Cheryl cleared her throat. ‘Yes.’ Like everyone else, she’d scurried away to hide.
‘You didn’t go to the police for eight months, in fact. Were you waiting to see if the police caught the culprits before you falsely accused Derek Carlton?’
‘No!’
‘The reward then. You were waiting for that – and you saw your chance to make money by coming here and telling us a pack of lies. Maybe settling an old score.’
‘That’s not true,’ Cheryl shouted. ‘That’s lies.’
‘I submit that you are misleading this court. You can’t remember where you were when you heard the car, it drove past you at such speed it would be nigh on impossible to see who was in the car, even without the likely glare of the sun on the windows. You claim Derek Carlton was the passenger in the car yet you are unable to tell the court whether that person was even wearing sunglasses or not. You see Danny Macateer lying dead after hearing gunshots yet you wander off home without any thought for reporting this supposed sighting-’
‘I was scared,’ Cheryl interrupted. ‘I thought they’d kill me!’
There was a commotion in the court with lots of people shouting at once. The judge told the jury this was inadmissible as evidence. His voice was sharp as he instructed Cheryl not to speak except to answer a question put to her.
What could she tell them? That the bang of a firework had finally shown her how scared she was, would always be as long as the gangs held sway. That she didn’t want her son growing up only to see him sucked in or mown down. That somehow she had found enough courage to pick up the phone.
Miss Mooney came after her again. ‘Some months later, only after a substantial reward had been offered, you finally approached the police. And for some malicious design of your own making you dreamt up these claims which bear little scrutiny.’
‘They did it,’ Cheryl said, ‘everyone knows-’
The judge stopped her again. ‘We are only interested in your eyewitness testimony. Rumour and gossip have no place in this courtroom.’
‘What did you really see that afternoon?’ asked Miss Mooney.
‘What I told you-’
She cut Cheryl off. ‘Were you even on that street?’
‘I swear. I saw them,’ she said fiercely.
‘If Derek Carlton had been wearing sunglasses would you still have been able to identify him?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘Because I know him, I know his hair and how he walks, everything.’ She felt hemmed in by the questions.
‘Are you close?’
‘What? No!’
‘You have never been in a close relationship to him?’ she asked waspishly.
‘No.’ Like Cheryl was some jilted girlfriend.
‘You don’t like him?’
‘I hate him,’ Cheryl said. ‘He’s a gangster.’
There were shouts and objections in court.
‘And you’d go to any ends to see him convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Because this is a vendetta, isn’t it?’ Her tone was harsh.
‘No!’
‘No further questions.’
Cheryl felt like someone had knocked her about, shaky again and sick. Her stomach growling with hunger, her breasts sore. She wanted to go, get back to Nana, fetch Milo. She felt dirty.
But the other defence lawyer was on his feet. Mr Merchant. Young but big with double chins and a small brown beard, too small to hide the chins. A posh voice.
‘When the car first drove past you, you were at the passenger side, am I right?’
‘Yes.’ Cheryl’s nerves were thrumming, her pulse stuttering.
‘And you have told the court that the car was travelling at speeds of forty miles an hour or more, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘The road is narrow, would you agree?’ he asked briskly.
‘I suppose.’
‘It’s a residential street, small terraced properties, just room for two cars to pass on either side?’
‘Yes.’ What did it matter? Cheryl wondered.
‘Then you would have been close to the car?’
‘Yes.’
‘So close that any passenger and the bodywork of the car itself would have obscured your view of the driver, isn’t that the case?’
‘No, I saw him.’ It was like everything she told them was crumbling, dissolving.
‘With your Honour’s Permission?’
The judge nodded and then Mr Merchant explained he was now showing a reconstruction filmed on the same street using a similar model of car with volunteers taking the roles of driver and passenger and a camera filming the witness’s point of view.
Cheryl watched as the film played out. It was stagy and cheap, like one of those health and safety films they’d watched in technology. Someone in court laughed aloud. The film showed just what the witness could see: the car drove by and there was the blur of the passenger but nothing of the driver.
‘You would have to bend down to peer in and see the driver,’ announced Mr Merchant.
‘I must have seen him before they got to me, then,’ Cheryl said crossly.
‘But not five minutes ago you told this court that only the noise alerted you, and given the short distance and the speed the car was travelling at you would scarcely have had a chance to see anything, isn’t that really the truth?’
‘No.’ He doesn’t believe me, she realized, he thinks I’m a liar. The risk she was taking, the fear she carried, leaving Nana on her own in the hospital – all that and he made her out to be some scheming bitch.
‘Remember you are on oath.’
‘I saw them,’ Cheryl repeated, her jaw stiff, her mouth gluey.
‘What was my client, Mr Millins, wearing?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Cheryl.
‘Nothing? Not one item?’
‘He was sitting down, driving.’
‘Presumably he was dressed?’
People laughed and Cheryl wanted to spit at the man making her feel stupid. ‘I can’t remember his clothes.’
‘Was he wearing a hat?’
Sam Millins often did, a little pork-pie type, but it would be dangerous to guess. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know a considerable amount, it seems to me. I put it to you that the reason you don’t know so much is that this is all an invention, a web of lies concocted for your own ends.’
‘No!’ What could she say to make them believe her?
‘Because you bear this defendant some sort of grudge, you’d like to see him punished and you’d like to get your hands on the reward money.’
‘That’s not true.’ Cheryl was close to tears, her fists were clenched, her shoulders rigid.
‘My client stands to lose his liberty and his reputation. The charge of murder is the most serious of all. You place him close to a murder but your account is full of holes. Beyond alleging that you saw him there, that you saw his car, you have not been able to give one shred of supporting evidence to back up that assertion. You don’t know, you can’t remember: that’s all we are hearing. No further questions.’
He turned away and Cheryl was left shivering, tears burning the back of her eyes. They were done with her.
‘Let’s get you a cup of tea,’ Benny said. ‘You deserve it.’
Cheryl cleared her throat, took off the microphone.
Upstairs Joe was waiting. ‘How’d it go?’
‘They didn’t believe me.’ A nugget of rage boiled inside her.
He smiled. ‘You can’t know that, the jury will make their own minds up.’
‘They made out like I was in it for the money, that I had some issue with Carlton and Sam Millins, and all these stupid questions-’
‘It’s their job, it’s not personal.’
‘It felt personal!’ Cheryl shook her head, disgusted with it all. Weary. ‘I’ve got to get to the hospital.’
‘Tea’s here.’ Joe nodded as Benny came in with tea and a plate of toast. ‘Only take a minute.’ All fatherly.
Cheryl tried to smile but her face was all wonky. She sipped the tea and ate the toast. She turned her phone on but there were no messages. Then Joe drove her to the crèche. This time Milo kicked off because he wanted to stay, he’d found a play set with Dalmatian puppies and a kennel and was in woof heaven.