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And anonymous witnesses.
Everybody except the lawyers leaves. Jen loiters, watching people who presumably have as much vested in this as she does, drinking vending-machine coffee, talking. The same way they always have in courthouses. The only difference is fewer mobile phones.
She pops outside, stands on the courthouse steps, wanting to witness the world here in its 2003 snapshot. She watches the cars, brand-new-looking but old, too, N reg, P reg. A lawyer stands nearby, smoking, just thinking. The buildings are the same. Same sky, same sun. She met Kelly only the preceding March; their relationship is hardly six months old.
She spins in a slow circle. You wouldn’t know. You wouldn’t know. The world doesn’t know how much it’s changing.
‘Jury back to courtroom one,’ an usher says from the foyer, and Jen heads inside, her eyes lingering on the city horizon for just a second. She’s about to find something out. Something she can never un-know.
In the courtroom, her eyes take a second to adjust after the glare of the September sun, but after a moment she sees what she expects: the witness box has changed. It is secured by a black curtain.
‘Witness B,’ the female barrister says, her voice as crisp and clear as a natural spring, ‘is a serving undercover police officer. His anonymity,’ she addresses the jury, ‘is to preserve his and the police’s methods and working arrangements and his safety. So, now, to Witness B. You do not need to state your name for the record. How would you like to swear your oath?’
Whoever is behind the curtains says nothing. The barrister waits, then approaches the curtains after the silence throbs in the courtroom for too long. Jen holds her breath. Surely, surely, surely this is not her husband.
The barrister re-emerges after a second and approaches the bench. Jen hears it, then, a murmured discussion. ‘He wants his voice anonymized. He’s got an accent. We did make a formal application,’ the barrister is saying.
Jen can’t catch it all. She can only hear snatched phrases. She can only understand because she’s a lawyer.
‘But Your Honour, in the interests of open justice …’ the other barrister says. Their debates continue in mumbled prose that Jen strains to hear.
‘It’s important in open court to be heard as you are,’ the judge announces after a few minutes more.
‘Witness B, the oath?’ the barrister prompts. Wait … this witness is a witness for the prosecution, not the defence. So …
Jen hears a sigh. A very, very distinctive, pissed-off sigh. And then a single word: ‘Secular.’
Three syllables. And there it is. What Jen perhaps already knew: Kelly is Witness B.
She had it all wrong. Kelly isn’t involved in crime. He had been trying to stop it.
Day Minus Six Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Eight, 11:00
‘I worked with him, yes,’ Kelly’s voice says, ‘for several months last year.’ He has disguised his Welsh accent, smoothed it out like planing wood. Jen is fairly sure only she would know this was him. The verbal cues you pick up only through twenty years of marriage.
‘And what was your role?’ The questions continue even though Jen’s mind is still trying to process it. The fact keeps repeating on her like shockwaves after an earthquake. He’s a police officer. He was a police officer?
Her eyes trail upwards to the tiny windows at the top of the courtroom.
He never told her. He never told her, he never told her, he never told her. Her life is a lie.
Thoughts gather around her like a crowd of reporters asking questions. How could he have kept this from her? Kelly? Her happy-go-lucky, trustworthy husband, Kelly? It doesn’t even explain anything. Why are they seeing the repercussions of this lie twenty years later? Why is Todd involved?
He never told her. He never told her.
Jen puts her forehead in her hands.
But then, isn’t this truth more palatable than the other? Maybe, but being damned if you do and damned if you don’t is still damned.
‘I was assigned to infiltrate the organized-crime gang the defendant was running,’ Kelly says dispassionately. God, it’s mad. It’s mad.
‘And at what point were you dispatched?’
Kelly clears his throat. ‘When the baby was stolen.’
‘Your Honour,’ the defence barrister, an elderly man, says immediately, rising to his feet. ‘Please stick to the points in issue.’
‘When two foot soldiers stole a baby as part of the workings of the defendant’s supply chain,’ Kelly clarifies acerbically.
