by Simon Hall
‘Yes, sir.’
Wishart paused, flicked a ginger curl back under his wig and gestured to the dock. ‘And did you see any sign of my clients?’
‘Err… no, sir.’
‘None at all?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Not a trace?’
‘No.’
‘No hint whatsoever?’
‘No, sir. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.’
Wishart’s face warmed. Behind him, Dan could see Adam had closed his eyes.
‘Really, Mr Groves?’ the barrister boomed. ‘I do apologise, I must have misheard. What is your profession again?’
‘I’m a reporter, sir. A journalist.’
‘I’m sorry, I thought you must be an experienced detective. An accomplished investigator, no less.’
‘No, look, what I was saying—’
‘It’s just…’ the barrister interrupted smoothly, ‘No one saw my clients there. As the trial has heard, there was no evidence they were there. No fingerprints, no footprints, no forensics – nothing. But your special insight into the case means you can stand here and tell us they may have been there?’
‘Well, they could have… err… fled.’
Wishart turned to the jury and raised an arm. ‘Fled?’ he mocked. ‘Fled? Past a hundred police officers? Who were on high alert, busily searching for them? Past police dogs? Past roadblocks? Past a helicopter? I think perhaps the only way they could have fled successfully is if they had one of those devices in which Dr Who travels through space and time – a Tardis, I believe?’
Even some of the jury chuckled. Dan caught a warning glare from Adam and just about succeeded in biting back a retort.
***
Even Adam agreed that the case was finely balanced. Fifty-fifty was his estimate of the chances of a conviction.
The fire in the white van had consumed any forensics there and they’d found nothing useful in the cottage. The intensity of the blaze and thousands of gallons of water from the firefighters’ hoses had destroyed any evidence. The forensics officers had done their best, but eventually had to concede the scene was hopeless.
The recording of the ransom demand provided no assistance. That there was someone in the background when Annette spoke was clear, but analysis came up with the unhelpful conclusion that it could have been anyone.
The kidnappers had been clever. Adam worked up a theory about how they’d got away, but that was all it was, just a suspicion.
With only one road into East Prawle, he thought Martha had been hiding somewhere, watching it. When she saw the police approaching, she’d called her brother. They used untraceable pay-as-you-go mobiles, discarded later when they escaped.
They had petrol and kindling ready to destroy the van. Brian had probably been living in it to avoid the risk of leaving any traces in the cottage. Together, the Edwards had dumped Annette in the storeroom. Martha left to watch the road and Brian camped in the van, returning occasionally to check on Annette, to give her water and force her to make the ransom call.
Dan had wondered whether they intended to kill Annette? It was a moot point, the subject of some heated rows between the detectives and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Adam thought they probably didn’t mean to kill her, that Martha would have expected Annette to be found before fire razed the cottage. But even so, he argued strongly it was a case of attempted murder; to be so reckless, starting the blaze with her lying tied up in the storeroom.
Adam originally wanted that to be the charge, but the CPS had vetoed it. It would be hard enough to get a conviction for kidnapping on the available evidence.
How had Brian escaped? It wasn’t by car, the only road out of East Prawle was sealed. He was physically very fit and had possibly fifteen minutes head start on the police.
He could, Adam suggested, have simply walked. The area was networked with paths. It was a fine day and he would have blended in with the hundreds of other ramblers enjoying the Devon countryside. The warm weather meant a hat and sunglasses wouldn’t have looked out of place; an excellent disguise.
A rowing boat had been discovered, sunk in a creek near the town of Salcombe, around four miles from East Prawle. Adam suspected Brian may have taken that and rowed to safety. But the boat had long been scuttled by the time it was found and any evidence destroyed. It was another theory that could never be proved.
The case fell back on circumstantial evidence. The Edwards had disappeared for the couple of days of the kidnapping, only resurfacing afterwards and appearing astonished at being arrested. They refused to answer any questions, just as Adam predicted.
Silence had served them well when interrogated about the attack on Albert Fisher. They expected it to do the same now.
The siblings’ mobile phones were switched off for the whole time Annette was missing so there were no location traces to help the investigation. The CCTV of Annette being abducted from Catherine Street showed two indistinct figures who an expert testified were similar in build and manner to Martha and Brian Edwards. There were shoe prints from the scene matching their sizes, but the shoes themselves were never recovered.
There was also intelligence from a couple of police sources that the Edwards had been boasting of some spectacular project in the days before the kidnapping. But the informants were criminals, unwilling to give evidence. It was all temptingly suggestive but a very long way from conclusive.
***
The prosecution’s best hope was an alleged cell confession by Brian Edwards. He was being held on remand in Exeter Prison and had shared a cell with a young drug addict and burglar called Ernie Smith. Brian had taken some of Smith’s heroin and afterwards talked about the big story of the year, that young girl being kidnapped and what a fine job it was.
There was a whole morning of legal argument about whether the jury should even hear Smith’s evidence. He was a career criminal, hoping to win some reduction in his sentence by inventing a story, said the defence. No, a man of dubious past, but one who had finally decided to do the right thing, claimed the prosecution.
Finally, Judge Templar ruled that Smith’s testimony would be heard. Adam’s sigh of relief carried across the courtroom. The odds on a conviction had changed in an instant. But it was the falsest of dawns.
Smith was young, nervous and faltering. His hair was cut short to the point of extinction, one ear was perforated with a line of metal hoops and he hadn’t shaved. In fairness, possibly as a gesture to the importance of the moment, he had at least the decency to wear his best track suit.
‘You are a thief, aren’t you Mr Smith?’ was Wishart’s gentle opening.
‘It’s just – well, I didn’t have much in life and—’
‘I suspect some members of the jury believe that at some point they didn’t have much in life either. But that didn’t prompt them to begin breaking into people’s homes.’
‘I was going through a bad time.’
‘As do many people, Mr Smith, but they don’t turn to crime.’
‘I want to set the record straight and—’
‘And you’re a drug addict.’
‘It’s not easy in prison.’
‘For whom no one is responsible for you being there but yourself, Mr Smith.’
‘Well, yeah, but—’
‘And you are a self-confessed liar, are you not?’
‘Yeah, but who doesn’t tell the odd lie?’
Whishart let the words wander through the air, before turning to the jury box.
‘And that, members of the jury, says it all. Ask yourselves this – can you really put any trust in this man?’
Based upon the look of the two lines of faces in the jury box, Dan began sketching out a script for a not guilty verdict.
Chapter Sixteen
In his years of observing the stately processes of the courts, Dan had come to the conclusion that he was, at very best, disillusioned with the legal system.
What galled him most was th
e way the law cared for those who should be at the heart of its work. But for a victim, the English concept of justice was entirely capable of piling anguish upon suffering, torment upon ordeal.
It was the night after a rape trial that Dan found himself sitting on the great blue sofa in the flat, sipping whisky and trying to forget what he had witnessed. The woman, whose misery lurked everywhere before his eyes, was in her early 30s, married with a young son, and was known in court as Wendy.
It was an early evening in the wintertime. She had been walking home from a coffee with a friend after work and was set upon. Wendy was pulled from a street near her house, dragged into a lockup garage and raped.
The defence barrister questioned her at length about the attack, and unsurprisingly she broke down and was unable to continue. Without her testimony, as is so often the way, the case collapsed. The alleged attacker, a body builder with a neck like a rhino’s and an attitude to match, swaggered out of court and made for the nearest bar to celebrate. As for Wendy, she had been left sitting in a bare ante room, crying.
Before finally going to bed, Dan looked up victim in the dictionary. He stared at the words, before picking up a pen, crossing them through and scrawling, Person to be treated with contempt, preferably humiliated, and left as a pile of human wreckage.
Dan was aware of his views and careful when reporting that most emotional moment of a trial, the victim’s evidence. So, the morning Annette took the stand was one for which he had been preparing himself.
In the weeks that followed the kidnapping, he had got to know a little more of Annette. Dan’s role in the inquiry was largely over, involved as he was, as a kind of freelance investigator.
Now it was for the real detectives to build a case against the Edwards. But, at the invitation of Roger Newman, Dan had been asked to meet Annette, to be thanked for his help in saving her. It was an encounter he tried not to think about, given the woman he found.
The meeting was in the MIR, just a few feet from where her picture had stood on one of the felt boards, and it was brief. To say Annette had changed was to compare a shift in the weather from Mediterranean summer to Antarctic winter.
***
It was Katrina who took the lead in questioning Annette. But even with her experience, she was faced by damage she had seldom before encountered. The interviews were marked by long silences and frequent breaks.
Dan only heard about it second hand from Adam at a couple of their regular discussions. During the last, over lunch, he had to ask to hear no more. Some roads are best left untraveled.
A psychologist had carried out an assessment. It took several months to prepare, despite the urgent need, because it was many weeks before Annette could speak about what she had gone through. And when finally they came, ‘Sledgehammer’ Stephens findings were as devoid of subtlety as his nickname dictated –
The subject is suffering SEVERE EMOTIONAL TRAUMA, Stephens wrote, as usual indulging himself in his fondness for capitalisation. Her mental fragility is STARK and a matter of EXTREME CONCERN.
Counselling and treatment appear to be having LITTLE EFFECT.
Her symptoms are classically those of someone who has suffered a NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE. In simple terms – POST TRAUMATIC SHOCK.
The sense of helplessness is PALPABLE. As a consequence, a growing state of PARANOIA has taken hold.
Annette has been suffering with constant MOOD SWINGS. She has a CONTINUAL, HEIGHTENED and EXAGGERATED fear of being abducted again. No amount of work has been able to ameliorate this.
She is experiencing VIVID and REPEATED NIGHTMARES. Sleep is intermittent and elusive, contributing a PHYSICAL FRAILTY to her psychological problems. She hardly eats. The deterioration in her CONTINUES.
FLASHBACKS are commonplace, and formed with EXTREME DETAIL and REALISM. They are particularly triggered by smell, a reaction to the petrol which was set around her, one of Annette’s most fearful memories of the abduction.
Annette seldom ventures out. All strangers are viewed as POTENTIAL ENEMIES. She is DISTANT, WITHDRAWN and DIFFICULT TO REACH. She has an almost insurmountable inability to discuss and share her feelings.
I note one further area of EXTREME CONCERN. Annette has, on two occasions now, confessed to suicidal thoughts. She should be CAREFULLY MONITORED, to ensure these do not grow and take an irreversible hold.
‘17 years old,’ was Adam’s comment, as he and Dan left the pub. ‘She had everything in life to look forward to. And now...’
***
When someone suffers a crime the system insists they relive it, and never just the once. First they must be interviewed by the police, and a statement taken. Afterwards, there are many follow up visits.
And then comes the climax of the torment: the court case. Yet again the victim has to go through what happened, and in a very public arena.
Even after all that comes an added sting, just for good measure. The final revisiting of the crime is usually carried out in full sight of the perpetrator, and with only a few metres between them.
So it was for Annette. As in the witness box, the young woman stood, breathless, hands gripping the curve of the carved wooden rail. And there she waited to relive her ordeal one more time.
Chapter Seventeen
On this mid-morning of a kind September day, the sun filled the skylights of Courtroom Number Three. As if they had been set, ready for this moment, the brightest of the natural spotlights fell directly onto the witness box and the 17-year-old woman standing there.
Judge Templar produced a judicial smile; one of those intended to show warmth and understanding, but which never quite convince.
‘Ms Newman, the court is aware of the ordeal you have suffered. We have no interest in adding to it. If at any point you would like a break, please say. Mr Munroe will take you through your evidence.’
The prosecution barrister was a short, chubby man, with a slightly lopsided wig. Stature being seen as a strength in legal circles, Munroe had borrowed a trick from his female counterparts. He wore bespoke shoes with stacked heels.
He began the examination gently in a rich, baritone voice, taking Annette through her statement. For a victim of such a crime, it was remarkably short.
There was little she could recall about the abduction itself. And in the hours afterwards, she was kept tied up and blindfolded, had no recollection of anything which might be seen as real evidence.
The only detail upon which Munroe fixed was Annette’s belief that two people were involved in the kidnapping. One was driving the van, the other in the back with her. The barrister held a long look with the jury, and then pointedly let his eyes slide over to the Edwards.
Being thin on facts, the majority of Munroe’s questioning concentrated on Annette’s feelings. Dan had seen it time and again. Everything the best of advocates did was designed to win the sympathy of the jury.
‘Forgive me for this question,’ Munroe said. ‘But some could perhaps think you came out of all this entirely unharmed?’
Annette stared at him. Her complexion, pale throughout the trial, had turned to milk in the witness box.
‘Unharmed?’
‘Yes.’
‘As if – I didn’t suffer at all?’
‘Just so.’
And now came a pause. There had been many in Annette’s testimony as she struggled with the recollections, but this felt different. It was the wait before the step into the land of shadow.
‘I did suffer – I have suffered.’
‘I appreciate from the medical report that it’s something you find hard to talk about,’ Munroe replied, gently. ‘But can you try to give us an idea?’
Another hesitation in the thick stillness of the courtroom. But when the words emerged, they came in a tumble, a rush of release.
‘I hate the world! I daren’t go out. I’m so scared. I keep thinking it’s all going to happen again. I used to have loads of friends. Now I don’t have any. I just watch TV. I think about what happened all the t
ime. The only chance to escape is when I try to sleep. But even then it all comes back again. I’m afraid to sleep! But I’m afraid to be awake too, because it’s always there. It’s like, well… I’m just afraid to live.’
The tears were forming and Annette dabbed at them with a sleeve. The brightness of the court, the mix of sunshine and fluorescent strips channelled the light onto her cheekbones.
They were once so very fine, had seen her the subject of a couple of photo-shoots when she was sixteen. But with her suffering, they had tightened to gauntness.
‘I’m sorry that this is upsetting,’ Munroe continued, sympathetically. ‘But it’s important for the jury to understand this was not a story with a simple happy ending – you being rescued and returned safely to your father.’
One of the jurors, an older woman, was wiping her eyes with a lace handkerchief. In the dock, the Edwards sat still, listening. Roger Newman was again bent forward, only his face raised to his daughter.
Munroe cleared his throat and said quietly, ‘During all this, you were never physically assaulted, were you?’
‘I was – touched.’
‘The fingers on your skin that you told us about? The tongue?’
Annette gulped. ‘Yes.’
‘Unpleasant, of course. But some might think it’s not sufficient to truly torment a person.’
She pulled at an ear lobe and reached for a glass of water. ‘Take your time, Ms Newman,’ Templar intervened.
Annette managed a couple of trembling sips and set the glass back down. The thud was loud in the quiet of the courtroom, amplified by the microphone above the witness box.
‘I don’t know how long I was held,’ she said. ‘They tell me it was less than a day. But it felt so much longer. And every second, every minute…’
The words faded. Munroe waited, then prompted, ‘Yes?’
‘It felt like I was going to be… to be…’
‘Yes?’
‘Raped! Strangled! Beaten! Murdered! I knew he was there. He was with me all the time. I could hear him. I could feel him. Looking at me. His eyes all over me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he was going to do to me. Every second I thought it would come. I was waiting for the hands on my shirt, ripping it open. On my jeans, pulling them down. Every second, every single second I was waiting, expecting it to come.’