Guilty One

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Flight: the control of opposing forces, weight versus lift, gravity and the pull of the great beyond.

  Fight or flight: the body facilitates both at the same time; there is the choice to attack that which threatens, or to run from it.

  It had been years since Daniel had felt the need to run, but he felt it now. He felt afraid of the outcome and responsible for his part in it.

  Irene was pacing outside the courtroom, mobile pressed to her ear, her gown trailing behind her, when Daniel returned to the Old Bailey. Daniel winked at her as he passed and she raised her eyes at him.

  Court Thirteen was nearly full. Sebastian was brought in and took his seat. He looked around for his mother. The Crolls were there behind, but not looking at their son. Charlotte was wearing sunglasses, which she kept pushing higher up her nose. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. Kenneth was looking at his watch and then at the prosecution’s QC, Gordon Jones, who, Daniel thought – even without his wig – managed to look like a public-school headmaster. Thin and always leaning forward slightly at the hip, Jones was a person of indeterminate age. He could easily be thirty-five, or he could be near retirement. The skin of Jones’s face was pulled tight over his skull.

  ‘What you have for lunch?’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Sandwich. How ’bout you?’

  ‘Spaghetti hoops, but they didn’t taste right. They tasted plastic or something.’

  ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘I only had a little. They were nasty.’

  ‘You’ll be hungry. Do you want a sweet? You’ve got another while to go.’

  Sebastian popped one of Daniel’s mints into his mouth. Daniel noticed one of the journalists pointing as he offered the sweets to Sebastian, then making notes on his pad.

  Sebastian seemed pleased with himself. The judge entered. Irene was not yet back, so her junior was standing in. But this afternoon was for the Crown.

  Gordon Jones stood up and supported himself with two fingers pressed against his lectern.

  ‘Members of the jury, I appear on behalf of the Crown. The defendant is represented by my learned colleague, Miss Clarke.’

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. It might have been a breath to calm him before he began, but Daniel knew it was meant as a sigh.

  ‘William Butler Yeats once wrote that the innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. Ben Stokes was innocent and he was beautiful. He was a beautiful eight-year-old little boy. He was just so tall …’ Gordon Jones held out a flat hand to indicate Ben’s height.

  In the gallery, Ben Stokes’s mother snorted suddenly. The whole court looked up at her as her husband put his arm around her. Jones waited for a few seconds until silence fell again.

  ‘He should have had the world ahead of him: school, girlfriends, university, a career and a family. But Ben unfortunately had another enemy, other than time itself. We will show that he was bludgeoned to death in a violent attack by someone he knew as a neighbour and a playmate, but who we will show was in fact a sadistic bully.

  ‘Ben was just riding his bike near his home in Islington on Sunday 8 August this year. He was known as a quiet child, well behaved but shy. He liked riding his bicycle very much, as those of you with children in the family will appreciate, yet he left his bike abandoned in the road and the next day was found dead, having been beaten to death with a brick that lay in the corner of the playground where he was found.

  ‘We will show that the defendant, Sebastian Croll, persuaded Ben to leave his home and his bicycle, before taking him to Barnard Park where he was later witnessed bullying and physically assaulting the smaller and younger boy. Finally, when Ben refused to stay out and accept this abuse any longer, it is our contention that Sebastian became enraged and began a sustained and fatal attack on Ben in an area of the park playground which was hidden by trees.

  ‘We will demonstrate that Sebastian Croll wielded the murder weapon in a savage manner.

  ‘This is an unspeakable crime, but one which is still very rare. The newspapers would have you believe that our society is decaying and that grave violence by children against other children is more common than it was in the past. This is not the case. Murder of this kind is mercifully rare, but its rarity does not discount its gravity. The defendant’s age should not deflect you from the facts of the case: that this small child, Ben Stokes, was robbed of his life before his ninth birthday.

  ‘The task before the prosecution is straightforward – to show beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant a) carried out the actions which killed the deceased, Ben Stokes, and b) that when he did this, he did so with the intention of killing or seriously injuring him. We will show beyond doubt that the defendant fought violently with Ben Stokes, choosing a secluded and leafy area of the park to launch a savage attack. We will show that the defendant sat on the deceased and wielded a brick at the face of the small boy with the clear intention of killing him. What followed … and let us be clear, this fact is in no way diminished by the defendant’s young age … What followed … was a premeditated act of murder.

  ‘Ben Stokes was beautiful and innocent indeed, but we will show that the defendant committed the ugliest of crimes, and is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.’

  The whole room seemed to have suspended its breath and so Daniel held his. The oak panels and the green leather seemed to creak and rub with impatience in the lengthening silence. Daniel glanced behind at the Crolls. Charlotte sat upright, her mouth just turning down at the corners. Kenneth was frowning at Gordon Jones.

  Sebastian was rapt. His boredom had passed. Daniel had watched him lean forward as he listened to Jones’s story, as if it was a story, created for his amusement with Sebastian as the protagonist.

  Irene silently re-entered the court.

  When the Crown finished outlining the case for the prosecution, Daniel felt a chill. He himself did not know for a fact whether Sebastian was innocent or guilty; he only knew the boy was out of place here in the adult court – even with the tables rearranged and the wigs off and only ten reporters in the gallery.

  Gordon Jones finally sat down, and Sebastian leaned into Daniel: ‘He’s got it all wrong. Maybe I should tell them?’ His clear, well-spoken voice was loud even in a whisper.

  ‘Not now,’ Daniel said, aware of Irene clearing her throat and glancing in his direction. ‘We’ll get our turn.’

  It was the second day of the trial and Daniel arrived at court at nine thirty. He jogged past the rows of press photographers who were three deep behind the makeshift barriers. When he entered the Central Criminal Court it felt dark and humid. Each entrance to this court always felt portentous. It was like being swallowed: entering the ribcage of a beast. The marble statues reproached him.

  Again, Daniel felt nervous, as if he was a younger, less experienced lawyer. He had been involved in countless criminal trials but today his palms were moist, as if it were his own trial.

  Before Sebastian arrived in the courtroom, Daniel took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He knew what the day held and knew that it could only be hard on the boy.

  ‘The Crown calls Mrs Madeline Stokes.’

  Ben Stokes’s mother entered and made her way to the witness box. She walked as if shackled. She wore her hair tied back. It was uneven, as if she had tied it back in a hurry. The hairstyle accentuated the hollows of her cheeks and her dark eyes. Daniel was at least twenty feet from her, and yet he was sure that he could see her tremble. She leaned on the witness box when she arrived and her breaths were audible in the microphone.

  The heating made the room dry and hot. Daniel felt his armpits become wet with sweat.

  Seconds passed, as Gordon Jones leafed through his notes. Everyone in the court was waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Mrs Stokes,’ he said after a long pause, ‘I know this is difficult for you, but I’d like to ask you to cast your mind back to the afternoon of Sunday 8 August. Can you tell the court about the last time that you saw your son alive?’


  ‘Well … it was a nice day. He asked if he could go out to play on his bike, and I said that he could but that he had to … had to stay in our road.’

  She was obviously nervous, broken by a deep sadness, yet her voice was clear and genteel. It reminded Daniel of ice in a glass. When she became emotional, her voice deepened.

  ‘Did you watch your son as he played outside?’

  ‘Yes, I did for a while. I was washing the dishes in the kitchen and I could see him going back and forth along the pavement.’

  ‘What time was it, do you think, the last time you saw him?’ Jones was softly spoken, deferential.

  ‘It was about one. He had been outside for half an hour or so after lunch and I asked him if he wanted to put a jacket on or come inside. I thought it might rain. He said he was fine. I wish I’d made him now. I wish I had insisted. I wish …’

  ‘So you allowed Ben to continue to play outside? At what time did you discover he was no longer playing in the road?’

  ‘Not long after that. It was maybe fifteen, twenty minutes – that was all. I was working upstairs and I looked out of the window. I kept checking on him. I … You can pretty much see the whole of our road from up there but when I looked out … I just couldn’t see him at all.’

  When she said at all, Madeline Stokes’s eyes became very wide.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I ran out into the street. I ran up and down the road and then found his bike, lying on its side, abandoned around the corner. I knew right away something terrible had happened to him. I don’t know why, but I did. At first I thought he might have been hit by a car, but everything was completely quiet. He had just … vanished.’

  Madeline Stokes was crying now. Daniel was moved by her, and he knew that the jury would be too. Her left hand was now red against the witness box, but her face was still white. When she cried she put a hand over her mouth. Daniel remembered what Harriet had said to him about Minnie losing her daughter. He remembered the day at the market with Minnie’s hands cold on his and her sad, watery-blue eyes begging him not to mention her little girl. Like Minnie, Madeline Stokes had only one child. She had lost everything that mattered and the world was now a dark place.

  ‘I shouted for him down some of the other streets and stood at the gate to the park, but I couldn’t see him in there. I called his friends, then his father and we … called the hospital and the police.’

  ‘Did you call your neighbours, the Crolls?’

  ‘No.’ She wiped her face with flat hands. Her eyes were rueful, red pebbles. They turned and shone – watching the scene again, reliving the panic. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Did Ben occasionally play with Sebastian?’

  ‘Yes, not at school really, but sometimes at weekends. At first I had been fine about it, but then I found out that Sebastian was bullying Ben, getting him into trouble, and I stopped them seeing each other.’

  ‘Can you explain what you mean by “bullying and getting into trouble”?’

  ‘Well, when we first moved to Richmond Crescent, Sebastian asked if Ben could come out to play. I was pleased that there was a little boy so close, even if he was a bit older, but then I decided he wasn’t really … suitable.’

  ‘And why, may I ask, was that?’

  ‘After playing with Sebastian, Ben started to use some very vulgar swearwords – words that he didn’t know before. I told him off and stopped him playing with Sebastian for a few days, but still at weekends they would occasionally play together. Then I noticed that Ben would have bruises after playing with Sebastian. Ben told me that Sebastian would hit him when he didn’t do as he asked. I complained to Sebastian’s mother and told Ben he was never to play with Sebastian again.’

  ‘When you complained to Sebastian’s mother, did you receive a satisfactory response?’

  ‘No, Sebastian is a law unto himself in that house, or so I gather. His own mother has no control over him and his father’s often away. I don’t think she keeps well.’

  Mrs Stokes wiped her nose and spoke down into her handkerchief. Daniel watched Charlotte out of the corner of his eye. She was impassive, but there was a shine on her make-up now. Neither woman looked at the other. Sebastian was sitting up straight, staring at Madeline. He blinked often.

  ‘So, you didn’t contact the Crolls about Ben’s disappearance because you had forbidden your son to play with Sebastian and so did not suspect that the two boys would be together. But you think that Ben would have disobeyed you …’

  Mrs Croll began to weep silently. Her shoulders shook and she pinched her nose with the tissue. Her voice was deeper when she spoke again.

  ‘Ben was in thrall to Sebastian, I suppose. He was the stronger, older boy. He hadn’t played with Sebastian for months and I just didn’t think. Now, it … it seems obvious.’

  ‘What happened after you called the hospital and the police?’

  ‘My husband came home. The police were fantastic. I didn’t expect them to do anything so soon, but they were right there taking details, and they helped us to look around the area and put out a description of Ben.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Stokes,’ said Gordon Jones.

  Irene Clarke stood up. Daniel watched her as she smiled encouragingly and folded her hands on the lectern. She was sombre, almost penitent before Mrs Stokes.

  ‘Mrs Stokes, I am sorry for the great tragedy that you and your family have experienced. I only want to ask you a few brief questions. Please take your time.’

  Madeline gave a small strangled cough, and nodded.

  ‘Had your son ever disappeared for a long period of time before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You said that there was a time when he played regularly with Sebastian. On any of these occasions did the boys wander outside their normal play area or go missing for any period?’

  Mrs Stokes coughed and appeared to have some trouble regaining composure.

  ‘Mrs Stokes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And is it not the case that until you knew that your neighbour’s child had been arrested you did not suspect that Sebastian could have been involved in your son’s disappearance?’

  Madeline looked up into the corners of the court. Fraught in the witness box, she seemed exalted, and the room a hallowed space. Tears streamed silently down her cheeks.

  ‘I didn’t think of him,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You testified that you had to stop Ben seeing Sebastian. Is it then true that Ben enjoyed playing with Sebastian?’

  ‘No, he was a bully, he was …’ Mrs Stokes’s fingers tightened on the lip of the witness box.

  ‘You didn’t like Sebastian, Mrs Stokes, that much is apparent, but did your son not ask to play with him? You described him as being in thrall to Sebastian. Was it not the case that, despite your disapproval, Ben and Sebastian were actually friends who enjoyed each other’s company?’

  Mrs Stokes blew her nose and took small breaths. The judge asked if she wanted a glass of water. She shook her head and looked up at Irene.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stokes,’ said Irene, ‘I know this is very hard. Was this not the case?’

  Madeline sighed and nodded.

  ‘Mrs Stokes, can I ask you to speak your answers out loud?’

  ‘Maybe they were friends.’

  Irene glanced at Daniel and then sat down. She could have gone further, he knew, but the jury were tense with sympathy for the young boy’s mother. This too Daniel respected about Irene; she could turn a witness when she had to, but she always remained kind.

  The breaks were regular because of rules put in place since the Bulger trial. Daniel went to the gents as soon as court adjourned. He felt heavy and tired. His heels sounded on the marble floors. The gents were familiar to him, with their blue walls and gold taps, but they smelled of ingrained urine and futile bleach.

  There was a free urinal in the far corner. Daniel exhaled as he urinated into its white porcelain.

  ‘All right, Danny?’


  It was Detective Superintendent McCrum. His shoulder nudged Daniel’s slightly as he unzipped.

  ‘Sometimes you wonder …’ McCrum said, his northern accent strangely warm and welcome in the cold Victorian toilet, ‘is there no other way? I can see this trial is going to be barbaric. It’s wrong to put them through all this.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Daniel. He shook and zipped and began to wash his hands. He didn’t know how Sebastian would cope with the long days ahead and the worst still to come. ‘And we’ve only just started …’

  ‘I know – that poor woman,’ said McCrum.

  Daniel turned away. He left without saying another word, nodding at McCrum slightly as he passed. The older man watched him go.

  22

  One year folded into the next like furrows of tilled earth. Minnie got the back windows fixed after the chickens pecked out all the putty. Some slates came off the roof in the wind and there was a leak which dripped slowly into a bucket on the stairs when it rained. She didn’t have the money to fix it and it went on for over a year. It was Daniel’s job to empty the bucket in the morning.

  Minnie’s goat, Hector, died during Daniel’s third winter at Brampton, but the following spring she bought a nanny goat and two kids to replace him. Daniel was allowed to do the morning milking: creaming her udders and then milking her patiently, methodically. Minnie taught him how. They made a new pen for the goats and a special milking area that the other animals could not access. Minnie told Daniel that the milking area had to be kept very clean. At night they would separate kids from nanny, to allow her udders to swell. The nanny goat was called Barbara, and Daniel named the kids Brock and Liam after Newcastle United football players, although they were both female.

  At night, after his bath and his homework, he would play backgammon with Minnie as she swilled her gin and he sucked chocolate éclairs. She would marvel at his ability to count without tapping the numbers on the board. Or sometimes it would be cards: knockout whist or pontoon. She would play records while they played: Elvis and Ray Charles and Bobby Darren. Daniel would shimmy his shoulders as he sliced his cards down on to the table, and she would raise her eyebrows at him and toss a crisp at Blitz.