The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy)

by David B Lyons

  ‘Like a Mamma birdie,’ I say. And I laugh. But nobody else does. Cos this courtroom full of snooty-ass bitches.

  ‘And, as you said, you spent almost three years in prison then. Did you spend all of that time on the Elm House wing?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And did Mrs Stapleton serve all those years with you on that wing, too?’

  ‘Think she’s spent all her time on that wing… I don’t know. It’s been a lot of years since I’ve been back inside.’

  ‘But, you were in effect neighbours in Mountjoy for all the years you were there that time?

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Close?’

  ‘I took her under ma wing, as I told you. I was her mamma birdie. There are a whole lotta screwed up women in prison, and I guess she looked so small and lonely and frightened. Hell, she was shakin’ in the van the first day I met her.’

  ‘Thank you, Christy. So, you were close friends for almost three years. Then you were let out of prison, but arrived back there some two years later, correct?’

  ‘Yep. But that was bullshit. I shouldn’t—’

  ‘Enough, Mrs Jabefemi,’ the judge says, slamming her hammer again.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘If the witness could refrain from profanities.’

  ‘I will, Ma’am,’ I say, noddin’ ma head at her.

  ‘It’s insignificant whether you feel you were rightly or wrongly sent back into prison, Christy, in terms of this trial. What is significant is what Joy Stapleton said to you during the small stretch of time you spent in prison during that sentence, isn’t it?’

  ‘That it is. That’s when she told me she did it. That she killed her two boys. She confessed. Came crying to me one day, saying things hadn’t been the same in prison since I left, and everything came out. It all poured outta her.’

  I look to Joy. Her lawyer has his hand lightly gripped around her wrist, just in case. But she doesn’t react. She just stares straight ahead.

  ‘She confessed to you that she killed Oscar and Reese?’

  ‘Yep. And that she buried them in the woods in the mountains. And that it was definitely her in that CCTV thingy… everything. She poured her heart out to me.’

  ‘Wow, Your Honour,’ Jonathan says, turning to look up at Judge Delia. I don’t know whether she believes me. I hope she does. But she looks like the snootiest bitch of all the bitches in this courtroom. So I dunno. ‘Now carefully and to the best of your memory, can you detail what Joy said to you exactly?’ Jonathan asks.

  ‘It was a long time ago, but I remember. I remember like it was yesterday because it was, well… it was Joy Stapleton finally confessin’. She said, “I did it, Christy. I couldn’t put up with them crying no longer. I strangled them and killed them. Then I went up the mountains and buried them.” She told me it took her three hours to dig out a grave and then she dumped the bodies in there and then she went home and got drunk.’

  ‘Quite a lot of detail…’

  ‘Yep. She just opened her heart to me.’

  I look at her again, through the curls covering her face so I can see her eyes. But she won’t look at me. Little bitch.

  ‘So, you are here to testify today, Christy, that Joy openly confessed to you inside the confines of Mountjoy Prison during your six-month sentence in 2017, yes?’

  ‘Yep. Sure am. The Lord God sent me. He said, he said, “Christy, you need to make sure o’ justice for those two little innocent boys.” So here I am. Making sure justice is served. She can’t get out of prison. She’s a killer. Worse than a normal killer. She kills her own.’

  I stare at her again. I really want to her to look at me, to see me. Bitch embarrassed me. She made a show o’ me, telling me to fuck off in the yard that time. She payin’ for that now. You don’t fuck with Christy, sista.

  She just keeps looking down at the desk in front of her, her lawyer still holding a loose grip round her wrist. Then I see him let go, and he stands up and stares at me. I didn’t even see Jonathan sit down. Now it’s this guy’s turn? Jonathan told me not to be intimidated; that this fella will bring up my past and won’t paint a pretty picture. But all I have to do is sit here and take it and not overreact. Then I can walk out those double doors, back to my freedom, back to ma little bedsit. While Joy here will be going back to Mountjoy. Back to those shitty little cells the rest o’ her life.

  ‘May I call you Christy, too?’ he says.

  ‘You may indeed, Sir.’

  ‘Christy, you just said Joy Stapleton confessed to you that she killed her two sons. Can you detail for the court where this conversation took place?’

  ‘Eh…’ I scratch at the side o’ my hair. ‘In her cell in Elm House.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘It’s just that during this period, in 2017 when you were in for a six-month sentence for theft, you were not based in Elm House, were you?’

  ‘Eh… nope.’

  ‘So how could you possibly have been present there for a conversation with Joy Stapleton at this time.’

  ‘I must have… must have been allowed in. Somehow. Sometimes we wander.’

  ‘You must have been allowed in… to Elm House? But this simply doesn’t happen, does it? Prisoners don’t wander block to block in Mountjoy Prison, do they?’

  ‘Well, eh… maybe it happened somewhere else and my memory is a little… I don’t know… fuzzy?’ I laugh. But none of the other snooty fuckers do. I know Jonathan certainly won’t be laughing. He be screamin’ inside. He told me this lawyer fella would ask all about where this conversation with Joy is supposed to have taken place. Because when I first told him, he recorded me and I said it had happened in Joy’s cell in Elm House. So, he told me I should just stick to that, even if this lawyer fella kept suggesting it couldn’t have happened there. But I didn’t stick to it like he told me. It don’t matter.

  ‘So now your memory is a little fuzzy on where this actual conversation took place? Is your mind fuzzy on the content of the conversation, too, perhaps?’

  ‘Nope. She told me e’rything.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘She just spat it out one day to you… just like you testified here today?’

  ‘Yep. She wanted to get it off her chest. She had been depressed since I left the prison and just wanted me back as a best friend, y’know, so she just told me e’rything.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Stapleton says no such conversation came up during your six-month sentence in Mountjoy Prison in 2017. In fact, she says she had no conversation with you at all during this period. That she saw you one day in the break yard, but that she ignored you.’

  ‘She lyin’ cos we did talk.’

  ‘Did you talk many times during that six-month stay?’

  ‘Nope. That was it.’

  ‘Hold on. You are telling me you only had that one conversation in 2017 and she openly admitted everything to you?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Now I find that hard to believe. Especially as you’ve already admitted to your mind being fuzzy – which is the exact word you used.’

  ‘Well you should believe it, cos it’s true, Sir.’

  ‘And you are to be trusted, Christy, yes?’

  ‘I am a woman of God, Sir. I am honest and true.’

  ‘You were fired from your job as warehouse worker in Cribbins Closets in 2019, Christy. Yes?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Because they ass holes.’

  ‘Mrs Jabefemi,’ the judge calls out, slammin’ that hammer again. It’s a good job I don’t have a hang-over… good job I kept clean these past three weeks.

  ‘Sorry, Yo’ Honour,’ I say, ‘won’t happen again.’

  ‘You may answer the question properly this time, Christy,’ Bracken says. ‘You were sacked from Cribbins Closets for what reason?’

  ‘Cos they say I stole from til
l.’

  ‘You stole from the till?’

  ‘That’s what they say. Sacked my sorry ass in front of all the folk working there.’

  ‘So, you were sacked for stealing on the job?’

  ‘I didn’t steal nothin’.’

  ‘But that is the reason they sacked you, yes?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And you were thrown out of a hostel called The Inn Take in early 2011. why was this?’

  I breathe out loud. Right into the microphone.

  ‘I stole somebody’s watch.’

  ‘You stole somebody’s watch?’

  ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘You just said you did.’

  ‘Well, I just sayin’ why I was thrown out, s’all. They threw me out cos they say I stole the watch. But I didn’t steal jack sh—’ I stop myself befo’ the judge slams that hammer again.

  ‘Okay, Christy. Now let me go back a bit. You were first sentenced to prison in 2008. Yes?’

  ‘Think that was ma first time, yep.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Theft.’

  ‘Theft. Correct. And you spent nine months inside. You then went back to prison in 2010 correct?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Theft, I guess. And I got eight month that time.’

  ‘Yep. That’s correct. Then the third time you got caught, you were sentenced to seven years for theft with use of an illegal weapon in September of 2012. Which is when you spent almost three years on the same wing as the defendant. You got out in 2015. Then in late 2017 you were back in Mountjoy for six months for…’

  ‘Theft.’

  ‘Yep. Theft.’

  ‘See where I’m going with this, Christy? You were sacked from the only job you’ve ever held, according to my records, for theft. You were thrown out of a hostel for theft. You have been arrested, charged and imprisoned on four different occasions for theft. And yet here you sit before us, asking us to trust you as you testify about a conversation that simply didn’t happen because it couldn’t have happened.’

  ‘It did happen!’ I say.

  ‘You ever been reliant on illegal substances, Christy?’ he says, taking a step closer to me. I was told this would come up.

  ‘You know I have.’

  ‘When did you start taking drugs?’

  ‘When I left home, back in… I don’t know… late nineties or whatever.’

  ‘And when was the last time you took drugs, Christy?’

  ‘A long time ago. I’m clean now. I don’t do nothing like that no more. I am a woman of God, Sir.’

  ‘Last time… roughly?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sir.’

  ‘You don’t know… has it been weeks? Months? Years?’

  ‘Years.’

  ‘Years? Well, now that can’t be the case, can it, Christy? I mean, I have here…’ he walks back to his desk and picks up a sheet of paper. ‘Records of you being accepted onto the Desoxyn trials at the Lilac Clinic in Blackrock back in February of this year, for a course of Desoxyn. Desoxyn, for the record of the court, is a legal substitute for methamphetamine. Did you need a substitute for meth in February, Christy?’

  ‘Well, maybe it hasn’t been years. But I bin clean fo’ months. Ever since I did that clinic trial at Blackrock,’ I lie.

  ‘Really? It says here that you left the trial after only four days?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Whatever?’

  ‘Christy. Your history suggests you are a woman who has relied on Class A drugs for the best part of twenty-five years. It also suggests you are untrustworthy, given your records of consistent theft, isn’t that correct?’

  I start swishin’ ma hands around on ma knees. This ass hole really rilin’ me up. Jonathan told me he would. But I thought I be strong enough to get through it. Any time I play with my hands like this, I know I need me some meth. It’s been three weeks now since Jonathan put me up in a hotel and told me to sober maself up befo’ I took the stand. But tonight… tonight when I get back home, I’m gonna get straight on the phone. I need ma fix. I gotta get me some shit, just to get over this shit.

  ‘Yeah. I guess ma history does suggest I’m a drug taker and that I’m untrustworthy,’ I say. Then I shrug one shoulder at him. ‘But I tell ya somethin’, mister lawyer man, I ain’t lyin’ bout this. She told me she done it. That gal confessed to me.’

  777 days ago…

  Joy was practically skipping behind Mathilda, her arms swinging by her side, a smile stretching across her face.

  ‘And he said – and these are his words because I chose there and then to remember them – “there’s a great chance” – a great chance, Mathilda!’

  ‘Cool,’ Mathilda said as she waddled her way around the maze of landings to lead the excitable prisoner back to Elm House.

  ‘Are you not happy for me?’ Mathilda shrugged her shoulders, not even bothering to turn around. ‘Where’s Aidan? I need to tell Aidan. Why didn’t he bring me to my meeting with Gerd Bracken, I know he’s rostered to be working today?’

  Mathilda cleared her throat.

  ‘He eh… was called up for a meeting with the Governor.’

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll tell him when I see him.’

  Joy continued to skip and grin while following Mathilda all the way back to Elm House. Bracken had just informed her that her retrial had been officially granted – all three judges in the Criminal Court of Appeal agreed that the fresh evidence brought to them was enough to warrant Joy another day in court. The consensus seemed to be, in the judges’ summoning up, that while they felt Mathieu Dupont’s technological breakthrough to be less than one-hundred percent scientific, the fact that Bunny the Dog had been found to be a fraud in a court of law overseas was ample reason to order the retrial. Which was odd, Bracken had told Joy when delivering the news, because he thought it’d be the other way around.

  ‘So now we have to start planning for the retrial… what we need to concentrate on is convincing a jury or a judge or whatever road they go down with this that you are not the woman in that CCTV footage. If we can pour doubt on that, then I think we have a great chance of finally getting you out of here.’

  ‘When will the retrial be d’you think?’ Joy asked, her face beaming, ‘think I’ll get out before Christmas?’

  Bracken puffed a laugh out of the side of his mouth, then he leaned forward.

  ‘Joy… this will take some time. Again. It may even be up to another two years before we get back into a courtroom. We gotta join the queue… and I can’t tell you how long that queue is. Besides, with your retrial, who knows what way the justice system will even try it. They might not see a jury as being suitable… I mean, who doesn’t know about the Joy Stapleton case? So, this could rumble on and on…’

  ‘Two more years?’ she said, grimacing.

  But it didn’t dampen her spirits. She was high as a kite. Especially after Bracken said he had to leave her to it because he had scheduled a press conference and was about to let the whole nation know that Joy Stapleton had been ordered a retrial – and that Ireland’s most infamous prisoner may have been innocent all along. The Joy is Innocent campaign will be abuzz. Half of the nation will say, ‘I told you so.’

  ‘Listen, listen,’ Joy squealed, clenching up her fists and excitedly shaking them at her fellow inmates as soon as she arrived back in the TV room, ‘I’ve got it! I’ve bloody got it! A retrial.’

  ‘Well, holy shit,’ Linda said, standing up and hugging a bouncing Joy.

  Nancy remained seated on the worn sofa, her arms folded as she stared over Joy’s shoulder at the TV.

  ‘Right Said Fred.’

  ‘Huh?’ Joy said, her face scrunching up at Nancy.

  ‘Right Said Fred. Which 80s pop band had a hit with a song titled Don’t Talk, Just Kiss? Right Said Fred. It wasn’t one of their big hits, but I was a fan back in the day….’

  Joy looked over her shoulder at the repeat of T
ipping Point playing on the screen.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I just said, Nancy? They’re giving me a retrial. They confirmed it at the Courts of Criminal Appeal this morning. My lawyers out there talking to the press right now as we speak. It’s official.’

  Nancy heaved herself up from the sofa, by griping a clawed hand to Linda’s knee.

  ‘I’m happy for ya. I am.’

  She slapped Joy on the back, then refocused her stare to the TV screen.

  Joy’s relationship with Nancy had been awkward and undefinable ever since she beat her up almost a year ago. But Nancy kept claiming her undying love for Joy until Joy eventually gave in and forgave her, but only because it made her life easier to not be ignored by the entire wing, all of whom had begun to blank her because she wouldn’t speak to Nancy. The two of them had been back talking for months now, but their relationship was undeniably strained. And awkward. They rarely spoke, not until Nancy felt horny and would sidle up to Joy and insist on being fingered. Joy wasn’t receiving any fingers in return, not anymore. But that was fine by her. She’d just close her eyes, give Nancy all four fingers until she couldn’t take them no more, then they’d both get back to folding bedsheets before being locked up for the night.

  ‘Has anyone seen Aidan?’ Joy asked, her fists still clenched with excitement.

  The heads around her shook, then some of the inmates leaned into her for a celebratory embrace; though they seemed unsure. But only because while they knew they should be happy for Joy, Nancy had set an unenthusiastic tone to receiving Joy’s news, and the ambience had fallen flat. Joy’s fists released and the bubble of excitement began to dilute in her stomach.

  But just as it did, in the midst of the awkward silence that followed a couple of the loose hugs she received from her so-called friends, she heard the voice she’d been waiting to hear. He was outside, asking if Joy was back from her meeting yet.

  ‘Aidan, Aidan,’ she shouted, running towards the door of the TV room, ‘I got it! I got it! They’re giving me a retrial.’

  She stopped short of hugging him, only because she knew it to be frowned upon. But she so desperately wanted to. Instead, she stood in front of him, ringing her hands and smiling from ear to ear.