“You do understand what will happen, don’t you, Derek,” she begins, “You’ll be put in the witness box and their barrister will set about trying to destroy your credibility. It’ll probably get quite rough. Have you ever been to court?”
“Only once,” he responds breezily, “over an unfair traffic fine.”
“Right, well this will be a lot more…invasive. He’s bound to ask you lots of unsettling questions, he’ll want to explore your background. Just for our info, what is your background?”
For the next twenty-five minutes, Derek fills us in on his background. Nina Patel smiles at him and says, “Well we probably won’t want as much background as that. But it’s useful to have such a full picture, so thank you.”
She then does some role-playing, asking the kind of aggressive questions that Derek can expect in court, but he seems unfazed. His answers are clear and calm and, unlike me, he only answers the question, not the insinuation.
After about twenty minutes of this, she congratulates Derek and thanks him for his time. We all stand and shake hands and I concentrate hard on not arousing suspicion. But, to me, my acting feels dismal.
Once Derek has left the room, my solicitor breaks into a little jig. “A surprise witness! I’ve always wanted one of those. Like in a movie.” But his tone dampens when he sees Nina Patel looking pensive. “What? Oh come on, Nina, he’s a game-changer, isn’t he? You’ve got to be pleased about that, surely.”
“I am pleased.”
“Well then tell your face.”
She screws up her nose and shakes her head slightly. Oh God, this isn’t going to work.
“I don’t know,” she mutters, “he worries me.”
Graham spreads his arms wide in frustration. “Why?”
“There’s…he’s…he’s not quite…he’s not…of this world.”
“Oh for Christ’s—”
“I can’t put my finger on it. I just worry about him in the witness box. What do you make of him, Kevin?”
I take a moment to appear calm.
“Erm…he seems reasonably ordinary to me.”
“Ordinary,” agrees Graham. “Exactly. Very ordinary. In fact, pretty bloody boring, which is perfect.”
Nina Patel tilts back her head and stares at the ceiling for a few moments. Graham looks at me and shrugs. We sit and wait in the silence. The suspense is torture, as the tick of their office clock counts down the seconds before Nina Patel sees through this sham. She’s spotted something. Of course she has. What was I thinking of?
Suddenly, she returns to us. “Oh, I dunno, I’m probably over-thinking.”
Graham laughs, relieved. “We don’t look gift-horses in the mouth, Nina. Not when…” He tails off. Nina flashes him a look.
“Not when what?” I ask.
He shuffles in his seat. “Erm…well, y’know…it’s not been going as well as we might have hoped…it’s what I told you about earlier…the jury…there’s a climate…it’s unfortunate.”
“I know…Jimmy Savile.”
“Yeh, it’s…”
“You’re saying they don’t believe me?”
“That’s my fear…yes.”
He turns to address Nina Patel. “I think your doubts are a bit of a luxury in this situation. We have to use Derek. Or else…” His voice tails off again. She gets to her feet with a new urgency.
“You’re right. I’m just being a scaredy-cat. He’s a game-changer.” Then, with sudden resolve, she says: “We’ll unleash Derek.”
“Unleash the Derek,” echoes Graham.
And they laugh. So I laugh too.
Four days later, I’m back in court watching Derek take the stand. The prosecution barrister attacks hard from the off, but Derek is a consistent performer. He comes across as steady, reliable; his monochrome appearance and neutral voice give him an air of objectivity, a whiff of detached authority that slowly frustrates his interrogator.
“So, Mr Tapscott, you are totally confident that you saw the incident unfold in exactly the…the ve-ry detailed way that you have described?”
“Yes, I’m confident.”
Their barrister chuckles. I don’t like that. “You’re a very observant chap, aren’t you? Not like most of us who wander around…head in the clouds. If I’m ever attacked, I hope you’re there to witness it.”
“Um…she wasn’t attacked.” Derek corrects politely. “She hit him.”
Seymour raises his eyebrows. He’s impressed. Their barrister is picking at a small piece of fluff on his gown.
“This case has regrettably attracted much tabloid ‘excitement’It’s been headline news for a couple of months now, and yet you only came forward as a witness three days ago, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“How do you account for that delay?”
“I don’t have a television.”
“Go on.”
“So I didn’t know what ‘Lenny’ or, um…”
What a skilful pause.
“Melanie?” prompts the barrister.
“Yes, I didn’t know what they looked like…because I’d never seen their programme, so I didn’t connect them with the incident I’d witnessed in the car park. Well, not until I saw their photos in the paper last week.”
“But their photos have been in the papers for months, Mr Tapscott.”
“I take the Telegraph…and not every day.”
Their man is starting to look worn down.
“You watch no TV…and you take the Telegraph.”
“Yes, sorry, I’m a bit of an oddity, aren’t I?”
“Not at all, Mr Tapscott, you’d make a very fine judge,” says m’lud, with a twinkle.
Laughter. The judge’s joke is met with a warm ripple of laughter, genuine laughter, not the polite laughter that had greeted his previous jokes. The atmosphere is starting to change. The jury are making eye-contact with me.
Derek continues to give a pitch-perfect performance. Great actors are defined by the choices they make. He seems to know, instinctively, when to pause and when to quicken as he effortlessly replicates sincerity. In fact, it is a form of sincerity, because all truly gifted liars begin by believing their own lies.
The prosecuting counsel is looking beaten now. But then he starts fumbling with his notes, shuffling them around. And I feel sweat trickling down inside my collar.
“Sorry, m’lud…” More paper shuffling. Something is coming. “Bear with me a moment…ah, yes…one more question, Mr Tapscott.”
Now he is fiddling with the back of his wig. “Have you ever spoken with the accused?”
Derek looks thrown. Is that acting?
“What I mean, Mr Tapscott, is, prior to this trial, have you ever met Mr Carver?…Do you know him? Have you ever spoken to him?”
“No.” Derek replies, totally relaxed.
The barrister looks at him for a few moments, but to me it feels like an age. Does he know? Is there an attack coming? “No further questions, m’lud.”
He sits down. You feel him admit defeat. It’s tangible. He knows Derek’s version is the most credible that the court has heard. Seymour takes a long, satisfied intake of breath. One hour later, the jury retire to consider their verdict. For twenty minutes.
“First reactions, Kevin?” Pop, pop!
“Kevin! Kevin! Over here!” Pop! Whirr!
“Kevin, how do you feel?” Pop! Pop! Pop!
“Kevin, this way!” Pop!
“Kevin!” “Kevin!” “Kevin!”
Two paparazzi square up to each other. As Graham tries to steer me through the crowd, several microphones are thrust under my nose, a TV cameraman is knocked off his stepladder. I find myself laughing at the mayhem.
“How do you feel, Kevin?”
“Give us a quote, Kevin?”
I raise my hand, like Charlton Heston playing Moses. “My main feeling, obviously, is one of relief. This has been a gruelling ordeal. But justice has been done in the end. As I always believed it would. Now I just want
to get on with my life. It’s time to move on.”
Funny how the clichés tumble out when the emotions get too big and formless. In the big scenes, life’s very badly written.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
“What are your plans, Kevin?”
“My immediate plans are to celebrate with the friends who’ve supported me through this whole, grim…soap opera.”
“What about the show, Kevin?” Pop! Pop! “Are you going to leave?”
“Hey! Careful!”
“Who are you pushing, you prick?”
“My client has no more comments to make right now, gentlemen,” Graham shouts above the swearing, as we bounce through the shoulders and elbows.
I didn’t thank Derek.
I thought thanking a witness could have looked inappropriate somehow. But I smiled at him. As he hovered on the courtroom steps. And then, as we made our escape, a few of the press approached him and I could just about hear him, fielding their barked questions.
“Please, please, this is not my day, this is Kevin Carver’s day. I’m just glad that I could help an innocent man go free, that’s all.”
In the evening, we go to a restaurant and get pissed. Me, Mac, Mac’s new wife and my old wife. A discreet corner table, away from prying eyes. After a few looseners, I claim centre stage.
“And my defence team said ‘Try not to look arrogant’. Yeh, can you believe that? They said that my face, at rest, looked arrogant, so I said: ‘What can I do about that, wear a fucking balaclava?’”
Through the laughter, Sandra is trying to say something. “They’ve got a point though. There is an arrogance…and a sort of innocence.”
“Arrogance and innocence?”
“The two can go together. But mostly it’s arrogance.”
“But…that’s probably just the set of my features, isn’t it? The way my face is arranged, I can’t help that.”
“No, it’s more than that. Something about the way you carry yourself, the way you look at people. You don’t know you’re doing it.”
“OK, Sandra. Balaclava it is.”
“For Christ’s sake,” bellows Mac, shaking the last drops from a bottle of wine, “can we not talk about something other than Kevin’s facial features, which are, if truth be told, those of a girlie-man.”
“Girlie-man?”
“Aye, you use moisturiser, don’t deny it, pal.”
“I suffer from dry skin.”
“It’s pouffiness incarnate!”
“Piss off! When are you pissing off, by the way?”
“Tomorrow. Touring the Midlands with a new show. An improvised piece about the potato famine.”
“Quick, get Cameron Mackintosh on the phone!”
Mac gets me in an over-affectionate headlock and because I’m trapped in his armpit, it takes me a while to realise that Derek is standing a few feet away, smiling.
“Oh…hi, Derek.”
“Hi.” His smile widens.
“Oh, sorry, um, Derek, this is Mac, Sandra, Julie.”
There is an awkward round of hi’s. “Are you eating here, then?”
“Oh no…no, no.” He holds up a self-effacing hand. “No, I just happened to be passing, on my way home, spotted you and um…well, just thought I’d pop in and say hi.”
“Right, listen…thank you so much for today, I…I was going to write to you.”
“Oh, not necessary.”
“No, it is. I just…well, I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
“Yes, you do,” Mac shouts, “Wormwood Scrubs!”
Above Mac’s raucous laughter, I thank Derek again.
“No thanks needed, honestly. All I did was tell the truth.”
“Well…I’m eternally grateful.”
This is so awkward. The conversation is going nowhere. Derek hovers for a few moments more.
“Well…erm…bye then.”
“Bye.”
I reach across and shake his hand. There is a staggered chorus of goodbyes from the others as Derek exits, in nervous English instalments. Once he has left, Sandra punches me on the arm.
“Ow!”
“Why didn’t you ask him to join us? He was obviously waiting for you to ask.”
“No, he wasn’t. He was on his way home, he said.”
“Oh for—”
“…just passing through, he said.”
“It’s just common courtesy.”
“Besides, it wouldn’t have looked very good, would it? After a ‘not guilty’ verdict, for me to be seen knocking back the vino with the key witness.”
“Aye, fair point, girlie-man.”
“Wouldn’t look good.”
Sandra shrugs. “You’re talking like someone who’s guilty.”
My voice rises in volume and pitch. “It just wouldn’t look very good. What if there were photographers? There weren’t photographers, were there?”
“Didn’t see any,” says Julie, the words echoing in her glass as she drinks.
“Let’s hope the bloody jury don’t suddenly turn up, that would look bad.”
I can feel my cheeks reddening, but people would assume that’s the drink, that’s what they would assume, it’s the drink doing that.
“It just felt like he was waiting for an invitation,” Sandra says quietly. “Didn’t you sense that?”
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” I snap, “I don’t know the man.”
Sandra probably suspected something after that evening. I’ve never quite had the guts to ask her. As we say goodnight, she whispers: “Take care, and don’t do anything stupid.”
It would be a lie if I said that the prospect of blackmail had not crossed my mind. But Derek didn’t seem the blackmailing type – whatever that might be. The only blackmailers I had ever met were producers.
His appearance in the restaurant had unnerved me. It was a bit of a coincidence. And how could he have spotted us? We were miles away from a window. My elation at the verdict was already clouded by questions. I felt cheated out of my moment. When I got home, I dug out one more bottle of wine and drank myself to sleep.
The morning papers made enjoyable reading. The Daily Mail was unequivocal: “Clearly, the terrible ordeal that Kevin Carver has experienced is the direct result of a feeding frenzy among the more irresponsible sections of our press.”
A female columnist in the Sun spoke for the sisters: “Jade Pope is a lying cow, as many women had always suspected.”
And the Star found a waiter she’d once screwed in Basingstoke: “Jade was a very cold lover, and a very mean tipper.”
In every paper, kind things were now being said about me. I had been cruelly wronged, my reputation was instantly returned to me. Of course, there would always be the whisperers, but I could do nothing about those. That damage had been incurred from the moment Jade had accused me.
I felt calmer, but strangely flat. Perhaps I had imagined this day too often.
Come Monday morning, I find myself back on familiar territory. The crew greet me with slaps on the back, hugs, and the girls start flirting again. Various actors tell me how they have stuck up for me at dinner parties. Nigel gives me a matey wink as he shouts down his mouthpiece: “Well, how long has he been in the toilet?…Twenty minutes? Well, go and check up on him, we don’t want him self-harming again, that put us nine scenes behind schedule. Just stick your head over the partition thing, OK?”
He is briefly bent double by a coughing fit, then he spreads his arms to embrace me.
“Kevin! Is this a social visit?”
“I’ve been summoned for a meeting.”
“They’ve got plans for Lenny,” says Simone, “that’s what we’ve heard.”
“And plans for Melanie,” adds Pam, with a giggle.
“Yeh, shark attack,” says Nigel. “In Australia. Great white shark eats her, the kid and half the boat. We won’t see any of that, of course, the whole story’s read out by Denzil the priest in a letter from her Nan.”
“Ri
ght…bit ignominious for Jade.”
“The cow deserves it,” says Pam.
“In spades.” Simone repeats it for emphasis. “In – spades.”
A small voice crackles down Nigel’s earpiece. Nigel listens, his brow furrowing to the point where his eyes disappear. “What do you mean, he’s praying?” He exhales long and hard and stares at the ceiling.
“Gavin?” I ask.
“Yeh, he turned Muslim last week. See that arrow painted on the wall there? That’s pointing to Mecca. He put that there, although strictly speaking, that’s pointing north-east, towards Seven Sisters but we haven’t got the heart to tell him.”
Nigel starts laughing, till the cough takes hold.
“You need to get that seen to.”
“I’m fine,” he splutters.
“Nice to have you back, Kevin.”
I turn. It’s Louise. Though there is something different about her. Simone mouths the word “botox” behind her back.
“We’re ready for you in the meeting room.”
I had no idea how I felt about returning to the show. Part of me wanted to just walk away. But then I had felt that way for years. I was forever fantasising about making a grand exit while denouncing the programme as shit-based baby food – Mac’s description.
But I am interested to hear what the producers have to say, if only out of mischief. Louise opens proceedings by saying how pleased everyone is about my vindication and praising my mental strength. She tries to smile, but her face won’t let her.
“We’ve had some editorial brainstorm sessions,” she announces, “vis-à-vis Lenny, and we’ve come up with some exciting new ideas.”
“Really? I very much doubt that, Louise.”
Oh yes, this is going to be fun. Louise takes a deep breath. The other producers wait expectantly.
“We are sorry about what Jade put you through. It was unacceptable. Her contract has been terminated. Melanie is going to be—”
“Shark food, yes I heard.”
“No, no, that’s just the decoy story we’re putting out to snow-blind the press. No, she’s going to be killed by terrorists.”
“Terrorists?”
One of the young assistant producers pitches in. Martin? Marcus? Matthew? “Suicide bomber,” he says. “Topical and edgy.”
The Star Witness Page 11