Apple Tree Yard (41 page)

‘There are quite a lot of institutes round there, aren’t there? Institutes, private clubs, research libraries…’ She glances at the jury and gives a small smile, ‘Corridors of power, that sort of stuff…’

‘I’m not… I…’

‘Forgive me, how long was it you worked for the Beaufort Institute?’

I hear a note of irritation creeping into my voice. It’s because I’m tired. ‘I still do. But full-time, eight years.’

‘Ah yes, I’m sorry, you’ve said that already. And during those eight years, you commuted every day, bus and Tube?’

‘Tube mostly, yes.’

‘You walked from Piccadilly?’

‘Piccadilly Tube, usually, yes.’

‘And lunch hours, coffee breaks, plenty of places to eat around there? Pubs after work etc.?’

At this, Mrs Price sighs – her hand goes up. Given his annoyance at the delay at break time, I am surprised the judge hasn’t intervened already but he merely looks over his glasses at the young woman barrister and she raises the flat of her hand in response. ‘Forgive me, My Lord, I’m getting there, yes…’

 She turns back to me, and lowers her voice a tone or two. ‘So in total, you’ve been working in or visiting the Borough of Westminster for, what, around twelve years? Longer?’

‘Longer, probably,’ I say, and it starts there. The moment builds, it swells and builds – a sense of unease located somewhere inside me, identifiable only as a slight clutching of my solar plexus.

‘So,’ she says, and her voice becomes slow. ‘It would be fair to say that with all that commuting and walking from the Tube and lunch hours and so on, that you are very familiar with the area?’

It is building. My breath begins to deepen. I can feel that my chest is rising and falling, imperceptibly at first, but the more I try to control myself, the more obvious it becomes. The atmosphere inside the court tightens, everyone can sense it. The judge is staring at me. Am I imagining it, or has the jury member in the pink shirt on the periphery of my vision sat up a little straighter, leaned forward in his seat? All at once, I dare not look at the jury directly. I dare not look at you sitting in the dock.

I nod, suddenly unable to speak. I know that in a few seconds, I will start to hyperventilate. I know this even though I have never done it before.

The barrister’s voice is low and sinuous, ‘You’re familiar with the shops, the cafés…’ Sweat prickles the nape of my neck. My scalp is tightening. She pauses. She has noted my distress and wants me to know that I have guessed correctly: I know where she is going with this line of questioning, and she knows I know. ‘The small side streets…’ She pauses again. ‘The back alleyways…’

And that is the moment. I glance at you, sitting in the dock, and you put your head in your hands.

I am hyperventilating openly now, breathing in great deep gulps. Poor Robert is staring at me, puzzled and alarmed.
There is something she hasn’t told me
.

The prosecution team is staring at me too, Mrs Price and her junior, the woman from the Crown Prosecution Service on the table behind them, and on yet another row of tables behind that; DI Cleveland and his team, Craddock’s father and his FLO by the door. Everyone is fixed on me – apart from you. You are not looking at me any more.

‘You are familiar, aren’t you?’ says Ms Bonnard in her satin, sinuous voice, ‘with a small back alleyway called Apple Tree Yard.’

I close my eyes. Ms Bonnard does not speak for a long time. When I remain silent too, she says, still softly, ‘Apple Tree Yard…’ She pronounces the three words quite contemplatively, as if she is remembering having been there herself. She does this so that the words, the significance of the words that is, will hang in the air of the courtroom, the recycled, air-conditioned air we have all been breathing for nearly three weeks. I open my eyes and look at her. She looks back. She wants everyone in the courtroom, but especially the jury, to know this is a significant moment. It is all unnecessary, because my deep breathing is signalling the significance more unequivocally than any theatrics from a barrister could do.
All smoke and mirrors, you know
: all of it, even the forensics. The barristers have to give the jury what they expect in order to get the result they want. Ms Bonnard is giving the jury what they expect and more: a witness caught out on the stand. What more could they ask for?

The logical part of my brain, the cortex, is functioning well enough for these thoughts to slide through my head as I stare at her, even while the intuitive part, the amygdala, is so confused I don’t know what to think or feel: my thoughts are like rats in a burning building, running along one wall after another.

‘Apple Tree Yard,’ Ms Bonnard continues, meeting my gaze, ‘is the alleyway in the Borough of Westminster, St James’s to be precise, where you had sex with your lover, Mark Costley, in a public street, quite quickly I imagine, during rush hour, standing up in a doorway, before you went on to a party where you got drunk and had sex with Mr George Craddock in his office in the Dawson Complex, while your students cleared up from the party downstairs. The next day, you told Mr Costley that you had had sex with George Craddock and claimed that he forced himself upon you. Some time later, you complained again to Mark Costley, saying that George Craddock was bothering you. You asked him to sort him out. You drove Mr Costley round to Mr Craddock’s house, in the full knowledge of what might happen. Mr Costley, your lover, went in to confront Mr Craddock, in a state of high tension, distressed by your story, and was taunted by Mr Craddock by the fact that you had been perfectly willing, whereupon Mr Costley struck him several times, leading to his death.’

I am staring at Ms Bonnard. Everyone else in the court is staring at me. Why doesn’t Robert intervene? Why isn’t he on his feet? He isn’t on his feet because he is as astonished by this turn of events as anyone else. He is planning a strategy. Is he? Is that what he is doing? There is so much in what Ms Bonnard has said that I want to deny, but it needs unpicking first. All I manage is, a feeble, curiously thoughtful, ‘That isn’t true…’ but I still don’t look at the jury.

‘Mrs Carmichael,’ Ms Bonnard says. She doesn’t look at me as she speaks, she looks straight ahead, as if she is musing to herself, inviting the jury to observe. Her voice is firm but not particularly accusatory. She is doing no more than stating simple fact. ‘Only yesterday, you were in the witness box, just as you are now, and, under oath, you told this court that you had a happy marriage, had never had an affair, and insisted that your relationship with Mr Mark Costley was platonic. You’ve lied to your husband, you’ve lied to the police and you’ve lied to this court.’ She pauses again, looks at me, mildly. ‘You’re a liar, aren’t you?’

‘No…’ I say weakly.

‘Do you want me to give examples of each of those people you have lied to? All over again? You had an affair with Mr Mark Costley that you hid from your husband, the police and from this court. Sworn witness statements, the court records…?’ Her voice is slightly raised, with a note of outrage. ‘Do I really have to go through it again? You’ve
lied
to your husband, you’ve
lied
to the police and you’ve
lied
to this court!’

‘
Yes
,’ I whisper. I will say anything to be allowed off this witness stand. I would even welcome being back in my concrete cell underground with its ludicrous bright yellow walls and bright blue floor, as long as they let me curl up on the wooden bench. I will do or say anything if only they will leave me alone.

‘I’m sorry?’ she cocks her head at me in query but she is looking at the jury.

‘Yes.’

She lets the syllable hang in the air, like a star, then she says quietly, ‘No further questions, My Lord,’ and sits down. 

23

There will come a time, after all this, when I will think of apple blossom. I will lie in a hammock strung between the apple trees in my garden and stare up at the constellations of flowers, white against the black branches, and wonder whether once, in some pre-industrial era, Apple Tree Yard really was a yard with apple trees in it, or whether it was just a street name plucked from the ether, as so many are.

That time is distant now. Now, I am still in the witness box facing hostile questioning from Mrs Price, although thanks to the efforts of your defence barrister, Mark Costley, there was very little work for the prosecution to do.

*

Robert did his best. As soon as his turn came, he asked for time to confer with his client before he proceeded – the request was denied. Hamstrung by his palpable ignorance of our relationship, he concentrated instead on Craddock, re-established the violence of the assault, my fear in the face of his reappearance in my life – but my admission rang in the room the whole while, like a Christmas jingle in a department store. And inevitably, in the light of what I had just conceded, the assault seemed less bad: I could see it on the jury’s faces. The black man in the pink shirt stared at me, expressionless; the older man of military bearing pursed his lips; the Chinese woman looked openly shocked. For each of them, their view of me was changed by this new knowledge. My actions, and the actions that were done to me – they had replaced me. I am not what I did, I wanted to say to them, or what was done to me: but as far as other people are concerned, we are indeed the sum of our actions and the things that act upon us. It is all the evidence they have. Our interior lives may be wildly different from how we are perceived but how can we expect other people to understand that? They cannot climb inside our skin, however intimate with us they may be.

I see myself reflected in the jury’s eyes and it is like looking in a fairground mirror that bulges and stretches, distorting me almost but not entirely beyond recognition. Three decades of being the most respectable science professional or suburban mother count for nothing set against one fuck in a doorway.

*

The next day, it is time for the summing up. The prosecution goes first and Mrs Price has quite an armoury at her disposal. The forensics look very bad for you, and in her attempt to defend you from the barrage of science ranged against you, Ms Bonnard has handed me to the Crown on a plate.

Ms Bonnard’s demolition of me continues in her summing up.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you were given to understand, at the beginning of this trial, that my client was going to plead not guilty to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and that we would be advancing evidence to prove that he has a personality disorder. Ladies and gentlemen, it is still our contention that Mr Costley does indeed suffer from a serious psychological disorder, but you no longer need to feel that has been proven here in court for you to acquit him. Let me explain…’

Since the revelation to the court of our affair, you are now pleading not guilty on the grounds of loss of control. The ‘identifying trigger’ that Jas told me about is, in effect, me. Ms Bonnard continues. ‘We shall never know the truth of what happened between George Craddock and Yvonne Carmichael, that night, the night she had sex with both Mark Costley and him within the space of a few hours, the first in a doorway in Apple Tree Yard, the other in an office in a university building after a drunken party. George Craddock is dead, and cannot explain or defend his actions, so we only have Yvonne Carmichael’s word for it that the encounter was not consensual. But we can assume that an encounter of some sort or another took place, and that Yvonne Carmichael told her lover, my client, about it, and that she later claimed she was being pestered by George Craddock. So whose idea was it that they drive to Craddock’s flat that day? I put it to you, that it was Yvonne Carmichael’s idea. Mark Costley’s only thought that day was to protect the woman he loved…’ She gives a long pause at this point. ‘And what evidence do you have, ladies and gentlemen, that Mark is the kind of man who would want to protect the woman he loved? Well,’ she gives a bleak little smile, ‘You could adduce that from the way he kept their affair secret for so long, in order to protect her, going so far as to attempt to withhold it from this court, prepared to take the blame for what happened for as long as possible, until even he began to realise that he had to tell the truth.’

I sit in the dock. And I listen to this story. And it comes to me that all you need for a story is a series of facts that can be strung together. A spider sometimes strings a thread from a bush to a fence post several feet away, quite implausibly it often seems, but it’s still a web.

‘Who knows what sparked off the violence between those two men that afternoon? Who knows whether Mark Costley, over-wrought and distressed and desperate to protect a woman he loved, a woman he thought to be in a situation of genuine threat from George Craddock – whether that is true or not we shall never know – who knows what state of anxiety he was in as he challenged George Craddock, and who knows how Craddock responded, taunting him, perhaps, with his lover’s promiscuity, a taunt that Mark found unbearable in the light of what he believed to have happened…’

It was a brave attempt, I have to give her that, but there was no evidence to support the theory that Craddock provoked you, was there, my love? Loss of control was always going to be a thin defence. You should have stuck to dim rep.

*

Who knows? as Ms Bonnard might say. I would like to know. Perhaps you will tell me one day. I have my own theory, and it goes like this. I don’t think you knew you were really going to kill George Craddock that day. If you had been planning on killing him, you wouldn’t have asked me to collect you at the Tube and drive you there – why have a potential witness? You wouldn’t have wanted a witness to murder, but you did need a witness to heroism, to your own view of yourself as man who would do the right thing. What happened that day was a joint enterprise, but not in the way the prosecution meant. You wanted the joint fantasy. You wanted me to see you as my avenging hero. You took the change of clothes along so that you could tell me later you had gone prepared, and then tell me that it hadn’t proved necessary, because you had taught him a lesson. He wouldn’t be bothering me again. You were quite prepared to do him harm, to frighten him, to break the law in doing so, but you had no intention of killing him. You knew how hard that would be to get away with. You are many things, but you are not a fool.