Final Witness
A gripping courtroom drama combining psychological suspense and political intrigue from the pen of ex-barrister-turned-crime novelist Simon Tolkien, grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien.It’s the trial - and scandal - of the decade: Greta Grahame, the beautiful young wife of Minister of defence Sir Peter Robinson, is accused of conspiring to murder her predecessor, Peter’s first wife, Anne.The prosecution case depends heavily on the evidence of one witness - Greta’s sixteen-year-old stepson, Thomas.A dreamy, bookish boy, Thomas was present but hidden on the night two men broke into their ancestral home, The House of the Four Winds, and killed his mother. His testimony steadfastly links Greta to the hitmen.But the boy’s motives are unclear. Is he so crazed by grief that he would frame his stepmother for murder? Or are his feelings toward Greta more complicated than anyone realizes? Might he actually be jealous of his father, jealous enough to destroy what remains of his own family? Or is he telling the truth - that this cunning young woman will stop at nothing in her pursuit of wealth and status?Simon Tolkien combines compelling courtroom drama and classic psychological suspense in this sharply etched page-turner.Previously published in 2003 as The Stepmother.
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Simon Tolkien
Final Witness
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife, Tracy.
Without her it could not have been written.
Epigraph
Turning over and over in the sky, length after length of whiteness unwound over the earth and shrouded it. The blizzard was alone on earth and knew no rival.
When he climbed down from the window-sill Yura’s first impulse was to dress, run outside and start doing something. He was afraid that the cabbage patch would be buried so that no one could dig it up, and that his mother, buried in the open field, would helplessly sink deeper and deeper away from him in the ground.
From Doctor Zhivago,
Boris Pasternak
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
A Personal Note on the Writing of Final Witness
Chapter 1
My name is Thomas Robinson. I am sixteen years old.
Chapter 2
In a tall nineteenth-century house on a fashionable street in…
Chapter 3
It hadn’t always been like this between Greta and Thomas.
Chapter 4
Peter took the stairs two at a time but at…
Chapter 5
The sound of the clicking cameras and the reporters’ unanswered…
Chapter 6
The first thing that Greta was aware of on entering…
Chapter 7
Judge Granger allowed his eyes to travel down the two…
Chapter 8
One hundred and twenty miles to the east of the…
Chapter 9
It had been a long time since Thomas had stayed…
Chapter 10
Thomas woke at ten o’clock in a pool of sunshine…
Chapter 11
The next morning, Thomas waited at the top of the…
Chapter 12
‘And now, with your Lordship’s leave, I will call my…
Chapter 13
On Friday the court did not sit until half past…
Chapter 14
Greta left the courthouse by a side exit and walked…
Chapter 15
‘How was it, honey?’ asked Peter.
Chapter 16
They got to Rowston with the dawn. It was the…
Chapter 17
After the funeral, Peter stood beneath the portrait of his…
Chapter 18
‘The next witness, my Lord, is Matthew Barne.’
Chapter 19
Police Constable Hughes arrived in court in full uniform other…
Chapter 20
On that same Monday afternoon, the third day of the…
Chapter 21
‘Right, Mr Lambert, remember the age of the witness and…
Chapter 22
Peter sat in the back of his official car drumming…
Chapter 23
Peter paced the rooms after Greta had left, checking off…
Chapter 24
Thomas walked over the Albert Bridge and on into Battersea…
Chapter 25
The Family Records Office opened at ten o’clock on Thursday…
Chapter 26
Afterwards Thomas never knew how they managed to get through…
Chapter 27
The man was dressed in a white paper suit. The…
Chapter 28
On a bright spring day four years later Thomas drove…
Prologue
Also by Simon Tolkien: The King of Diamonds
Also by Simon Tolkien: The Inheritance
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Simon Tolkien
Copyright
About the Publisher
A PERSONAL NOTE ON THE
WRITING OF FINAL WITNESS
I never thought I would be a writer. I think in retrospect that I always felt overshadowed by my famous grandfather, J.R.R. Tolkien, and believed that it would be presumptuous to even think of following in his footsteps. Instead I took the safe course after leaving university and went to law school in London in order to become a solicitor. I didn’t want to go – it felt at the time like I was voluntarily putting on a straitjacket, and for the next few years it really did feel like my horizons had narrowed as I learnt company and land law statutes by rote, and sat in an Islington law office under the senior partner’s watchful eye, conveying houses and flats from one North London owner to another. But then one day – several years after I qualified – I was told to go and represent a man accused of an assault at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court. I lost the case but a new and unexpected world opened in front of me. It was certainly scary – the magistrate was quite fierce and the prosecution lawyer didn’t give an inch, but the courtroom was exciting. The decisions that I made mattered and I had to think fast and on my feet.
Soon afterwards I changed firms and began to work full time in criminal law. Now I was spending a lot of my time in prisons like Brixton and Wandsworth preparing serious cases for trial, but there was something missing. I had to hand my work over to a barrister when the day of trial arrived and I realised with growing frustration that I wanted to present the cases in court myself. Perhaps arrogantly, I believed that I could do just as good a job of breaking down witnesses and convincing juries. I knew it was going to be difficult becoming a barrister – there were few job openings and the tall wrought-iron gates of the Inns of Court seemed an impenetrable barrier when I drove past them along the river. But I made endless applications and in the end I got lucky – I got taken on at 2 Paper Buildings in the Temple and finally realised my dream of representing defendants in the Crown Court.
As a barrister I tried to be ready for all eventualities but of course I never was. The court was a live theatre where the course of a trial could change in a moment – defendants who fervently insisted on their innocence could well be guilty and each side’s witnesses could be lying for any number of reasons. The jurors seemed to be watching your every move, and the judges were far fiercer than the magistrates I had encountered in the lower courts. I enjoyed arguing the law – sometimes the outcome of a trial could depend on the interpretation of a single word in an obscure statute, but most of all I loved the human drama of the courtroom. Masked behind the legal language and procedures lay raw human emotions and terrible events – gruesome crime scene photographs or a witness’s sudden collapse could tear away the veil of formality at a moment’s notice.
