I Know What I Saw

It’s been almost two weeks since my phone call with Jan and I have heard nothing more. I just wait, continuously flattened by the walls in Seb’s house. I want desperately to leave but I can’t. I have to train myself to withstand the weight of confinement.

Seb continues to pretend to go to work.

‘You know I read once about those Japanese salarymen who lose their jobs but still get up every morning, get dressed and go to “work”. They just go to the park. Rows and rows of them on benches. The article said that they pretended because they were ashamed of losing their jobs, but I don’t think it’s just shame. I think it’s that pretending is the next best thing to doing.’

‘You could get another job,’ I say to him.

He nods sadly and straightens his tie. ‘You could too,’ he says.

When the day of my hearing comes, it is grey and flat. I wash thoroughly and dress in a suit Seb has lent me. The trousers are loose around the hips and the jacket is short in the sleeve, but I wear it gratefully. As I walk up the long path to Southwark Crown Court, I suddenly realise that it is familiar. I came out of it after my bail hearing, but I didn’t see it then. Now I look and recognise it as a building I have seen before in the papers. Today there is no press, only shallow puddles and misty, driven rain. As I walk I see myself reflected in the huge windows lining the route. I am indistinct, a ghost almost.

Jan and Nasreen take me to a small room. There is enough space for a table and three chairs with their guts spilling out into the open. Nasreen, in her wig and gown, catches me looking at the furniture.

‘Classy, isn’t it?’ she says, removing her wig.

‘I’ve seen worse,’ I say.

She smiles and spreads her diamond fingers at me.

‘Okay. Remember your plea. Not guilty. You might hear me make a fuss about one or two bits of disclosure but apart from that it should be a fairly swift hearing. You will hear some dates, called stage dates; this is just a timetable for the service of papers, that kind of thing. The only date that you really have to worry about is the one at the end – the trial date. Okay?’

I nod. Jan updates me a little on the progress of the record, telling me that the prosecution haven’t found the rest.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Shit, we’re being called on. Let’s go, Nasreen will explain it in court,’ she says, and we follow Nasreen as she slips her wig back on to her head and walks towards the courtroom.

This court gives me a sense of déjà vu. It is like a magnified version of the courtroom I was in before. This one is vast, and the judge so far away that when he finally comes in, I can barely see him. He is in red robes and smiles benignly at everyone. I am shown into a dock with glass walls and asked my name and nationality and then told to sit down.

‘Ready for arraignment, Ms Khan?’ the judge says.

‘Yes, please, My Lord.’

‘Very well. Mr Clerk, please would you put the indictment,’ he says to his clerk.

‘Alexander Shute you are charged on this indictment with one count of murder. It is said that on the 30th day of December 1989 you murdered Michelle Mackintosh. To this charge how do you plead?’

The court falls into silence and it is as if the world has stopped moving. They all wait, and a part of me waits too.

‘Not guilty,’ I say.

The remainder of the hearing goes exactly as I have been told before Nasreen gets to her feet.

‘My Lord, we were surprised last week to be informed that one of the exhibits from the locus in quo has vanished.’

‘Vanished?’ the judge says. ‘Is it a critical exhibit?’

‘As far as we are concerned, My Lord, it is. It is our case that the defendant witnessed rather than committed this murder. My instructions are that he saw the murderer shortly before the act take a record off a record player and throw it across the room, where it broke in two. That record may, we say, in the circumstances and mechanism of the throwing, have captured the murderer’s fingerprints.’

‘Yes. And what’s your point, Ms Khan?’

‘My point, My Lord, is that although the Crown have been able to test one of the two pieces, without result as it happens, the police appear to have mislaid the other piece.’

‘I see.’

‘And we would like to put the Crown on notice here and now that there is likely in the circumstances to be an application to stay this case for abuse of process.’

‘Yes. Mr Douglas-Jones? What do you say?’

‘We are making enquiries, My Lord. The indications at the time were of an accident, and for that reason, the exhibits weren’t treated exactly the way they might have been in a murder case. In a nutshell, My Lord, we have what we have. Frankly, we are surprised that there was any fragment of the record available for testing at all.’

‘I see. Well, Ms Khan, you’ll take your own course, but I will need some persuading to stay these proceedings on that ground alone.’

I am dismissed shortly after and find myself in the corridor being debriefed by Nasreen.