Donald Cousins waited at the back of the court of His Honour Judge Schneider on Tuesday morning, watching and only half listening while a witness blundered through evidence. It had been difficult to force himself inside, out of the sun, but in here the cool was welcome. Middlesex Crown Court, facing the Houses of Parliament, was once poetry in carved oak and Donald mourned it. Now, Court Five, where the judge sat, was a white-walled box full of power points and laptop screens, as anonymous as any other, although an incongruous throne-like chair had been preserved for the use of the judge. The shield and coat of arms above it, bearing the old legend Honi soit qui mal y pense: Evil to him who evil thinks, was painted in bright blues, reds and golds, and looked like a garish warning sign. The insecurities of the English, Donald thought. The language of the law was Latin, the courtroom mottos were ancient French, and in this case the judge had a Teutonic name. Schneider. Next door’s court was presided over by a diminutive Goan, whose brown skin was peculiarly suited to his white wig. The witness in this court was a resident Scandinavian, who had seen a man savagely attacked by a group of other men, one of whom was in the dock. She was being cross-examined by African counsel. Donald Cousins felt his chest swell with pride in being English. Nowhere else was the law quite so colourful. He attempted to concentrate.
The trial in progress was rehearsing the story of an outdoor fight on a dark night, witnessed by strangers, six months before. A man had been disfigured for the simple crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The witness currently on the stand was distressed by the reliving of it. He said something, yes; then he hit him, then the other one went to hit him back, and then they were fighting, then one went to the ground. Three of them kicked him.
Can you identify the man in the dock as one of those men?
Yes. He was the one who went on longest. The others stopped.
Yes, but can you identify my client?
To Donald Cousins, it was all no more than proof that fists, feet and knives still prevailed as the favourite inner-city weapons. On Saturday nights, high days and holidays, post-football, the west end of central London reverted to historic type. Strong drink was the recreation of choice long before Victoria ruled and gin was a penny a pint; brawling followed and still did. In the same central areas, on Saturday nights, a drunken swathe, lured by bright lights, music, cheap drink and each other, were left marooned with no means of getting home and no sense of direction either. Donald blamed the 1960s, for the kick-starting of a new wave of no inhibitions. Carnaby Street, all that. Silly clothes and drugs, new money. Protest marches sponsoring the right to violence. He had first really lost his nerve much later, in the vicious poll tax riots, buried it for good on future demos, and kissed it goodbye on a New Year’s Eve celebration policing gig in Trafalgar Square. Honi soit … The love of life which went with New Year’s Eve rapidly turned rancid in the early hours of the new year itself. There were endless opportunities for casual murder. Currently the action was in the environs of Leicester Square, haven of bars, cheap eats, cinemas, where pubs and clubs disgorged their fun-loving thousands after the night buses became scarce, leaving them to wander aimlessly, fight indiscriminately and abandon one another. Even a prime minister’s son. And nothing united a celebratory or protesting mob better than the presence of the police, who rapidly became the common enemy. It was on these battle lines, these unpredictable Saturday nights, that a man in uniform, surrounded by historic monuments, learned to hate, fear and hold in contempt the pitiful, pitiless public. Sometimes that particular iron never left the soul.
He listened. The witness stuttered. Of course it was him. He was wearing a baseball cap. He had stripes on his shoes. He was kicking the man on the ground, long after he was still. It made me feel sick. He was the worst, he aimed for his head. It was as if he never wanted to stop.
How blind are you, Miss Gunstrom? Were you wearing your spectacles that night? I note you wear them now. You couldn’t really see, could you?
Donald groaned. Cheap tricks from defence counsel, questioning the witness like that.
‘Many of us wear spectacles, Mr Peal,’ the judge said, adjusting his own. ‘They don’t nullify sight, and can, indeed, enhance it. That’s what they’re for. And you must not bully the witness. I think we should adjourn here. Back at two thirty.’
Judge Schneider wasn’t bad at this, Donald conceded. He kept his interruptions minimal and took care of the witness. Cold and careful and surprisingly sensitive. He had recently begun to suppose that the same iron which entered a policeman’s soul might also infect that of a judge, only later, rather than sooner, since the judge was better rewarded, never had to handle the bodies or touch the blood, regarded the evidence of carnage from a distance, at third hand. But the verbal and visual repetition of man’s inhumanity to man would always be wearing in the end, however sanitised it became in the telling, especially when it was as pointless and stupidly wicked as this. As for punishment, the judge could never deliver an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He had no such privilege. He would sentence by formula, while the hungry eyes in the public gallery lusted for revenge.
It was an apposite case for this particular Tuesday morning, when the Evening Standard headlined a variation on Saturday-night brutality. A stabbed man had been left alone in an ambulance in Leicester Square, safe at last, until someone joined him there and finished off what wasn’t even half done. Throttled him, like a chicken, with a wire garrotte, while a phalanx of preoccupied police officers stood yards away. Someone with plenty of malice aforethought, getting into an ambulance and killing an injured man. Donald did not know which shocked him more, the cruelty, or the nerve.
On the Monday he had spent hours with the judge’s clerk, going through records, and realised during the process that Carl couldn’t be all bad, because his twelve-stone, bigbosomed, no-nonsense Jamaican clerk, shared with three others, actually seemed to like him. She was very helpful with the facts, had a memory like Methuselah, and was interesting. He gets racial abuse all the time, she said, ’cos of his name. Only from thick whites, I ask you. I keep telling him to change it to Smith. If he calls himself Dolores Smith, I tell him, and puts on some jewels, then he’ll get promoted. He’s a nice warm man.
What about his personal life? Donald asked. She shook her head, and said if she knew she wouldn’t tell him.
Nice? Warm?
He was like an iceberg when he came into the tiny retiring room, smiled so briefly it was like watching a light bulb turned on and then off, in the same second. He nodded towards Donald, acknowledging the appointment.
‘Can we go out?’ he said. ‘If that’s all right with you. I prefer to go out.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘You’re the only one round here calls him sir,’ the clerk chipped in. ‘The rest of us call him God. Don’t we, Carly baby?’
He smiled at her then, and the real smile was a revelation. He led the way down the labyrinth of corridors which led from the back rooms of the courts, and out of a side entrance. Once out in the street he took the lead, walking away from the building with what seemed to Cousins to be unnecessary speed.
‘We can walk down the river to my chambers,’ he said. ‘Or sit in Parliament Square with Winston Churchill. That’s what I tend to do on a day like this. Anything to avoid other lawyers.’
His yellow-grey hair was flattened by wearing the wig for a morning. It was a mystery to Donald why courtroom lawyers failed to rebel against that bizarre and unflattering piece of uniform. Anyone sane would resent wearing horsehair on their head on a day like this, but perhaps it made them concentrate and forget what they looked like. Wig, gown and white wing collar made all equally anonymous. Carl simply looked smaller without them.
To reach the square from the court, they had to sprint across the road, avoiding three lanes of traffic. The judge seemed used to it. The square was not the ideal place for conversation, because of the pigeons and the noise, but the traffic isolated it into an island which few people chose to risk, even for a better view of the Mother of Parliaments and the smiling face of Big Ben. Carl sat on the stone surround of a flowerbed facing the massive back of the statue of Winston Churchill, who was dressed in his old overcoat and glowering at the world. Donald had no option but to sit alongside. The stone was nicely cool. Donald could imagine the judge sitting here even when it was covered in ice. He did not seem a man who revelled in creature comforts. Carl patted the stone with a large, capable hand.
‘Winston was my father’s hero,’ he said, as if explaining his choice. ‘Since my father was a German prisoner of war, I never quite understood why. He said we needed to be vanquished.’
It was a remark which did not seem to demand a reply. Carl sat, expectantly, with his hands in his lap. Donald, who had looked up the judge’s history for the scant detail available, simply nodded to indicate he knew about that, and then asked a question, because he wanted to know. They sat close together, the better to hear above the traffic which circled around them and became a neutral hum of sound.
‘You were born in the late fifties, weren’t you? Not so long after the war. How did your father being German affect you?’
‘I’m honestly not sure. Maybe simply that I had a different childhood from other people, although it didn’t seem so. If he was discriminated against, he didn’t say. He was simply very pro-British. I was brought up to be grateful for being alive and to venerate all things British, with a certain Germanic discipline, of course. The difference was later.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘By the time I was a teenager, and my mother had died, it was puzzling to see my English contemporaries pouring scorn on tradition and hating the establishments I was taught to revere, as I still do, although perhaps a bit more selectively. I was always slightly at odds, I suppose. Ultra-conservative, with a small c. Nothing more than that. Do you have any news for me? Again, I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance.’
Donald cleared his throat. He was yearning for a nice warm pint. ‘I’ve isolated a few possibles,’ he said. ‘The good news is that the list isn’t long; the bad news is that they’re difficult to trace. And I have no means of making any one of them answer questions when and if I do find them.’
‘How on earth do you select?’
‘By using a few basic principles, which even in themselves take a lot for granted. First, I’ve been looking for any person who has expressed a grievance against you, i.e, the widest category. There are plenty of those. Angry young men, mainly, customers who shout out threats as they go down to the cells en route to prison … Those who were free before.’
‘I told you …’ Carl interrupted.
‘That they’re usually prepared and resigned, yes,’ Donald said impatiently. ‘As people are, theoretically, for deaths and smaller tragedies which have been looming for a time. We may have been warned, but nothing prepares us for what we feel when it actually happens. We’re still angered and insulted by it. As I said, the widest category of threateners are those who publicly blamed you for them going to prison. Hatred is so often the displacement of blame, especially blame of oneself.’
Carl was silent.
‘So,’ Donald continued. ‘the widest category is the I’ll see you dead, you bastard brigade. Those who actually shouted, because they were humiliated by the sentence. Especially those within that category who already had a propensity for violence. I mean, those you sentenced for violent crimes, as opposed to any other kind.’
‘That’s very scientific,’ Carl said. ‘But those people aren’t the most cunning. Fraudsters are worse. They ruin lives without a shred of violence. They almost make thugs look admirable.’
This felt like an attempt to change the subject.
Donald went on. ‘I’ve also ignored the other category you mentioned. Those who may loathe you for what, in their eyes, you failed to do. Such as not imposing a sufficiently vengeful sentence on someone who hurt their child. Or overseeing an acquittal which seemed unfair. Those deprived of a fitting revenge – the old miasma-ridden we were talking about – because of a technicality which got someone off. I can’t possibly track down those, unless they expressed themselves publicly. I have to stick with the obvious, which is the violent, verbal ones who shouted, and I’ve broken down this little grouping into those with the necessary skills. And endurance.’
Carl leaned forward to rest his hands on his knees. He looked up towards the sky, enjoying the warmth on his face, like a cat reacting to the sun, stretching his neck. His profile was harmless, with a stubby nose, broad forehead and round, non-aggressive chin above a thick neck, but his hands were enormous, as if meant for toil. The hands of a surgeon were like that. Donald had the uncomfortable feeling that for all that the judge was older than himself, he would not like to be on the wrong side of him in a dark alley at night. His was a solid body.
‘What exactly do you mean by endurance? Is this new police jargon?’
Donald had the feeling that the man was laughing at him; that he knew in advance that the investigation was useless and all this was playing with words. He raised his voice and slowed down.
‘I mean the capability, and the willpower, to carry through. To go on wanting to do something. To harbour revenge, to plan it and hone the plan, to have an aim and sustain it, over months, years if necessary. I’m only looking at the last two years. I’m also only looking at men. Women don’t do this stuff, and anyway, you’ve only ever sent a handful of the fairer sex to jail.’
‘The jury convict,’ Carl began. ‘I don’t.’ He was being obtuse.
‘Or fail to convict,’ Donald said, suddenly furious. ‘The stupid jury may convict, they carry the can, but it’s you who actually send the bastards to jail, and it’s you they’ll remember, not the twelve grey people.’
‘I never think the jury stupid,’ Carl said. He was trying to change the subject. ‘They’ve been bullied for centuries, first as hired witnesses, then dummies, ordered to do nothing but convict. No heat, food or water until they did. Then they rebelled with the trial of William Penn, the Quaker: 1670, wasn’t it? Trumped-up charges about a prayer meeting. Not a million miles from here. The jury wouldn’t convict. They were starved and imprisoned, and still they wouldn’t. They resent it when the state creates bogeymen and expects them to hang them. The jury won, in the end. Penn took the jury trial system to America. Now look what they’ve done with it. What was it William Blackstone said? The judgement of twelve men, indifferently chosen and superior to all suspicion …’
‘… is the sacred bulwark of the nation’s liberties,’ Donald finished.
The judge looked at his watch. ‘That’s all I have to preserve. The jury’s right not to be bamboozled. So that they can judge. I do wish defendants could see that. I digress. You were saying?’
The crafty bastard, pretending he knew nothing of history, Donald thought. In other circumstances he might enjoy this man. He wanted to argue that the William Penn jury were hardly unbiased, since the leader was a diehard Quaker himself. And what about the fate of the poor deluded imbecile who was hanged for starting the Fire of London? That was a jury too. They could go on, he sensed, for a long time, and the judge was trying to distract him. He wondered why, and could only guess.
‘The man who sends you threatening images, sir, and who maybe got into your room in chambers, is certainly dangerous, potentially at least, because he’s calculating, and he has to have two qualifications. The last three images, by the way, came from two sources: one from a college with a bank of computers open to everyone in the place, two from an internet café. Maybe our man is capable of untraceable trespass, but he’s got to be computer literate. Capable of accessing or scanning a picture, using a machine.’
‘Isn’t everyone, these days?’ Carl said airily.
He did live in an ivory tower, after all.
‘Not the unemployed riff-raff who pass through your court, yelling threats, unless, of course, they go to prison, where they may learn how. They do learn computers in prison.’
‘I’d be glad if they learned anything,’ Carl said, ‘apart from a drug habit. So you think the person who is threatening me is an ex-con, still holding a grievance after he’s free? Having learned the necessary skills?’
‘A computer-literate ex-con, capable of breaking into your chambers. Multi-skilled, perhaps with a history of harassment and planning. I doubt if he cares if you live or die, but he does want you to be uncomfortable.’
‘Anyone obvious on your little list?’
Donald sensed he was trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He could risk being offended, because he was waiting to play his trump card. Produce the jack of spades which justified keeping him going on with this cushy number as long as he liked. Unless, of course, the murder of the man in the ambulance turned into a spate of murders. Then they would all be called in.
‘Yes, there is, as it happens. Remember a man called Blaker? Recidivist, drop-out? Leniency because of age, even though he’s spiteful? Convicted for robbery. He mugged women for handbags, sold on the credit cards, kept the cash. Then, just when they were beginning to recover, he contacted the women. Told them he knew where they lived, watch out. Scared them for no particular purpose except his own enjoyment. When he was arrested, which he was because he only had one patch and always went back to the same places – he can’t operate or feel at home in any place other than Soho, that one – he had a fine old collection of keys. Hadn’t tried to use them, but still, must have had it in mind. You’ve sentenced him twice, and he didn’t like it either time. Released in April. Crazy but articulate.’
Carl sat up. He seemed to be enormously relieved.
‘Ah, yes. Blaker. Unpleasant, to say the least. Yes. He did shout, didn’t he? Said he was framed and I was part of an endless conspiracy against him. He should still be inside. Where is he now?’
Big Ben chimed two. The sonorous notes cut through all other noises and echoed around them. Donald waited for the sound to roll away.
‘Don’t know where he is,’ he said. ‘Early release, courtesy of the parole board. There’s an address where he isn’t, so I either walk the streets where I know he might be, or wait for him to call on his parole officer. In the meantime, I have to talk to your son. I’ve called his mobile, like you said. He doesn’t get back to me.’
A stiffening of the judge’s shoulders showed Donald he had been right, and that this was one of the subjects His Honour wanted to avoid. Carl seemed deafened by the chimes of the clock, shifted uncomfortably. Then he rallied, shook his head. ‘I do apologise for his rudeness. I’ve had to tell him, of course. He says I’m paranoid.’
‘When’s the best time to catch him?’
Donald wanted to call him Carly baby, if only to provoke. Carl sighed, rose from the bench, and looked back at Winston, as if for inspiration.
‘He’s a student,’ he said. ‘Of economics, I think I told you. So it makes sound sense for him to live with his father and sleep all morning. That’s where you’ll find him in the early part of the day. I’ll tell him to expect you, shall I? By now, on a day like this, he’ll be sitting outside college holding court with his friends. He might conceivably be attending a lecture, but I doubt it. You’ve got the photo I gave you?’
‘Yes.’
He had photos of both, as a matter of course. Donald wondered how anyone who had formed a grievance against the judge whilst he was wearing his wig would ever recognise him without it. Maybe that was what it was for.
‘The photo of Sam may not be very helpful,’ Carl said. ‘They change very quickly at that age. My son in particular.’
‘Funny, that. My wife says that about the daughters.’
They began to walk back towards the courthouse together. There was this strange moment when Donald did not want to leave him. Wanted, instead, to say, let’s go for a pint and find out what you really know about history. Discuss the ignorance of children. How they know bugger-all about it. He was momentarily grateful to Carl. After all, the judge was facing the next few hours effectively locked up with scumbags, lawyers and jurors, while he himself could roam free.
‘Do you think your jury’ll convict the bloke in the dock?’ he asked, as they waited to cross the road back towards the court. The traffic seemed endless and angry, racing against time, as if wanting to be far away before the monstrous clock struck the time again.
‘Oh yes. The evidence is all there, for once. It was like the witness said, it was as if he couldn’t stop. He didn’t stop kicking, our man in the dock, until he was hauled off, with blood on his striped shoes. A frenzy. I don’t understand it, do you? Repeated kicks to the body and head, ruptured spleen. Where does that kind of hatred come from? They didn’t even know each other.’
They were on the other side of the road, breathless.
‘Does that make it better or worse, Carly baby?’ Donald asked, panting.
Carl stopped in his tracks and considered. It was as if the question was all that mattered and all questions had to be answered. He spread his big hands, honestly bewildered. ‘I just don’t know. I wish I did. Only the victim could tell you that. It’s violence without any purpose that I can’t understand. I can understand planning it, for money, retribution, whatever you like, but not for nothing. I can understand running and hiding and lying. Sensible people take aim and fire once, don’t they, Don? I can’t understand the kind of anger which doesn’t fizzle out.’
‘Oh, I can,’ Donald said, smiling. ‘I can understand that. Did Your Honour ever learn to shoot? You have to go on until you stop missing.’
‘Don’t be hard on my son,’ Carl said. ‘He’s very … young.’
He inclined his head, left him abruptly. Donald stood on the lonely pavement, with no priorities for the afternoon, except how he would later justify the time spent. A little creative reporting. He was lured by the thought of a walk by the river, any vain mission which involved staying out of doors, so he may as well try and track down the student. There was something satisfying about looking for needles in haystacks in a way that could be regarded as important, at least on paper. The rude little bastard who did not respond to phone calls could also be a prime suspect, and both he and the judge knew it.
He walked. Westminster to the Temple was not far along the side of the river. The son’s college was uphill from the Embankment, not far from the Aldwych. Stone buildings were the order of the day everywhere after the Great Fire in 1666, all of them built and rebuilt beyond recognition, changed by wars, fashion, money. He was taking a bet that a spoiled student had no idea how lucky he was to be where he was, in an age of extraordinary peace and prosperity lasting longer than almost any in centuries. His own daughters were just the same.
It was hot. Eighty degrees, humid, London hot. He turned away from the river with regret, uphill to the Aldwych and the pale buildings of the London School of Economics. The kids sat outside in their dozens. The crowds, as he went uphill, seemed to move downhill, thicker as he moved. He hated not being able to walk in a straight line; it was like being inside a swarm of flies. He surveyed the milling groups of students with profound distaste, and turned back. Even with a photo of the boy, he would never find him here. Instead he found a pub and a place to sit outside with a pint, pulled out his time sheet and scribbled on it.
Mr Terry Blaker, loony tunes of no fixed abode except a hostel address, did exist, of course. The judge remembered him better than he was letting on. Blaker’s valedictory message as he was led screaming from the dock was unusually biblical, according to the court notes. Judgement will be upon you, he had yelled. Your own sins will find you out. You murderer! It would be nice to know what all that was about. Donald began to be convinced by his own argument, his own categorisation of the various degrees of potential culprit for the heinous crime of giving the good judge sleepless nights. The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that Blaker could be good for this, because Blaker might consider himself vindicated by the parole board, an innocent, bent on revenge. Donald found to his surprise that it was all, also, beginning to matter, just a bit. He would rather it was Blaker than the judge’s son, because he liked the judge. He liked his men served dry, when they knew about history. He liked it when they tried to protect their children. It did not follow that there was any urgency. He was perfectly sure that the judge was safer than most people who risked crossing the road, and that meant tomorrow would do.
It rained in the late afternoon of the Tuesday, overdue rain released in a rush after the muggy heat of the day. Rachel thought differently about rain these days. In the city it was simply a nuisance, even if it cleansed the air and brightened the trees, it did not have any obvious purpose. Now she thought of Farmer Wiseman and his hay. They needed rain, he had said, proper rain, not like the drizzle of Saturday. The more the better. A week’s worth would be nice. She no longer resented the rain, except for the fact that it made people behave badly. A downpour after drought had the same effect as a snowfall in the city, creating bad temper and amazement, as if it had never happened before. It was an excuse to be late and for trains to stop. The model for the life drawing class failed to turn up. Everyone else did, and no one believed the excuse.
It happens, the teacher said. They aren’t all reliable. Sorry, folks, we have to rely on ourselves. Regard it as an opportunity. Today we do heads. Our heads. Any volunteers? You? May as well start with a pretty one. Five minutes, please.
Rachel followed his instructions, sat on the dusty plastic chair on the podium in the middle of the room and made herself comfortable, as she had watched other models do, trying to find a position she could maintain. It was more difficult than she had imagined. There were precious few times in the day when anyone kept entirely still for any length of time, except when asleep, and not even then. She stared at the far wall, and immediately wanted to move. The room was silent apart from the swish of traffic in rain outside. It was a sound as soothing as the sea. She did not find the sensation of being scrutinised uncomfortable; keeping still, gazing in the same direction, she let her mind roam free. It was a great time for dreaming and planning, Ivy had told her.
‘You rarely see a smiling portrait,’ the teacher was saying. ‘Not in pencil or charcoal, anyway. Not drawn straight from life. No one can keep up a smile for long. Not even a politician. Remember the way it seems fixed on their faces? It starts to hurt after a while. Solemnity’s the natural repose for the face.’
What a short memory you have, Rachel thought. Ivy could keep up a smile for ten minutes. She had once done it here, but the teacher was right. It had been slightly disconcerting.
‘Those of you who’ve only got a view of the back of the head,’ the teacher said, ‘don’t worry. It’s just as revealing as the front. Especially when you can see the angle of the neck. Necks are like stalks, always bending.’
Rachel’s hair was severely knotted on the top of her head as usual. Lately, she was always longing to let it hang free. Now she felt she was being obliging.
‘Thank you. Now you, Norman.’
A male head, by way of contrast. The one they called the Plonker took the hot seat. It reminded her of a medical examination in front of an audience. He was facing her, chose to stare at her beseechingly, rather than at the wall. Not a bad face, once she looked at it directly, gauging the distance between hairline and eyes, nose and mouth, the narrow chin. Nothing unkind about it. Any slight frisson of dislike and embarrassment he had caused disappeared completely. He was simply a face. No one else noticed that he was staring at her, willing her attention with his pleading eyes. He twitched; he was limited to three minutes. She decided that heads were less revealing than bodies. On his way back to his seat on the other side of the room, he paused by her easel.
‘Listen,’ he whispered urgently, taking advantage of the shuffling round as a new head took up position, pages turned to a fresh sheet of paper. ‘Listen, I’ve got to talk to you. You flat-share with Ivy, don’t you? I’ve got to tell you …’
‘No you don’t.’
‘I was with her on Saturday night,’ he said, his voice growing louder as the shuffling ceased.
‘In your dreams,’ Rachel muttered.
‘Five minutes, please.’
He went back to his seat.
‘When drawing the head,’ the teacher intoned wearily, glaring at Norman, ‘always remember to leave room for the brain.’
Rachel got out first at the end of the class, leaving someone else to stack her easel and chair. Ivy would be at home and her flat was full of flowers. It was still raining, and it was lovely to be going home.
In the pocket of her jacket she found the piece of bone Farmer Wiseman had handed to her out of the incinerator. A souvenir of another country. She and Ivy would go back there soon. This was the summer of her happiness, and her achievement.
She could find him. It was only a question of whether she should.