by Dick Francis
‘He seems determined that it should be you,’ he replied.
But even if I had wanted to lead the defence, the trial judge would be likely to ask some telling questions about how I intended to strengthen the defence team, especially at the front. It would be a coded recommendation to get a QC to lead.
The best I might expect was to be appointed as a silk’s junior in the case. As such I might be responsible for doing most of the work. But I would get little of the credit for obtaining an acquittal, while shouldering most of the blame if our client were convicted. Such was the life of a junior.
What was I even thinking about? I told myself. I could not act in this case. The law wouldn’t let me.
Do as you are told.
Next time, I’ll smash your head.
I’ll cut your balls right off.
Someone will get badly hurt.
Oh hell. What do I do?
‘Are you still there?’ Bruce asked.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was thinking.’
‘I’ll contact your clerk in due course, then, I’ve got the number,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ I replied. Was I mad? ‘But Bruce,’ I went on. ‘Will you call me tomorrow and tell me what happens. And where Mitchell is sent. I’d like to go and talk with him.’
‘OK,’ he said, slowly. ‘I suppose that will be all right.’ I could tell from his tone that he didn’t like it.
What a cheek, I thought. It had been me that had given him his celebrity client and now he was becoming protective of his position.
‘Look, Bruce,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to steal your client, whom, you might recall, I gave you in the first place. But I need to speak to Steve Mitchell and may need to do so more than once. If he chooses, and I have no intention of convincing him otherwise, you can act for him throughout, including at trial. All I ask of you is that you engage a brief from my chambers, whether it be me or not. Is that fair?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ he replied, backtracking a little. Perhaps he too had suddenly worked out that Steve Mitchell was my friend and would, on my say-so, drop Mr Bruce Lygon quicker than a red-hot coal. Bruce needed me, not vice versa.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then you will call me?’
‘You bet,’ he said. ‘Straight after the hearing.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Now go and enjoy your dinner. Say happy birthday to your wife.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I will.’
As expected, Steve Mitchell was remanded in custody at the brief hearing at Newbury magistrates’ court at ten the following morning. According to the report on the lunchtime news, he had spoken only to confirm his name and address. No plea had been entered, and none asked for. The report concluded with the fact that Mitchell had been remanded to Bullingdon Prison, near Bicester, to appear again at Oxford Crown Court in seven days’ time.
I was watching the TV in one of the conference rooms in chambers. My conspiracy-to-defraud trial had ended abruptly and unexpectedly when the court had resumed at ten thirty that morning. Accepting the inevitable, the brothers had changed their pleas to guilty in the hope and expectation of getting a lesser sentence. The judge, caught slightly unawares, and having promptly thanked and dismissed the jury, ordered reports on the two men and then adjourned the case for sixteen days. We would reassemble for sentencing two weeks on Friday at ten.
I was pleased. Any victory is good, but one where the defendants change their plea is particularly gratifying as it means that, even though I would never know if I had actually persuaded the jury of their guilt, the defendants themselves were convinced that I had. So, now believing they had no chance of acquittal, they had jumped before they were pushed. And best of all, it also meant that I had two clear weeks that I had expected to spend at Blackfriars Crown Court now available for other things. And that was rare. Trials tended to overrun, not finish early. It felt like the end of term at school.
Arthur had not been around when I had arrived back from court but he was in the clerks’ room when I went through from the conference room and back to my desk.
‘Arthur,’ I said. ‘You might expect a call from a Mr Bruce Lygon. He’s a solicitor in Newbury. He’s acting for Steve Mitchell.’
‘The jockey?’ Arthur asked.
‘One and the same,’ I said. ‘Apparently Mr Mitchell wants me as his counsel.’
‘I’m sure we can find him a silk,’ said Arthur. He wasn’t being discourteous, just realistic.
‘That’s what I told Mr Lygon,’ I said.
Arthur nodded and made a note. ‘I’ll be ready when he calls.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and went on through to my room.
I called Bruce Lygon. He had left a message after the magistrates’ hearing but I needed him to do more.
‘Bruce,’ I said when he answered. ‘I want to visit the crime scene. Can you fix it with the police?’ The lawyers for the accused were entitled to have access to the scene but at the discretion of the police, and not prior to the collection of forensic evidence.
‘With or without me?’ he asked.
‘As you like,’ I said. ‘But as soon as possible, please.’
‘Does this mean you will act for him?’ he asked.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Not yet. It might help me make up my mind.’
‘But only his representatives have access,’ he said.
I knew. ‘If you don’t tell the police,’ I said, ‘then they will never know.’
‘Right,’ he said slowly. I felt that he was confused. He was not the only one.
‘And can you arrange an interview for me with Mitchell at Bullingdon?’
‘But you’re not…’ he tailed off. ‘I suppose it might be possible,’ he said finally.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow would be great.’
‘Right,’ he said again. ‘I’ll get back to you then.’
Bruce had been a lucky choice. He was so keen to be representing his celebrity client that he seemed happy to overlook a few departures from proper procedure, to bend the rules just a little. I decided not to tell Arthur what was going on. He wouldn’t have been the least bit flexible.
Steve Mitchell was very agitated when I met him at noon the following day at Bullingdon Prison. I currently didn’t own a car as I found it an unnecessary expense, especially with the congestion charge and the ever-rising cost of parking in London. However, I probably spent at least half of what I saved on hiring cars from the Hertz office on Fulham Palace Road. This time they had provided me with a bronze-coloured Ford Mondeo that had easily swallowed up the fifty or so miles to Oxfordshire.
‘God, Perry,’ Steve said as he came into the stark prison interview room reserved for lawyers to meet with their clients. ‘Get me out of this bloody place.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said, not wishing to dash his hopes too quickly.
He marched round the room. ‘I didn’t bloody do it,’ he said. ‘I swear to you I never did it.’
‘Just sit down,’ I said. Reluctantly, he ceased his pacing and sat on a grey steel stool beside the grey steel table and I sat on a similar stool opposite him. These functional items, along with two more identical stools, were securely fastened with bolts to the bare grey concrete floor. The room was about eight foot square with sickly cream walls. The only light came from a large, energy-efficient fluorescent bulb surrounded by a wire cage in the centre of the white ceiling. Absolutely no expense had been wasted on comfort.
‘I didn’t do it,’ he said again. ‘I tell you, I’m being framed.’
As it happened, I believed him. In the past I’d had clients who had sworn blind that they were innocent and were being framed, and experience had taught me not to believe most of them. One client had once sworn to me on his mother’s life that he was innocent of setting fire to his own house for the insurance money, only for the said mother to confess that she and her son had planned it together. When she gave evidence against him in court, he had shouted from the dock that he’d kill her. So much for her life.
However, in Steve’s case I had other reasons for believing him.
‘Who’s framing you?’ I asked him.
‘I’ve got no bloody idea,’ he said. ‘That’s for you to find out.’
‘Who is Julian Trent?’ I asked him calmly.
‘Who?’ he said.
‘Julian Trent,’ I repeated.
‘Never heard of him,’ Steve said. Not a flicker in his eyes, not a fraction of hesitation in his voice. Asking questions for a living, I believed I was a reasonable judge of when someone was lying. But I was not infallible. Over the years I had frequently believed people who were telling me lies, but it was not often that I discovered that someone I thought was lying was actually being truthful. Either Steve was being straight with me, or he was fairly good at lying.
‘Who is he?’ Steve asked.
‘No one important,’ I said. It was my turn to lie. ‘I just wondered if you knew him.’
‘Should I?’ he asked.
‘No reason you should,’ I said. I decided to change the subject. ‘So why do the police think you killed Scot Barlow?’
‘Because they just do,’ he answered unhelpfully.
‘But they must have some evidence,’ I said.
‘It seems that it was my bloody pitchfork stuck into the little bastard.’ I could imagine that Steve referring to Barlow as ‘the little bastard’ hadn’t gone down too well with the police. ‘And would I be so stupid to have killed the little bastard with my own pitchfork? At least I would have then taken the bloody thing home again.’
‘What else do they have?’ I asked him.
‘Something about spots of his blood and some of his hairs being found in my car, and his blood being on my boots. It’s all bloody nonsense. I was never in his house.’
‘So where exactly were you when he was killed?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They haven’t told me when he actually died. But they did ask me what I was doing between one and six on Monday afternoon. I told them I was riding at Ludlow races. But I wasn’t. The meeting was abandoned due to the bloody course being waterlogged.’
That was really stupid, I thought. Lying wouldn’t have exactly endeared him to the police, and it was so easy for them to check.
‘So where were you?’ I asked him again.
He seemed reluctant to tell me, so I sat and waited in silence.
‘At home,’ he said eventually.
‘On your own?’ I pressed him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was alone reading all afternoon.’
Now he was lying. I was sure of it and I didn’t like it.
‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘If someone was with you, they would be able to give you an alibi.’
He sat silently.
‘Do you know what the word “alibi” means?’ I asked him. He shook his head. ‘It’s Latin. It means “somewhere else”. An unshakeable alibi is proof of innocence.’ I tried to lighten the atmosphere. ‘And even you, Steve, couldn’t be in two places at once. Are you sure you were alone all afternoon?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, affronted. ‘Are you saying I’m a liar?’ He stood up and looked at me.
‘No, of course not,’ I said. But he was. ‘I’m just trying to make sure you remembered correctly.’
I rather hoped he would sit down again but he paced round the room like a caged tiger.
‘I’ll tell you what I do remember,’ he said to my back. ‘I remember that I’ve never been in Scot Barlow’s house. Not on Monday. Not ever. I didn’t even know where the little bastard lived.’
‘What about the text message?’ I said. ‘The one saying you were coming round to sort him out.’
‘I didn’t send any bloody text message,’ he replied. ‘And certainly not to him.’
Surely, I thought, the police must have the phone records.
He walked around in front of me and sat down again.
‘It doesn’t look too good, does it?’ he said.
‘No, Steve, it doesn’t.’ We sat there in silence for a few moments. ‘Who would gain from Barlow’s death?’ I asked him.
‘Reno Clemens must be laughing all the way to the winning post,’ he said. ‘With Barlow dead and me in here, he’s got rid of both of us.’
I thought it unlikely that Clemens would go to the extent of murder and a frame-up to simply get rid of his racing rivals. But hadn’t someone once tried to break the leg of a skating rival for that very reason?
‘I didn’t do it, you know.’ He looked up at me. ‘Not that I’m sorry he’s dead.’
‘What was there between you two?’ I asked. ‘Why did you hate him so much?’ I thought that I wouldn’t ask him about the incident in the showers at Sandown. Not yet. Much better, at the moment, if absolutely no one knew I had seen Barlow lying in the shower, and what he had said to me.
‘I hated him because he was a sneaky little bastard,’ Steve said.
‘But just how was he sneaky?’ I asked.
‘He just was.’
‘Look, Steve,’ I said. ‘If you want me to help you, you will have to tell me everything. Now why was he sneaky?’
‘He would sneak to the stewards if anyone did anything wrong.’
‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘Did he ever sneak on you?’
‘What, to the stewards?’
‘Yes,’ I said, imploring. ‘To the stewards.’
‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘Not on me to the stewards, but he was a bastard nevertheless.’
‘But why?’ I almost shouted at him, spreading my arms and hands open wide.
He stood up again and turned away from me. ‘Because,’ he said in a rush, ‘he told my bloody wife I was having an affair.’
Ah, I thought. That would account for the hatred. Steve went on without turning round. ‘Then she left me and took my kids away.’
Ah, again.
‘How did Barlow know you were having an affair?’ I asked.
‘I was having it with his sister,’ he said.
‘Do the police know about this?’
‘I bleeding well hope not,’ he said, turning round. ‘Now that would give me a bloody motive, wouldn’t it?’
‘When did all this happen?’ I asked him.
‘Years ago,’ he said.
‘Are you still having the affair with Barlow’s sister?’ I asked.
‘Nah, it was just a fling,’ he said. ‘Finished right there and then, but Natalie, that’s my wife, she wouldn’t come home. Went and married some bloody Australian and they now live in Sydney. With my kids. I ask you, how am I meant to see them when they’re half the world away? It’s all that bastard Barlow’s fault.’
I thought that a jury would not necessarily agree with his assessment.
‘And what about the betting slips found on the prongs of the fork?’ I said.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Steve said.
‘But they had your name on them,’ I said.
‘Yeah, and would I be so stupid as to leave them stuck on the bloody fork if I had planted it in Barlow’s chest? Don’t be bloody daft. It’s obviously a sodding stitch-up. Surely you can see that?’
It did seem to me that the police must think Steve to be very stupid indeed if they were so certain he had done it based on that. Or perhaps they had forensic evidence that we didn’t yet know about. We would discover in due course, during pre-trial disclosure but, for the time being, we could only guess. Either way, it would be worth pursuing the matter at trial.
‘Were they, in fact, your betting slips?’ I asked him. We both knew that gambling on horses was against the terms of his riding licence.
‘They may have been,’ he said. ‘But then they wouldn’t have had my name on them. I’m not that bloody stupid.’ He laughed. ‘Least of my worries now, I suppose.’
‘Is it true that Barlow used to go through other jocks’ pockets looking for betting slips?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I doubt it. It was probabl
y me that started that rumour.’ He grinned at me. ‘I’d have said anything to get at him.’
In truth, it was Steve Mitchell, and not Scot Barlow, who had been the sneaky little bastard.
‘I hope it wasn’t that rumour that got him killed,’ I said.
Steve looked at me. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said.
CHAPTER 5
On Thursday night I stayed with my trainer, Paul Newington, at Great Milton.
I had left Steve Mitchell feeling very sorry for himself at Bullingdon Prison.
‘When can you get me out of here?’ he’d asked me as we had shaken hands.
‘I really don’t know, Steve,’ I’d said. ‘It is most unlikely that you would get bail on a murder charge.’
‘But I didn’t do it,’ he had repeated yet again.
‘The police don’t see it like that,’ I’d said. ‘And I’m afraid the court will take more notice of them than of you.’
‘But you will try?’ he had implored.
I had privately thought it would be a complete waste of my time.
‘I’ll get Bruce Lygon to make another application,’ I’d told him.
‘I want you to do it,’ he had demanded.
But I knew it wasn’t always a good idea for a barrister to appear at a bail hearing. It was seen as overkill. In some eyes, it tended to make the accused look guilty. Sometimes that very fact could swing the decision against the award. And anyway, bail in murder cases was as rare as hen’s teeth.
‘I don’t really think it would make any difference,’ I’d told him.
‘So when can I expect to get out?’ he had asked in near desperation.
‘Steve,’ I’d said. ‘I think you had better prepare yourself for quite a lengthy stretch in here. The trial date will likely not be set for at least six months and it could be as long as a year away.’
‘A year!’ he’d exclaimed, going white. ‘Oh my God. I’ll go mad.’
‘I’ll see what I can do to get you out sooner, but I don’t want to build your hopes up too much.’
I had looked at him standing there with drooping shoulders, appearing much shorter than his five foot six. He may have been an arrogant ego maniac who annoyed most of those he encountered, but there was no doubt that he was one of the best in hischosen tough and physically demanding profession. He was basically a harmless victim and I was sure he was no murderer. And he didn’t deserve to have been thrust into this nightmare.