Dead Wrong - [9]

‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ Mr Wallace replied. ‘Do you garden?’

‘A bit,’ I said, overawed by the comparison.

‘Glenda, my wife, designed it. Place was full of hydrangeas and gladioli when we moved in. She died,’ he carried on, ‘six years ago now. We keep it just as she made it. We could sit outside if you…’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll get the key.’ He strode over to his desk and came back with a bunch of keys. He unlocked the French windows. I gathered up my tray and book and we settled on seats on the patio immediately next to the house.

‘So,’ he resumed his story, ‘I asked to see the person in charge. They made me wait, of course. I told him they’d got the wrong person. I explained how close the boys were, that neither of them got into fights. That Luke would never hurt Ahktar. The man listened, he thanked me, he said nothing. As far as I can see, they’ve got a suspect and they want to make it fit.’

‘But without proof…’

‘Apparently they have two witnesses.’

Bad news. I underlined the word witnesses in my notes.

‘People who saw something that incriminates Luke. How could they?’ he demanded. ‘He didn’t do it; they’ve got him mixed up with someone else.’ His tone was hectoring. In any other situation it would have put me right off, but I made allowances for his desperation.

‘What did Luke say?’

He sighed. ‘Luke can’t remember anything.’ I could hear the despair in his voice. ‘He was pissed, he says he’d taken some tablets, he can’t remember anything. He doesn’t know what happened. Just a blank. He was devastated when they told him Ahktar was dead but he can’t remember a thing.’

My heart sank. With witnesses for the prosecution and a suspect who was out of his head on drugs, it wouldn’t be hard to secure a conviction. Obviously it would depend on what the witnesses actually saw and whether there was any other interpretation of that. But all Mr Wallace could offer in Luke’s defence was his trust, his faith that his son hadn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t have killed his friend. And I’m sure most parents faced with that accusation would say the same.

‘Mr Wallace-’ My uncertainty must have come through because he interrupted me before I could say more.

‘Please,’ he said, gripping the edge of the seat. ‘Please.’ He implored me but there was strength, not weakness in his plea.

Objections leapfrogged over each other in my mind. A hopeless case, I’d be going over the same old ground, I can’t do anything your lawyer can’t do, the trail will be stone cold, it’s months ago, they’ve got a witness, he may be guilty, these tragedies happen. But I couldn’t turn him down. His conviction, his passion about his son’s innocence was too powerful.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘but these are my terms.’

Chapter Four

Driving back through the city centre was even slower than getting there. I felt exhausted by meeting Mr Wallace and the intensity of his emotional state. I had an image I couldn’t shift of the knife in Ahktar’s chest. I don’t like knives. I was stabbed once. Please don‘t, I’d begged. He raised his arm…the knife shining…No. I shook the memories away.

My shoulder was stiff and aching. I rolled it back round and round as I queued up to get onto Princess Street. We inched forward a couple of cars at a time when the lights changed, but the traffic ahead was hardly moving. There’d been a crash. I crawled past wanting to avert my eyes, needing to look. A woman in one of the cars had a neck brace on. She was being lifted out by two ambulance men. I sighed with relief; no blood, no dead bodies or worse, no decapitated driver or twitching limbs imprinted on my mind for the rest of my life.

If Ahktar had been stabbed outside the club as everyone was coming out, surely there would have been more than two witnesses? There’d have been blood, a skirmish; people would have glanced, looked, stared. There would have been the unmistakable atmosphere of violence, the scent of danger and death that we all recognise instinctively, that speeds up our heartbeat and raises the hairs on the back of our neck. I needed to find some of those witnesses. Six months after the event it wouldn’t be easy, and acting for the defence we could hardly get a slot on Crimewatch to pull people in. I’d start with the list Mr Wallace had given me, but from what he’d said none of the witnesses had come up with anything substantial the defence could use. Before I talked to anyone though, I’d book a visit to Golborne and meet Luke, assess for myself whether I thought he was wrongly accused. As an independent operator I had the freedom to choose who I worked for and what the terms were, and I’d said to Mr Wallace that I would only take the case if I felt comfortable working for Luke’s release.

Sheila rang. They were reopening Victoria Station so she hoped to travel home the following day. The news continued to be dominated by the bomb. Television and newspapers featured devastating pictures of the Arndale Centre and surrounding buildings; the gaping windows, twisted metal and fragments of concrete. It still made my stomach churn. Much was made of the bridge that linked Marks & Spencers with the Arndale Centre. It had literally jumped several feet in the air with the force of the blast, yet had fallen back into place in one piece – albeit unsafe. And a red pillar box close to the centre of the blast had inexplicably survived while everything about it was smashed to smithereens.