by Tim Parks
But such reflections were pointless. For quite apart from what might or might not be a policeman’s particular take on the administration of justice, there was Mattheson’s career to consider. Mattheson is a career policeman, he thought. Abstract argument dissolves in the acid of personal interest. This was something Judge Savage had often thought. To catch the men whose crime had filled the newspapers and made their town the centre of national attention for some long time would be a major coup for Inspector Mattheson. He has a suspect now. A Korean? And it would be even more of a coup, would it not, if the eventual solution was not the one that everyone expected? It hardly seems likely, Daniel thought, that Mattheson will put my family and my privacy before his career. Or me before Minnie if it comes to that. Why should he? The girl might well be in danger. I’ve left, she had said on the phone. Who could know how her family would react? Daniel had called her this morning immediately after leaving home. She knows about their immigration racket, Daniel thought. To be part of her family is to be an accomplice in a crime. They can’t let her walk out on them. It was seven-thirty in the morning from a call box. I changed my mind, she said. I’m not going back. I don’t even really like Ben. I want a different life. You were right, she said, to tell me to leave. I should have done it ages ago. Have you told Sarah? he asked. About us? I think she knows, Minnie said. In any event, Daniel insisted, I want you to tell her. And I want you to tell her that I told you to tell her. I don’t want her to think I’m trying to hide anything. The time had come to be clear. Prevarication has exhausted me. My double life has tired me out. I’m proud of you, he told the Korean girl. I’m proud you had the courage to do it. The girl said nothing. Daniel had phoned Mattheson at nine. I’m preparing a written statement for you, Inspector. Let’s meet at twelve. The policeman was thrown. I have a suspect, he said lamely. I’ll come to you at twelve, Daniel repeated. And now found he was supposed to be in a meeting.
Suspect in the singular, he had said, not suspects plural. Who? Judge Savage was curious. But I can’t allow him to charge the wrong person. STATEMENT, he started to write: In 1992, during a rape trial at which I was counsel for the prosecution . . .
Hilary phoned. All the morning’s thinking had been a not thinking of Hilary, a blotting her out. Now here she was, eager and friendly. With Martin in hospital, she was saying, Christine says she isn’t so eager to move in absolutely at once. But she says she’ll definitely pay the money into our account today. We can exchange contracts as soon as the solicitor has a free moment, then decide on a rent to pay her pro tem for as long as Sarah’s there. That’s a wonderful idea, Judge Savage said. Sarah’s bound to see reason in a week or so, don’t you think? Probably as soon as she knows she’s not causing trouble, Hilary said. You could be right. Or if Christine still isn’t in a hurry to move, she could find a couple of flat mates to help with the expense. Right. That might be a solution, he agreed. He hung up and wrote:
. . . I made the acquaintance, as a result of coincidences which needn’t concern us, of a member of the jury, a young Korean woman called Minnie Kwan, though I believe her actual baptismal first name may be different.
Writing, Judge Savage felt a flow of power. Something you’d like me to type? Laura asked. The clerk was coming toward his desk. He made no attempt to hide the paper. She brought a reassuring aura of expensive perfume and youthful cheerfulness. So different from Sarah. Another brick to add to the stone-throwing bundle, she said. She dropped a thick file with a thud. No need for the moment, he told her. Just making notes for today’s meeting. Oh, right. Judge Carter’s ill, she added and they laughed. It was a court joke. I’m still laughing, he noted. I’ll still be myself whatever comes of it all.
Should he admit that the affair had begun during a trial? Because of course that would be grounds for a re-trial. Daniel stopped. There was a web of consequences here. A rapist and thief might find his sentence quashed. It would be a ridiculously inflated effect of an otherwise insignificant cause. Again the pen waited. The power you feel, he wavered, is only the power to pull down the temple on everybody’s head. Should he hang on, perhaps, until he knew who Mattheson’s suspect was? Could you erect a barrier between Sarah and Hilary so that it never comes out? How could I do that? Minnie would have to be spirited off to some other town, a job found for her, a place to live. People do do such things.
Judge Savage opened the file newly arrived on his desk. There were psychiatric reports on the various accused. There had definitely been an inflation in psychiatric reports of late, Daniel felt. Ms. Singleton, he read, describes her relationship with Mr Sayle as follows (verbatim from tape): We met at St Mark’s youth club a few years ago. I think I must have been fourteen or fifteen. Like, he’s four years older than me. He’s twenty-three now. Anyway we both went to church then. I stopped, he still goes. Not always. David’s very straight and very respectful. I mean, he does volunteer work and stuff. Paraplegics and old people. You can check with his mum. I know because it pisses me off. I mean like, I’ll be wanting to go out and he’s like helping somebody in a wheelchair at Saver Centre. Sometimes he goes with Jamie (Mr James Grier, another of the accused). Or he used to. Jamie’s changed now. He doesn’t go to church no more. I suppose you could say David’s hung up. I think so. At the beginning, it was funny, I liked him especially because he didn’t just want to have sex with me, you know how most boys are, it’s like the only thing they want. Then it got weird. I mean he didn’t do it at all. We never have. He says he doesn’t want to harm me. We go to a party or even a rave and he gets going up to a point and then stops. Or it’s just like he disappears. In his head. It gets on my nerves. I’m nineteen now. I’ve . . .
Daniel turned the pages. It really was hard to see how the inclusion of this verbatim material could have any relevance at all. Where was the statement’s conclusion? He went straight to the end: My assessment is that this is a group of people in their late teens and early twenties who are all extremely infantile. Rather than couples, or just a loose group, it is as if the accused were in a brothers-and-sisters relationship to each other (7 of the 9 accused are the only child in their families, none of the supposed boyfriend/girlfriends spoke of a normal sexual exchange) with the result that they (and in particular the older male members) seemed to have no idea how to free themselves from their innocence. In this light, the stone-throwing, if we assume that the defendants are indeed the perpetrators, which always and exclusively (according to witness reports) took place on Saturday nights and always immediately after closing time, can be seen as an attempt to establish an initiatory ritual which might allow those involved a sense of having become adult.
Free themselves from their innocence! Daniel slapped the paper down on the table. He felt angry. What was this all about? Immediately he picked it up again. It should be noted, the paragraph continued, that in many societies the performance of an indiscriminate act of violence, even a killing, has been seen as a necessary introduction to adulthood and in particular sexual maturity. Such initiation rituals . . .
Again Daniel slapped the paper down. You get killed because someone else needs to become an adult and have sex! Fantastic! The psychologists forgive everybody, he remembered a colleague saying after one trial, because the most important gesture in the modern world is to show understanding. I prompted that acquittal of the Mishras by pretending I’d understood them, Judge Savage thought. No, by fielding the idea that it was impossible to understand them. Even better. Even more understanding.
Very determinedly now, he wrote: I had a brief sexual relationship with the above-mentioned Miss Kwan after which I heard nothing from her until a few months ago – March, I believe – when she phoned me asking for an urgent favour. She didn’t say what she wanted, but during the phone-call she became involved in a violent altercation with her father. I was unable to grasp the reason for the argument because it was in Korean. Apparently as a result of the argument the call was interrupted. Some time later Miss Kwan telephoned me in chambers and beg
ged me to meet her. I agreed. She did not then come to the meeting. Since she had always spoken of her father as being dictatorial and extremely violent in her regard, I became concerned for her safety and attempted to contact her without success. Eventually I spoke to a man whom I believed to be her fiancé. He refused to answer my questions on the phone and said he wanted to meet me. I went, on the evening after the Mishra trial, to the Capricorn Café on Market High Street. Instead of her boyfriend, her father and brothers were there to meet me. I recognised them because I had once visited their fabrics warehouse as a potential customer. They refused to answer any questions about Miss Kwan’s well-being. They appeared convinced that I was a pimp attempting to lure the girl into a life of prostitution. While I was using the bathroom, they left the café and it was immediately afterwards, on returning to the car park, that I was attacked. Although I did not see the faces of those who attacked me, I have every reason to believe that it was these men. In any event I finally contacted and saw Miss Kwan yesterday at a flat on the Dalton Estate, Sperringway (flat 72 Sandringham House). She was well. However, and as of last night, the girl has now decided to leave the flat and her family and is staying temporarily at our old family flat in Carlton Street (she is presently there with my daughter). It seems she is pregnant and quite possibly, given her family’s attitude to personal freedom, in need of police protection. I did not explain these facts earlier in order to protect my reputation and, obviously, my family situation. I wish to say how much I regret the considerable amount of police time that could have been saved had I made these facts available earlier. The Kwans can be found on East India Road in the South Side Trading Estate where they have a company called Kwan’s Asian Fabrics. I am willing to give evidence in accordance with this brief statement and will furnish all further details that you may require in a full and properly recorded statement whenever and wherever you may see fit.
Daniel signed the three sheets of notepaper, put them in an envelope and asked Laura to call a courier. Oh, I’ve only just been told, Judge, she cried over the phone, congratulations on the MBE!
SEVENTEEN
IT HAD OFTEN occurred to Judge Savage that on a different day, or even in different weather, or a different room, a jury might decide things differently. Everything happens now. The thing is decided round this table at this minute with this group of people on the basis of this evidence. He had sent the letter. Twenty years of double life, he told himself, end in that statement. Looking around, he thought: I must speak to Hilary, I must tell Minnie what I have done. Expect months of confusion. Then a voice was asking if he felt well enough to sit. Just very briefly, if you could, Adrian asked. There was no other court available.
A few moments later Judge Savage heard a man proclaim himself not guilty of causing actual bodily harm to a drunk who habitually shouted on the street outside his flat. Judge Savage granted bail. The accused had no record. The court usher had a cold. Sooner or later I was bound to send that letter, he told himself again. Just one more, your honour, if you wouldn’t mind. A frail, belligerent boy pleaded not guilty to burglary. My client does not want bail, your honour. He believes his life is under threat if he leaves the prison. His defence will be duress. I have done nothing which could lead to my being imprisoned, Judge Savage reassured himself. He would not grant bail, if it wasn’t asked for, he agreed. A heroin addict, the boy claimed he had been forced to burgle by a dealer to whom he owed a substantial sum. Duress, Daniel Savage knew, was a very difficult defence. At knife-point, the boy claimed. Could the libido constitute a source of duress? Your honour, there is one other small matter for consideration. The defendant is a registered addict. I have a statement from his doctor indicating that he may have to absent himself from the trial for about half an hour at some point to receive his dose of methadone. Disrobing, Daniel experienced a moment of vertigo, a rapid clouding of the mind. He gripped a table: it was all bound to happen, he thought. Everything is bound together.
Back in his office, he phoned Jane. Jane? Sorry, this is her sister. I seem to be moving through a fog. Daniel shook his head. Would you like her mobile number? Before he could dial, Hilary phoned again. The solicitor can see us at six. She was excited, delighted. I’ll be there, he promised. No problem. A man in the fog, he thought, with a telephone, a list of numbers. No sense of direction but everyone present.
Hello? Jane! It’s Daniel. She was thrown. Sorry, Dan, I’m in the car, let me pull over. I’m in trouble, Judge Savage told her. What is it? There, I’ve parked. She hesitated: You do know I’m marrying Gordon? Of course I know. It’s not about that. Their two voices were strange. You didn’t love me, were the last words he’d heard from her. Eighteen months ago. I never really believed you’d leave your family. She hadn’t cried. You never loved me, Minnie said. Women make these discriminations. What is it? Jane repeated. He said: It’s going to come out I had sex with someone on a jury. But Dan! Listen . . . No, Dan don’t talk on the phone. Don’t! Jane, keep calm. It’s only . . . But you mustn’t! Don’t say a word more. When can I come and see you? How can I help. Perhaps a visit in the cells, he laughed.
Pathetic! He hung up. No one was going to put him in cells! I’m behaving pathetically. A few moments later Judge Savage was in the car, though it wasn’t clear where he was going. It is harder to know where I am going than if I were driving through a fog. Or phoning at random. The eye doesn’t help either, he thought. It is more of an offence for me to be in charge of a motor vehicle, he told himself, than to have had an affair. My sight is impaired. Even if it was with a member of the jury. It is more prejudicial to public welfare – he spoke out loud in the car – for me to sit at the wheel of a motor vehicle than to have sex with a member of a jury in one of the most open and shut cases I was ever involved in. Though it was a shameful breach of trust. Could Martin advise him? Martin had defended in that trial. It was one of three or four cases in which they had been pitted against each other. I might kill someone, he thought. But hadn’t Martin himself been lucky not to kill anyone when he spun off the road like that, headed no one knew where? How attractive that was. Or Christine? Now he was on the ring road. Or even Frank. He could go and see Frank. There were other names too, but none promised release. No one is interested in a traffic offence, Judge Savage thought, however serious. Martin hadn’t even been charged. Prince of Wales caught speeding, who cares? Why had he called Jane? We will never call each other, they had agreed. Daniel Savage had never felt so completely alone. A man who enters and leaves his place of work at a separate entrance, he thought, who has his own separate bathroom, who eats separately from others at a separate dining room. The judge. As if the only way not to be compromised was to avoid all contact with the world around.
It was eleven o’clock. People often speak of the ring road as if it were a clock. At nine o’clock there is the court, at 12 the exit home. Driving to six o’clock, or half past, he could go to the industrial estate to confront the Kwans. I could do that. I could discuss the state of play with them. Or Carlton St at ten. My old home, my daughter, Minnie. I have nothing to say to Minnie. Or Frank at two. And prostitutes at various half hours. There were two girls in short pants standing by a traffic light. Prostitutes are available twenty-four hours a day. A city encircled by prostitutes. The local newspaper loved to comment on the fact. Sacrifices on the altar of monogamy. He had read that somewhere. Whenever I’m out on the ring road there’s always traffic, Max had said. Did Max go to prostitutes? Somebody has to. There is a geography of prostitution, Daniel chattered to himself. There’s a particular place people go where they can be someone else for a while. As when a woman will only have a lover in the basement, or kiss a friend in the corridor. She feels excited in the corridor. It feels less inappropriate in the basement. He was at eight now, heading anti-clockwise. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant may be one thing on the ring road but he is quite another in the city centre. Not to mention the mask he wears in the office and the different voices he assumes on ho
me phone, work phone and mobile. Daniel remembered sentencing a respectable stockbroker for repeated violent affray at the away games of his childhood football team. If I drive, Daniel thought, straight to the police station, take the next exit, fast, I might still be there before Mattheson reads the statement.
But I didn’t get into the car to drive to Mattheson. He pulled up in a lay-by. That appointment came later. He sat quietly for some minutes, waiting to see what he would do. I need to breathe. This crisis will pass, he thought. He waited. Could it be, he suddenly thought, that Martin had been lying in bed quietly waiting for some crisis to pass? The same crisis he had tried to exorcise in a high-speed accident. He hadn’t even invented a story to explain where he had been going that day. I must not drive in this state, Daniel Savage told himself, sitting in the lay-by. It is a shameful risk of other lives. Cars flew past. Until, with lying in bed, a moment’s disorientation had become a month, three months. The crisis hadn’t passed. It doesn’t matter if I get this man off or not, Martin had said. It was a denial of his whole life to date. All human experience is essentially the same, he said. The condemned and the acquitted. All matter and no matter. The outcome of any trial is irrelevant.