The Lighterman: The Kray Twins are out for revenge... (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 3)

by Simon Michael

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you are sure that the interview occurred at 07:14 hours?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘Mr Vermeulen, counsel and My Lord have a typewritten version of that interview. Where are your handwritten original notes taken at the time?’

  Another fractional hesitation, and Vermeulen pulls a pocketbook from his uniform pocket. ‘Here.’

  ‘May I see that pocketbook, please?’

  Slowly Vermeulen raises his hand and holds out the pocketbook to the usher, keeping his eyes fixed at all times on Charles’s.

  Charles’s heart thunders as the usher, with an infuriating lack of urgency, collects the pocketbook and walks to counsel’s bench. Charles takes the pocketbook and opens it to the last page on which there is any writing. Charles knows that the alleged interview is likely to have been the last thing Vermeulen wrote in the book because it would then have been handed over to the police for transcription. In fact, it is the first and only thing in the book, and that gives rise to a flutter of anticipation in Charles’s chest. It would have to be the only entry in the book if Vermeulen had rewritten it as demanded.

  His hands shaking slightly, Charles’s finger travels to the top of the interview, and he reads silently: “This interview of Isaac Conway consisting of 1 page in length was taken by me Vincent Vermeulen on 4 November 1963 at 03:14 hours…!” 03:14! He’s changed it!

  Charles reads it again, and then a third time, to be absolutely sure, and to allow him time to exert an iron grip over his facial expression. As professional courtesy requires, he bends down and shows the entry to Montgomery. By the time he looks up he is calm and his face bland.

  ‘Usher. Please would you hand this pocketbook to his Lordship?’ asks Charles.

  Charles waits for the pocketbook to be handed across and for the Judge to look at it, but he does not allow the Judge enough time to leap in with his own helpful intervention.

  ‘According to your pocketbook,’ continues Charles, ‘which you tell us was written at the very moment when the confession was given, the time when you started the interview was 03:14 hours, and not 07:14 hours. There is a four-hour difference. Mr Vermeulen, which of the two times is likely to be accurate: the one that you yourself wrote contemporaneously with the so-called confession, or the typewritten version written by, no doubt, a Metropolitan Police secretary several days later in an office in London?’

  Vermeulen turns to the Judge. ‘I’m very sorry, my Lord, I don’t know how this mistake can have occurred. The note in the pocketbook on your Lordship’s desk was the note I wrote at the time.’

  ‘You’re not likely to have got the time wrong by four hours, are you, Mr Vermeulen?’ asks Charles.

  ‘No, my Lord, I can’t see how that could have happened. I can only assume that the typist made a mistake. Perhaps she couldn’t read my writing.’

  ‘But if you did write the interview at 03:14 hours, how could Mr Conway have possibly confessed? You told us yourself in your evidence that the body was not discovered until over two hours after that, at 05:30, and you didn’t return to Mr Conway’s barge until 06:10. So how could he have confessed at 03:14?’

  Even though Vermeulen is expecting this line of questioning he clearly hasn’t anticipated how damaging or embarrassing it would be. His face is now bright red and trickles of sweat can be seen emerging from his fair-haired sideburns and sliding down his cheeks.

  ‘Well, obviously, he couldn’t, but … I did interview him, my Lord, and that was after the body was discovered, obviously. I’m afraid I can’t explain it.’

  ‘The explanation, surely Mr Holborne, is very simple,’ says the Judge, intervening yet again. ‘CPO Vermeulen made a mistake when writing the time in his notes. Your client could not have confessed before Mr Vermeulen returned to the barge.’

  ‘Thank you for making that suggestion, my Lord. There is of course an alternative: CPO Vermeulen has, as I suggest, made up the confession altogether and by the time he came to do so, he got the time wrong.’

  Charles looks at the jury. They are all staring hard at the Waterguard. Charles cannot at this stage predict whether they believe him or not, but the intensity of their gaze suggests at least that they are uncertain about his evidence, which is all Charles needs, because “uncertain” cannot mean “sure beyond reasonable doubt”.

  Charles looks down at Vermeulen’s notebook, the one he stole from the Harpy. Despite Merlin’s words, he’s undecided. He has just got in a nice clean punch, which will certainly score. On the other hand, he’s not sure about the contents of the notebook because, despite Merlin’s urging, Charles has thought of several honest explanations Vermeulen could deploy, were he to think of them.

  For a start, he could deny the notebook is his; or he might accept that the notebook is his, but deny authorship of the pencil annotations, and that would require a handwriting expert on a collateral issue, which would certainly be denied by this judge; he might equally say that the references to alcohol were merely a list of seized goods from other smugglers. Indeed, while in bed the night before, Charles had woken in the wee small hours with the best false explanation yet: each of the rummage teams at the Harpy were in competition with the others as to how much they could seize, and this was Vermeulen’s way of keeping a score of his team’s successes.

  So there are many ways in which Vermeulen can muddy the waters. While his fear of exposure might have induced him to alter the time on the interview, that didn’t mean the notebook offered a knockout opportunity. If Charles became involved in a complicated series of questions and answers about the stolen notebook and got nowhere, the power of the clean punch he has just landed will have dissipated in the minds of the jury. Better, he concludes, to sit down now, with the impression left in the minds of the jury that this man may be lying to them over the interview.

  And so, with a regretful glance towards Merlin in the dock, one which he hopes will be interpreted as a sensible tactical decision rather than cowardice, Charles resumes his seat. As he does so he looks up at the public gallery. The young man in the expensive suit is scribbling furiously on a pad, casting worried looks towards the door. With a final look down into the court where Vermeulen is sitting almost directly below him, the man stands and slips quickly out of court.

  Charles pays only half attention to Montgomery’s re-examination. The QC explores for a while the possible explanations for the differences in time, but Vermeulen can come up with no better answer than he has already offered. Fletcher has no questions, deciding to leave well alone, and Vermeulen is allowed to stand down.

  ‘With your Lordship’s leave,’ says Montgomery, ‘I will call the next witness, Adrian Peter Keeley.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Montgomery, thank you.’

  APO Keeley is a short dark man full of nervous energy. He bustles to the witness box, takes the oath, and stands with his hands clasped behind his back. Charles can see that his right foot taps, incessantly and quickly, throughout.

  Charles leans forward to Montgomery and speaks softly. ‘You can either lead or tender this witness. There’s nothing in dispute, and I only have one issue for him.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Montgomery addresses the judge. ‘My learned friend has said that I may either lead or tender this witness as none of his evidence is in dispute.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Montgomery. The decision is yours.’

  ‘I think it will help the jury if they hear Mr Keeley’s evidence, my Lord, but I will take it swiftly.’

  The QC takes Keeley through his statement, asking leading questions and obtaining the evidence set out in the statement. In Charles’s opinion, Keeley says nothing of any significance in his witness statement and he only wants to ask the Waterguard about the missing boathook. He rises to do that a few minutes later.

  ‘Mr Keeley, you were unable to find a boathook on Mr Conway’s barge during the course of your search.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And that surprised you?’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes. It’s standard equipment on every vessel working the river.’

  ‘And like all pieces of small equipment on a boat, it can get lost easily.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The barges are not locked or secured at night, are they?’

  ‘Insulated barges, like those used to carry cheese or meat, and customs barges, which have alcohol in them, they are locked. But ordinary hatch barges like this one, for general cargo, no, not usually.’

  ‘Do you know when Mr Conway’s boathook went missing?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Do you know how many boathooks there would be on the River Thames?’

  ‘Thousands I would guess. Probably tens of thousands.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Keeley. That is all.’

  There is no re-examination by Montgomery and the judge has no questions, and Keeley leaves the court altogether.

  ‘The final witness for the Crown, my Lord,’ says Montgomery ‘is the Home Office Pathologist, Dr Burch. Page nineteen in your Lordship’s bundle.’

  Dr Burch is called by the usher. The doors open and a potbellied little man with a yellow waistcoat and spotted bowtie waddles down the aisle. He’s in his sixties and wears old-fashioned pince-nez on a short, upturned nose. He takes the oath in a surprisingly deep sonorous voice, enunciating every word carefully. Montgomery takes him through his evidence with precision, paying particular attention to his calculations regarding time of death, and then resumes his seat.

  Charles rises slowly. Things have gone reasonably well so far, but the next ten minutes will be crucial to Merlin’s fate. They are, genuinely, life and death minutes.

  ‘Dr Burch, is this a fair summary of your evidence? APO Evans suffered a blow to the head which caused his death. He was not in the water at that time. We don’t know if he was wearing his tunic at the moment of his death. However, at some point after his death, before he went into the water, he was prodded or stabbed with a boathook at a time when he was not wearing his tunic. At some point after that, somebody replaced his tunic. And finally, at some point after that, his body was placed or fell in the water. Have I understood your evidence correctly?’

  The little pathologist thinks carefully through Charles’s summary, point by point, and then nods. ‘Yes, my Lord. That is a fair summary.’ He takes off his pince-nez, extracts a bright yellow handkerchief from his top jacket pocket, and polishes them vigorously.

  Charles relishes cross-examining scientists. They think logically, which means they can be trapped by logic in a way which other witnesses cannot, and they are less likely to “massage” their evidence to support one side or the other. Charles has had cause to cross-examine dishonest experts in the past, ones who fight to the death to uphold a theory even when presented by incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, but they are, happily, relatively rare.

  ‘Let’s start with the blow to the head,’ he says. ‘You cannot say if it was administered deliberately or sustained during a fall.’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘So there is no scientific evidence to prove that the blow was administered, in the sense that a third party did it.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘It could conceivably have occurred as a result of a fall.’

  ‘Yes, that is possible.’

  ‘Now let’s look at the jacket. One sequence of events would be that Mr Evans died while fully dressed, someone took off his tunic, poked him with a boathook, replaced the tunic, and then, somehow, he ends up in the water.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord. That sequence would fit my findings, but I cannot imagine any reason why someone would take off his tunic after he was dead just to poke him with a boathook, and then get him dressed again.’

  God bless you! shouts Charles internally. That’s exactly the point I was going to make, but it comes with so much greater force from a prosecution witness!

  ‘With respect doctor, I completely agree. A much more logical sequence would be that he suffered his blow to the head while he was undressed, partly or completely; he dies; he is then poked with the boathook; and then someone redresses him.’

  ‘That might be more logical, but I cannot possibly say if that’s what occurred.’

  ‘How easy or difficult is it for someone to put a tunic such as this onto a dead body?’ asks Charles.

  ‘It is surprisingly difficult to dress or undress a corpse. We cut clothes off deceased persons for that reason. We don’t want to do damage, to their skin or ligaments for example, by struggling with tight clothing, which might affect the scientific findings. This tunic jacket was tight-fitting and, by the time Mr Evans was taken out of the water, buttoned right up the front. Because Mr Evans had a hole in him which was caused post-death, but the tunic did not, we know it must have been put back on him after he died and after he received the post-mortem stab wound. Whoever did that would have struggled to achieve it, and must’ve been quite strong. The deceased was a well-built man, and heavy.’

  ‘That suggests, does it not, somebody who was very concerned that APO Evans was not found in a compromising position?’

  Montgomery leaps to his feet but the Judge is ahead of him. ‘Pure speculation, Mr Holborne. Don’t answer that please, doctor. Members of the jury, we cannot possibly know what was in the mind of the person who re-dressed Mr Evans, and it is wrong of Mr Holborne to speculate with this witness. Mr Holborne, you will be entitled to indulge in these wild theories during the course of your speech, if you think it will get you anywhere. But not during the evidence.’

  ‘Very well, my Lord. Dr Burch let us turn to the way in which Mr Evans found himself in the water. We know from the absence of any significant water in his lungs that he did not drown.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord, that and other findings.’

  ‘So we know that after he had died and was re-dressed by someone, he came to be in the water.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Am I right in believing that none of the scientific evidence helps us establish whether he was put in the water deliberately or he just fell there.’

  ‘That would be correct.’

  ‘Summarising your evidence so far then: APO Evans might have received his fatal injury from a fall, rather than a blow from a third party; he was poked while undressed and dead; he was dressed again; then his body went into the water, possibly by accident rather than design.’

  ‘That is correct, my Lord.’

  ‘Thank you. Now let me move to the issue regarding time of death. There are several difficult factors at play in this particular case when attempting to calculate the time of Mr Evans’s death, are there not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Again, perhaps you will let me list them and you can correct me if I make a mistake. Firstly, there is the fact that he was in cold water. One of your techniques for determining time of death is the degree to which a body has cooled since the heart stopped beating. But if a body is put in cold water, that will lower its temperature quickly, thereby falsely suggesting an earlier time of death than in fact occurred. Correct so far?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then there is the fact that Mr Evans was wearing quite thick clothes. That would tend to keep his body warmer, a factor which would pull in the opposite direction to the cold water.’

  ‘Yes, although I think that factor would be very much less important than the cold water.’

  ‘Thank you. Then there is the issue of rigor mortis which, you tell us, usually starts in the first twelve to twenty-four hours and was absent in this case. In view of the fact that Mr Evans was last seen by his colleagues some thirteen hours before his body was found, that bracket is not very helpful to us.’

  ‘Yes, I agree with that. But I didn’t place any weight on the absence of rigor mortis in reaching my conclusion.’

  ‘Exactly. You placed most of the weight in your analysis on the absence of liver mortis. Can you explain to the jury again what that is, please?’

  ‘Certainly. When a body is still,
without the heart pumping blood around the circulatory system, the blood tends to pool in the lowest part of the body. So if a body is supine, that is facing upwards, which is the case here, the blood will tend to pool in the back and buttocks. In such a case you would see early discolouration in the skin, a purplish patchy discolouration, within an hour of death, becoming more prominent by three hours of death. There was no such discolouration in this case, which is why I concluded that death had occurred relatively recently, no more than three hours before the body was found.’

  ‘Thank you. You look for liver mortis signs on the part of the body to which the blood will fall.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord. As I said, when I arrived at the tow path the deceased was lying face up, and I was told that he had been taken out of the water in the same attitude. I therefore looked for liver mortis signs on his shoulders, back and buttocks, and there were none.’

  Charles pauses before his all-important question, the one to which the entire cross-examination has been leading. ‘If anybody were to be repeatedly turned during the period when liver mortis would emerge, the blood would not pool in any particular part of the body, would it?’

  ‘No, probably not. I’ve never had a case where a body has been turned post-mortem, as if rotated on a spit, but in principle that would be right.’

  Charles watches some of the faces of the jurors as they recoil in revulsion at the thought of turning the dead APO Evans on a spit, but he presses on.

  ‘And do you agree, Dr Burch, that we cannot exclude the possibility that Mr Evans’s body was indeed turned by the waves and by the effect of passing ships in what is one of the busiest waterways in the world?’

  Dr Burch considers this by taking off his pince-nez, staring at the ceiling of the courtroom and then closing his eyes. After a full ten seconds, during which Charles’s heartbeat almost doubles, he opens his eyes, looks back across the well of the court to Charles, replaces his pince-nez and answers.

  ‘I cannot exclude that possibility.’

  ‘In which case the absence of liver mortis would not throw any light on the time of Mr Evans’s death.’