Summary Justice: 'An all-action court drama' Sunday Times (Benson and De Vere)

by John Fairfax

  Tess wouldn’t dare to argue with Camberley, and Camberley had made it clear she was paying. Ever the gentleman, George Braithwaite protested for a decent interval before capitulating. Then he plumped for the Coq de Bruyère. He’d studied the menu intently, weighing up one potential rapture against another, carefully avoiding any direct conversation with Tess, for this was the first time they’d met since the day Benson was sentenced to life, when he’d urged her to keep well away from a convicted murderer. She hadn’t done. Now it was too late. On shaking hands, Braithwaite’s pained smile seemed to say he wished she’d taken his advice. And then he’d become indignant, insisting that Helen couldn’t possibly meet the bill. They were seated in Le Tour de Saint Martin, a small restaurant behind the British Museum. The voice of Edith Piaf, heavy velvet curtains and an open fire transported them from London to some forgotten corner of rural France. Archie, Benson and Tess were the guests of honour, for Benson would hear of no distinction between the three of them.

  Tess soon forgot Braithwaite’s manner because she was watching Benson with interest. While everyone else got pleasantly drunk – Tess included – he remained sober. And she knew why. He needed to be able to protect himself. Any moments of civilised excess had to take place on The Wooden Doll with Papillon. But there was something else about Benson this evening. All the praise – and it was high praise – seemed to pass him by as if he hadn’t quite heard what was being said. His mind was elsewhere. But the compliments had an effect on Tess.

  Combined with the country wine, the simple fare and the warbling ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’, she increasingly began to think she no longer cared if Benson had killed Paul Harbeton or not. It had no bearing upon his dogged fight in Court 1. A fight that would never have been fought if she hadn’t suggested that he should come to the Bar. She felt a part of his victory. She’d been there at the beginning of his journey and she’d been there for his first big case. She belonged. And what did it matter if he had orchestrated that article in the Guardian to bring her on board? It’s what she’d wanted. And Benson needed friends in a friendless legal world. Was it any surprise that he’d resorted to subterfuge?

  ‘Non, je ne regrette rien . . .’

  Douglas had suggested that if Benson was guilty then he must be a pathological liar; he must be diseased; and he was probably exploiting Tess. For her own good, he’d urged her to shun him. She looked at him now, listening to Camberley: they were like mother and son, patron and protégé. If Benson had exploited Tess, he’d exploited Camberley even more . . . and that was inconceivable. Douglas, out of caution and concern, had got it wrong. Oddly enough, thought Tess, the person who’d probably come nearest to the truth was Sally. If Benson had killed Paul Harbeton, then he was the sort of person who’d never forgive himself. Guilty or not guilty, he still longed for his innocence. Was such a man to be shunned, if he’d paid his debt? Had Tess made a mistake by joining the small group of people who were prepared to help him?

  ‘Non, je ne regrette rien . . .’

  She ordered a Calva and made two decisions. First, she’d call Sally and tell her the bet between the Samurai and Buddha was off. Second, she’d cancel the planned meeting with Angela Temple, the former manager of the Radwell Brain Trauma Clinic. Who cared if Benson and Harbeton shared a connection to Norwich? It probably meant nothing anyway.

  ‘Non, je ne regrette rien . . .’

  After taxis had taken Camberley and Braithwaite home, Tess, Benson and Archie lingered on the pavement of Russell Street. An evening spent discussing the acquittal of Sarah Collingstone had raised an inevitable question. Archie gave it voice:

  ‘Who the hell killed Andrew Bealing?’

  It could have been a Chinese gang. It could have been David Hamilton. It could have been anyone. Not knowing gave an unsatisfactory conclusion to the trial. It did to every murder trial where there was no conviction. The flip side of victory was unease.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Archie, hailing another black cab.

  ‘So do I,’ said Tess. ‘But I doubt if we’ll ever find—’

  ‘I know what happened,’ said Benson, opening the door for Tess, who then paused: she’d leaned to kiss him goodnight, coming so close her lips had touched the hairs on his face, but then Archie, swaying, spoke: ‘What are you on about?’

  Tess withdrew, fractionally, but that fraction was like a thousand miles.

  ‘I know who killed him,’ said Benson. His hand brushed against hers. ‘I know how it was done and why. I’m going to bring this case to a complete close. Do you want to be involved?’

  The question was addressed to both of them. Tess looked at Archie and Archie looked at Tess and Archie spoke for them both.

  ‘Yes.’

  * * *

  The taxi dropped Tess at the cobbled entrance to Ennismore Gardens Mews. She could still feel the tingle from Benson’s stubble on her lips; she could smell his skin; she could see the desire in his eyes – so different to Farsely’s coarse hunger, that seeming tenderness that turned into the longing for a kebab – and it had wounded her. He was beseeching and at the same time so very far off, scared to come out of his darkness, begging her to come to him. All in a quick look by the door of a taxi. By an effort of will, she pulled herself away from the memory of his touch, settling her mind, instead, on Benson’s avowal and declaration, understanding now why he’d been studying the evidence when she’d thought he was preparing his speech; understanding why he’d been distracted during Camberley’s bonfire of compliments. But she was worried, because counsel aren’t meant to—

  ‘Miss de Vere, give me a moment.’

  Tess spun round. The man who’d waited by the beadle’s gatehouse had been waiting by her home. He stepped forward into the light of a streetlamp, drawing back the hood of his tracksuit. But she felt no fear: because, close up, this man was the frightened one. He cowered, keeping himself out of arm’s reach. He glanced up and down the lane.

  ‘Will you give a message to Mr Benson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then tell him thanks. Thanks from me and thanks from all the others.’

  The man’s head was shaven. Old surgical scars converged on his scalp like a motorway junction.

  ‘Thanks for what?’ she asked.

  ‘For killing Paul Harbeton, because Paul Harbeton was a bad man, and if Mr Benson hadn’t done it someone else would’ve done, eventually. I wish I had. You can tell him that. I wish I’d had the guts to do it myself, but I’m not well, you see, even now . . .’

  He looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Why not tell him yourself?’ asked Tess.

  ‘I daren’t be seen with him. I’ve tried, but I’m worried they’re watching.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if they’ll beat him up, they’d beat me up. You can tell him I called the police the other night. I’ve cleaned up the rubbish, too. It’s my way of saying thanks. Tell him I put the cat in his garden. That was a present. To say thanks. And give him my message, will you?’

  The man grimaced as if he’d suffered a sudden searing headache.

  Tess took a step forward. ‘Do you want me to call a doctor?’

  ‘No, I just can’t remember what I was going to say. I’m not too sure about what I’ve said, either . . . but you got it, didn’t you? Tell Mr Benson, okay?’

  He then backed off and ran, loping to his right side, one leg refusing to do as it was told.

  Tess stayed in the street for some while wondering what to do; wondering what to make of this bizarre midnight visitation. When she turned in, she’d made some fresh decisions. She wouldn’t be telling Benson; she wouldn’t be calling Sally and she wouldn’t be cancelling the meeting with Angela Temple.

  PART FIVE

  ‘Who the hell killed Andrew Bealing?’

  (Mr Archie Congreve, Clerk to Mr W. Benson Esq.)

  Benson heard a soft scraping sound and looked over. A piece of paper had been slipped beneath the cell door. On
reading it, he didn’t know what to feel. This is what he’d been waiting for, and now that it had finally happened, he didn’t really want it.

  ‘What’s up, Rizla?’ said Needles.

  ‘I’m moving out. I’ve been transferred.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘First thing.’

  Needles didn’t seem surprised. But then again, nothing surprised Needles. He’d learned to go with the flow, to roll with whatever happened. It was another survival trick. The old man had mastered them all.

  That night, in the dark, Benson lay on his back, hands behind his head. And he remembered his first night, when he’d curled in foetal anguish, his hands clenched, holding on to nothing but a sliver of hope. He could so easily have dropped it. But he hadn’t. And that was because of Needles. He’d shown him what he had to do, which had made it possible for him to study the transcripts, the articles and the law books. And he was okay, too. Sort of. Unhappy, reserved, cautious, numbed . . . but okay. He’d make it back to the real world.

  ‘Thanks, Needles.’

  ‘What for?’

  He’d just broken wind.

  ‘For showing me the ropes.’

  ‘No problem, son.’

  They’d spent endless hours together. They knew each other’s habits as if they were family. They’d become strangely close, if only because Needles, in breaking his own rules, had told Benson every personal detail he could retrieve from his broken mind. He’d brought out these snapshots of memory over hooch as if Benson might keep them for him, put them in order, and write the names and explanations underneath.

  ‘Thanks, Rizla.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Ah . . . I dunno.’

  The next morning Benson jumped off his bunk as soon as he heard the key enter the lock. He’d warmed to the idea of moving. He could do with a change. He’d be nearer home. The door swung open, and Needles looked up and said:

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m moving out. I’ve been transferred.’

  ‘What? Now?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Needles gave a shrug and came over. ‘Well, good luck, son.’

  They shook hands and Benson’s eye strayed to Needles’ locker. Folded on top, neatly, was the yellow woollen scarf. Needles had finished it. The months of knitting and undoing stitches and knitting again had finally come to an end. He was about to ask for it, as a memento, when the guard pulled him by the arm.

  He was taken to HMP Codrington. He was two’d up with a lad from Warsaw who didn’t speak any English. Three days later Benson was lying on his bed reading the paper when he had one of those violent emotional experiences that have to be boxed up and buried, all on its own.

  Albert Seabrook, sixty-seven, a prisoner at HMP Kensal Green, had been found dead in his cell. A review was underway in relation to the effectiveness of risk assessments and the prevailing system of earned privileges at the establishment. Seabrook, serving eighteen months for non-payment of fines, contempt of court and handling stolen goods, had been granted permission to use knitting needles and wool. He’d subsequently knitted a scarf and hung himself. No one at HMP Kensal Green was available for comment.

  58

  Papillion was purring like a Soviet tank without an exhaust system. The papers – tabloid and broadsheet – were as effusive as Camberley had been the night before. Archie had brought a selection to The Wooden Doll first thing in the morning. So had Tess. The two of them were reading out select passages as a preliminary to whatever Benson now planned to do. They’d been told there was no time to waste. Benson was only half listening. He was uncomfortable with the praise, somehow. But he was pleased. Pleased for Sarah. And pleased for the men and women banged up out there who might think their life is over; that they’ll never make it back to normal life, and a normal job. Maybe just one of them might think they, too, could start again.

  ‘So why won’t you tell us what you know?’ said Archie, throwing the Independent on the table.

  ‘I know it’s irritating but just indulge me, please. Call me infantile. But the resolution of this case has become personal; and I’m a private man.’

  Tess folded the Irish Times. ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘Good question – and nice try – but you’ll have to wait. Fact is, the true explanation was staring us in the face from the very beginning. There’s one issue I ought to have explored and I didn’t – neither did Winter nor Glencoyne. Terribly basic. We were all a bit too hooked on that DNA. But no matter. In the long run, I think what we’re doing now will be best for everyone.’

  ‘So what happens now?’ said Archie.

  ‘We confront Anna Wysocki before she leaves the country.’

  ‘How do you know she plans to leave the country?’

  ‘Because the trial’s over. She has no reason to remain in the UK. And because it’s the only way to get your hands on £3.7 million.’

  To make sure she was there, Archie rang her number and offered a new central heating system with free maintenance for two years. She didn’t want one. She was going home to Poland.

  Alan Richard Shaftoe had lived at a Clapham address registered to Hopton Residential Holdings Ltd. According to Benson’s source – a well-connected member of the Tuesday Club who’d served two years for possession of false identity documents with improper intent – Shaftoe had bought a false passport on the deep web for £2000 in June 2014. It had been sent to his ‘home’ address, which also happened to be Anna Wysocki’s – for she was housed in a HRH Ltd flat. Benson had concluded that Bealing obtained the passport as part of a plan to evade the gang he’d tried to shop to the police – the Hong Hua. That’s what ‘Jock’ had revealed at the risk of his life. The police hadn’t come up with a false identity so Bealing took matters into his own hands. Benson, while not being surprised to learn of Bealing’s purchase – it confirmed what he’d already concluded – had seen another explanation. And bringing it into the open was now his prime objective, to secure a deeper kind of justice.

  ‘The police never found that false passport,’ said Tess. She was at the wheel of her Austin Cooper. Archie was squashed in the front. Benson was seated in the back.

  ‘Which means Wysocki must have it,’ said Archie.

  ‘I’d say the killer,’ said Benson, preferring a precise description.

  He felt this with certainty. The finding of that document, a secret bid to escape, had sealed Bealing’s fate.

  59

  Anna Wysocki no longer lived in Clapham because the property had been sold by Debbie Bealing within a month of her husband’s death. She’d lost her job, too, because the supermarket in Balham had been sold to a developer a week later. Given the evidence of Roger Grange, it was clear that Debbie had relished these transactions above all the others. She’d got her own back on one of her husband’s innumerable lovers. Out on her ear, Wysocki had found a couple of rooms in Streatham Vale. At trial she’d said she was now unemployed.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ asked Benson.

  They hadn’t forced their way in. He had given her the choice of talking to him or talking to DCI Winter who, he imagined, would want to know a lot more than the colour of her coat under sodium lighting.

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘The evidence says you did. You knew Bealing was at Hopton’s Yard. You knew Collingstone had gone to see him. You have no alibi for that night. You saw them through the peephole in the front door. You waited until Collingstone had gone and then—’

  ‘That’s not what happened.’

  ‘Look, Anna, I know about Alan Shaftoe. DCI Winter doesn’t. I know about the £3.7 million in Zurich. DCI Winter doesn’t. All it takes is one phone call and you won’t see Warsaw for at least fourteen years. The tariff’s gone up since my time. And believe me, Anna, you don’t want to go to prison. It’s very unpleasant. I knew this guy called the Gaffer and—’

  ‘You’ve got it
all wrong.’

  Her blonde hair was dishevelled. She was sitting on the edge of a worn-out sofa picking at painted nails. Benson allowed himself a reflection: even beautiful women look awful when they’re terrified.

  ‘It’s not what happened,’ she repeated, placing her elbows on her knees and peering through cupped hands as if they were blinkers.

  ‘Call Winter, please, Tess.’

  Tess took out her phone.

  ‘No, wait. Please. Just a minute. I need to think.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You’ve had plenty of time. This is your last chance. Tell me what you’d planned.’

  Bealing said he loved her. Really loved her. He’d only married Debbie because Joe Hopton pushed him into it. His daughter was knocking thirty and he’d wanted someone to take over the haulage business. So he let himself get hitched for money, for the chance of running his own show. But Joe kept his hands on the reins and he made sure that Debbie retained a controlling interest in every new venture. As regards Debbie herself, she was fine if she took her medication, but she could use her illness to get her own way. If they had a row, and Debbie didn’t like the outcome, she’d stop taking her tablets. After Joe’s death, things got worse, that’s why he paid for a nurse, Darren Weaver. Her dependence on Bealing had become more intense and he couldn’t cope; didn’t want to cope. By then, Wysocki had known Bealing for three years. The affair started like an apple falling from a tree in autumn. It was inevitable.

  ‘I wanted him to get a divorce,’ said Wysocki, her eyes wet with tears, ‘but he thought it was almost impossible. Debbie would never agree. She’d harass us for ever. And she’d never agree to any financial settlement. It would be a fight in court with Debbie self-harming during the adjournments. And then Sarah Collingstone turned up.’

  ‘Is that when he got the idea?’ said Benson.

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘Don’t be disingenuous, Miss Wysocki. The idea got Bealing killed. The idea to disappear into thin air.’

  ‘Yes.’