‘Ben Stokes was beautiful and innocent indeed, but we will show that the defendant committed the ugliest of crimes, and is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.’
The whole room seemed to have suspended its breath and so Daniel held his. The oak panels and the green leather seemed to creak and rub with impatience in the lengthening silence. Daniel glanced behind at the Crolls. Charlotte sat upright, her mouth just turning down at the corners. Kenneth was frowning at Gordon Jones.
Sebastian was rapt. His boredom had passed. Daniel had watched him lean forward as he listened to Jones’s story, as if it was a story, created for his amusement with Sebastian as the protagonist.
Irene silently re-entered the court.
When the Crown finished outlining the case for the prosecution, Daniel felt a chill. He himself did not know for a fact whether Sebastian was innocent or guilty; he only knew the boy was out of place here in the adult court – even with the tables rearranged and the wigs off and only ten reporters in the gallery.
Gordon Jones finally sat down, and Sebastian leaned into Danieclass="underline" ‘He’s got it all wrong. Maybe I should tell them?’ His clear, well-spoken voice was loud even in a whisper.
‘Not now,’ Daniel said, aware of Irene clearing her throat and glancing in his direction. ‘We’ll get our turn.’
It was the second day of the trial and Daniel arrived at court at nine thirty. He jogged past the rows of press photographers who were three deep behind the makeshift barriers. When he entered the Central Criminal Court it felt dark and humid. Each entrance to this court always felt portentous. It was like being swallowed: entering the ribcage of a beast. The marble statues reproached him.
Again, Daniel felt nervous, as if he was a younger, less experienced lawyer. He had been involved in countless criminal trials but today his palms were moist, as if it were his own trial.
Before Sebastian arrived in the courtroom, Daniel took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He knew what the day held and knew that it could only be hard on the boy.
‘The Crown calls Mrs Madeline Stokes.’
Ben Stokes’s mother entered and made her way to the witness box. She walked as if shackled. She wore her hair tied back. It was uneven, as if she had tied it back in a hurry. The hairstyle accentuated the hollows of her cheeks and her dark eyes. Daniel was at least twenty feet from her, and yet he was sure that he could see her tremble. She leaned on the witness box when she arrived and her breaths were audible in the microphone.
The heating made the room dry and hot. Daniel felt his armpits become wet with sweat.
Seconds passed, as Gordon Jones leafed through his notes. Everyone in the court was waiting for him to speak.
‘Mrs Stokes,’ he said after a long pause, ‘I know this is difficult for you, but I’d like to ask you to cast your mind back to the afternoon of Sunday 8 August. Can you tell the court about the last time that you saw your son alive?’
‘Well … it was a nice day. He asked if he could go out to play on his bike, and I said that he could but that he had to … had to stay in our road.’
She was obviously nervous, broken by a deep sadness, yet her voice was clear and genteel. It reminded Daniel of ice in a glass. When she became emotional, her voice deepened.
‘Did you watch your son as he played outside?’
‘Yes, I did for a while. I was washing the dishes in the kitchen and I could see him going back and forth along the pavement.’
‘What time was it, do you think, the last time you saw him?’ Jones was softly spoken, deferential.
‘It was about one. He had been outside for half an hour or so after lunch and I asked him if he wanted to put a jacket on or come inside. I thought it might rain. He said he was fine. I wish I’d made him now. I wish I had insisted. I wish …’
‘So you allowed Ben to continue to play outside? At what time did you discover he was no longer playing in the road?’
‘Not long after that. It was maybe fifteen, twenty minutes – that was all. I was working upstairs and I looked out of the window. I kept checking on him. I … You can pretty much see the whole of our road from up there but when I looked out … I just couldn’t see him at all.’
When she said at all, Madeline Stokes’s eyes became very wide.
‘What did you do?’
‘I ran out into the street. I ran up and down the road and then found his bike, lying on its side, abandoned around the corner. I knew right away something terrible had happened to him. I don’t know why, but I did. At first I thought he might have been hit by a car, but everything was completely quiet. He had just … vanished.’
Madeline Stokes was crying now. Daniel was moved by her, and he knew that the jury would be too. Her left hand was now red against the witness box, but her face was still white. When she cried she put a hand over her mouth. Daniel remembered what Harriet had said to him about Minnie losing her daughter. He remembered the day at the market with Minnie’s hands cold on his and her sad, watery-blue eyes begging him not to mention her little girl. Like Minnie, Madeline Stokes had only one child. She had lost everything that mattered and the world was now a dark place.
‘I shouted for him down some of the other streets and stood at the gate to the park, but I couldn’t see him in there. I called his friends, then his father and we … called the hospital and the police.’
‘Did you call your neighbours, the Crolls?’
‘No.’ She wiped her face with flat hands. Her eyes were rueful, red pebbles. They turned and shone – watching the scene again, reliving the panic. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Did Ben occasionally play with Sebastian?’
‘Yes, not at school really, but sometimes at weekends. At first I had been fine about it, but then I found out that Sebastian was bullying Ben, getting him into trouble, and I stopped them seeing each other.’
‘Can you explain what you mean by “bullying and getting into trouble”?’
‘Well, when we first moved to Richmond Crescent, Sebastian asked if Ben could come out to play. I was pleased that there was a little boy so close, even if he was a bit older, but then I decided he wasn’t really … suitable.’
‘And why, may I ask, was that?’
‘After playing with Sebastian, Ben started to use some very vulgar swearwords – words that he didn’t know before. I told him off and stopped him playing with Sebastian for a few days, but still at weekends they would occasionally play together. Then I noticed that Ben would have bruises after playing with Sebastian. Ben told me that Sebastian would hit him when he didn’t do as he asked. I complained to Sebastian’s mother and told Ben he was never to play with Sebastian again.’
‘When you complained to Sebastian’s mother, did you receive a satisfactory response?’
‘No, Sebastian is a law unto himself in that house, or so I gather. His own mother has no control over him and his father’s often away. I don’t think she keeps well.’
Mrs Stokes wiped her nose and spoke down into her handkerchief. Daniel watched Charlotte out of the corner of his eye. She was impassive, but there was a shine on her make-up now. Neither woman looked at the other. Sebastian was sitting up straight, staring at Madeline. He blinked often.
‘So, you didn’t contact the Crolls about Ben’s disappearance because you had forbidden your son to play with Sebastian and so did not suspect that the two boys would be together. But you think that Ben would have disobeyed you …’