Jo, Margo and three other women were just inside the doors by the security desk.
Jo saw him first. ‘Johnny! Morning, Superman.’
The other women turned, breaking into smiles. Margo gave him a round of applause. He smiled back and shrugged.
‘Where’s Heather?’
‘Through the doorway, right then left. She’s in the waiting room with her brief.’
He’d gone in, seen them sitting, drinking coffee, talking earnestly. He’d stood there until Heather noticed him and introduced him.
‘Have you thought about what I said?’
Heather smiled, distracted. ‘About what?’
‘About my going into the witness box.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well?’
The barrister answered, ‘I don’t think it would work, Mr Kay.’
‘I’m Johnny.’
‘Johnny. Even if we could get you into the box – and I think there’d be massive objections as soon as we tried it, I don’t think we could use you.’
‘I don’t see why not.’
She looked at him, summing him up. ‘Let’s have a go, then. I’m the prosecuting barrister, OK?’
‘OK.’
She spoke very quietly. ‘Mr Kay, in your previous employment, did you have any direct experience of the Ramsgill Stray base?’
‘No, but I did with Chelten—’
‘Please just answer the question. Before you recently trespassed into the base with the accused, had you ever been there?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever, during your alleged time with the Security Service, been given any briefing on the activities carried out at Ramsgill Stray?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Kay, are you by any chance in love with the defendant, Miss Weston?’
His jaw dropped. Heather’s head lifted sharply to look with an odd expression at Lisa Gardiner. He and Heather avoided looking at each other.
The silence hung there, crackling.
‘You see what I mean?’ said the barrister, and she smiled sadly.
Now he looked down at the court, wondering what unforeseeable events were about to unfold. The document from the Stray had been where he had known it would be, in the roll-top desk in his father’s study. This time he thought his father wouldn’t have minded the search. Now it was inside the lining of his jacket, where it had been before – a tiny and probably hopeless precaution against a double cross. He’d been very much on the alert all the way to court, looping around in big detours to avoid the obvious direct route, watching every other car for signs of possible interception, half expecting to find himself arrested at the court itself where they knew he would have the document on him. Nothing happened. Whatever game the Americans were playing, it wasn’t that one.
Judge Belmont-Adams seemed exotically dressed, dark blue robes, violet sleeves, a red sash and a white cravat. He had a simple fuzzy wig. Johnny was looking steeply down on him from the public gallery, up to one side. It was a perspective that slightly diminished the grandeur of the court. The top of the canopy projecting over the judge’s head was in the course of reconstruction. Rough, unfinished boarding was visible only from above and on top of it some workman had left a crumpled cigarette packet.
Johnny had a moment to look around as the judge brought out a brown leather pencil case from which he took a wooden ruler and a bottle of Quink. He began to rule columns in a green book. Johnny wondered what they were, ‘For’ and ‘Against’ perhaps.
Wigs were everywhere below. Some of them looked infinitely old and dusty as though millennia of bookworms might be nesting in them.
Lisa Gardiner was not the only woman. There was a junior on the prosecution side, got up in that odd way that judges have been able to impose on the females of the law – dark make-up, strapped in, severe drawn-back hair. The sexiness of the high-class dominatrix – the price of being allowed to play the legal game.
The clerk of the court, in front of and some way below the judge’s bench, stood up, climbed on to his chair and turned to have a whispered conversation with him.
Then, suddenly and sickeningly, ‘Call Heather Weston.’
It came as a shock to see Heather brought into the dock, flanked by guards from Group 4. Johnny thought how disconcertingly different she looked, that attractive, generous face now focused and intent as if an alternative set of muscles had been brought into play. She glanced up at the gallery, waved at Margo and the group of her supporters gathered at one end. She went on looking at them, searching and then her gaze found Johnny, separately, off to one side. She gave him a little nod and he put his thumb up. She looked sad suddenly and turned her face away.
There was no jury yet. Johnny believed he would at any moment hear the prosecution dramatically announce they were not proceeding but instead an argument started between the barristers and the judge about the evidence. Dr Beevor’s statement lay at the heart of it. Lisa Gardiner explained the background of their inability to bring Dr Beevor to court, even bringing in the plane crash. The prosecuting barrister, Alan Reynolds, refused to accept the documents without the opportunity to cross-examine Dr Beevor. The judge agreed with him, looked at his watch, scribbled a note and said, ‘Let the jury panel be brought in.’
A line of men and women filed in to the benches at the back of the court and were called by name, one at a time, into the witness box.
Johnny looked at them and his heart sank further. They all looked like pillars of society. Two of the women could just have had mild Liberal tendencies on a good day. The others looked like Sun-reading Tories. There were three large short-haired middle-aged men, all in leather jackets.
Why let it go this far, thought Johnny? If they’re dropping it, why let the jury in? He looked all around hoping for he knew not what. A glimpse of the American? A clue to coming salvation? There was no sign of anything to interrupt the slow juggernaut of the law. All he could see was Jo in her chair, tucked away in a corner of the main court down below – a privilege allowed because of the lack of wheelchair access to the gallery.
He became aware of the words now being spoken, the dry legal bullets aimed one by one at Heather’s body down in the dock.
‘…that on that date, at Ramsgill Stray Station, she did assault George Arthur Hayter, thereby occasioning grievous bodily harm. Prisoner in the dock, how do you plead?’
‘Not guilty.’ Heather’s voice sounded strong.
Johnny’s heart went out to her. One of the leather-jacketed men in the jury sniffed loudly.
The prosecution opened. The barrister injected just sufficient righteous contempt into his voice that Johnny, even though he knew it was simply a professional trick, felt a strong urge to go down and warn him to watch the way he spoke.
‘…contrary to Section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, she did on that day violently strike Sergeant George Hayter, a long-serving and loyal member of the Ministry of Defence Police, with a weapon, namely a section of timber…’
He droned on, laying out the bones of the prosecution case. Johnny felt despair rise. He’d been tricked, he knew that now with complete certainty. Heather would go to prison. He would be stopped on leaving the court, stopped when they knew he must have the papers on him. They’d be sure to find them. He felt the papers, stiff through the lining of his jacket. What could he do? Give them to one of the other women? Would that help? They might all be searched.
‘…the incident took place at the Ministry of Defence’s base at Ramsgill Stray…’
The Ministry of Defence? Who was this man trying to kid?
‘…a base whose work is covered by the strictures of the Official Secrets Act but whose function is absolutely central to our national security. Miss Weston is no stranger to the base. On at least one hundred and twenty-three occasions, she has gained access to it in order to…’