‘Ryan certainly was trying to wind her up,’ Delia mutters.
‘Sorry, Your Honour?’ the young woman asks.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Delia says without looking up, her eyes still squinting down the length of her legs. ‘Just thinking aloud.’
There’s a scuffle at the door, as somebody from inside tries to open it while the young woman spins to grip at the knob with both hands, dragging it back shut.
‘Excuse me!’ Callum’s voice sounds agitated, curt, rude.
‘Judge McCormick has asked me to keep this door closed during recess,’ the young woman says.
‘It’s her son. Callum. Let me out.’ He yanks the door so forcefully that he almost sucks the young woman into the courtroom, then he paces outside without an apology where he almost trips over his mother’s outstretched legs.
‘Get back in that courtroom,’ Delia snaps.
‘Mum, you need to—’
‘You heard me. Get back in that courtroom, Callum. The court official here has just told you nobody can come outside that door. You are now in breach of the court. Do I need to call security?’
‘Mum, listen. The Private Eye—’
‘Callum!’ she screams, forming both of her fists into balls atop her lap. ‘I need these minutes to consider everything I’ve just heard.’
‘Course you do, but—’
‘Callum!’ she screams again.
He holds both of his hands aloft, then looks back over his shoulder at the young woman dressed in black.
‘Okay… okay, Jeez,’ he says, swivelling, then strolling back into the courtroom in a sulk.
When the young woman dressed in black pulls the door back shut, Delia offers her a smile.
‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ she asks.
‘Ivy. Ivy Malone.’
‘Well, thank you for your continued service of the courts, Miss Ivy Malone,’ Delia says. Then she drops the smile from her face, re-squints her eyes and stares back along her outstretched legs.
She doesn’t know where to begin dissecting Joy’s testimony from. She is aware the media will make it all about Joy’s outbursts. But Delia knows she doesn’t have to complicate her filtering process by concentrating on the two occasions Joy stood in the witness to shout back at Jonathan Ryan. Delia needs to dig deeper than that. She needs to reach the fine lines in between the lines, and then begin the process of filtering them into the appropriate pockets inside her mind.
‘Your Honour, that’s the ten minutes you called for,’ Ivy says, startling the judge. It didn’t seem as if she had been squinting that long. The judge tuts, then scrambles herself to her feet, squeezes the shoulder of Ivy’s black blazer and pulls the door open herself.
‘All rise.’
The shout goes up late from the clerk as Delia settles herself back into the highchair, gripping her gavel tight.
She sighs heavily, then knocks lightly once.
‘We have heard from the last of the witnesses in this retrial. It is now time for both the defence and the prosecution to deliver their final arguments. Mr Bracken…’
Bracken scoots back his chair to get to his feet, then strolls purposely to the centre of the courtroom floor, leaving behind his client whose face is still swollen from all of her crying.
‘Your Honour,’ he says, adopting his familiar stance of forming a steeple with his fingers. ‘If there is doubt, then you must let her out. And there is plenty of doubt in this case. In 2010, my client was arrested and eventually sentenced to two life sentences for a crime she simply did not commit. Nobody has ever been able to say with any degree of certainty that she is guilty of the horrendous and heinous crimes she is accused of. Two life sentences for a crime one police officer working on the case testified in front of you to say was a deeply… flawed… investigation. Let me remind you what Sandra Gleeson said when she was on that stand, Your Honour. She testified that investigators, “were only focused on one suspect from the outset.” She said that only three seconds of CCTV footage out of five thousand hours that were viewed were ever deemed necessary to the investigation. Three seconds out of five thousand hours. That is a decimal of a percentage that begins with three zeros, Your Honour.’ Delia scribbles notes on the paper in front of her as she maintains eye contact with Bracken. ‘If investigators were only looking for Joy Stapleton in all of the footage they viewed, Your Honour, then what did they miss? Sandra Gleeson was an assistant detective on this case, and she believes the investigation was lacking from the outset… and flawed from the outset. That, in itself, Your Honour is enough to excuse Joy Stapleton with an apology for her wrongful conviction. Sandra Gleeson’s testimony pours all sorts of doubt onto the original verdict. And if there’s doubt, Your Honour, you must let her out.’ Bracken readjusts his standing position, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘But that is not the only doubt that has been poured onto the original verdict over the course of this retrial. Bunny the dog, Your Honour, who had been instrumental in Joy’s original trial has, since that trial, been confirmed as a fraud. The dog did not have the skillsets required to even attempt to confirm the presence of decomposing bodies in the Stapleton home in early 2009. Bunny’s handler, Mr Grimshaw – who sat in that witness chair last week – also lacks the skillsets and indeed qualifications for such a claim. Again, Your Honour, we managed to pour more doubt onto the original verdict in this case. And if there’s doubt… you must let her out. Then we brought, to this court, brand new technology which was able to pour more doubt over the woman in the infamous CCTV footage… letting us know that this couldn’t be Joy Stapleton. Because the height of the woman in that footage simply doesn’t measure up to Joy. Y’see that’s a metaphor for this whole case, Your Honour. Nothing measures up. Nothing measures up at all… Judge McCormick,’ he says, taking two steps closer to the judge and staring up at her with his heaviest puppy-dog eyes, ‘when there is doubt poured onto a case brought by the state – any case at all – it is proper legal procedure to dismiss the charges. After all, a case must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. We, here, haven’t just poured doubt on to this case, Your Honour, we have flooded doubt onto this case. My client has spent eight years, two months, two weeks and two days inside Mountjoy Prison for a crime she did not, and could not, have committed. If you are to release her tomorrow, which we strongly believe you should do given the amount of doubt flooded onto this case, my client – Mrs Joy Stapleton – will have spent three thousand days exactly behind bars. Three. Thousand. Days. For a crime she simply did not commit.’ Bracken softens his face and releases his fingers from their steeple. ‘I and my client thank you for your time, your diligence and your expertise, Judge McCormick, and believe that you will faithfully do what is right by these courts. That is our final statement – thank you, Your Honour.’
He produces his tilted head bow again, then paces back to his desk, and as he does Delia pulls back the sleeve on her left wrist before tilting it to her face.
‘Mr Ryan, it is lunch time. But I’ll leave it up to you. Would you like to deliver your final argument now, or…’
‘Let’s take the recess, Your Honour,’ Ryan says.
‘That okay with you, Mr Bracken?’ Delia asks, flicking her eyes to the opposite bench.
Bracken curls up his mouth, shrugs his shoulders and nods his head. Then Delia bangs down her gavel once again.
‘Okay, let’s take half an hour. Court will resume at 1:40pm precisely.’
Delia sucks on her cheeks as she heads out the side door, nodding to Ivy as she passes her.
But she’s barely turned the corner of the first corridor by the time she hears a familiar calling – a calling she’s heard almost every day of the past thirty-five years.
‘Mum.’
She stops, and sighs as she spins.
‘What is it, Callum?’
‘I’ve got something to show you, though it’ll make you wanna vomit.’
‘Vomit?’ she says, placing her hands on her hips, t
hen squinting at the wry smile flickering on the corner of her son’s mouth as he approaches her, his phone cupped inside his hand.
He swivels when he reaches his mother, to show her the screen, then he presses at the play button. As soon as he does, a scratching sound hisses from the speakers, before Delia baulks her face away.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘Keep watching, Mum.’
‘Callum,’ she says holding a hand to her face. ‘Have I not seen enough penis for one woman this week?’
‘Keep watching.’
The camera was between his legs, his balls hairy and tight at the bottom of the screen, his hands tight around his tubby mushroomed-shape shaft. Over his fistful of penis lay a hanging belly, all hairy and matted with sweat. She couldn’t see a face. Not until a neat side-parting of grey hair made itself visible. Followed by those unmistakable bushy V-shaped eyebrows. It looked as if Eddie was staring up over his belly at whatever footage he was masturbating to, totally unaware his laptop was filming him.
‘Men. You really are all stupid, huh?’ Delia says. Then she glances up at her son, producing a wry smile to mirror his.
‘Where is he?’
‘Canteen, I bet,’ Delia says.
She pats her son on the back and then they both pace back up the corridor they had just walked down, before entering through the side door of the courtroom so that they can take the short cut to the canteen. But they don’t need to travel so far. Because heading towards them are the same bushy V-shaped eyebrows that had just appeared in the video.
‘Eddie…’ Callum calls out, his voice echoing around the empty courtroom. ‘You might wanna take a look at this.’
1 day ago…
Joy sighed with every exhale of breath she took as she slodged behind Anya.
The cringing hadn’t diluted. Nor the anger. She was furious with herself… so much so she formed both fists into balls and let them hang heavy by her side as she was being led back to her cell. That was her one chance – the only chance she’d ever have – of defending herself. And she fuckin’ blew it. Or at least she felt she had.
In between bouts of heavy sighing, she held her eyes closed and replayed all the times she had stumbled or stuttered on the stand. Then she’d cringe when she’d picture herself standing and shouting back at Jonathan Ryan.
‘I’m a fuckin’ idiot. I should’ve listened to my lawyer. I shouldn’t have gone up there. I think I might’ve fucked it all up for myself,’ she said to Anya, who looked even more like a model today because she had her hair all tussled into a loose bun and was dressed in a designer fitted suit to accompany Joy to and from the courts. But, as always, Anya didn’t return conversation to the prisoner. She just kept her sculptured face stern until they reached cell E-108, before she pushed open the cell door, pointed Joy inside and then slammed it shut – even though Joy would have been allowed to roam around, given that cells were open and most of the other prisoners were in the TV room gossiping – about her, no doubt. Though Nancy wasn’t. Joy had peered through the crack of her cell door when walking past just moments ago, noticing she was having her usual post-dinner nap.
But Joy chose to do just as she had done every evening of the past two weeks when she returned from court – she lay on her mattress in foetal position, and stared at the smiling faces of her two boys.
She didn’t feel up to mixing with any of the inmates since she’d returned from isolation – and knew the only likely place she’d find peace and quiet during her retrial was on top of the plastic, blue mattress of her own cell, with the door shut tight. She had heard the prisoners were getting updates on her retrial through the RTÉ evening news, which, she realized as she lay staring at her boys’ smiles, is what most of them were likely doing right now.
She thought about crawling out of her bed and heading down to the TV room just to listen to what the RTÉ reporter had to say about her time on the stand. But she couldn’t summon the energy. Nor the courage. She felt that if she heard him report that she had made a fool of herself up there today then she might as well head back to her cell and end it all.
So, instead, she rested her ear onto her thin pillow and attempted to relive her testimony. She cringed when she replayed the first time she’d stood up to shout at Jonathan Ryan. “How fuckin’ dare you!” she’d snapped. And then she filled with rage when she heard him accuse her, straight to her face, of murdering her sons. Especially as he was so close to her, almost all up in her face, just below the witness box.
‘Uuuugh,’ she squirmed, tossing and turning on her mattress. ‘I’m gonna be here the rest of my fuckin’ life’. She stared at the photograph of the boys, then turned over on her pillow, away from their faces and began to sob, her shoulders shaking, her throat gurgling. She was so overwhelmed. So exhausted. So devastated.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,’ she said, slapping her palm to the pillow right next to her face. She had done the exact same thing during her first night inside. Eight years, two months and two nights ago now. Three thousand days tomorrow. Sometimes those three thousand days feel like a lifetime ago to Joy… and yet on other occasions, her first night inside a cell seems as if it were only last night.
She managed to stop sobbing, then mustered enough energy to sit up; her teeth grinding, her jaw swinging. She knew the rest of the prisoners would be heading back to their cells for lock up soon. So, she stood up, yanked the sheet from the four corners of her bed and then pinched one end of it between her chin and chest so she could fold it neatly in half. Then she knelt down and began to roll the sheet up so tight that it turned into a long scarf. Seconds later, she was looping the scarf around one end, before gripping and yanking the noose as tight as she could get it.
‘Fuck this shit,’ she whispered to herself.
Then she reached for her bible.
❖
‘Get your filthy hand off me,’ Delia says, shrugging her shoulder until Eddie’s arm drops. ‘I know what you do with that hand.’
His eyes widen, his neck roaring red under the collar of his creased shirt.
‘Delia, you can’t… you can’t…’
Delia pushes a laugh through her nostrils, then tucks her chin into her neck so that she can look up at her boss over the rim of her retro-styled glasses.
‘I mean, how stupid can you be, Eddie, huh? You know… you know people hack into laptop cameras… Sure you did it to him.’ She flicks her head back towards her son who is beaming with smugness over her shoulder. ‘You got beat playing your own game. But nothing seems to get in between a boy and his tiny best friend, does it?’ She puffs out another laugh, then spins on her heels, storming back out through the side door of the courtroom, ignoring Eddie’s calls.
‘You gotta protect the verdict regardless, Delia,’ he whisper-shouts after her. Callum has to hold a hand to Eddie’s chest, to stop him from following the judge as she paces her way back down the corridors, where she eventually kicks her way into her office and plonks herself into the leather chair at her big oak desk.
She nibbles at half of the sandwich Aisling had left for her as she attempts to soak in the absurdity of it all. Then she holds her eyes closed to clear her mind of Eddie’s hairy ball sack, so she can turn her focus back to the trial. Though her thoughts are delving much, much deeper than just the trial itself. Well beyond this one court case. She finds herself questioning everything she has ever believed in; the system in which her family had given over almost the entirety of their adult lives. Then, in the midst of her inner deliberation, Aisling’s voice cackles through the speaker of Delia’s phone, stunning the judge back to the present, informing her that she’s due back in court again. Time is flashing by for her. It seems as if every time Delia begins to squint her eyes in deep thought, she is instantly snapped back out of it.
When she is sat back into her highchair in the courtroom, she eyeballs Eddie in the back pew, watching as he fidgets, firstly by folding his arms, then dropping them down by his side before he begins
to comb his fingers repeatedly through his hair with both hands. He doesn’t know what to be doing with himself. His face is now hot pink, his neck flaming red.
‘Your Honour,’ Jonathan Ryan says, approaching Delia’s highchair. ‘Mr Bracken’s final argument kept trying to suggest that there was no evidence in this case.’
Ryan holds aloft a tiny remote control, then pinches his finger at a button that blinks the large screen at the side of the courtroom floor back to life. An intriguing opening to his final argument.
‘There’s your evidence,’ he says, pointing at the footage playing on loop of a figure in a pink hood walking by a garden wall. ‘I’m not sure evidence gets more red-handed than that. This is Joy Stapleton walking away from where her boys were buried, about one-thousand metres from where her boys were buried, on the night we believe they were buried. The defendant was practically caught red-handed.’
He pauses, with his finger still pointing at the screen, allowing the footage to play on loop three more times.
‘Talk about evidence,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘That is literally evidence in front of our own eyes. Mr Bracken says there is no evidence. Well, he should know that most murder cases don’t get the luxury of evidence as hot as this. In most murder trials we don’t get to see footage of the defendant walking away from the scene of the crime. The defence’s argument, that this is mere coincidence, is frankly laughable, Your Honour. We know that Mrs Stapleton was the only person in Ireland to own this particular pink hooded top even before this retrial. But during this retrial, we had Mr Tobias Masterson testify on the stand to reaffirm that, and we also produced written statements from other purchasers of this pink hooded top from Pennsylvania which only further rules out the plausibility of coincidence. If a coincidence was difficult to believe for the original jury in this case eight years ago, Your Honour, then a coincidence must be impossible to believe now. This,’ he says, pointing his finger at the screen again, ‘can only be Joy Stapleton. This is the evidence that proves she murdered her two boys. Don’t let it be said we don’t have evidence. We have evidence.’
The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy) Page 26