‘He wouldn’t answer some questions at first, sir, but he became more co-operative.’
‘And when PC Allen had written out his answers, he read it over, is that so?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And then he wrote this piece at the bottom — the caption — in his own writing?’
‘Yes, sir. We have a card with the text on and he copied it out.’
‘And then he signed the document?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sergeant, was there any indication, during the entire interview, that my client was in any way unwell, or did not understand what was happening?’
‘None at all, sir. It all happened as I have described.’
A witness who is able to completely deny something will do so. He will say, ‘No.’ When you get long answers you are probably dealing with a liar. For the first time I thought Sawney might be telling the truth.
‘Would it surprise you, sergeant, to learn that my client says that he has almost no recollection of that interview, of making any statement, or of writing the caption, or signing the document?’
The officer eyed Sawney in the dock. ‘I have no idea what the state of his mind or his memory may be at the present time, sir.’
PC Allen was no more helpful, merely echoing his partner’s answers. Then we had the custody sergeant. He produced the Person In Custody form and explained how the two officers had presented Sawney at his desk and he had gone through the statutory procedure. When Sawney had complained of dizziness, the sergeant had called the divisional surgeon, who had examined Sawney and cleared him for interview. There being no interview room available, he had agreed with the arresting officers that they should fall back on the old procedure.
I examined the Person In Custody sheet before rising to cross-examine.
‘Sergeant,’ I began, ‘was my client apparently well when he was first brought to you?’
‘He was trembling, sir, but some people do when they’ve been arrested. I had no reason to suppose he was sick until he complained that he felt dizzy.’
‘It says on the sheet that the arresting officers explained that they wished you to authorise the holding of my client in custody so that they could obtain evidence by questioning him. Right?’
‘Yes, sir. That’s the usual reason.’
‘He then complained of dizziness and you called the surgeon?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘In the personal property listed on the form there are shown “one small brown bottle of tablets” and “one small white bottle of tablets”. Do you recall what tablets they were?’
He shook his head. ‘No, sir. It was months ago and I have no recollection.’
‘What did you do with them?’
‘I put them in a property bag, zipped it up and locked it. He had them returned to him when he was bailed. His signature for them is on the form.’
‘Did the surgeon see them?’
‘Yes, sir. I drew his attention to them.’
‘And the surgeon advised you that, in his opinion, my client was fit for interview?’
‘Yes, sir. He told me that the suspect could be interviewed.’
‘In fact, sergeant, that must have been your decision on the surgeon’s advice. You are personally responsible at law for that decision, are you not?’
‘Well, yes, sir.’
‘When the interview ended, and my client was brought back to your desk to be charged and bailed, did you notice anything unusual about him then, sergeant?’
‘It was a very busy time, sir. I had been concerned with his state before the interview because that was my duty, but I really don’t remember anything about him afterwards.’
‘So, sergeant, if he’d come out of the interview with his clothing torn, two black eyes and blood all over his face you wouldn’t have noticed?’
‘Mr Tyroll!’ snapped the Major. ‘What is the purpose of that question? Are you suggesting that your client was assaulted during the interview?’
‘I am simply trying to determine, Your Worships, the extent of the sergeant’s care for persons in custody. I have reminded him that he is personally responsible for suspects’ fitness for interview. He is also personally responsible for the health and safety of detainees at all times while they are in custody.’
‘He knows that,’ said Billingham. ‘Get on with it and try to stick to the point.’
The prosecutor closed his case with the custody sergeant and we adjourned for lunch.
Chapter 27
Traditional lawyers’ wisdom says that the Defence case never looks better than at the end of the Prosecution case. After that it’s usually all downhill and that’s without having Sawney as your only witness.
Police officers give evidence all the time. They learn how to do it. It’s part of their professional expertise. Civilians are amateurs and they worry about appearing in the witness box. They think they’re going to be made to look stupid and dishonest by smartass lawyers for the other side.
There are a few ground rules and if you stick to them a hostile advocate won’t make much of you. First of all, keep your answers short. If you ramble on and try to explain things, you’ve far more chance of contradicting yourself or telling the crossexaminer something he didn’t know. Secondly, if you can answer with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, do so. If you can’t, then there are only a few other safe answers. They are, ‘I can’t remember’, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I didn’t hear/understand your question’. Finally keep your temper and don’t argue.
Sawney knows all this, if only because I’ve reminded him every time I’ve represented him. He knows it, but he didn’t do it.
He was uppity with me and kept trying to run on and explain things out of order and when I sat down the Prosecutor had a field day. Sawney dodged, argued, back-tracked, blethered on, snarled and fudged. Sometimes he didn’t recall anything about the interview, sometimes he did; sometimes he had signed the statement, sometimes he couldn’t remember. I just stared out of the window and wished I’d taken up digging ditches for a living.
It ended at last and I got my chance to put in the doctor’s statement. I admit it sounded good. He said that he’d treated Sawney since childhood and that, in recent years, his patient had complained of increasing dizzy spells and fainting fits. He had prescribed medication for them (he didn’t say when). He believed that Sawney suffered from a genetic condition which he called ‘phenyl-cetonic’. It affects the chemistry of the blood and creates a predisposition to epilepsy, as well as causing prematurely grey hair. He believed that his patient might well have developed epilepsy and was having tests done. In his opinion, an epileptic suffered such severe disturbance of the brain during even a minor attack that he should not be asked to make any consequential decision or sign any document for as long as twenty-four hours afterwards.
Which was fine, as far as it went, but it only went as far as saying that Sawney might have this weird genetic condition, that he might have developed epilepsy as a result, and that — if he had — his statement was worthless. All very conditional. Still, it was all written in nice long words and it seemed to impress Their Worships.
Patterson, the Prosecutor, was still sulking about the medical evidence. He popped up and announced that he had the police surgeon outside and he would like the court’s permission to call him in rebuttal of my medical report.
The clerk shook his head. ‘Mr Patterson,’ he reproved him, ‘you know better than that. Had you taken the opportunity to object to Mr Tyroll’s Section Nine statement, we should have had his doctor here for you to cross-examine him if you wished. You might also have called your own medical evidence. Indeed, forewarned as you were of the nature of the Defence evidence, I’m surprised that you didn’t call the surgeon anyway. I shall have to advise Their Worships that it’s too late now.’
Patterson sat down and sulked. We made our closing remarks, me leaning heavily on the doctor’s report. Their Worships retired for a smoke, a cup of tea, biscuits and
to consider their verdict. Sawney sat in the dock and scowled at the police officers. I played hangman against myself on my notepad and lost.
The magistrates came back at last. Major Billingham leaned forward over the high bench and clasped his hands in front of him, clearing his throat.
‘We have had some difficulties with this case,’ he began. ‘It seems to us that the defendant was quite properly arrested on suspicion and taken to be questioned. The custody sergeant acted entirely properly in calling in the divisional surgeon when the suspect made a complaint of dizziness and he could have done no other than accept the doctor’s advice that the suspect was fit for interview. We place no blame upon the police doctor, who did not have the detailed knowledge of the defendant’s own family doctor and cannot be expected to come across rare genetic disorders when he is called to a police station. With hindsight, it might have been better if Mr Tyroll’s suggestion had been adopted and the defendant bailed to be interviewed on another occasion, but we appreciate the pressures upon our police to clear up detected crimes as fast as possible.’
Where this was going I was not sure, but it was the first time Billlingham had ever approved anything I had said and he was carefully letting everyone off the hook. I hoped that would include Sawney.
‘We are entirely satisfied that what happened during the interview was exactly as the two officers have told us, but we cannot be sure of the defendant’s perception of those events after hearing his doctor’s report. Epilepsy is a dreadful affliction, and we sympathise deeply with those who suffer from it. Bearing in mind the doctor’s strictures about the disturbance of the brain and the dangers of allowing a sufferer to take important decisions after even a minor episode, we cannot say that we are satisfied that his statement should be accepted as true and intentional. It is nobody’s fault, but it is unfortunate that his medication was taken from him at the police station, though we understand the reasons why. Because of our unease about his perception of the interview, and for that reason only, we find the defendant Not Guilty.’
Not a word about the strange revival of the old interview format which meant we had no tape-recording. Nobody’s fault, eh? Still, I’d won.
Sawney was out of the dock as fast as a rat, hissing in my ear, ‘I want to sue them for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment!’
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘The Bench has just said that everybody acted purely properly. Go home and say a very big thank you to your doctor.’
He scowled at me and left without another word.
In the lobby Patterson caught my arm and introduced me to the police doctor. ‘He can tell you what those two bottles of pills were,’ he said.
‘Codeine and aspirin,’ the doctor said. ‘I jotted it down in my notes.’
I thanked him, grinned at Patterson and left. I don’t know if Sawney was guilty. It’s none of my business, anyway. I have to work with what he told me. Still — you wonder. When I first received the medical report I had a long search to find out about ‘phenyl-cetonic’ mutation. Apparently it causes eczema as well, which Sawney hasn’t got, and the hair goes grey in childhood, which his didn’t, but it may cause mental disturbance in adulthood, so maybe he has got it, and then there was that dodgy use of the old interview procedure. Maybe he really was innocent.
A day in court with Sawney, win or lose, exhausts and depresses me, so I called briefly at my office, told them the result and caught a cab home.
Sheila couldn’t understand my mood. ‘You won, didn’t you?’ she said.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I have a nasty suspicion that a cunning family doctor and an unscrupulous liar have just combined to get a petty thief out of his just deserts.’
‘I thought you weren’t supposed to worry about that,’ she said.
‘I’m not supposed to pre-judge my client, and I’m not an expert on genetic mutations, but I just can’t escape the feeling that I have been used as a mouthpiece for a cynical scam, and I don’t have to like it.’
‘It must have happened before,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and I’ve no doubt it will happen again, but I still don’t have to like it. Pour me a large drink, please.’
Somehow the request made the doorbell ring and John Parry appear on the front doorstep. ‘Make that two large drinks!’ I called to Sheila.
‘What about your clue?’ Sheila demanded as she brought us our glasses. ‘Any results?’
‘That’s what I called about,’ John said. ‘There were no prints on the tin, as we suspected, so we’ve opened it.’
He pulled an envelope from his pocket and shook the contents on to the table, a number of capsules of two different types.
‘Not more bloody pills!’ I groaned. ‘So, he takes stimulants for Dutch courage or sedatives to steady his nerves and he buys them illegally. Where does that get us?’
John shook his head. ‘Not so,’ he said. These are prescription jobs, so they may lead us to him. His little round tin was divided inside by a slip of cardboard and each half contained a clutch of different pills packed in cotton wool,’
‘So what are they, then?’ I asked.
He reached in his pocket for a slip of paper and read out, ‘Nortriptyline and haloperidol.’
‘I’m not the wiser,’ I said.
‘Well, the lab in Brum aren’t doctors, but they say that nortriptyline is an anti-depressant.’
‘What about the other?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ve been trying to get hold of the police surgeon.’
‘What about Macintyre?’ I asked. ‘He’ll be at home. He doesn’t have surgery or patients to call on.’ Macintyre was the town’s pathologist, an old crony of both me and John.
I rang Macintyre’s number and found him at home.
‘Mac,’ I said, ‘can you identify a couple of drugs for John Parry and me?’
‘What d’ye mean — identify?’ he asked.
‘I mean we know what they are, but we don’t know what they do.’
‘I’m not the best person to ask,’ he said. ‘I dinnae prescribe for my patients.’
‘Come on, Doc. Some of your patients die of what’s been prescribed for them and some of them take other things. You must know about the things people take.’
‘Tell us what they are,’ he demanded.
I read John’s note to him. Macintyre muttered at the other end of the line. ‘Nortriptyline’, he said, ‘is an anti-depressive drug, I believe. Give me a moment with the Pharmacopoeia. I’ll look them up.’
He went away for a couple of minutes then returned with a sound of rustling pages.
‘It says here’, he said, ‘that nortriptyline is an anti-depressant, as I thought, and haloperidol is an anti-psychotic.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means that it relieves symptoms caused by malfunctions of the brain. It can prevent or lessen physical spasms in some conditions.’
‘What sort of conditions are we talking about, Doc?’
‘How the hell do I know? Did ye get both of these from the same person?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, what sort of person is he? Is he epileptic or something?’
‘We don’t know, Doc. We’ve got the drugs but not their owner.’
‘Then you’re looking for someone who suffers from some kind of twitches and gets depressed about it. Tell that lassie of yours that I’m coming round for dinner tomorrow night to find all about what you’re up to,’ he said and put the phone down.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he wasn’t in his most helpful mood, but he says that nortriptyline is an anti-depressant and that haloperidol is an anti-psychotic.’
‘A what?’ asked John.
‘Apparently it offsets effects of brain malfunctions. He says it can prevent physical spasms.’
‘What can cause physical spasms?’ Sheila wondered.
‘Doc only suggested maybe epilepsy.’
‘Epilepsy,’ said Sheila. ‘Is that hereditary?�
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‘I believe that a predisposition for it can be inherited,’ said John. ‘You don’t think I was right about a dynasty of brain surgeons with epilepsy?’
‘There’s a genetic mutation that can make epilepsy more likely,’ I said, and told John briefly about Sawney and his possible phenyl-cetonic genes.
‘Is it common?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘The only figure I can find suggests less than fifty children a year born in the UK who have it.’
‘That wouldn’t be his motive, would it?’ Sheila asked. ‘Surely you wouldn’t go to all that trouble to avoid people finding out there was epilepsy in the family, would you? I mean it’s a terrible thing to have, but they can control it with modern drugs and anyway, if he told me that and asked me not to mention it, I wouldn’t. It’s not really relevant.’
‘It wouldn’t be just epilepsy,’ I said. ‘Our man’s not just sick, he’s crazy. He’s unbalanced and fixated on something that needs to be hidden and he doesn’t care much what he does to protect his secret.’
‘What are you going to do, John?’
‘First of all find a doctor who can tell me how rare this combination of drugs is and, hopefully, what you would take them for. Then circularise doctors looking for such a patient,’
‘Doesn’t sound quick,’ I said.
‘It won’t be, I’m afraid, but it’s the best we can do. We’re already chasing the crossbow angle. That might produce something. By the way, he’s writing to me now.’
‘To you?’
‘Yes, it seems he knows that I’m in charge of this enquiry I had this in the post today.’
He drew out a slip of white paper with a printed message:
WHO KILLED MCKENNA?
I, SAID THE SPARROW,
WITH MY LITTLE ARROW,
I KILLED MCKENNA.
‘Does that mean he thinks he succeeded last night?’ Sheila asked.
‘Who knows? I think it’s just another of his more or less relevant threats. I doubt if he’ll try an arrow from the garden again. He’ll expect us to be ready for that,’ said John. ‘But it does mean he’s still trying — to stop you, if not to kill you.’
Bad Penny Blues (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 3) Page 18