The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy)

by David B Lyons

  ‘E’ryone round here says they innocent, Joy.’

  ‘I am innocent!’ Joy snapped.

  ‘Calm down, girl. You at risk of losing the only friend you got in the whole world right now.’

  Joy unclenched her fists and tilted her head backwards, a groan growling at the back of her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Christy. Thanks for… I don’t know… thanks for talking to me.’

  ‘Thank you, girl,’ Christy replied. ‘When I do time in here, I normally keep maself to maself. People up in here think I’m all kinds o’ crazy. Just me and ma bible when I’m in here normally. S’nice to talk to someone… even if they are a chi—’

  Christy stopped herself.

  ‘A child killer… is that what you were gonna say?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You were about to.’

  ‘Well, ya know what, girl?’ Christy said, leaning forward and resting her fingertips onto Joy’s forearm. ‘I actually haven’t worked you out yet. Ma visions will tell me in time if you guilty or not. They always do.’

  ‘Visions?’

  ‘God talks to me. Lets me know what’s what. I pretty much know all the girls in here. See Linda o’er there, the brunette with the short bob? That bitch says she didn’t slit her boyfriend’s throat. She be lying. I know she did it. I saw visions o’ her doin’ it.’ Joy squinted at the middle-aged woman sat eating a slice of cardboard toast on the far end of their bench, noting she didn’t look too dissimilar to Joy’s own mother, whom she had sorely missed every day of the past sixteen years. Breast cancer had taken her. Breast cancer that was caught too late. Joy’s father was still alive, but he was in a nursing home, aged only fifty-five years, unable to cope with the continued drama that kept unfolding before him. He lost his wife to cancer, his two grandsons to murder and then his daughter to the judicial system in the space of four years. ‘And Stella, this one over here, she’s down fo’ attempted murder. Put a young girl in a coma in a bar one night. Glassed her, then jumped on top o’ her and kept punching at her face until all her lights went out. I saw that in a vision too.’

  ‘And what about you? What are you in for?’ Joy asked, turning back to face Christy.

  ‘Me?’ Christy said. Then she glanced upwards, to eyeball Mathilda over Joy’s shoulder. ‘They say I held up the petrol station in Glasnevin. My third one they caught me for, they say. I had a sawn-off shotgun, they say. Didn’t fire it though. Still got sent down for seven years. Highest sentence I cudda bin given.’

  ‘Seven years?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s cos I’m black. But I don’t like to moan ’bout it. God will see me right in ma next life. Right now, me ’n’ Him tryna get me through this one. Seven years for armed robbery… it’s a long stretch. Though I bet you with yo double life sentence you prolly think seven years is nuttin, right? But I’m gonna be sixty years of age in seven years. Ma life’s clock is tick-tocking away.’

  ‘What about her, the red headed one?’ Joy asked, nodding towards the woman who offered an ounce of sympathy her way whilst floss-drying her under regions in the shower room that morning.

  ‘Oh… That’s Nancy Trott. You don’t wanna be dealin’ with Nancy Trott. You stay well the hell away from that crazy red-headed bitch, ya here me?’

  Joy turned back in her seat.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She nasty. Bitch prolly be raping yo pretty ass right about now if I wasn’t here beside ya. With you all tiny and pretty, I bet yo just her type.’

  ‘You serious?’ Joy asked, raising an eyebrow. Though just as she did, she noticed Aidan nod his head at her as he stood against the back wall, relieving Mathilda of her duty.

  Christy noticed them glancing at each other and did a double-take.

  ‘You fancy that white boy?’ she said, a little too loudly.

  ‘Shhh,’ Joy hissed, stifling a smile. ‘Course not, don’t be silly. I’m married.’

  Christy tucked her chin into her neck and gurned a face at Joy.

  ‘You are? I don’t think the newspapers know whether you married or not. They say yo husband didn’t show up to any o’ yo trial.’

  Joy puffed a small laugh out of her nostrils, then a long silence settled between them before Christy broke it, using the thickest of her Texan drawl.

  ‘Don’t know what all y’all see in those skinny ass white boys anyway,’ she whispered. ‘They so ugly all bright pink ’n’ naked. Can you believe I actually escaped a country of big black hunky men to come live here, in sunny Dublin, where all the boys’ skin so white sometimes I think I can see right through ’em. But a woman gets horny, don’t we? So, fuck skinny ass white boys I do. Though I have to say,’ Christy leaned even closer. ‘I don’t even feel some o’ they white dicks when they all up in there, sometimes.’

  Joy held her stomach while laughing and reeled back on her bench. But just as she did, somebody grabbed a fistful of her frizzy hair from behind and slammed her nose to the corner of the table.

  ❖

  Delia exhales loudly as she pushes through the door to her office.

  She leaves her briefcase, as she always does, resting against the balled leg of her oak desk, removes her robe, which she drops to the floor, and then sits into her padded leather chair; her elbows on her desk, her hands slapped against her cheeks.

  It’s been a long day, even for her.

  Her overall feeling isn’t exhaustion though. It’s frustration; frustration because the trial hadn’t covered as much ground during its opening day as she had hoped it would.

  After opening arguments, both sides of the court detoured into an array of legal spats that seemed determined to test the judge’s patience. Although the retrial had been granted two full years before it made it to court, the prosecution and defence teams were still, today, discussing minute details from the original trial, arguing whether or not they should be considered by the judge during her retrial deliberations. The paperwork Judge Delia had to contend with for any major trial was often labour-intensive. But for this retrial it had trebled in size; only because parts of the original trial had to be considered, too.

  The opening arguments Delia had heard earlier failed to unearth any surprises. Not that opening arguments usually do. Lawyers just like to draw a rough outline of the arguments they will be bringing up in the trial, and very rarely hit a judge or jury with a key twist so early on.

  After removing her hands from her cheeks, Delia wiggles her mouse to blink her computer screen to life. And in the time it takes for her old Apple Mac to refresh, she gazes around desk – a ritual she isn’t even aware she goes through every time she reawakens her computer.

  It’s a grand old oak desk she gets to look around, worth thousands of euros. Not that she paid for it. It became hers when she inherited this grand office at the back of Dublin’s Criminal Courts from her predecessor – Judge Albert Riordan. The office was always densely lit, because the bulb hanging above the desk when Delia first entered was too weak to light the room adequately. But she liked the dimness and the warm ambience it brought to her work environment and so has, for the past nine years, purposely reordered the wrong bulb every time one blows. The dim orange light casts sharp shadows across the old desk; a shadow of the giant computer monitor; shadows from the two cupfuls of pens and pencils that sit beside her computer monitor. And the shadow from the photo frame that stands on the opposite side of her keyboard – framing an image of her and her now deceased husband Ben with their arms wrapped tightly around their only child Callum as they celebrated his graduation from Trinity College back in November, 2008. Although she doesn’t like how she, personally, looks in that picture – not with her standing outside the Windmill Pub freezing cold and all hunched up in her winter hat and scarf – the image is as special to her as anything in this life. The flash of a camera. A moment in time captured forever. It’s not a special moment to her because the two men in it happen to mean more to her than anything or anybody else; it’s special because it
’s the last image that was ever captured of the McCormicks together. Ben passed away three weeks later, collapsing to a stuttering heart while sat at a conference table in his firm’s head office, surrounded by twelve of his colleagues. One tried to revive him after his forehead had slapped to the table, but it was too late. Ben was gone. And has been gone for past twelve years.

  Friends have tried to fix Delia up on dates since she became a widow, but she genuinely isn’t interested. She claims she’s married to her profession. Besides, she has a man in her life. Callum. He hasn’t quite moved out of the family home yet, even though he earns almost a quarter of a million a year and has just turned thirty-five. Despite numerous liaisons with the same sex, Callum is yet to find Mr Right and is way too needy to live alone. Besides, he knows all too well that his mother enjoys having him with her in their family home.

  When her ritual of gazing at the items casting shadows on her desk is distracted by her monitor blinking to life, Delia exhales a sigh to reset herself, then begins to tap away at her keyboard. But footsteps cause her to pause pretty much before she has even begun. Then there’s a beat of silence before knuckles rattle against the door. She doesn’t need to call her visitor in to know who it is. She can always tell by the knock.

  ‘In you come, Eddie,’ she shouts.

  Her boss grins at her after he’s pushed his way through. He’s a heavy-set man, is Eddie – over six-foot tall and at least twenty stone in weight. He’s just one of those guys who’s always been big all over; big shoulders, big hips, big ass. He has worn his greying hair neatly parted to one side in all the time Delia has known him and has immensely bushy eyebrows – shaped like an inverted hairy V.

  ‘Why don’t you get a proper light in here, Delia,’ he says, staring up at the dim glow above her desk.

  ‘Change the tune, Eddie.’

  Eddie closes the office door gingerly, then grips the back of the chair opposite the Judge.

  ‘Didn’t quite get to open the floor today, huh?’

  Delia thins her lips.

  ‘Paperwork and more paperwork. Seemed to me Bracken was trying to delay the day. He kept arguing over the order of the witness list – obsessing about it, truth be told. It was all a nonsense. I think he was trying to delay the beginning of the trial until tomorrow… probably needs more time vetting his witnesses.’

  ‘Wouldn’t put it past him. He eh… kept his opening argument pretty close to his chest though, huh? Do ya think he has something up his sleeve? Can’t imagine Bunny is his only ace card. A dodgy dog might have been enough to win his client a retrial, but it won’t be enough to acquit her.’ Delia rubs her fingers across the deep wrinkles of her forehead, then raises an eyebrow across the desk. ‘Sorry,’ Eddie says. ‘It’s not my place to say what will or what won’t be enough to acquit Joy Stapleton. That power is all in your hands.’

  Eddie holds his palms outwards, then scoots himself around and sits into the chair he’d been gripping the back of.

  ‘Defence team didn’t say much in opening either, did they?’ Delia offers up as she begins clicking at her mouse.

  ‘They don’t have much to do, though. As long as they stay firm on why Joy was convicted in the first place, they’ll be fine. Onus is all on Bracken to prove Joy shouldn’t be behind bars. But he’s not gonna be able to do that. I know this is a massive case and the – excuse me for cursing – but the fuckin’ media vans outside – did you see ’em?’ he asks. ‘Never seen so many vans in my life. But truth be known, you don’t need to feel a huge amount of pressure on this, Delia. As big a story as it is. This is an open and shut case for you. Take all arguments into consideration and then do what you gotta do…’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Eddie. I do know how to do my job.’

  ‘Course ya do,’ he says, chuckling from the back of his throat. ‘It’s just…’

  Delia’s breathing pauses, and her fingers hover over her mouse.

  ‘It’s just what?’ she says, peering over her glasses at him, as if he’s one of those chancer lawyers she likes to stare down to exert her dominance. Except she doesn’t have dominance in this room. Eddie Taunton does. He’s the Chief Justice – is literally responsible for keeping the cogs of the whole judicial arm of the nation turning, and has been doing so for the past twenty years. He has a jovial manner most of the time, but even the most high-profile of figures know he’s no pushover. No matter who’s in the room, from Supreme Court judges to the President or even the Taoiseach, Eddie Taunton always assumes the role of authority.

  ‘You remember all those years back, I interviewed you for a Supreme Courts Judges Panel chair?’ he says.

  Delia’s hand remains hovering over her mouse, her breath still held.

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Remember I asked you about this trial in particular… the original Joy Stapleton trial? I knew you’d studied it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told me you were sure she did it – that Joy Stapleton was guilty. That the jurors got it right.’

  ‘Yes.’ Eddie shrugs. And then Delia finally exhales a long, silent breath through her nostrils before her hand finally rests on to her mouse. ‘What are you trying to say, Eddie?’

  ‘I’m not trying to say anything. Just that you believed her to be guilty—’

  ‘This is an entirely different trial, Eddie. What are you trying to suggest?’ Judge Delia gasps, then whips off her glasses and leans forward – her eyes wide. ‘Eddie, did I get awarded this trial because of an answer I gave to you in an interview seven years ago? Oh my word… that’s it, isn’t it?’ She sits back in her chair and stares up at the dim bulb above her. ‘Wow. You decided there’d be no jury on this retrial. You decided on one judge. You decided on me. Eddie… did you set this up because you assumed I’d deliver a guilty verdict?’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve said at all,’ Eddie says, holding his hands up. He raises one of his V-shaped bushy eyebrows into a more prominent arch, then creases his chubby cheeks into a grin.

  ‘Eddie… you did, didn’t you? You want a guilty verdict. You’ve played for it?’

  ‘Don’t be paranoid, Delia,’ he says.

  ‘Why no jury?’

  ‘You know the answer to that quest—’

  ‘Why no jury?’

  ‘Because the whole bloody nation knows about this case. We couldn’t get twelve unbiased views. There was never going to be a retrial if a jury couldn’t be found.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Delia, forgive me for cursing again, but for fuck sake, we’ve had these conversations. You were chosen because you’re the best bloody judge in the country. Probably one of the best there’s ever been. You got chosen on merit.’

  Delia squints at her boss, her forehead dipping.

  ‘Eddie, I will be judging this new trial with the freshest of eyes.’

  ‘Course you will. Course you will.’

  It comes as no surprise to Delia that Eddie would have preference for a guilty verdict. It’d be less mess for him to clean up as Chief Justice. Delia has been aware for years that Eddie doesn’t play every game inside the lines, but surely he wouldn’t be so brazen as to ask her out straight to deliver a specific verdict on any trial? Let alone the biggest retrial the country’s ever witnessed…

  ‘Well… if… there’s nothing of urgency, Eddie, I must get back to…’ she points at her computer screen which has by now blinked back off again.

  ‘Sure, sure.’ Eddie heaves his large frame out of the chair and rises to his feet. ‘Eh…’ he scratches at the stubble of his chin. ‘You know she did this right? There’s no doubt about it all—’

  ‘Eddie—’

  ‘Regardless of what doggy tales or new technology Gerd Bracken brings to this retrial, that’s her in that CCTV footage.’

  ‘Eddie!’

  Eddie shows her his palms again.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ he says. ‘I get it. You’re the judge.’

  Delia grins her teeth and offers him a fr
iendly blinking of the eyes. But Eddie just shakes his head back at her, then he grunts as he pulls open the office door and strolls out.

  Delia leans her head back to the top of her chair and puffs out a snort of laughter. Then she wiggles at her mouse again, for her screen to blink back to life, and in the time it does, she stares around her desk again, following her usual routine.

  ‘That was odd,’ she whispers to herself.

  2,860 days ago…

  Joy had been slowly and carefully reintroduced into Elm House; starting with her rejoining the prisoners for lunch in the canteen, flanked by two officers, then being allowed an hour in the games room with the other prisoners, flanked by two officers. And last week she was allowed to take breaks with other prisoners in the yard for the first time – again, flanked by two officers. Each transition passed seemlessly, even if she was shitting herself throughout.

  Incredibly, given the force of the smash, her nose hadn’t broken. Though it did suffer a severe cut right across the bridge that was only fully healing over now – four months after the attack. The purple and yellow bruising under both of her eyes hadn’t relented for well over a month. It was odd that she had been placed in isolation, given that that was the exact same punishment her attacker had received. Stella, her name was – a close associate of Nancy Trott. She was so enraged that Joy had killed her two boys and yet had the audacity to sit in the canteen brazenly laughing with Christy Jabefemi that she waited until the new prison officer relieved Mathilda from her shift of protecting Joy before running over and grabbing Joy by the hair and slamming her face to the corner of the bench.

  While Stella’s isolation was deemed punishment, Joy’s was for her own safety. She resided in a cell that sits between a janitor’s storage unit and a prison officer’s station on the other end of the gate that leads into Elm House. She spent most of her days in that cell; though she did have the luxury of a TV screen for company with six channels, as well as her own shower. She also had the freedom to go to and from a small yard at certain times of the day that was just on the other side of the janitor’s storage unit. After a couple of weeks in, her three rounds of civilian clothes arrived. Three sweatjumpers, three T-Shirts and three comfy pairs of tracksuit bottoms – along with a dozen pairs of underwear and two pairs of trainers. All comfy clothes. And all comfy clothes that finally fit her.