Guilty Not Guilty

by Felix Francis

  There was a smug self-satisfied air to the prosecution counsel as he dismissed the doctor and then moved on from the theft to the attempted murder.

  First up in this section was a Thames Valley Police traffic officer, who testified that he had attended a road-traffic incident at the Hanwell village interchange after a call from a member of the public to the 999 emergency line.

  ‘And what did you find?’ asked the prosecuting barrister.

  ‘A cream-coloured Fiat 500 in the field beyond the hedge. It was in a heavily damaged condition and there was evidence that it had been in collision with a nearby large oak tree. The ambulance service were already in attendance and they, together with the fire brigade, removed the occupant who had been placed in an induced coma. He was subsequently transported to the John Radcliffe Hospital by air ambulance.’

  How disappointing, I thought. I’d always wanted to go in a helicopter and now I had, but I’d been unconscious throughout the whole trip.

  ‘And what then happened to the vehicle?’

  ‘What was left of it, after the fire brigade had cut the roof off, was collected by a mobile crane onto a low-loader and removed to a vehicle breakers yard near Bicester. I supervised the removal myself.’

  The next witness was a police forensic specialist who testified that he had examined the remains of the Fiat at the breakers yard and had obtained samples of white paint found on the rear of the vehicle. He had further found, by chemical analysis, that the paint was identical to that used on long-wheelbase Ford Transit vans.

  An office employee of Joe Bradbury’s High Court enforcement company then told the jury that Joe had signed out one of their vehicles on the day in question, a long-wheelbase white Transit van, and the vehicle had then been sent by Mr Bradbury direct to their regularly used body shop for repair after he had informed the company that it had been driven into by a disgruntled loan defaulter.

  Next, another police specialist, this time in IT, gave evidence to show that ANPR cameras had recorded the passage of the van along the M40 motorway from London to Banbury, and mobile phone records had shown Joe Bradbury’s phone connecting to a mast near Hanwell village just before the supposed time of the collision.

  Finally in this sequence, my friend Mr Constance, the orthopaedic surgeon, appeared to describe the injuries that he had encountered on my arrival at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

  ‘He’s a very lucky man,’ said the surgeon, turning towards where I sat at the back of the courtroom. ‘And particularly as he had been in that car all night before being found. Any sudden movement, even involuntary, during that time would have likely severed his spinal cord rendering him, at best, paralysed.’

  ‘So do you consider,’ said the prosecutor, ‘that, in your expert opinion, the injuries sustained by Mr Gordon-Russell were life-threatening?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Mr Constance. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that more than ninety per cent of people would have died in those circumstances. Mr Gordon-Russell must have the constitution of a horse.’

  Oh, no, he’s wrong there, I thought. Horses, for all their great bulk, are very delicate creatures; but we all knew what he meant.

  The eel had been mostly conspicuous by his absence during this string of testimonies, only briefly rising to ask the police forensic specialist to speculate on how many vehicles on British roads had that same white paint as a Ford Transit van, but now he stood up again.

  ‘Mr Constance,’ he said. ‘Are you saying that the injuries sustained by Mr Gordon-Russell are consistent only with there having been an attempt on his life? Could the same injuries not have been caused by an accidental collision with the tree caused only by his own excessive speed?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Constance. No further questions.’

  The eel sat down and the surgeon was dismissed by the judge.

  The final strand of the prosecution’s case concerned the murder of Amelia.

  One of the other detectives on the case gave evidence, playing on the court televisions the CCTV footage from a petrol station near the Banbury motorway junction, in which Joe Bradbury was clearly shown filling his black Nissan with fuel. The time and date on the footage indicated that he was there at 8.20 a.m. on the morning Amelia died.

  The same detective then told the jury that the emergency call from Joe to report his sister’s death was taken at 10.17 on that same morning. He further stated that the distance between the petrol station and the Old Forge in Hanwell had been measured by him at precisely 4.2 miles.

  The prosecutor didn’t need to ask him why he thought it had taken Joe almost two hours to cover such a small distance by car. I could tell from the faces of the jury that they had worked that one out for themselves.

  Next up was a forensic scene-of-crime officer who testified that he had attended the house in Hanwell on the morning of the murder.

  He explained how he had examined the broken lock on the back door, damage he considered consistent with a violent forced entry into the premises from outside. He also described how he had obtained DNA swab samples from the body of the victim and from various surfaces in the kitchen.

  ‘And what did those samples reveal?’ asked the prosecutor.

  ‘DNA from three different individuals was found on the kitchen surfaces. Comparison with known profiles has allowed me to identify those individuals as the victim, her husband and the defendant.’

  ‘From just three individuals, you say?’ asked the prosecutor. ‘Was there any other person’s DNA present?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And how about on the body?’

  ‘Swabs taken from the victim’s skin provided just two profiles. That of the victim and another of the defendant.’

  ‘From whereabouts on the body were the swabs taken?’

  ‘From the exposed skin,’ said the forensic officer. ‘From the hands, face and especially round the neck.’

  ‘And where exactly on the victim’s skin was the defendant’s DNA found?’ asked the prosecutor with a rather smug look on his face. It is said that no barrister should ever ask a question in court to which he doesn’t already know the answer, and the prosecuting barrister in this case clearly did.

  ‘On the neck.’

  ‘And did you also take swabs from the ligature used as the murder weapon?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I did.’

  The prosecutor waiting expectantly and waved a hand to the witness in encouragement to go on.

  ‘DNA from both the victim and the defendant were present on the leather dog lead.’

  ‘Thank you, officer,’ said the prosecutor. ‘No further questions.’

  The eel was quickly to his feet.

  ‘But would it not be the case,’ he said, ‘that you would expect the defendant’s DNA to be present on the victim’s neck and on the ligature if he had been attempting to remove the dog lead from around his sister’s throat?’

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ said the forensic officer. ‘My job is only to determine if DNA is present, not to speculate on how it got there.’

  *

  ‘They’ll surely find him guilty after all that,’ I said to DS Dowdeswell over another coffee.

  ‘I very much hope so,’ he replied somewhat hesitantly. ‘But it’s all rather circumstantial.’

  ‘There’s surely nothing circumstantial about Joe’s DNA being all over Amelia’s neck,’ I said.

  ‘That’s true but, according to his defence statement, he found your wife dead with the dog lead already in place. He claims that he broke in through the back door to try and remove it, and that is how his DNA would have been transferred to both her neck and the lead.’

  ‘What do you mean by his defence statement?’ I asked.

  ‘Before the trial starts, the prosecution have to disclose to the accused all the evidence they have, along with the list of any prosecution witnesses. They also have to disclose anything that might help the accused or undermine their own case, even if
they don’t intend to raise it at the trial. Basically, the prosecution have to disclose everything they know.’ The sergeant didn’t sound like he much approved of the practice. ‘Then the accused has to deliver a document back to the prosecution outlining his intended line of defence, including any defence witnesses he will be calling. That document is what’s known as the defence statement.’

  ‘So what else does Joe’s defence statement say?’

  ‘On the theft, he says that his mother knew about the payment and it was a gift from her to him for all his help in selling the house.’

  ‘But that’s nonsense,’ I said.

  ‘You know it and I know it, but that’s what he will be telling the jury. And, on the attempted murder, he claims that no collision ever took place and you simply must have crashed into the tree by going too fast round the corner.’

  ‘How about the white paint found on the back of the Fiat, and the fact that his mobile phone was in the Hanwell area at the same time?’

  ‘He maintains that those are merely coincidences.’

  ‘Surely the jury won’t believe that.’

  ‘In my experience, juries can believe all sorts of strange things. And remember, he doesn’t need to convince all twelve of them. Just three would be enough to ensure he’s not convicted.’

  Now he really had me worried.

  38

  Joseph Bradbury took the stand at the start of the third week of the trial, as the defence opened their case.

  I watched as one of the security guards used his key to unlock the door from the dock to the courtroom proper, and as he then escorted Joe across the floor of the court to the witness box, sitting down right beside him. Meanwhile, the second security officer also took up station, standing four-square in front of the exit double doors out to the concourse.

  They were clearly taking no chances that their prisoner might escape.

  For the second time I listened as Joseph Bradbury swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and, for the second time, I didn’t believe a word of it.

  The defence barrister was quickly on his feet and there was no building up to the murder indictment for him, he went straight into it from the off.

  ‘Why did you go to see your sister on that fateful Wednesday morning?’ he asked Joe.

  ‘Because she called me on the previous evening and asked me to go and see her. Our mother had just been diagnosed with cancer and she wanted to discuss her treatment.’

  I knew better than to repeat my shout of ‘liar’, as I had done in the Coroner’s Court. So I just sat on my hands and ground my teeth in frustration.

  ‘But why could you not discuss it with her over the telephone?’ asked the eel.

  ‘Amelia was quite emotional when she called me and she said she didn’t want to discuss matters over the phone. Hence, she specifically asked me to go over and see her the following morning.’

  ‘But not at her house?’

  ‘No,’ Joe said. ‘She wanted me to go to her house but recent relations between Amelia’s husband and me have not been as good as I would have liked, so I suggested we meet elsewhere so that her husband wouldn’t be around to be rude to me, as he always is.’

  He turned and looked towards me with his usual pretentious sneer.

  It was as much as I could do not to jump to my feet and shout out that it was he who was always rude to me, rather than vice versa. In actual fact, I did my utmost to have no communication with him whatsoever, in order to not inflame the situation. I refused to answer his calls and I certainly did not reply to his ranting, vile emails. Not that that had stopped him sending them. Only him being on remand in Bullingdon Prison had done that.

  I pressed my lips together tightly, and gripped the sides of my seat hard to keep myself from standing up.

  ‘So where did you arrange to meet your sister?’ asked the eel.

  ‘She said that if I wouldn’t come to her house then we should meet in a pub car park in Wroxton. The Hare and Hounds pub. It’s closed now but we both knew where it was because we had met there before. It’s only three miles from where she lived’

  ‘Why not meet at your mother’s house?’

  ‘I suggested that but Amelia was insistent that we couldn’t speak about mum’s future when she was there listening, so we finally agreed on the pub.’

  ‘And at what time was this meeting due to take place?’

  ‘Nine o’clock in the morning. I was there a few minutes early so I waited but Amelia didn’t come. In all, I waited there for about an hour. I tried calling her in case she had forgotten but there was no mobile phone signal at that point in Wroxton, so, in the end, I did drive to her house. I rang the front-door bell but there was no answer and it was locked, so I went round the back. It was then that I saw Amelia through the kitchen window. She was lying face down on the kitchen floor.’

  His voice trembled. He always had been a good actor.

  ‘The back door was also locked so I broke in by kicking the lock off. I went straight to Amelia and tried to remove the dog lead wrapped around her neck. Her skin was so cold and her lips were blue. I was quite certain she was dead. I’ve never felt so helpless.’

  This time he made out that he was actually crying, covering his face with his hands and blowing his nose loudly into a tissue.

  God, it made me so angry.

  I knew what real tears were like. I’d wept buckets of them.

  ‘Then what did you do?’ asked the eel.

  ‘I immediately called the police and waited for them to arrive.’

  The eel shuffled his papers.

  ‘Now let us move on to the supposed theft,’ he said. ‘Do you admit that you received a personal cheque for one hundred thousand pounds from Mr Newbould in payment for fixtures and fittings, and for some pieces of furniture left at your late mother’s property in Weybridge, which Mr Newbould was purchasing at the time?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Was your mother aware of this payment to you?’

  ‘Of course she was. It was her property that I was selling. She was fully aware of the fact and she agreed that I should keep the money in recognition of the work I had done in selling the house for her.’

  ‘But we have heard from the detective in this case, and also from your late mother’s solicitor, that she told them both shortly before her untimely death from cancer that she was convinced that you had stolen the money from her. How do you explain that?’

  ‘Convinced is the right word,’ Joe said. ‘My mother was a frail old lady who was often confused and forgetful, whatever her doctor might say. Just prior to her death, she was convinced by my brother-in-law, William Gordon-Russell, that, among other things, I had stolen this money from her when the reality could not have been more different. She had given it to me as a gift. I remember her clearly saying so to me at the time of her house sale. The fact that, all these years later, she couldn’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If it was stolen, would I have been so stupid as to pay the cheque straight into my own bank account for all to see? There simply was no theft. No theft, that is, other than that of half my mother’s estate by him.’

  He pointed straight at me and I could see the members of the jury looking across the courtroom to where I was sitting.

  He sounded so damn convincing and believable, when I was so sure that what he was saying was completely untrue. But neither Mary nor Amelia were here to refute his lies.

  Could the jury not see through this travesty?

  I found it impossible to read their thoughts.

  Only time would tell.

  ‘And finally,’ said the eel. ‘Let us move on to the attempted murder charge. Please tell the court what you were doing on that particular Wednesday.’

  ‘I was at work in the morning, in Ealing, west London. I was carrying out my duties as a High Court enforcement officer, executing a writ of repossession on a property where the tenants were in arrears with their
rent.’

  ‘And did you have a company vehicle for this purpose?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Joe said. ‘A long-wheelbase white-painted Ford Transit van.’

  ‘And how about in the afternoon?’

  ‘The repossession took a lot less time than I had expected. The tenants had already packed up their stuff before I arrived, and it was simply a matter of seeing them out of the property and then changing the locks. An hour’s work at most. So I found myself with time on my hands. I regret it now, but I decided to go to Banbury. I had been bereft over the loss of my sister and I somehow felt that being close to where she had died would give me some sort of comfort.’

  ‘And did it?’ asked the eel.

  ‘It did at the time but it has caused me all sorts of trouble since.’

  ‘The prosecution have claimed that you were there in order, on purpose, to crash into a car driven by your brother-in-law. Is that right?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’ve never crashed into anything on purpose and certainly not near Banbury. That would have been really stupid. If, as they say, the crash was so severe, how come the van wasn’t so badly damaged that it was impossible to drive? How would I have then got back to London?’

  ‘So where did you have the crash?’

  ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, really. I wasn’t concentrating and I ran into a concrete post near the company vehicle depot in Harrow. I know I told the staff in the office that someone else had driven into the van, but that was so I wouldn’t get the blame. Things like that happen all the time. That’s also why I took the van straight to the body shop.’

  He looked shamefaced at the jury and some of them even nodded back at him in understanding.

  How could they believe such a load of claptrap?

  ‘So let me just confirm what you’re saying to us, Mr Bradbury,’ said the eel. ‘You say there was no theft because the money was a gift from your mother to you; you say that you did not crash into any other cars; and you say that your sister was already dead when you arrived at her home. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe said, smiling. ‘Totally correct on all three counts.’