Vicious Circle (35 page)

‘So he left you alone in the kitchen and then what happened, Cookie?’

‘Then there was a bit of quiet, and suddenly Miss Bryoni start screaming like she having her throat cut. Even Bonzo hear it down there in the garage. But I shout, “Bonzo, you better come quick. Sounds like there big trouble.” We runs up the stairs and Bonzo runs straight through that big ol’ door like there nothing there. I runs in just behind him and I see Master Carl on top of Miss Bryoni on the bed and she fighting him like a crazy girl and screaming her head off and he on top of her having sex with her.’

‘How did you know he was having sex with her, Cookie?’

‘Nuff good ol’ boys have done it to me for me to know for sure when one of them doing it to someone else, Miss Strauss.’

‘Please continue telling us what took place next, Cookie.’

‘Well, Bonzo go out of his head. Like all of us he just love little Miss Bryoni. He shouting at Carl, “What you doing to her, man? She your little baby sister, man. What you doing to her?” and stuff like that. Then he grab Carl and throw him clean across the room. Then I see Carl got his pants all open in front and his big ol’ hard-on sticking out a yard in front of him, all wet with my baby’s blood and stuff and then I want to kill him also, but I tell Bonzo leave him ’cos the police going to take care of him and we gotta take care of Bryoni. Then I call the police and they come pretty damn fast and they arrest Carl and Bonzo carry Bryoni to the police car ’cos she hurt so bad she can’t walk and they take her off to hospital.’

‘Thank you, Cookie. I have no further questions for you.’

Judge Chamberlain looked towards the defence table. ‘Counsel for the defence, do you wish to cross-examine the witness?’

John Martius seemed about to refuse, then he stood up slowly.

‘Mrs Honeycomb, you say you heard Bryoni inviting the accused up to her bedroom?’

‘Yes, sir, I heard her tell him to come up, but I don’t think she want him to play hide the ol’ pork sausage with her. I think she gonna play him the tape of Sacha telling what Carl did—’

‘Your Honour! Witness has answered my question that Bryoni Bannock invited her brother into her bedroom. The rest of her testimony is supposition.’

‘Please don’t speculate, Mrs Honeycomb. The jury will pay no heed to the rest of witness’s reply.’

‘Thank you, Your Honour. I have no further questions for this witness.’ Martius sat down again.

Next, Melody Strauss called Bonzo Barnes to the witness box. Bonzo corroborated every detail of Cookie’s evidence, but not as articulately nor as colourfully as she had delivered the original.

John Martius asked a single question in cross-examination. ‘Mr Barnes, did you hear Bryoni Bannock invite her brother Carl into her bedroom?’

‘Yes, sir. I heard her.’

‘Did Bryoni often entertain her brother Carl in her bedroom with the door closed?’

‘If she did then I never seen or heard her do it, mister.’

‘But you are not certain that she never had him alone in her bedroom?’

Bonzo thought about the question deeply and darkly. ‘It ain’t my job to stand guard at Miss Bryoni’s door every minute of the day.’

‘So you don’t know if Bryoni Bannock made a habit of entertaining her boyfriends in her bedroom behind closed doors?’

‘I am sure of one thing, mister. If I catch any boy in her room trying to do what Carl done to her I gonna break his neck.’

‘Thank you, Mr Barnes. No further questions for this witness, Your Honour.’

Bonzo rose to his full height and stature and glowered at John Martius. ‘I know what you trying to make me say, but what you hear me say is our little Bryoni is a good girl. I gonna break the neck of anybody who say she not!’

‘Thank you, Mr Barnes.’ John Martius backed away hurriedly out of the reach of Bonzo’s long arm. ‘You may leave the witness box.’

Melody called her next witnesses. He was Sergeant Roger Tarantus of the Houston Police Department. He gave evidence that he and his team had responded to an emergency call and gone to No. 61 Forest Drive, the residence of Henry Bannock and his family, on the evening in question. Melody led him through a detailed description of what he had found on the premises on arrival, and the actions he had taken. Sergeant Tarantus’s evidence tended to confirm the evidence of all the other prosecution witnesses, including Bryoni Bannock and both Bonzo Barnes and Martha Honeycomb.

‘So, Sergeant Tarantus, on the strength of what you had seen and heard at Number Sixty-one Forest Drive you arrested Carl Bannock for rape and sundry other offences and took him into the Houston police headquarters, where you booked him?’

‘That is correct, ma’am.’

The defence team declined to cross-examine the sergeant, and the other witnesses called by the prosecution were all character witnesses for Bryoni Bannock. These were Bryoni’s school teachers and the psychiatrists from Nine Elms who had come to know Bryoni well over the time she had been a regular visitor to her sister Sacha. One after another they described Bryoni as an exemplary student and an intelligent, well-balanced and normal child.

In cross-examination the defence attempted to lead the witnesses into agreeing that Bryoni had an abnormal interest in the opposite sex for a child of her age. In every case this was strongly resisted by all of them.

At last Melody was able to tell Judge Chamberlain, ‘No further questions. The prosecution rests. We are ready to make our summation to the jury, if it pleases Your Honour.’

‘Thank you, Miss Strauss.’ The judged turned to the defence table and asked, ‘Does counsel for the defence wish to call any witnesses in rebuttal, Mr Martius?’

A hush of anticipation held the courtroom. Everybody knew the defence had to call the accused, Carl Peter Bannock, to the witness box to give testimony in his own defence. Not to do so would be an admission of his guilt. To do so would be a calculated risk.

John Martius rose slowly, almost reluctantly, to his feet.

‘The defence calls the defendant, Carl Peter Bannock, Your Honour,’ he said. There was an audible sigh of released tension and Melody Strauss smiled thinly in anticipation, like a lioness with the scent of the gazelle in her nostrils.

Carl rose from his seat at the defence table and made his way in the palpable silence of the courtroom to the witness stand. His demeanour was that of profound contrition. He stood in the box with his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed. His expression was tragic.

‘You may take a seat, Carl,’ John Martius advised him.

‘Thank you, sir, but I prefer to stand,’ Carl mumbled like a broken man.

‘Please tell us how you feel about these legal proceedings.’

‘I am completely devastated. I feel that I have lost the will to go on living. If this court places me under sentence of death I will welcome the executioner with open arms.’ Carl lifted his head and looked across the floor to his adoptive father, Henry Bannock, seated in the front row facing him. ‘I feel I have let down and disappointed my father. He had such high hopes for me and I tried to live up to his expectations but I failed.’ He sobbed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. ‘I am deeply sorry for any hurt or damage that I might have inflicted on my two darling sisters. I am just as guilty as they are in leading me into sin. I forgive them, and I beg them to forgive me. I am overcome with remorse.’

Henry Bannock snorted with disgust and deliberately turned his face away from the sorry spectacle.

‘Are you guilty of the charges that have been brought against you, Carl Bannock?’ John Martius demanded.

‘I am guilty only of succumbing to temptation and to female enticements, to the sin of Adam and the wiles of Eve.’ The phrase was so theatrical and contrived that some of those that listened to it winced.

‘No further questions of this witness, Your Honour.’ John Martius sat down.

Melody Strauss came at the accused, the lioness now charging from ambush. ‘Are you suggesting, Mr Bannock, that you were deliberately lured into committing rape by your two underage sisters?’

‘I am confused and deeply distressed. This has all come as a terrible shock to me. My memory fails me. I hear the accusations levelled against me and I think that there must be some truth in them, but I remember only very little of any of it, madam.’

‘How do you suggest your sperm found its way into your twelve-year-old sister’s vagina? Did she place it there herself, Mr Bannock, do you suppose?’

‘As God is my witness, I don’t know. I don’t remember any of this, but I am profoundly sorry for anything I might have done.’ He was blubbering again.

‘Do you suggest that your twelve-year-old sister inflicted the bruises and contusions on her own body? Perhaps she ripped open her private parts to shame you, do you think that possible?’

‘Maybe that is what happened, and if so I forgive her as I hope she will forgive me.’

‘Do you believe that those twelve law-abiding and upstanding citizens of the jury are naïve and gullible to the point of lunacy to fall for this claptrap? Is that what you believe, sir?’

‘No! I certainly do not believe that. It is only my own memory that I doubt.’

‘When did this strange bout of amnesia first strike you, sir? Was it when you realized that you were going to be made to pay for the hurt and shame you so readily inflicted on your young sisters?’

‘I don’t remember. I truly don’t remember.’

Melody threw up her hands in disgust. She was too shrewd to labour a point that she had taken so convincingly. She knew that the defence had paid a high price to allow their client to express his repentance in open court, and she was well pleased.

‘No further questions for the accused, Your Honour.’

‘Very well, ladies and gentlemen.’ Judge Chamberlain glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘The time is a few minutes short of four o’clock. So I am going to adjourn this court for today and we will resume at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, to hear the prosecution’s summation.’

*

Melody Strauss’s summation lasted almost three hours. She laid the established facts before the jury in a cogent and logical fashion which demonstrated how she had earned her reputation. The jury and everybody else in the courtroom listened with total fascination. The manner in which she presented her case was flawless.

In contrast, John Martius made no attempt to address the evidence. He worked on the theory that his client had been the victim of enticement and entrapment by his two sisters. He put forward the theory that the motive of the girls was to bring Carl into disfavour with Henry Bannock and to replace him in their father’s affections. His rebuttal took only forty-eight minutes.

Judge Chamberlain summed up for the jury. He told them to consider carefully if Carl Bannock’s remorse for the crimes he was accused of was genuine or if it was merely rather poor acting, and if Bryoni Bannock’s horrendous injuries were self-inflicted.

‘Were those real tears of remorse that we saw in the eyes of the accused yesterday, or were they perhaps more saurian in nature?’ he asked them.

He sent the jury out directly after lunch to commence their deliberations.

Henry took Melody Strauss, Ronnie Bunter and Bryoni down the road to lunch at the local Burger King. Bryoni and Melody shared a double cheeseburger. Now that her ordeal was almost over Bryoni was once again chirpy as a songbird, but she held her father’s hand for reassurance, and once she whispered to him, ‘If Carl goes to prison, he is going to be real mad at me. Do you think he will come to get me when they let him out again?’

‘Carl is going away for a very long time. And we are going to make sure that he can never bother you again, my darling.’

By the time Henry called for the check it was after three o’clock. He was still paying it when a clerk of the court hurried into the restaurant.

‘The jury is back, Mr Bannock. They have reached a verdict. You had best hurry, sir.’

‘Good Lord! Well under three hours, that’s either very good or very bad.’ Ronnie Bunter gave his opinion.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ Henry grabbed Bryoni’s hand and hustled her down the street to the courthouse. The courtroom was full and the press section included reporters from as far afield as New York City and Anchorage, Alaska.

*

Hector Cross had left orders that he was not to be disturbed. He had diverted any incoming telephone calls to Agatha’s office in Abu Zara. He was so deeply engrossed in the typescript of ‘The Poisoned Seed’ that he had not been conscious of the passage of time until there was a discreet little double tap on the door of his study.

Hector jerked back from another time and a faraway place to the present. He had been so engrossed in Jo Stanley’s writing that for another few seconds he was slightly disorientated. He glanced at the window and saw by the outside light that it was already dusk. The day had sped away. He had not eaten since breakfast and had subsisted on cups of coffee that he brewed himself. He had barely taken the time to visit the toilet that adjoined his study.

He jumped up from the desk and crossed quickly to the door. He opened it, and she stood there smiling at him. She wore one of the white terry towel bathrobes and her legs and feet were bare. Her hair was damp and she had twisted it up on top of her head. She had bathed away the last traces of her make-up and her skin glowed. She looked young as a schoolgirl. She had obviously slept well for her eyes sparkled and the whites were clear. The irises were green, like tropic sunlight through seawater, sea green and serene.

‘Are we going to stand here staring at each other all night, or are you going to invite me into your lair?’

‘Forgive me. I had almost forgotten how good you look.’

‘You saw me just six or seven hours ago.’

‘Has it been that long?’ He was genuinely surprised and he checked his wristwatch. ‘You are right. I must learn not to argue with you.’ He took her hand and drew her into the room. ‘I do apologize for neglecting you. But it’s your own fault, I am sorry. You had me mesmerized with your literary genius. You had me hooked and hog-tied.’

‘You old flatterer, you!’ she said, but she smiled with genuine pleasure.