Gareth Dawson Series Box Set

by Nathan Burrows

  “So, what else?” I asked. Laura opened her mouth to reply, but Paul got there first.

  “Next, we’ll go into your state of mind after Jennifer died. What led you to decide to attack Robert Wainwright.” He shuffled the papers in his hand, looking down at the text on them. “Finally, we’ll go through the attack itself, almost in slow motion. That’s the crucial part as it will build the scene for the following witnesses.”

  “Won’t that have already been done by the prosecutor?”

  “It will, yes,” Paul replied. “But not from your perspective.”

  “The only goal that the prosecutor will have had was to prove that you attacked Robert,” Laura chipped in as Paul nodded in agreement. “It’s not about the result of the attack, but the fact you attacked him in the first place.”

  “Then when I’m done, it’ll be the prosecutor’s turn to ask you any questions she wants to,” Paul said. This was the first time I’d heard the prosecutor referred to as a woman.

  “She?” I asked. “Is it the same one from my original trial?”

  “Yes, it is,” Laura replied with a sideways look at Paul. “It makes sense, seeing as she was the prosecutor back then.” I understood what Laura was saying, but that didn’t mean that I had to like it. The thought of coming up against that witch, especially on the witness stand, was not an appealing prospect.

  “What sort of things is she likely to ask me?” I asked.

  “Well, to be honest, I don’t think there’s a great deal she can ask.” Paul glanced at Laura as he answered. “Correct me if I’m wrong Laura, but as long as we keep it to you, your experiences, and your feelings, there’s not much left for them.”

  “As long as you’re one hundred per cent honest, Gareth,” Laura said. I looked at her, surprised. What did she mean by that?

  “Yes, of course, there is that,” Paul said. He looked at me with a frown. “But there aren’t going to be any surprises, are there Gareth?” I wondered if now was a good time to tell them I used to be a burglar, but I decided against it. I’d never even been under suspicion back in those days, so there was no way that my previous career could come back and bite me.

  “Until the day I was arrested for murder, I’d not had a single brush with the law,” I said confidently. Laura was looking at me quizzically. “I promise you, there are no surprises.”

  “I would think this will take a morning or an afternoon to go through everything,” Paul said. My heart sank at the thought of being on the witness stand for that long.

  “Don’t worry, Gareth,” Laura said as I shuffled uncomfortably in the chair. “I’ll work with you on everything.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. I was going to need all the help I could get.

  “So, after you, I’m going to put the policeman on the stand.” He peered at the paper in front of him. “Griffiths, isn’t it? Yes, that’s the chap. I’ll go through the crime scene with him, why he went straight to you, that sort of thing.”

  “It’s pretty obvious why Malcolm came after me though, isn’t it?” I said. This struck me as stating the obvious. “Wainwright had killed my wife, and I was on CCTV leaving the alleyway where he was found dead.”

  “Hmm, yes, well there’s a little more that I can pull out of his testimony than that,” Paul replied. “I can use him to describe the scene you see and set up some interesting bits and pieces for later on.” Paul sat back in the armchair and waved at the camera in the corner of the room. “I wonder if they’ll be able to sort us out with a cup of tea,” he said to no-one in particular. We all sat for a few seconds before he waved at the camera again. “Perhaps they’ll be along in a minute.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” I muttered. Mr Jackson was probably sitting in his control room waving back at the screen he was watching us on.

  Paul returned to his papers, turning the top sheet over and folding it back. He squinted at the text, and I wondered if he’d forgotten his glasses even though I couldn’t remember him ever wearing any.

  “Next up will be my investigator, Alfie Nesbitt. The ex-policeman I told you about. Very, very good he is. We will need to get his history past the prosecutor, though. This worries me, because if we can’t use the evidence he’s gathered, then we’re in real trouble.”

  “What evidence?” I asked.

  “Oh, all sorts,” Paul replied, dismissing my question with a casual wave of his hand. “Laura, we need to work on this element more back at the office. I can’t risk not being able to include what he’s uncovered.” Laura nodded, scribbling on her notepad. I thought this was supposed to be a collaborative effort between Paul, Laura, and me, but Paul seemed more than happy to keep me in the dark about a lot of things that I’d like to know about. I decided to try to talk to Laura about it if I got the chance to speak to her again on her own.

  “I think at this point we’ll probably be drawing stumps by Thursday afternoon,” Paul said. “Assuming we start on a Monday morning, that is, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. Opening arguments until lunchtime on the Monday, you in the afternoon.” He pointed his index finger in my general direction. “The policeman and Alfie on Tuesday, and then the first of the big hitters on Wednesday.”

  “Doctor Klein?” Laura asked.

  “Indeed, the lovely Doctor Klein,” Paul smiled as he said the name. I’d never heard it before. “She’s my wound specialist and absolutely charming.” I saw Laura smirk.

  “She should be, she’s costing us enough,” she said. Paul made a shushing sound, wagging his finger at Laura.

  “Now now, dear. Don’t be like that.” If anyone else had said that it would have sounded rude and patronising, but Paul managed to get away with it. “I think she’ll be on for a day at least, if not more. It depends on how brave the prosecutor’s feeling.”

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “She’s a pathologist, retired now. Well, almost retired. Her area of expertise is blunt force trauma and injury patterns, with a particular interest in cranial trauma. She’s superb, and you know what the best thing is about her?”

  “No, what?” I replied.

  “She looks like she’s just walked off the set of Miss Marple.”

  32

  “All rise.”

  The courtroom stirred into life at the barked order from the court usher. The quiet murmur of conversation died as people rose to their feet. At the front of the courtroom, the door behind the judge's desk opened and Judge Watling stepped through. He’d not changed much at all since my previous trial. I was half expecting him to look much older than he did, or to stumble in on a walking frame or something, but he looked pretty much the same. Mouldy looking wig with grey hair sticking out from underneath it, and the same flowing red robes. Judge Watling examined his empire over the top of his glasses for a few seconds before sitting on his ornate chair.

  “Please, be seated,” he said in a quiet voice. As the sound of the gathered audience sitting down echoed around the courtroom, he turned and gave me a very slight nod. Enough to acknowledge my presence, maybe even enough to recognise our previous dealings with each other.

  I knew from the clock on the wall opposite me that I had been sitting in the accused enclosure for just over an hour before the judge had called the court to order. It was now just before ten o’clock on Monday morning, and I’d been brought in a few minutes before nine. For the last hour, I’d sat on the hard wooden bench, flanked by Mr Jackson and another prison officer who I didn’t know. One thing I did know about him was that he was a heavy smoker and had disappeared three times in the past hour only to come back stinking of cigarettes. I wouldn’t have minded so much but he didn’t offer to take me with him, even though I’d given up, preferring to leave me in the care of Mr Jackson. I wasn’t sure what the rules were for guarding prisoners in a courtroom with only one officer, but an escape from Mr Jackson seemed very unlikely anyway unless I got a very good head start. The only consolation for sitting on the uncomfortable bench was that if I found it u
ncomfortable, Mr Jackson must be even more uncomfortable given his size.

  We’d left the prison first thing in the morning, and I’d spent the best part of an hour sitting in the holding area underneath the courtroom. It was a soulless place, just a row of individual cells with bars instead of proper doors. No natural light at all, just fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. Although the courtroom itself was new, the interior decorators hadn’t spent much time down here. The cells were arranged around a central area with a table and chairs where the prison officers and court officials sat around reading newspapers and drinking tea. The whole room was tired and depressing. To be fair to the staff, it wasn’t much of a staff rest area for them either.

  A few minutes after I was brought up to the courtroom from the holding area, the public gallery opened. I watched as Andy and Jacob came through the door to take up seats at the front, and they both raised their hands in my direction as they sat down. I didn’t return their waves as it didn’t seem like the right thing to do, so flashed a wry smile in their direction instead. A few moments later, once the public gallery had filled up completely, I looked back to see if I recognised anyone else. At one end was an elderly couple, a woman and a man deep in conversation, and there were a few other people sitting on their own who I thought might be from the press. Paul had told me that the front cover of the Eastern Daily Press, Norwich’s local newspaper, was carrying a story about my retrial. He said that at some point it would almost certainly be picked up by the nationals as well and as I looked at the seats, I played a game in my mind to match the occupants to the media sources.

  At about ten minutes before ten, there was a small commotion at the back of the public gallery. I looked up to see Tommy, David, and Big Joe making a noisy entrance as they asked people to make some space for them. I couldn’t hear them from where I was sitting, but I knew them well enough to know that they wouldn’t be asking nicely. Especially Big Joe. He was just that kind of bloke.

  Paul, Laura, and the prosecution lawyers had arrived not long after I had. Laura had gone straight to the defence table, where she busied herself arranging files, notepads, pens, and bottles of water for her and Paul. She was dressed in a business suit and was wearing the satin green blouse that I had seen her in before. The one that was so like Jennifer’s. Laura looked up at me and smiled, and I noticed that she’d had her hair cut. Paul had gone straight to the prosecution table and had been engrossed in conversation with the prosecuting lawyer. It was indeed the same prosecutor from before, Miss Revell, who still looked as evil as she had done at my original trial. She was just as thin, just as nasty looking. She had two young men with her, lawyers perhaps or maybe paralegals? I didn't know who they were and didn’t care, anyway. The two men both wore very serious expressions but looked as if they were just out of school. One of them was arranging the prosecution table just as Laura was doing on the defence table, while the other one was pecking away at a laptop. On another table between the two lawyers’ tables and the back end of the courtroom sat a man and a woman, both with impressive sets of folders in front of them. I had no idea who they were either, but they looked like legal types if there is such a thing. Both well dressed, comfortable sitting where they were, mumbling to each other occasionally. At one point the woman looked across at me but looked away with no change in her expression at all.

  Paul and the prosecutor finished their discussion before sitting at their respective tables where they waited for the judge to make his grand entrance. A few minutes before ten, as if there had been a silent alert, they both put their wigs on. Paul slid his hand back across his widow’s peak before he put his hairpiece on. One of the benefits of not having much hair, I guessed. It took Miss Revell a bit longer to sort her hair out underneath hers, and I watched her struggle with it. One of her grey-suited colleagues looked up at her but thought better of offering to help. She eventually got things under control and looked toward the bench with glasses halfway down her pinched nose.

  Judge Watling cleared his throat, silencing the murmurs of conversation that had started back up again as people had sat back down. He looked towards the court usher, who was standing by a door on the opposite side of the courtroom.

  “Please bring in the jury,” Judge Watling said. The usher opened the door and I watched as the jury filed through. This was my first opportunity to see them. Paul and Laura knew all about them as they’d been involved in the selection process, but I knew nothing about the group at all. I sat with my head forward, and my shoulders down, as instructed by Laura. She had said it was important that the first impression the jurors got of me was of a man in the wrong place. A man who should not be sitting on the accused’s bench. If I’d been sitting there with my head held high and my chest thrust out, Laura had said this would give the wrong impression to the jury, and I had no reason to disbelieve her. The other thing she told me it would be useful to do is to give them names in my head, just made up ones. Something about altering my body language if my mind thought I knew them, making me look friendlier and less like the convicted murderer I actually was.

  I glanced at the jurors every few seconds as they filed into their seats. Most of them looked unremarkable, just normal people, but there were one or two who stood out. The third juror in the line was a large black woman, dressed in a multicoloured dress that shouted ‘look at me’. She was staring in my direction as she made her way to her seat, and I cast my eyes back down as soon as I realised she was looking directly at me. She had eyes that bulged just a bit, like someone with that thyroid thing I’d read about in a newspaper once. I didn’t want to stereotype, but she wouldn’t have looked out of place in a gospel choir, so I named her Ella after Ella Fitzgerald. One of Jennifer’s favourite singers. Further down the line was a man who was about my age, and about my size. He would be Mark, which was my middle name, just because he reminded me of me. He was followed by an elderly gentleman who was walking with a stick. On their own, they could have been father and son. I looked back down at my lap, trying to come up with a name for the older chap. The best I could do was Albert, who was a character in a sitcom I used to watch when I was younger. I didn’t know many elderly people who I could name him after, so Albert would have to do. I heard the door close and then looked up to see who had walked in last.

  The last juror to take her seat, and the one who was sitting furthest away from the judge and therefore the foreman, was a middle-aged woman of about fifty. She was well built but not fat, and she was dressed in a jacket and trouser suit not unlike the one that Laura was wearing. The thing I liked most about her was her face. Framed with curly brown hair that was streaked with grey, she looked very kind. Almost maternal. I wondered for a few seconds if she was still called a foreman, even though she was female. Was she a forewoman instead? Did it matter? She had a passing resemblance to my old English teacher, Mrs Rose, who for some reason had quite liked me even though I was shit at the subject. I never knew what Mrs Rose’s first name was, as I only ever called her ‘Miss’, but Rose was a first name as well, so that would do me. Rose she was.

  I sat back on the bench and tried to make myself comfortable as the judge went through his preliminary statements. He went through the house rules, what to do and what not to do, and he reminded the jury of their obligations. No watching television, no reading newspapers or going on the internet, no discussing the case with anyone else. Once he had finished, and the jury was sworn in, Judge Watling turned and looked at the prosecution bench.

  “Miss Revell, as the prosecutor you have already won the toss. The floor is yours.” I watched Miss Revell nod in the judge’s direction and get to her feet.

  “Your Honour, thank you,” she said before turning towards the jury with a brief glance at Paul and Laura. I noticed that she didn’t look at me, and I wondered if that was deliberate. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for attending today. My role within this court is relatively simple. Mr Dawson has already been tried for murder, by a jury of his peers just li
ke you, and found guilty. He has been sentenced to life in prison.” As she continued, I realised her angle appeared to be to convince the jury that this was a waste of their time. That justice had already been done. Her opening comments only lasted for perhaps ten minutes, and she finished with a final reminder to the jury I was already a guilty man. When she had finished, she sat back down and Judge Watling looked directly at me for a couple of seconds before he spoke.

  “Mr Dewar, if you would be so kind?” the judge said, but Paul was already getting to his feet.

  “Your Honour, my learned friend.” Paul looked at the judge and the prosecutor in turn. He put his hands out to his sides, palms facing towards the jury as if he was welcoming them to his own personal courtroom. “We are all here today at the behest of the Criminal Court of Appeal for the retrial of the young man sitting behind me, Mr Gareth Dawson.”

  As he said my name, I sat up a little bit straighter on the bench as instructed by Laura and looked across at the jury. All twelve pairs of eyes were staring back at me. I felt the colour rise to my cheeks as I realised that it wasn’t just the jury who was staring at me, but that it was everyone in the courtroom. If I felt this nervous when everyone was just looking at me, how much worse would it be when I was actually on the stand? I glanced up at the public gallery, looking for Andy. When I caught his eye, he grinned and gave me a discreet thumbs up.

  “As you all know, Gareth Dawson was tried and convicted, in this very courtroom, for the murder of Mr Robert Wainwright.” Paul stepped away from his table and walked across to stand in front of the jury’s bench.