One should never make promises one can’t keep.
23
I was following Faye’s instructions and taking things easy at home, my feet up on the sofa, watching highlights of cricket from Australia, when Detective Inspector Galvin telephoned around lunchtime on Thursday.
‘I think we may have Darryl Lawrence’s accomplice in custody,’ he said. ‘I’m not certain, but his height and shape fit the man in the hospital CCTV images.’
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘But can you hold him on such flimsy evidence?’
‘Currently, he’s under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Darryl Lawrence. CCTV footage at Victoria shows him entering the Tube station with Lawrence but leaving it again on his own after the incident.’
‘Does it actually show him pushing Lawrence under the train?’
‘Sadly not, but we do have a couple of eyewitnesses. The transport police have now handed the case over to us. We’ve arranged an old-fashioned line-up for this afternoon. Would you come and see if you recognize him from the attack at your flat?’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Charing Cross police station. Come to the main entrance on Agar Street at three o’clock.’
‘I’ll be there.’
Charing Cross police station is built in a triangular shape with a fully enclosed courtyard in the middle. Eight men were standing in a line across the centre of the courtyard, each of them holding a card with a number on it, from 1 to 8.
‘Now, take your time, sir,’ said the uniformed police sergeant who’d accompanied me outside. ‘Walk down the full line and have a good look at each man. If you recognize anyone, please go back and touch him on the shoulder or you may come and tell me his number.’
I started walking slowly along the line of men, looking at their faces.
All of them were of roughly the same height and build, and each was dressed in everyday clothes and an anorak. None of them was conveniently wearing red baseball boots.
But I didn’t need that clue. I easily recognized the man who had held me in my hallway as Darryl Lawrence had repeatedly thrust his knife into my torso. Even though I’d been unable to provide DI Galvin with a description at the time, and I’d said that I couldn’t remember what he looked like, I knew him instantly. He was holding card number 3.
I went on down the whole line, looking closely at each of them in turn. I was quite certain that I had never seen the other seven men before.
I went back to number 3 and touched him on the shoulder.
‘Are you sure?’ asked the sergeant.
‘Positive,’ I said. ‘This is the man who held me in my flat while I was being stabbed.’
The man had previously been standing up very straight and looking into the distance well above my head. Now he moved his eyes down to meet mine. They were cold, like ice, with no emotion in them whatsoever. Eyes are sometimes described as the windows to the soul. If so, this man had no soul at all. The windows were black and uncaring.
I wondered what was going on in the brain behind them.
He said nothing as he was led away by two burly constables back into the building.
DI Galvin, who had been watching proceedings from the far side of the courtyard, now walked over to join me.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘You picked out the right one.’
‘There was absolutely no doubt,’ I said. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Gary Banks. He has previous for violence.’
‘How about the other two witnesses?’ I asked. ‘Did they pick him out?’
‘One did, one didn’t.’
‘Is that enough?’ I asked.
‘Probably not. But identification evidence on its own is never enough.’
‘Does that mean he’ll walk?’ I asked with concern. I didn’t fancy Mr Banks coming after me again. ‘I’d feel a lot safer knowing he’s locked up.’
‘That will be up to the CPS and the magistrates. We do have a little bit more on him — the hospital CCTV images and the fact that he was arrested wearing red baseball boots with white soles and laces might help.’
‘I looked for those,’ I said with a smile.
‘That would have been a bit too obvious. We needed you to pick him out without those to help you.’ He smiled back at me. ‘And we will continue to interview him, of course. So far he’s replied No comment to every question he’s been asked, but we’ll see. We have a few alternatives to try.’
‘Thumbscrews?’ I asked.
‘Only verbal ones, sadly.’
On Friday morning I caught a train to Ascot races for the first day of the last major meeting before Christmas. It had been almost two weeks since I’d been on a racecourse. That had been at Sandown on the day before I’d been stabbed.
That was also where I had first met Henrietta Shawcross, the day of the giggles over lunch in Derrick and Gay Smith’s box.
Thirteen days ago.
In some respects, it felt like much longer, in others, like only yesterday.
I hadn’t seen Henri since she’d been to Richmond on Monday evening, and I’d spoken to her only on the telephone for a few minutes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said when I complained I was being neglected. ‘It’s my busiest time of the year. Everyone is having Christmas parties and needing staff. I’ve worked solidly every day this week, and every evening except Monday. All I want to do afterwards is go home and go straight to sleep.’
Sleep, I’d thought.
All I wanted to do was ‘sleep’ with her.
‘We will spend lots of time together next week,’ she’d said.
‘Shouldn’t I be booking my flights?’ I’d asked.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve done all that. We leave on Wednesday.’
‘Where to?’ I’d asked.
‘The Cayman Islands.’
It all seemed surreal as I struggled up the hill to the racecourse on a typical December day of dampness and wind. The Cayman Islands seemed as far away as the moon.
I had to stop at least twice to rest.
I was beginning to wish that I had heeded my sister’s advice to take things more easily, and to watch the racing on the television.
But there was nothing like actually being where the action was happening. On television one saw only what the producer decided was relevant, whereas I preferred to look elsewhere, perhaps to see what someone didn’t want me to.
I went through the racecourse entrance turnstiles using my official BHA pass and made a direct line for the coffee bar on the concourse level of the imposing grandstand. It wasn’t so much a drink that I needed but a place to sit down. The walk up from the station had tired me out more than I’d thought it would.
‘Now, you must be careful,’ the nurse had said at the hospital clinic the previous morning, when I’d gone to have the stitches out. ‘We don’t want you back in here again, now do we?’
No, I’d thought. We don’t.
As I was sitting, drinking my coffee, my phone rang. It was DI Galvin.
‘Banks has been charged with manslaughter,’ he said.
‘Why not murder?’ I asked.
‘He says he didn’t push Lawrence under the train on purpose. It was an accident.’
‘And you believe him?’ I asked, with sarcasm in my voice.
‘Of course not. But we were in danger of getting nothing and having to let him go as our time was almost up. Everything was circumstantial. The fact that the second witness couldn’t pick him out rather negated the one that could. He wasn’t saying anything at all, so we offered him a deal and he took it.’
‘I didn’t think plea bargaining was allowed in the UK.’
‘It wasn’t like one of those US deals. There was no mention of a specific sentence or anything. We simply gave Banks the opportunity to agree with us that Lawrence’s death was manslaughter, not murder. His solicitor must have thought we had a stronger case than we actually did, because he advised Banks to agree. He has since been chatting away telling us all about how, in the crush on the platform, he only slightly nudged his dear old friend Darryl, who then stumbled accidently, falling under the train.