False Witness (16 page)

And as I walked swiftly down the corridor and past Legat, who was still strapped to the bed, I heard Kingsley call out something
that sounded like, “Keep riding the Stang.”

Legat smiled grotesquely.

“Keep riding the Stang, Mr. Fawley.” Richard Kingsley’s voice had all but disappeared. “Keep riding the Stang. Keep riding
the Stang.”

“I
DON’T SEE WHY WE COULDN’T GO TO THE
S
AVOY
,” I said, looking around the post-theater crowd in the restaurant later that evening.

Justine did not answer immediately. She took a long draw on her slim cigar and mouthed the smoke from cheek to cheek, all
the time knowing that I was bound to find this mildly provocative, despite my aversion to smoking.

“Because,” she said, finally billowing out the orange smoke.

“Because what?”

“Just because.” She was being evasive, irritating and very Justine.

My encounter with Kingsley had left me both ravenous and confused, although not necessarily in that order.

She continued, “How was your… beef—”

“
Bistecca Fiorentina
,” I said.

“I don’t know how you can eat it so rare. It was barely cooked. There was blood everywhere.”

“We booked a table at the Savoy at the beginning of the trial, so what’s all the fuss?”

“That was different,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because we had nothing to hide.”

“So?”

“So now we do.”

What did that mean? I hoped it was the possibility of sex that night, but when I looked at her, she looked away and increased
my longing. I had phoned Justine the day after Manly’s memorial. The day after she had whispered strange things in my ears
and tore my court shirt and scratched my back; Penny, of course, hadn’t noticed. When I tried to phone her, she had hung up.
The next day I rang her in chambers. She had to speak to me. Finally, I compelled her to meet me.

She insisted that we meet in an inconspicuous restaurant, she said that the eyes of the Bar were on us, she said there were
no promises.

So we settled on an anonymous Tuscan place off St. Martin’s Lane. It was called II Gallo Nero. It was not so much a restaurant
as a place to be humiliated by waiters with fake accents, where food was overpriced and undercooked, where there were more
wines from Canberra than Chianti. But with Justine opposite me, it seemed perfect.

“Do you want to get the bill?” I asked, finishing off the bottle of Chateau Bondi Beach.

“Steady on,” Justine replied. “I haven’t ordered a—what’s it called?”

“Tiramisu.”

I have always been clumsy and awkward with women; either dithering embarrassingly or diving in recklessly. Justine must have
sensed my insecurity and deftly fingered the back of my hand.

“I’m not going anywhere, Tom.”

“I just thought we could—”

“Yes?” She feigned innocence. A winsome smile, a toss of the hair.

“I mean… Penny’s home. Ginny’s not well, you see. And well, that hotel—”

“The Strand Palace?”

“Yes, that one. It’s just round the corner.”

Suddenly Justine’s eyes were a forest of color. She held her left hand out palm upward. “That’s fifty quid, mate. Up front.
Hundred without yer boots on.”

“Justine, I only thought—”

“That’s the point. You didn’t think. Not of me. What do you take me for?”

The waiter arrived. “
Signori
? For the desserts?”

“A cheap whore?” said Justine.

I tried to retrieve the situation. “A tiramisu for the—”

“Just the bill,” she snapped.

The waiter was confused. He had served me several times before when I was with Penny.

“Can you order a taxi?” I asked. “For Chiswick.”

“
Si, signor
.”

“And do you have any
vin santo
?” I did not know why I asked this.

“Yes, er…
si
,” he said.

“
Allora, due, per favore
,” I said.

He looked at me somewhat quizzically. When I held up two fingers, he gave a shallow bow.

Justine had been watching a little bemused. “What are you plotting, Tom?”

“You’ll see.”

“It sounds terribly naughty.” Suddenly she was playful again. I could have screamed. “Friends?” she said.

“I suppose it was rather insensitive of me.”

“Penny was my best friend, you know. Well, out of the girls at school. None of them really liked me. I don’t find this easy,
Tom.”

I tried to take the initiative by offering a sacrifice. “Perhaps we should… forget it,” I said, trying to look casually at
the Renaissance reproductions on the wall behind her.

“Don’t be an idiot all your life, Tom,” is all she replied.

Ten minutes later, Justine twisted another smoldering stub around the ashtray savagely. “So how was the conference with Kingsley?”

“Different.”

“Quite a… character, 1 bet.” She enunciated the syllables of “character” with excessive care.

“He is, if you go in for that sort of thing.”

“Interesting?”

“Dangerous.”

“Have you got a chance of winning?”

“You tell me,” I said.

The waiter finally returned with two small, heavily cut glasses, newly polished and filled to the very brim with a rich straw-colored
liquid smelling of the Tuscan hills.

“This is delicious,” said Justine. “What on earth is it?”

“
Vin santo
,” I replied. “Holy wine. Makes you tell the truth.” I sipped a little and looked at Justine. “Well?”

She did not reply.

“Perhaps it’s best we don’t talk about it,” I said. I tried to summon the waiter over, but when I caught his eye, she began
to speak.

“I would say your chances are pretty good. Our witnesses are silly little girls and the forensics are a bit suspect.”

“What about the confession?”

“Are you defending him or am I?” I didn’t answer this and she continued, “I know… I know Aubrey is a little worried.”

“About what?”

She put a finger to her moistened lips. “Ever look up that witness?”

“Which one?”

She lowered her head and whispered, “
That
one.”

“Why the secrecy?” I didn’t imagine that a restaurant full of bit-players would be interested in the case of the Queen against
Richard Kingsley.

“I still haven’t told Aubrey I disclosed her details to the defense.”

“To the
defense
?”

“Well, to you then,” she said.

I took another sip of
vin santo
and wondered whether her betrayal was a first tentative flirtation, a kind of foreplay. I said, “Goldman tells me he got
some High Street solicitors in the West Country to act as his agents. But—”

“But what?”

“But they couldn’t find the witness. She’s some kind of hermit or hermitess or whatever you call them. Of course,” I said,
wondering how far I could push my luck, “of course, you’ve seen—”

“Her statement? So what if I have, Tom?”

“So you could tell me whether it’s worth busting our butts to find her.”

“I can’t help you on that.”

“Won’t, you mean.”

“Listen. I gave you her name because I didn’t think Davenport was complying with his duties of disclosure. Not playing fair.
That’s all. You’ll get nothing more from me.”

“Is it worth seeing her?”

“Were you listening?”

I tried to imagine Justine’s room in chambers, the Regency desk, her silver hair and the softness of her whispers. “Come on,
Justine.”

She blinked twice very softly and bit her bottom lip like she did
that
time. “I gave her details to you, didn’t I?”

The waiter interrupted and announced my taxi which, much to his annoyance, I told him to send away.

“I never thought Italian food amounted to much,” said Justine.

“This is authentic,” I replied.

“We’ll have to come again.”

“So there’ll be a next time?”

“Maybe.” She lit up again. “Any problems with the trial bundles or the unused material?”

“No. You—and I mean you and not Davenport—have been very good.” Minute beads of sweat had broken out on my forehead and my
eyes were beginning to haze over. “By the way, what does your graphologist say?”

“What graphologist?”

“About Kingsley’s handwriting?” I said. Then seeing that Justine did not reply, I added, “You know, the note Payne found.”

“Well, we haven’t actually instructed—”

This I could not believe. “You are joking?”

“Aubrey thinks… well, you’re not disputing that Kingsley wrote that note, are you?”

“Kingsley is.”

“But Payne found it in Kingsley’s cell, Tom. Be realistic.”

I still felt uneasy about the origin of the two notes. If Kingsley did not put the first in my brief, then how did the typed
note get there? As for the second, I wondered whether we could argue that Payne’s search of the cell was illegal? But the
truth was that everything pointed to Richard Kingsley as the author. I said, “Kingsley insists we test the handwritten one.”

“Your funeral,” Justine replied and immediately realized what she had said. Her eyelids flickered a little. “Poor Ignatius,”
she whispered, her eyes becoming two sad pools.

The robing rooms of London were awash with theories of how a High Court judge was found at the bottom of his stairs with his
neck broken. I wanted to press Justine, but this was not the right time. “You couldn’t help our graphologist see the original,
could you?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“You know how difficult it is. No one knows where exhibits are pending a retrial.”

“I’ll get on to that little toad, Payne,” said Justine.

“So you don’t like him either?”

“Watch him, Tom.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to work that out,” she said. Justine looked at me and there was something in her eyes that thrilled me and made
my heart pound painfully. “Can you stay over?” she asked.

“Not again.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve run out of excuses,” I said.

“What? After one night’s fornication?” She used rather a biblical word which reminded me of sermons and pulpits and priests
and incense. She said, “What did you tell Penny last time?”

“Said I got legless at Manly’s bun-fight and slept on Nick Mellor’s leather sofa in chambers.”

“Penny believed that?”

“Think she was relieved I didn’t come home drunk.” I knew I should have said, Come home drunk
again
. But I was unsure how much Justine knew about my drinking.

“Why don’t you come down to my place?” she asked.

“Your country mansion?”

“I’d hardly call it that, Tom. I’ve just had new central heating installed at the cottage.”

“I heard that your father owned an obscenely large residence near Stonebury.”

“He did.”

“So why can’t we stay there?” I asked.

“We just can’t. I haven’t stayed there since my father—”

Justine broke off and seemed upset. Again I had pressed the wrong buttons. I decided to try to lighten the conversation.

“I
am
grateful for your kind invitation to join the great and the good among the turnip fields,” I told her. “But I’m afraid I
object to the life of the landed gentry. On moral grounds.”

Justine looked at me coldly. “And how about adultery? Do you object to that, Tom? On moral grounds?”

I did not reply.

“So what did Penny say?” she continued. “When you finally told—”

“You’re not serious?” It had actually flashed across my mind in a moment of guilty weakness. But what would confessing have
achieved? It could only have hurt Penny and got me into trouble, although I was not certain which of these two considerations
was the most important. So I said, “I’m not going to tell her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tom.” Justine’s face crinkled and she appeared very old. A line, like an old scar, ran from her right
eye to the corner of her frowning mouth.

“It’ll devastate her,” I said.

“What if she finds out?”

“No, really. She’ll go absolutely—”

“Penny’s my friend. We don’t have secrets. Never have.”

“For Christ’s sake, Justine. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You’ve got to tell her.” She put her lighter into an unimaginably expensive handbag. “You’ve got to tell her, Tom,” she said
as the orange cloud of smoke began to clear. “Or I will.”