Almost True (35 page)

What's more important, truth or friendship?

‘So, you abandoned your vantage point, leaving your friend fighting for his life in the dirty ground, and you ran off in a north-westerly direction – the direction of your home, in fact?' he asks.

‘Yes . . . no . . . I mean, I wasn't going home, I was going to call an ambulance for them . . . for Arron.'

‘Indeed?' he says.

‘I stopped the bus and I told them to call the ambulance and I ran back. I'm fast – I'm a fast runner – I wasn't gone for long.'

‘And when you came back, when you believed the ambulance was on the way to help save the life of your friend, your best friend, lying there bleeding in the mud – what happened?'

‘I told Arron he had to run, to run away.'

‘You told Arron he had to run away? Just after calling an ambulance to save his life?' He makes it sound like it's impossible that anyone could ever believe me about anything.

‘I didn't want the police to catch him – I didn't want them to think it was just Arron, not Mikey or Jukes as well.'

‘You thought it was more important to hide from the police than to get immediate medical aid for your friend?'

‘Yes – for him, not for me, for him. It wasn't all
Arron's fault, but if they found him with the body, it'd look like it was him by himself.'

‘If they found you both with the body it would look like it was the two of you acting together, wouldn't it?'

It's getting harder to stay calm. ‘I didn't – I wasn't. It wasn't anything to do with me.'

‘It would be quite normal for you to feel guilty, Tom. You failed your friend, didn't you? If you'd intervened earlier, perhaps the whole fight might have been avoided.'

The judge interrupts. Tells Arron's lawyer he's over-stepping the mark. Asks me if I'm OK. I take a big gulp of water. ‘Yes,' I say.

‘You felt bad and guilty and you begged Arron to run away so you wouldn't be found at the scene?'

‘No, it wasn't like that.'

‘Arron was prepared to stay with the body, wasn't he? He would have told the police and ambulance exactly what happened. How Rio attacked him. You made him run away, didn't you?'

My voice is a whisper. ‘Yes . . . but. . .' I trail to a halt, because it's true I was feeling guilty and scared – and I am now – but it was Arron doing the mugging, not Rio, and I was trying to help him when I slashed him with the knife.

God, we were all so stupid. We were all guilty.
Any one of us could have been dead. Any one of us could have been in the dock.

And then he starts on about my email. The email to Claire. And he picks it apart sentence by sentence, but the one he keeps coming back to is, ‘I'm a liar . . . I'm lying to the police.' And I try and explain, but he says it so many times that in the end I snap, ‘Look, you've said it enough. They've got the message.'

‘Yes, indeed,' he says and he sits down.

Mikey's lawyer is next. Mikey's story is simple. He was nowhere near that park. He was at home, watching telly.
The Weakest Link
, to be precise. I'm a liar, I'm a liar, I'm a liar.

His lawyer picks up the bit in my statement where I say that maybe Mikey gave Arron some money, maybe it was to do with drugs, and he has fun with that – what an imagination I have! Did I spend a lot of time alone in my room? Watching people out of the window? Making up stories about them?

Liar, liar, pants on fire. He doesn't actually say it, but that's what he means.

Sweat is trickling down the back of my neck. I've drunk all the water they put out for me, and I need to pee. I'm shifting around in my seat, rubbing my forehead.
It's so hot in here. I feel like I've been here forever.

Mikey's lawyer sits down. Someone says something about the court . . . I can't hear it. . . ‘All rise!' someone shouts, and all the lawyers stand up. Then the screen goes blank.

‘Lunchtime,' says the court official. ‘I'll go and organise some sandwiches. You can use the facilities if you need to – across the corridor, but you need to tell the police officer outside where you're going and come straight back. You are not allowed to discuss the case with anyone.'

I stumble towards the door, brush past the policeman guarding it and head into the Gents. And lock myself into a cubicle.

It only seems like five minutes later that there's a knock at the door. ‘Ty?' says Patrick's voice. ‘Ty, you've got to come now. They're going to start again soon.'

I lean my head against the cubicle wall.

‘Come on, Ty. It'll be all right.'

I take a deep breath. I open the door. Patrick's standing there, looking at his watch.

‘Patrick, I can't . . . I can't . . . he was saying. . .'

But Patrick wags his finger at me and says, ‘You know we can't discuss anything. You need to get right back in there now before the judge comes back. I need to get to the public gallery, too. Splash your face with water . . . that's it. . . Blow your nose, and I'll see you later.'

And he's gone, and I'm back in the stuffy little room.
I sit down at the table. The screen flickers to life again. I can see the lawyers chatting, rustling papers. Then I hear them say, ‘All rise' and they stand up. The judge is back. We're on again.

Jukes's lawyer. A little fat man, with a black beard. He's got a big smile on his face. He's looking at me like he's just wandered into Krispy Kreme and I'm chocolate iced with sprinkles. He's rubbing his hands together.

‘Good afternoon, Tom,' he says. ‘Let's talk about what you saw at the park.'

And we go through it all again. For the fourth time. He's trying to catch me out on details – who was standing where, who did what when.

And it's hard to remember exactly what I've said, and a few times he wins, ‘But, forgive me Tom, didn't you say that Mr White was standing to the left of Mr MacKenzie, when you were speaking to my learned friend Mr Belweather, is that not correct?'

‘Umm, yes . . . I mean no . . . I mean, well, it kind of depends which way you were looking at them.'

And so it goes on. And he makes me tell every detail again of the knife-waving and the cutting and how I wanted Arron to run away.

Then he says, ‘This accusation of yours against my client, this was part of a long-standing feud between your families, was it not?'

Eh?

‘Umm. No . . . I don't know what you mean.' I say.

‘Since your mother took out an injunction against my client's uncle, Christopher Richardson, nine years ago.'

‘I don't know anything about that,' I say, and it's totally true. I don't know anything about an injunction. But I'm thinking –
Jesus
, Chris the plumber? Jukes's uncle? – and God knows what my face looks like.

‘Are you sure?' he says, ‘This is the truth we want now, Tom, not one of your stories.'

‘Yes,' I say, ‘I'm sure. I'm absolutely certain about everything I've told you.'

‘Completely certain?' he sneers. And I can't stand it any more. I push my chair back from the table, leap to my feet. I pull my shirt out of my trousers and tug it up as far as I can. ‘Please sit down!' says the judge, but I'm not listening. I turn to my side, to show my scar to the camera.

‘Please sit down!' says the court official, but I'm shouting, ‘That's what he did, your client. That's how he tried to shut me up. And Alistair got shot, and they hurt my gran. They petrol-bombed our home. Why would they do that if I was lying? You tell me.'

I thought Jukes's lawyer would look angry, but he's smirking like I've just handed him a Christmas present. ‘My Lady,' he says, ‘a matter of law arises which I would
like to raise in the absence of the jury.'

I sit back down on the chair. I'm trembling. I pick up the glass and drink some water, but my hand is shaking so much that I spill some on my shirt. I can see the court official shaking her head.

The jury file out. The judge says, ‘Tom, remain seated while giving evidence, please.' Then the screen goes dark.

The court official is tutting at me, but she refills my glass and she says, ‘Look, dearie, calm down and eat your sandwich, because it's not good to miss your lunch and it's going to be a long afternoon.' So I choke down a few mouthfuls of slimy ham and cotton wool bread, and I sip some water and I wonder what's going on in the courtroom.

They take ages. Ninety minutes later the screen comes on again. My anger's as dead as the slivers of pig in my sandwich. All I want is for it to be over. They can say what they like about me. I don't really care.

The judge tells the jury to ignore my outburst, ‘which is not relevant to your deliberations.' She says to me, ‘Tom, do you understand what I've said?' I nod. I don't accept it for a minute, but I'm not going to argue.

She nods to Jukes's lawyer. ‘Proceed.' And he does.

When he finishes, I think that's it. I've done my bit. It's over. But then the first lawyer gets up again. The
prosecution one. And he starts all over again. Perhaps I'm going to be here forever. Perhaps they all get to question me again and again and again.

He's talking about truth and lies. Asking me what I was taught at school. Asking me about going to church . . . what the Catholic religion says about lying. Making me say, ‘Yes, I know the difference between truth and lies. I really do.'

‘The injunction mentioned by my learned friend, you had no knowledge of it? Any idea what it relates to?'

‘I can guess,' I say. ‘When I was little, my mum had a boyfriend who hit me and who hit her. Maybe that was him. Jukes's uncle.'

‘Do you know his name?' he asks, and I say, ‘He was called Chris and he was a plumber. That's all I know.'

Then he asks me again about that moment when Arron and I ran away. What can I say? ‘It's really hard to think when you're standing there and there's someone dead,' I say. ‘I did the wrong thing. I'm sorry.'

That seems to be it. The camera's red light goes out, the screen goes blank. I sit at my table, staring at my hands, wondering what's going to happen now. Do we wait to see if Arron's found guilty or not? Will the screen come back on? Then the door opens and Patrick comes in, and the court official hands us over to a policeman who takes us to a door where there's a cop car waiting.
As we drive off, I look up to see the angel – Lady Justice – again, but she's up too high. I can't see her from this angle.

In the car, Patrick tells me I did well, apart from the bit when I showed them the scar. ‘You almost got the whole trial aborted,' he said. ‘When the jury was sent out, the defence lawyer was arguing that you'd made it impossible to try his client fairly. It was good that you stopped when you did.'

‘I didn't want to,'

‘I know. But there's a time and a place. Anyway, don't expect a verdict for a week or two. These things take time, and they've got a lot of evidence to hear.'

‘Oh, right.'

‘Ty,' he adds, ‘About the injunction . . . Nicki's boyfriend. . .'

I shake my head. I'm not talking about that. But I can't stop wondering if Nathan maybe didn't have things quite right. Maybe it wasn't because of my mum that Jukes wanted me involved in the gang. Or maybe it was because of her, but for a different reason. Revenge.

Patrick's looking at me, and his face is so concerned, so worried that it's actually hurting me to look at him. I stare out of the window, but trickling raindrops get in the way of London. It's like the streets are crying.

‘Arron's evidence seems to have omitted your assault
on him,' says Patrick. ‘He's presenting himself as Rio's victim. Maybe it was a bit too much to expect the jury to believe he could be bullied by you as well. A big, tall youth like that. It suits him to say you had the idea of running away, but he wants to make sure they think all his injuries were inflicted by the boy who supposedly mugged him.'

‘What did he look like, Arron?' I ask.

‘Sullen,' says Patrick. ‘He was looking down most of the time. His mother was sitting in front of me and he only glanced at her twice.'

‘Were his sisters there? Two little kids?'

‘No. There was a brother, I think. Anyway, he's going down for manslaughter at least, one way or another. It's just a question of whether the other two go with him. His best hope is that the jury will believe his story that Rio was the aggressor – it all depends what the jury make of you – and if there's any evidence to corroborate your account.'

My worst fear in the world used to be that Arron wouldn't be my friend. I used to fret over stupid things, like name-calling and being picked for teams at school and what I'd do if I had to admit that my best friend didn't seem to like me any more.

I never ever thought we'd be enemies. He must hate me now I've tried to demolish his story in court.

But why didn't Arron change his story? Why didn't he tell the police that I hurt him? He could've deflected some of the trouble onto me, confused the jury, made me look like a potential killer too.

I can't think of a reason. Unless, maybe, Arron's still my friend after all.

Patrick's telling me about his house in France, and the little village which has a
pâtisserie
and a
boucherie
and an
école primaire
and an
église.
It's as soothing as doing a vocabulary test in school – always my best moments – and I can feel the hammering of my heart slowing down and the horrible retching taste die away.

And when I fall asleep, I dream of eating French bread and French cheese and walking along a French village high street and feeling free and safe and normal again.