TR01 - Trial And Retribution

by Lynda La Plante

  All we've got at the moment is his word. "

  "Well, Dunn did mention that Jason Harris, the brother, was always--' " Keep away from the family, it's a public relations hornets' nest. "

  Waugh strode to the door but stopped as he gripped the handle, as if seized by a further thought.

  "Has Rylands been over any likely cross-examination yet with Dunn?"

  "No, we're doing that today. We thought it would be better to get a bit of rapport going between them first."

  The senior partner twisted the doorknob and stiff- armed the door open. From the corridor he called back, "Well, don't feather-bed him.

  The Crown aren't going to. "

  The door slammed and Belinda made a snarling face.

  At the GPS, Walker and North were winding up a progress report to Griffith. It was basically a 'no-progress' report.

  "So," said Griffith, 'there's nothing more on the forensic front? "

  Walker frowned. He wished to God there was.

  "No," he said.

  "And I think what we've got is all there is. Also there's a lot of pressure to release the body for burial and I think we should do that now."

  "Agreed?" Griffith looked from Fletcher to North.

  "Agreed," he confirmed when they both nodded.

  Walker continued, very subdued, "There's really nothing to add to the scientific evidence and I'm afraid we didn't get quite what we'd hoped from the Gillingham interviews."

  Almost distastefully, Griffith flicked through the pages of the evidence bundle, now bulkier than ever.

  "I have a responsibility not to waste public money on a case which

  is going to fold up. And I have to tell you .. " He stared at the two police officers over his half-moon glasses.

  "I have to tell you, I am coming to the view that we should offer no evidence."

  Willis Fletcher sat beside Griffith, his eyes fixed on an open page of his own copy of the file. The barrister's face was grave but with a suggestion of humour somewhere in the corner of his eyes. Walker found some encouragement in that. At the other end of the table Jennifer Abantu's face was as impassive as ever Walker had no idea if her opinion counted for anything with Griffith. But then, he had no idea what her opinion was.

  "Dunn still hasn't come up with his alibi witness," he said.

  "I think there's a very good chance we'll be able to show he's served a false notice of alibi."

  Fletcher stirred in his seat.

  "Well, that would be a help," he remarked.

  Griffith looked at him without appreciation and closed the file decisively.

  "I shall take that into consideration when making my decision."

  "Hang on," said Walker desperately.

  "There's some thing else you should take into consideration. I'm sure the Director of Public Prosecutions doesn't want any more sensitive, national cases dropped for lack of evidence, leaving more grieving families to drag their private prosecutions through the courts."

  He was going out on a limb here, and he knew it. But he ground on.

  "Sometimes it's important to try a case. Sometimes it should be seen to be tried."

  Griffith stood up, capped his pen and clipped it into his breast pocket.

  "I execute policy," he said darkly, "I don't play politics.

  I'll let you know what I decide. "

  In the car, Walker pounded the dash with his fist, working out his pent-up aggression.

  "Fletcher wants to proceed I can feel it. Griffith doesn't, but surely he won't have the balls to drop it?"

  "You're going to need yours, I reckon."

  Walker looked at her.

  She smiled, braking sharply.

  "That crack about the PPP," she went on, 'it didn't go down at all well. "

  Walker banged the dash again.

  "I still put money on Dunn."

  "What about Peter James, though?"

  He shook his head as she put the car into gear.

  "No. I don't like him, but I don't think he's a killer."

  As they pulled away from the lights, Walker shook off the sense of despair.

  "Tell you what get Satchell to have another go at the ice-cream seller. Speak to his boss this time. If he's lying ..."

  North nodded.

  "Peter James would be in the clear yes?"

  "He'd be laughing and so would we. If I'm reading Griffith right, the reason for why he doesn't want to go on against Dunn is he's afraid the real killer's Peter James."

  Robert Rylands, the inveterate defence brief, had a favourite performance in prison conference rooms acting the prosecutor. It was part of his job to play the game of putting a client through his witness box paces, to test him with the difficult questions the Crown would ask and gauge his readiness and credibility. And Rylands played the game hard, turning the small prison interview room into a court, circling the client like an attack helicopter, pouncing on his uncertainties and inconsistencies.

  At Wormwood Scrubs, with Michael Dunn in his

  sights, he wondered, not for the first time, why he found this task so satisfying. Perhaps, after all, he should have been a prosecutor himself. He'd have been a bloody good one.

  "Now you admit you let young children into your flat unchaperoned?"

  "I'm sorry?" asked Dunn.

  "Unwhat?"

  "Unsupervised. Without any adult with them."

  "Yes, I suppose so."

  "And you showed them videos. Why?"

  "Because they like them."

  "But why did you want them to come to your place?"

  "Because ... because ... I enjoyed their company."

  Dunn looked nervously at Belinda. He couldn't under stand the change that had come over Mr. Rylands. He'd gone so hard. She nodded encouragement at him, gave him a smile.

  "And what sort of videos were these?"

  "Well, cartoons and " And some quite unsuitable material am I right? "

  "I don't know."

  "Child's Play 3. The Terminator " Yes, I had them. But my video was nicked and I couldn't show them films any more, see. "

  "But children came to your flat after the video disappeared, didn't they?"

  "Yes."

  "When was the last time there were children at your flat?"

  Dunn shook his head, bewildered.

  "I don't know, I can't remember."

  "Can you remember a specific day when Julie Anne was at your flat?"

  "No. No, I can't."

  Rylands rubbed his hands, a gesture which seemed to show he was pleased, though neither Dunn nor Belinda could see why.

  "All right, Michael, let's turn to your alibi for 5th September. You know what an alibi is, don't you?"

  "Course I do."

  Rylands paced to the window and swung around, leaning with his elbows on the sill. He pitched his voice a few semitones higher, his most sceptical courtroom voice.

  "You've named two men and a woman as alibi witnesses. Of the men, one won't cooperate and the other can't be found. The woman's never heard of you. How did that happen, Mr. Dunn?"

  "I don't know, I was confused. I couldn't remember exactly--' " Because if you were not with those people, then it is possible that it was you whom Mrs. Marsh saw from her window, you who took a little girl by the hand and led her back to your flat. Isn't it? "

  Dunn was shaking his head pathetically.

  "No, really. There was never any little girl in my flat that day."

  Rylands thought for a moment, looking at the ceiling.

  "If you can't recall any specific day or date that Julie Anne was at your flat how can you be so sure she wasn't there on 5th September?"

  Dunn was frightened now. His eyes were wide with anxiety as he looked for support to Belinda, then back to Rylands. He said, "She used to come all the time. All the time. Just ask her brother. Ask Jason."

  Rylands held his gaze for a moment, then relaxed, smiling, coming forward to the table. He began assembling his papers.

 
"That's all right, Michael. Just remember it's in their interest to try to make you lose control of yourself. Just answer the questions and keep cool." He tapped a stack of papers against the table to straighten them.

  "We'll leave it for today, OK I will see you again before trial."

  On the way back to town, Rylands was whistling to himself.

  "You seem pleased," Belinda said.

  "Moderately, moderately. I wouldn't put it higher than that. You?"

  "I don't know. There's something Michael said that's bugging me. Ask Jason, he said. Do you think we could?"

  Rylands shook his head.

  "Tricky. Young child witnesses? Very, very tricky ..."

  Two hours later Peter and Anita's door opened and Helen let herself in. She carried a suitcase.

  "Didn't know you had a set of keys," Peter told her when he met her in the hall. He glowered at her.

  "I've come for the funeral."

  "Well, you're not staying here."

  Hearing voices, Anita came through. She gave her mother a hug.

  "I want you to stay. Mum."

  Peter simply swore.

  chapter 20

  SUNDAY 3 NOVEMBER. 11. 30 A. M.

  Kenneth Poole lay naked across a sturdy refectory-style kitchen table of Norwegian pine. A young woman was walking her fingernails up and down the length of his spine while he licked a few last vestiges of the strawberry yoghurt that he'd spooned into her navel a few minutes earlier. And then the telephone was ringing.

  Most of Poole's Sunday mornings were like this. Around nine o'clock, after a look through the News of the World and a breakfast at his Bethnal Green flat of two fried eggs, a fried slice and grilled bacon, he'd catch a bus out to Romford. It was from there, at a quarter to ten sharp, that his boss would leave his comfortable home for the office and keep reliably busy all morning completing the previous week's accounts. Poole found it intensely exciting to lurk in the bus shelter opposite the house, waiting for Frank Petrie's exit.

  It was always the same pantomime, starting with Petrie's jaunty appearance on the path, buttoning his camel coat. Kenneth watched as the electronic key beeped open the Mere's doors, the door opened and closed with a soft cough and Petrie settled in the driver's seat, lighting his first Cuban panatella of the day and stroking the engine into life. Then, at last, as the growl of the Mere's radials died away, Poole nipped across the road, slipped through the side door of the house and slid into the willing arms of the young and lovely Mrs. Petrie.

  Kenneth knew he would never have that expensive coat, that Mere or even that panatella. But what he did have, by the gift of nature, was the equipment to make Michelle Petrie, from time to time, a very happy woman. So, between ten and midday, before he himself had to clock on at the depot to start his Sunday shift, he and Michelle would cavort around the house like a pair of bonobo chimps. They did it on the World of Leather four-seat sofa in the lounge. They did it on the hairy astrakhan rug in front of the ingle-nook fireplace ingle nookie as Michelle called it with a delicious giggle). They did it rolling around the smoked-oak parquet in the hall, on the Cumberland slate work top in the kitchen, in the dusty intimacy of the broom-cupboard, in the bubbling cauldron of the huge Jacuzzi bath.

  They even, if they felt lazy, did it in the emperor-size bed with its five-speed vibrating mattress.

  And so, for a couple of hours each week, Kenneth Poole thought he'd died and gone to heaven. It couldn't last, of course.

  As the phone warbled, he paused in mid-lick but Michelle didn't miss a finger-step. Nonchalantly she raised the portable handset that was never out other reach.

  "Yeah?"

  Kenneth strained to listen. He recognized Petrie's nasal twang coming fuzzily through the earpiece. Michelle was drumming her fingers on his shoulder blade.

  "What they want then?" she asked.

  Judging by his tone of voice, Petrie seemed upset. It was even more squaw kingly petulant than usual.

  "Oh, OK," his wife said at last.

  "See ya later, sugar."

  Michelle laid the phone down and began to writhe her limbs, those limbs whose God-given shapeliness could make Kenneth break out in a sweat just thinking about them. She was evidently maneuvering to force Poole's mouth to make a lower contact on her body. But, for the moment, he declined the gambit.

  "What did he want?"

  Michelle went on wriggling. Then she brought one of her nicely shaped feet up to the tabletop to give herself purchase.

  "Oh, nothing."

  "What did Frank want? " Just, the police are down at the depot, asking a lot of questions about some murder, so he's going to be late. "

  "A minute," Michelle sighed and lay still a moment.

  "Yeah, but it's nothing to do with Frank, it's nothing important. So come on big boy, forget about it and just--' " Wait a minute, Michelle. I want to know. What murder? "

  "That little kid over dock lands it was in the news. A while ago. One of our vans was nearby when it happened or something."

  "Holy buckets of shit!" said Ken, rolling off the table and scrabbling for his jockey shorts.

  "I got to go."

  Satchell hated funerals. He sometimes had an inexplicable impulse to laugh, so he tried to stay away. Now, with the Guv and Pat North in attendance at the Harris burial, he felt it was OK to miss it.

  Checking on Poole's story, he'd been down to the depot at eleven to interview Frank Petrie, the ice-cream van king. According to Petrie the vans went out at twelve every day.

  "We got a roster of calls for every unit," Petrie told him as they stood in his office. He walked and knocked on a chart on the wall.

  "I got eight vans at the moment goes up to a dozen in summer. And this chart plots every site visited by every van, how long they stay and so on. That way, nobody doubles up and we don't get into no turf wars with the opposition. Used to be anarchy out there at one time. "

  Satchell said, "So you know exactly when Mr. Poole arrived at the Howarth Estate on 5th September?"

  Petrie's face took on a crafty expression.

  "I know when Poole should have been on the estate. He should have been there at half-past twelve. But I don't know if he actually was. I've had trouble with that young man before. Wouldn't put it past him if he was getting into the knickers of some tart on my time."

  "What Confessions of an Ice-Cream Seller type of thing?"

  Petrie lowered his voice and said contemptuously.

  "I wouldn't put it past him."

  Satchell glanced at his watch.

  "Is he working today?"

  "Poole? Yes due on at twelve, as usual."

  "Would you ask him to come down to the station when he knocks off? I just want to take him through his statement again."

  Now Satchell was back in the Incident Room cross checking through the door-to-door inquiries for references to the visit of the ice-cream van. A call came through from the front desk.

  "Got a Kenneth Poole here for you, Dave."

  Poole was early it was only half one.

  "OK," he said.

  "Be right down."

  "I was scared, you know? Thought I'd lose my job because he's a right bastard and I'd had one warning anyway..."

  Poole was gabbling through nervousness. And from his breath, Satchell could tell he'd been in the pub for a few sriffeners.

  "I mean, I never thought it would matter half an hour, like."

  "What did you think wouldn't matter, Mr. Poole? Just spell it out, easy like."

  Poole swallowed.

  "I didn't get to the Howarth Estate until gone one on the day the little girl was murdered."

  He was rubbing his hand through his hair.

  "Oh, shit! I knew it'd all come out."

  "What? What would come out?"

  "I was shagging his wife, see? She'd give me a few quid, you know, to cover for the ices I might have sold and ... well, he knows now because I told him. I got the boot said he suspected I was with a tart, so I told him
exactly who the tart was!"

  Dave Satchell's mouth was open. This was absolutely bloody choice. He couldn't wait till he told the lads. Leaning meaningfully forward, he tried to keep a straight face.

  "Well, this is potentially serious--' " Serious? You're not joking. I lost my job! "

  "I mean we could have you for making a false statement. You know that?"

  "Yeah, of course. Look, I'm sorry. Me and Michelle, well, we stopped meeting in working time after that. We thought of another time."

  "I'm glad to hear it, Mr. Poole, but let's not get sidetracked. Now, I want you to make out a new statement about your true movements on 5th September,

  OK?"

  Half an hour later, DS Satchell was standing inside the door of the church where the funeral of Julie Anne Harris was just beginning. If you'd paid him he couldn't have waited with this news.

  "He who dies and believes in me shall live," intoned the vicar.

  "And he who lives and believes in me shall never die ..."

  Satchell spotted Walker, North and Richards sitting near the back so he slid into the pew immediately behind and leaned into Walker's ear.

  "Guv, the ice-cream seller lied about the times. He didn't get to the Howarth Estate till gone one."

  Walker looked round.

  "Did you--' " Yeah, I just took a new statement. This puts Peter James in the clear, right? "

  Walker couldn't suppress a smile. He hammered once with his fist on his right knee. If he'd had a Marlboro between his fingers he'd have snapped off the filter.

  He whispered to Pat North.

  "Hear that? Griffith can't pull the case now can he?"

  "And', whispered Dave, " Michael Dunn still has no alibi. "

  Pat kept her face to the front, but she too was smiling faintly. They were back on track. Meanwhile the vicar's voice echoed over their heads.

  '.. and in the midst of life, we are in death. "

  Belinda knew it was the funeral today and had even considered attending but dismissed the idea, remembering her violent reception at the Harris's front door. So she'd come to work instead.

  Working on a Sunday was nothing new to Belinda. The offices of Clarence Clough usually had a few lawyers in over the weekend and security there was round the clock. Not that she thought much of the security presence a bunch of dozy old men.