The Star Witness

by Andy Hamilton

  As the trial wore on, my legal team started to look more and more round-shouldered. Even Nina Patel looked downcast. Oh, and the Home Secretary had announced a big crackdown on crimes of violence against women. So that boded well.

  But then, a stroke of luck. The judge got knocked down by a van. His injuries weren’t serious – a few cracked ribs – but it meant the trial was adjourned for a week.

  I just stayed inside the house, wearing my pyjamas like a uniform. I didn’t want to do anything, didn’t want to see anyone or go anywhere. That’s what happens with depression, I suppose. You take yourself hostage. My cleaning lady stopped coming. I couldn’t be bothered to find out why.

  Then I had another stroke of luck. Some England footballers were caught having sex with underage girls in a health spa. There were four players involved, so the two photographers who had been permanently parked outside my house suddenly disappeared, presumably to stake out some Tudor mansions in Cobham.

  But I still didn’t venture out.

  I measured my day in the sounds of the street. The eight a.m. electric whine of the milkfloat. The three p.m. clunk-clunk-clunk of car doors, as the mums’ army mobilised to collect kids from school. The midnight wails of sirens drifting up from the High Street, half a mile away.

  Sometime after midnight on the Thursday when all seems quiet, I take the wheelie bins down to my gate. A fox is watching from the other side of the street. He knows it’s bin night. The contents of several bin-bags are already strewn down the street. Suddenly, a voice comes out of the darkness.

  “Little buggers, aren’t they?”

  Shit, a photographer. But a man steps forward under the streetlight and I can see that he has no camera. “Sprinkle pepper over your bins, that’s the answer.” His tone of jovial familiarity is unnerving.

  “Sorry, um, do I know you?”

  He chuckles. “You probably think you do. People always think they know me. It comes from having such a bland face, I think. When you look like nobody in particular, you look like everybody in general.”

  I get it now. He just wants someone to talk to. One of the innumerable lonely, harmless semi-nutters.

  “Right, well, goodnight.”

  I turn and head back towards my front door.

  “I need to talk to you, Mr Carver.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s late, I—”

  “It’s not right, what’s happening to you.”

  Oh no, a fan.

  “Well, that’s very kind and thank you for your support but—”

  “She’s lying.”

  I have reached my door. “Well—”

  “She’s lying, Mr Carver. And I’m prepared to say that in court. Tell them how I saw everything.”

  I wheel slowly, not quite sure what I’ve heard. “You saw everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “Are you…are you saying…that you’re a witness?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. If I’d known about your plight I would have come forward sooner but—”

  “No, no, that’s fine.” I hurry back towards him, my arms outstretched as I try to organise my galloping thoughts. “But let me get this clear in my head, you’re saying you saw everything, and that you want to give evidence on my behalf now, is that right?”

  “Absolutely. To prevent a miscarriage of justice. You’re an innocent man, Kevin.”

  And I start to weep. Uncontrollably. For so long I’d clung to the hope that somehow the truth would out, because the truth always does out in the end, doesn’t it? In every great play or novel the truth finds a way through, like water. And now here it was. Here he was. I was saved. And so I weep, sobbing like a child, swallowing great gulps of air.

  “My name’s Derek,” he says.

  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.”

  8

  The Evidence

  In the days after that conversation, I kept telling myself I’d made the right decision. It’d be insane to commit a criminal act in order to prove my innocence, wouldn’t it? Of course it would.

  Derek left a few messages on my answerphone. Was I sure? Perhaps I should think about it some more. He left me his number. I meant to erase the calls, but somehow I never got round to it.

  It’s very hard to be certain about what might have been. I don’t like hindsight, it’s such a know-all. But I’m quietly confident that nothing more would have happened as regards Derek’s offer, if it had not been for my next stupid, imbecilic mistake.

  I went on Twitter.

  God knows what made me do it. I can only put it down to morbid curiosity. I had been thinking about it for ages but now, with the trial about to resume, I got this overpowering urge to find out what people were saying about me.

  I search my name and brace myself.

  I know it might be bad, but I am not prepared for what comes next. There are hundreds, hundreds of tweets, nearly all of them dripping with vitriol about me. It’s terrifying to realise how despised I have become. I scroll and scroll in the hope that I’ll find someone who doesn’t think I am scum, but it’s a lost cause.

  Every now and then I happen on one that is condemning the trial as a circus – and a few misogynists are getting stuck into Jade – but overwhelmingly, it is pure hatred directed at me. Many of them want me sent to prison for ten years, plus. That phrase – ‘dead man walking’ – appears on a regular basis.

  Like an idiot, I read them all, transfixed by the horror of the procession. Eventually, shaken to the core and weak-limbed, I switch off my phone and lie out on the sofa. All the panic that I thought I had mastered comes flooding back and I am utterly and indescribably alone.

  I stand no chance.

  I feel like I am crouched in front of a firing squad.

  After a few minutes, with my heart still pounding in my chest, I rise a little groggily to my feet, fetch a pen and paper and head for the answerphone.

  We meet in a very quiet corner of a local park. I kid myself that I am still undecided.

  We conduct a little exercise. I play the part of that assassin of a barrister and cross-question Derek relentlessly, manoeuvring him, berating him, ambushing him. But he holds up very well. His version of my version never falters. He seems in control; which, with hindsight, he was.

  “We mustn’t meet again, Kevin. If we were seen together, then…”

  “No, ‘course, absolutely.” “I’ll go to the police, offer to make a statement etcetera, they’ll put me in touch with your legal team.”

  “Why now?”

  “W
hat?”

  “Why now? Why have you left it so late? To help me?”

  “Well, I had the idea a while back, but I thought I’d wait and see how things panned out…see if the case against you collapsed. No point committing a criminal offence unless it’s necessary, that’s what I always say.”

  Always? What’s the word “always” doing in that sentence? “Have you done this before?”

  He smiles. “Not this, no, not as such.”

  ‘Not as such’? What does that—”

  “I’ll be off then.”

  He shapes to leave, but I have one big question left.

  “What makes you so certain I’m innocent? You don’t even know me.”

  “Yes, I do. I can read people.” He can read people. I wish I could read him.

  The next day the police contact my solicitor, who calls me in for a meeting. As I’m shown into Graham’s office the first sight that greets me is Derek sitting straight-backed in a worn, dark blue Sunday-best M&S suit. Across the desk sits a very excited Graham and to the side, perched on a sofa, absorbed in the text of Derek’s statement to the police is Nina Patel.

  Graham rises quickly to his feet.

  “Kevin! Some good news at last. This gentleman is called Derek Tapscott. And he’s come forward to vindicate your version of events. He was in the car park, he saw everything!”

  I pretend to be stunned. Don’t do too much, Kevin. Less is more. Derek stands and greets me as if we have never met and I feel sure that we must look like a pair of total fakes. But my solicitor clearly hasn’t registered that anything is amiss, he is beaming at me, while Nina Patel is still poring over the details of Derek’s statement.

  “The tide has turned, Kevin” chuckles Graham. “The cavalry is here, have a seat, make yourself comfy, tea?”

  I nod, still doing “stunned”.

  Nina Patel looks up from the documents with a reassuring smile.

  “Well this is very timely,” she says. “Our barrister is going to be very pleased.”

  I ask where my barrister is. Nina Patel explains that he’s in court, but that she will brief him. But, all the time that she is talking to me, she is looking at Derek, weighing him up. She’s too bright for us, this isn’t going to work.