A Time For Justice (39 page)

‘
You’d been beaten up, bashed about the head and body, quite
badly injured, knocked unconscious - and you say you were thinking
very clearly?’ Graham barely suppressed a laugh. ‘Do you expect the
court to believe that, officer?’

‘
I’m a very cool customer in stressful situations,’ said Henry
glibly and rather rashly. A complete and utter lie, one which was
seized upon ruthlessly by Graham.

‘
A cool customer in stressful situations,’ the QC repeated
dubiously. ‘Now that is not altogether true, is it ...
Sergeant?’

‘
Yes, it is,’ said Henry without conviction.

‘
Well then, perhaps I could remind you of another incident
when you showed yourself to be completely uncool in a stressful
situation. Such as at the scene of the M6 bombing, of which my
client is accused. You actually assaulted and threw a TV reporter
down the banks of the River Ribble. Isn’t that so? Not the actions
of a man who is, quote “A very cool customer in stressful
situations”, are they?’

‘
That was completely different,’ protested Henry
eventually.

‘
Are those the actions of a man who is a cool customer?’
Graham was insistent.

‘
Completely and totally different ...’

‘
Did you or did you not assault a TV reporter?’

‘
Yes, but-’

‘
Thank you, officer,’ said Graham victoriously.

Henry found himself to be shaking and grinding his teeth. He
gripped the edge of the witness-box to stop himself falling over.
His breathing was shallow. His nostrils flared. Suddenly this big
courtroom was beginning to swallow him up. He wanted to flee. Leap
over the side of the box and run. Run for his life. He was, again,
showing exactly how uncool he was in stressful situations. His eyes
roved round the room madly. To the Judge. Across the faces of the
jurors. To Hinksman, who smirked. Back to Graham, a man he hated
more than anyone else at that moment in time.

Get a fucking grip on yourself, Henry, he told himself. Get a
fucking grip. Pull yourself together. Don’t let this little shit
win.

‘
I need to tell you about that particular situation,’ he
pleaded. He looked at the Crown prosecutor for support.

The man, who had been squirming until that moment, got the
message and stood up reluctantly. He addressed the Judge. ‘Your
Honour, I feel that Sergeant Christie should be allowed to tell the
court about this if he so wishes ... After all, he did not bring
the subject up. It was my learned friend here.’

Graham said quickly, ‘Your Honour, the situation itself is not
actually relevant, merely the witness’s reaction to it.’ The last
thing he wanted was Henry going for the sympathy bid.

‘
No,’ said the Judge with finality, ‘the Crown is quite
correct, Mr Graham. The officer should be allowed to expand a
little if he so wishes.’

She nodded towards Henry who said, ‘Thank you, Your Honour.’
The prosecutor sat down, hoping Henry wasn’t going to make a mess
of this, like he had done so far.

Joe Kovaks rubbed his eyes. He had been up all night,
patrolling the streets of Miami, searching, but not finding. It was
almost 7 a.m., five hours behind British time.

He was parked in a plain FBI sedan in the Lemon City
district, north of Miami, killing the last few minutes of his tour
of duty.

His temporary partner, Tommo, dozed next to him in the
passenger seat, snoring gently. Sue had been reassigned unwillingly
to other duties - some massive white-collar fraud enquiry where she
could use her accountancy skills to their best advantage - and
Tommo had been teamed up with Kovaks pending the return of
Donaldson from England.

The sun was climbing up through the sky. It was going to be
another hot day. Soon Kovaks would be going home - how he had
almost come to hate going home! - and he would take Chrissy to
hospital where she would undergo treatment for most of the day,
some medical, mostly psychiatric. He would go back to the apartment
and sleep while she was there, collecting her later in the
day.

Kovaks yawned and reviewed the night’s work.

Another fucking total waste of time. He’d combed the city for
what seemed the millionth time, but he couldn’t find her, the woman
who was going to bring Corelli to justice...

He and Tommo had hassled countless prostitutes, pimps and drug
dealers, because he was sure that it was amongst these people she
would be found: selling her body, what was left of it, and that
once gorgeous mouth so that she could get pumped-up with enough
drugs to see her through the next day.

But he couldn’t fucking find her.

Kovaks was teetering towards the edge now.

Tommo opened his eyes and squinted sideways at Kovaks. ‘You
gonna answer that fuckin’ radio or not?’ he croaked.

‘
Eh?’ Kovaks had been so deep in his thoughts that he did not
hear the radio operator shouting his call sign. He fumbled the
handset. ‘Yeah, receivin’. Go ahead.’

‘
Yeah, Joe,’ began the weary operator. ‘Can you be making your
way to the Jackson Memorial Hospital, Emergency Room?’

Puzzled, Kovaks said, ‘Sure, but I’m off-duty at
seven.’

‘
Well,’ she drawled, ‘it’s up to you, Joe, but that little
lady you been seeking for the past few days has just turned up
there in the back of an ambulance - drugs OD.’

‘
On my way,’ shouted Kovaks, throwing the handset down, the
wheels of the car spinning almost before he’d finished
speaking.

They were back on Henry’s side following his graphic and
emotional account of the M6 bombing and its aftermath in the river
and on its banks. It was the first time Henry had related the whole
story in full to anyone. He found it to be a cathartic, cleansing
experience. Suddenly he felt as though a great burden had been
lifted from his soul. He’d tried his best, but the situation had
been against him. And now he could accept that. Stood in that
courtroom, the eyes of the world on him, he had bared his soul -
and it felt great.

He looked at the jury. Two women were actually
crying.

Then he looked at Hinksman.

Again their eyes locked. But this time Henry felt in no way
intimidated by him. I am a brave man, he told Hinksman silently.
You are a violent man, but at heart you must be a coward. I am
better than you.

Graham coughed. He desperately wanted to get the whole thing
back on course.

‘
Now if I may bring you back to the night in question,’ he
said, not wasting time, not allowing the jury to reflect. He went
straight for the jugular. ‘We’ve established that you were in a
dark alley, being assaulted by a number of people. You were on your
back, having passed out briefly. What happened next?’

Henry’s ordeal was by no means over.

‘
One of them had a gun to my face - my own gun, actually - and
he was weighing up whether or not he should "pop" me.’

‘
“
Pop” you, officer?’

‘
Pull the trigger, kill me,’ explained Henry. ‘Before he could
make a decision he himself was dead with his brains blown out,
mostly all over me.’

‘
Who shot him?’

‘
A man who came down the alley.’

‘
Do you see that man in court today?’

‘
Yes,’ said Henry. He pointed. ‘Him. Your client.’

‘
Now, come come,’ tutted Graham disapprovingly. ‘How can you
possibly make that assumption? A dark alley. No lighting. A
beating. You cannot say for sure that it was my client in the
alley, can you? You cannot say for sure that he killed those
people, can you?’

Henry hesitated. Then he said, ‘I am sure it was.’ No way was
he going to be swayed.

‘
Did you see his face?’

‘
To a degree,’ said Henry. ‘Enough to identify
him.’

‘
What happened after “this man” shot those people in the
alley?’ ‘He turned and walked away.’

‘
Did he speak to you?’

‘
No, but he spoke to one of the men before he shot him. He
said a few words in an American accent.’

Graham chose to ignore that. ‘Did he turn back at
all?’

‘
Briefly, at the end of the alley. He glanced back and I saw
his face again - this time under street lighting. It was definitely
your client.’

‘
And how long did you see his face for? One second? Two?
Three?’

‘
About a second,’ admitted Henry.

‘
About a second ... and that gave you enough time to make a
positive identification of Mr Hinksman?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
How far away was he from you?’

‘
About fifty feet.’

‘
And you were still laid on your back, is that
correct?’

‘
Yes,’ said Henry.

Graham shook his head. ‘What happened next?’

‘
Hinksman turned and walked away towards the Tower. I decided
to go after him.’

‘
So you lost sight of him.’

‘
Yes.’

‘
For how long?’

‘
Until I caught up with him on the promenade.’

‘
Which was how long?’

‘
A minute, ninety seconds.’

‘
Is it not just possible that the man you caught up with was
not the same man who killed all those people in the
alley?’

‘
It was the same man - Hinksman,’ said Henry
firmly.

‘
But you lost sight of that man. How could you possibly say it
was the same man?’

‘
I recognised him, and apart from anything else, he was
wearing the same clothing.’

Graham did not pursue Henry’s encounter on the promenade with
Hinksman. Too many people could back him up. Instead he
concentrated on discrediting the identification of Hinksman in the
alley. He knew that much of the evidence against Hinksman was good
and that he would probably get convicted of most of the murders of
which he was accused. Graham saw it as his job to do two things;
get some of them reduced to manslaughter and get him off some of
the charges. He had a strong case against Henry’s testimony, as the
sergeant well knew. There was no one to back up Henry’s story
because Ralphie’s girlfriend had disappeared without trace
(probably dressed in concrete, Henry believed), and therefore
everything rested on Henry’s eyewitness account, backed up by
forensic and ballistic evidence which proved that the gun in
Hinksman’s possession at the time of his arrest was the one which
killed Ralphie and his pals. The difficulty for the prosecution was
in proving that Hinksman had actually pulled the trigger. If Henry
couldn’t convince the jury, then Hinksman would be cleared of four
murder charges. Henry did not want this to happen.

Henry spent a further thirty minutes in the witness-box under
cross-examination by Graham.

In the end Graham said huffily, ‘It is obvious, officer, that
you have decided to stick to your story no matter what, so I have
no further questions for you.’ Angrily he sat down, unhappy that he
could not get Henry to budge - and not terribly pleased that he had
been unable to carry out Hinksman’s instructions and drag Henry’s
character through the mud.

Three hours after stepping into the box, Henry stepped out,
feeling weak and hungry. The court had adjourned for
lunch.

‘
Well done, pal,’ said Donaldson. He’d been watching from the
rear of the court.

‘
I feel completely drained,’ said Henry. ‘Lunch?’

‘
Afraid not. Karen and I have an appointment in Manchester at
three. We’ll be leaving now.’

‘
What’s that for?’

‘
Can’t tell you,’ said Donaldson, tapping his nose.

‘
A mega-concoction of pills, anything she could lay her hands
on, I’d say,’ the nurse told Joe Kovaks. ‘You name it, they were in
there. Pill cocktail, could’ve been lethal if she’d’ve had ‘em in
her any longer. Got here just in time. We pumped her stomach out
real good. Doc says no harm done.’

‘
So she’ll be OK?’

‘
Yep. She’s tired now and she’ll need a few days in here, but
she’ll be fine, or at least as fine as a junkie can
get.’

They turned into the ward. ‘Third bed on the left.’

‘
Thanks, nurse,’ Kovaks said.

He walked quietly down the ward. Curtains were drawn around
the third bed along. He found the gap and stepped into the enclosed
world. Kovaks gasped when he saw her. She looked very ill, all skin
and bone and she seemed to be barely breathing. In fact he thought
she was dead at first, but a twitch in one of her fingers told him
otherwise. A drip ran into one of her skinny arms, the tube of
which was not much less in circumference than the arm
itself.

Kovaks sat next to the bed. His chair scraped on the
floor.

She looked ninety years old. Kovaks knew she was nineteen. He
shook his head sadly, remembering the feisty girl who used to give
him as good as she got whenever he visited her to try and arrest
Whisper when he’d been wanted on warrant. She hadn’t taken any shit
from anyone back then. Now she didn’t even look capable of taking a
shit.