by Simon Lelic
‘I said, why are you defending him?’
Finally the gap became a chasm and the car ahead peeled right. Leo accelerated in its wake and the Passat lurched clumsily to the left.
‘Defending… What? No. I’m not defending him, Ellie – not in the sense you mean. I’m representing him is what I’m doing. There’s a difference.’ Leo took a breath. ‘One of the great things about this country, about our legal system, is that everyone, no matter how heinous the alleged crime, has the absolute, unimpeachable right to qualified representation, to trial before a courtroom. Habeas corpus, it’s called. It’s a question of process. Which means, in this case, that…’ Leo interrupted himself when he caught sight of his daughter’s expression. ‘Mr Smithson. Right?’
His daughter nodded. ‘I know he gets to have a lawyer. I’m not stupid. What I mean is, why does he get you?’
‘Me? He gets me because…’ Leo lifted a shoulder. ‘Because I was there. Because it’s my job.’
‘You could say no, though. If he did what they say he did, you should say no.’
Leo made a face. ‘It’s not that simple. I mean, there are other…’
‘You could, though. Couldn’t you? You should. I really think you should.’
Ellie wore an adult, earnest expression that did not sit easily on her fragile features. She looked pale, almost grey. She looked, in fact, as if she was close to tears – although these days it was often difficult to tell.
‘Look, darling. I don’t get to pick and choose who I represent. It doesn’t work like that. And anyway…’ He had not yet said it, not out loud. ‘I want this case. I really think I do. You might not understand that yet but one day, I promise, you will. This is a good case, Ellie. This is good for my career.’ And that was the point: for all his father’s misplaced pride, what had Leo really been doing with his life except mopping up the spillage from the high-street bars? This case was something more: a chance, as his father had put it, to make a difference.
‘Even though you said it would be awful?’ Ellie asked. His daughter’s tone was even but her expression was ominously rigid.
‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t say awful.’
‘You did. You said it would be awful and you said we should all be worried.’
Leo laughed. He could not help it.
‘Could you please pull over now.’
‘Ellie. Please. I didn’t say awful, I said uncomfortable – that it might get uncomfortable, not that it would necessarily. And I said you shouldn’t be—’
‘Dad! Pull over. Let me out. Please, let me out.’
‘It’s raining, Ellie. We’re still a block away.’
‘Pull over. Just here. Please, Dad. Dad!’
‘Okay, okay!’ Leo braked, harder than he had intended, and swung the car to the kerbside. ‘Ellie, look…’
His daughter had unbuckled her seatbelt and her fingers were reaching for the door catch.
‘Wait,’ said Leo. ‘Ellie! Don’t I at least get a…’
But his daughter was already gone.
He should have been braced for the frenzy at the police station. A twelve-year-old boy was helping the police with their inquiries; for the time being they were not looking for anyone else. For the stringers, TV reporters and local hacks, it was as enticing an invitation as an open bar.
Leo almost made it through. He was of average height and build and wore nothing more arresting than a high-street suit. Aside from his boxy, decade-old briefcase, he might have passed for an overdressed journalist or a face-man for the local news. The local newsmen, however, were all in attendance, having grabbed prime position by the doors. They knew Leo; Leo knew them. It was the crime reporter from the Post who spotted him first.
‘Mr Curtice! Leonard! Over here, Leonard!’
‘Excuse me,’ said Leo. ‘Thank you. Sorry. Excuse me.’ He sensed the television cameras tracking him and trained his gaze at shoulder height.
‘Leonard! Leo! Hey, Leo.’ A hand around Leo’s elbow and he turned.
‘Tim. Hi. Sorry. If you’ll excuse me. I really have to…’ Leo tried to forge ahead but the scrum enclosed him. The grip on his arm tightened.
‘What’s going on, Leo?’ Tim Cummins pressed his stubbled, fleshy face towards Leo’s. ‘Who have they got in there?’
‘I can’t comment, Tim, you know that. If you’ll excuse—’
‘Can’t comment on what, Leo? You’re not denying that this is your case?’
‘Please, Tim, I really should be—’
‘Who’s the client, Leo? Is he local? Will he be charged?’
Leo shook free his arm. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, with more force this time. He shoved and the journalists closest to him stumbled. Cummins dropped his notebook. He let it lie, raising himself instead on his tiptoes.
‘You have a daughter, right, Leo? How do you feel about what happened to the Forbes girl? How does your family feel about your involvement in this case?’
Leo felt himself flush. He did not look back but pressed his way onwards, leaking from the crowd and through the doorway.
Inside it was no less frantic. Exeter Police Station was an inert place, usually: a city-sized precinct for small-town misdemeanours where business was conducted with languid efficiency. Not today. Officers – some uniformed, others suited – streaked from doorway to doorway, bearing files or flapping pages and with an air that there was somewhere else they needed to be.
Leo’s entrance, nevertheless, did not go unnoticed. The desk sergeant was waiting. A tall man, wide too, he had his long arms locked and his hands splayed on the counter. Leo gave a twitch in the officer’s direction. It was ignored. Leo straightened his jacket and pinched his tie-knot and failed to stop himself checking across his shoulder as he started forwards. Cummins, he saw, was pressed against the glass of the door, his hands around his eyes. How do you feel? he had asked. How does your family feel? As though Leo’s family were anyone’s business but his own.
Leo approached the desk. His jacket was twisted and he shrugged a shoulder. He glanced back towards the entrance, then faced the man on reception. There was no question about who would speak first.
‘Good morning,’ Leo said. He cleared his throat. ‘I have an appointment. With a client.’
The desk sergeant drew back. ‘Your name… sir?’ The desk sergeant’s was Brian and he surely knew Leo’s.
‘Curtice,’ said Leo through a frown. ‘Leonard Curtice.’ He allowed his expression to settle. ‘I’m sorry if I’m late but there was quite a crowd on the—’
‘Sign here. Then go through there.’ The desk sergeant flicked his chin towards a set of double doors.
So this would be the way of things, Leo thought as he recrossed the lobby. Howard had warned him, just as he in turn had warned his daughter, but still he had not been prepared. It was discomfiting, he would admit. But no matter. Yes, his daughter was upset but she was, after all, only fifteen years old – she could not be expected to understand. As for the desk sergeant, the local hacks, anyone else who had assumed he had sided with Felicity’s murderer: their ignorance, surely, was their problem. At least now Leo understood. At least, now, he knew the extent of the hostility he would have to deal with.
He shifted his briefcase from left hand to right and once again adjusted his tie. He passed through the set of double doors. There was an escort waiting for him on the other side. The man nodded and the nod gave Leo heart. He called Leo ‘sir’ and without a hint of a sneer. He behaved properly, professionally, and Leo resolved to do the same. He would talk to Ellie and he would bear all the rest. Here, now, he had a job to do.
4
They were being watched. It was part of the agreement. The investigating team – the police – were excluded but the social worker, the boy’s parents: they were watching and listening to everything that was being said. Which, in practical terms, was very little: questions but no answers; prompts but no replies; a lopsided conversation, then, that had toppled, momentarily, i
nto silence.
Leo glanced again at the security camera. He wanted to stand and to pace but standing and pacing was what the police had done, what Daniel’s parents had done, what the social worker had, after more than an hour alone with the boy, finally resorted to. So Leo sat. When his foot tapped of its own accord, he forced it flat. When his fingers took up the beat instead, he wrapped them in a fist. He was, would be, patience personified. He and Daniel: they had all day.
They had, in truth, a deadline that was fast approaching. Leo did not want to look again at his watch because the boy had caught him last time and that single glance, Leo estimated, had cost him far more than the split second it had taken. Instead, on a blank sheet of notepaper and with the pen Meg had bought for him for Felicity Forbes’s final Christmas, he drew.
A stick figure, at the base of the page. He considered giving the figure more substance but the fleshless lines, given the boy’s build, seemed appropriate. He gave it shoes, which became trainers when he added the swoosh: blue on white, just like Daniel’s. He gave it ears and on one of them he planted a full stop. The head he left hairless, except on top: here he drew a succession of spikes – sharp, as the boy’s would have been had he not spent seventeen hours without access to a tube of hair gel. Knowing how sensitive his daughter was about the freckles that spotted her own fair skin, Leo resisted dotting the stick-boy’s cheeks and ignored, too, the silvered scratch lines around his throat. Instead he drew a mouth: a line, straight across, which he stitched shut with a string of smaller lines a pen-nib apart.
‘Not a bad likeness,’ Leo said and spun the page so Daniel could see. He caught the boy’s eyes as they leapt from the piece of paper to a point on the table beside it. ‘This is you: now, here,’ Leo said. ‘And this…’ He turned the page again and worked quickly. He drew a man beside the boy: the same earring and fastened mouth; the same hair but with a gap this time on the crown. ‘This is you in twenty years’ time. Here,’ he repeated, and directed his chin around the interview room. ‘Or in a cell a bit smaller.’ To make the point he drew a box around both figures, so that the stick-man’s head brushed the ceiling, and sectioned the box with bars. Then he turned the page once more and thrust it across the table. He clicked his pen and stared at the boy. Daniel ignored the picture. With his chin tucked against his collarbone, he kept his rinsed-denim eyes fixed on the tabletop.
‘You need to talk to me, Daniel. This – ’ he used his pen to tap the picture ‘ – is what will happen if you don’t talk to me.’
Nothing.
‘I’d like you to trust me, Daniel. I’d like you to trust me but it’s not important that you do.’ He paused. ‘Shall I tell you why?’ Again he waited but the boy, unsurprisingly, gave no answer. ‘Because I couldn’t tell anyone what we discussed even if I wanted to. If I did, they’d put me right in here with you.’ He gestured once more to the page he had ripped from his notebook. ‘I’m on your side, Daniel. Not because I want to be. I’m on your side because I have to be.’
The table that divided them was drainpipe grey: unmottled, unmarked but perhaps it was that absence of anything at which to stare that continued to draw Daniel’s focus. Leo was reminded of his first impression of the boy: that Daniel, despite everything, seemed timid, almost shy – not like a killer at all.
‘You could tell me… I don’t know. That you’d robbed a bank. The NatWest on the high street, say. You could tell me and I’d have to keep it secret. Or that you’d stolen a car. A Porsche, say. A Lexus. You…’ Leo was about to carry on but something about the boy stopped him. He had moved. Had he moved?
‘What?’ Leo said. He waited. What, he was about to say again but the boy spoke first.
‘No way.’
Leo fought an impulse to lean forward.
‘No way? What do you mean, no way?’
‘No way I’d steal a Lexus.’
Leo swallowed. He nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘A Porsche, then. Would you…’ steal, he was about to say, but the word – the direct question – did not seem appropriate ‘… how about a Porsche?’
Daniel rolled a shoulder.
‘Not a Porsche either?’ Leo slowly shook his head. ‘You’re a hard man to please, Daniel.’ And this, the ‘man’ Leo would have bet, earned a twitch of Daniel’s pale, cracked lips.
‘So what would you drive? Free choice. You’re in a forecourt with every car ever made and you get to take one home. What would you choose?’
The boy did not hesitate. ‘Subaru Impreza.’
Again Leo nodded. ‘In blue. Right? Like…’ Like? Like whom? The rally driver. Scottish bloke. Or was he Irish? ‘McRae.’ It came to him. ‘Colin McRae.’
Daniel, though, made a noise. ‘In white.’ He seemed to contemplate, then bobbed his head. ‘Yeah, white.’ He gave Leo a fleeting, bashful look. Leo, in response, picked up the drawing and crumpled it into a ball.
‘Just another half an hour.’
Detective Inspector Mathers strode on. Leo skipped to keep pace.
‘Inspector, please. He’s talking to me.’
‘He told you – what was it, Mr Curtice? The car he’d most like to steal. What next, would you say? His favourite serial killer? His top ten genocides?’
‘That wasn’t… That’s not what…’ Leo dropped back to avoid a phalanx of uniforms. He caught up with the inspector at a fire door. ‘The point, Inspector, is that he said something. His first words in seventeen hours. That’s progress, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Curtice.’ Mathers stopped mid stride and Leo’s soles screeched. ‘That’s not the kind of progress I’m looking for. Either he co-operates now or we proceed right away to pressing charges.’
‘But half an hour, Inspector. That’s all. What’s another half an hour when you’ve already told the world you’ve caught the killer?’
‘Come now, Mr Curtice. We’ve hardly—’
‘Oh no? Shall we ask the mob on your front steps and see how they interpreted your announcement?’
The detective inspector, a chiselled man far too ruddy for the season, made a motion with his mouth like he was sucking a boiled sweet.
Leo stepped close. ‘Be frank with me, Inspector Mathers, and I’ll be frank with you. This boy, my client: we both know the truth. You’ve got DNA that will turn out to be a match and you’ve got a witness – a fine, upstanding PhD student – who saw him fleeing the scene. He did it. We both know he did it.’
The policeman could not quite hide his satisfaction.
‘What we don’t know is how it happened,’ said Leo. ‘And we won’t, not until Daniel starts talking to us. Wouldn’t it be easier – for me, certainly, and for my client, yes, but also for your investigation – if someone could get him to open up? To give an account of himself?’
‘Mr Curtice. I hardly need remind you how time-sensitive this operation is becoming. It’s been four weeks since Felicity went missing; two weeks since the body was—’
‘Half an hour, Paul! That’s all! I don’t want Daniel to fight you any more than you do because we both know how that will end. It’s in everyone’s interests that he talks to me, that he trusts me. At the moment he’s tired and he’s scared and—’
This time it was Mathers who leaned close. ‘Do you think I give a fuck how scared he is? Do you think I give a fuck if he had a sleepless night?’ He pressed a fingertip to Leo’s chest. ‘How much sleep do you think I got last night? Or the night before? Or the ten, fifteen nights before that? How much sleep do you think the Forbes family got, or every other officer working this case?’
‘Look, Paul, all I meant was—’
‘You’re damn right we know the truth, Mr Curtice. You’re damn right we caught the killer and the world, as far as I’m concerned, deserves to be told.’ The detective inspector paused: a dare, seemingly, for Leo to fill the silence.
Leo said nothing.
‘Have your half an hour,’ said the inspector, waving a hand. ‘Come up with some story if you
can. Just don’t try and kid me. You’re not here to do the world any favours. You’re on nobody’s side but your own.’
They were back, it felt like, where they had started. Yet Leo, this time, let his fingers drum.
‘Daniel?’ Leo watched, waited. ‘Daniel, please. They will charge you. You understand that, don’t you? You understand what I’ve told you? Unless you give an account of your version of events, they’ll decide for themselves what they think happened.’
The boy sat with his shoulders hunched. He shrugged, as much as his posture would allow – which was communication, at least, of a kind.
‘This refusing to speak. It does you no favours. I thought I’d made that clear. Did I not make that clear?’ His tone would not help, Leo knew, but it was becoming harder to resist. He looked at his watch, openly.
‘I can’t help you if you don’t let me. Your parents – ’ Leo tipped his head to the security camera ‘ – they won’t be able to help you either.’
A noise this time: something between a sniff and a snort.
Leo stood. He turned away and clutched his forehead. He turned back, a rebuke half formed, but Daniel was now sitting upright.
‘What’s…’
Leo waited.
‘What’s… that thing.’ The boy, for an instant, met Leo’s eye. ‘That thing you said. The thing with the letters?’
Leo shook his head. ‘I… DNA? You mean DNA?’
The boy did not say no.
‘It’s a genetic…’ Leo stopped himself. ‘It’s us. It’s tiny pieces of us. It’s incontrov… It’s proof, Daniel. Like fingerprints. They take samples at the scene and try to match it to their suspect.’
‘But it doesn’t mean…’ The boy glanced at the camera. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. That… that I did anything.’
‘It… No, not in the sense I think you mean. But unless somehow—’
‘And no one saw me. Like… there. Doing, you know. What they say I did.’
‘No,’ Leo said. ‘No, that’s true. But the DNA—’