MS. You don’t know when? A memorable experience, surely? Losing a finger. As well as doing your nails.
AJ. I was waiting for him to come home. I’d found some nail varnish, varnished my nails. Last thing I’d got left, really, always had nice hands.
MS. And in he came and chopped off your first finger? Just like that? With an axe?
AJ. We had an axe to get into the squat. A little one. I don’t know where it was.
MS. You didn’t know where it was? Did he know?
AJ. Hesitation. I dunno. There was always something sharp about the place. Something to hurt. Sharp things. Like glass.
MS. Sharp things that weren’t available when he was absent? Things with which you could hurt yourself?
AJ. Yes. He hid them until he came home. Then he got them out.
MS. He hid the sharp things from you, did he?
AJ. I suppose so. We had an axe, anyway. Put away somewhere safe. Only a little one.
MS. Like the one you used to trash the other flat?
AJ. I never did that. I might have done, but I never did. I liked it.
MS. Oh, you liked it, did you? So why did you trash it?
AJ. I didn’t. Whenever I was out of my head, I slept. When he went away, I slept and went to work. It was like that.
MS. But the sharp things were hidden when he went away?
AJ. Yeah.
MS. He hid the sharp things to save you from harming yourself, didn’t he, Angel?
Pause. Witness confused and looking round.
AJ. Did he? I didn’t think that was why. He always hid things. I wasn’t supposed to look.
MS. Tell us about when he cut off your finger with the little axe.
AJ. Animated. I’d found this old nail varnish. My nails were all cracked and bitten, but they looked great when he came home. I told him I’m going to work with my sister, ’cos I’m good at sewing, and he said, what for? And I said, to sew. And he said, you can’t make anything. And I said, yeah, I can. I’m not worthless, you know, I’m gonna leave you. She’ll give me a job. And I showed him my nice nails, and he took a picture, and he said, which finger do you use most when you sew? That one, I said. And he hit it with that little axe.
MS. A little axe? You’re sure about that?
AJ. Yeah. I had my hands on the table, showing my nails, and-
MS. How much had you had to drink? Or smoke? Or snort?
AJ. Excited. He brought back weed, and vodka. I don’t know how much.
MS. Definitely an axe?
AJ. Yeah. Because I said I was leaving. I didn’t see him get it out.
MS. Right. You said it didn’t hurt much at the time?
AJ. No. It did afterwards. He put salt on it.
MS. And, much later, after your sister Henrietta came to collect you and took you back to London, the finger was examined? Not the rest of you, because you refused, but the finger?
AJ. Yes. I remember that.
MS. And examination showed that it wasn’t done with a sharp blow from an axe. Examination showed that the top knuckle of your right index finger was sawn off, possibly with a large pair of scissors. He didn’t think you were a danger to yourself with scissors, did he?
AJ. Whispers. I mended his clothes. There were always scissors.
MS. Proper, professional scissors, which you turned on yourself, Angel. You did, didn’t you?
AJ. I don’t know. Witness becomes restless. Calms down. What he didn’t know is how you use all your fingers to sew. You use them all. I can still sew. Hen made me. So he didn’t win.
MS. You could take off your own finger with an industrial-sized pair of dressmaking scissors, couldn’t you Angel?
AJ. I suppose. I don’t know.
MS. Are you aware that when the flat was searched by the police, no axe was found, but there was a pair of scissors? Interruption by HHJ McD. The witness cannot possibly answer that question.
MS. Quite right, Your Honour, I take it back. Better adjourn here, Your Honour, don’t you think? Give the witness a rest.
AJ. Screaming. You don’t believe me, do you?
MS. I can’t possibly answer that question.
Dear God. Scissors.
Thomas found the huge scissors he used in his office for cutting open harmless paper sacks, tamper-proof envelopes of the sort used by banks, as well as for the destruction of the cardboard boxes in which his wine deliveries arrived. These boxes had to be reduced to tidy fragments to go out with the ordinary rubbish. Cutting them up tidily was a process he enjoyed.
He spread his left hand on the desk and held the scissors in his right hand. They were the size of small shears and comfortably heavy. With three fingers and thumb, he opened the blades, keeping them far away from the spread hand, and closed them, slowly. Yes, he supposed it could be done, with the right kind of madness and the right pair of scissors.
This afternoon, Thomas had found it difficult to resist the manuscript of the trial for several reasons, viz. a) he was restless and he did not have enough to do, b) the Lover inspired him to read it for clues, and c) it was appallingly interesting. He had leafed through selectively, looking for her, vowed never to bother again, and still he was drawn, if only to those pages where he could hear her talking. He had no interest in the evidence-in-chief of the witnesses, answering questions from the Prosecutor, only in the pages containing her name. Such a ruthless bitch, making it quite obvious that the silly girl was lying, with her frightful cross-examination technique, asking several questions at once, confusing but effective with a slow witness. He was wondering why she was never stopped, remembering how she could mesmerise with conversation alone, what a fast talker she was, with a way of deflecting interruptions. He was missing her again, on tenterhooks about Peter Friel and the Lover, found himself wanting to tell her about it, until he came across this bit about scissors and dropped the pages to the floor. It was important to put them back in the box, alongside a learned discussion on the law of kidnap, before going to find his own scissors. It was like putting Marianne away, to sleep with a cloth over her head. Thomas was glad it was almost time to close the office and go home, leaving her there.
He was still examining the scissors for size, peering at them with his hand clasped behind his back, when downstairs rang up and said, Ms Henrietta Joyce to see you. Dear God, again. A real-life Joyce? A spectre rising up from the printed page of a transcript, which was all that was left of Marianne Shearer as far as he knew. Pretty and harmless, downstairs said in her own code. Smells OK.
He was hiding his own weapons when she came in. How peculiar. H. Joyce, not A. Joyce. Funny little thing with an interesting coat and an enchanting carpet bag, and, as he discovered to his relief when he shook her hand, she certainly had all five fingers. The right Ms Joyce. The same name; the person to whom Peter Friel had taken the skirt. He simply had not made the connection before. What the hell was going on? Outmanoeuvred and excluded, angry again, and yet, oddly, he could not take exception to her physical presence. She was… what was the right word for her? Nice, and strangely familiar. Racking his brains. She was not the one Marianne had described as that silly little bitch, but the sister of same. Stood up well to cross-examination, Marianne said. Better than some. A miracle I got her on the stand first, they must have been mad to let me.