The Murder of Graham Catton

by Katie Lowe

  ‘We’ll look at what that evidence is, right after this.’

  I take the phone, and press stop. The silence engulfs us. I stand and flick on a light. I pretend to see something outside as I pull the curtains closed. The truth is, I don’t want to have to meet Dan’s eye.

  ‘I’m going to check on Evie,’ I say, stiffly. ‘I’ll just be a sec.’ I climb the stairs without looking back.

  Three knocks, and silence. I’m so close to her door, I can see the curve of the grain in the wood.

  ‘Evie?’ I knock again. ‘Can I come in?’

  There’s no answer. I toy with the idea of opening the door anyway. Of pushing it open, just a crack, and peering inside. But it’s something I’ve never done. I know, from the girls on the unit, that teenagers need privacy. That the overbearing mothers are more damaging than the uninterested ones, in nine cases out of ten.

  I press my forehead to the door, and knock, gently, again. ‘I’d like to talk to you, Evie. Please.’

  I hear the soft hiss of music, quickly hushed. Headphones. I feel his hand on my shoulder, a comfort.

  I turn, grateful for it. But there’s nobody there.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Dan says, when I return.

  I slump into my chair. ‘She won’t talk to me.’

  He reaches for my hand. The warmth of it comes as a surprise. ‘She’ll be fine. Give her some time. She’s probably just working it out.’

  That’s what I’m afraid of, I think. ‘Are you OK?’ It’s a deflection. He nods, and swallows. The knot in his throat bobs, a grim reminder. ‘I just … I feel terrible. I don’t know what to say. I wish …’

  My stomach flips. I imagine the things he might be about to say. I wish you’d been honest with me. I wish I’d known all this before we met. I wish I wasn’t so attached to your daughter. Because, then, it’d be easy to walk away.

  ‘I’m just really sorry, Hannah. Really.’

  I point at the phone, sitting between us like an unexploded bomb. ‘Shall we …?’

  He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again.

  He picks up the phone and presses play, skipping quickly past the ads.

  ‘… a compelling story. And one the jurors would, no doubt, have been grateful for. Because – however they might look on TV, or sound on podcasts like this one – criminal trials are, as a rule, kind of dull. After weeks of waiting around, hearing witnesses grilled on details that seem insignificant, being shuttled back and forth from the jury room, it’s easy to lose sight of the narrative – to get lost in the specifics.

  ‘Which is what makes these closing statements so important. It’s an opportunity for the legal teams, on both sides, to tie up their arguments in a story that’s easy for the jurors to follow and – more importantly – to remember. So, when they’re locked in that stuffy little room with eleven other people they’re sick of looking at, they’re all at least in agreement about the facts of the case.

  ‘Except, the thing is: Guildford’s closing statement was a masterclass of smoke and mirrors. “We know this,” he said. “The evidence shows this to be true.”

  ‘But evidence is open to interpretation. And it’s possible to interpret this case’s evidence in a totally different way.’

  Dan frowns. I know what he’s thinking. You can’t ‘interpret’ proof.

  I can almost hear him scoffing at the words, in another situation; listening to some other case. One that’s not quite so close to home.

  The music picks up. It feels like a tease and a threat. Like a cat toying with a caged bird.

  ‘Let’s start with the eyewitness testimony from someone we’ll call Miss B. At trial, she told jurors that she saw Philips running from the scene, at about the time of the attack. She looked across the courtroom, and pointed at him. “Yes,” she said. “It was him I saw.”’

  I remember this moment: the swell of gratitude I felt for this girl who was so clear in her recollection, so confident in what she’d seen. I’d wanted to believe her, when I’d been told there was a witness – and she made it so blissfully easy to do.

  ‘Hard to argue with – right?’ Byers goes on. ‘But the thing is, Miss B. wasn’t always so sure.

  ‘In her initial statement, she says that she saw the man from behind. She says it was dark. She can’t describe him with any more specificity than this: a male, of average build, and average height. She says he might’ve been wearing trainers, from the sound they made on the pavement. But then, she says, it could’ve been a jogger, out for a late-night run. An insomniac, trying to burn off some energy. She is – put simply – a terrible witness.

  ‘And in any other case, her statement would’ve been filed away, unlikely to be used, unless it happened to corroborate something else that turned up later on.

  ‘But the officers in this case took a different approach.

  ‘The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on witness testimony, says “people believe that memory works like a recording device. You just record the information, then you call it up and play it back when you want to answer questions or identify images. But memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page. You can go in there and change it. But so can other people.”’

  Dan glances at me, looking for confirmation. I nod without meeting his eye.

  ‘There’s no way the detectives don’t know this. Even if they’re not aware of the theory behind it, they’re experienced officers. They know exactly how to handle a witness.

  ‘Or rather – how not to. Let’s listen to a clip from their second interview with Miss B., three weeks after her first statement. After they’d decided Mike Philips was their suspect. We’ll come back to how they decided that, shortly.’

  A tape crackles on, an airy hiss.

  I recognize the voice as it speaks. I see the female officer who’d questioned me that first night – her skin pale, sallow in the flickering light.

  ‘And you said it was a black sports coat he was wearing – is that right?’ She sounds much older, more assured, on the tape.

  The girl’s voice is barely audible, the hiss rising as Byers increases the volume. ‘I … Yeah. Yeah.’

  ‘“You said”,’ Byers says, her voice venomous. ‘That’s what Detective O’Hare tells Miss B. “You said it was a black sports coat he was wearing.”

  ‘Now, that’s quite the statement. Because throughout the whole of their conversation prior, there’s actually no mention of a jacket at all. Not once do they talk about what the man Miss B. saw was wearing – until now.

  ‘Miss B. did, however, have a conversation with the very first officer that she spoke to when she contacted the police to say she thought she’d seen something, the night of the attack. He scribbled down a few notes, which are largely illegible – except for two words.

  “Grey hoodie”. It’s an item of clothing that will never be mentioned again.’

  I see Dan give a silent sigh. He seems to know where this is going before I do. He reaches for a pen, and a receipt. I think of all the times I’ve found these scribbled notes on scraps of paper around the house, the occasional word that, for him, sums up a whole train of thought. The beginnings of a story. A clue.

  ‘That black sports coat, though? That’s important to the officers. Because they needed a witness to say they’d seen a man wearing one at the scene, that night, to make their case. But they couldn’t find one, no matter how hard they looked. So they brought Miss B. back in. And with that clever trick – that swift little manipulation – they made her that witness. It was the last piece of the puzzle. Right after they spoke to Miss B., they went to Mike Philips’s home, and made their arrest.’

  Dan shuffles in his seat, his eyes fixed on the phone. I think about reaching for his hand. But I can’t.

  ‘So – how did they get to Mike? How did they decide they needed their witness – their extremely unreliable witness – to ID him, of all people? I mean, this is the Met. They’ve probably got plenty of other evidence that’s waterti
ght. Maybe the CPS were putting the brakes on, and the Met needed one final thing to persuade CPS to let them pull Mike in. Right?’

  I feel unsteadied, as though I’ve missed a step. I am falling, in slow motion.

  ‘According to the charging documents, police first became aware of Mike Philips after they received an “anonymous tip”, three days after Graham Catton’s murder, from a woman claiming to be a friend of Mike’s. She allegedly told them he’d confessed to a murder while drunk – saying that he thought he’d killed two people, but the local news said it was just one. There was only one murder reported on the local news that week that fit the bill: Graham Catton’s. But before the call handler could ask for more details, the anonymous caller hung up.’

  Dan looks up, and I shrug. This is new to me. No anonymous call was ever mentioned at trial.

  ‘Pretty compelling, you might think,’ Anna Byers goes on. ‘But we’ve seen this before, in plenty of other cases. There’s no such thing as an anonymous tip without a motive behind it. It’s possible that the caller wants justice to be done, sure – but it’s also possible that they’ve got their own reasons for putting someone else in the crosshairs. And in this case – when the Met’s own record of this “anonymous call” lists two different times, several hours apart – it’s worth bearing in mind that there is a legitimate question around whether it ever happened at all. Because one of these officers – PC Rachel O’Hare – was, in fact, already aware of Mike Philips. His was a name she knew well.’

  The music picks up, building to something. I hear the threat in Anna Byers’s voice as she speaks.

  ‘Nine months before his arrest for the murder of Graham Catton, Mike Philips was arrested on a possession charge. A misdemeanour, really – officers found a small bag of cannabis in his pocket during a routine stop-and-search and took him into custody. So far, so normal. But a week later, Mike made a complaint to the Independent Office for Police Conduct – the IOPC – claiming he’d sustained injuries during his arrest, thanks to the officers’ use of unnecessary force. He provided photos, taken by his mother when he finally arrived home, showing cuts and bruising to his face and wrists. I’ve seen these photos, myself, and … they’re not easy to look at. It’s hard to believe they were the result of anything but a brutal assault. And apparently the IOPC agreed. Following an internal investigation by the Met, one of the officers involved – PC David Paulson – was suspended for eight weeks. His suspension began a week before Graham Catton’s murder. Ten days before the anonymous call. And two weeks before PC O’Hare – who, coincidentally, had been partnered with Paulson throughout her training, before she moved over to the homicide team – made Mike Philips an official suspect in the case.’

  ‘Now, it’s possible that this is a coincidence. But for me … it raises doubts. Oh – and the fact that Rachel O’Hare’s sister was, by this point, PC Dave Paulson’s wife? Bingo. We have ourselves one suspicious-looking arrest.’

  Dan sighs through his teeth. ‘Jesus.’ There’s something in his expression that hurts. And it’s only when he speaks again that I realize: it’s relief.

  ‘This isn’t your fault, Hannah,’ he says. ‘This wasn’t … You couldn’t have known any of this.’

  And he’s right. I couldn’t. I didn’t. In this respect, at least, I have nothing to hide. But it’s the first time Dan’s suggested he thinks that I might.

  There is more, of course. Piece by piece, Anna Byers dismantles the case against Mike Philips; the case I’d found so compelling – so easy to believe – at trial.

  The composite sketch drawn from ‘Miss B.’s’ description, drawn after she’d crossed paths with Philips in the police station that day – according to Byers, a slip that happened entirely by design.

  The mobile-phone data – cell-tower evidence that supposedly placed Philips in our home at the time of the murder – actually covering almost a square kilometre of London, including the bar he’d told police he was drinking in that night.

  Even the gloves, glossy with my husband’s blood – even these, Byers shows, weren’t as damning as they’d seemed at the trial. Because, as Byers says, ‘Mike doesn’t dispute that he, at one time, owned these, or similar, gloves. He accepts that there’s a strong likelihood – almost a guarantee – that they’re his.

  ‘The thing is, they’re the only thing linking this supposed murderer to the victim. The crime scene – the Catton home – was swept for DNA. Not a trace of Mike’s was found there. He didn’t leave so much as a fingerprint, or a single hair. In terms of this aspect of the forensic evidence, Mike simply was not there. It is only the gloves that connect them.

  ‘But Graham Catton’s murder took place in September. Philips had no recollection of having seen, or worn, these gloves since the previous winter. Around the time he was arrested for possession of a class C drug and made a complaint against the officer who beat him during his arrest. He doesn’t recall seeing them again until they were held up in front of him, when he was questioned by the officer who wanted him locked away.’

  I see Dan’s mouth open at this. He catches himself before he speaks, but I know – of course – what he was going to say. No recollection? Isn’t that what people say when they don’t want to incriminate themselves?

  By the time Byers reaches the end of her case, I feel like I’m drowning. I look at Dan, his eyes fixed on his phone. Throughout, he’s scoffed and groaned at the appropriate points, in what felt like a kindness – like charity. But he’s pale now. He looks exhausted. Look at me, I will him, silently.

  But he doesn’t. There’s a change in the music: a steady, persistent beat. A slap of footsteps on pavement.

  ‘Let me tell you an alternative story – one I think makes much more sense,’ Anna Byers says, at last. ‘It’s a story about corruption and vengeance. After Mike’s complaint, it was only a matter of time. He had no way of knowing it, but a countdown started, the second he contacted the IOPC. They already had the evidence – a pair of gloves that belonged to him, and a sports coat that didn’t – so for Paulson and O’Hare, it was just a matter of finding the crime. They knew Mike wasn’t in the Catton house that night. But they also knew he was close enough to the scene for them to use cell-tower evidence to place him there. They knew he wasn’t wearing a black sports coat – nor, for the record, was he wearing the grey hoodie Miss B. apparently originally mentioned – but they also knew that they could manipulate their witness into saying he was, and then into describing him for the sketch artist by tampering with the line-up procedure. And they knew they wouldn’t find his DNA at the scene.

  ‘But they didn’t need to. They had access to the house, and to Graham Catton’s blood. They had Mike’s gloves, with his DNA inside them, and they had a black sports coat, almost identical to the one Mike was photographed in, at the time of his previous arrest. They had the pieces. All they needed to do was arrange them into the kind of story a jury would believe. And it worked. It’s been a decade. Mike’s still in prison. And all the while, all the evidence pointing towards an alternative suspect – a much more convincing suspect, who we know was there the night of Graham Catton’s murder – remains undisclosed.

  ‘But not for much longer. That’s next time, on Conviction.’

  17

  Dan presses thumbs to temples; shakes his head. ‘This is ridiculous. It’s a conspiracy theory, dressed up as journalistic integrity. They’re making a case, rather than reporting the facts.’ He looks at me with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘It’s fake news.’

  I force a laugh, though it’s hollow.

  He thumbs my palm, a little harder than usual. As though he’s trying to make a point.

  ‘Hannah,’ he says, gently. ‘If they’re right about any of this, all it proves is that the police didn’t do their jobs.’

  This isn’t a statement that makes me feel any better.

  ‘You can’t hold yourself responsible for that,’ he goes on.

  I feel a knot of frustration gr
owing. Over the years, I’ve come to accept the fact he can’t stand silence; it’s impossible to sit in a room with him and just be. Now, though, it seems like an assault.

  ‘You were a victim in all this.’

  I close my eyes. He’s expecting a response; I can feel it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, finally.

  I’m not entirely sure what, exactly, I’m apologizing for. It doesn’t matter. The words do nothing to alleviate the guilt I feel creeping over my skin. Because, deep down, I knew it wasn’t him. But I wanted to believe it, so I could move on.

  ‘Hannah,’ Dan says. ‘Look at me.’

  I look up. ‘Please, Dan. I need a minute to process all this, so … could you please just shut up? Just this one time. Please.’

  His face crumples, hurt. He lets go of my hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean that. I’m just …’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he says. A lie, of course. It isn’t.

  ‘Dan—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He stands, his chair groaning as it scrapes across the tiles. ‘I need to take a shower, so …’

  ‘Oh, come on – don’t—’

  ‘Seriously, it’s fine.’ He plants a kiss on my head. It’s a way of avoiding my eye. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too,’ I say, as he walks away.

  I close my eyes, forehead pressed to the table. Now he’s gone, I’ve never felt more alone.

  Well what the fuck do you expect????

  I begin typing back, but Sarah is faster.

  You can’t do that, H. Not to him. Not now. I know it’s hard, but you need to contain your inner bitch.

  I laugh, softly, in the silence. When you work out how, can you let me know?