7
The Truth
In exceptional circumstances, fate has sent me a wholly unexceptional man. Derek is average height, average build, with a forgettable face crowned by a flop of sandy-coloured hair. His voice is flat and neutral. He would never turn a single head and yet, as he sits on my sofa, drinking beer, to my eyes, he is an angel.
“So,” he pauses to take in the room, “this is how TV stars live. Cheers.”
He toasts me with his can of Becks.
“Cheers. Listen…Derek, I’m sorry about the waterworks just now…only it’s been a hell of a time for me.”
“I can imagine.”
I feel an overpowering urge to cross-question him in order to check, one more time, that there hasn’t been a misunderstanding.
“So, Derek, just to be one hundred per cent clear…you were in the car park.”
“Yes.”
“And you saw Jade hitting me.”
“Yes.”
“And you saw her fall and—”
“Bang her head, yes.”
“Right, good.”
“It was an accident.”
“Yes.”
“I’m prepared to say all of—”
“You’re prepared to testify.”
“I’m happy to stand up in court and say that I saw her hit you, fall, and crack her head.”
“And did you hear me offer to take her to hospital?”
“If you like.”
This stops me in my tracks. “Sorry, Derek, I…”
“I can say that if you want me to.”
“No. No, no, you must only…y’know…you can only say what you saw. So…you’re saying you didn’t hear me say that, about the hospital? ”
“No, I didn’t.”
“OK, no problem, that’s fine, no problem at all…what, were you too far away to hear what I said?”
Derek looks at me blankly.
“Y’know…in the car park…were you too far away in the car park? Whereabouts were you in the car park, Derek? I mean, which bit of the car park? Were you on the other side of the car park? You weren’t in the car park, were you, Derek?”
“Not physically, no.”
I let out a suppressed, frustrated roar. How could I be so stupid? I had been ignoring alarm bells in my mind for the last ten minutes. God, this is cruel! To be offered salvation and then – hang on, what did he just say?
“Not physically? Wait, I get it, Derek, you saw it all on security cameras, didn’t you?”
“No.”
My head is spinning now. There’s a wave of nausea. Remember to breathe.
“Then…with respect, Derek…how did you witness all this?”
“I witnessed it all…emotionally.”
My voice deadens. “You witnessed it…emotionally.”
“Through my emotions, yes,” nods Derek.
“Right…how does that work exactly?”
He puts his beer down on the table. “Well…it’s like this…y’see, Kevin, like you I was once falsely accused – also by a lady-friend, as it happens – so I’ve experienced your sense of helplessness. Your story resonates with me as being emotionally true. Instinctively, I can tell you’re innocent, and I want to help you.”
“…Help me?”
“By setting you free.”
He beams at me triumphantly. I press my hands against my pounding temples.
“You’re…you’re offering to stand up in court…and tell lies on my behalf?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I’m offering to tell the truth…the events are true, it’s only my perspective that’s theoretical.”
I try to shape an answer, dumbfounded by his deformed logic. And I know, in my bones, that this is a defining moment. It’s a perfectly straightforward situation. A stranger – probably a nutjob – is proposing that he and I collude in a criminal act. All I have to do is calmly show him the door – which is what I start to do.
“No, I’m sorry, Derek, it’s not on. Now if you wouldn’t mind lea— you can take the beer – but I’d really like you to just—”
“No, listen, Kevin, please, they’ll send you to jail.”
“I’ll get longer for perjury.”
“I’m the one who’d be doing the perjuring.”
“Please go. I’ll take my chances in court.” I usher him to his feet.
“I think you’re being foolish,” he says.
“I’ll be OK. The truth will out.”
“And I’d be facilitating that…outage.”
I start to guide him, gently but firmly, by the elbow in the direction of the door.
“Think of me as a kind of midwife,” he pronounces.
“…a midwife?”
“Yes, helping to birth the truth…y’know, inducing it.”
I’m getting the measure of him now, he’s an obsessive, a fantasist and a New-Age bullshitter.
“We’d get years, Derek. It’s called conspiracy.”
“Yes ‘Conspiracy to Ensure the Cause of Justice’.”
For some reason, momentarily, he reminds me of Ross from Friends. Isn’t that odd? As I reach for the latch on my door, his grey voice acquires an edge.
“You are innocent, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I snap. “I’m innocent.”
“Then why should the innocent be punished?”
How that question hung in the air.
There was no escaping it. There was a very good chance that I’d be sent to prison for something I didn’t do. Even if I only got a suspended sentence, I would still be publicly branded as a woman-hitter. But perhaps I was being pessimistic. Perhaps the legal system would win through, if only I could trust it. I was fearful, confused. I didn’t know what to think. But I didn’t turn the latch.
“It probably would make no difference, Derek, the jury could still convict me.”
“No, no—”
“Well—”
“No, I’d be too convincing. I once trained as an actor.”
An actor? Hard to believe. He cuts no shape at all.
“…What do I do now?” I mumble.
“I phone people and ask them if they’re happy with their electricity supply. I don’t usually get any further than that. But I’m good at handling rejection, which is just as well really.”
Derek witters on in his featureless drone for a few more minutes about how he sees the call centre as “one more island in the odyssey of his life”. I am trying to herd the thoughts stampeding around inside my head and then, as if from out of thin air, as if I was somebody else, a third party, I hear myself say: “How much?”
“Sorry?”
“If I agreed…how much are we talking about?”
“I don’t want money.”
“No money?”
“No.”
“Right…but, well…sorry, but what do you get out of it?”
“I get to help a fellow human being in pain.”
Yes, I know. More alarm bells. But the thundering in my head was drowning them out. “This whole idea is…it’s madness.”
“It’d be madness not to.”
“But—”
“Have you thought what your life will be like if you’re found guilty? It’s a big step, I know.”
“Too big.”
“Just think about it…think about the alternative. Why don’t you sleep on it?”
I didn’t sleep on it because I didn’t sleep. It felt like I would never sleep again. My brain boiled with possibilities. It was too reckless, I’d be placing myself at the mercy of a total stranger – and they didn’t come much stranger. On the other hand, what chance did I stand in court? It was my word against hers. And she made a much more convincing victim than I did.
And the jury was eight women, four men.
And I didn’t like the way they were declining to look at me. Irrational? What’s rational in an insane situation? The bottom line is the truth; the truth is the truth is the truth. Does it matter who tells it? Or how? I could picture my face on millions of front pages in countless homes; that would be obscenely unjust, to be publicly reviled. Didn’t I have the right to prevent that? And how big was the risk? Even if Derek turned out to be an unconvincing witness, as long as no one knew we had met, then—no, it was all too much, it wasn’t me. I shouldn’t panic. The jury aren’t idiots. But juries make mistakes. Could I just run away? Or am I going mad? Should I take some more sleeping tablets? Perhaps I’m already mad.
At last, light began to creep into my bedroom. I got up, made myself some breakfast and listened to the radio. John Humphrys was interviewing a psychologist about how the human brain was being changed by new technologies. Another cricketer had been accused of taking bribes. A banker had received a bonus. Someone had been stabbed in Hammersmith.
At nine o’clock, the phone rang: like a question.
“It’s me. If the supervisor comes across I may have to start asking you about your electricity supply.”
“Where did you get my number?”
“There are ways. Nothing is private any more, Kevin.”
“Blood-y hell, how did—”
“So, have you decided?” he asks, talking over me. “Have you? I mean, if you’ve decided to play it all by the book and just take your chance in court, I’d understand, Kevin. I can see you’re a pretty principled kind of guy…y’know, I’d respect that choice…totally. Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here, Derek…and the answer is I’m not interested.”