The Mother (10 page)

“I can't believe he was so rude to Kwame.”

“That's his job.”

“What, treating people like shit?”

“He just wants to win and anywhere he can inject a bit of doubt into the minds of the jury, he will.”

“Regardless of the truth?”

“Marcia, do you really think he gives a toss whether Manley's guilty or innocent? He just wants to win. This is all about scoring points, nothing more. And Quigg's no different. Do you think it's just coincidence that she happens to have a black male assistant working with her on this case? He's basically her antiracism proclamation, sitting there for the duration in case anyone doubts it. That'll gain her a couple of points in the minds of some of the jury at least.”

If we were anywhere else, I would probably be shouting. In the stairwell, beneath the sign telling us not to discuss cases here, my words are a low and frantic hiss. “Oh my God! You're totally paranoid! You know, everyone everywhere isn't
making some political point with everything they do. Why does poor Henry have to be some complicated plot for Quigg to prove she's not prejudiced? Why can't he just be the most qualified, capable person she could have chosen to bring along to help her?”

Nipa returns from the toilet and because of this the discussion comes to an abrupt end.

“So far so good,” she says, and neither of us replies, though I give Nipa a small smile of acknowledgment.

“It's Nadine Forrester next, isn't it?” Lorna asks.

Nipa nods then says to me, “Her evidence is going to be pretty graphic, Marcia. Are you sure you want to be in there listening to it?”

“I have to, I don't have a choice.”

“You do have a choice,” Lorna says. “I'll be there. You don't have to.”

“I want to know, . . .” I say. I don't explain it, the raw need for every detail, no matter how awful, how terrible, no matter what it contributes to my nightmares, my pain. I find it hard to understand myself. My son died horribly, in the most traumatic circumstances, and he did it without me. He didn't have the chance to opt out, and because he could not make that choice, I will not make it either. But it is so personal and I don't know if it is structurally sound, so I don't say it, can't take the risk of Lorna or Nipa taking this fragile logic apart. “. . . I
have
to know.”

Lorna holds my hand, squeezes it, and says, “Okay.”

Nadine Forrester is young and blond and nervous. Quigg does a good job easing her in gently, building a picture of a twenty-two-year-old who jogs four times a week, for differing
durations, in different places, one of the regular places she jogged up until March 18 being the Sports Ground.

On March 18 at around six fifteen, she was on her second lap of the grounds, and Quigg guides the jury to the detailed map of the Sports Ground so they can see that she was in the final quarter of a clockwise circuit. There is a slight incline that meant she did not have a clear view of the entrance to the Sports Ground till she was about 800 meters away from it. This was the first point that she noticed Ryan ahead in the distance. She had her headphones in, was listening to garage music as she ran. She was vigilant, always is when she's running. She's had trouble with weirdos, been followed in the past, regularly had to deal with sexual innuendo and unwanted attention, so although she had her headphones in, she was fully aware of her surroundings and the people in her vicinity.

She is pretty, Nadine, maybe five seven or eight with a slim, athletic frame. I visualize her in running kit, with cropped pants and vest, her hair, which is down now, pulled into a ponytail behind her, and have no difficulty imagining men ogling and making comments as she passes.

Quigg asks, “Miss Forrester, what was Ryan doing when he first came into view?”

“He was too far away, I couldn't see what he was doing, but once he came into view I kept my eyes on him.”

“At that point he was walking toward you?”

“Yes.”

“But still some distance away?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anyone else in the park?”

“No. I'd passed another guy who was jogging in the oppo
site direction a few minutes earlier, but no one else. That was one of the reasons I kept my eye on him. I thought about turning around and running the other way, to be honest, 'cause there weren't any other people near us and I didn't want my phone jacked . . .”

“As in stolen from you?”

“Yes.”

“So you thought about turning around and going the other way.”

“Yes.”

“What stopped you?”

“As I got closer, I could see he was eating, looked like chicken and chips out of a box. That sort of made me feel a bit safer, not that you can't mug someone if you're eating, but it made me feel a bit safer, so I carried on.”

She's blowing my mind. She sees my son walking in the park. He's not interested in her, not even glancing her way or paying her any attention. He's just in the Sports Ground, walking along, eating chicken and chips, wearing his football kit with his school blazer over it, and without knowing anything else about him, she's already associated him with phone-jacking and mugging.

Ryan slept over at Lorna's about a year ago. He got the bus to hers after school and stayed till the Saturday evening. He got home about sevenish, and when he entered the house, he slammed the front door. It was so uncharacteristic that I went straight out into the hallway to see what was wrong, and it was obvious he was upset, close to tears as he chucked his bag onto the floor, unzipped his body warmer.

“What's happened?” I asked.

“Nothing!”

“Tell me.”

“What's the point? It doesn't change anything.”

“Ryan, would you please talk to me? What's happened?”

“Nothing!” he said. “Nothing! I'm not exaggerating,
nothing
happened!”

“I don't understand.”

“I got on the bus to come home. It was packed. I sat down. That's it. I wasn't doing nothing, just sat down and the old lady next to me moves over. There's nowhere to go, but she moves, scrunches herself up against the window—oh my days, if you saw her, all scrunched up, y'know—and she wraps
both
her hands around the handles of her bag like she's ready to fight me to stop me taking it. I never even noticed she
had
a bag. Up to then I never even really noticed her. Why's she gotta go on like that? Why?”

“She's an ignorant woman. You just have to ignore people like that . . .”

“I should ignore her? Why ain't
she
ignoring
me
? On my life, she made me so angry I wannid to take her stinking bag, not to rob her, I wannid to chuck it out the window, teach her a lesson. I came this close!” He put his thumb and index finger about a centimeter apart, demonstrating.

Obviously he didn't do it. Obviously I talked him down, appealed to the sensible, compassionate part of him that the stranger on the bus had snuffed out in a moment of ignorance. But it was on my mind for weeks after. He was fifteen. I was already steering him away from street kids toward friends of a higher caliber, I was preventing him from aimlessly hanging around by making sure his time was filled, nudging him toward study and books and everything that might ensure his future was bright, but I couldn't work out how to steer
him clear of ordinary people in common spaces, had not brought him up like my mother had brought me up, telling me I needed to be twice as good as the next white person in order to get half as far. That woman on the bus, who probably didn't even think about him again once he'd got off at his stop, was in my head for weeks and I shared Ryan's anger. I know he would have been angry now listening to Nadine's racial profiling of him, while all he was doing was putting one foot in front of the other, going to pick up his stuff.

Quigg asks, “You were still jogging toward Ryan. You decided not to turn back. What happened next?”

“I was probably about a hundred meters away from him when I saw another guy behind him. He'd just entered the Sports Ground and he was walking quickly in the same direction as Ryan but was maybe two hundred meters away from him. I was close enough to Ryan to see his face. He had his headphones in his ears. I think he was listening to music, because he was walking like he was keeping time with the beat.”

“Did he look at you?”

“No, he was looking at his food. I'm sure he must have noticed me but he wasn't actually leering.”

“Can you describe the other person, the one who had just entered the Sports Ground?”

“It was dark and he was wearing a hoodie. I couldn't see his face. I thought about turning around again, but I felt safer because I was almost level with Ryan, so I wasn't the only person about.”

“And what happened next?”

“I passed Ryan. He didn't look at me. But the other guy, I was running toward him but I still couldn't see his face even though I was only about a hundred and fifty meters away, and
that was freaking me out a bit. Anyway, I carried on jogging toward him. He was walking really fast toward me and he seemed to be getting faster and then it was like he was running toward me and I nearly freaked out completely. I thought he was gonna attack me. After I started running, 'cause of a couple of incidents, I started going to tae kwon do, and when he was running toward me, I was thinking about stance, the best way to use his own force against him or block him if he went for me; it's like my mind had slowed down and I was trying to be prepared for attack, and then he ran past me . . .”

“I want to stop you there for a moment. Can you describe that person?”

“It was all so fast and I couldn't see his face 'cause his head was down, like he was looking at the ground.”

“What about his clothing? Did you notice what he was wearing?”

“Black jogging bottoms and trainers; Nike Flynit Maxes. He had on a top, kinda dark brown, and it had a logo on it, a yellow one, and his hood was up. The hood was black.”

“Did you notice anything in particular about the way he walked?”

“He was running.”

“Before he started running. Did you notice anything unique or characteristic about the way he walked?”

“No.”

“What about his height?”

“He was taller than me, a lot taller, about six foot, maybe six two.”

Her estimation of the person's height is spot on; Tyson Manley is six foot one.

“Could you see if he was carrying anything?”

“Not in his left hand. He passed me on the left. That hand was empty. But even when he was coming toward me I couldn't see his right hand because he kinda kept it behind his back. I was thinking he had a knife, then I was thinking I was overthinking and he probably didn't have anything in his hand, and I was telling myself to stay calm, 'cause if I panicked I wouldn't be able to defend myself. As he passed me he really started sprinting and I was relieved he had passed me but I looked back to make sure, in case he came at me from behind.”

“When you looked back, what did you see?”

“He stabbed him. In the back. I couldn't believe it. I tripped and fell over. He just ran up behind Ryan and stabbed him! It was horrible, horrible!” Her composure has disintegrated. She is crying and it is easy to imagine that she is experiencing in the detailed recall the same level of incomprehension and shock she experienced at the time it happened. “He pulled the knife out and he stabbed him again. Ryan hadn't even turned around. The first stab was like a punch and it kinda pushed Ryan forward a bit and then he stabbed him again and this time Ryan started turning around and he pulled the knife out and stabbed him again, and then Ryan fell. He just fell onto the ground, onto his knees then his stomach, and the hoodie still stabbed him again in the back. He went down on one knee so he was half kneeling beside him and he stabbed him again, the fourth stab, while he was lying on the ground. And then he looked up and saw me, and I've never ever in my life ever been that scared because I was a witness, I'd seen it all, and I thought he was going to come and stab me as well and I just got up and ran for my life. I thought he was chasing me and I ran. And when I got to the
entrance there was another black guy there and I think I just screamed. Then he ran into the grounds and I ran across the road into the Turkish supermarket. I had scraped both my knees and my hands, and they were bleeding but I never even noticed till I got in there and they were ringing the police, that's how scared I was. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. I can't even walk past the grounds now, even now I can't.”

I am crying silently and Lorna is too. This is how he was taken, my son, so mercilessly. Tyson Manley didn't walk up to him and face him like a man and tell him what the problem was, so that if there was any possibility of it being sorted out, it could be. He never gave him a chance to explain or defend himself. How Nadine has described it is exactly how I have relived it, imagining Ryan walking along listening to his music and eating his hot wings and chips, because he loved hot wings. He would have been tired after training and he was just chilling, walking back to get his boots, just chilling with his food and his music, so unprepared that when it happened, instead of thinking about how much he was loved, instead he was wondering
Why?
Why was he being attacked, stabbed, why was he dying?
Why?
What for?

Tyson Manley is looking down at the floor. He makes no eye contact with anyone in the court. There is a scuffling sound from behind me and I turn my head to see Luke standing, with tears on his face, pointing at Tyson Manley and shouting, “Murderer! Murderer!” Then there are other voices, Ricardo's trying to calm him down, Nipa's as she rises, the security guard's as the door is flung open and she enters. The judge directs the public gallery to be cleared and says we will have a half-hour recess. The jury begins to leave and Tyson Manley is taken out, and Lorna and Nipa have to help
me to stand so we can leave the gallery, because my legs are unsteady, their strength fails me.