‘Is that your question, Shay because, no, I wasn’t act—’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that isn’t my question. But then again, I seemed to be the last one to know, didn’t I? So maybe it’s just me. Maybe I didn’t know the woman I had married after all. I was the last person to twig that the police were looking at you the whole time. But even when I finally realised they were, and when I got over the shock of it, I still believed you. Because I couldn’t believe you had anything to do with killing our boys. That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Of course it doesn’t,’ Joy whispered.
Shay held up his index finger, silencing her again.
‘But none of it makes any sense. And then… and then they showed me that CCTV footage.’ Joy looked down at the desk, shaking her curls subtly from side to side. ‘And I’m pretty sure the first time I saw it, yeah, I recognised that hoodie, but I didn’t immediately think, ‘that is Joy’. Though it’s hard for me to know exactly what I thought the first time I saw it… But what I can tell you, Joy, is that every time I watch that footage now… I see you. Every time. Every damn time I watch it, I see your face under that hood.’
‘Shay, you can’t believe—’
‘Shhh,’ Shay hissed again, his cheeks now streaming with tears, his arms stiff by his side. ‘I’m just telling you what I think I see, Joy.’ He began to sob. ‘Not what I know. But I guess, all these questions that fly around my head, about the phone call to the police, about the CCTV footage, about you calling it a coincidence, about the dozens of theories I’ve read about… they’re all nonsense, aren’t they? Because no matter what way I think about this, it all comes back to one thing for me. It all comes back to those three seconds of CCTV footage, where a girl wearing a hoodie only you could possibly be wearing walks down a road just a few hundred yards away from where our boys were found.’
Joy leaned closer, placing her forearms on the desk, her chains rattling.
‘Let me answer your question, Shay.’
He sniffled up his nose, then wiped a hand over his face, mopping up the wet.
‘You always say that it’s just a coincidence somebody was wearing that same top; it’s no coincidence, is it, Joy? I want you to look me straight in the eye and tell me the absolute truth… You owe me the truth. Is that you in that CCTV footage?’
‘No,’ she said without hesitating. ‘And you have to believe me, Shay. You have to believe me.’
He blinked at her, through his tears. Then he stood abruptly, scooting the chair he was sat on towards the back wall.
‘Okay…’ he said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘that is all I came here to ask… so, I, eh… I’m…’ he tailed off his muttering as he pulled open the yellow door, exposing both the Governor and Mathilda outside.
‘No. Shay,’ Joy called out. ‘Please.’ Shay paused in the door frame, his hand still on the handle of the door, and stared back at his wife, his face blotchy and swollen. ‘If you came here to ask me one question… then can you please, please, allow me one question of my own… please?’
She gently pressed her thumb into the corners of her eyes, to mop up her tears. Then she was certain she noticed Shay nod, even though he didn’t.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘all I want to know, Shay, is whether or not you believe me. That’s all I want to know. It’s all I need to know.’
She held her lips tightly closed as she tried to study the muscles in his face. But none of them moved.
‘What do you mean believe you?’ he spat out, before gulping back more tears. ‘Believe you about what in particular? Do I believe you killed our boys?… I genuinely don’t know. Do I believe that is you in that CCTV footage?… I genuinely. Don’t. Know. I don’t know anything. Anything!’ He punched the yellow door, then he paced out of the pokey office and across the concrete landing.
❖
Delia is so taken by how handsome Mathieu Dupont is, with his jet-black hair, jet-black eyebrows and perfectly chiselled chin smothered in stubble, that his looks seem to have almost diluted her panic attack.
‘Mr Dupont, can you state your occupation for the court please?’ Bracken asks as soon as the witness has sat.
‘Of course, eh,’ he says, his French accent thick. ‘I, eh… am the PDG – or as you say in Ireland, CEO – of a company we call Provenir.’
‘And Provenir is a multi-million euro company that specialises in innovative video engineering, correct?’
‘Objection, Your Honour,’ Jonathan Ryan shouts. ‘What does the value of the witness’s company have to do with the relevancy of this trial?’
‘Rephrase the question,’ Delia says without hesitating, releasing her sweaty hands from her own grip. She stares at her thumb, then lightly squeezes at it, creating a fresh bubble of blood.
‘Okay, so Provenir is a successful company, shall we say, that specialises in innovative video engineering, correct?’ Bracken asks.
‘That is eh… correct. Among other things,’ Dupont replies.
‘Okay, and isn’t it a fact that your company Provenir assisted Pixar on two of their blockbuster Hollywood movies, yes?’
‘Oui… yes, we did. We assisted with some communication through email to some of the production company’s researchers. We didn’t get to go to Hollywood. There was no set.’ Dupont laughs. ‘We were in communication with Pixar on some specific difficulties they had about perception. That was it. I think it was five emails back and forward… that was it.’
‘But your company got a mention in the credits of the movies, correct?’
‘Yes.’ Dupont laughs again. A husky laugh that sounds as if he might have already smoked a full box of cigarettes this morning.
‘You were also a lecturer in Nice, correct – at Nice Sophia Antipolis University?’
‘That is correct. Yes. Over the course of maybe eight years.’
‘Closer to ten, according to the University itself, Mr Dupont. Nine years and seven months to be precise.’
Dupont laughs his husky smoker’s laugh again.
‘Was it almost ten years? Wow-wow-wee-wa,’ he says. ‘My, eh… memory is not so great.’
Bracken smiles back at his witness, showing his veneers. But even he must know that he doesn’t come anywhere close to having the best smile in this courtroom. Not today.
Delia gulps, then lightly burps as a pocket of air jumps itself up her throat. She brings her hand to her mouth, then looks about herself, hoping the stenographer didn’t hear her almost throw up.
‘So, you are a specialist in innovative engineering, and you lectured on this subject for nigh on a decade at a prestigious university in northern France, Mr Dupont. That’s very impressive. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be with us at this trial today.’ Dupont nods back. ‘Let me ask you,’ Bracken continues, ‘upon hearing of the Joy Stapleton case for the very first time when, I believe, a student brought you an analysis of the CCTV footage for his end-of-year assignment, you began to look into the case yourself, correct?’
‘I thought it was a very, very interesting case, yes.’
‘You used your innovative software to try to discover if the woman in that footage could possibly have been Joy Stapleton, correct?’
‘That is correct. Well, I first started looking at it with my student – his name is Eric Dupont… no relation.’ He smiles a vertical dimple into his stubbled cheek. ‘Then I brought it into our studio to take a closer look… eh… intrigued, is the best word to describe it.’
‘You were confident you could tell the exact height of the person in that footage… wouldn’t that be fair to suggest?’
‘Well eh… Mr Bracken,’ he says, his accent thickening, ‘what I would say is that I felt I could do my best with my best technology to determine the height of the person in the footage.’
‘And in brief terms for the court, can you detail how you could do that?’
‘Sure I, eh… we – my company, Provenir – developed 3D model software that is able
to read persons from still images and determine the exact height of that person.’
‘So, that mightn’t sound impressive to the courts, because measuring somebody from a photograph or a still seems a little easy…’ Bracken holds his hands in front of himself and puffs a laugh. ‘But can you tell the court how intricate the measurements must be to determine exact height?’
‘Yes. It is not so easy. Because we, each of us, hold so many different heights. Just because my doctor measures me at six foot, three, it does not mean that I am always six foot, three. In fact, I most likely never am six foot, three. Or rarely. I really only am six foot, three when somebody says, Monsieur Dupont, can you stand against that wall so I can measure you? And I think that has only happened to me maybe four or five times in my life. So, most likely and more often than not, I am not six foot, three, even though it is my official height. We all slouch, hunch, bend, lean, pivot… all these things. And, for example, an everyday average height throughout any given day can be up to two whole inches lower than a person’s official registered height.’
Delia lightly burps, only this time she envelops it so well that she is certain the stenographer couldn’t have heard her. Then the door to her right sweeps open and Aisling walks in, nodding to the judge. She hands her a plaster before sneaking back out in silence. The judge stares up at Bracken as she unpeels the plaster and begins to curl it around her thumb. Then she nods at him, signalling that he should continue.
‘So, you took the still of the figure from the CCTV footage, Mr Dupont, then built a 3D model of her and measured her exact height. Is that correct?’
‘That is correct, yes.’
‘And can you now reveal to the court what the exact height the person is in that footage?’
‘One hundred and fifty-four point seven, one five centimetres. Which in your money here in Ireland is exactly five foot, and three quarters of one inch.’
‘Five foot, and three quarters of an inch,’ Bracken says, nodding his head. ‘The defendant here today, Joy Stapleton, Mr Dupont, according to her prison records is five foot, two inches in height. Your finding is that the figure in the CCTV footage is one whole inch and a further quarter inch smaller than that, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘That might sound like a tiny measurement to many in this courtroom today, but in your line of work, that’s a gulf… correct?’
‘What I can say, Mr Bracken, with absolute certainty is that the figure in the CCTV is definitely not five foot, two inches.’
A light gasp is heard at the back of the court and Bracken pauses to allow the effect of it to float through the room.
‘And this software you use to determine your exact findings, Mr Dupont, what’s it called?’
‘Oh… Sonix17, we are not very creative with names,’ Dupont says, laughing again, exposing his vertical dimple. Delia almost laughs with him, but in trying to stifle it, she awakens another frog in her throat.
‘And Sonix17 was built when?’ Bracken continues.
‘2017, as the name suggests. I told you we were not very creative with names.’
‘2017? Very recently. So, it is fair to say that this technology did not exist in 2012… when Joy Stapleton’s original trial took place, correct?’
‘Course not, no,’ Dupont says, shaking his head.
Delia knew that question was asked just for her benefit – to underline to her that this was brand new information being brought into the legal argument. A retrial can only really be granted if new evidence emerges. This expert’s testimony, with new-age technology that couldn’t have been used during the original trial, coupled with the fact that Bunny the dog had, since the original trial, been labelled a fraud, was the brand new evidence the defendant was bringing to this court. Delia had known these were the likely trump cards of the defence. But she didn’t realised the new technology would be delivered to her in such a convincing and specific manner.
‘That is all, Your Honour,’ Bracken says, nodding up at Delia. She purses her lips back at him, then squints to the back rows of the gallery. There’s still no sign of Taunton. So, she flicks her gaze to her son, then has to hold her eyes closed with frustration to allow the image in the video to wash through her thoughts. She holds her hand firmer to her mouth in anticipation of another burp. But none comes.
‘Your Honour, may I?’ Jonathan Ryan calls out from his desk.
‘Of course, Mr Ryan.’
Ryan rises to his feet, a mysterious smug grin on the corner of his lips. Delia had noted the maturity in his performances during the opening two days of this retrial. This is the third trial she’s presided over cases that he has attempted to prosecute. And he seemed, in her eyes, to be getting more assured and more confident each time he appeared in front of her.
‘Mr Dupont, thank you for being with us here today,’ Ryan says. ‘I have found your testimony most interesting, I must say. I also find it wildly inaccurate and I will detail exactly why that is in one moment. But before I do that,’ Ryan strides into the middle of the courtroom floor, ‘can I just have something clarified, please? When Mr Bracken was questioning you earlier, he suggested your company, Provenir, was a specialist in video engineering. You answered him by saying “among other things”. It is the “other things”, Ryan curls his fingers to denote quote marks, ‘that your company really specialises in, isn’t it? You don’t specialise in detailing the height of figures from CCTV footage, correct?’
Dupont laughs again.
‘Of course not. We would not be so successful with such a business model.’
‘So, what your company really is successful at is developing perceptive-space software for smart phone app manufacturers, correct?’
‘Eh… yes. When you say specialise, that is what we really specialise in. That is what makes our company successful. Correct. Working with app developers is pretty much our entire business.’
‘Yes. And can I just confirm that when Mr Bracken says you were a lecturer at the University in Nice for ten years. That’s not ten years full-time, right? A few times a year you would give lectures on video engineering at the university.’
‘Yes. It was three times a year. Each October, January and April.’
‘So, thirty lectures in total?’
Dupont laughs.
‘It must be… yes.’
‘So let me get this straight, Mr Dupont… when Mr Bracken introduces you to the court as somebody who not only specialises in determining the height of somebody through a CCTV still and somebody who has lectured extensively on the subject, that’s quite a hyperbolic description, is it not?’
‘Hyper…’
‘Hyperbolic. An exaggeration?’
‘Well, that was Mr Bracken’s description,’ Dupont sucks the dimple into his cheek again. ‘Not mine. I do not consider myself a lecturer. I never have. I liked passing my expertise to students and would have done more hours in the university, but time would not allow, of course.’
‘Yes. Well, Mr Bracken has a tendency to be hyperbolic when he feels a witness requires it,’ Ryan says, darting a quick glance to the judge.
Delia picks up her gavel and thumps it twice to her desk.
‘Mr Ryan,’ she yells out. ‘I am surprised.’ Her eyes grow wide as she stares down at Ryan.
‘Sorry, Your Honour,’ he says, holding up his two hands and then turning back to the witness. ‘Mr Dupont, have you ever met the defendant, Mrs Joy Stapleton?’
‘No, no,’ Dupont says, shaking his head before signalling to the defendant as if anybody in the courtroom needed her pointed out. ‘Today is my first day to see her.’
‘So, you, through your software, were able to determine the exact height of a woman you have never met?’
‘Well, that is not true. I was not looking to determine if or if not the figure in the footage was Mrs Stapleton. I was just trying to determine the height of the woman in the footage.’
‘And you came up with five foot, and three quarters of an inch?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why do you think that couldn’t be Mrs Stapleton?’
‘Well… as I said, I was not looking for Mrs Stapleton. I was looking for the exact height of the figure in the footage only.’
‘But you testified here today that, and I quote “I can confirm that the figure is not five foot, two.” Yes?’
‘I did.’
‘Where did the figure of five foot, two come from?’
‘Well… it came from Mrs Stapleton’s prison records, no?’
‘Ahhh,’ Ryan says. And as he does, Delia gulps, swallowing the threat of another burp. ‘Mr Dupont you are a man of exact measurement, are you not?’
‘I am. Yes. I guess.’
‘Well, do you honestly believe that the measurements taken, probably quite swiftly inside a cold prison medical room with an old stadiometer would in any way be scientifically precise?’
‘I did not say that the record of the prison measurement is correct.’
‘No, you didn’t. Which is why I called your testimony wildly inaccurate at the beginning of my cross examination, Mr Dupont. You may have been measuring against an inaccurate record. We, the prosecution team, tried to retrieve exact measurements of the defendant. We were denied. You admitted under oath here today that this is the first time you have ever seen Mrs Stapleton in the flesh, correct?’
‘It is still correct, yes.’
‘So, I take it you’ve never measured her either, right?’
Dupont shakes his head and rubs his fingers across the stubble of his chin.
‘No. I have not measured Mrs Stapleton. I live between Nice and Paris. Yesterday was my first time in Dublin in ten years.’
‘Because Mr Bracken invited you to be part of this trial… to get you up here to label you successful at this and that, just so your testimony would sound impressive. But if your testimony is all about accuracy, then it fails somewhat if you are comparing to a measurement recorded in a cold prison room by a dodgy stadiometer, does it not?’
The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy) Page 9