They Framed Arthur He Returned as Lucas novel · Chapter 1 of 8
Chapter 1: The Name They Buried
Arthur is in the dock as the verdict on the failed operation is read out, and the court hears that the theatre log places him in a room he was never in.
The clerk read the charge and I said my name for the last time as a free man.
"Arthur Red."
I stood in the dock at Southwark Crown Court with my hands flat on the rail.
The rail was oak and cold and I could feel my own pulse in it.
Twelve people sat in the jury box with their coats still on.
The public gallery was full. Most of them were hospital staff.
I found Maria in the third row before I found anyone else.
Slate-blue jacket. Chestnut hair. Hands folded like a woman at a funeral.
Thompson sat beside her, navy suit, blue tie, back straight as a ruler.
His son James was two rows behind them, in a camel coat, looking at his phone.
The judge came in and everybody stood and I stood too.
Mr. Okonkwo died on the table at two fourteen in the morning.
Aortic dissection. Sixty-one years old. Two grandchildren.
I never met him.
That was the whole case, in one sentence, and it took the Crown eleven days to say it.
The prosecutor stood up and read from the theatre log.
"At two ten a.m., Mr. Arthur Red entered Theatre Four."
I looked at the jury.
"At two twelve, Mr. Red was recorded as lead surgeon."
One of the jurors, a woman in a green scarf, wrote something down.
Another, a man in his sixties with a walking stick propped against his knee, kept his eyes on the ceiling.
I had been at home in bed at two ten in the morning.
I had a phone that said so. The Crown had my phone.
The Crown said a phone on a charger proves nothing, and a man can leave a phone on a charger.
My barrister stood and did what she could.
She said the log was a digital record. She said digital records can be edited.
She said the login was made from a shared terminal on the fourth floor.
The prosecutor said the log was hospital property, maintained by hospital staff, and the hospital had no reason to lie.
He said the defendant had access to the terminal. He said the defendant had a reason.
He said the defendant had been told that morning his contract would not be renewed.
That was true.
Thompson had said it to me in the corridor, quietly, with his hand on my shoulder.
"Arthur, the board wants younger hands in that theatre. Nothing personal."
Six hours later a man died and I was in the log.
Maria sat through all of it without moving her head.
I had loved her for two years.
She used to fall asleep with her hand inside my shirt, flat on my chest, like she was checking something.
She came to my flat the night of the operation and stood in the doorway in her coat.
She said, "Don't say anything to anyone. I'll sort it."
I said, "Sort what, Maria."
She said, "Please."
Then she was gone, and the next morning two officers were at my door.
The prosecutor asked the court to note the defendant's demeanour.
I looked down at my own hands on the rail.
Surgeon's hands. Everybody in that room knew what they were for.
At lunch I sat in a holding room with a sandwich I didn't eat.
There was a window high up with wire in the glass.
My barrister came in and sat across from me and told me the judge's summing up would take an hour, then the jury would go out.
"Can I ask you something," she said.
"Yes."
"Were you in that theatre."
"No."
She looked at me for a long time.
"I believe you," she said. "That isn't the same as it being provable."
She told me the sentence range for gross negligence manslaughter.
She told me it could be two years. It could be four.
She told me to take my tie off before the verdict, because men faint in the dock and it's the tie that does it.
I took my tie off and folded it and put it in my pocket.
The jury was out for four hours and eleven minutes.
I counted it. There was nothing else to do.
I counted the panels in the ceiling. I counted the usher's trips to the door.
At six minutes past four the usher stood up and the room filled again.
When they came back, the woman in the green scarf wouldn't look at me.
The foreman stood up and the clerk asked him the question.
"Guilty."
Somebody in the gallery said oh God.
My knees did something I didn't tell them to do and I put my hand on the rail.
The judge asked me if I had anything to say before sentence.
I said, "I have performed one hundred heart operations in that hospital. I have never lost a patient I could have saved."
The judge said that was noted.
Then the prosecutor stood up again for the sentence hearing, and asked the court to consider the defendant's total lack of remorse.
Maria stood up.
She stood up slowly, the way you do when you want the room to turn and watch you do it.
The judge looked at her over his glasses.
"Mrs. Vance. You are not on the witness list."
"I know," Maria said.
"You have already given evidence."
"I know that too."
"Sit down."
She didn't sit down.
She turned so she was facing the jury box, and then the gallery, and then me.
Her voice carried the way it does in a theatre, from the back of the throat, so that even the usher by the door heard it.
"He was there," she said. "I saw him."
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