by John Fairfax
‘Yes. They went into the warehouse.’
‘Where were you?’
‘In the front office, but there were windows on either side of Andrew’s office, and I could see straight through.’
‘Was the warehouse well lit?’
‘No. But light fell on them from Andrew’s office. This time Sarah let Andrew hold both her hands. She tugged and stumbled back and he pulled her towards him and he kissed her. We’re not talking a peck. They lingered, with Andrew sliding his hand towards her bottom. Then they’d come back inside and Sarah was all red and shining. She didn’t know we’d seen them. And even though they were apart, Andrew kept following her around, accidentally brushing against her, accidentally touching her hand.’
‘Where was Debbie?’
‘She’d stayed at home. Darren, the nurse, called in to say she couldn’t make it.’
Glencoyne moved forward two months, to the week leading up to the murder. It seemed there’d been a sea-change in the relations between Andrew and the defendant. For a while, there’d been no meetings in the evening. And during this last week, the defendant had taken to ringing the main office, because Andrew wasn’t answering his mobile. There’d been several telephone calls a day, some of them minutes apart, but Andrew wouldn’t take them. He’d said, ‘Tell her I’m out, Kym.’ And then he’d put his head in his hands and said, ‘Why did I ever let her get anywhere near me? I can’t give her what she wants.’
That last conversation had taken place on Friday, the 13th of February, at about half-four in the afternoon, the day before the murder. The defendant had sounded tense and desperate. Hamilton had gone home at five and never seen Andrew Bealing again.
18
Benson rose to cross-examine. He waited until Hamilton had finished dabbing her eyes and taken a sip of water.
‘Who is Screwball?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re unfamiliar with the term?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Let’s talk about Dave, then.’
‘Who’s Dave?’
‘Your husband Dave. The one with a conviction for careless driving. The one who spent three months in HMP Bexley for criminal damage. The one sacked by Andrew Bealing in 2006 for hitting a client. Do you need any further clarification?’
‘No.’
‘You married him a year before Debbie married Andrew Bealing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dave was an HGV driver, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Employed by dear Joe before Andrew Bealing had even seen Hopton’s Yard?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you call him “dear Joe”?’
‘Everyone did?’
‘You too?’
‘Well, yes, why wouldn’t I?’
‘Because dear Joe had favoured Andrew Bealing over your husband. He’s the one who was groomed to take over. He’s the one who ended up in a nice pile in Wimbledon.’
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘Is it? But you were part of the family. You’re Debbie’s cousin. Dear Joe had married your mum’s sister. You’d worked in the firm for eighteen years before Andrew Bealing turned up. You’d married a driver. And you expected Dave to take over, didn’t you?’
Hamilton pulled at an earring. ‘That’s rubbish.’
‘But then Andy Bealing went and married thirty-year-old Debbie. No one expected that, did they?’
‘No.’
‘And all at once Andy Bealing became the apple of dear Joe’s eye. Is that rubbish, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your Dave went downhill. Just like Debbie. Because he’d lost the game of thrones. Or is that rubbish, as well?’
‘Okay, I admit it. I was upset. He was upset. We’d given years to that firm and Joe took it all for granted.’
‘Is that “dear Joe”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s return to Screwball. Have you remembered who that might be?’
Hamilton sipped more water. And Benson praised the genius of the architect who’d designed Court 1. The witness was almost within touching distance of the jury. They could hear her breathe. They could see her sweat.
‘Well, that’s what some people called Debbie.’
‘Screwball?’
‘Yes.’
‘It wasn’t some people. It was everyone. You called her Screwball, didn’t you?’
‘Well, in a friendly way.’
‘Friendly? You call that friendly? Did you visit Debbie Bealing when she was hospitalised in 2013?’
‘No.’
‘But her father had just died.’
‘There were only two of us in that office and I was run off my feet.’
‘Did you visit her after work?’
‘No.’
‘Give her a call when you heard she was on a downer?’
‘No.’
‘But you’d known her all your life. This is “poor Debbie”. Why didn’t you reach out to her?’
Hamilton fiddled with a ring, turning it round on her finger. Benson lightened his voice:
‘What about when your aunt died of a broken heart in 2014? That’s Debbie’s mum. Did you check up on Debbie afterwards, to find out if she was coping?’
‘I should have done, I suppose.’
‘That’s not what I asked you. We’re not here to find out whether you should have helped Debbie Bealing. We’re here to find out if you can be trusted. To find out if you’re a liar.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘Mrs Hamilton, you’ve come to this court crying about “dear Joe” and “poor Debbie” and “chirpy Andy” and you couldn’t care less about any of them. That’s why you never went to visit Screwball.’
‘That’s untrue.’
‘You’re seething with thirty years of resentment.’
‘That’s untrue.’
‘And you resent no one more than Chirpy Andy, who kicked your husband out of the business.’
‘That’s untrue.’
‘You’re unemployed now, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well . . . Debbie’s sold up everything.’
‘She’s loaded, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not easy to find a job at forty-seven, is it, Mrs Hamilton?’
‘No.’
‘What about David? Is he working?’
‘He’s on the sick.’
‘Are you broke, Mrs Hamilton?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Where were you on the night Andrew Bealing was killed?’
‘At home.’
‘With Dave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘So we’ve only got your word for it?’
‘And Dave’s. You can ask Dave.’
‘That was DCI Winter’s job, not mine.’ Benson watched her, pondering his next words. ‘Mrs Hamilton, before you came into court, my learned friend Miss Glencoyne warned the jury not to have pity on people when tragedy leads them into wrongdoing. Lying in court is wrong, Mrs Hamilton, and I have no pity in telling this jury that you can’t even be trusted to tell us who Dave might be.’
Glencoyne was on her feet. ‘Perhaps my learned friend might restrict himself to questions. The speech can come later.’
‘Certainly,’ said Benson. ‘Mrs Hamilton, would you agree that sex is a bit of a struggle?’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘All that writhing around. Unless you’re involved, you wouldn’t know if someone was having the time of their life or being tortured?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘The same can be said of a Christmas kiss, can’t it? They’re not always wanted.’
‘That one was. She was all red and shining.’
‘Because she’d been humiliated.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Precisely, Mrs Hamilton. You just do
n’t know what happened in that warehouse.’
‘I saw what I saw.’
‘Would you take a look at this plan, please?’
The court usher took a diagram prepared by the Crown and handed it to the witness.
‘Please mark with a cross the place where Mr Bealing and my client were standing at the time of the embrace.’
Mrs Hamilton did so. The diagram was shown to the judge, the jury and Glencoyne.
Benson fixed Hamilton with a long stare. She looked away. She was beaten and ready to be compliant. Or at least he hoped so. He moved to what seemed like a trivial subject.
‘Mr Bealing was pretty relaxed on health and safety issues, wasn’t he? There were no up-to-date manuals setting out correct lifting procedures and so on.’
‘No. He found all that stuff boring. He was always putting it off.’
That was the answer Benson had wanted. He let the reply linger before asking his last question:
‘Did you ever consider that when Mr Bealing said “I can’t give her what she wants”, all he meant was a load of manuals?’
‘That never entered my mind.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hamilton, I’ve no further questions.’
Glencoyne had no re-examination. As Hamilton left the stand, Benson turned over Archie’s note asking what kind of genie came out of a can. He wrote ‘Sprite’ and turned to hand it back, glancing up at the public gallery. Instantly he was AC1963 again. He felt the suffocation of a locked cell. He sensed Needles, knitting on his throne. He could smell the corruption. In fact, Benson had made a mistake . . . but for a second, he thought he saw his brother Eddie sitting at the back of a packed public gallery. The brother who’d never believed that Benson was innocent. The brother who knew too much.
19
Tess couldn’t understand it. According to Archie, Benson had savaged one witness after the other, and none more than the stunning Anna Wysocki, the one employee who’d made Sarah Collingstone’s life a misery. It had felt like a score was being settled: Sarah Collingstone’s big brother had gone round to Anna Wysocki’s to sort her out. It hadn’t taken long. Within minutes she was dazed, bleeding admissions.
She’d never made a single work-related complaint prior to the appointment of Sarah Collingstone. She’d never raised any of her concerns with Andrew Bealing, despite a stream of worked-related emails, letters and calls. And then it had all come out: yes, she’d been jealous of the defendant’s appointment as assistant manager – she’d applied for the job too; yes, she’d considered the defendant to be out of her depth; and yes, she’d tried to break her spirit.
‘Shaw called that the devil’s work, didn’t he?’ Benson had wondered.
Wysocki didn’t know, because she hadn’t read Shaw.
‘I commend him to you.’
She knew the defendant would be seeing Bealing on the night he was killed. She knew that Bealing always worked late at Hopton’s Yard on Saturday nights. She retracted the assertion that Bealing had favoured the defendant, given that she, too, as an Alington Trust referral, had received generous support from him. Yes, she’d sent him grateful emails. Yes, he’d changed her life. No, she’d discussed none of this with DCI Winter. He hadn’t asked. Finally, Benson seemed to relent.
‘Do you have an overcoat, Miss Wysocki?’
‘Yes.’
‘A hat?’
‘Yes.’
‘That coat. Has it got more than one colour?’
‘Yes. Same for the hat.’
‘Where did you buy them?’
‘Krakow.’
‘Winter wear, would you say?’
‘They are, yes.’
‘Did DCI Winter ask if he could borrow them?’
‘No.’
On that strange note, Benson had let her go, and Tina Sheldon was called into the ring. Twenty minutes later she left the court in tears, admitting that she’d come up with ‘Screwball’ as a nickname for Debbie Bealing; that she was the one who first suggested Darren Weaver serviced her three times a week.
‘Don’t be modest. This is high invention. Take all the credit.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘What about the thermometer?’
‘No, no, that wasn’t me. That was Kym, that was.’
Then Ricky Warton took the stand. He’d been the last person to see Andrew Bealing alive.
Warton was a driver. He’d turned up at Hopton’s Yard on Saturday night at 6.10 p.m. to hand in his time sheet. Standing in the warehouse he’d looked through the office window to see the defendant and Mr Bealing having what seemed to be a stand-up row. Mr Bealing was trying to take the defendant by the arms, but she pushed him away. She was in floods of tears. At that point, Mr Bealing turned and saw Warton, and came into the warehouse. When asked if he was okay, Mr Bealing made a grimace and said, ‘It’s nothing. She’s got her teeth into my arse and she won’t let go.’
The phrase could have meant anything.
According to Glencoyne, this was a reference to the final throes of an affair. Benson scorned the idea, seizing on the coarse wording: it didn’t belong to a sympathetic man who’d once fallen for an abandoned woman. It belonged to a boss who was sick of being pestered by an employee. Warton agreed.
By the time the court rose for the day, the notion of an affair turned sour had been seriously challenged. Of course it was still possible – the affair had been secret – but Benson had exposed so much gossip, jealousy and ambiguity that there was growing room for reasonable doubt: and that was all the defence needed.
So Tess was surprised to find Benson abstracted when he should have been thrilled. He kept glancing towards Artillery Passage from their corner table in Grapeshots Wine Bar. He’d kept his duffel coat on; and she had seen a book peeping out of a pocket. He was reading Robert Frost. Tess liked Frost. Especially the ‘snowy wood’ one. Something about promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.
‘She’s hiding something,’ said Benson. ‘I think Hamilton was right. There was a fling between Sarah and Bealing and they both got burned.’
‘Who cares?’ said Archie. ‘The jury’s no longer sure, that’s all that counts, isn’t it?’
‘No. If one part of her story is false, then the rest might be. If she loses the jury later, she’ll lose them for good.’
Benson’s gaze drifted to the entrance.
‘Debbie Bealing may be fragile,’ said Tess, drawing him back, ‘but she’s given us a lead. She’s not the only one who thinks the ninjas killed her husband.’
Tess had got some corroboration. And she wasn’t referring to Felbridge’s no-show or Winchley’s reticence or Obiora’s flight. She’d contacted Roger Grange, of Wellborn and Grange, Solicitors and Financial Advisers.
‘I rang him at work. Wouldn’t see me. Ten minutes later I get a call-back from his wife, Amanda. She’s also his secretary. She wants to see me later in the afternoon when she can get away from her husband.’
Tess met her in a coffee shop in South Wimbledon. She was pretty damn scared. In April 2014 Roger’s business partner Hugh Wellborn had been killed in a car accident on the A4. He lost control on a bend and hit a lamppost. It was heartbreaking. He left a wife and four kids behind. But Hugh liked fast cars. His licence was at the limit on points. He wouldn’t heed a warning. Amanda and Roger hadn’t thought there was anything more to the accident until Andrew Bealing came to see Roger in September that year.
‘According to Bealing, Wellborn’s death had been no accident,’ said Tess. ‘He’d been murdered for trying to void one of Bealing’s contracts. It was a professional hit.’
‘Who was the contract with?’ Benson was focused now.
‘Some European company operating as a front for Chinese interests. Amanda didn’t know which one and neither did Grange. Bealing hadn’t said; and they didn’t want to know.’
Benson turned to Archie. ‘You’ve got to go through the files for 2014 again. Examine every client. Untangle their corporate stru
ctures. Check them out. If needs be, get the Tuesday Club on to it.’
‘Okay.’
‘We’re not talking hard-nosed punters,’ said Tess. ‘Those Chinese interests weren’t legitimate. Bealing was talking about a gang. Gang interests in the UK. Based here in London.’
‘And according to Debbie,’ recalled Benson, ‘he’d been moving their stuff around.’
‘So it seems.’
‘Contraband. Only we don’t know what.’
‘No. But I’m sure Obiora knew.’
‘We’ve got to find him.’ Benson tapped the table. ‘So what have we got? Bealing was the lynchpin of a distribution operation. It’s criminal and probably international with Bealing handling the UK side of things. He’s got a good name so he’s unlikely to attract the attention of the police or customs. And if he does, he’ll just plead ignorance. The truth is, to quote Debbie, the drivers don’t open the boxes. They only check the manifest. But once those shops start bringing in the money, Bealing wants out. He wants to go completely legit. So he asks Wellborn to get him out of the contract. Wellborn contacts the client. The client wraps him round a tree.’
‘Lamppost,’ said Archie.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Benson. ‘Why kill Bealing? He’d got the message. He’d carried on making deliveries.’
‘He knew too much,’ said Tess. ‘That’s what he said to Debbie.’
Benson was frowning. ‘But why tell Grange nearly six months after Wellborn was killed?’
‘Because he wanted to make sure that Debbie was okay for money if anything happened to him. He wanted to make Grange a trustee to manage the estate. He didn’t think Debbie would be capable.’
‘So?’
‘A trust deed was drawn up, but Bealing never signed it. He left it too late. That’s why she’s probably undersold the Hopton portfolio. There was no one to stop her. She got rid of everything within eight months.’
Benson was drinking Spitfire from a pewter mug. He gave it a swish and lined up the dates: sometime in early 2014 Bealing tells Wellborn to get him out of a contract. Wellborn is killed in April. By July, Bealing is turning to Felbridge and Winchley. He’s floundering. In September he blurts it all out to Grange. By February of the following year, he’s dead.
‘This has nothing to do with Sarah Collingstone,’ said Benson. ‘She turned up in June. It’s pure coincidence. Bealing was already looking at his grave.’