Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  The judge inclines his head. ‘Mrs Morton, you will kindly keep your answers to the specifics about which you are asked.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir…’ trembles Mrs Morton.

  ‘So, very slowly then?’ repeats Mrs Price.

  ‘Yes, very slowly I would say.’

  Even Ms Bonnard has no further questions for this witness and Robert, of course, has none.

  When the judge tells Mrs Morton she is free to go, she looks crestfallen, as if she has failed an audition.

  *

  On the fourth day of our trial, the morning is taken up with legal arguments – it is a debate about the admissibility of hearsay and bad character evidence and has something to do with the witnesses that the prosecution wishes to call about you, your past life. Now that we are moving on to you, that will lead, inevitably, to me – and to what Craddock did. It is all about to get much harder.

  The jury is not called until the afternoon, during which there is another event that plunges the court back to reality, sucks us down into the vortex of it, as events dotted throughout the trial will do every now and then, often when I least expect it. I am tired, at this point, although not as tired as I will be later. I’m not sleeping well in prison: no one sleeps well in prison unless they are given a pill that knocks them out cold.

  *

  The public gallery is almost empty for once – the incident with your wife has yet to occur, there are no students that day, and Susannah hasn’t made it this afternoon. There are two people sitting at one end who I think might be distant relations of Craddock, and the two retired people who have come most days at the end of the gallery nearest the door.

  The woman who discovered Craddock’s body is in the witness box. She was his landlady. She identifies herself as Mrs Asuntha Jayasuriya, the Managing Director of Petal Property Services. She owns seventeen rental properties in the area. It was only chance that the body was discovered so quickly – we might have had a week, ten days maybe, before someone at the University reported that he had not shown up for work and the police went round. We were unlucky. Craddock was in arrears with his rent. Mrs Jayasuriya’s staff had written to him several times but received no reply so she had decided to turn up unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon. She wouldn’t normally do that, but Craddock had been a long-standing tenant who hadn’t been in arrears before so she wanted to know if there was a problem, and she was in the area anyway. She let herself into the building and walked up the stairs to the first-floor flat, hoping to surprise him, although it was she who was about to get the surprise. She had her nephew with her but instructed him to wait for her in the hall. There was no answer when she knocked on the door of Flat B but she could hear voices from the radio, which made her suspicious that Craddock was in but just not answering, so she knocked loudly, called out, ‘I’m coming in now, Mr Craddock!’ and let herself in with her key. Once inside, she didn’t even have time to call out his name again. The door opened straight into the sitting room and she saw the body immediately.

  Mrs Jayasuriya must be a lady of some self-possession as well as a successful businesswoman because she did not scream or shout for her nephew to come. She stayed standing exactly where she was and dialled the emergency services from her mobile phone. She remains rigid in the witness box while the tape of the call is played to the court. There is no trace of hysteria or even shock in her voice.

  ‘Emergency services, which service do you require?’

  ‘Police, please, and an ambulance, but it’s too late I think. I think he’s dead.’

  ‘Who is dead please?’

  ‘A man. The man who rents my flat. I’m here at the flat and he’s lying on the floor. There’s blood here. He’s dead. The address is…’ Mrs Jayasuriya gives the address with full postcode.

  ‘Right, they are on their way and what is your name please?’

  ‘My name is Mrs Asuntha Jayasuriya. That’s J, A, Y…’ she spells her name slowly.

  ‘And how do you know he’s dead?’

  ‘It’s obvious.’

  Then, on the tape, there is a small commotion as the nephew enters and can be heard calling, ‘Auntie! Auntie!’

  Mrs Jayasuriya snaps back at him in a language I don’t recognise. It sounds as though she is telling him to stay back.

  This would not necessarily be a shocking moment – Mrs Jayasuriya is measured and pragmatic – but there is still something about it that silences the court, deadens even the small foot shuffles or turning of papers that characterise much of the other evidence. It is the wormhole effect. We are there. We are listening, and picturing, and present, and George Craddock is lying on the floor in front of us, his feet toward us and his head just into the kitchenette, and there is blood, and the alarmed calling of the nephew in the background and then beyond that, the incongruously urbane tones of a presenter on BBC Radio 4.

  *

  The jury are not called on Friday. The legal arguments about hearsay evidence continue. You and I are there, in the dock, as usual, listening to it all. At one point, you lean forward in your seat and place your forearms flat on the small shelf in front of you, resting your chin on your arms and staring straight ahead. I cannot tell if you are bored or unusually intent.

  I cannot imagine your experience of all this so far. The Category A holding area here is probably very similar to the one I am in but your prison experience will be very different, I suspect. And you have been there for so long now. Have you acclimatised? Are the privations of it routine? Are you frightened? You look so changed, so other, from how I remember you, from the brief glimpses I have been allowed, and it comes to me that the heady, early days of our affair now seem like things that happened in a film. I cannot believe we had sex in the Houses of Parliament. I can scarcely believe that we ever had sex at all. That acute feeling I felt, the giddiness of it, as if I had plunged my face into a bouquet of lilies, their scent so blissful it would make me feel faint – that was what it was like. Was it happiness? Was that all it was? Or was it a kind of addiction, to the story, to the drama of what we were doing? If it was a film, we were the stars.

  *

  I have no visitors over the weekend. Susannah offered to come but she was giving up enough time to attend the trial so I told her she mustn’t. I made up a story about needing to spend the weekend not thinking about the trial, but in fact I wanted her to have a break.

  There was no break for me, nor would there be. In the queue to get breakfast, a large woman called Letitia bumps into me with her meaty upper arm and shoves her face in mine and says, ‘Rich bitch, how’s the trial going?’ Rich bitch is what they call me in here. Everyone is called something.

  Letitia is not making a polite or friendly enquiry. I turn my head away, and Letitia, who has thin, grey-blonde hair and a nose that has been broken several times and the glint of genuine psychosis in her eyes, puts a fat forefinger beneath my plastic tray and neatly flips it up from the counter and over me. Hot tea sears through my T-shirt and baked beans splat against my trousers and the guard in the corner calls out wearily, ‘Letitia! Here now please!’

  A very young, very pretty black girl in front of me hands me a thin paper napkin from the pile on the counter and says casually, ‘That fucking dyke’s out of order.’

  During Association Hour, Letitia sits in the corner of the room and glares at me when while the television high up on the wall blares advertisements and the new drug addict on our wing stands facing the wall and slowly bangs her head against it. ‘Oi, Muppet!’ shouts Letitia at the drug addict. ‘You’ll give yourself a fucking headache!’ Then she returns to glaring at me. I ignore her. I’m annoyed she’s still been allowed Association after this morning’s episode. Her aggression doesn’t frighten me, though – after a week of processes, it comes as a relief.

  *

  On Monday, the prosecution starts on you – on us.

  The first witness is a police officer. Her name is Detective Sergeant Amelia Johns. She is a trim woman with short red ha
ir, pale skin and a small, almost featureless face. After taking the oath, she adjusts her police tunic and smooths her skirt before sitting in the drop-down seat.

  Mrs Price is already on her feet. ‘Thank you, officer,’ she says. ‘You are a Detective Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police; can I just establish how long you’ve been a police officer for?’

  ‘I’ve been a police officer for seventeen years,’ DS Johns replies, looking at the jury.

  ‘And you were initially based in the borough of Waltham Forest, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘But you moved to the borough of Westminster, is that true?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct, seven years ago. I was seconded to the security team for the Estate of the Palace of Westminster and its immediate environs.’

  ‘And would you just explain to your jury how that security team works, it’s a slightly unusual situation, isn’t it?’

  DS Johns gives a slight smile and says, ‘Well, yes, it surprises some people the way it works. Security at the Houses of Parliament isn’t actually run by the Metropolitan Police, it’s run by the Estate staff. The Metropolitan police officers there all fall under the control of the Estate.’

  ‘So if I understand correctly, officers who work there are actually more like private security guards?’

  DS Johns gives her smile again. ‘Yes that’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Could you give us a concrete example of how this works?’

  ‘Well, the police staff patrol, do crime reports, but for instance, if a crime was being committed in the House of Commons, in theory, no officer would have no right to enter the chamber unless he or she was asked to do so by either the Sergeant at Arms or one of her representatives.’

  Mrs Price affects surprise. ‘So let’s say, one Member of Parliament turned and began to strangle another…’ She turns to the jury with a wry look, ‘… something we all hope would never happen, I am sure, but let’s say it did. In theory, the officers on duty would have no right to intervene unless they were summoned to do so by the Estate staff?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘And the Estate staff, what sort of people are they?’

  She pauses. ‘Well a lot of them are ex-army, there’s quite a variety in fact.’

  ‘Any ex-police officers?’

  ‘Yes, a few.’

  Mrs Price pauses. ‘And the man we have in the dock here, Mr Costley. He was one such member of the Estate staff, wasn’t he?’

  Something odd happens to DS Johns’ face. It closes. The small smile she has been giving, what one would imagine to be her natural demeanour, vanishes. Her features are more arranged, as it were – I feel, even before she speaks, that her answers are about to become more careful. ‘Yes, he was a member of the Estate Security Staff.’

  ‘He had been a police officer for eleven years, a Detective Sergeant such as yourself, then he left the Metropolitan Police and was employed by the Estate.’

  ‘I’m not aware of exactly how long Mark was a police officer for.’

  ‘Very well, of course, but would you explain to me what his role within the Estate was?’

  ‘He was a security advisor.’

  ‘In what capacity did he work?’

  I am watching DS Johns very carefully, her neat, guarded face, and I feel certain that something occurred between you and her when you worked at the Houses of Parliament. She has not looked over at you or me, not once.

  ‘Mr Costley was employed by the Estate as an advisor. I mean, to the police officer in charge of events planning…’ She pauses, as if this practical information is for some reason difficult to recall. ‘It was his job to, well, ensure compliance … Health & Safety regulations, about events, to checking up on the duty log, supervising the shifts of the CCTV monitoring crews … and so on.’ I wonder how much she knows about what you really do.

  ‘So, he was a sort of bureaucrat, then? Or someone important?’

  A minute pause. ‘Well all those jobs are important for the proper running of the Estate. Behind everything the public sees there is a huge amount of bureaucracy.’

  ‘What I’m getting at is, if something went wrong, say, an incident, would he be the man running down a corridor or the man filling in the form about it afterwards?’

  ‘He would be the man filling in a form.’

  Mrs Price has stopped speaking. She folds her arms and looks down at her table for what, to me, seems an inordinate amount of time. During this long moment, I notice, out of the corner of my eye, that you have leaned forward in your seat and dropped your head a little.

  Eventually, Mrs Price looks up. ‘Detective Sergeant, I would now like you to tell the jury about what occurred between you and Mr Costley just before you applied to transfer to your current post in the drugs and firearms unit at Barking & Dagenham.’ She looks at the DS and gently prompts, ‘Please, if you would.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says DS Johns. ‘I made a complaint to the Estate about behaviour by a group of men but in particular Mr Costley, a complaint to the Estate’s Human Resources Department.’

  ‘Would you please explain to the court what that complaint was.’

  ‘Inappropriate behaviour, I mean, on several occasions. I had been in the Monitoring Office, that’s the set of suites where we monitor all the CCTV cameras on the Estate, divided into areas. They would watch the cameras and award marks to females according to their sexual attractiveness.’

  Mrs Price has her back to me but I can imagine her expression being one of mock surprise. Then she says, somewhat cautiously, ‘Of course, reprehensible as this behaviour is, some might say it is no more than what happens in many men in male-dominated environments – security guards in shopping centres, let’s say.’

  ‘Mr Costley’s behaviour went a little further than that.’

  ‘Really, would you care to explain?’

  ‘One of the Estate staff, a young woman, complained to me that he would watch the CCTV cameras monitoring the visitors’ entrance to Portcullis House, and that if he found a female visitor attractive, he would go down to the entrance and follow her.’

  At this, several members of the jury glance over at you. I am careful to look straight ahead.

  ‘And did this member of staff report to you what he would do after that?’

  Ms Bonnard is on her feet but before she can say anything the judge gives a weary sigh and raises his hand from where it has been resting on the table, saying, ‘Ms Bonnard, in anticipation of your objections I believe we had a whole day of debate last week…’

  ‘My Lord, I believe the question just asked this witness goes beyond…’

  ‘As Mrs Price is about to explain the necessity for the question, I trust, I will allow it. You will have your turn during cross-examination.’

  ‘My Lord,’ Ms Bonnard gives a short, peremptory bow, and sits.

  Mrs Price bows to My Lord and then turns back to DS Johns. ‘As we were saying, DS Johns, could you please explain what you were told happened after Mr Costley had spotted a female visitor on the security cameras that he found attractive and had followed her around the Estate?’

  ‘He would return to the CCTV Monitoring Centre and say that he had followed her, he would comment on her figure, what she was doing and so on.’

  ‘And did you yourself observe him saying this?’

  ‘No, it was reported to me, but I once came across him going through the visitor log and cross-referencing it with the security clearance files.’

  ‘This would be quite a normal activity for a man in his job, would it not?’

  ‘He had Google-imaged the woman concerned. On his computer screen, there were about twenty or thirty small pictures of her. He closed the screen as I came into the room but his desk was opposite the door and I saw it quite clearly. He left the room and I saw the log with her name on it on his desk.’

  I think of the pictures of me that come up on Google – when you’re in academia, you end up
with quite a few, most of them very unflattering. Sometimes students take pictures during talks or lectures; they post them, they Tweet, sometimes there is video. There is no such thing as privacy the minute you stand up in front of other people. It might only be two people, but before you know it, the whole world will be able to see how you didn’t brush your hair properly that day.

  ‘And when was this incident?’

  ‘About three months before Mr Costley was arrested for the offence he is currently on trial for.’

  I stare at DS Johns.

  ‘And without wishing to identify her, can you say anything about the woman concerned?’

  ‘She was an Immigration Officer who was visiting to discuss staff vetting.’

  It goes through me like a kind of sad shock. Of course. It wasn’t me you were Google-imaging that day DS Johns is discussing. It was my potential replacement. I was in bits at the time. You were doing your best to be supportive but you were already looking around elsewhere.

  The questioning of DS Johns continues but I have the picture. You have been established as a predator, as some whose behaviour is worryingly underhand.

  *

  When Ms Bonnard gets to her feet for the cross-examination, she does so very slowly, with narrowed eyes. Am I imagining it, or does a shiver of anticipation go through the court, as if it was feeding time at the zoo?

  ‘DS Johns…’ Ms Bonnard begins, softly. ‘Thank you for coming here today, for taking time out of your duties.’

  DS Johns looks slightly disconcerted. Was that a question or not?

  ‘I won’t be detaining you long, I promise…’ Ms Bonnard smiles at her. ‘Perhaps you can explain something to me. I understand that the young woman who made this complaint to you – about Mr Costley watching female visitors on the CCTV, that is – I understand that the reason she is not in court herself today is because she is travelling abroad. Vietnam, I believe?’

  ‘I think it’s Thailand.’