Find Them Dead

by Peter James

  Jupp considered this for some moments before turning to Brown. ‘Why was this not passed to the prosecution before now?’

  ‘I apologize, Your Honour, but this evidence was only obtained this week when Starr unexpectedly gave evidence for the prosecution.’

  ‘Court is adjourned for twenty minutes,’ Jupp announced. Then he looked, irascibly, at the two lead counsels. ‘Come to my chambers immediately.’

  85

  Thursday 23 May

  In the jury room, Harold Trout, seated, said, ‘What the defendant is saying is utterly preposterous. The man is cornered in the last chance saloon and is clearly lying through his teeth. Are we really expected to swallow such arrant nonsense?’

  Mike Roberts, spooning coffee into a mug by the kettle, said, ‘Well, during my last two years with the police I’m afraid I saw some quite astonishing cases involving falsified documents and records created by cyber criminals. I think he is making a valid point about what we can and can’t trust these days.’

  ‘My nan was swindled out of £12,000 by online fraudsters just two months ago,’ Toby DeWinter concurred. ‘They are extremely clever and sophisticated. She showed me the email purportedly from her bank and it really did look genuine.’

  ‘We’ve had to engage a computer expert full-time in my business to protect us and our clients against cyber fraud,’ Hugo Pink added. ‘What the defendant says is completely plausible.’

  ‘Would he lie under oath?’ Maisy Waller questioned.

  ‘With respect, Maisy, when someone’s back is to the wall, they will say anything,’ Trout said, dismissively.

  ‘I wasn’t sure earlier, despite all the evidence against Mr Gready,’ Maisy Waller persisted. ‘But after listening to him, I have to say I really don’t like him – and I don’t trust him.’

  ‘I’m with you, Maisy, and with you, Harold,’ Mark Adams said. He looked around at his fellow jurors, all now seated at the table. ‘Do we really need to run into a third week just to hear a bunch more lies? I’ve got to earn money for my family and for the mortgage, and it’s tough enough losing two weeks as it is. Surely we’ve heard enough – do we need to hear any more?’

  ‘Any more what, exactly?’ Meg said, sternly rounding on him. ‘That we don’t need to hear any more from the defence? Is that your idea of justice? You’d like to see a kangaroo court convict this man regardless of the facts so you can get back behind the wheel of your Uber?’

  He glared back at her. ‘I don’t know if you and I have been sitting in the same court, but it’s blatantly clear to me that, as Harold has just said, the defendant is in the last chance saloon. He’s guilty as hell. A child of three could see through the baloney he’s just spouted at us. Does he think we’re a bunch of idiots sitting around playing pass the brain cell?’

  86

  Thursday 23 May

  In his chambers, Jupp turned to Brown. ‘Primrose, can you tell me what is going on here?’

  She replied, ‘As I said in court, Your Honour, as a result of Starr giving evidence on behalf of the prosecution, a matter that I was going to bring up with him required me to seek a further opinion from a handwriting expert. My expert, Professor Shaw, has only just turned up having rushed here from another court appearance. I apologize to my learned friend, but I think it would be helpful to the court to hear his evidence. Mr Cork will be able to cross-examine him and I accept that he may, if not happy, ask you for a short adjournment to instruct his own witness, but I don’t believe that will be necessary. I appreciate that he can reserve that right.’

  Jupp turned to Cork. ‘Your thoughts, Stephen?’

  ‘In the ideal world, of course, I’d like to have seen this evidence before, had time to consider it and make a judgement about instructing my own expert. I am mindful of where we are with the case at the moment and if I think I can deal with it today, I will, but I do reserve my prerogative of instructing my own witness if necessary.’

  Jupp considered what he had heard for a few moments. ‘If that is your view, I would rather deal with this witness today, but that should not prevent you from making a proper evaluation of the handwriting evidence and you are right to take it further if necessary.’

  The three of them returned to court.

  87

  Thursday 23 May

  ‘Let’s have the jury back,’ Jupp said to the jury bailiff after he had taken his seat.

  The jury returned and took up their positions.

  The judge turned to Primrose Brown. ‘You may proceed.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honour.’

  She stood. ‘I am calling Cambridge handwriting expert, Professor Geoff Shaw.’

  A bright-eyed man in his forties, with a mane of wild, greying hair, stood in the dock, exuding confidence.

  First, the QC established the professor’s credentials as a leading handwriting authority, which included listing a number of fraud trials in which evidence he had given was a major factor in securing convictions.

  Shaw, speaking with an infectious enthusiasm, began by giving evidence regarding the alleged signature of Terence Gready on the Safe Box Co document. He referred to a series of slides on the monitor next to the judge. Each was of the signature, some showing it in its entirety, some enlarged details of one part of it.

  He clicked a remote control. After a short delay the signature appeared on the monitor, Terence Gready, upright, with a separation between the first and last name, above the printed name SAFE BOX CO.

  ‘In the interests of brevity, I will explain to you the key points to look at, without going through all the minutiae of detail. All of you will be given a copy to study later. The first area to look at is the starting strokes, which you can see clearly highlighted in yellow on the first image,’ he said, checking against the document but keeping his main focus on eye contact with the jury. ‘Next, again highlighted, is a pen lift and the appearance of a tremor, indicative of hesitation and a lack of confidence.’

  The third image now appeared. There were four yellow circles on different parts of the signature. ‘This is the most telling of all the three images, as it shows clear evidence of patching. For those of you unfamiliar with graphology language, patching is the term for touching up a piece of handwriting. There are four instances of such patching on this signature, each indicated by a yellow circle.’

  Shaw paused, looking thoughtfully at the jury. ‘I don’t know if any of you ever make corrections to your own signature when you’ve just signed something, but I certainly don’t – and have never done so.’ He could see from their expressions they agreed.

  Shaw continued. ‘My point is that each time you sign a document, your signature does not have to be an exact replica of any previous signature, it is simply your personal mark. So, I would ask you all to think very carefully about something: if this really was Terence Gready signing his name, why would he have subsequently touched up his signature so meticulously – in four different places?’

  Brown said to the witness, ‘It is the defence’s submission that this account was not opened by my client, and this is not the signature of my client.’

  Shaw replied, ‘It is my professional opinion that there are a number of anomalies with the signature, and it is not consistent with the defendant’s handwriting signature samples that I was provided with.’

  Brown shuffled her papers, paused for a moment and then sat down.

  Cork stood up and turned to Shaw. ‘Is it correct you have only had signatures to work on and no other handwriting samples?’

  ‘That is correct,’ Shaw replied.

  ‘Am I also correct in saying that where signatures are involved you are only able to say that it is more likely or less likely to have been signed by a particular individual?’

  ‘In many cases that is correct. It is always difficult when you are only working with signatures. But you are able to look and comment on similarities and construction of letters and words.’

  ‘The point I make, Professor Shaw,’
Cork said, ‘is that because you only have signatures to work with, the weight of this evidence is limited.’

  Shaw paused for a moment. ‘What I am able to tell the court is that there is a possibility the defendant did not make this signature mark, and I can say its construction is unusual.’

  ‘One last question, Professor Shaw. Is it possible that somebody who was seeking to throw doubt on the originality of a signature could have done so in this way – could that person have deliberately made the signature look questionable?’

  ‘It is possible. I can say that this signature purported to have been made by Mr Gready is not consistent to others that I have seen from him. He may have signed it, but there again someone else may have signed it attempting to forge his signature.’

  ‘No more questions.’ Cork sat down.

  Primrose Brown rose. ‘Professor Shaw, is it fair to say from your evidence that your conclusion is that it would be highly unusual for someone to sign their own habitual signature in this way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, no more questions.’

  ‘We will break for lunch,’ Jupp said.

  88

  Thursday 23 May

  It was pelting with rain outside and most of the jurors, mindful of the forecast of heavy rain all day, had brought their lunch in with them. The few that didn’t had made a quick dash outside to get food and had brought it back with them. By 12.30 p.m. they were all seated around the table.

  Meg’s hopes had been lifted by the defence QC’s handling of the handwriting evidence. No one could argue against what they had all just heard, could they? As she removed her egg and tomato sandwich from Laura’s lunch box, which had animals all over it, she was starting to feel increasingly optimistic. She put it down and made a note on the pad she’d been carrying in her handbag since the start of the trial: Safety deposit box signature.

  It was one more piece of evidence in Gready’s favour as there was some doubt as to its authenticity. As strong as the earlier challenges to the Financial Investigator’s evidence. There was nothing linking Terence Gready to any of the overseas bank accounts and transactions, other than circumstantial evidence. Until Michael Starr’s evidence – which Meg knew she would have to work on to discredit its validity – there was no evidence of him and Gready ever having met.

  She glanced back through some of her notes. Some very strong arguments to put to her fellow jurors. Maybe, just maybe, she was going to be able to pull this off.

  God, please.

  ‘You know something,’ Mark Adams said. ‘If that bloody windbag defence woman doesn’t wrap it up soon, I’m going to vote guilty just to piss her off.’

  ‘Don’t you think we need to put emotions aside, Mark?’ Harold Trout reprimanded. ‘We are here to do our civic duty and judge a man on the facts – this is not about tactical voting because we like or do not like the person defending him.’

  ‘Yes, well, my civic duty is to put food on my family’s table. I’m already struggling to do that with all the competition out there these days without losing two weeks’ income – running into a third might suit a retired person like yourself, living on your fat pension, but it would be a bloody disaster for me.’

  ‘And me, too,’ responded Singh.

  ‘And me,’ chipped in Toby. ‘The daily amount we’re getting paid is a joke. I’m facing missing an audition that could give me a part in a series that would offer me six months’ lucrative work I badly need.’

  ‘And a man facing years in prison isn’t important?’ Meg asked, her sandwich still untouched. ‘We’re all sitting here having to decide whether a fellow human being is guilty or innocent. Just take a moment to think what that means. Imagine he is innocent – are you willing to make possibly a wrong judgement, one that might destroy his life forever, just so you can get out of here?’ Her anger was rising as she went on.

  ‘Any one of us could be in a dock, accused of an offence we haven’t committed. How would one of you feel knowing the jurors there to decide your fate were more interested in getting the trial over than actually coming to the right verdict?’ She looked at them and waited. From their expressions, her point had hit home.

  ‘Mark, you are anxious to get back to earning money as an Uber driver. And you, Toby, are worried about missing an audition. Well, I’m in the same boat, OK? I’m out of work having been made redundant – thank you for asking. I’ve got a job interview which I should be attending on Monday. I’m prepared to sacrifice that interview, and the chance of a really good job that would put food on the table for myself and my daughter, out of my civic duty. So, I suggest everyone calms down and accepts the situation for what it is. Several of us may suffer financially, temporarily, but I for one know that if I do make that sacrifice, at least I will be able to sleep easily for the rest of my life knowing I did the right thing. Do you want it on your conscience that you may, possibly, have ruined someone else’s life for your own gain?’

  There was a long silence.

  Mike Roberts broke it. ‘Very well said, Meg.’ He picked up the thick bunch of trial documents and opened them at a page he had bookmarked. Then he looked at Mark Adams. ‘This lady you have described as a windbag, Primrose Brown, is an eminent criminal barrister. She will call more witnesses this afternoon. When she has finished with those, we will then have the closing speech from the prosecution, followed by the closing speech from defence. After that we will have the judge’s summing up, before we are sent out for our deliberations. It is highly unlikely you will get your wish of the trial ending this week, so as our foreperson has eloquently said, you’d better get over it.’

  ‘If I had one shred of doubt about the defendant’s guilt, then yes,’ Adams said, defensively. ‘But can you really, honestly, say you have, Meg?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I can. There are already plenty of arguments for reasonable doubt – and we still have more witnesses to come.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you just have to look at Terence Gready’s body language to see he is guilty,’ Toby DeWinter said.

  ‘Really?’ Meg quizzed. ‘You’re an expert on body language?’

  ‘Actually, yes. I’m an actor. Body language is part of what I do.’

  Hari Singh chipped in. ‘There’s a saying we should all be aware of. Before you judge any man, first walk ten miles in his shoes.’

  ‘Isn’t that an old Groucho Marx joke?’ said Pink. ‘Before you judge a man, first walk ten miles in his shoes. Then you’ll be ten miles away and you’ll have his shoes.’

  The tension in the room was broken by some laughter and smiles, except for Meg, who sat thinking.

  ‘I suggest,’ she said, tartly, ‘before we judge the defendant, we do what we are here to do, the thing we are sworn in to do, and that is to listen to all the evidence. The time to do our judging is after that.’

  Rory O’Brien, the geek who had remained silent since they had entered the room, looked up from one of the stacks of spreadsheets in the bundle he had open in front of him and said, quietly, ‘I agree with our foreperson. We should hear all the evidence before we start coming to conclusions.’ He returned his focus to the spreadsheet.

  Perhaps because O’Brien had barely spoken since the trial had begun, what he had to say had an oddly calming effect on the room.

  89

  Thursday 23 May

  The first defence witness of the afternoon was a forensic financial analyst in her early fifties called Carolyn Herring. Primrose Brown began by coaxing her credentials out of her. Having worked for some years in a senior position in the fraud detection department of the Inland Revenue, she was now employed in a similar role in the private banking sector.

  With a few skilful questions, the QC established for the benefit of the jury that this woman was a very much more experienced and qualified forensic financial analyst than the prosecution witness put forward by the CPS, Emily Denyer. Then slowly, item by item, she went through the spreadsheets produced by Denyer, totally losing
Meg – and she sensed quite a few of the other jurors – in the process.

  Quite apart from being baffled by the figures, Meg was struggling to concentrate, because she was so distracted by her fear for Laura, and the challenges some of the jury presented. Who could she count on, at this moment, for a ‘not guilty’ verdict?

  She looked surreptitiously down at the list on the tiny notepad she kept in her handbag. So far those she hoped were on her side were Maisy Waller, Hugo Pink and Hari Singh, who, with his Buddhist views, she was increasingly sure wouldn’t give a ‘guilty’ verdict. Including herself, that was just four out of eleven – so far. Enough for a hung jury, but not remotely enough for the verdict she had to deliver.

  Shit.

  And now the QC, plodding through these spreadsheets with her witness, in agonizing detail, was going to antagonize some of the jurors even further, for sure. It was gone 2.30 p.m., over an hour, but they were coming towards the end.

  Suddenly, as if sensing the mood of the jury in a moment when the analyst had paused, Brown said, ‘Ms Herring, I don’t wish to go back over all these transactions and the complexity of the inter-account trading. I’m sure some members of the jury, like myself, struggle when we see columns of figures.’ She smiled as she glanced at the jury. ‘Are you able to summarize what you have found during your exhaustive analysis?’

  Herring turned to the jury. ‘Everything that you have heard from Emily Denyer is circumstantial. In all the transactions, between bank accounts across seven different countries, not once does the name Terence Gready appear, nor do any of the transactions link back to any accounts pertaining either to him or to his firm in Brighton. In my opinion, I can see no evidence of any financial benefit to him in any of them.’

  Meg’s spirits rose at this.

  ‘Undoubtedly, there is a very clever mastermind behind all of these transactions, but could anyone say beyond reasonable doubt that the mastermind is Mr Gready? There is no direct evidence to show this.’