Simon Tolkien - Final Witness

All around them barristers were moving to and fro. Their long black gowns billowed out behind them, and their patent leather shoes clicked on the marble floor. The eighteenth-century-style horsehair wigs that were part of the barristers’ required dress would have seemed absurd if their owners were not wearing them with such apparent confidence. Greta was suddenly filled with a sense of being out of her element. How could she control what happened here if she didn’t know the rules? She got up from the bench hurriedly. Sitting still only made things worse.

“Come on, let’s go and find court nine. That’s where we’re supposed to be meeting Miles.”

Greta injected her voice with a sense of purpose that she was far from feeling.

A small crowd was waiting outside the bank of elevators, and Greta glimpsed the squat figure of Sergeant Hearns, the officer in the case. He smiled lugubriously when he saw her, and Greta couldn’t decide whether it was a greeting or a spontaneous expression of pleasure at seeing the object of his investigation inside the courthouse at last. In any event, she didn’t respond, turning suddenly on her heel and calling to her husband.

“Come on, Peter, it’s too crowded. Let’s take the stairs.”

Peter turned obediently to follow his wife. He was determined to stand by her, but there were some places, of course, where he could not follow. She would be alone in the dock. Alone when she gave her evidence. Alone when the jury came back with their verdict.

He worked his fingers into the wrinkled furrows on his forehead and hid his face momentarily behind his upturned hand.

Four floors above them at that very moment Miles Lambert, counsel for the defense in the case of Regina v. Lady Greta Robinson, was buying two cups of coffee in the barristers’ cafeteria. One white with two sugars for himself and one black with none for his opponent, John Sparling, counsel for the prosecution.

Miles Lambert was sixty-six and single. Forty years of drinking fine wines and eating rich food with other successful lawyers had earned him a florid complexion and a rotund figure that he kept encased within expensive, tailor-made suits, complete with waistcoat and gold watch and chain. Court etiquette required him to wear a wing collar and starched white neck bands, but outside court he was known for extravagant ties of wildly clashing colors that matched the handkerchiefs that poured from his breast pocket when he was not using them to dab his sweating brow. Although in recent years “Lurid Lambert” had given way to a new nickname of “Old Lurid,” opinion in legal circles was that Old Lurid might be sixty-six but as a defense lawyer he was at the height of his powers.

Miles’s pale blue eyes looked out on the world from behind a pair of gold-framed half-moon spectacles, and those who knew him well said that the eyes were the key to understanding Miles’s character. They were small and shrewd, and if you studied them carefully, you would see that they seemed to become more quiet and watchful as Miles became more exuberant. It was as if they took no part in his loud laughter and extravagant gestures. They remained detached and attentive, watching for weaknesses, waiting for opportunities.

John Sparling was as different from Miles Lambert as it was possible to be given that they were two successful lawyers of roughly the same age dressed in approximately the same way. He was tall while Miles was short, and thin while Miles was fat. He wore no glasses, and his large, gray eyes looked out coldly on the world from above a long, aquiline nose. His mouth was small, with thin, straight lips, and he spoke slowly, forming his questions with careful decision and always pausing after the witness had answered for the extra fraction of a second that was enough to tell the jury his opinion of what had just been said. He was fond of telling juries that they must put pity and sympathy aside in their search for the truth. Sparling’s enemies said that this was something that he had no need to do himself, as he had had all pity and sympathy excised from his character at an early age.

John Sparling never defended, and Miles Lambert never prosecuted. They were polar opposites, and yet in a strange way they liked each other. You could almost say they were friends, although they never met outside the courthouse, where they spent their days in an unending struggle over the fate of their fellow human beings.

If pressed, Sparling might have described himself as an instrument of justice. It was an article of faith for him that nobody should escape the consequences of his actions — least of all the wife of a cabinet minister. Sparling had been looking forward to this case for weeks, but then so too had his opponent. For Miles Lambert, criminal law was not so much about justice as about winning. It was something the two men had in common. They both hated to lose.

“So, Miles, you’ve got Granger,” said Sparling. “Her Ladyship must be pleased.” His lower lip raised slightly, the nearest he ever got to a smile.

“Haven’t talked to her about it yet,” replied Miles Lambert as he vigorously stirred the sugar into his coffee. “But yes, I’d prefer old Granger to one or two of the death’s head judges that sit on the first floor. Defense’ll get a fair crack of the whip at any rate.” He would have liked to have ladled four spoonfuls into the cup, but his doctor had set strict limits on coffee and sugar since Miles had suffered a minor heart attack two years before. The instruction to reduce stress by taking on fewer cases, however, had fallen on deaf ears.

“He’ll like your client, I expect,” said Sparling. “Old Granger’s always been one for the ladies, hasn’t he?”

His Honor Judge Granger was known as a fair judge with something of a defense bias. Miles was secretly very pleased to have gotten him, although it wouldn’t do to gloat.

“It’s not the judge that matters,” he said diplomatically. “It’s the jury.”

“Hoping for a few priapic jurors too, I expect.”

Miles smiled broadly, but behind his cup of coffee he was registering a slight surprise. It was unlike John Sparling to be so cynical about the legal process. Something must be bothering him. Miles needed to find out what it was.

“You’re exhibiting an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, if you don’t mind me saying so, John,” said Miles in a bantering tone. “Not what you need on a Thursday morning.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Miles. Have you got those further statements?”

Miles’s smile gave way to a grin. It was the return of the killers to the murder scene the previous week that had gotten under his opponent’s skin. It was too much of a good thing.

“Yes. I got them on Friday evening through the fax. The policeman at the scene, follow-up investigation by the omnipresent Sergeant Hearns. And the boy, of course. Your star witness.”

“My star witness.”

“Uncorroborated to the last.”

“All right, Miles. We’ll let the jury form their own opinion about that.”

“Oh, yes. The priapic jurors.”

Sparling gave another of his smile imitations. He looked determinedly tolerant.

“Yes, the priapic jurors,” he said. “But it wasn’t them I was asking you about.”

“No,” Miles acknowledged. “You want to talk about the statements, don’t you, although I can’t imagine why. I’ve got them. You’ve got them. You’re calling these witnesses. What else is there to discuss?”

“I want to call the boy last. Hearns says he needs time to get over what happened last Wednesday.”

“If it happened.”

“All right, Miles. I’ve read the police statements too, you know.”

“No trace of any intruders whatsoever. No one saw the car come. No one saw the car go.”