Final Witness

Chapter 6

The first thing that Greta was aware of on entering the courtroom was the sound of many voices suddenly becoming still. The benches on the left of the court were thronged with the same reporters who had surrounded her outside. There was to be no escape from them, although the cameras and sound equipment were absent.

Before her arrival the court had been just another room, but now there was the beginning of drama, the certainty of action to come. Everything was lit by bright artificial light because this was a place removed from the outside world. There were no windows, and the soundproofed walls were bare except for the extravagant lion-and-unicorn emblem behind the judge’s empty chair.

Miles Lambert came to a halt beside the dock. This was a dark wooden enclosure at the back of the court, which Greta had had to occupy once before when she came to court in the spring to plead not guilty. Now a security woman with cropped black hair and a sallow face bent to open the low wicket gate and stood aside for Greta to enter the enclosure. The latch of the gate clicked behind her.

“Now, Patrick’ll be watching to see if you need anything,” said Miles in a soothing tone. “Have you got plenty of paper and pens? You can pass me a note if you think of something important, although I doubt we’ll get much beyond the prosecution’s opening statement this morning, and you don’t need to worry about that. It’s not evidence.”

Greta nodded and bit her lip. As if paper would help her. With all these people looking at her and strangers deciding her fate.

“We ought to get a jury fairly soon. Remember not to look at them directly. They don’t like that. But let them look at you. There’ll be a bad minute or two with the photographs of the body. I can’t stop Sparling showing them those, but it won’t last long. The judge’ll see to that. Granger’s all right. We could have done a lot worse.”

Greta smiled wanly. She was grateful to Miles Lambert for trying to make things easier for her.

The security woman tapped Greta on the shoulder, interrupting the conversation.

“You need to surrender to custody. It’s the rules.”

“But haven’t I just done so?”

“No, I’ve got to search you. Check your bag.”

“Oh, all right,” said Greta, offering her handbag up for inspection.

But this wasn’t enough.

“It’s through here,” said the woman, touching Greta’s arm this time as she guided her through a door in the side of the dock out into a small holding area. The once white walls were covered with obscene words and pictures drawn by rapists and murderers raging against their fate. Greta thought how strange it was that such a place should exist within a few yards of the judge, sitting in all his pomp and glory. But neither the graffiti nor the stale smell of urine emanating from a lavatory cubicle with a seatless toilet in the corner really bothered Greta. She’d seen worse.

It was the staircase in the far corner that sent a shiver down her spine. She couldn’t see more than the first three steps from where she stood near the door to the court, but it was enough to know that they went down and not up. Down to the cells below, from which there would be no escape. One word, one little word from the jury, and she’d be stumbling down those stairs with guards holding her elbows. Greta felt that it was like having the chance to see the scene of one’s own death before it happened. She was suddenly gripped by a wave of nausea and sat down on the bench that ran the length of the room as if she’d just been punched.

“Come on now,” said the security woman with a note of irritation creeping into her voice. “You can sit on your arse in court all day. But right now I need to search you. It’s the rules.”

Greta held herself rigid while the woman’s hands patted down her body. Shoulders, breasts, stomach, thighs; with each touch Greta felt herself being claimed by a system that was too big for her. Too impersonal. She kept her eyes fixed on the whitewashed ceiling until the search was over, never allowing her gaze to stray for a moment to the staircase in the corner.

“All right, you’re fine,” said the woman, holding open the door to the dock.

Back in the courtroom, Greta breathed deeply. She took out her handkerchief and held it to her nose. The fragrant Chanel perfume allowed her to imagine the cool interior of the drawing room at home. The chandeliers and the rich hangings. With an intense effort of will she forced the holding room and the descending staircase out of her consciousness. Then, opening her eyes, she ran her hands through her perfectly layered black hair and settled back into her chair as she began to take in her surroundings.

The reporters had gone back to talking amongst themselves, and in front of her the barristers were unpacking heavy files and law books onto the long tables at which they worked. To Miles’s left a tall, distinguished-looking man in wig and gown was listening to the police officer, Detective Sergeant Hearns.

They made a strange pair, thought Greta. Hearns in his ill-fitting suit and kipper tie standing almost on tiptoe to whisper what he wanted to say to the barrister, who leaned slightly to his left, allowing Greta to see his profile: the long, thin face and the aquiline nose. This must be the man that Miles had told her about, John Sparling, counsel for the prosecution.

As usual Hearns was waving his crude, stubby-fingered hands about for emphasis. Greta remembered this irritating habit from the interview that she had had to undergo with him before she was charged.

“I put it to you, madam, that you’re the brains behind this conspiracy,” he had said then.

“The eminence grise, Mr. Hearns?” Greta had asked, resorting at last to sarcasm.

“Don’t bandy foreign words with me, madam,” he’d countered. He had always addressed her as madam; never Greta or Miss Grahame. Perhaps that was something they’d taught him at the training college. Interrogation techniques for aspiring detectives.

“This is a very serious allegation, madam. A lady is dead and I’m putting it to you that you’re responsible.”

“And I’m putting it to you that you’ve been reading too many detective stories.”

And so it had gone on. Hour after hour in the dingy police station in Ipswich. At least she wouldn’t have to hear all the interviews played back. Miles had managed to agree with the prosecution that a summary would be read to the jury at the end of their case.

Greta pulled her mind back to the present. Hearns had finished putting whatever he had to put to Sparling, and as the lawyer turned back to his papers, his eyes met Greta’s for a moment. She could not read his expression. It was distant but knowing, cool but penetrative. She shivered.

A loud knocking on a closed door to the right of the judge’s chair brought everyone in the court to their feet. Immediately the door opened and His Honor Judge Granger swept in, preceded by the court usher. He was an old man with only a year or two left before his retirement, and yet he carried himself ramrod straight. His threadbare wig was perched forward on his head above a pair of bushy eyebrows. His face was very lined and his cheeks were sunken, but his bright gray eyes told a different story. They seemed as if they belonged to a much younger man as they darted around the room taking in everybody and everything before he gathered his black robes about him and sat down heavily in his high-backed chair. There was a shuffling and scraping as everyone else in the courtroom including Greta followed suit, but she was only allowed to remain seated for a moment.

The clerk of the court, dressed also in wig and gown, rose to his feet.

“The defendant will stand.”

Greta did so.

“Are you Lady Greta Robinson?”

“I am.”

Greta tried to keep her voice up, but the words that came from her lips sounded small and distant. Not how she wanted them to sound at all. She needed to remember what her elocution teacher had taught her before she came south. “Projection,” it was called. She hadn’t worked as hard on that part of the course, as her attention had been focused on changing her accent — losing the thick northern vowels and replacing them with the long a’s and o’s of the British ruling class.

The judge had heard her answer, at any rate. He treated her to a half smile and gestured downward with his hands.

“Sit down, Lady Robinson. Sit down.” His voice was surprisingly high, and its almost feminine tone was accentuated by the courtesy with which he always spoke. Loudness and rudeness formed no part of Judge Granger’s judicial vocabulary.

“Now, Mr. Sparling.”

The counsel for the prosecution got slowly to his feet. “Yes, my Lord.”

“What about bail?”

“There are conditions of residence and reporting, my Lord.”

“Reporting, Mr. Sparling?”

“Yes. On Wednesdays and Saturdays to Chelsea Police Station.”

“Well, I don’t think we need persist with that now that the trial is under way. Residence should be quite sufficient.”

“Very well, my Lord.”

“Now, there is one other matter that I want to raise with you both at this stage, gentlemen. I’ve been looking at these photographs.”

“Of the house, my Lord?” asked Sparling. “Or the victim?”

“Of the victim. There are five, I believe. Showing these very dreadful wounds. Now, I can’t see any need for them to be shown to Lady Anne’s son. The medical evidence is agreed as I understand it. Death occurred as a result of two gunshot wounds to the shoulder and the head, with the second shot being fired at close range.”

“That is correct, my Lord,” said Sparling. “The photographs will be given to the jury during my opening statement this morning, but the Crown will not show them to Thomas Robinson, who will by agreement be giving evidence last.”

“Oh, why is that, Mr. Sparling? He should surely be your first witness.”

“Ordinarily, yes, my Lord, but the Crown wishes to give him the maximum time to recover from the events of the fifth of July. Your Lordship has seen the new statements?”

“Yes, I have. Well, I suppose that does seem sensible in the circumstances. Now, Mr. Lambert, about these photographs.”

“I won’t show them to Thomas Robinson, my Lord,” said Miles Lambert, rising from his seat and pushing the table back a few inches as he did so in order to make room for his ample stomach.

“There is one matter of admissibility on which we will need your Lordship’s ruling,” added Miles, “but that is perhaps better done before Detective Sergeant Hearns gives his evidence.”

“Yes, Mr. Lambert, I agree. Let’s press on. Miss Hooks, we’re ready for the jury now.”

This instruction was directed at the court usher, a diminutive lady less than five feet tall. She looked out on the world distrustfully through an enormous pair of black-framed glasses with thick lenses that seemed to cover almost half her pinched little face. Her black gown fell almost to the floor, and Greta feared for a moment that she might stumble over it as she moved as quickly as her small legs could carry her toward the door in the far corner of the courtroom behind which the jurors were waiting.

The strangest thing about the jury was their lack of strangeness, Greta reflected, as each of the twelve stood in turn to swear or affirm that he or she “will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence.”

Here were her judges. A motley assortment of men and women plucked at random from the capital’s population. An Indian man with a turban and another without. An Italian in an expensive suit, who she caught out of the corner of her eye giving her an admiring glance. Two middle-aged ladies with big hair and large busts on either side of a young man in a crumpled T-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on the front. An Asian girl with a tiny voice, who had to be made to take the oath twice because nobody could hear her the first time round. Four other men of nondescript appearance, who would hopefully have Greta’s pretty face well in mind when it came to reaching their verdict; and finally a woman in her forties, who looked exactly like Margaret Thatcher might have looked at that age if she’d had short black hair and worn a trouser suit. She took the oath in a determined voice that made everyone in the courtroom sit up while she held the Bible above her right ear, in the manner of a president on inauguration day.

The names of the other jurors had flown past unnoticed, but Greta caught this one as it was read out by the clerk: Dorothy Jones. Greta thought that there was nothing Dorothy-like about her at all as she extracted a black pen from her clutch handbag and tapped it menacingly on the table in front of her.

In the well of the court John Sparling allowed a half smile to momentarily crease his thin lips. Here was a juror who wouldn’t have trouble obeying his instruction to put all pity and sympathy aside in her search for the truth. She’d be like a hound on the trail of a wounded fox when it came to that task.

To Sparling’s left, Miles Lambert moved his bulk uneasily about on his chair as the Indian man without the turban stood up to take the oath. He didn’t like the look of the woman in the trouser suit. The rest seemed all right, and he’d gotten what he wanted with eight men to four women, but the Margaret Thatcher look-alike would no doubt try to take over and get herself elected as forewoman before the day was out.

Miles knew the type, and he thought nostalgically of the good old days when the defense had the right to get rid of up to three jurors for no reason at all. Now there was nothing one could really do unless the jurors knew the defendant or one of the witnesses. It was one area in which Miles felt that the American system was decidedly better. He’d have liked nothing better than to cross-examine this Jones woman about her beliefs and prejudices, but still it wasn’t to be, and she was only one of twelve. Perhaps the men would rebel and elect the youth with the grungy T-shirt to chair their deliberations.

“All sworn, my Lord,” said the usher in the shrill voice of those who go through life suffering from an incurable doubt that people won’t hear what they are about to say.

The jury settled themselves in their chairs and looked up expectantly at the judge, but it was the clerk of the court who claimed their attention. He rose to his feet holding up a piece of paper.

“The defendant will stand.”

It was the second time the clerk had said these words. The third time would be for the jury’s verdict.

Greta stood, holding herself steady with her hands resting on the brass rail of the dock.

“Members of the jury, the defendant stands charged on indictment 211 of the year 2000 with one count. That between a date unknown and the thirty-first day of May 1999 she did conspire with persons unknown to murder Lady Anne Robinson. To this charge she has pleaded not guilty, and it is your task having heard the evidence to say whether she is guilty or not.”

Guilty or not. Guilty or not. Guilty or not. Greta held hard to the rail as the courtroom suddenly swirled in front of her and the words echoed in her mind. Her trial had begun.