‘You didn’t see the beginning of the altercation?’ she asked.
‘No, I was upstairs.’
‘You didn’t see Jason hit Thomas Garrington with a cast-iron lantern?’
‘No, but Val told me-’
‘Hearsay,’ she barked, and the judge asked him to confine his testimony to those things he had witnessed directly.
‘You didn’t see anyone use a knife?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘When you went into the garden, where were the defendants?’
‘By the gate, near the pavement.’
‘And Conrad Quinn?’
‘He was with Jason, Jason was pushing him.’ The figures in the spiralling snow.
‘Pushing or pulling?’
‘Erm…’ Andrew pictured the scene. ‘Pushing, pushing him away.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘You’re not sure?’
His stomach flipped. ‘That’s how it looked,’ he said. But he felt she had scored a point. He had to be clear, he knew that; he had to be convincing, rock solid, not waver, allowing different interpretations.
‘What were Thomas Garrington and Nicola Healy doing at that time?’
‘Shouting.’
‘What were they shouting?’
‘I don’t know, I think-’
‘We don’t want your thoughts, Mr Barnes, we want the facts.’
‘Right.’ He ground his teeth together. He could feel sweat on his palms, on the sides of his chest. He was here to tell them what had happened to Jason, but it was a trap, a false trail. She was leading him down it, away into marsh and bog, places where the sun didn’t shine, where shadows lurked and shifted shape. And he was stuck. Sinking sand. He blinked, his eyes losing focus; saw Jason, just leaving the courtroom, slipping out and glancing back but distracted. Distracted and not seeing Andrew.
‘Mr Barnes.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Shall I repeat the question?’
He couldn’t do it. He had come here for justice, to bear witness, and he couldn’t even do that properly. He was diminished. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. He dared not speak; his jaw ached with the tension, his heart felt as if it would burst. The usher stepped towards the witness box. But he would not give in. He held up one hand. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I want to carry on,’ but he couldn’t control the way his hand trembled.
‘Very well,’ said the judge.
Mrs Patel resumed her questioning. ‘What was Thomas Garrington shouting as he stood at the other side of the fence?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘So he may well have been remonstrating with Conrad Quinn?’
He stared at her. ‘It didn’t look like that, it looked like-’
‘But you’ve just told the court you don’t know-’
‘Their body language,’ he interrupted. ‘They were excited, high, wild. Ready to run. They were waiting for him.’
‘Speculation,’ she rapped.
‘That’s what I saw.’
‘Your Honour…’ There was an interchange between the lawyer and the judge. Andrew took a sip of water. He could do this, he had to do this. It was all that was left to him.
Mrs Patel resumed her cross-examination and he answered her few remaining questions with as much clarity as he could muster.
Mr Floyd, the barrister for Nicola Healy, appeared to take up the same thread. Implying that Nicola Healy and Thomas Garrington had fled the scene and wanted Conrad to come too. ‘Conrad Quinn was still struggling with Jason, am I right?’ he asked.
Andrew agreed.
‘Conrad Quinn had persisted even when his friends had run off?’
‘Only for a moment,’ Andrew said.
‘A moment?’ Mr Floyd scowled. Could he be more precise? ‘One second, two seconds, five?’
Andrew counted in his head. ‘Three, no more.’
‘How long would you say you were outside in all? Until you returned after the chase?’
‘It’s difficult to say. It was all very quick.’
‘When you first came out of the house, was Conrad Quinn kicking Luke Barnes?’
‘No, he was struggling with Jason.’ They kept coming back to Conrad, to what he was doing, but Conrad wasn’t up there in the dock, the other two were.
‘Did you see Nicola Healy touch Jason at any point?’
‘No,’ Andrew said.
‘Did you see Nicola Healy kick Luke Murray?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see anyone kick Luke Murray?’
‘No.’
‘Would it be true to say that the only violence you witnessed that night came from Conrad Quinn and was directed at your son Jason?’
He felt a swell of irritation. It wasn’t a fair question. It ignored everything else: what had happened on the bus, then what Val had seen. ‘Yes, but-’
‘Thank you. No further questions.’
Andrew walked back down into the pit of the building, numbly following the volunteer to the witness suite. He felt a flame of anger growing steadily inside him. For the first time he grasped that they might not win, that the defendants might possibly be acquitted, and he knew then that he would spend the rest of his life trying to bring them to justice if that was the case. He felt his fury cooling and hardening into something solid as stone. He would never give up, never let it go.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Louise
The second day of the trial opened with Conrad Quinn in the witness box. Before he was called, the judge announced that if there was any disturbance in court, he would clear the gallery.
Louise heard the whispers behind her – liar, grass, scum – as he came up the steps into the dock. He was accompanied by a uniformed guard, a reminder to everyone that he had come from prison, where he was on remand awaiting sentencing.
She fixed her eyes on him. He was wiry, short; he looked undernourished, ill fed. He had a cheap-looking suit on. It was too big for him, shoulders sagging, the sleeves drowning his hands. He had a tattoo on his neck, barbed wire. His hair was so short you could see the pale scalp beneath, and marks here and there as if he’d shaved it himself and nicked the skin. This was the boy who had destroyed Luke, the one who had kicked him in the head until-
Her hurt, her rage trembled beneath her skin. She took him in, drank him in, avid.
Mr Sweeney cut straight to the chase. ‘Conrad, you pleaded guilty to charges of Section 18 wounding in the case of Luke Murray, is that correct?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
The sir made Louise want to weep. As if showing respect for authority now would help him. Or perhaps he had to say it in prison and had got into the habit.
‘You just answer the questions; no “sir” needed.’
The boy nodded.
‘And have you given a full and truthful account of the incident to the police?’
‘Yes.’
Someone hissed. The judge didn’t appear to notice.
‘In order to appreciate the sequence of events that led to the affray, I would like you to tell the court about an incident that occurred on the thirty-first of October 2010. At a house party. When Luke Murray and Thomas Garrington exchanged words.’
Louise braced herself. Ruby gave her a look; she knew what was coming too.
‘We was at this party and Gazza was-’
‘Mr Garrington?’
Conrad Quinn shuffled uneasily, gave an embarrassed smirk. ‘Yes, he was having a go at this girl, ragging her, you know. Like putting her down. And Luke tells him to do one.’
What might have happened if Luke had kept his mouth shut, not said anything and left the party then? No run-in with Garrington, no deadly encounter on the bus. He’d still be coming home, heading straight for the microwave, then the Xbox. Still learning his trade as an electrician, a bit of money in his pocket, growing in confidence, more settled, happier. Maybe meeting a girl, someone bright and funny; he was a looker, after all. Getting a job, married, babies.
‘“Do one”; that means to leave, to stop?’ Mr Sweeney clarified.
‘Yeah. And Gazza didn’t like it, he swings for him and he misses. Luke trips him up and he hits the deck and he’s fuming. Really racked off. Then Luke’s got his phone out filming. Then they went.’