‘Do you want to see your client first or talk to the prosecuting solicitor?’ the usher asked.
What the hell should she do? She was considering his question carefully when the usher turned around and said, ‘Oh, here’s Mr. Talbot now. He’s prosecuting today.’
She looked up to see a familiar figure bearing down on them.
‘Neil.’ She had not seen him since the graduation ball, when he had got boorishly drunk and vomited in the bushes.
‘Laura Ellis!’ A blush was deepening his already florid complexion. He had put on weight. ‘Fancy seeing you here. I heard a rumour you were a high flyer in the city.’
‘And I thought you had gone off to Australia in pursuit of … What was her name?’
‘Ah, yes … That was a long time ago. That all ended in rather an unfortunate manner. So, are you here to defend someone? Hardly your usual line of work, I’d have thought.’
‘I’m here to defend Luke Goddard.’
Neil raised his bushy eyebrows.
‘Pretty clear-cut case of GBH. We’ve got all the witness statements from the police officers. We also have eye-witness accounts of him lobbing a breeze block at the windscreen of a lorry. Today will just be committal proceedings. The police are opposing bail.’
‘Now wait a minute. Before you steam ahead, I need to see the statements and discuss the position with my client.’
‘I’ve got copies for you,’ he said dismissively, handing her some papers. ‘I don’t think you’ll find anything to dispute here. Between you and me, the guy’s a scumbag.’
‘This is my client you’re talking about,’ she said, eyeing him coldly.
Laura strode away. She scanned the witness statements. Three policemen. Almost identical accounts. They could have been cut and pasted onto each other. She turned to the usher.
‘Could I see my client now, please?’
Luke was in a tiny low room lit by a strip light. When the usher left they were alone.
‘Done some homework?’ he asked.
‘I did a bit of swotting up last night and spoke on the phone to someone in the office this morning. He only defends the occasional businessman who’s up for speeding offences, but he knew the gist of things.’
She handed him the witness statements.
‘This is bullshit, Laura,’ he said when he’d finished reading them. ‘Can’t you see that?’
‘They all say the same thing as far as I can see.’
’That’s my point. Hang on a minute … This one here – Foster. I know him. He’s a violent bastard. I saw him beating up a protester behind one of the vans. His boss had to step in and stop it getting out of hand. Last I saw of him they were putting him in the back of one of their own vans. He couldn’t have seen what happened because he wasn’t there.’
‘How do you know it was him?’
‘I know, Laura. When you’ve been on the picket line for a month, you know their faces pretty well. They’re a hard bunch, believe me.’
‘But it will be your word against theirs. It will be difficult to prove he’s lying when three of them say the same thing.’
‘Whose side are you on for God’s sake?’
‘Well, we’ve got to be realistic. Why don’t you tell me what exactly happened there?’
‘Yeah, well, I was on the picket line with the other guys. We’d been there for a few hours. There was a lot of tension. There were more police than ever before. They had riot shields. They were determined to break the protest. A few scuffles broke out here and there, and they tried to arrest a couple of people. But we managed to fight back and get them away. This had been going on for a couple of hours when the lorries started to come out of the plant to deliver the evening editions of The Sun. Those drivers are psychos, I tell you. One of them, driving an articulated lorry, mounted the pavement and drove at some of the protesters. Everyone scattered about, but someone lobbed a breezeblock through the windscreen, and the lorry went out of control and hit a wall on the other side of the street.’
‘So who was it?’
‘I don’t know. There was so much going on, it was impossible to see properly. Someone punched me in the face, and I could hardly see out of one eye.’
‘Tell me some more about the policemen you saw beating up a protester.’
‘This guy had been taunting a line of police. He was swearing at them, shouting, calling them “paperboys”. All of a sudden, they all went for him, about five of them. They hit him with truncheons. He fell over and then they started really laying into him. This guy, Foster, he was the worst.’
‘OK. I’ll talk to the prosecuting solicitor. Let me see what I can do.’
She went back up to the lobby. She found Neil Talbot in a corner, chatting to a police officer.
‘Can I have a moment?’
She saw him exchange glances with the policeman before he left him.
‘You can’t use these statements,’ she said. ‘One of your witnesses, Foster, is lying. He wasn’t at the scene. He was already inside a police van. He’d had to be restrained from beating up a protester. I’m surprised you don’t know that already. Or perhaps you do?’
‘Is that what Goddard says?’
‘We have other eyewitnesses who say the same thing,’ she said.
‘That’s a surprise, when you’ve only just spoken to your client.’
Laura stared at his sweating, florid face.
‘How do you know what I’ve done or how many people I’ve spoken to about this? Rest assured, if you persist with this charge, I’ll bring witness after witness forward to testify to witnessing PC Foster being restrained by his superior officers. Don’t you think it looks a bit strange that they’ve put him forward as a witness in those circumstances? A bit of a slip, don’t you think? And while I’m on the subject, it also seems a bit odd that all the police statements
