Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

‘Continue, please.’

‘Then Jason Barnes grabbed Gazza and Gazza slung him off. This woman opened the door, she was calling out. Then Jason Barnes hit Gazza on the back, knocked him to his knees.’

‘What did he use?’

‘I didn’t see, I thought it was a metal pipe or summat, but I didn’t see it. Gazza was screaming, he got up and he went after Jason. Jason was coming towards me. Then Gazza got his knife out.’

‘Where from?’

‘He kept it in his boot. And he sticks Jason with it, real fast. Then he runs off and Nicola with him.’

‘Where was the knife at this point?’ said Mr Sweeney.

‘Gazza still had it. He said later he put it in his pocket.’

‘Let’s stick with what you witnessed. You knew he was carrying a knife?’

‘Yes, he always has one.’

‘Liar!’ a woman yelled. ‘You bloody liar.’ There was a hubbub in response, people shuffling around to see who had called out, others echoing the sentiments. Louise saw a woman towards the back, her face bright red, mouth tight. The skin of her neck loose, like one of Louise’s elderly clients. Her hair puffy and dry, a dandelion halo of an indeterminate shade.

‘Silence!’ ordered the judge. ‘I will not tolerate interjections in my court. If there is any more disruption, those responsible will be held in contempt and the gallery cleared.’

The woman wrenched herself away from the man beside her. Louise thought she’d walk out, but instead she set her face and folded her arms. Louise wondered whose mother she was. Garrington’s, she guessed. She thought the ones behind them, the overweight woman and her two daughters, were Nicola’s family. The girls looked like Nicola, but she was the prettiest.

‘Did you expect Thomas Garrington to use the knife?’ said Mr Sweeney.

‘No, never. I wouldn’t have hung around if I’d known.’

Just for the kicking, then? Louise thought bitterly. This is my son: the one on the ground, the one bleeding in the snow. The reckless one, the live wire, the one who always had to push it that bit too far and was lucky to survive. Lucky? There’s a thought to conjure with. The sarcasm was a prop, something sharp and hard to cling to. She would not break down here, she would not. Her nose stung, her teeth were aching, jaw clamped so tight she thought they might shatter.

‘You ran from the scene?’

‘Yes, soon as I realized what Gazza had done.’

‘You didn’t remain to continue fighting with Jason Barnes?’

‘No, he was just in the way. I was trying to get out of there.’

‘Then what happened?’ asked Mr Sweeney.

‘We ran into the estate until we were sure no one was following us. Gazza said split up. Nicola was like, “What have you done, man? You’ll get us all banged up.” And I’m the same.’

‘And how did Gazza react?’

‘He said to stop shittin’ ourselves and to separate. Said if anyone asked we’re to say we’d been in town after we left Nicola’s – where they have the ice rink. Hangin’ out there till midnight.’

‘When did you find out what had happened to Jason Barnes and Luke Murray?’ said Mr Sweeney.

‘The next day. Gazza rang us. He said to lie low and that. Not to blab.’

‘He was warning you not to say anything about the incident?’

Louise was sick of the term ‘incident’. It wasn’t a freaking incident; it was murder and attempted murder.

‘Yes, he was,’ said Conrad Quinn.

The boy continued to answer questions about the appeal and seeing their pictures in the paper.

‘In all this time did it ever occur to you to come forward and give yourself up?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘’Cos I didn’t want to go to prison,’ he said. People muttered at this, a ripple of sound. Louise caught Andrew’s eye. His gaze was unguarded, naked. She would have liked to have been sitting next to him, she realized. Or going for coffee in the breaks between witnesses. Dissecting the evidence with him, sharing outrage and confusion and indignation. Over the months, she had come to appreciate his company. The tragedy that linked them put them on special ground, a unique tribe in a ghastly place that only those who’d lived through similar experiences could comprehend.

‘But once you were arrested and charged, you turned Queen’s evidence, pleading guilty to Section 18 wounding, a very serious charge that carries a lengthy sentence. When you could have pleaded not guilty along with the defendants and possibly been acquitted. Why didn’t you do that?’

‘Because I know what I’ve done and what I ’aven’t and it seemed best to tell the truth. I never meant to kill anyone, and I never did. I never had any intent. And if I lied and pleaded not guilty and then if it went the wrong way, the trial I mean, I’d get life for something I never did.’

‘One final question,’ Mr Sweeney said. He paused and the room stilled. ‘Please consider your answer very carefully and remember you are under oath.’

The boy nodded, made the same nervous gesture wiping at his nose.

‘Did you clearly see Thomas Garrington stab Jason Barnes with a knife?’

‘Yes, I did. I did. He did it.’

Andrew

If Andrew thought his own cross-examination was tough, it was a walk in the park compared to the savaging that Conrad Quinn received. At one point, the judge admonished Mrs Patel for harassing the witness. The stress told on the lad, who began to rock, obviously a subconscious reaction, tilting up on the balls of his feet and back, wiping repeatedly at his nose and getting less and less articulate as the gruelling interrogation went on.

The gist of the defence was to portray Conrad Quinn as a violent young thug who was out to save his own skin at the expense of his mates.

‘Have you ever carried a knife?’ Mrs Patel demanded.

When Conrad Quinn hesitated before answering, she swept in with, ‘It’s not a difficult question, is it? Yes or no?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Regularly?’

‘I suppose.’

‘You suppose. And where was your knife on the seventeenth of December?’

‘In my sock.’

He sounded pathetic, thought Andrew.

‘Handy enough to pull out when Jason Barnes came at you.’

‘I never!’ he said.

‘What happened to your knife?’ asked Mrs Patel.

‘What?’ said Conrad Quinn dully.

‘Where is it? Where was it when the police searched your house?’

‘I got rid of it,’ he said.

Andrew groaned inwardly. It looked so incriminating.

‘Why?’

‘Because of what happened.’

‘Because you stabbed Jason Barnes?’

‘No!’ Conrad Quinn protested, still for a brief moment. His face and his neck, with the unfortunate tattoo, flushed dark red. ‘No, because my knife was a bit like Gazza’s and they might think it was the one what had been used.’

‘Was there any blood on your knife?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But they could say I’d cleaned it. Bleached it and that.’

‘Did you?’

‘No. No.’ He sounded panicky now, and Andrew caught an intake of breath in the seats behind, where the other families were. What must it be like to be his parents? he wondered. To watch this, to see him there, clumsy and frightened, already baldly admitting to having kicked Luke hard enough to crush his skull and damage his brain.

‘Where did you get rid of it?’

‘In the river.’

‘I’d like to suggest a different version of events. It was you that stabbed Jason, wasn’t it? It was your knife, wasn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘You were still there with him when Thomas Garrington and Nicola Healy had run out of the garden. They had seen you get out your knife and they wanted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and you. But you were intent-’