‘You all right, Seb?’ he asked. Sebastian was sitting on the edge of the bunk, looking down at his shoes, which were turned toe-inwards. ‘You’ll get your lunch in a minute.’
Sebastian nodded, not looking up at Daniel.
‘I know it’s boring … probably the worst thing about court.’
‘I wasn’t bored. I just wish I didn’t have to hear …’
‘Hear what? What do you mean?’
‘All the bad things about me.’
Daniel took a deep breath, unsure how to respond, and settled down on the bunk next to him. ‘That’ll get worse, you know, Seb,’ he said finally, leaning forward on his elbows so that his head was level with the boy’s.
‘We lost the first argument,’ he said.
‘True,’ said Daniel, ‘but it was an argument we expected to lose.’
‘Why argue if you know you’re not going to win?’
‘Well, for one thing because it’s a valid argument and in court, remember, even if one judge disagrees with you, on appeal another judge may think you’re right.’
Sebastian was silent again, looking at the floor. Daniel was not sure if he had understood. He thought about explaining more to him, but did not want to burden the boy. He imagined what he would have felt like, alone in this cell, as a boy of eleven. He had been close to it. The Thorntons could easily have reported him.
‘Are you my friend?’ said Sebastian.
‘I’m your lawyer.’
‘People don’t like me,’ said Sebastian. ‘I don’t think the jury will like me either.’
‘The jury are there to consider the facts put before them. It doesn’t matter if they like you or not,’ said Daniel. He wanted this to be true, but did not completely believe it.
‘Do you like me?’ said Sebastian, looking up. Daniel’s first instinct was to look away from the green eyes that found his own, but he maintained eye contact.
‘’Course,’ he said, feeling as if he were crossing a boundary again.
There was not much time left before court resumed. Daniel bought a sandwich near St Paul’s and ate it looking out on to Cannon Street. Sebastian’s low mood was upon him and the boy’s questions turned in his mind.
He felt a sense of foreboding: he was not sure if it was fear of the outcome of the trial, or empathy for the boy and what he faced. He felt heavy with responsibility. A crow landed suddenly on the ledge outside the diner. Daniel stopped eating and watched as it choked back a chip it had snatched from the pavement. The bird cocked its head and looked at Daniel, its beak slick. Then the bird was gone, swooping up to the heights of the buildings where baroque fantasies had been cut from the Portland stone. Daniel watched the ascent until the bird was out of sight.
Flight: the control of opposing forces, weight versus lift, gravity and the pull of the great beyond.
Fight or flight: the body facilitates both at the same time; there is the choice to attack that which threatens, or to run from it.
It had been years since Daniel had felt the need to run, but he felt it now. He felt afraid of the outcome and responsible for his part in it.
Irene was pacing outside the courtroom, mobile pressed to her ear, her gown trailing behind her, when Daniel returned to the Old Bailey. Daniel winked at her as he passed and she raised her eyes at him.
Court Thirteen was nearly full. Sebastian was brought in and took his seat. He looked around for his mother. The Crolls were there behind, but not looking at their son. Charlotte was wearing sunglasses, which she kept pushing higher up her nose. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. Kenneth was looking at his watch and then at the prosecution’s QC, Gordon Jones, who, Daniel thought – even without his wig – managed to look like a public-school headmaster. Thin and always leaning forward slightly at the hip, Jones was a person of indeterminate age. He could easily be thirty-five, or he could be near retirement. The skin of Jones’s face was pulled tight over his skull.
‘What you have for lunch?’ said Sebastian.
‘Sandwich. How ’bout you?’
‘Spaghetti hoops, but they didn’t taste right. They tasted plastic or something.’
‘That’s not good.’
‘I only had a little. They were nasty.’
‘You’ll be hungry. Do you want a sweet? You’ve got another while to go.’
Sebastian popped one of Daniel’s mints into his mouth. Daniel noticed one of the journalists pointing as he offered the sweets to Sebastian, then making notes on his pad.
Sebastian seemed pleased with himself. The judge entered. Irene was not yet back, so her junior was standing in. But this afternoon was for the Crown.
Gordon Jones stood up and supported himself with two fingers pressed against his lectern.
‘Members of the jury, I appear on behalf of the Crown. The defendant is represented by my learned colleague, Miss Clarke.’
He took a deep breath and exhaled. It might have been a breath to calm him before he began, but Daniel knew it was meant as a sigh.
‘William Butler Yeats once wrote that the innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. Ben Stokes was innocent and he was beautiful. He was a beautiful eight-year-old little boy. He was just so tall …’ Gordon Jones held out a flat hand to indicate Ben’s height.
In the gallery, Ben Stokes’s mother snorted suddenly. The whole court looked up at her as her husband put his arm around her. Jones waited for a few seconds until silence fell again.
‘He should have had the world ahead of him: school, girlfriends, university, a career and a family. But Ben unfortunately had another enemy, other than time itself. We will show that he was bludgeoned to death in a violent attack by someone he knew as a neighbour and a playmate, but who we will show was in fact a sadistic bully.
‘Ben was just riding his bike near his home in Islington on Sunday 8 August this year. He was known as a quiet child, well behaved but shy. He liked riding his bicycle very much, as those of you with children in the family will appreciate, yet he left his bike abandoned in the road and the next day was found dead, having been beaten to death with a brick that lay in the corner of the playground where he was found.
‘We will show that the defendant, Sebastian Croll, persuaded Ben to leave his home and his bicycle, before taking him to Barnard Park where he was later witnessed bullying and physically assaulting the smaller and younger boy. Finally, when Ben refused to stay out and accept this abuse any longer, it is our contention that Sebastian became enraged and began a sustained and fatal attack on Ben in an area of the park playground which was hidden by trees.
‘We will demonstrate that Sebastian Croll wielded the murder weapon in a savage manner.
‘This is an unspeakable crime, but one which is still very rare. The newspapers would have you believe that our society is decaying and that grave violence by children against other children is more common than it was in the past. This is not the case. Murder of this kind is mercifully rare, but its rarity does not discount its gravity. The defendant’s age should not deflect you from the facts of the case: that this small child, Ben Stokes, was robbed of his life before his ninth birthday.
‘The task before the prosecution is straightforward – to show beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant a) carried out the actions which killed the deceased, Ben Stokes, and b) that when he did this, he did so with the intention of killing or seriously injuring him. We will show beyond doubt that the defendant fought violently with Ben Stokes, choosing a secluded and leafy area of the park to launch a savage attack. We will show that the defendant sat on the deceased and wielded a brick at the face of the small boy with the clear intention of killing him. What followed … and let us be clear, this fact is in no way diminished by the defendant’s young age … What followed … was a premeditated act of murder.