Authors: Dexter Dias
False Witness (2 page)
For my parents
And for Katie
My thanks are due to many people. To Mike for opening my eyes to the possibility of writing fiction. To Teresa for spotting,
supporting and advising me. To Carolyn and Kate at Hodders for their editorial and administrative input. And finally to Ruth
Rendell, for taking the time to speak to a case-weary barrister and convince him that he
might
be able to do it.
The author also wishes to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright materials:
Chatto & Windus for extracts from “The Panther” from
Selected Poems
by Rilke, translated by J.B. Leisham; Curtis Brown Ltd. on behalf of Joanna Richardson for the translation of Baudelaire’s
poem “The Vampire. “© Joanna Richardson.
TRIAL
Then the young man asked Him, “What good thing must I do, that I may have eternal life?”
To this He replied, “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness.”
Matthew 19:16–18
HAPTER
O
NE
“A
ND TO THE FIRST COUNT, HOW DO YOU PLEAD?
Guilty or not guilty?”
There was silence.
Then again the question. “On the first count, you are charged with outraging public decency. How do you plead?”
A breath. A pause. And then an answer. “Guilty.”
I suddenly remembered why I was sitting in the front row of Court 8 at the Old Bailey. I adjusted my horsehair wig and told
myself that I had to stop daydreaming while the court was in session.
But I was puzzled by the previous night’s dream. For I had again dreamt of Stonebury, where the murder was committed. I had
dreamt of the village and of the rain and of a young girl being led quietly to the circle of stones. And I was puzzled by
a voice. For I had been asked a single question. It was this: Is a dream something you possess, or is it something that possesses
you?
I didn’t know the answer back then. If I did, perhaps I would not have sat and listened to the charges being read out, but
would have taken off my wig, neatly folded my gown, and would have then disappeared from the court with the minimum of fuss.
The furor caused by the death of Molly Summers has died down. The case came to court over a year ago and I suspect that no
one but me really thinks about that trial anymore. Yet when I am alone, and especially when I am tired, the memories begin
to well. Usually it is the scent of perfume or the texture of muslin that first comes to mind, and then, like an old movie
with shadowy figures moving in silence, the story unfolds.
What I do find strange when I look back at it all, is that I could have become so involved. I still return to Stonebury every
few months, which must be an admission of some kind. There are certain things that I cannot explain and other things I do
not wish to. And when I return and walk around the ancient circle, the place where the broken body was found, I realize that
I was partly to blame. I realize that I bore some of the guilt. But I was too weak and the desire was too strong and then,
I suppose, there was Justine.
At one time a barrister’s life had seemed so straightforward: you’re born, you’re called to the Bar, you take silk, you die.
I imagined that nothing would interrupt my procession from Bar to oblivion except, perhaps, hair-loss, the odd affair, and
a couple of hard-earned ulcers. It was safe, if predictable, progress. And then I started dreaming about the stones.
To the press, the case was a sensation. To the law, it was a scandal. But to me, it was simply a journey. It was a journey
to the center of the circle. But this was a circle of my own creation, a place from which even now I find it hard to escape.
Even now.
“You plead guilty?” asked Leonard, clerk to Court 8.
He was in a bad mood. But then Leonard, the oldest of the Old Bailey clerks, had been in a bad mood since the 1960s when they
abolished capital punishment. He missed the black caps, he once told me. Then there was the “You will be hung by the neck
until you are dead” line. Leonard never understood that, he said. After all, where else could they hang you from? When I once
made a suggestion, Leonard didn’t speak to me for a year.
The public gallery was full by the time that proceedings began at 10:30
A.M.
There was even a long queue outside stretching a fair distance along Old Bailey toward St. Paul’s Everybody wanted to see
him
.
And there he was: my client, Richard Kingsley, sitting quietly in the dock oblivious to everything. There was Richard Kingsley,
pulp novelist, celebrity and guilty as any one of us can be. He sat hunched up in his wheelchair with a slightly shriveled
arm and waited to be punished.
At least they could not hang him.
“And on the first count,” repeated Leonard, more irritably, flaring his nostrils, “you plead guilty?”
“Yes,” said Kingsley. “Guilty.”
Leonard waited for the murmuring in the public gallery to die down. Then he said, “And on the second count, Richard Kingsley,
you are also charged with outraging public decency.”
My tatty wig pricked me when I heard that. My winged collar cut into my throat for I had always thought it a ludicrous charge.
Didn’t it assume that there was something called the public? And that it had a sense of decency? And that despite all the
obscenities that had become part of our lives, it could still be outraged?
Leonard read on. “And the particulars of the offense are that you committed acts of a lewd and disgusting nature, tending
to corrupt the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl in Stonebury?” He clearly enjoyed reading that, and looked around the court
at the open mouths in the galleries and the bored faces of the court staff. Then he asked the question. “Are you guilty or
not guilty?”
Kingsley looked at me with his unnaturally white face. I nodded.
“Guilty,” Kingsley said.
It was 10:41
A.M.
I had already secured two guilty pleas. It was excellent progress. Because that was the deal. Plead guilty to some of this,
not guilty to some of that, and it was all going to be over by lunchtime. The defendant would get a lighter sentence, the
police could say they solved some crimes, the court could wheel in the next case and, of course, I would collect the money.
Everybody would win.
That first day was, I recall, a bright Monday in December. First thing, at nine o’clock, I had seen Kingsley in the cells
below the Old Bailey. He sat in the artificial light and talked about his crimes. He was a phenomenon. Richard Kingsley could
discuss the corruption of the young and the abuse of the innocent as though it were a lesson in algebra with certain given
axioms and inexorable conclusions.
“You have studied the brief, I suppose?” he said to me, stretching his tiny frame.
“Of course,” I replied.
“So you know what I did to those other girls?”
“What they
say
you did.”
“Ah, yes. I’m presumed innocent, aren’t I? I keep forgetting that.” He moved his wheelchair a little closer to me so that
he could whisper. “But what if… I was not quite innocent? What then? I just wondered, would
your
morals be outraged by my—little games?”
“Isn’t that my business?”
“Surely I’m entitled to know the type of man who is defending me? You see, I suspect you aren’t sure if I did it?”
“So?”
“So you wonder. Yes, you wonder, don’t you, Mr. Fawley?”
I considered very carefully how I should answer him and finally decided that I should begin as I intended to carry on. I lied.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Kingsley,” I said. “I wonder about a great many things. I wonder about the size of my overdraft.
I even wonder about the meaning of life. But I can sleep well enough at night without knowing the answer to either.”
It was all lies.
Even before I had been sent the case papers, the dreams had begun. At night, I could not sleep without dreaming about the
stones. I used to dread sleeping by myself, because I feared there would be no one to wake me up and then the dream would
go on and on.