The Unforgiving Minute

by Paul Casselle

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  Part Four

  Phillips awoke in his favourite winged armchair. The Dean’s drinks party had gone on until late. He had found the Japanese rather good fun, and had enjoyed discussing various advances in quantum physics, and shooting down their ludicrous belief that Chaos theory exposed a non-deterministic universe. Just because we cannot understand something doesn’t mean we should jump to fantastic explanations. Everything is knowable. It’s simply a question of fearless research and having the balls to go through with experimentation. The truth, when we finally understand it, is always awe-inspiring enough. For Phillips, a belief that the future is fundamentally unknowable; a belief in randomness; effects without a cause, was as crazy as a belief in God.

  The phone rang. It was the Dean.

  “Phillips, where the hell were you last night? I kept making excuses to my guests, but you didn’t arrive and wouldn’t answer your phone.”

  After a hesitant pause Phillips responded.

  “Dean, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t feeling well and sat down for a minute, but didn’t wake up until this morning. I’m so, so sorry.”

  The line went dead.

  It had happened again; this strange memory aberration that came with each use of The Device. Over the past few weeks Phillips had thought of hundreds of possible theories to explain the anomaly, but none were compelling. In one instance, he would jump a period of time and on returning, hear reports of what he did while he was jumping, but he would have no memory of the period. However, on occasions, like last night, the jump would not work. He would go through the event he was trying to avoid, but find that although he had full recollection of the events he had just lived through, everyone involved had no memory of him being present at all.

  Phillips wearily pulled himself out of the comfort of the chair and walked towards his desk; another day of trying to make sense of this. There was a knock at the door. He sighed and closed his eyes. The knock came again, but louder and more insistent. Phillips went to the door and opened it. Two men in badly fitting suits were revealed. The one in the most creased suit spoke.

  “Professor Phillips?”

  “Yes.”

  “Professor Edward Vivian Phillips?”

  “Still yes,” he said with a playful smile.

  “Professor Phillips, I’m arresting you for the murder of Alan Newton.”

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  Part Five

  Judge Hughes appeared at the panelled oak door and moved quickly to his chair. The court rose with Pavlovian reverence. The Judge sat down and the court followed his lead. Two people were left standing; the clerk of the court and Phillips, mournfully alone in the dock.

  “You are Edward Vivian Phillips?”

  “Yes,” said Phillips, with the energy of a dying man.

  “Edward Vivian Phillips, you are charged that on the third day of September two thousand and twenty-nine you did wilfully murder Alan Newton and subsequently did bury his body in Bromarsh woods.” The clerk paused and looked up from the charge sheet to meet Phillips’ gaze. “How do you plead; guilty or not guilty?”

  Phillips squeezed his eyes shut hoping that, when he opened them, he would find himself in his winged armchair; waking from a nightmare. His eyes blinked open.

  “Not guilty.”

  The newspaper reporters mumbled excitedly in the gallery and settled in for the theatrics of a juicy murder trial.

  “Order, order,” boomed Judge Hughes, reminding the court both of his presence and supremacy. “Mr Premburton? Please call your first witness.”

  The council for the Crown stood up and bowed ingratiatingly towards the bench.

  “I call Joseph Nestor.”

  A man in his early thirties entered the court and took the witness stand. The clerk approached him carrying a selection of religious tomes. Scanning through the leather-bound selection in his hands, the clerk spoke without looking up.

  “Religion?”

  “No, thanks. I’m trying to give them up,” joked Nestor.

  Judge Hughes shot a disapproving glance at the young man.

  “Sorry. I’m not religious.”

  The clerk continued, unfazed, and with great pomp and circumstance.

  “Raise your right hand and read the words on the card.”

  “I swear to give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  Premburton rose to his feet as the clerk returned to his desk.

  “Mr Nestor, you are the neighbour of Professor Phillips?”

  “Yes, I live in the house next to his.”

  “In fact, they are semi-detached, are they not?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “I understand they are quite new buildings.”

  “Built in two thousand and twenty-five. Me and the Professor were the first people to live in them.”

  “So, they’ll be those new graphene-frame affairs with ultra-thin walls, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, ultra-thin walls. I can’t even have bare floorboards because they’d make too much noise. I know the Professor needs to concentrate on his work. You know what I mean?”

  Yes, I know exactly what you mean. So, you must hear various noises from the Professor’s house.”

  “Sometimes, yeah.”

  “Mr Nestor, were you at home on the evening of the third of September this year?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “And did you hear anything unusual through those ultra-thin walls of yours?”

  Smythe, counsel for the defence, shot to his feet.

  “M’lud, ‘anything unusual’ calls for subjective speculation.”

  The judge scratched his chin.

  “Get to the point quickly, Mr Premburton.”

  Nestor looked towards the Professor.

  “Please look at me, Mr Nestor,” said Premburton with quiet insistence. “Did you hear anything… you would not usually expect to hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Raised voices.”

  “Can you tell us exactly what you heard?’

  “Well, at first it was just the usual talking; the Professor and Alan.”

  “Would that be Alan Newton?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be sure it was Alan Newton with the Professor?”

  “I’d seen him arrive earlier. I was looking out of the front window.” Nestor shot a guilty look at the Judge. “I wasn’t spying or anything like that.”

  “No one’s accusing you of anything, Mr Nestor,” said Premburton. “Please continue with what happened next.”

  “Well, their voices started to get louder. Bit of a barney, I thought, but then it went quiet for a minute, and then there was a crash, like something heavy falling on the floor. And that was it.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “How can you be so accurate?”

  “Holby City.”

  “I’m sorry… Holby City?”

  “The TV programme. It had just finished… Nine o’clock.”

  “Indeed. Did anything else happen?”

  “Yes. A few minutes later I heard the Professor’s front door bang. So, I looked out of the window and saw the Professor carrying something heavy to his car.”

  “How do you know it was heavy?”

  “Well, it was a big black plastic thing and he was half carrying it, half dragging it.” A slight smile pulled at Nestor’s mouth. “I remember I thought, my god, the Professor’s done him in.”

  “Done him in?”

  “Yeah, you know… Well, anyway, that’s all I saw.”

  “Thank you Mr Nestor,” Premburton turned to Mr Smythe, “Your witness.”

  Smythe stood slowly.

  “Mr Nestor, I only have a few questions for you.”

  Smythe gave Nestor a wide disarming smile.

  “You are sure it was Professo
r Phillips that you saw half dragging, half carrying something to his car?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are certain he came out of his house; the Professor’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  Smythe held up a photograph, “Please enter this as Defence Exhibit One.”

  He gave the photograph to an usher who, in turn, passed it to Nestor.

  “Do you recognise this view, Mr Nestor?”

  “Yeah, it’s the view from my front window.”

  “Can you see the Professor’s front door in that photograph?”

  “Well, no. Not from that angle.”

  Smythe stared at the witness for a few seconds.

  “No, not from that angle. How about the road, can you see that?”

  “Yeah, through the branches of the tree.”

  “Through the branches of the tree,” Smythe repeated slowly. “That is a very tall and wide tree. How was it possible to see so clearly with it obscuring your view?”

  “It’s autumn,” said Nestor incredulously, “all the leaves have dropped off.”

  “Indeed,” Smythe said nodding his head. “All the leaves had dropped off. Do you know what sort of tree that is, Mr Nestor?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a conifer… with dense foliage; an evergreen. The leaves don’t ‘drop off’ even in autumn. Mr Nestor, the truth is that because of that tree you cannot see the Professor’s front door at any angle, and even though this picture was taken in broad daylight, rather than at nine o’clock on a September evening, you can barely see the road. So, I ask you again, Mr Nestor. Are you sure you saw the professor?”

  “Well, not one hundred percent, no, but I heard his door shut so it must have been him.”

  Smythe interlocked the fingers of his hands and flexed them thoughtfully.

  “Okay, let us recap what you know for sure. You believe someone arrived at the Professor’s house. We have established you could not see from your window, so you can’t be sure who it was or if there was a visitor at all. You heard raised voices through the wall, which could have been a radio or television…”

  “No, I know what I saw…”

  “Please let me finish, Mr Nestor,” Smythe insisted.

  Judge Hughes cleared his throat.

  “Mr Nestor…”

  Nestor mumbled under his breath.

  “… to continue,” Smythe seamlessly resumed, “you then heard something crash to the floor. A most unusual thing to happen. There is no way that could be anything but sinister?”

  “M’lud,” shouted Premburton, losing his poise for the first time in the proceedings.

  “Mr Smythe,” intoned the judge, heavily, “you have, as have the witnesses, a duty to stick to the facts, rather than assumptive polemics. Please do so.”

  “M’lud,” said Smythe, bowing his head to the Judge, then turning back to the witness “you then hear, but cannot see, a door slam closed. And then see something in the darkness, through the thick foliage of a large tree, that you take to be Professor Phillips dragging something large to his car. Do I have that right?”

  “Well that was definitely a body he was dragging.”

  “But you couldn’t see it, could you?”

  Nestor transferred his weight from one leg to the other.

  “No, but that thump, thump, thump down the stairs, had to be a body.”

  “You couldn’t be mistaken?”

  “I know what I heard.”

  “Okay, Mr Nestor.”

  Smythe signalled his assistant. The young woman touched the play button on an audio/visual panel set into the desk. A distinct, rhythmic thump, thump, thump was heard.

  “Is that like the sound you heard, Mr Nestor?”

  “Yes, that’s it exactly!”

  Smythe signalled his assistant again. This time a large flat-panel screen flickered on. The same sound, thump, thump, thump, came over the audio, but on the screen was Smythe pulling a large blue wheelie suitcase down the steps to the Professor’s house; thump, thump, thump. When he reached the bottom, he turned to the camera.

  “That’s Professor Phillips’ suitcase. On the night in question he went to Aldeburgh-on-Sea for a few days. No more questions, M’lud,” said Smythe with practised understatement as he retook his seat.

  The next witness was a tall, thin, academic man. His hands were striking; fine and balanced with long fingers, like those of a pianist or a surgeon.

  After swearing in, the man stood erect and benign. But, he nevertheless looked like a gentleman whose patience should not be tested.

  “Dr Greenspan, you are the forensic pathologist that conducted the autopsy on Alan Newton?” asked Premburton.

  “Yes, I am,” responded Greenspan with a steady voice that perfectly matched his appearance.

  “Will you kindly tell us your findings?”

  “Certainly. The deceased had been in a good state of health before his death. He had bruising to his forearms and his right hip. There was a deep wound, seven centimetres long, on his right temple. He also suffered considerable haemorrhaging to the front right quadrant of his brain.”

  “And the cause of death?”

  “A massive cerebral haemorrhage.”

  “I understand the body was found around eight o’clock on the second of October two thousand and twenty-nine, is that correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Can you estimate the time of death?”

  “Using standard biological markers, between twenty-eight and thirty-two days previously.”

  “Can you tell us how the body was found?”

  “I’m sorry, no. I think it was someone walking their dog…”

  “No, sorry Doctor. I meant was the body dumped in the bushes or…?”

  “Oh, I see. No, the body had been buried.”

  Premburton’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, as if auditioning the emotion of surprise for a pantomime producer.

  “Buried? So whoever killed him obviously took their time?”

  Smythe jumped to his feet.

  “M’lud. The question calls for an opinion rather than factual evidence.”

  The Judge nodded his head sagely.

  “Mr Premburton, I’d appreciate questions that are a little less rhetorical in nature, if you’d be so kind.”

  “M’lud. Doctor Greenspan, may I ask how long you have been a forensic pathologist?”

  “This year will be thirty-five years.”

  “So, I think we can assume you have a wealth of experience?”

  Greenspan turned his eyes downward and momentarily tilted his head to one side.

  “In what cases do you find a victim buried rather than left above ground?”

  “Generally when the perpetrator has more time; when they’re not rushed.”

  “Or when they have pre-planned the burial?”

  Smythe was on his feet before the end of the last syllable.

  “M’lud,” protested the defence lawyer.

  “You have been warned, Mr Premburton. I will not warn you again,” said Judge Hughes.

  “I withdraw the question,” said Premburton with unconvincing contrition.

  Premburton sat down and Smythe rose from his chair.

  “Dr Greenspan, you say the cause of death was a massive cerebral haemorrhage.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the haemorrhage was the result of the head trauma?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Did you establish how the head wound was sustained?”

  “Yes, blood and skin belonging to the deceased was found on the edge of a table at Professor Phillips’ house. The edge of the table was, undoubtedly, the cause of the wound”

  “What sort of table was that, at the Professor’s house? For instance, was it a heavy table or one that could easily be picked up?”

  “M’lud,” barked Premburton, half standing, “The question calls for an opinion outside of the witness’s expertise.”

  “I quite agree,
Mr Premburton,” said the judge, “However, I do not think one needs a degree in furniture making to be able to say whether a table is light enough to be picked up or not. You may answer the question, Dr Greenspan.”

  “The table had a heavy wooden base and a thick glass top. In my opinion…” he paused, “… it would not be possible for a single person to lift it.”

  “So, there is no way the table could have been swung; as a weapon?”

  “No, I believe not.”

  “And the bruising to the arms?”

  “Consistent with a struggle.”

  “A violent struggle?”

  “The bruising was very superficial. There is no indication of anything prolonged or particularly violent.”

  “And lastly,” Smythe concluded, “Dr Greenspan, did you find any forensic evidence of Professor Phillips having been at Bromarsh Woods?”

  Premburton shifted in his chair and chewed his lip.

  “No. No soil or flora samples from the woods were found on any of Professor Phillips’ shoes or clothes.”

  “So there is no evidence that the Professor was ever in Bromarsh Woods?”

  “No, there is not.”

  “How probable is that? That a man who drags a body into the woods and digs a grave, would have no soil or flora on his clothes?”

  “Highly improbable.”

  “Thank you doctor. No more questions,” said Smythe retaking his seat.

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  Part Six

  Phillips had had great faith in Smythe from the moment he had met him. He came highly recommended and had an excellent record of acquittals. After the performance Phillips had just witnessed, he was feeling strangely sanguine considering he was standing trial for murder. It seemed that there was no hard evidence that he had committed any crime. Only that somehow Alan had hit his head on Phillips’ table, but there was very little to link the Professor to that and nothing to implicate him in any other part of Alan’s demise.