by John Fairfax
‘It must be an enormous relief to have finally told the truth?’ said Glencoyne.
‘It is.’
‘To have shifted the burden of lying?’
‘I’m not proud of myself, Miss Glencoyne.’
‘No, I’m sure you’re not. But let’s just look a little more closely at what you’ve just admitted.’
Glencoyne had a habit of standing with one ankle crossed over the other, like someone waiting at a bus stop, the toe perpendicular to the ground. Her expression was of someone who couldn’t quite work out the timetable.
‘You lied to DCI Winter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Trevor Hamsey, your previous solicitor, and Miss Wendling, your previous barrister?’
‘Yes.’
‘The court, in pre-trial hearings?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Benson and Miss de Vere?’
‘Yes, I did. And I’m sorry.’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘But at last you’ve grasped the nettle and told this jury?’
‘Yes, Miss Glencoyne.’
Glencoyne nodded, still bemused. ‘So now your conscience is clear? You’ve said all there is to say?’
‘I have, yes.’
Glencoyne placed a hand behind her back. ‘Where is Shinwell Lane?’
‘Shinwell Lane?’
‘That’s right. Where is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s one lie in the bag. Let’s catch another. Where is Felton Street?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not following you.’
‘Lie number two. If you won’t explain, I’ll tell the jury. Both roads are in Portsmouth. Who is Judith Appleton?’
Benson turned to give a worried look to Tess, wondering if she knew where this was going; but she’d no idea. Sarah Collingstone did:
‘She was my aunt.’
‘Your mother’s sister. And where did she live?’
‘Portsmouth.’
‘Fifty-six Shinwell Lane?’
‘Yes.’
Glencoyne nodded, no longer puzzled. ‘She’s dead now, isn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two thousand and five. But her next-door neighbour Karen Brookland is very much alive. Do you remember her? Is it all coming back, Miss Collingstone?’
Sarah Collingstone nodded but Mr Justice Oakshott made her reply for the record.
‘Karen Brookland remembers you very well,’ said Glencoyne. ‘And she remembers your aunt very well. More to the point, she remembers you going to the Clayhall Youth Club. Is she right about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you recall where it was located? Sorry, speak louder please.’
‘Felton Street.’
‘Exactly. Round the corner from where your aunt lived. And where you lived between July and September of 1998 after your mother had died. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
Glencoyne waited for the wave of surprised whispering to die down.
‘You’d had a difficult year. You’d failed your GCSEs in June. Your mother had died of breast cancer in July and to all intents and purposes you’d been homeless. Because you refused to go and live with your father, didn’t you?’
Sarah Collingstone nodded and again she was made to reply.
‘Because – to call a spade a spade – you’d sided with your mother after the separation in May of ’93. So when you found yourself having to move in with your father, you called Aunt Judith in Portsmouth.’
Glencoyne filled out the picture with small brush strokes. The defendant had moved to Shinwell Lane in Portsmouth. She’d planned to re-sit her exams at Newtown College. She’d planned all sorts. Only she hadn’t gone to Newtown College and she hadn’t stayed in Portsmouth. Glencoyne took a step to one side.
‘Now that your memory’s coming back, tell the court who lived at 17 Shinwell Lane?’
‘I can’t remember their names.’
‘Mr and Mrs Newland. But you remember their house, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because you were never out of it. And do you remember who’d been placed there by Portsmouth Social Services? Tell the court, please.’
‘Andrew Bealing.’
‘Who you claim to have met for the first time on the 26th of June 2014, having been referred to Hopton Imports Limited by the Alington Trust. That was another lie, wasn’t it?’
Glencoyne left the witness hanging in silence, and Tess almost heard a rope creak, but Mr Justice Oakshott eventually said, and kindly, ‘You must answer the question. Have you lied again?’
‘Yes.’
Glencoyne placed her hands behind her back. ‘Where, in fact, did you first meet Andrew Bealing?’
‘At the Clayhall Youth Club.’
‘On Felton Street. That’s right. Why didn’t you stay in Portsmouth?’
‘Because my aunt changed her mind.’
‘Oh, Miss Collingstone, please. Let’s stop beating round the bush. Your aunt rang your father, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she rang him to say that looking after Sarah as a schoolgirl was one thing, but dealing with a pregnancy was another. She sent you home to Brampton, didn’t she?’
Collingstone had closed her eyes and lowered her head. She swayed slightly. Glencoyne didn’t wait for an answer. She moved on as if to catch game shot out of the air:
‘Who is the father of Daniel, Miss Collingstone?’
They jury were watching, heads turned. Mr Justice Oakshott was waiting, fingers poised over his laptop. Benson must have died, because he’d ceased to move. And Tess felt maybe she owed Sally an apology.
‘Answer the question,’ said Glencoyne.
Collingstone raised a hand and smoothed her forehead; and then, as if a battery had been taken from her back, she buckled and collapsed.
41
‘What the hell just happened?’ said Benson.
Tess followed him out of Court 1 into the concourse. ‘Collingstone got convicted.’
The jury had been sent out. A medic had been called. Mr Justice Oakshott had retired to his chambers adjourning the case until 2 p.m. Glencoyne had looked through Benson as if he hadn’t been there; but there’d been the faintest intimation of a smile.
‘She’s finished,’ echoed Benson, desperate for a cigarette.
He’d asked the question – what had happened? – but he already knew the answer. Glencoyne must have got a statement from Karen Brookland, the neighbour who’d known Collingstone’s aunt. Brookland could give evidence about Collingstone knowing Bealing, but the rest was inadmissible hearsay – because she’d learned it from the aunt who was now dead. In those circumstances Glencoyne could have served a notice to introduce hearsay evidence, but instead she’d preferred to ‘cross-examine in’ the whole story, getting Collingstone to accept what Glencoyne was putting to her, and taking Benson by surprise at the same time. But no statement from Brookland had been included in the unused material disclosed by the prosecution prior to trial. So either Glencoyne had kept it back – a shit’s trick – or Brookland had come forward over the weekend, having followed the Hopton Yard killing trial in the press. If it was a shit’s trick, then Glencoyne had been running her case from a position of apparent weakness, anticipating Benson’s every move, intending all along to demolish his ‘success’ as soon as Collingstone got into the dock. And of course, if Glencoyne had wanted to weld the jury to the Crown’s case, then that would have been the way to do it. If, on the other hand, Brookland had only recently intervened, then Glencoyne had simply been very lucky; and – as Camberley often said – luck, or the capriciousness of the gods, played a great part in the running of a trial. Either way, Collingstone was finished.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Ralph Collingstone after Benson had called him into a conference room.
‘Sarah has just admitted that Andrew Bealing is Daniel’s father,’ said Benson.
Ralph tur
ned to Tess as if Benson had cracked a sick joke; Tess nodded.
‘But he isn’t,’ said Ralph, lowering himself on to a seat. ‘That’s impossible. Tony Greene’s his father . . . he told me himself.’
Benson folded his arms, painfully aware that he had no time to be sensitive; that the court would soon be reconvened and Ralph’s world was about to collapse yet again, just as it had done for Benson’s father, sitting in this very room fifteen years ago. Benson had to prepare him for what was about to happen.
‘I’m sorry, but Sarah has lied to you, far more than she’s lied to me,’ he said. ‘Even if she didn’t kill Andrew Bealing, there’s no chance the jury will believe anything different, not now. You must try and remain calm. A long journey’s about to begin.’
‘I’m going nowhere, I’m staying here, with Sarah, because she’s innocent. She can’t have killed Bealing, it’s impossible, I should know, I was with her – we were together at home, we were listening to a story and Sarah was upstairs, with the door open, so she couldn’t have been at Hopton’s Yard, could she? She couldn’t have killed him and she’d never have . . .’ – he looked faint and tugged at his shirt – ‘Tony Greene is the father, I’m telling you. He told his own parents. He suggested the name.’
Benson could have cried. Ralph couldn’t believe that his daughter had deceived him. And as for the rest – the horrific rest – his denial was primeval: his wonderful daughter could not have smashed a bottle and plunged the broken neck into someone’s body. Benson’s father had been exactly the same. Nothing the police or the lawyers said would change his mind. His son would never have killed another man. He’d been doubting himself ever since. The lobster had gone to deeper water.
‘I’ll give my evidence, Mr Benson. I’ll tell them what really happened. I’ll tell them that Sarah and I were together, at home, with Daniel.’
Benson nodded like a doctor who’d seen the size of a previously hidden tumour. The thing was a monster. Nothing could be done. Ralph wouldn’t be believed; and the jury would be right to reject his evidence.
‘You’ll have your chance, Mr Collingstone,’ said Tess, following Benson’s thinking.
‘But I have to see her now, I’ve got to talk to her about Tony Greene; there has to be some mistake, I just know, I remember Tony saying—’
‘You can’t speak to Sarah,’ said Benson. ‘I can’t speak to Sarah. She’s still giving evidence. She’s still Miss Glencoyne’s witness. Her cross-examination is only just beginning.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’ll be in a holding cell. If the doctor says she’s fine, the questioning will continue after lunch.’
Benson didn’t say the rest: that Glencoyne was going to flail her in front of the jury. But even if he had, Ralph may not have responded. When a catastrophe strikes a family there comes a time when even a parent will think of themselves instead of their children. And Ralph had the look of a man standing in his own grave. He was just waiting for the shot to put him out of his misery.
Leaving him in that state felt like an abandonment, but there was nothing else Benson could say or do. He joined Tess for a desultory lunch and then came back to the concourse where Ralph gestured towards a conference room. Benson had to explain what had happened all over again and Ralph, rambling with the glazed concentration of the condemned, told Tess she had to tell the judge about the threat to Bealing’s life, the legal highs and the missing fortune. He strained to understand Benson’s repeated explanations as to why that wasn’t possible, and then a court usher’s voice came through an opened door:
‘We’re ready, Mr Benson.’
42
Counsel are not allowed to bully a witness. They cannot be rude or aggressive. There are guidelines for this sort of thing. But there is nothing so violent as the truth, expressed simply, if one has lived a lie, drawing in family, relatives and friends as if they were nothing more than background detail, the landscape for the deceit, giving it a fresh, convincing appearance.
So Glencoyne’s flailing of Sarah Collingstone was, in fact, an extremely polite affair; more akin to putting away the Lego than a whipping. Returning to the theme of lost memory, Glencoyne dismantled eighteen years of dishonesty. Without having to build anything in its place, the real Sarah Collingstone appeared in front of the jury. She may as well have been naked under a spotlight from Hopton’s Yard.
The first great lie had been given to Anthony Greene. Then a whole raft had been floated past his parents and her own father. Deceiving the midwife, gynaecologist and hospital staff had been small beer, but she’d done it nonetheless. The whole story added up, no matter who you spoke to. One could only assume that Aunt Judith was none the wiser. She wasn’t speaking to Ralph, her brother-in-law, anyway, so the story was pretty tight. And then Anthony got killed and Aunt Judith fell from a ladder and broke her neck. The chances of being rumbled were nil.
Benson listened without taking notes, castigating himself for not having dug deep into the past; but he’d had no time. And Sarah’s case had been so like his own.
Glencoyne lingered on these early years. Had Bealing known that his girlfriend of a month was pregnant? Yes, he had. And what had he done when she told him? He’d vanished within the week. A mutual friend at the youth club had taken her to one side. Bealing had been on about tracing his mother’s family in Spain. He’d skipped the country.
‘And what was your reaction, Sarah?’ said Glencoyne.
Collingstone was a defeated woman. The pencil-line bones on her face looked broken. She’d been offered a seat. She clung on to a glass of water. Benson thought he might as well go home.
‘I felt betrayed and angry and humiliated,’ she said, crying. ‘I’d thought he’d help me. I thought he’d come with me to speak to my dad.’
For a moment, she sounded like the sixteen-year-old she’d been. Frightened of her dad’s reaction. Needing her boyfriend.
‘Did you feel used, Sarah?’
‘Yes.’
‘And thrown away?’
‘Yes, I did.’
Glencoyne then floated a kite: after Daniel’s birth, had she met any other parents and children with special needs? Yes, she had. And had any of those children, through their parents, brought civil actions for damages alleging medical negligence? Yes, they had. One of them had suffered brain damage on a scale similar to that of Daniel. He’d won £2.5 million. A structured settlement had been approved by the court to provide the little boy with a lifetime of care and support.
‘Of course, you couldn’t claim anything, because no one was at fault?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you were a little jealous, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because you’ve had to look after Daniel with no one to help but your father, always worrying what will happen if and when either of you die?’
‘Exactly, Miss Glencoyne.’
The friendliness worried Benson. It served no purpose but to bring in a conviction. Glencoyne moved forward sixteen years, just like Benson had done in that first conference, only this time the truth came out. Collingstone had Googled Bealing’s name out of curiosity.
‘And you discovered he was a very wealthy man?’ said Glencoyne, still friendly.
‘Yes.’
‘And some of that anger came back, didn’t it, because you’d brought up Daniel without his assistance?’
‘Yes.’
‘You thought of that little boy and his claim for damages?’
‘I did, to be honest.’
Collingstone had gone to see Bealing privately in early May 2014. She hadn’t wanted to make a scene. But she did want help. She needed help. Daniel needed help. ‘He needed a structured settlement?’ interjected Glencoyne.
‘Something similar, yes.’ And Bealing told her he’d sort everything out. He’d been astonishingly sympathetic. He contacted the Alington Trust saying he was looking for an assistant manager; he told Collingstone to present herself in Jun
e. He then gave her a job, not expecting her to do anything. But she enjoyed it, and would have loved it, had it not been for Anna Wysocki who couldn’t understand why Sarah had been appointed, given her limited experience.
‘He told me he needed time to work out the finances,’ said Collingstone. ‘His main concern seemed to be Debbie. She could never know about Daniel, he said, and I didn’t want to disturb his marriage. I wasn’t looking for a relationship.’
‘You were looking for money?’ Glencoyne’s tone had subtly changed.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you come with figures?’
Collingstone sipped some water.
‘Figures, Miss Collingstone?’
‘Yes. I told him about the damages case. I said this was nothing to do with me. But the cost of nursing, day and night, is astronomical. And I had to look into the future, if I got ill, or died. You can’t imagine how worrying it is.’
‘So you were seeking a settlement in the region of £2.5 million?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he agreed to provide you with such a sum, secretly, after which you would have no dealings with each other?’
‘Yes. The job was just a way of giving me some money immediately.’
‘But you had sex with him on a table.’
Collingstone recoiled as if she’d been slapped.
‘You put five scratches on his back.’
‘That only happened once.’
‘And you’d have liked it to happen again.’