Guilty Not Guilty

by Felix Francis

  ‘Did you notice anything during the journey?’ the prosecutor asked.

  ‘As I backed out of my drive, I spotted a large white van parked further down the road. I assumed at the time it was one of the many similar courier vans that deliver online-shopping packages. I remembered thinking that he wouldn’t be delivering to me as I hadn’t ordered anything. Other than that, I noticed nothing unusual and I arrived at the Waitrose car park about half past four.’

  I went on to describe how, after doing my shopping and loading everything into the car, I had set off to drive home a little before five-thirty, and by that time on a dull dank late October afternoon, it was already completely dark.

  I had driven out of Banbury and, after indicating to turn right off the main road into Hanwell village, I had realised far too late that the headlights behind were not slowing down.

  I told them how someone had driven straight into the back of Amelia’s Fiat 500, shunting it forward with such force that hitting the opposite grass verge had sent the car airborne. It had passed over the hedge, crashing into the tree in the field beyond.

  ‘And what happened after that?’ asked the barrister.

  ‘The next thing I remember was waking up in the John Radcliffe Hospital some ten days later.’

  ‘And what were your injuries?’

  I catalogued everything, starting with the break to my neck and the bruising of my spinal cord, which had resulted in my motor-nerve paralysis.

  ‘And are you fully recovered now?’ asked the prosecutor.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Over the past eight months, with constant physiotherapy, much of my mobility has returned. But I still have problems, with my legs in particular, and I am informed that I may never recover full movement and control.’

  ‘So would you describe your injuries as being life-changing?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very much so.’

  But not as life-changing as losing my wife.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Gordon-Russell. No more questions.’

  The prosecuting barrister sat down, leaving me still standing there in the witness box with a look of total surprise on my face.

  No more questions?

  But I had more to say.

  How about asking me about Joe’s vile emails? And his threats? What about his attempts to brainwash his mother? And the theft of the money? And his false accusation that I had assaulted his daughter?

  I had so much more to say.

  35

  ‘Am I right in thinking that you refer to yourself as Bill Russell rather than using your full name?’

  The ‘right slimy eel’ defence barrister was on his feet and asking the questions in cross-examination.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  ‘Why is that? Is it some kind of reverse snobbery?’

  He made it sound like a major failing.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just simpler.’

  Specifically, it had been simpler when I’d been riding as an amateur jockey, as ‘Mr W. Gordon-Russell’ had been too long to fit on the racecourse number boards, not that many of them had those any longer.

  But maybe the eel was right too, in a way. Being the son of an earl, and with a double-barrelled surname to boot, didn’t make getting spare rides any easier.

  Historically, in British horse racing, the jockey was always considered to be the owner’s servant, and the earliest race records show only the names of the horse and its owner, and not that of its rider. Even in modern times, for some of the old school, offering a ride to someone who they considered had a higher social standing than them was a no-no.

  ‘Mr Russell,’ said the eel, ‘I put it to you that much of what you have told the court today has been a pack of lies.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It has been the truth.’

  ‘An intricate tissue of lies to cover up your own carelessness and wrongdoing?’

  ‘Not at all. I have told you the truth.’

  ‘You have told the jury that your relationship with your wife was a loving one, but I suggest this is far from the reality?’

  ‘No. I loved my wife deeply. We had a blissful marriage.’

  ‘But was it not your mental cruelty towards your wife that resulted in her being admitted to a psychiatric institution on several occasions?’

  I was doing my best to keep my cool. This was clearly a line that Joe had spun to his defence team. It was what he had accused me of many times in his ranting emails, when it had been his doing all along.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But your wife had been admitted to such institutions?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But not due to any cruelty on my behalf. I suggest you look at your client’s behaviour to find the true reason.’

  He ignored me. ‘Your wife suffered from depression. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you say that a happily married person would be depressed? Does not the very word depression imply unhappiness?’

  ‘That is far too simplistic a view, and one that is totally wrong,’ I said. ‘Depression is a complicated issue and doesn’t necessarily relate to someone’s happiness or unhappiness.’

  ‘Was your wife suicidal?’

  ‘She had been, in the past.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And had your wife not been rushed to accident and emergency several times as a result of trying to take her own life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hardly the behaviour of someone in a blissful marriage, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You are misrepresenting the situation,’ I said.

  ‘No, Mr Russell. It is you that is misrepresenting the situation. Was your wife not desperately unhappy in your marriage, to the point of trying to end her own life on multiple occasions? Is that not the true situation?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That was absolutely not the case.’

  He ignored my answer yet again.

  ‘And was your wife’s inability to have children a source of further friction between you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it friction,’ I said. ‘It was a source of great sadness for us both.’

  ‘So it put your marriage under strain?’

  ‘Yes, it did,’ I said. ‘It was a difficult time for us both.’

  I could see DS Dowdeswell sitting behind the prosecution team staring purposefully at me. Then I remembered his warning over lunch.

  ‘But,’ I went on, ‘it didn’t ever affect the deep love we had for each other. It put us under strain in other ways and, if anything, those difficulties brought us closer together as a couple.’

  The detective sergeant nodded at me in approval.

  The eel didn’t.

  ‘Did you stand to benefit financially from the death of your wife?’ he asked.

  ‘In what way do you mean?’ I asked back, sure that he was on about the life insurance policy. But I wanted him to mention it first.

  ‘Was your wife’s life insured?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I have been employed in the insurance business all my working life. It would be remiss of me not to have insured my wife, as indeed it would have been if I had not also insured myself.’

  ‘But is it not the case that you took out a new policy just a few months before her death? A policy that pays out a million pounds to you as the sole beneficiary?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is the case. But I can assure you that no amount of money can compensate for the loss of my wife.’

  DS Dowdeswell was nodding furiously.

  But the eel pressed his point again. ‘However, you did stand to benefit financially from her death?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not.’

  The eel was slightly taken aback. ‘But you have just told the court that you are the sole beneficiary to a life insurance policy worth a million pounds. How is that not a financial benefit?’

  ‘Because, according to her mother’s will at the time, Amelia stood to inherit half of her mother’s substantial est
ate, something that would have happened very soon as her mother had been diagnosed with inoperative stage-four pancreatic cancer. However, as my wife was murdered and hence predeceased her mother, and we have no children, the whole estate would have gone to her brother.’ I turned and faced the dock, pointing my left forefinger in Joe’s direction just in case the jury hadn’t understood what I was saying. ‘My wife’s death would have resulted in a huge financial benefit to him, not to me.’

  The detective sergeant looked so happy that I thought he was about to burst into applause, and the eel looked like he’d swallowed a wasp.

  I could see what the defence were attempting to do. They were trying to sow a seed of doubt in the minds of the jury that it had been the wicked cruel husband whodunit but, in trying to establish a financial motive for me to have killed her, they had only provided me with the opportunity to do exactly the same for their client sitting in the dock.

  But the eel wasn’t giving up the thread that easily.

  He played what he obviously thought was his trump card.

  ‘Mr Russell,’ he said, ‘was it not the case that you were arrested by the police on suspicion of murdering your wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said unhesitatingly. ‘But I was wrongly arrested. As I have explained earlier, I was away in Birmingham at the time of my wife’s death – and CCTV has proved it beyond any doubt. The police have accepted that. I have a letter signed by the chief constable of Thames Valley Police.’

  I decided not to mention that the letter didn’t exactly state that I was innocent, just that the police would not be pursuing charges against me unless any new evidence emerged. But, even so, I could tell from the eel’s body language that he was suddenly regretting having brought up my arrest in the first place.

  But I wasn’t. It had given me the chance to show that I had a watertight alibi.

  For the first time, I was even quite enjoying myself and eager to see the eel’s next tactic.

  I was pretty sure that he couldn’t refer to the police caution I had accepted as an undergraduate for having had sex with Tracy Higgins when she was only fifteen. That had been twenty-one years ago and was hardly relevant to the matter in hand, but I wouldn’t put anything past him.

  ‘Mr Russell,’ he said. ‘Would you consider yourself a risk taker?’

  ‘My work as an actuary involves the evaluation of risk,’ I replied. ‘Every activity we perform carries some level of risk – crossing the road, flying away on holiday, scuba diving, everything. My job is to calculate that level, however small. So, in some respects, everyone is a risk taker.’

  ‘But would you say that you personally take unnecessary risks?’

  ‘No.’

  I wondered where he was going with this.

  ‘But did you not ride in steeplechase races, including over the Grand National fences? Would you not consider that an unnecessary risk?’

  ‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘But it was a calculated risk.’ I smiled at him. ‘If you are on a good horse then the level of risk is acceptable.’

  ‘But did you not have to give up riding in races due to injury?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what was that injury?’

  ‘I damaged my neck.’

  ‘You damaged your neck?’ he sounded incredulous, spreading his hands wide towards the jury. ‘But is it not the case that you broke vertebrae in your neck, the same vertebrae that have caused the current problem with your walking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So your present difficulties may, in some large part, be due to the injury you received several years ago while riding.’

  ‘I can’t answer that as I’m not a doctor,’ I said. ‘All I know is that I could walk perfectly well before the recent crash, and I can’t afterwards.’

  ‘Do you like speed, Mr Russell?’

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by speed. Did he mean amphetamines?

  He clarified. ‘Does going fast give you a thrill? An adrenalin rush?’

  ‘I think everyone gets a thrill from riding a fast roller coaster.’

  ‘But not everyone rides racehorses at thirty miles per hour over Becher’s Brook. Did that give you a thrill, Mr Russell?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Do you miss that thrill, now that you have stopped riding?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you drive a fast, powerful sports car instead?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it fast,’ I said.

  ‘No? A four-point-two-litre V8 supercharged Jaguar XKR-S sports car? With a top speed of one hundred and seventy-four miles per hour? I think I’d call that fast.’

  ‘It is now more than ten years old,’ I said.

  I had bought it during the bountiful years, before the financial crisis, when all City bonuses had been overly extravagant.

  ‘As maybe,’ said the eel. ‘But I bet it still shifts along pretty nicely, doesn’t it? Enjoy driving it, do you, Mr Russell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was no point in denying it. I loved driving my Jag.

  ‘Do you like going fast? Taking a few risks?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘How many penalty points do you have on your driving licence, Mr Russell?

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Are they all for speeding convictions?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused to allow that fact to settle into the brains of the members of the jury.

  ‘Going fast on the night of the crash, were you, Mr Russell?’

  ‘No,’ I said, smiling. ‘And I wasn’t driving that car.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said triumphantly. ‘A Jaguar sports car is built to corner well. You are very familiar with it. But on that day you were driving a Fiat 500. Is it not the case, Mr Russell, that you simply took the corner too fast in a car you were not used to driving, and one that is not designed for the high-speed manoeuvres that you regularly perform, and far from being hit from behind by another vehicle, you simply lost control and crashed due to your own excessive speed and negligence?’

  As the detective sergeant had said, he was, indeed, a right slimy eel.

  ‘No,’ I replied strongly and loudly. ‘That is not what happened at all. The Fiat was almost stationary when it was struck from behind by another vehicle.’

  The eel snorted his disbelief.

  ‘No further questions.’

  He sat down and the prosecuting counsel made no move to stand up again.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ said the judge. ‘You may step down.’

  In truth, I was somewhat disappointed. I’d been on a roll, and I’d been in the witness box for less than one day when I had quite expected to be there for much longer.

  Clearly, so did the court, as the next prosecution witness had not been called to appear.

  ‘We will adjourn until ten o’clock on Monday morning,’ announced the judge.

  ‘All rise!’

  36

  ‘Sounds to me like you did pretty well,’ Douglas said.

  I had taken the train from Oxford to spend the weekend with my brother and we were talking through the events of the day over a glass of Rioja.

  ‘The defence barrister was a bit of a bastard.’

  He laughed. ‘All barristers can be bastards when we need to be. It’s the defence’s job to throw doubt on the testimony of the prosecution witnesses.’

  ‘But he didn’t need to be so unkind about Amelia and her problems.’

  ‘From what you’ve said, I think he was quite mild. When I’m defending I can be far worse than that.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ I said. ‘Then I’m glad you weren’t there.’

  He laughed again and we drank some more wine.

  Whereas it would have been illegal for the prosecution to coach me as one of their witnesses in the case, there were no such qualms for my brother, the QC, provided we did not discuss the actual evidence.

  Over the past few weeks, Douglas and I had spent quite a lot of time on the telephon
e together. He had taught me what to expect in the court, how to handle difficult moments, and to keep my composure at all times. His wide experience with juries had given me an insight into what they were looking for and how to present them with it.

  Without his guidance, mine would have been a far more nervous performance.

  ‘How are things in general?’ Douglas asked. ‘Other than the trial?’

  ‘Much the same,’ I said. ‘I still can’t walk properly and no one will employ me.’

  ‘But they can’t still believe that you were responsible?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. But it’s all to do with risk – all insurance is. They see it as a risk to employ me at the present time with all the publicity still going on. Who was it who claimed there was no such thing as bad publicity?’

  ‘Phineas T. Barnum,’ Douglas replied. ‘The American circus owner. It was either him or Oscar Wilde.’

  I shook my head. ‘Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’

  ‘Same thing, surely. Or maybe it was Brendan Behan?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Brendan Behan. You know, the Irish poet and playwright. Used to describe himself as a drinker with a writing problem. Claimed he drank only on only two occasions – when he was thirsty and when he wasn’t. And his favourite tipple was a mixture of champagne and sherry. Totally lethal.’

  We laughed, and then took large sips of our own alcoholic beverages.

  ‘But, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that Behan said that there was no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary.’

  We both laughed again. It felt good.

  Laughter had been in short supply in my life during the past eight months.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Whoever said it was an idiot. All the fund managers are telling me to wait until the trial is over. Maybe things will settle down then, they say. Thank the Lord for Mary Bradbury, that’s what I say. Without her legacy I’d probably be losing my house by now.’

  ‘How about Amelia’s life insurance money?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘You know what insurance companies are like. They won’t pay out until the death certificate is registered by the coroner. And that won’t be until the inquest concludes, and that won’t happen until after the criminal proceedings are finished. They’ll drag it out as long as they can.’