We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [58]
Had his latent violence not been visible in every bulging sinew, some members of the public might have burst out laughing, so grotesque was his claim to innocence. It was hard to imagine a more fitting face for a ruthless killer.
However, even the judge himself looked down when O'Connor stared hard at him, and they began to wonder who was stronger: the law or O'Connor.
Again O'Connor turned his head.
"Look," he said. "Look at my ruined face. This isn't the face of a man who fights back. It's the face of a man who turns the other cheek even when he's wrongly attacked." He looked directly at the witness box, and not one of the crew met his eyes. He showed the court first one scarred cheek, then the other. "Do you really think that I would let anyone come near me if my blood was as bad as people say?" He ripped his tattered shirt, which he wore even here, with a theatrical movement, baring his scarred chest. "This," he said, his voice turning hollow from emotion, "this is the body of a martyr. This is the body of the lamb."
"He's going to win," Gustafsson said, fingering his ruined eye as they sat in the nearest bar after the session. "Did you see how scared the judge was of him?"
"But the law isn't scared of him," Albert objected.
"What good's the law if the judge is small and weak and the criminal is big and strong?" asked Rhys Llewellyn.
Albert was the only one who still believed in the law. Every day they turned up in court, to be called as witnesses one by one. O'Connor contradicted them brazenly every time, looking at the judge, who averted his eyes. Their cuts began to heal, and their blue and yellow bruises were fading: only Gustafsson's eye stayed ruined, but even on his blind side he didn't have the courage to meet O'Connor's stare.
They'd had to put off looking for new work until the trial was over.
They grew restless and lost faith. They drifted around the bars and drank their savings away.
"We should never have reported him," they said to Albert.
"The law's stronger than O'Connor," he replied.
"Look at the judge," they retorted.
They didn't believe in shore justice. Albert had talked them into this. Soon O'Connor would be freed and he'd take his revenge. They should have swallowed their defeat and never sought the help of the law. It always sided with the strongest anyway.
"Look at the judge," they repeated. "He's small and he stoops. He's bald. He's barely bigger than a child."
"So don't look at him," Albert said. "And listen instead."
"So, what did you hear?" Albert asked them after the next session.
They mumbled something and looked away. Well, he had a point.
When you listened to what the man actually said, you got a different impression. He sank his teeth in like a bull terrier. He was impossible to shake off: he kept asking questions until he got to the heart of the matter, until the giant snapped and banged the counter in front of him with his fist as he roared across the courtroom, "I'm a man of peace; everyone will testify to that!"
"Everyone except the crew of the Emma C. Leithfield," the judge commented. He looked away again, but his voice stayed calm.
"It's the law that comes out of his mouth," Albert said.
"No, he's speaking for himself," Rhys Llewellyn said, "but he does it well."
After sixteen days of questioning, the judge convicted O'Connor, sentencing him to five years in jail for assault and manslaughter. Since it couldn't be proven that he'd intended to kill Giovanni, though no one doubted it, he wouldn't be branded a murderer and hang by his neck until he was dead. But they hadn't expected that. They'd expected him to walk free.
O'Connor roared like a wild animal when the sentence was pronounced.
"Serves you right, you brute!" Gustafsson shouted.
The judge turned and sent him an angry look, the first they'd seen throughout the trial.
They congratulated one another as they left the courtroom, but instead of triumph at the defeat of their enemy, they were filled with simple relief. It was as if they'd been on trial themselves. And now they'd been set free.