The Crime of Huey Dunstan (16 page)

“Don’t know, to be honest. You pays your money and you takes your choice. It’s bad news for us if the Crown can show that he did.”

I said, “But obviously they can’t. Otherwise Sparrow wouldn’t have tried to trip me up like that.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lawrence said. He put my bag on board the bus and gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder, a habit he had picked up from Sir Edmund Hillary.
“Have a good trip. I’ll try and find out about the lamp. My love to Lisbeth.”

“See you on Tuesday,” I said.

THE CASE RESUMED on Monday and I arrived back in Cornford on Tuesday morning. I had hoped to return on Monday, but that was the day our younger daughter Sarah arrived from Kuala Lumpur. Sarah flew in with her husband, a hospital manager who had business with the government, and it was my only chance to see her. The weekend was blessedly peaceful. On Sunday morning Lisbeth and I went to a nursery. As I walked about the plots, negotiating the gravel paths between the beds, I called out to her the names of plants and shrubs I could identify from their aromas—a favourite game—and arrived home drunk with scents. I have always loved nurseries. For Lisbeth who does the planting and looks after our small garden, they are a tonic. For me, an impatient person who feels useless if he is not doing
something intellectual, they have a pleasant tranquilising effect, distracting my mind and reducing a tendency I have in situations that require prolonged thought of peering intently into the blackness in case something should miraculously come into view.

We discussed Huey’s trial only once, when I brought up the question of the broken street lamp.

“It’s pretty damning,” Lisbeth said, “if he did smash it.”

“Why?” I said. “Why is it any worse than turning off the lights or drawing the curtains inside, or locking the door from the outside before he leaves? He admits doing all that.”

“It’s—oh I don’t know. It’s just one thing too many. Makes it seem he planned it all in advance, makes it seem so deliberate. What does Lawrence say?”

“You know Lawrence. He doesn’t let on.”

“I still don’t understand. A street lamp is up on a pole. What did he do—throw rocks at it? How did he manage to break it?”

“We don’t know for certain that he did.”

“But the lamp was broken?”

“Supposedly. I haven’t looked.”

“I thought you said he broke it. Or the prosecutor said he broke it. Where’s the evidence? Did he admit it?”

“He
appears
to have admitted it to the police.”

“Charlie, listen. It’s not your problem.”

“It’s this catastrophic disregard of consequences he
has, this damned honesty. ‘I may have broken it,’ he told the police. ‘I’m not too sure,’ he said in court when he was asked by the prosecutor. I think he honestly doesn’t remember if he broke it or not.”

“Anyway it’s the jury’s problem. You know what?” Lisbeth gave a little squeal and stopped the car. We were driving to the airport to collect Sarah. Lisbeth suddenly swung over and stopped the car. “You know what I think?
You
don’t know the answer, the prosecutor doesn’t seem to know the answer, Lawrence is ambivalent. You’re all loopy. It happened, when—two years ago? And you still don’t know if the lamp’s broken or not? Why doesn’t someone go up a ladder and look?”

That night I had a vivid dream. I was midshipman on a sinking ship. We had been strafed and bombed from the air. I was posted on the flying topmast as lookout for the kamikaze pilots, but I had failed to see the Jap planes coming. The captain yelled at me. “I’m going to have you cashiered.” Crew members were running about the decks and jumping over the side. The vessel was listing badly. As it started to go down, I jumped. The seas opened and I found myself sliding down a gigantic wave. The silence was eerie. As I slid downwards, I passed the captain who had gone over a bluff and broken his leg. I waved to him as I went by. Then it was snowing. The sun came out, melting the snow and revealing a carpet of blue hyacinths and other wildflowers that exuded a plethora of scents I could not
recognise. I was in a valley. As I walked up the valley, I passed some graves. One of them was freshly dug. A number of mourners were standing about. “You’re too late,” a young man turned to me. It was my brother, Tom.

I came to a small chapel. There was a man in a vestment standing at the entrance holding a censer. “Have you come to confess?” he said. “Come along. Huey’s waiting.”

I took off my shoes and followed hesitantly, treading on flagstones that felt cold and slimy. I was overcome with a sense of foreboding, my nostrils dilating at the acrid fumes, sharp and volatile, that rose from the censer he was swinging.

I said to him, “What’s it about?”

“Search me…Here he is, Huey. The prof ’s come.”

There was a chair and a small light burning, like in a confessional. I peered into the flickering gloom.

“I can’t see anything,” I said.

“I’m here.” Huey was behind a screen, with something dark like a cowl pulled over his head.

I said, “What’s that smell?”

“Ammonia. Don’t you remember? In the hospital. You said it reminded you of your mother’s room when she died. You told me a story.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do. You said you’d stolen your mother’s bible that she bought with the tea coupons.
Tea coupons!
I’d never heard of tea coupons. You said you threw the book in the canal and let your brother take the rap.
You never owned up.”

“I wanted to. I was only a boy, Huey.”

“That’s no excuse. You threw away the book but kept the guilt.”

“That’s true. Tom never split.”

“But you’ve still got the guilt, I reckon. That’s only half the story.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something you didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the funeral, your mother’s funeral. You told me you got there too late. When you arrived she was already put in the ground and everyone was weeping but not you.”

“I swear. I stood beside her grave and tried to weep but I couldn’t.”

“Bollocks. The reason you didn’t weep was you weren’t there.”

“Who says that?”

“Your brother. You abandoned her, he says. You never came to the funeral. You couldn’t face it so you stayed away. He’s out there. Why don’t you go and ask him?”

“It’s a lie,” I said. “That’s not true!”

I got up from the chair and walked round behind the partition and tore the screen away. There was nobody there.

I woke from the dream sweating. I was sitting on the edge of the bed sweating profusely and trembling. I sat
there for some moments before I got back into bed and fell asleep again. As I drifted off I heard a voice say, “It’s OK. You don’t have to suffer a lifetime for what you did as a child.”

But was that Huey speaking? Or my mother?

Lisbeth woke me at five. I had a sense of disquiet that was probably a hangover from my dream and the realisation that I had barely an hour before the bus left for Cornford. Lisbeth had prepared sandwiches the night before. She filled a thermos with tea while I dressed, and drove me to the station. The bus left at 6.05 a.m. We just made it.

The bus was due in Cornford shortly after ten. It stopped twice before I fell asleep. All that remained of my dream of the night before was a vague outline of a cowled figure sitting in the dark asking me questions. On the journey I tried to work out how many witnesses remained to be called, and got to six or seven, seven maximum, not counting the man Glen, assuming he showed up to answer the subpoena. That left only the two closing addresses and the judge’s summation. It seemed unlikely the jury would go out before Friday.

The bus was a few minutes ahead of schedule. We arrived in a rainstorm. I took a taxi to the hotel, left my things at the desk and went straight to the court. Somebody told me the time. It was 10.20 a.m. I sat in the lobby downstairs and waited for Lawrence’s junior or his clerk to come and get me in the break, as arranged. The man
Glen was not expected to arrive before eleven, Lawrence had said. I assumed he would arrive under escort. I sat down on one of the benches inside the door, then rose and walked about flexing my shoulders to undo the stiffness from the bus ride, sweeping my cane to and fro over the floor of the foyer. The lobby seemed deserted. After a few turns I felt for one of the benches near the foot of the stairs where I had sat on previous occasions, and realised I had miscalculated. There was no contact. I remembered the wooden benches were grouped in pairs and clamped to the floor. I moved left, then right, sweeping with the cane. Again nothing. Then out of nowhere a hand appeared and guided me forward.

“Thank you,” I said. “I can manage now on my own.” I felt the edge of the bench with the fingers of my hand, swivelled round and sat down. The person who had helped me sat down beside me. We sat for some minutes in silence. A voice said:

“Terrible thing being blind. Terrible.”

I gave a start. With the voice came an odour that was far from pleasant. Alcohol. I resisted an urge to stand up and move away and instead, as it dawned on me who the man was, who the voice belonged to, shifted my body along the bench as far away as I could. He’s here, I thought. Dimly I heard voices coming from upstairs, then a rush of footsteps descending to the lobby. As the foyer filled with sound I got to my feet, thinking, I must find Lawrence. Someone cannoned into me. One minute I was standing
up, the next my cane was knocked from my hand and I was spreadeagled on the floor.

I heard a cry: “It’s him! It’s him!”

“Calm down, calm down.”

“Don’t let Christina see him. She’ll kill the fucking bastard!”

“Get him out of here!”

In the mêlee that followed, I managed to roll over on to my knees. Somebody helped me up.

“Are you OK, Ches?” It was Lawrence.

“Of course I am. Where’s my stick?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Stop fussing.” Lawrence was standing beside me dabbing my jaw with something soft. “It’s only a graze. Where’s my stick?”

“It’s here.”

“Thanks.” I felt my jaw and collapsed the cane and opened it again to make sure it wasn’t broken. The shouting had subsided. I said, “Don’t tell me. That was Glen, wasn’t it? And the father! Huey’s father went berserk.”

“It’s all right. He’s gone now.”

I said, “You blew it, Lawrence. You should have been here.”

“Ches, I was in court!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been. I told you there’d be trouble if you didn’t keep them apart. Don’t you remember?”

When the hearing resumed, there was another witness on the stand, a woman. She was being shown a photograph. Lawrence was saying to her:

“I want you to look at the photograph, Mrs Manger, and tell me if you can see Mr Dunstan in the class. It was taken in 1980 when he was seven.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Look closely. Take your time.”

“No. Oh yes. There he is in the second row.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

“The smile.”

“Was he a smily child?”

“Mischievous, I’d say. Bubbly little boy, big toothy grin. I’d forgotten about that.” The word “bubbly” registered. I recognised the voice of the teacher who had turned up the report card for me.

“Thank you, Mrs Manger.”

“No questions,” the prosecutor said.

There was a pause. I heard Lawrence talking to the bench or the registrar. Then a bump. A door bumped. Another witness was led in, the witness sworn. I heard the judge issue an order prohibiting publication of the witness’s name and a further interim order suppressing publication of “any acts performed upon the accused, Hugh Thomas Dunstan”.

It was my first intimation of what Lawrence had been up to behind the scenes, of plans laid, deals done in the shadowlands of legal dodgems. I had a portent of
what was to come. My blood was racing. Portent? Huey, I realised, like me, had been told nothing. The court had become unnaturally still. As I sat back in my chair, I caught Huey’s breath coming in gusts. Throughout the trial, trying to “observe” what was happening, I had had two screens before my eyes, two maps: a map of the witness stand in the opposite corner below the bench, and another of Huey sitting straight up behind me facing away at ninety degrees towards the witness in the stand. But now he wasn’t doing that, his body had shifted somehow.

“…And all this happened in your caravan on the outskirts of town,” Lawrence was saying to the witness, “when Mr Dunstan was seven or eight?”

“I would say so.” I recognised the voice. It was the man in the foyer.

“And did these acts occur without the knowledge of Mr Dunstan’s parents?”

“I would say so, yes.”

I remembered Huey’s description of his attacker. Tall and skinny, with a beard. The voice was insipid, yet audible. The more audible for its curious distinctions, as the answers were spooned out.

“You held him down on the bed?”

“More or less.”

“Tied him up and forced him to give you oral sex?”

“If he said so.”

“He has said so, Mr Constable. He has told the court what he suffered at your hands and he has also said that you
threatened him with worse, if he said anything to anyone afterwards. Did you threaten him?”

“I have to say that I did.”

Small gusts of wind were parting the hairs on my scalp. Huey was breathing rapidly, like an animal hungry for air with its head lowered, as if he couldn’t bear to face his tormentor. My own breathing was accelerating. At the back of the court I heard a chair scrape; my attention was diverted. I imagined the father had started up, had started to his feet. He couldn’t bear it either?

“…What was the first thing you did? Here’s a small boy, you’re alone with him. Did you get him down on the bed? What did you do?”

“I think I put my hand on his leg.”

“Top of his leg? Yes. And you smiled at him? Thank you. How tall are you, Mr Constable?”

“I’m six foot.”

“And you have a beard. Is that the same beard you had then?”

“Bit scruffier then.”

“Yes. You’ve tidied yourself up to come to court this morning, no doubt. Take off your glasses, please. No, keep them on for the moment. Would you look at this snapshot…Have you seen it before?”

“No.”

“It’s a snapshot of the victim, the dead man. It was taken before he died. Would you say it bears a resemblance to what you yourself might have looked like
fourteen years ago?”

“Maybe.”

“What does ‘maybe’ mean?”

Silence. There was a long pause.

“Please take off your glasses.”