—the police, say, or a powerful company—becomes corrupt in order to get business done. Or when a man takes the law into his own hands. For example.” He leaned forward. “If
I
had a daughter who was abused, or raped, or killed, and I knew who’d done it, I’d kill the bastard if I could, not wait for the law to catch him and lock him up. We’re all above the law, but mostly it doesn’t show.”

The sudden ferocity that had surged in his voice was alarming. I felt almost as if
I
were being accused of something.

“You’re sure that’s what you would do?” I said.

“No,” he said, and smiled, apparently calm again. “But I’m sure that’s what I would feel.”

“I could never kill anybody,” I said.

“You’ve never been in a room with whoever murdered your wife and daughter,” Braithwaite said. “Or you tell me you haven’t. So how can
you
be sure?”

“Even when I thought Khazar was guilty,” I said, “when the trial began, when I was in that courtroom and he was sitting there behind the bulletproof glass, even then I didn’t want to kill him.”

“What did you want?”

I had thought about this. The answer was quite simple, really. I said, “I wanted it to be over, and not to have to think about it anymore.”

He nodded.

“I wanted to be able to go to sleep,” I said, “and not dream, and not wake up till morning.”

He said, “I’m afraid even justice and truth can’t give you that.”

“Are you saying I’m wasting my time looking for them?”

He shook his head. “No, not at all. If I were you that’s what I’d do. All I’m saying is, be prepared to be disappointed if you ever find them.”

Jim Collins stopped me outside the department office a few days later. “George said you’d been to see him,” he said. “Was he helpful?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so. I’m still digesting what he said.”

“What did you make of him?”

“Cool, as you said. I can’t say I exactly liked him. Quite cynical. Although he got very impassioned at one point.”

“George is all right,” Jim said. “The cynicism’s a front. He got pretty bruised when he was a solicitor. He told me he saw a lot of lawyers who couldn’t cope, whose lives fell apart under the pressure.”

“He mentioned a friend who jumped off a bridge,” I said. “I wondered …”

“That was his brother. It was one of the things that prompted him to change direction.”

“His brother? I thought maybe a partner, a companion.”

“You think George is gay? Well, I suppose anything’s possible. But he was married back then. As we all were. George was one of the ones who fell apart. He’s very self-contained these days. Doesn’t reveal anything he doesn’t want to.”

“That,” I said, “makes a lot of sense.”

“Do you know how I found out that Parroulet was paid for his evidence?” I said. “Did you ever work that out?”

“You dug a lot of holes in a lot of different places.” Again, Nilsen was neither denying nor acknowledging anything.

“A policeman told me. Do you know why he told me? Because he thought the whole investigation had been wrecked, undermined by what you call the ‘rethink.’ He said it was a classic example of making evidence fit the crime rather
than the crime fit the evidence. He said he was very worried by the way outside agencies were interfering with the investigation. He wasn’t the only one, he told me.”

“I don’t recall anyone in the police being too worried,” Nilsen said. “I don’t recall anyone raising objections.”

“He was overruled. They all wanted a result, just as you described. When Khazar and Mahmed became suspects, the police made it absolutely clear to your people that Ali’s evidence wouldn’t stand up in court because it was known he’d been in your pay. If Parroulet was to have any credibility it was essential that the same charge couldn’t be levelled at him. Your people said the money was on the table and the police said it had to be off the table or under it. No money could change hands till a trial had taken place. So when Parroulet asked about payment the police kept it low-key and off the record, but he knew if he said the right things there’d eventually be a pay-off, he’d just have to wait for it.”