I clinked glasses. ‘Too right!’ I said.
A bit later Macintyre was in full flood, reminiscing about some drunken hospital porters on duty at Christmas who, rather than manhandle a corpse down four flights of stairs, dropped it out of a window into a snowdrift and then couldn’t find it. I went into my own office to dig out my reserve cigarettes. John Parry followed me.
‘Got some news for you,’ he said.
‘Give me the bad first,’ I said. ‘The headlines are always bad at Christmas.’
‘Saffary’s back,’ he said. ‘Is that bad enough for you?’
I nodded. ‘Pretty bad,’ I said, ‘but I thought it would happen.’
‘What did HQ say about your complaint?’
‘Oh, they sent me a load of carefully written gobbledegook, to the effect that, while I had undoubtedly been the victim of a complex and serious crime, and while they had to admit that the evidence indicated the involvement of an officer or officers of the Central Midlands Police, they regretted that it was not possible to identify the culprits, so no disciplinary or criminal proceedings would be brought against anyone. Yours faithfully, Chief Superintendent Scribble, for Chief Constable.’
It was the big Welshman’s turn to nod.
‘Where does it leave you? Saffary being back?’ John had been made Acting Inspector when I succeeded in getting Saffary kicked sideways, six months before.
‘That’s the good news. As from January first my promotion is confirmed.’ He flashed his lapels and grinned broadly.
‘Congratulations,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘Let’s go back and have a drink on it.’
He put out a restraining hand. ‘Hold on, boyo. Saffary’s after you already, Chris. He was in the Police Club last night, sneering about the Belstone Lane case being appealed again. He said you’d been to the Scrubs to see one of them.’
It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Alan Walton is Granny Cassidy’s son-in-law. She asked me to see him. I’m not acting for him and I don’t think much of his chances.’
‘Just watch yourself, that’s all.’
‘Right,’ I said and we went back to the party, where the announcement of John’s promotion used up the last of the booze. I was filled with the seasonal spirit of goodwill, and if it didn’t extend to Saffary I wasn’t going to see him as a threat.
The Christmas holiday with Sheila in my home was like all the best Christmases of childhood rolled into one and for several days I forgot Granny Cassidy, Alan Walton and Inspector Saffary. When we got back to work I wrote to her as kind a letter as I could construct, setting out my realistic appraisal of Alan’s chances.
On New Year’s Eve she rang me at the office, to tell me that Alan and his mate had been granted Legal Aid and leave to present their application to the Court of Appeal. I asked her to pass on my congratulations and drew a silent breath of relief.
‘There’s just one thing you could do for me, Mr Tyroll, if you will,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘I’m too old and slow to go to London when the appeal is on. Will you go for me?’
On the phone I couldn’t even see her little black eyes but I said yes anyway. It seemed harmless at the time. I was too puddled by love and Christmas to see that the Belstone Lane case was beginning to slide down on top of me.
7.
The Court of Appeal sits in London at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, a strange Gothic building reminiscent of vampires. I refused to drive down again so Sheila and I went by train.
Beyond the inevitable security screen at the entrance to the Royal Courts is a breathtaking Gothic hall, which duly impressed the tourist in Sheila, not to mention a display of historic robes which impressed the historian in her. The case was listed to be heard in the afternoon so we made for the restaurant.
Sheila looked at the sandwich packet she was opening. ‘I don’t believe it!’ she laughed. ‘Royal bloody sandwiches!’ and she pointed to the crown printed on the wrapper.
‘We are’, I said solemnly, ‘in Her Majesty’s Royal Courts of Justice and that was Her sandwich.’
‘I can just imagine her getting up early to cut it,’ she said. ‘It’s not a raw prawn sandwich, you know.’
‘There used to be a tramp who bought sandwiches in here and then sold them to tourists on the streets. He used to tell them they were left-overs from Buckingham Palace. Had a good trade, I believe.’
She laughed loudly, a sound not often heard in those precincts. ‘You mean somewhere in Tokyo or Sioux Falls there are framed wrappers like this one? Marvellous!’
As we left the table she asked, ‘You still reckon he’s got Buckley’s?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
We made our way through the low, Gothic arches that lead back into the main hall, and took a staircase. On landings above the hall are the courtrooms. As we pushed through two sets of glass doors, Sheila looked round at the panelled room, lit by high windows.
‘Don’t you have any modern courts?’ she asked.
‘Sure. There’s a new building at the back of this one — all chilly air-conditioning in the courts and stuffy waiting areas, but they use that mainly for civil hearings. When it comes to the liberty of the subject and being told that you’ve got to go on doing your time, we believe in the full Victorian panoply.’
‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I wanted Dickens … ‘
‘Dickens was long dead before we had a Court of Appeal,’ I said. ‘It may look like pure Victorian, but actually it was invented early in this century. There were a few obviously wrong convictions and Parliament got fed up with passing special Acts to undo them, so it set up the Court of Appeal.’
We sat in the raised public benches at the rear. A few places had been taken by the curious and those who had come in out of the cold, and an elderly couple a few feet away looked as if they might be Grady’s parents. We had not been seated long when three robed and wigged judges shuffled on to the high bench above the court and the lawyers rose and bowed to them.
Sheila was looking around. ‘Where’s Walton?’ she whispered.
I looked around. ‘If he was here, he’d be up there,’ I said and pointed to a little panelled box, high up on the right. ‘It’s a bad sign.’
‘What is?’
‘That he’s not been brought from the Scrubs. That, and listing it in the afternoon. It means they’re not expecting to waste much time on it and they don’t want him here to see them chuck his application out.’
She shook her head. ‘You’d think they’d let him come. Who is everybody?’
‘The three old blokes in robes and fancy wigs are the judges. The blokes in black gowns and wigs down there are the barristers and the people sitting immediately behind them are solicitors and clerks. Keep quiet — Grady’s barrister is about to kick off.’
A young man, whose clean white wig betrayed his lack of years in practice, had risen. He began to outline the argument I had read in Walton’s application — that the officers who investigated the case had now been disciplined for serious offences in another robbery case and that, as a result, Grady’s assertions at the trial that his confession statement had been faked were now more believable. Had the jury at Stafford, he argued, known of the officers’ behaviour in the other case, they would have been less likely to convict. The convictions were unsafe and unsatisfactory and his client should be granted leave to present an appeal to the court.
He concluded in a few minutes, bobbed his head to the judges and sat. Walton’s barrister rose alongside him, an older man with a greyer, scruffier wig. The judges were talking among themselves.
Eventually the presiding judge turned back to the court. ‘Thank you, Mr Wegg,’ he said to Grady’s barrister. ‘Before you address us on behalf of the applicant Walton, Mr Grocutt,’ he went on, ‘there is a preliminary point which we should like to clarify, one that may save a deal of time.’
He cleared his throat. ‘It seems to us that the first hurdle, as it were, in thi
s application, is the believability of the statement which, it is alleged by the Crown, was given freely and voluntarily by the applicant Grady. If we accept that the disciplinary proceedings subsequently taken against officers in the case cast doubt on the truth of that document, if, as Mr Wegg would have us believe, that statement was not voluntarily given, but was extracted by force or fraud or if it is in itself faked in some way, then it is obvious that this court must consider whether the jury at Stafford would have felt able to convict had it known of that situation.
‘In the case of both applicants there is, of course, a second hurdle — the evidence of the witness Mrs Simpson, but it may be that we can leave that issue in abeyance for the present at least. Mr Grocutt, may we take it that you agree with the proposition that both of these applications depend, in the first place, on the question of the credibility of Grady’s confession statement — that that question is as much at the heart of your client’s case as that of his fellow applicant?’
Grocutt bobbed his head and murmured his agreement. It was self-evidently right. He didn’t see the trap, Wegg didn’t see the trap and certainly I didn’t.
‘Then,’ the judge continued, ‘I believe that we can shorten these proceedings.’
I had expected little of this hearing, but now I began to suspect that the court had something new up its sleeve. It did.
‘Apprised’, said the judge, ‘of the nature of this application, we thought it right to institute certain enquiries. The single judge in giving leave for this application to come before us was aware, as any newspaper reader is aware and as was recited in both of the applications, that investigations into the conduct of certain officers of the Central Midlands Police had resulted in disciplinary action against the late Detective Chief Inspector Hawkins and Inspector Watters in another case. He was quite right to permit this matter to be aired here. Taking the view which I have already put, that the credibility of the Grady confession is crucial to both applications, a proposition which both counsel have accepted, we have caused an enquiry to be made with the Chief Constable of the Central Midlands as to the precise nature of the proceedings against those officers. I am sure that applicants’ counsel will equally agree that this information is essential to any decision on the applications.’
He paused to allow counsel to agree with him. Both nodded dumbly. They were beginning to catch on.
‘I have here’, he said, ‘a letter written on behalf of the Chief Constable in answer to the query which we directed to him. It is dated 29th December last year and reads as follows:
‘ “I have been asked by the Chief Constable to reply to your enquiry of 20th December in respect of disciplinary proceedings taken against Detective Chief Inspector Hawkins and Inspector Watters of this force.
‘ “From records before me I can confirm that, on 15th July 1998, both of these officers appeared before a disciplinary hearing as a result of enquiries into their conduct in the case of R. v. Altaf Hussain. They were both charged identically, namely that ‘In pursuing enquiries in the case of Altaf Hussain they failed to observe proper procedures or to maintain proper records of their enquiries’.
‘ “It will, perhaps, assist you if I point out that although both officers were found to be guilty of this charge, the charge related only to the keeping of proper records and documentation. It was in no way concerned with the conduct of any interview, whether with a witness or suspect, nor was it alleged that any suspect had been improperly treated by the officers.
‘ “You may not be aware that Detective Chief Inspector Hawkins is now deceased.”
‘That letter is signed by Chief Superintendent Lawson on behalf of his Chief Constable.’
In the silence that followed the reading, counsel for the prosecution rose for the first time.
‘My Lords,’ he began, ‘it seems to me that, in the light of the chief superintendent’s information —’
He got no further before the judge interrupted him. ‘Yes, Mr Randle, in the light of that letter it appears that both of the applications now before us are based upon a false premise — namely, that officers in the case are now known to have misbehaved in their treatment of a suspect in the Hussain case. Since we are now aware that no such proposition can be supported it is the view of this court that these applications must fail. Our detailed reasons will be issued in due course.’
He pulled his robe around him and rose, shuffling off the bench with his two colleagues.
‘The bastards!’ I breathed. I knew now that the Belstone Lane case had just become virtually impossible and that it had finally fallen on my head.
8.
Tourists love the Temple — the Victorian rookery where London’s barristers roost. A network of crooked lanes, emerald lawns and handsome old buildings, peopled by bewigged and gowned barristers and lit by ancient gas-lamps, it stands a few yards from the Law Courts.
The price of Sheila’s company in the Court of Appeal had been the promise of a visit to the Temple, and now she strolled its lanes with wide eyes and a busy camera, exclaiming as a genuine lamplighter ambled past us in the winter twilight and went about his duties in front of her lens. I followed blindly behind her, immune for once to the Temple’s charm, turning over the Belstone Lane case.
Eighteen years ago four unknown men had ambushed a security van. A guard had been killed and another maimed. Despite an enormous manhunt, no charges were brought for six years. Then Glenys Simpson had named her husband and three friends as the robbers. The police had arrested three men not including Billy Simpson. Simpson had committed suicide. Grady had signed a confession statement, whether genuine or not. He had been charged. Walton had denied any knowledge of the robbery. He had been charged. Freddy Hughes had denied all knowledge of the robbery. He had not been charged. Walton and Grady had been convicted on a combination of Grady’s ‘confession’ and Glenys Simpson’s evidence. Hawkins and Watters, the interviewing officers in the case, had been disciplined. Walton and Grady had revived their appeals and got as far as a hearing before the full court.
It didn’t make much sense, but it got worse. So far from Walton and Grady’s appeals failing on the evidence of Glenys Simpson, the court had produced its hidden ace and thrown the appeals out on the statement of the police that Hawkins and Watters were done for only administrative offences — and that, I was sure, was simply not true. The Central Midlands police, over the signature of a chief superintendent acting for the Chief Constable, had lied to the Court of Appeal to make doubly sure that Walton and Grady did their twenty years.
On the train back to Brum I continued my silence. Sheila was equally silent, plying me with coffees from the buffet and reading a magazine until we were half-way home. Then she put down her reading, sipped her coffee and leaned across the table to me.
‘OK, Chris Tyroll, are you going to talk about it or not?’
I looked up and said nothing.
‘Come on!’ she said. ‘Ever since the decision you’ve been moping about like a one-legged bloke at an arse-kicking contest.’
I grinned, in spite of my mood. ‘OK, get me something stronger from the bar and I’ll talk.’
She came back with a couple of whiskies and I set out my argument. She nodded when I had finished.
‘But you always expected the case to be thrown out.’
‘Yes, but I thought they’d do it in two stages. I thought they’d accept that there was doubt over Grady’s statement then say, “But Glenys Simpson’s evidence stands unchallenged and the jury could have convicted on that so no cigar.” ’
‘So they threw it out for a different reason. What’s the difference?’
‘Look — the investigation into the Central Midlands police has given them a hell of a bad press. A number of big cases have gone belly up. In the remote eventuality that the Court of Appeal had let this one through, it couldn’t have done the police much more harm. What’s more, they must have seen it the way I did — that it might succeed on the first point, but it wou
ld fail on what their Lordships called the “second hurdle”. So, all in all, they hadn’t got much to worry about, right?’
She nodded and I went on. ‘But something about this case is so important that the police wouldn’t rely on the court to give them a way out, they had to give it a shove in the right direction — a bloody big shove!’
‘The letter?’
‘Exactly. That letter is nothing more than a bare-faced lie.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ll show you when we get home.’
Back at the ranch, Sheila’s appetite led her straight to the kitchen. I picked up the phone and relayed the bad news to Granny Cassidy. She was very philosophical about it, thanked me for going to London, then she asked, ‘He don’t get any more Legal Aid now, do he?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘So he don’t have to have a lawyer from the court?’
‘No.’
‘Do it for him, Mr Tyroll. Do it for him and our Tracy. She’m breaking her heart for him. It’s been twelve years, Mr Tyroll. Will you do it?’
By the time Sheila called me to the table I was scrabbling glumly through the magazine rack by my armchair.
‘What you after?’ she enquired.
‘This,’ I announced, triumphantly brandishing a magazine. I took it to the table with me.
‘I hope’, she said, ‘you’re not going to turn out to be one of those blokes who reads at the table.’
‘Just this once,’ I said and turned to the article I had been seeking. I found the passage I wanted and passed it across to her. ‘Read that!’
Fork in one hand, magazine in the other, she read the paragraph I had indicated.
‘ “ESDA tests on Hussain’s so-called confession statement revealed that the pages had been written out of sequence. As a result, the Court of Appeal quashed Hussain’s robbery conviction and Hawkins and Watters were brought before a disciplinary hearing.” ’
She laid the paper down. ‘What’s ESDA?’ she asked.
Robbery with Malice Page 3