Gareth Dawson Series Box Set

by Nathan Burrows

  “I’m sorry too,” she said. Laura dropped her voice as Paul turned away and walked back toward the table, his black robes billowing out behind him. “How are you doing?” she asked in a half whisper. “Is everything okay?” I didn’t reply, but smiled to let her know everything was fine. I got to see her dimples for a few seconds, which was a result.

  I sat down, forcing Mr Jackson to shuffle over on his seat to make room for me. There was a space on the other side of my chair where the other prison guard had nipped outside, no doubt trying to get his nicotine levels as high as possible before the court sat. I didn’t blame him. Mr Jackson sniffed loudly.

  “I think she likes you,” he said. I turned to look at him, but he remained sitting in the same position staring forward with his enormous arms folded across his chest. “Shame you’re in nick really,” he continued. That was the most sociable thing he’d said since the first day I’d arrived at Norwich. I looked at him, trying to work out if he was joking, taking the piss, or just making a statement. As I was wondering what to say in response, or whether to say anything at all, Miss Revell breezed into the courtroom. She was followed by her two stooges, both dressed in the same type of suit. One of them was carrying a laptop, the other one a box file of some description. When he saw her, Paul walked over to their table and within seconds they were deep in conversation. I couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about when I noticed one of Miss Revell’s stooges saunter over to Laura and say something to her. She glanced up at him and laughed. Even from this distance, I could see her dimples. I looked at Mr Jackson and thought for a second I saw a smile on his face, but I couldn’t be sure. Bastard.

  The public gallery was filling up, so I concentrated on the people who were filing in so I could get my attention away from Laura. A lot of the people I didn’t recognise, but I saw Andy and Jacob make their way in, as well as Robert’s parents. There was a small group of four men who took their seats in the second row. They were all dressed in pretty much the same way in scruffy jackets and jeans, all with notebooks clutched in their hands. They had to be from the press, but from which press I couldn’t tell. I wouldn’t recognise a reporter from the Evening Daily Press at the best of times. It was obvious from how they were talking to each other that they knew each other. The gallery filled up pretty quickly, and the twenty or so seats were filled within a few minutes. I looked at the clock on the wall of the courtroom and saw that it was almost ten minutes before nine o’clock. As the minute hand ticked onto the number ten, both Paul and Miss Revell reached for their wigs and adjusted them on their heads. Paul was fussed over by Laura, while one of Miss Revell’s suited assistants helped her. A hush descended over the courtroom as the minute hand of the clock made its way round the clock face until it reached five minutes to ten.

  The door behind the judge's desk opened halfway, and the familiar face of the court usher peeked out of the opening. He glanced around before turning back to say something to someone still in the room, presumably the judge. There was a pause before the door opened fully and the usher stepped through. He stood to one side of the door and drew himself up to his full height, preparing for his moment in the spotlight. I looked through the door behind him, eager to get a glance into the judge’s inner chambers or whatever they were called. I couldn’t see much, but there was a man in a suit in there who looked very familiar. I looked back into the courtroom at the desk where the man and woman who didn’t really fit in had been sitting. Court employees, Laura had called them. Their desk was empty, and I was ninety nine per cent certain that one of them was sitting in the judge’s private room. They might both be in there, but I couldn’t see that far into the room.

  The usher took a deep breath.

  “All rise,” he said in what he presumably thought was a commanding voice. It wasn’t, but who was I to criticise? We all got to our feet as Judge Watling walked through the door, swinging it closed behind him and cutting off any view I had of his inner chamber. He sat on his throne and took a second or two to assess his little empire.

  “Please, be seated,” he said after a pause. There was a rustling noise in the court as everyone sat down and made themselves as comfortable as they could.

  It was showtime.

  44

  Judge Watling welcomed the jury back, sounding reasonably sincere when he said he trusted that they’d all had a good evening. He said a few words about not discussing the case outside the courtroom, or reading about it in the newspapers or on the internet. The judge said this every morning, and not for the first time I wondered how this was policed. For all anyone knew, just before their door opened the jurors had all been sitting there on their phones reading up on whatever the Eastern Daily Press was pushing out today. I knew for a fact that my trial had made the front page of the newspaper as I’d seen a copy downstairs in the holding area. The headline had been something bizarre which made no sense, but I recognised a picture of Jennifer and me on the front page, so knew there was a story on the trial in there somewhere. I’d been tempted to ask one of the officers working in the holding area if I could read it, but thought better of it. Whatever the article said, I’d figured, no good would come of me reading it.

  “So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to ask the counsels for their closing statements. Mr Dewar,” the judge said, looking at Paul over the top of his reading glasses. “As the defence, you have the privilege of batting first.” As if Paul didn’t know that. As Paul got to his feet and rearranged his robes while he turned to face the jury, I looked up at Judge Watling who gave me his trademark cursory nod.

  “Your Honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you,” Paul said in a quiet voice. Several of the jurors leaned forward slightly as if they couldn’t hear him very well. I looked at Ella. She was wearing a louder dress than she normally wore, this one covered in bright red and green flowers. The only way it could be any less loud was if you were colour blind. She caught my eye and I glanced down, breaking eye contact.

  “I stood in front of you at the beginning of last week and made some introductory comments which I would like to refer back to now if I may,” Paul continued, speaking in a louder voice now he had the jury’s attention. I glanced at them, and saw all twelve pairs of eyes were fixed on Paul. He spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes describing what I had done, how I’d planned for and carried out an assault on Robert Wainwright. I let my head hang in front of me, trying to look penitent. “But, ladies and gentlemen, once Gareth Dawson had struck the man who had killed his wife, what did he do?” Paul paused, and I looked up at him. For a second, I thought he was asking me the question. Paul was standing still, looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face. I flicked my eyes across to Laura, who was staring at me with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. I got the message and looked back at my lap. “What did he do next?” Paul repeated himself, and I could tell that he’d turned back to face the jury.

  “My learned colleague, Miss Revell, would have you believe Gareth Dawson then struck Robert Wainwright again, and again.” I could hear Paul’s hands hitting the table, punctuating his words, and I flinched at the sound. “Struck him so hard that he killed him, murdered him. And that is the alleged crime for which my client, Gareth Dawson, was found guilty here in this very courtroom and sentenced to life in prison.

  One of the things I spoke to you about last Monday morning was the concept of ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. In order for the conviction to stand, you must be one hundred per cent certain that Gareth Dawson carried out those fatal blows. He has admitted striking Robert Wainwright once, hard enough to knock him to the floor and render him temporarily unconscious.” I risked a quick glance up at the jury and could see that several of them were looking at me. “But he denies striking him again. He says that he threw the bat to the floor and fled, disgusted with himself, after rolling him onto his side so he wouldn’t swallow his tongue.”

  Paul reminded the jury of the evidence that showed me leaving
the scene. The CCTV footage with no time or date stamp. He then went through the other CCTV footage that was taken from the taxi driver’s dash-cam and the camera in The Heartsease.

  “The police didn’t bother to try to find the dash-cam footage, so certain they were that they already had their man, and they discounted the footage in the pub stating that the camera’s time could have been altered when Gareth Dawson installed the camera. But they were not able to offer any proof either way that the camera’s time had been changed. Their analysts couldn’t say. So, it’s just as likely that this time was accurate as it is that it was inaccurate.”

  He turned to the map on the easel, pointing at the red stickers with the times written on them. “These timelines don’t work, ladies and gentlemen.” Paul jabbed at the sticker over The Heartsease with his finger. “If he was here at 10:26 pm, and then here…” Another jab at the map, this time over the sticker at the junction of Thunder Lane and St William’s Way. “If he was here at 10:20 pm, then he couldn’t have killed Robert Wainwright at 10:22 pm, which is the time that the police have ascertained was the time of the fatal blows from the victim’s broken phone.” He left his index finger over the sticker covering the location of The Griffin pub and paused for a few seconds, taking a sip of water from a glass on the table. I watched from under my eyelids as Laura filled the glass back up as soon as Paul had put it down. “A phone which Gareth Dawson reports as being intact, and not smashed, when he left the scene. He even checked the victim’s phone as he left to make sure he could call for help when he came round.” Paul paused again, looking at each of the jurors in turn.

  “Now, what about the medical evidence?” he said, picking up a few sheets of paper from the table and studying them for a few seconds. “This, ladies and gentlemen,” Paul said as he waved the papers in the air. “This is crucial in terms of reasonable doubt. Dr Klein, a well respected academic in the field of trauma, has demonstrated that Robert Wainwright was struck and sustained a head injury. Then, perhaps longer than ten minutes later, he sustained further serious injuries which killed him. These injuries were inflicted — probably by a left-handed person — at 10:22 pm when according to the evidence my client would have been somewhere between the road junction and a pub over a mile away. The prosecution has offered no evidence to the contrary.”

  Paul was really getting into his stride by now, and he had let a hint of indignation creep into his voice. I forgot all about not looking up and studied him, fascinated. He was staring at the jury, and although I couldn’t see his expression I could see his head going from side to side as he looked up and down the row. “So if Gareth Dawson didn’t kill Robert Wainwright, the obvious question is who did?” Several of the jurors looked across at me, but I couldn’t read their faces. “I don’t know,” Paul said, exhaling as he did so. Several of the jurors frowned as he carried on. “There are no other suspects in the case. What there is is plenty of evidence to suggest, and I emphasise the word suggest, that Robert Wainwright was in trouble with some quite serious people. He was heavily in debt to a criminal organisation and he was being threatened by them.” Paul picked the papers back up from the table where he’d put them when he was taking a drink. “The medical evidence shows that Robert Wainwright was the victim of a sustained beating some days before he was killed, which my client himself witnessed. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that perhaps this beating is related to Mr Wainwright’s murder. As a suggestion, it cannot be disproved.” Paul paused again before bringing his hand back down on the table with a thump. This time, I wasn’t the only one who flinched at the noise. “So, why did the police not investigate this angle?”

  I looked up at the public gallery to see if Malcolm was up there. It was fairly obvious where Paul would go next, at least it was to me, and I didn’t think Malcolm would come out of it particularly well. I could see Andy and Jacob sitting at one end of the public gallery, and Tommy and David were huddled together at the other end, but I couldn’t see Malcolm anywhere. Why would he attend though, I asked myself as Paul’s indignation rose a notch.

  “Why did the police not investigate this angle?” he repeated his question before turning back to point in my direction. “Why should they? They had already found their prime suspect. A man who, by his own admission, had planned for and carried out an attack on the man who he considered had murdered his wife.” I waited for an objection from Miss Revell, but she stayed silent. I looked down, feeling not just the jury’s but every set of eyes in the courtroom focus on me. “Why would the police look for anyone else when they had what amounted to a confession already? Why would the police look for anyone else when all the facts pointed toward my client?” I looked at Laura who stared back at me with a pained expression. Paul’s voice dropped, and the next words were spoken with an air of resignation, not indignation.

  “Except the police didn’t have all the facts. They only had one or two of them. But their absolute focus on my client as the sole suspect meant that they didn’t look for any more. They only looked for information that incriminated my client for the murder of Robert Wainwright, and then they adjusted that information into so-called facts at the exclusion of a full investigation.” Paul drew himself up to his full height, and I sensed that he was reaching his conclusion. The indignation was starting to creep back into his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, my client could not have murdered Robert Wainwright. Yes, he struck him. But did he kill him? No. He couldn’t have. Because at the exact moment that Robert Wainwright died, at the exact moment those killing blows were delivered, my client was well on his way to a pub over a mile away.”

  Paul stopped speaking, picking up the glass that Laura had refilled and taking a sip. His hand was rock steady, not a hint of nerves at all.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, let me put to you an alternate theory. One which I believe has just as much, if not more, credibility as a chronology of events. I put to you that Gareth Dawson’s version of events is a true one, as every shred of evidence which my team has uncovered points to. Evidence which the police did not even begin to look for, as they were so focused on my client as the guilty party. Was Robert Wainwright being followed by the thugs who had beaten him up the previous week? Perhaps they saw my client leaving the alleyway and entered it after he had left. We will never know as the camera that captured my client crossing the road didn’t cover the entrance to the alleyway.” Paul paused, taking a deep breath which I unconsciously mirrored. “Perhaps, as Gareth Dawson was approaching The Heartsease to meet his friends, these unknown assailants were in the alleyway with Robert Wainwright as he lay there slowly bleeding into his brain? Perhaps they were delivering the fatal blows that overlaid the damage that my client had done?” Paul paused again, taking his time. The silence in the courtroom was almost palpable.

  “I don’t think there’s any ‘perhaps’ about it, ladies and gentlemen. I can’t produce a suspect, or suspects, in this case. But I don’t need to. The evidence speaks for itself. If you have any doubt whatsoever that Gareth Dawson didn’t kill Robert Wainwright, then it is your civic duty to overturn this wrongful conviction.” Paul remained on his feet for a few seconds, looking at the jury, before he sat back down in his chair and reached for the glass of water. Laura put her hand on his shoulder and leaned toward him, whispering something in his ear. Paul nodded in response, and turned back to look at me. As he did so, I saw a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead reflected in the harsh fluorescent light of the courtroom.

  Miss Revell got to her feet and clasped her hands in front of her as though she was about to say grace before a meal.

  “Your Honour,” she said in a voice so quiet I had to strain to hear her. “May I approach the bench?” Judge Watling’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and he looked at her over the top of his half-moon glasses.

  “Of course,” he replied, taking his glasses off and folding them as she made her way over to him. I watched as she leaned forward and talked to the judge. Keeping her hands clasped in front of her, she looke
d as if she was pleading with him, almost begging. The judge frowned, then his frown became deeper, and then he just nodded. The only words I could make out were his final words to her, which could be lipread from where I was sitting. He said ‘thank you’ to Miss Revell before she turned and walked back toward her table with a brief sideways glance at Paul. I looked at Paul, but couldn’t see his expression. The only thing I saw was Laura looking at him and shrugging her shoulders when she caught his eye.

  Judge Watling cleared his throat to silence the conversations that had burst into life as Miss Revell was walking back to her table.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid that I must adjourn the court for a period of time.” He looked up at the large clock on the wall which read just before ten o’clock. “We will reconvene at eleven o’clock sharp.”

  With that, he got to his feet and disappeared into his inner chambers before the usher had a chance to open the door for him.

  45

  Mr Jackson led me back down to the cells underneath the courtroom as his colleague peeled off to the smoking area. I had thought at one point that we were just going to sit in the courtroom for an hour, but after a heated whispered argument about smoking, Mr Jackson had appeared to give in. I was deposited in the cell and Mr Jackson sat at the table and opened up a newspaper. I declined the offer of a cup of tea from the cell assistant or whatever he was called. My stomach was churning, and I wasn’t sure I could keep a cup of tea down.

  The door to the cell area opened and Laura rushed in, heading straight across to my cell. She looked flustered and had her lips pressed together into a thin line.