Miss Adams did come out of her flat and found Miss Roux sat against the wall with her face in her hands. She asked her what had happened and recalls Miss Roux said, ‘He just fell, he just fell.’
When the police arrived they found Mr Dickinson slumped partially over the banister on the second floor, it was clear that he had received massive injuries to his head and was dead.
They also found Miss Roux by the stairwell. A PC Whitby asked Miss Roux what had happened and she said, ‘I fucking killed him, he just kept pushing me and pushing me.’
The story of Tasha’s life, just like so many of the others I deal with, had its own predictable narrative arc: a difficult start to life when nothing much was expected of her, a middle, when, if different decisions had been made, it could have turned out better, and finally a tragic conclusion.
Like so many of the defendants who I represent or prosecute, Tasha Roux had no stability as a child. I’m not saying that every child who comes from a broken home is doomed, nor am I saying that every stable family unit gives rise to stable well-adjusted adults, but background plays a big part in shaping a person’s adult life.
I sometimes think of myself when I was a child and contrast how lucky I was, how my path of normality and relative success was already written out for me through the fluke of being born into a stable family. I remember being eight years old and having a fight with my brother. He wouldn’t let me in the house so I picked up a broom and in temper smashed the kitchen window. I don’t know who was more shocked, me or my brother, as the glass erupted into tiny fragments all over him and the kitchen.
When my dad got home he exploded with anger and ordered me to my room, where I sat and stewed for about an hour before he came up. His eyes incandescent with fury, he pointed at me as he spoke. ‘Everything you do has consequences, Russell,’ he told me, ‘every decision you take, everything. And if you spend your life doing stupid things and bad things, then nothing good will ever happen to you.’
Then he stood and looked at me. The eyes boring into me were not the normal warm Dad eyes, but serious, ‘you’ve got to listen to this and never forget it’ eyes. ‘Do you understand, Russell?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘now the consequences of what you did are that you’ll have no pocket money and no football for a month, and if you ever break a window or lose your temper like that again, me and your mother will call the police and you’ll go to jail.’
I waited for about two days before he hugged me. And that was the most important hug ever after what felt like the two longest days of my life.
Have I made bad decisions since? Yes, of course I have. But the difference is that I’ve been lucky enough to grow up knowing that there were people around me who cared about my decisions, who would tell me off if I made the wrong ones, but hug me later. Tasha Roux never had that. Nor do most of the other people who enter our courts ravaged by drugs and in awful dead-end lives.
Am I advocating the ‘traditional family unit’? No, that’s not my place. Am I criticising errant fathers and pregnant teenagers? No, I don’t hold a brief to do that either. All I’m saying is that life is a hell of a lot easier if you’re born with people who care about you enough to stick around.
Girls
‘Aunty Margaret wants to know if you’ll be taking anyone to Lucy’s wedding?’ my mum said over the phone one night.
‘Mum, I’ve told you already, if I go at all, I’ll be on my own.’
‘You’ve got to go.’
I sighed, ‘Okay, if I can I’ll come. But I’ll be on my own.’
‘Surely there is a nice barrister you can bring?’
‘Well, I could bring my roommate Amir if you like, but that might cause a bit of gossip though. You know what Uncle Arthur’s like – “they’re all queers down south”.’
She scolded me for being facetious.
This is my mum’s favourite subject: my love life. I have reached an age where she wants to marry me off and she has this image of me meeting a lovely female barrister – probably getting hitched in Gray’s Inn Chapel, before settling down to a lovely life making little barristers.
Which brings me on to the subject of female barristers.
How can I write this without sounding like either a raving sexist dinosaur, the type of man who emits a Sid James type ‘phwoar’ every time a woman comes into view, or a rampant neo-feminist who will not rest until there is equality and harmony between the sexes.
I am neither. But, I do feel sorry for women at the Bar. Especially the Criminal Bar. It’s not easy. The odds are stacked against them.
First they have to deal with the robing room. Robing rooms are bastions of machismo. They are stacked with extremely confident males, many of whom have come from fairly privileged backgrounds, often from all-boys schools where they learned much about many things, but absolutely nothing about women. The atmosphere in the robing room can be boorish, gladiatorial, boastful and ungallant, though, I hasten to add, it can also be gentle, helpful, genuinely funny and collegiate. You have to be confident and thick-skinned to survive and survival is a hell of a lot easier if you’re a bloke. As a baby barrister, I was sent up to a court in the Midlands, to make an application to vacate a trial. I searched for my opponent and when I eventually found him and told him that I was applying to adjourn our case he just took one look at me and told me to ‘fuck off’.
Then there is the overt sexism. And I mean proper 1970s Carry On Up the Khyber sexism. Conversations, in which male barristers will discuss whether a juror, or a witness, or a WPC or another barrister is ‘fit’, are commonplace. And there have been occasions when I have watched as young female barristers walking into a robing room are looked up and down by the men who are clearly making an assessment of their looks rather than their ability.
To survive this, female barristers often become even more masculine than the men. They might not be able to demonstrate the same instinctive boorishness, so they show their ‘machismo’ in court. Some female barristers are the most steely, ballsy operators I know. They will eat you up and spit you out in court because that is how they have been forced to demand respect. They will develop a stare or a pout that they use to put errant Judges in their place and obtain what they want for their clients. It can be incredibly impressive, and a little scary, to see them in action.
Of course, I’m generalising, but only slightly. After all, females were only allowed to practise in the 1930s and there are still far fewer female Judges than there should be.
Am I proud of the fact that my profession is inherently sexist and has forced some women to suppress their femininity? No, I’m bloody not. Do I want it to change? Well, I’m not sure about that either. At least not entirely. Barristers, both male and female are, by definition, a bit odd. There needs to be characters, there needs to be big Silverback gorillas with massive personalities and even bigger egos charging around, because without them, the courts, and I would argue the justice system, would be far more anodyne and much less effective. And, just as importantly, there needs to be the fierce female advocates, because the culture has led to the creation of some truly amazing women barristers – though hopefully over time, as the robing rooms and courts become less chauvinistic, women can be themselves and get on with the job without being hindered by the gender.
But do I want to marry a female barrister?
No, I bloody don’t. The idea of coming home every day to find myself immediately thrust into an argument, which I will lose, about whose turn it is to do the washing up, or to be cross-examined within an inch of my life as to why I leave the toilet seat up, is my idea of hell.
I love my learned female colleagues, and yes, there are actually quite a few I fancy, but I’ve never gone out with one and I don’t plan to change that any time soon. I planned to go to my cousin Lucy’s wedding on my own.
Touting and solicitor’s wars
Now let me put this into context – a man’s got to eat. And, if you
are in the business of providing for yourself and your family or whoever, by working in the Criminal Justice System, then every person who requires legal representation because they have been daft enough or unfortunate enough to get themselves accused of a crime is, potentially, a source of income.
That is why solicitors firms do everything that they can to get clients. I understand that, after all it’s why I count my pages so carefully. I understand why solicitors clamour to get onto the police station duty rotas that determine which solicitor will be called out to represent someone in the nick. It’s because that usually means that if they are subsequently charged, they will be given the legal aid certificate or Representation Order, which means that they will be paid for their work. Representation Orders therefore are the key to everything. Without a ‘Rep Order’ the Legal Services Commission will not pay out. And in a murder case, the ‘Rep Order’ is the most lucrative of all – it’s like Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket.
Most solicitors firms have an official police station accredited lawyer, which means that lawyer’s name is on a list held in various police stations, and their phone number will be called if they are the duty solicitor at the time when someone is brought into a police station. That firm then holds the golden ticket to represent that client throughout the proceedings; and at the end of proceedings they will cash it in with the Legal Services Department so that they can pay their staff, and everyone eats.
There was a time when this whole process of ‘finders keepers’ was accepted in a rather gentlemanly and dignified way, but those days have gone. Things are now decidedly dog-eat-dog – and, for me, that is a change for the worse.
And the reason for this state of conflagration is because there are some circumstances in which a Representation Order can be transferred from one firm to another. This transfer can only be granted by a Judge on application by an advocate who will tell the Judge that, for whatever reason, the defendant no longer wishes to be represented by his current solicitor but wants to transfer his Representation Order somewhere else. Judges won’t do it willingly, they have to be satisfied that there has been either incompetence or a total breakdown in the relationship between the client and the lawyer.
In recent years the whole process has become more aggressive because the large firms know that the only way they can survive is if they acquire as many legal aid Representation Orders as possible. Unfortunately touting is now widespread. It normally takes place in prison, where a defendant on remand will sit in their cell worrying about their case. In these circumstances they are easy prey to unscrupulous elements. They will be visited by other solicitors who will often bring them gifts – new trainers or phone cards are particularly popular gifts. After all, what’s a 50 quid pair of trainers if that person is potentially worth many thousands in legal aid money?
There are even rumours of solicitors entering into agreements with certain criminals that involve the exchange of money back to the client. So, in other words, a client would effectively be paid by the state for committing a crime – which is a horrendous prospect. But, as I say, I’ve no proof that this goes on, it may be nothing more than a rumour.
What annoys me most of all though is the making of false promises. And this happens a lot. Typically, if one advocate has tried and failed to get the client bail, the next day that same remanded defendant will invariably be visited by some stoatish, weaselly solicitor who will say to him, ‘Don’t you worry, you transfer your legal aid to me and I’ll get you bail.’ It’s a promise that won’t be kept.
Blatant tapping-up like this was the cause of my single biggest explosion of anger in a court building. I was instructed to represent an Irishman called Brian Turner. Mr Turner had been accused of stealing lead and copper piping. It wasn’t the biggest case in the world, there weren’t many hundreds of pages of evidence, but I had read the evidence and I had prepared myself to look after him as best I could.
On the day of his plea hearing I turned up to the cells to meet Mr Turner for the first time and was met by a woman in a sharp suit with big heels and massive, confident hair.
She introduced herself, told me she was from Harmsworth’s Solicitors and said that she had been to see Mr Turner and that he wanted to transfer legal aid from the firm instructing me, to them.
I started to shake with rage. I tried to contain myself.
‘What,’ I said, my voice trembling, ‘you’ve been to see my client without my permission?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and thrust towards me a letter that purported to come from Mr Turner authorising the application to transfer solicitors. I ignored her jutting hand.
‘You’ve,’ I repeated, ‘been to see my client, without my permission?’
‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘and here’s his letter explaining the reasons why he no longer wishes to instruct you.’
Again, I ignored her letter.
‘How. Dare. You,’ I exploded, sounding a bit too much like Frankie Howerd as I tried to suppress my outrage. Now it was my turn to jut a finger. ‘Don’t you ever, ever, ever, go and see one of my clients without my permission unless a Judge says so.’
Miss Confident Hair didn’t give a toss. ‘Here’s the application,’ she said, ‘here’s his letter. I’ll see you in court.’ With that she flounced off.
I read the letter, it clearly hadn’t been written by Brian Turner. It stated that he wanted to transfer legal aid because he no longer had any confidence in his legal team and wasn’t happy with the way they’d represented him in court.
My innards screamed with rage. I went into the cells and plonked myself down in front of Brian Turner. I dispensed with my usual friendly compassionate matey spiel.
‘Are you Brian Turner?’ I said gruffly.
‘I don’t want to speak to you,’ he said, ‘I want to speak to my new lawyer.’
I repeated slowly, ‘Are you Brian Turner?’
‘I am.’
‘You’ve never met me before, have you, Mr Turner?’
He looked at me, trying to think of something clever to say, before answering, ‘No.’
‘Then how can you write a letter saying you have no confidence in me?’
He turned away and I threw the letter down on the table.
‘What did they give you, Mr Turner?’ I continued. ‘A phone card? A pair of Nikes? A few quid?’
He continued to look at the wall and repeated, ‘I only want to speak to my new solicitor.’
‘You didn’t write this letter did you, Mr Turner?’
He started to whistle as he ignored my question. I got up and left him. It wasn’t that I was desperate to represent him, it wasn’t the money either, it wasn’t a big case, it was the principle. It was the fact that some nameless, faceless solicitor from some massive firm had felt able to write a letter from a client I had never met, telling a Judge that this client had no confidence in me – that’s what made me so angry.
The case according to Tasha Roux
A week after I had failed to secure Tasha Roux bail I went to see her again. It was time now for me to hear her side of the story. She sat across from me and Kelly in a visitors’ room at Holloway Prison and started to tell me about Gary Dickinson. I stopped her, I didn’t want to know about Dickinson yet, I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to find out more about the person who had done this – I felt that I would then have a better chance of gauging whether or not she was telling me the truth and how she might fare in a courtroom.
‘I tell you what,’ I said, ‘I’ll ask you some questions; some of them might be a little personal, but not too personal, and some of them might be a bit painful. I’m sorry, but trust me, every question I ask you, I ask you for a reason.’
She nodded.
‘Okay, how old are you?’
I knew that answer, but I wanted to hear everything from her own mouth.
‘I’m 23,’ she told me, then she continued to answer my questions about her childhood, about her mother having difficulties with drink and drug
s and how she had five brothers and sisters, and that they were all taken into care when she was about eight years old.
‘Eight is a really shit age for that,’ she told me, ‘because you understand enough when you’re eight, you know how to feel abandoned and you know that it isn’t right.’
She tried to skip over her teenage years, so I stopped her and asked her specific questions. She had got into the wrong crowd, she told me, ‘Everyone was doing pills and smoking weed, so I just went along with it.’
I had heard this story a lot. Drugs and the culture of drugs were part of modern life. It would have been a greater surprise if she had managed to get to the age of 23 without some relationship with them. We moved from drugs to an even darker place. This was trickier. I composed my questions carefully in my head.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘there’s no easy way to ask this next question, but there is a suggestion in the papers that you were being used by men for sex?’
She looked down, then nodded. ‘It didn’t go on for very long,’ she said, ‘it started as a laugh, when I was about fifteen, me and some mates being taken out to clubs and that, then it got worse and we were expected to provide …’ she paused, now she was picking the right words, words that wouldn’t cause too much pain ‘… services,’ she said. ‘We were expected to provide certain services.’
‘How did it end?’
She fidgeted with the plastic coffee cup in front of her.
‘I got pregnant,’ she said, ‘and the baby was taken away.’
At this point a large perfect tear started to roll in silence down her cheek.
We moved on.
She described meeting Gary Dickinson. ‘He was alright at first,’ she said, ‘he would look after me.’ Then her eyes narrowed and a sense of urgency crossed her face. ‘You do realise that he was up to all sorts?’ she said.
‘Oh, yes,’ I told her, ‘don’t worry.’
She told me how she suspected him of having a few women living in various flats around the area, but she wasn’t sure.
Confessions of a Lawyer Page 17