by Nick Stone
‘Evelyn Bates was murdered on the floor of the living room – designated as Area A – hence the abundance of hair and fibre there, as well as the presence of urine, saliva and a trace of faecal matter. The pattern of the urine stains and the preponderance of hair indicate that the victim was lying on her back while being strangled. Her killer then carried her into the bedroom post-mortem, where she was stripped naked and laid on the bed.’
Now it was our turn.
The judge looked at the clock. We had half an hour left.
‘Mrs Devereaux, how long is your cross-examination likely to take?’
I helped Christine to her feet.
‘Not long, My Lord,’ she said.
A few of the jury scowled.
Christine looked to the witness stand.
‘Dr Beales, I’m sure you’re very busy and would rather not have to return tomorrow. Could you please therefore limit your answers to “Yes” and “No”,’ she said, raising laughter from the public and smiles and smirks in the jury. There was even a smattering of applause. The judge banged his gavel, but he was smiling too.
‘Very well,’ Beales said, acting oblivious to the mockery.
‘How much of the victim’s hair was found in the bedroom?’
‘Two strands.’
‘Only two?’
‘That’s right. On the pillow.’
‘And how many on the couch?’
‘Eight strands.’
‘And on the carpet of Area A?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Which led you to conclude that Evelyn Bates was strangled on the floor, as opposed to the couch or the bedroom?’
‘Correct.’
‘Did you recover any relevant fingerprints from the bedroom – either the accused’s or the victim’s?’
‘No.’
‘None whatsoever?’
‘No.’
‘Did you recover any of the accused’s hair or fibres from the bedroom?’
‘No.’
‘None whatsoever?’
‘No.’
‘So would it be fair to say that the accused never entered the bedroom?’
‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘If the accused wore gloves to commit the crime, he wouldn’t have left any prints on the door.’
‘But not all gloves obscure fingerprints, do they?’ she said. ‘Cloth gloves will leave prints, leather ones leave an impression, as do surgical gloves.’
‘Thick latex gloves won’t.’
‘We’ll return to that shortly,’ she said.
The jury were back. They were listening.
‘Can you tell the court which of Mr James’s clothes were tested for DNA.’
‘His shirt, trousers, shoes, socks, boxer shorts and his jacket.’
‘Were traces of the victim’s bodily fluids found on any of these?’
‘There was a slight amount of saliva on the collar of his shirt, mixed in with the victim’s lipstick,’ Beales said.
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘You found no other traces of the victim’s bodily fluids on Mr James’s clothes?’
‘No.’
‘Strangulation’s a messy death, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘It can be.’
‘How many such murders have you had to analyse over the course of your career, Dr Beales?’
‘I don’t keep tallies,’ he said. ‘But it’s quite a few.’
‘Did any of those previous victims void their bowels and bladders, as happened here?’
‘In most cases, yes.’
‘And in those cases, when you examined those suspects’ clothing, did you find traces of their victims’ bodily fluids?’
‘Where the clothes were recovered, yes. Very often.’
‘Yet, there were no traces on Mr James’s clothes.’
‘No.’
She paused. The four main jurors were writing furiously. She waited until they’d finished.
‘It’s been determined that Evelyn was lying on her back when she was murdered, so facing her killer,’ Christine said. ‘This means the killer was very close to her, on his knees, straddling her. The pattern of bruising at the back of her neck tells us his hands were all the way around her throat, and he’d interlaced his fingertips around her nape. For him to have done this, Evelyn Bates’s head would have to be off the ground, and her killer would have been leaning very close to her, using his full body weight to apply pressure on her throat. All the while, Evelyn was fighting hard – fighting for air, fighting for her life. So, Dr Beales, why was no trace of the victim’s saliva found on the front of Mr James’s shirt?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Could it be it’s because Mr James didn’t kill Evelyn Bates?’
Beales looked at Carnavale before answering.
‘I don’t wish to speculate on the reasons,’ he said.
Christine paused there.
She’d scored a definite point in the reasonable doubt area.
‘Were there any fingerprints found on the victim’s neck?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘But you looked for them?’
‘Of course.’
‘So, not a single fingerprint was found on the neck and throat. Any explanation for that?’
‘The killer most likely wore gloves. It’s the only explanation.’
‘Were any gloves found at the crime scene?’
‘No.’
‘Were any gloves found in the search of the accused’s property and workplace?’
‘No.’
‘How would you explain that?’ she asked.
‘It’s unlikely the killer would have kept them. Perhaps he threw them away.’
80
Day 4
Rudy Saks was due to give evidence first thing.
We filed into court.
As always, Judge Blumenfeld asked the barristers if they had any pending issues before he called the jury and let the public in.
Carnavale got to his feet.
‘My Lord, it appears that Rudy Saks has left the country.’
So he wasn’t the driver in the Megane.
The judge had two faces; one for the jury, another for us. When addressing the former, he was charm personified, speaking to them with humility and respect, as if they were his equals – which, of course, in here they almost were. With us he was the incoming storm, thunder massing in his pendulous jowls.
That’s what Carnavale was getting from him now.
‘When did he leave the country?’
‘Saturday, My Lord.’
‘It’s Thursday today, Mr Carnavale. Why am I only hearing about this now?’
‘The police were initially unaware he’d left. They’d made numerous attempts to contact Mr Saks about his court appearance. When he didn’t respond, they went to his address yesterday and were told that he’d had a family emergency in Portugal. His mother is apparently terminally ill.’
‘How was he allowed to leave?’
‘We’re looking into that, My Lord.’
The judge beckoned his clerk over and whispered something. She picked up the phone and made another of her silent calls.
‘I’ve issued a summons for his immediate return.’
If witnesses fail to appear in court a judge can force them to attend and give evidence. If they don’t come of their own free will, the police drag them to the stand. Not that there was any way that was going to happen with Saks. The summons was as good as nominal. Saks probably wasn’t even in Portugal any more. He was in the wind.
According to Janet, Saturday’s events wouldn’t affect the trial, because none of my three kidnappers were directly linked to Evelyn’s murder – at least not yet. Their only connection was the house one of them had shared with Saks, and that wasn’t proof of anything.
Still, Saks’s no-show was great for us. A major pillar in the prosecution’s case had been kicked away.
Christine didn’t react, but Red
path gave me a discreet thumbs-up.
‘Are your other witnesses already in the building, Mr Carnavale?’
‘They are, My Lord.
‘Let’s proceed then, shall we?’
The nightclub CCTV footage was cued up on the courtroom flatscreen.
Carnavale called two waitresses who worked at the club. Eastern European, pretty, pert, twenties, hair scraped back. Swayne and I hadn’t interviewed either of them.
Waitress 1: Dead nervous, voice like stilettos stamping on sheet metal.
She saw VJ and Evelyn talking for ‘a while’.
Why did she notice them in particular?
‘Because of her dress. Green is an unusual colour to wear at night.’
Christine cross-examined. How long did Waitress 1 see them together?
‘Only for a second.’
‘But you said you saw them talking “for a while”.’
‘They looked like two people in the middle of a conversation.’
‘I think what actually happened is you only looked at them for a second, before you went about your business? Would that be a fair comment?’ Christine says.
‘Yes. I think that’s how it was.’
‘So, you only assumed they’d been talking for a while?’
‘Yes,’ the waitress said. Then she looked at Carnavale, blushing scarlet. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘We all make mistakes,’ Christine said.
Carnavale let that one go, called Waitress 2.
She was a lot more confident. She saw VJ and Evelyn ‘dancing together, really close, like a couple’.
Christine asked her if she remembered the conga line bursting through the door. She did.
Christine played the video, narrating for the jury. The dancers came in-between the bar and where Evelyn was standing, so the waitress couldn’t have seen her.
She saw what happened after Evelyn had been knocked over by the conga line and fell on top of VJ. Then they both got up, and he might have helped her to her feet, or been checking that she was all right.
Waitress 2 insisted she saw them ‘slow dancing’.
Christine played the rest of the tape. Evelyn left the club, one hand clutching at her torn dress strap. Christine pointed to the timer and said that less than four minutes elapsed between Evelyn getting knocked over and her leaving the club. So they either weren’t ‘dancing’ like the waitress thought, or it was the fastest slow dance in history. That got a laugh from the public and a smile from half the jury. They were warming to her, I noticed.
The waitress said she was sure of what she saw.
Christine knew the rest of the video showed Jonas Dichter following VJ out of the club, but she couldn’t raise it in court, because it proved nothing.
‘No further questions.’
At lunch, Redpath told Christine he thought it was going well – better than well, even.
‘Trials are won one day at a time. Every trial has a tipping point, a moment when you know which way it’s going to go. We’re not there yet,’ she said.
Then I sensed I was being stared at. I followed the sensation to a small old man in a thick, battered grey tweed jacket, unshaven and sweaty-faced, the remains of his hair clinging unkempt to his temples. He was sitting alone, an open Tupperware container in front of him, unwrapping a tin foil package. He was looking right at me.
DCI Reid was sitting next to him. She was staring at me too.
Gary Murphy was the last witness of the day. Redder and rounder than when I’d last met him, he gave me a nod as he passed. I didn’t reciprocate.
Carnavale started with a couple of scene-setting questions, and then cut to the chase.
‘Please tell the court what happened on the night of March 16th?’
‘It’d been a very quiet night, only two or three customers. Around half-eleven or thereabouts he came in —’
‘Who?’
‘The fella in the dock.’
‘Vernon James?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Was he with anyone?’
‘Yeah, a woman. Tall, blonde, green dress.’
The court clerk passed Murphy a photo.
‘Was that her?’ Carnavale asked, and then turned to the jury. ‘For the record: the witness has just been handed a police photograph of Evelyn Bates post-mortem.’
‘I never really saw her face,’ Murphy said.
Carnavale’s mouth was poised to launch his next question – lips quarter-parted and puckered into a tense moue. Then his brain registered the words that had passed through his ears. He blinked a couple of times, looked down at the lectern, his brow corrugating.
‘That’s not what you said in your police statement.’
‘That’s exactly what I said.’
‘Not according to this,’ Carnavale said, holding up his statement. ‘DS Fordham showed you that photograph of the victim and asked you, “Is this the woman you saw him with?” – to which you replied, “Yes”.’
‘That’s not what I said, though. I said, “Yes. Maybe. But I didn’t get a look at her face.” The copper must’ve stopped at “Yes.”’
‘Mr Murphy, you signed the statement, acknowledging it to be true,’ Carnavale said. He was keeping his cool, but the edge of his neck and the backs of his ears were starting to flare up.
‘I read it quickly, skimmed it really,’ Murphy said.
‘Why?’
‘I was busy. He interviewed me at work. There were customers to serve. Anyway, I trusted the bloke. He’s a copper, right?’
Mild laughter from the public.
‘Are you therefore now telling me – telling this court – that you didn’t see Evelyn Bates – the woman in the picture – with the man before you, in the dock?’
‘I’m not saying I did, I’m not saying I didn’t,’ Murphy said. ‘It might’ve been her, but I didn’t get a look at her face.’
‘And you served them at 11.30 that night?’
‘I served the fella. The woman went and sat in the corner.’
‘And you saw them leave together?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Around midnight.’
Carnavale sat down, took a deep breath, and exhaled it back as a long pissed-off sigh. His junior said something to him, which earned her a sharp look.
Christine rose. She asked the court clerk to hand the witness Exhibit 17 – the Facebook photo of Evelyn Bates in her green dress, taken on her iPhone before she went out to the hen party. A copy of the photo was also handed to the jury. She waited until the foreman had it before she started speaking.
‘Was this the woman you saw with Vernon James?’
‘No.’
‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’ Christine said.
‘Absolutely sure,’ Murphy said. ‘The woman I saw the fella with was tall. She had long straight blonde hair, past her shoulders. And then there was her dress… It was down to her ankles with this split up the thigh. You saw most of her leg, most of the thigh. And the back was exposed too. And… erm… the dress was… it was pretty darn tight. Like paint.’
‘Paint?’
‘Like she’d painted it on, if you know what I mean,’ Murphy said, embarrassed.
The public guffawed. The judge smirked. The Asian juror covered her mouth to giggle.
Christine asked for copies of the forensics photos of Evelyn’s dress to be given to both the witness and the jury.
‘Was it this dress?’
‘No. Nothing like it. The only thing in common was the colour, but even that was different. The blonde I saw, her dress was dark green. This one here’s wrong.’
‘How?’
‘It’s got a back for a start. And it’s too short. The one I saw was more like a gown or something.’
‘When you say the woman you saw with Mr James was tall, how tall would you estimate her to be?’
‘About his height,’ Murphy said, nodding in VJ’s direction.
‘Vernon James is s
ix foot two. So was she roughly that tall?’
‘Yeah, I’d say, give or take.’
‘What about her build?’
‘Fit.’
‘As in athletic?’
‘And that.’
More laughter. Even the judge chortled.
‘So she was curvaceous?’
‘Yeah… well fit.’
‘One further question – did you notice anything in particular about Mr James. About his appearance?’
‘Yeah, he was in a bit of a state. Dishevelled. His suit was dirty – damp, like he’d had something thrown on him. And he had scratches on his face too.’
‘Where?’
‘On his cheek,’ he said. ‘Oh, and he seemed a bit pissed – I mean, drunk. He was slurring his words.’
‘Thank you.’
She sat down.
Most of the jury made notes.
Carnavale got up for the cross.
‘Mr Murphy, would you care to tell the court about your conviction for perjury?’
Murphy gawped in shock.
The public muttered.
Christine was taken aback. Redpath too.
As were judge, jury, court clerk and even the stenographer.
I was confused. Was Carnavale attacking his own witness?
‘In 2007 you were convicted for lying under oath during an insurance fraud trial, were you not? You served six months in prison,’ Carnavale said.
‘I… I… I… errr…’
Christine stood up. The judge waved her to sit down.
‘Mr Carnavale, what are you doing?’ the judge asked.
‘My Lord, the witness contradicted his statement, and I’m trying to determine the reason why.’
‘He is your witness.’
‘But, My Lord, this concerns his credibility.’
‘Of your witness?’ The judge was incredulous.
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Carnavale. This is your case. Therefore it’s your responsibility to determine the credibility of your witnesses before you bring them to court – not while they’re in court. Secondly, as you knowingly put a convicted perjurer on the stand, I don’t think you’re in any kind of position – moral, legal or otherwise – to cross-examine him about his past. Now, unless you have any questions relating directly to the matter at hand, then please ask the witness. If not, I will discharge him.’
Carnavale stood there, glowering at the barman for a good few seconds. The jury watched the stand-off with glee. The foreman had his mouth open. He’d be dining out on this one for a good long while.