Guilty One

11

Once inside Parklands House, Daniel was searched and scanned. A dog sniffed his clothes and briefcase for drugs.

An attendant brought him coffee and said that Sebastian would be along soon. Charlotte had called Daniel to say that she was running a little late, but to begin without her. He felt apprehensive in the small room. It had to be kept locked at all times, he had been advised, but there was a panic alarm to use if he needed anything. He felt the paper and leaves sensation in his stomach, dry and shifting; it made him uneasy.

Sebastian was brought in by a care assistant.

‘Good to see you again, Seb,’ Daniel said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Not really. I hate it in here.’

‘Do you want something to drink?’

‘I’m all right, thanks. I just had some orange juice. Can you get me out of here? I hate it. It’s horrible. I want to go home.’

‘Have your mum and dad been to see you a lot?’

‘My mum’s been a few times, but I want to go home … Can’t you sort it out? I just want to go home.’

Sebastian’s head fell suddenly into the crook of his elbow. He curled his other arm around him.

Daniel stood up and leaned over Sebastian, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He rubbed and patted. ‘Come on, you’re all right. I’m on your side, remember? I know you want to go home, but we have to work with the law. I can’t get you home just now. The judge wants you here as much to protect you as anything else.’

‘I don’t want to be protected. I just want to go home.’

Again, Daniel felt a prickle of understanding for the boy. It came to him like a nettle sting: heat and itch, lurching him into memory. He remembered arriving at Minnie’s for the first time, and the social worker telling him that, for his own good, he should be kept away from his mother.

‘What I can do is work to get you home after your trial. How about that? You ready to work with me on it? I need your help. I can’t do it on my own.’

Sebastian sniffed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. When he looked up, his eyelashes were wet and separated.

‘Mum’s late,’ said Sebastian. ‘She’ll be in bed. My dad flew out last night. It’s better if I’m there. That’s why you need to get me out.’

‘What’ll be better if you’re there?’ Daniel asked. Although he was sure he knew what Sebastian was going to say, he wondered if he was projecting on to the boy.

‘Do you like your father?’ said Sebastian, as if he hadn’t heard Daniel’s question.

‘I don’t have a father.’

‘Everybody has a father, silly. Don’t you know that?’

Daniel smiled at the boy. ‘Well, I never knew him. That’s what I meant. He left before I was born.’

‘Was he nice to your mum?’

Daniel returned Sebastian’s gaze. He knew what the boy was trying to say. He had watched the boy’s parents and had witnessed Kenneth’s aggression towards the boy’s mother. Daniel blinked to remember his own mother thrown across a room so hard that she broke the arm of the armchair on to which she fell. He remembered standing between her and the man who wanted to hurt her again. He remembered his leg trembling and the smell of urine.

‘Listen, we need to get down to work. Now that we’re back working together, is there anything you’ve remembered that you need to tell me?’

Sebastian looked at Daniel and shook his head.

‘We’re on our own now. I’m your lawyer and you’re my client. You can tell me anything. I won’t judge you. I have to act in your best interests. Is there anything about the Sunday you were playing with Ben that you want to tell me? If you do, now is the time. We don’t like surprises later on.’

‘I’ve told you everything, absolutely everything.’

‘Good, well I’m going to try my best to get you out of here.’

There was a magnetic sound of metal smacking cleanly together, as the electronic door unlocked. Charlotte came into the room in a flurry of apologies and tinkling bangles. She twisted Sebastian’s face towards her gently and kissed him on the side of his forehead.

‘I’m so sorry, traffic was a nightmare!’ she exclaimed, loosening her lilac silk scarf and slipping off her jacket. ‘And then those bloody dogs at security. They terrify me. It seemed like an age before I was through.’

‘Mum doesn’t like dogs,’ said Sebastian.

‘It’s all right,’ said Daniel. ‘I just wanted to run through with Sebastian what’s going to happen now.’

‘Great, fire away,’ said Charlotte with a strange, fraught enthusiasm. She was wearing a polo neck and kept pulling the sleeves over her hands.

‘Well, we have a lot of work to do over the next few months to prepare you for trial and there are a number of other people that you’ll need to meet and talk to … We’re going to make an appointment for a psychologist to come and see you, and then in a week or so you can meet again with the barrister who will present your story in court. Does that make sense?’

‘I think so. But what will the psychologist do?’

‘You’ve not to worry about that. It’s just to see how you might cope with the trial. He’s our witness, remember, so you’ve not to worry, OK?

‘What I wanted to try and explain to you today was the prosecution’s case against you – that is the arguments that they will put forward to try to prove that you killed Ben. We have only recently received these documents, and I’m working on building your defence, based on what the prosecution have against you … If you don’t understand anything, let me know.’

‘It’s crystal clear,’ said Sebastian.

Daniel paused as he watched the boy. As a child he had come close to being in Sebastian’s position – but he had never owned Sebastian’s confidence.

‘The main evidence against you is that although you say you were only playing with Ben, and that he did fall and hurt himself while he was with you, your clothes and shoes have Ben’s blood on them.’

‘It’s not a big problem,’ said Sebastian, his eyes bright and alert suddenly.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, because you can say the blood and stuff got on to me because he got himself hurt …’

There was a pause. Sebastian met Daniel’s eyes, then nodded once.

‘We’ll be arguing that Ben fell and hurt himself, and we have your mum as an alibi from 3 p.m. onwards, which throws into question the witness’s assertion that he saw you fighting with Ben again later in the day. But the Crown will argue that the blood and DNA on your clothes is evidence that you murdered him.’

Daniel glanced at Charlotte. The ring finger on each of her hands was trembling. Her attention seemed to drift, so that Daniel wondered if she had heard.

‘I didn’t hurt Ben like that; I was just playing with him …’

‘I know, but someone did hurt him, you know – hurt him very badly – someone murdered him.’

‘Murder’s not that bad.’

In the silence of the room, Daniel could hear Charlotte swallow.

‘We all die, you know,’ said Sebastian, smiling faintly.

‘Are you telling me you know how Ben died? You can tell me now, if you want.’ Daniel winced in expectation of what the boy would say.

Sebastian tilted his head to one side and smiled again.

Daniel raised his eyebrows to prompt him. After a few moments, the small boy shook his head.

*

On his legal pad Daniel wrote down for Sebastian the sequence of events that would follow: from the first formal conference with the barrister to the preparation for trial.

‘After the committal hearing, there will be a period of waiting for the trial. I want you to know that you and your parents can still see me or talk to me during that period if you have any questions.’

‘Cool,’ said Sebastian. ‘But … when will the trial be?’

‘Not for a few months yet, Seb. We have a lot of work to do before then, but I promise we will take you to see the court before your trial.’

‘Noooooo,’ Sebastian whined, slapping a hand on the desk. ‘I want to go sooner. I don’t want to stay here.’

Charlotte sat up and took a breath, as if someone had thrown a cup of water in her face. ‘There, darling, there,’ she said, her fingers fluttering to Sebastian’s hair.

Sebastian’s eyes shone as if he might cry.

‘Look, Seb, I’ve got an idea,’ said Daniel. ‘How about I run and get us some sandwiches. How does that sound?’

‘I’ll go,’ said Charlotte, on her feet. Daniel noticed a purple bruise on her wrist as she reached for her bag. ‘I really need some air anyway. I’ll be right back.’

When the heavy door clunked shut, Sebastian rose to his feet and began to walk around the room. The boy was thin, with delicate wrists and elbows that protruded. Daniel thought that apart from anything else he was too small to be capable of Ben’s brutal murder.

‘Seb, did anyone speak to you that day in the park, apart from the man who called on you both to stop fighting?’ The chairs were fixed, so Daniel had to stand up so that he could face Sebastian. The boy stood just taller than Daniel’s waist. Ben Stokes had been three years younger than Sebastian, but only two inches shorter.

Sebastian shrugged. He shook his head, not looking at Daniel. He was leaning against the wall, examining his nails and then turning forefinger on thumb as if miming a nursery rhyme: ‘Incy Wincy Spider’.

‘Were you aware of anyone acting strangely in the park – did you see anyone watching you play?’

Again Sebastian shrugged.

‘Do you know why she’s wearing that jumper?’ said Sebastian. He held his hands up to his face, thumbs and forefingers touching, and looked at Daniel through the rectangle of his fingers.

‘What, do you mean your mum?’

‘Yes, when she wears that jumper it means that she has strangle marks on her neck.’ Sebastian was still looking at Daniel through his fingers.

‘Strangle marks?’

Sebastian put both hands to his throat and squeezed until his face started to turn red.

‘Stop it, Seb,’ said Daniel. He reached out and pulled gently at the child’s elbow.

Sebastian fell against the wall, laughing.

‘Were you scared?’ he asked, smiling so broadly that Daniel could see one of the child’s missing teeth.

‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself,’ said Daniel.

‘I was just trying to show you,’ said Sebastian. He returned to sit at the table. He seemed tired, reflective. ‘Sometimes if he gets annoyed he squeezes her throat. You can get dead that way too, you know? If you squeeze too hard.’

‘Are you talking about your mum and your dad?’

There was the sound of the door unlocking. Sebastian leaned over the table, one hand held up to cover his mouth, and whispered: ‘If you pull down the neck of her jumper you’ll see the marks.’

Charlotte came in with the sandwiches and Daniel found himself watching her more closely as she unpacked the bag of food and drinks. He looked at Sebastian, who was choosing a sandwich. Better when I’m there, he remembered the boy saying. Daniel felt another sudden flush of empathy for the child. He remembered his own mother with a man’s hands around her throat. He remembered how desperate he had felt as a child, separated from her, unable to protect her. It had driven him to terrible things.