Confessions of a Lawyer

by Russell Winnock

  A short while later we found Charlie sitting quietly having a baked potato in the public canteen. Kelly and I joined him. He betrayed no sense of emotion at all.

  ‘How do you think it’s going?’ I asked. I wanted Charlie to reassure me that everything was going to plan, that he had a cunning ruse up his sleeve and that it was all going to end in stunning forensic victory.

  Instead he just smiled lamely and shrugged slightly. ‘It’s going exactly how I expected it. How do you think it’s going?’

  ‘The same,’ I answered nervously, ‘just as I thought it would.’

  The reality was that I had no idea how I had expected it would go. Charlie went back to his food. ‘Is there anything else you want me to do?’ I asked.

  Charlie looked up at me and Kelly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’d like you both to go through the interviews and edit out anything that shouldn’t be there.’

  I nodded.

  The next witness was the most difficult for us: Rick O’Rourke was the witness who had actually seen part of the incident. He emerged into court, his eyes scampering from side to side as he took in the sight of the Crown Court in full operation. He took the oath with a booming Northern Irish accent. I immediately feared the worst. I could sense that Mr O’Rourke was going to be one of those witnesses who believes, rightly or wrongly, that once they have become a witness for the prosecution, it is their mission to help secure a conviction. He took the oath, confident and unhesitating, promising to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  Sometimes these types of witnesses can be helpful to the defence as their zeal causes them to exaggerate some of the facts, or become unnecessarily argumentative and unattractive. I hoped, in fact I prayed that O’Rourke’s prosecutorial enthusiasm might annoy the jury.

  ‘I’m going to ask you some questions about the defendant Tasha Roux,’ said Roger Fish, to which the witness sucked in deeply and disdainfully, as though he was about to be asked questions about Adolf Hitler.

  Rick O’Rourke then proceeded to tell the jury how in his opinion Tasha Roux was probably up to no good, as she was always having men and parties late at night, and her music was too loud.

  ‘She was a bit of a party girl, if you know what I mean,’ he said, ‘probably up to all sorts.’

  This was outrageous.

  At this point I wanted Charlie to get up to his feet to object. I wanted to hear one of those American courtroom drama exclamations, ‘I OBJECT!’ Instead, and with far more subtlety and force, Charlie simply stood up and scowled at Roger Fish. ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘Mr Fish knows better than to allow his witness to say things like that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Justice Vernon, and he gently admonished Roger Fish and the witness, ‘Your view that the defendant was probably up to all sorts means nothing in a court of law, please confine yourself to what you actually know.’

  O’Rourke’s enthusiasm, however, remained undimmed. He continued to give evidence in a way that was entirely hostile to his erstwhile neighbour. It was emotive and brutal, unfair. I mean, what had Tasha Roux ever done to him?

  ‘I was awoken by the sound of shouting and screaming coming from up my corridor,’ he said, ‘I knew immediately which flat it would be coming from, because there’s regularly shouting coming from Miss Roux’s flat.’

  ‘Was this the usual type of shouting you heard?’ asked Fish.

  ‘Oh no sir,’ said O’Rourke, ‘I could tell that something terrible was about to happen.’

  I wanted to stand up and shout, ‘What a load of bollocks. How could you possibly tell what was about to happen, you daft Irish fool!’ Of course, I didn’t, I simply dug my biro into my notes and wrote with increasing venom my record of what Mr O’Rourke had said.

  He continued in a similar vein, telling the jury how after about half an hour of slamming doors and shouting and screaming he opened his door and peered out.

  ‘How much of the door was open?’ asked Fish.

  ‘Just enough for me to see out onto the landing but still keep the chain on,’ replied O’Rourke.

  ‘And what could you see?’

  O’Rourke’s face turned grave, he knew that he was about to impart some serious information on all of us.

  ‘I saw the deceased, Mr Dickinson, banging on the door, sir, then I saw her open the door.’

  ‘Did you hear any of the conversation at this point?’

  ‘Yes, he was saying that he was sorry – I don’t know what he was sorry for, he just kept repeating, I’m sorry, let me in.’

  ‘Did she let him in?’

  ‘They went in; then a couple of seconds later he came out and walked away. And then she came after him.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was just trying to get away.’

  ‘And what was she like?’

  O’Rourke paused – ‘She was wild, sir.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They squared up to each other – she was shouting in his face, he was trying to get away.’

  ‘Did he get away?’

  ‘Yes, he made his way away from her towards the top of the stairs.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well,’ said O’Rourke carefully, ‘at this point, I couldn’t see him, only her, but I reckoned that he’d got as far as the banister at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because in that time he couldn’t have got much further away.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She rushed towards him.’

  ‘What do you mean by rushed?’

  ‘Her face changed, and she went towards him. And the next thing I heard was this almighty scream.’

  ‘A man’s scream or a woman’s?’

  ‘Both, sir.’

  It wasn’t good. Rick O’Rourke was describing Tasha rushing towards Dickinson in an aggressive way, and, if she was doing the rushing, if hers was the aggressive act, then she wasn’t acting in self-defence.

  Charlie got to his feet quickly – we needed to nullify O’Rourke as best we could. Charlie went on the attack.

  ‘Had you been asleep?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m a light sleeper,’ replied O’Rourke.

  ‘But at five o’clock in the morning you weren’t at your most awake were you?’

  ‘I’m a light sleeper, what more can I say, I heard the noise and got up and went to the door.’

  Damn, O’Rourke was good.

  ‘You didn’t see Miss Roux and Mr Dickinson coming together, did you?’

  ‘No, that I didn’t, sir.’

  ‘Nor did you know what Mr Dickinson was doing to her immediately before he fell over the banister.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For all you know, he could have had a knife in his hand at that moment.’

  Fish got to his feet. ‘Is My Learned Friend suggesting that Mr Dickinson had a knife in his hand at that point?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, ‘My Learned Friend knows full well I’m not suggesting that, what I am suggesting is that in the moment immediately before Dickinson fell over the banister, anything could have happened, because Mr O’Rourke didn’t see it.’

  The rest of the cross-examination was bad-tempered and meandering.

  Charlie tried to get out of Mr O’Rourke that he hadn’t seen the facial expressions of either person, but O’Rourke was insistent that he had.

  Charlie tried to suggest that the gap in his door was actually smaller than O’Rourke was saying, but O’Rourke simply invited him to come and measure it, reminding Charlie that he lived there and had done so since 1976.

  It wasn’t good.

  If it had been a bullfight, with Charlie Parkman as the matador and Rick O’Rourke as the bull, the bull didn’t have a single sword sticking out of his flank, and the matador was, well, the matador was on his knees.

  We left court downbeat. Charlie looked exhausted. I think he’d forgotten how emotionally and intellectually tiring a day cross-examining witnesses in th
e Crown Court could be.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he said, then he turned to me. ‘Do you think that there’s anything else I could have done today, Russell?’

  ‘No,’ I said, dutifully, ‘you were brilliant.’

  He shot me a half-smile that suggested that he was grateful but didn’t quite believe me, then took himself off, leaving me alone with Kelly.

  ‘We’re going to have to do these interviews,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘I know.’

  I hadn’t planned for the next sentence that was about to leave my mouth. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if you’ve got nothing on, I mean, no plans, I’m going to do the interviews tonight. Why don’t you come round to mine and I can cook us a bit of dinner, you know, supper, a bit of food, nothing fancy. It’s not a, you know, just a bit of food and we can do the interviews together.’

  She smiled at me.

  Brilliant.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  Brilliant.

  Dinner with Kelly Backworth

  I hadn’t planned to ask Kelly around for dinner. I wasn’t even sure it was dinner, not a proper dinner. Not a change your underpants, put on your best aftershave and prepare a playlist for your iPod with hanky-panky in mind, dinner.

  No, this was just a casual, come round for what posh people would term supper – that’s all. And I wasn’t going to get excited about it. I mean, she probably had no idea that I fancied her. And if she had thought that then she might have run a mile, suggested that we do the interviews back in chambers or in one of the conference rooms by the court, rather than put herself in my flat, with me, alone.

  By the time I got home, I had temporarily forgotten about Tasha Roux and the problems that we were having and I was preparing myself for my night with Kelly Backworth.

  I decided to cook that most staple of dishes known to single men: spag bol. I couldn’t go wrong with spag bol. Unfortunately, when I checked my fridge, I found that I had precisely two cans of lager, one bottle of strange sauce that my parents had brought me back from a holiday to Peru two years earlier, half a bottle of milk and a bumper pack of yoghurts. This wasn’t good.

  I took myself off to the corner shop and got the ingredients.

  I then considered what to wear.

  I didn’t want to look like a barrister, but at the same time, I didn’t want to look like someone desperately trying not to look like a barrister.

  Many barristers find dressing outside of court a huge challenge. The occasional chambers parties or away days are like a gathering of fashion criminals, as my colleagues mix red corduroy with brown brogues, pink v-neck jumpers with striped shirts, high-waisted jeans, and occasionally garish T-shirts which have clearly seen better days.

  She was due at 8pm. I had a shower, prepared the food and dressed myself in a casual shirt and jeans. I was definitely better dressed than most barristers. Of that I had no doubt.

  I then set about flossing and brushing my teeth.

  This was important. One of the worst aspects of being a barrister is that occasionally, one is prone to ‘court breath’, a particularly pungent brand of halitosis that sets in if you have had about five cups of coffee and spent most of your day sitting in a courtroom without saying very much. The worst aspect of ‘court breath’ is that the sufferer may well have to turn and speak quietly and close up to a solicitor or opponent, which means invariably letting out death breath fumes directly into their face. It’s awful and I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Just in case. I mean, you never know.

  At 8.10, Kelly arrived at my door.

  It was the first time I had seen her out of her dour grey and black suits. It was the first time I had had the chance to see her shape, unleashed and feminine and, as I had expected, she was gorgeous. She looked at me, and I could tell that she was a bit embarrassed and nervous.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, ‘come in.’

  She offered me a bottle of white wine, which I immediately put in the fridge.

  ‘I didn’t know if it was appropriate,’ she said, ‘you know, to have a glass of wine whilst we were working, but I thought after today, we both needed one.’

  I smiled and thanked her. She looked different. Her hair was clean and springy, her face was softer and her lips seemed smooth, with a glistening quality.

  It struck me that perhaps she thought this was a ‘dinner’ dinner. Shit, I started to wish I’d put together a suitable playlist now.

  ‘I’ve just cooked spaghetti bolognese,’ I said, adding nervously, ‘is that alright?’

  ‘That’s great,’ she said, adding, ‘if I’d had to bet on the food you’d cook, I would have chosen spag bol.’

  I wasn’t sure if this was a compliment or not. I got the feeling not, or perhaps it was good that she was teasing me. Damn, it had been bloody ages since I’d done this. I was starting to realise that I’d spent too long being single, I was clueless, I couldn’t read the signs that are particular to girls. She’d only been in my flat three minutes, and already I was confused.

  We sat down and I opened the wine. And then we talked.

  We talked about music. I told her about Neil Young, and she said she’d never heard anything by him, so I played her ‘Ruby in the Dust’, which she didn’t seem too impressed by. But this was okay, I could work with this.

  We talked about the law, and she told me which barristers she liked and which ones she hated. By now we’d had a drink and she was starting to relax and show an indiscreet funny side. She told me that she had liked my friend, Johnny Richardson, but she thought that Angus Tollman was a complete arse who was rubbish with clients. I’m not proud to say it, but this made me quite happy. She said that she was scared stiff of Jenny Catrell-Jones, so I told her that I was even more scared of her boss Mrs Murdoch.

  I asked if I was still NIHWTLBOE, and she told me that I probably was.

  And we both laughed.

  Things were going well.

  I liked having her in my kitchen. I liked looking at her face, I liked laughing with her. I started to wonder how I might move things along.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’d better get down to it then,’ she said.

  And I burst out laughing. ‘Yeah, but what about the interviews?’

  She feigned shock. ‘Russell!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’d get the sack for going anywhere near you. First rule of our firm, never shag barristers. Especially NIHWTLBOE ones.’

  I felt my innards swoon, she was thinking about it, I knew she was. She’d used the word shag. I was in. Was I? I was. There was a pause, I looked at her. I leant over, and I kissed her.

  There, I’ve said it. I’ve confessed, I’ve told you that I kissed Kelly Backworth, in my flat, in my kitchen, just before we edited the police interviews that had been carried out with Tasha Roux.

  And it was bloody nice as well.

  You don’t need to know any more.

  Tasha gives her evidence

  The Crown’s case continued for the next couple of days. Two days in which we had mostly uncontentious evidence: there was the pathologist’s evidence, which was delivered by a strikingly handsome grey-haired bloke who looked as if he belonged on the TV. He told a riveted court that Gary Dickinson had died because of massive trauma to his head, which had caused a severe cerebral contusion to his lower cranium and a subarachnoid haemorrhage, which, in plain English, is having your head smashed in.

  He had diagrams and reconstructions and told us that Gary Dickinson would have died within three minutes of landing.

  This was a poignant piece of evidence. This is the exact moment when the gravity of the trial really hit home – three minutes from fall to death. Three minutes to have your physical existence here on earth ended. That resonated with all of us except, perhaps, the Judge and the Fishmeister, who had both heard it all before.

  We then had the telephone reports which showed the dreaded text messages, and some toxicology reports which showed that Gary Dickinson had had a small amount of alcohol that night and
, possibly, a small amount of cocaine. Whilst Tasha had had quite a lot of alcohol and was twice the legal drink drive limit (not that she had planned to go anywhere in a car) and had had a moderate amount of cocaine.

  Then the interviews, which had been so painstakingly edited a couple of nights before, were read out, and that was it – the Crown’s case was over.

  ‘That is the case for the Crown,’ said Roger Fish, and did a rather elaborate bow towards the jury.

  I had been sitting next to Kelly throughout. Neither of us had mentioned the night at mine – well, not in detail. I wasn’t sure if we’d do it again or if she just saw me as a bit of fun. I didn’t know.

  But now wasn’t the time to think about that, now was the time to start our case, and that would start with Tasha.

  Before she gave her evidence, we went to see her, to give her one last pep-talk, to make sure that she was as ready as she could be. And to tell her the bad news that we hadn’t been able to track down anyone to back up her account of what Gary Dickinson had done to her.

  I asked Charlie if he didn’t mind if I said a few words to her. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘feel free.’

  Tasha was quiet. She looked petrified. It was funny how her mood would transform her physical appearance. She would grow and harden when she was angry, then visibly appear to soften when she was sad or despondent. Now, she was petrified, and that seemed to make her smaller.

  I sat down opposite her and smiled. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked, which, on reflection, was a monumentally dumb question.

  She nodded, but we both knew that she was far from alright.

  ‘It’s your turn now, Tasha,’ I began. ‘You’re the star now; because, whether we like it or not, the jury have been waiting all week to hear from you.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘And I know that nothing I can say is going to make you less nervous. You’re petrified, I know that. Christ, I’m petrified for you. But you’ve got to remember three things, okay?’

  I paused to make sure that she was listening to me, that my words were making their way into the emotional maelstrom that was her consciousness.