Apple Tree Yard (38 page)

Robert turns to me and says, ‘I’ll be down in a few minutes, OK?’

I rise from my seat with a sense of anticlimax. I don’t know what I expected from the conclusion of the prosecution case but it was something more than this. Perhaps it is because I expected the paramedic’s statement to lead somewhere and it didn’t. Perhaps it is because I have not yet taken the stand. Is it arrogance or desperation on my part that makes me eager to do so?

*

When Robert comes down to the cell, he has the air of a man who is a little demob happy, perhaps because it is a Friday afternoon. He has brought his junior with him, Claire, and they cram together on the tiny table in the consulting room while I sit opposite and Robert tells me that that evening he will have a submission with the judge that the case against me should be dismissed. The only effective prosecution witness the Crown has brought against me was Kevin, he says, but although his testimony may have offered the jury a motive for my involvement, it was far from proven – and what, of course, was key to that, although Robert does not say it openly, was that he was not allowed to speculate about the nature of my relationship with you. Despite everything I have learned about you recently, I want to say to you:
You were right, keeping quiet about us, that is what is keeping me safe.

As Robert and Claire get up to leave, I look at them. I want to delay them, although they are eager to go. When they are gone, there will be nothing for me to do except sit and wait in my cell until I am returned to prison. They, and all the other professionals in that courtroom get to have a weekend away from this, to return to the outside world, normal life, weather, the News at Ten, a restaurant they think overpriced or a bottle of wine not as good as it should be. These things and much else besides await Robert and Claire and all the other professionals involved in our case but not me, or you – or Craddock’s father.

My question is genuine, all the same. ‘How is it looking for Mark?’

At this, they pause, exchange glances. Claire opens her mouth to answer but Robert cuts across her. ‘Well, all I can say is, if I was his barrister, I would not be advising a defence of diminished responsibility. You saw yourself, Ms Bonnard couldn’t shake Dr Sanderson. She’d better have a damn good psychologist on her side, that’s all I can say. She must have something up her sleeve. Costley’s held down a responsible job for years, has a family, no serious psychiatric history. I was surprised that was what they were going for, under the circumstances. Of course, we are all obliged to take instruction from our client and I’ve not been privy to their conversations, so…’ he presses his lips together, tips his head a little.

I ask them the question I asked Jas in the pizza parlour. ‘Why didn’t he go for self-defence?’

Again, Robert and Claire exchange the briefest of glances. Then Claire says gently, ‘The forensic evidence would have made that defence quite difficult.’

*

I don’t know how to feel, after they have gone. Perhaps, on Monday, because of Robert’s submission, the case against me will be dismissed and I will be free to go. It all seems so sudden. I haven’t even taken the stand. No evidence has been presented in my defence but then the evidence against me seems so tenuous too. It is half-time. The managers are in with their teams, giving them a pep talk, reviewing the game so far and telling them what needs to happen in the second half. For me, it’s looking quite good; for you, quite bad. I’m worried for you, of course I am. But the tantalising and terrifying thought that on Monday I could be going home is what fills my head, like a cloud, like a migraine headache. I can’t think any other thought. I should have remembered Jas’s story, at that point, the story he told about the experiment on the chimpanzee. If I had remembered that, my love, I would not have managed that bleak, small, foolish smile when Robert and Claire shook my hand as they left the consultation room on that Friday afternoon. 

21

On Monday, the second half of the trial begins. All weekend, I have allowed myself to hope.

The Monday morning journey feels like an ordinary commute by now. I don’t feel sick in the van any more. I chat to the prison officers who accompany me. When we arrive, the elderly Caribbean guard at the Old Bailey greets me with a smile and when I say, ‘How was your weekend, Thomas?’ he replies, ‘Beautiful!’

Up in court, the public gallery has opened and Susannah is there, and as I take my seat I give her a hopeful thumbs-up. She returns it with a wan smile. Robert comes over from his table and says, ‘Now, don’t get your hopes up.’ But even so, it is only later, when we are all in position but before the jury is allowed in, at the point where the judge says, ‘I am not minded to allow…’ that I realise I have been lying to myself for the whole of the prosecution case. For that whole two weeks, I have been saying, they have no case against me. And all weekend I have been saying to myself, of course the judge will dismiss the case, not because motions to dismiss are often successful – they rarely are – but because
you
know they should, they will. How does the mind divide so neatly? I’ve never understood it: there is too much about human psychology that is grey or ambiguous. How do people operate on two levels, going about their normal lives while the rest of it is falling apart? You don’t need to be an adulterer to know about that. You only need to be someone who still has to go to work in the morning when their child is sick or in trouble – and that must be true of a huge proportion of the human race. ‘How are you?’ the receptionist at the Beaufort asked me brightly, the day after my son had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. ‘Fine!’ I chirruped in reply.

When the case against you is dismissed, or when you’re found not guilty, you don’t even go back down to the cells for them to do some paperwork. They just let you out, straight away. There’s a door in the dock that opens into the body of the court and you just walk through it and out into the corridor and down the stairs and right out on to the street.

I wonder what you are thinking, as I sit there in the dock – but you remain silent and impassive as you have done throughout. Surely you would have been pleased to see me set free, despite the seriousness of your own predicament? And then a sobering thought occurs to me: Is this a question that I even need to ask?

I am so swaddled in disappointment that I hardly notice the business of the court continuing. Of course. The defence cases can proceed apace now, beginning with yours. It takes effort to lift my head and look around but I say to myself, you must stay alert. You will be on the stand before you know it.

The judge has finished rearranging some papers in front of him, looks up and around the court, beams at us all and says, ‘So then, are we ready for the jury?’

*

Ms Bonnard begins by calling some witnesses who will counter the poor impression of you given by DS Amelia Johns and Witness G; your boss at the Houses of Parliament, a colleague from your days as a cop. It strikes me that your counsel is in a difficult position here. She wants to humanise you, and she wants the jury to start liking you a bit more, but she also wants to present you as psychologically disturbed enough to avail yourself of the defence of diminished responsibility. It’s a tricky one.

The only witness that matters, though, is her psychologist.
She better have a damn good one
.

As it turns out, Ms Bonnard has two. I have no idea how much choice barristers get when they choose psychologists to give evidence in their cases – presumably there is a register, presumably they have their favourites. But Ms Bonnard has chosen a couple of wild cards – a young man who looks scarcely old enough to be on work experience and a woman like herself. I wonder if she thought the jury would be more favourable to her youthful, eager psychologists than to the prosecution’s heavyweight and unpleasant Dr Sanderson. It works for me. I like them both. They were the two people who were sitting behind Ms Bonnard while Dr Sanderson gave his evidence – I noticed them taking notes.

Although they are a team, it is only the young woman who takes the stand. She is called Dr Ruth Sadiq and has neat dark hair and pale skin, very fine hands, I notice from across the court as she reads the secular oath – I am reminded of what Laurence said about how we receive information. She has also interviewed you in prison and presents a much more sympathetic portrait than Dr Sanderson. Yes, she would agree with Dr Sanderson that you are an ‘unreliable historian’ but that is characteristic of people with psychological problems who hold down high pressure jobs and family life: it could be viewed as a coping strategy. It turns out that Dr Sadiq is a specialist in high-functioning patients with disorders. Personality disorders are often diagnosed in people who have chaotic lifestyles, she says – drug addicts or alcoholics, homeless people – the kind of people much more usually seen in the dock. Anti-social personality disorder is often twinned with those conditions, for instance. But very intelligent people with good support systems are able to come up with coping mechanisms that ameliorate their disorders – for instance, in the case of borderline personality disorder, a calm environment, the patient being surrounded by people who behave in a consistent way, means that the patient is able to pick up clues on appropriate behaviour from those around them. Dr Sadiq is softly spoken – the judge has to ask her to speak up twice – and has none of the rhetorical certainty or sneering of Dr Sanderson. I can feel the jury warming to her. My hopes rise.

‘So you are saying, if I am correct,’ Ms Bonnard prompts, ‘that the unstable behaviour usually associated with borderline personality disorder is sometimes not apparent in people who have strong support structures.’

‘Yes, that is correct, I believe it manifests itself in other ways.’

‘Would you care to describe those ways to the jury?’

‘Well, in its developed forms, borderline personality disorder can lead to what we call dissociation – that is, where a person dissociates from real life and starts to create their own self-sustaining narrative, almost as if they believe they are watching themselves in a film, if you like, a little drama around themselves, which they are the centre of, and in which they feel safe. This, I believe, would also fit the criteria of a narcissistic personality disorder.’

Ms Bonnard affects an air of pleased surprise. ‘So,’ she says, ‘someone in a dissociative state, as a result of either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder or a combination of the two, could be using their own made-up stories about themselves in order to cope with daily life, and hide their disorder from those around them?’

‘Precisely, yes. If they create their own story about themselves, then they remain in control. As I said, safe.’

‘To other people they might just seem, well, a bit of a fantasist?’

Dr Sadiq gives a smile and says, ‘Well, that’s not a very technical term but yes, I believe fantasist is what such a person might be called, when actually, they have a serious undiagnosed psychological disorder and are using a sophisticated coping strategy in order to manage everyday life.’

It all sounds plausible to me, and it fits with your idea of yourself, your need to pretend that you were more glamorous and exciting than you were, the risky sex… the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the way we pick and choose our evidence. Trying to look at this coldly, to remove the element of self-interest in this theory, I am still convinced.

Ms Bonnard gives Dr Sadiq a warm smile and says, ‘Thank you, Doctor, please remain where you are.’

*

Mrs Price gets to her feet for the cross-examination. She has none of the feline poise of Ms Bonnard – that frightening slowness and precision. You do not get the feeling, as she rises, that her cross-examinations are spectacles. As she is nearer to the witness box than Ms Bonnard she doesn’t have to turn her head and so I rarely catch sight of the expression on her face, but from the set of her shoulders I am guessing she still has that slightly weary air, as if her point of view is so patently correct that she can hardly be bothered with cross-examining at all.

‘Dr Sadiq,’ she says, looking down and up again. ‘Your
theory
, that people with high-functioning personality disorders can develop coping strategies that protect their lifestyles from becoming chaotic, that they can hide these very serious disorders for many years from friends, family, workmates, doctors and so on… It formed the basis of your PhD thesis, I believe? The one you took at Kingston University. Is that correct?’

Dr Sadiq is still composed, softly spoken. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

Mrs Price looks up and says simply. ‘It’s your pet theory, isn’t it?’

And then Dr Sadiq gets it very badly wrong. She says nothing. She looks over at Ms Bonnard, as if hoping for instruction, but all Ms Bonnard can do is stare at her encouragingly. It is a big mistake. It makes her seem like a star pupil who is looking for the right answer. She glances at the judge and the jury but none of them are going to help her out either. She looks at the dock and I want to lean forward and say, go on, forget the self-deprecation, just be firm in your opinion, be unequivocal. It’s 60 per cent how you look, 30 per on how you sound and only 10 per cent what you actually say. That 30 per cent is yours for the taking.

Dr Sadiq says, ‘Well, yes, you could call it that, it’s a theory I believe in. I do believe it is a good one, though, I think it explains a lot.’

‘But Dr Sadiq, forgive me,’ Mrs Price says patiently, ‘what I’m driving at is, the theory of high-functioning personality disorders which you expound in your PhD thesis, it is countered by most of the recognised psychological diagnostic tools used in criminal cases, isn’t it? For instance, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?
’

Again, that self-sabotaging pause. ‘Well, yes, but…’

‘And what about the
International Classification of Disease
?’