A Private and Convenient Place

by Michael G T Stokes

  ‘Precisely!’

  Like the experienced advocate he was, Cronshaw then changed the subject completely.

  ‘The meeting at Hastings. You went there by motorcycle, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. I never went there at all.’

  You could almost hear the relief in Julia’s voice. She had survived counsel’s interrogation about Grayling’s ex-directory telephone number. That, of course, was exactly what Cronshaw wanted her to think.

  ‘You were then taken by the same means to London to keep your pre-arranged appointment with Bill Savage?’

  ‘No. I travelled to London by train from Leicester. The evidence is there for all to see.’

  She pointed to the jury bundle.

  ‘Evidence of your manipulation of events, would be more to the point. This was a charade you arranged to give yourself a false alibi?’

  ‘I travelled by train,’ she insisted, ‘I haven’t been on a motorcycle for years.’

  She thought she was coping pretty well with cross-examination now. There had been a bit of a blip over Grayling’s telephone number but she had put that to bed – or so she thought.

  ‘You have an interest in art do you?’ continued Cronshaw.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You say you took in the Holbein exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery?’

  ‘I went there, yes. I did a year of a history of art course before I went to secretarial college so I am not entirely ignorant of such matters.’

  ‘Tell us about Holbein. I’m afraid I missed the exhibition.’

  Cronshaw picked up the brochure that the police had found at her mother’s house and flicked through it.

  ‘Do you remember when he was born, for example?’

  ‘The father or the son?’ she quipped.

  There was a touch of arrogance in her response and the glint of a minor triumph in her eyes. That’ll show him, she thought. Some of the jurors were quite impressed too. But while Cronshaw had not expected such a quick and telling reply, he did not allow it to divert him.

  ‘Shall we start with the son?’

  ‘I don’t remember the exact date but it was around fourteen ninety-five, I believe. He was Henry the Eighth’s court painter, you know. He painted the portraits of many of his courtiers, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and Anne of Cleves of course. Caused a lot of trouble that particular painting. The king thought it far from life-like!’

  She smiled in that superior way of hers. I can certainly out do you, Harold Cronshaw if you want a duel about Holbein! ‘Well, am I right?’

  ‘Fourteen ninety-seven,’ replied Cronshaw. ‘You were very close.’

  ‘But no cigar,’ whispered Markham-Moore as he noted down Julia’s answers.

  Cronshaw had chosen his ground carefully. He held up the brochure.

  ‘This is the catalogue you say you acquired at the exhibition?’ He passed it to the usher who handed it to the witness.

  ‘It looks like it, yes.’

  What’s he up to now? thought Julia.

  ‘Look at the penultimate page, if you would.’

  She did as she was asked, but took her time about it.

  ‘You will see a series of numbers written in ink. A telephone number, perhaps?’

  Julia looked down at the page. There was the number written along the edge of a photograph of Holbein’s 1533 painting of the Ambassadors. Her heart started to sink.

  ‘I suppose so; I don’t recognise it if it is.’

  She no longer sounded quite so confident.

  ‘I have asked for it to be double-checked. It is the same number called from the telephone box in Thrussington on the twelfth of March last year. The number that appears in the admissions read to the jury yesterday.’

  He paused for effect.

  ‘Gus Grayling’s ex-directory telephone number.’

  Julia was temporarily stunned. There was a collective intake of breath from the jury and the buzz of conversation around the courtroom. She put her hand to her forehead. How did that get there? Then she remembered. Oh God! I’d forgotten. Maxine had written it down for me when I met her along with Kelly Maguire in London the week before the twelfth of March. I’d visited the first day of the Holbein Exhibition before the three of us met up.

  Cronshaw waited for the court to settle.

  ‘Well, Miss Hamilton. Tell us please, how did it get there?’

  Was Cronshaw reading her mind? She glanced towards the jury who were on the edge of their seats then continued to survey the page as she desperately searched for a response. Cronshaw waited. Time seemed to be standing still.

  ‘Well. Do you have an answer? Or do you require time to think?’

  She raised her eyes from the brochure and glared at Cronshaw.

  ‘Of course I require time to think. Not being a qualified lawyer, I like to think before I open my mouth and speak!’

  The jurors smiled. They liked her response. Even Cronshaw grinned.

  ‘I have no idea. It is not my handwriting. It could have been put there anytime in the last twelve months.’

  She was now regretting her decision to give evidence. Why did I not listen to my QC? His final advice to her had been to stay out of the witness box and put the prosecution to proof.

  ‘Could it?’ Cronshaw looked at the jury again. Several jurors sat back in their seats but they continued to concentrate on the woman in the witness box.

  ‘By whom?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  Thank God for Detective Sergeant Knight, thought Cronshaw. She had gone through the catalogue with a fine tooth comb while Hooper and Craddock had examined the material uplifted from Grayling’s home. She was following Hood’s maxim. Always look at the exhibits.

  ‘That is the number you called on the twelfth of March nineteen ninety-nine before you attended your appointment at the salon in Thrussington.’

  ‘I did not. And if I might point out, I only picked up the catalogue at the exhibition in London on the sixteenth. The call you are seeking to attribute to me was made before then.’

  Her brain was now in overdrive and her confidence started to revive. She could certainly think on her feet! But so could Cronshaw.

  ‘That’s what you say. But the exhibition had been running for ten days by the sixteenth of March. You could have gone there before the twelfth of March?’

  ‘Well I didn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps you met someone there who gave you the number? Someone who wrote it down on a convenient piece of paper. Your Holbein Exhibition catalogue for example?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That would account for its being there, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know how it got there.’

  Cronshaw looked at her in silence for several seconds, then moved on. A less experienced advocate would have pursued the point to destruction and, perhaps, lost the sympathy of the jury. But Cronshaw knew better. Leaving it and moving on was the best way of ensuring it remained in the collective consciousness of the jury. And he intended to return to it later. The coup de grâce could wait.

  ‘Perhaps the jury would like to see the brochure?’ interrupted the judge. ‘And copies of that page should be made available for them.’

  ‘Already done, my Lord,’ said Cronshaw, handing a sheaf of papers to the usher. ‘And a copy for your Lordship.’

  Further questioning was delayed as the copies were distributed, giving Julia more time to think. Cronshaw waited for the jury to settle then continued.

  ‘Let me ask you about Mr William Savage, QC. You used him for your own ends, didn’t you? He provided you, quite innocently, with a convenient alibi for both the sixteenth of March and for the period during which the abduction and blackmail took place?’

 
‘I did not use him at all. I regarded him as a friend. If anything, it turned out he was using me.’

  ‘You couldn’t believe your luck when he asked you to go to Brussels with him? The perfect alibi! A brand spanking new QC! You seized the opportunity with both hands?’

  ‘As you say, he asked me to go with him; I had no control over the dates. He had already made his arrangements.’

  Cronshaw sounded genuinely curious as he continued.

  ‘Why did you go with him? You were, you say, pregnant by Michael Doyle. Why go all the way to Brussels with another man and spend six days with him?’

  Julia took time to answer.

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time. I needed a break. I’d been under a great deal of pressure.’

  ‘And you used him to cover your smuggling a large amount of cash into Europe?’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘The experienced chambermaid who gave evidence would have known if your larger suitcase remained in your suite over a period of five or six days. This wasn’t a Travelodge or a downmarket bed and breakfast. This was a five star hotel in the centre of Brussels. She would most certainly have noticed it if it had been placed in the wardrobe?’

  ‘She was mistaken. It never left the room until we departed.’

  ‘You provided that case – full of cash I suggest from the Charnwood robbery – to someone you met in Brussels.’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  ‘You then retrieved the case, or got someone else to do it for you, and caused it to be handed in at the hotel – minus the cash of course. You’d been questioned by DCI Hood about it. That’s why the case had to be retrieved. Another example of your manipulation of evidence?’

  ‘Not so. It was genuinely mislaid.’

  Cronshaw turned again to her relationship with Savage.

  ‘You never told Savage you were pregnant until you returned to the UK?’

  ‘I did, over dinner. I was being very open with him.’

  ‘You are seriously suggesting that a man like William Savage, one of Her Majesty’s Counsel, so very concerned for his reputation, has forgotten a woman with whom he shared a room for six days had told him she was pregnant – by another man, and a criminal to boot?’

  Julia bridled.

  ‘So it would seem. He did drink rather a lot, you know. I believe it can make some people very forgetful.’

  ‘You initiated this abduction and blackmail?’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘You will notice I use the word “abduction”, rather than “kidnap”. You prefer “abduction” too, don’t you?’

  ‘They mean the same, don’t they?’

  ‘That is the word you used when you were in conversation with Grayling about the matter, isn’t it?’

  ‘Says your absent witness! My counsel hardly got the opportunity to cross examine him, if you remember – before he disappeared.’

  She glared at Cronshaw and adjusted her jacket.

  Cronshaw merely smiled.

  ‘You got the idea, I suggest, from the trial you were involved in three years ago in Northampton?’

  She shook her head vigorously.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You knew that if the judge ruled against the admissibility of the DNA both Doyle and Benson would be freed. There would then be sufficient time – before the judge’s family was released – for Doyle to leave the country?’

  ‘This is just your theory. It isn’t true.’

  ‘You acted as you did to guarantee Doyle would get away with his crimes. Just in case Judge Campion didn’t follow the earlier decisions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Abducting his wife and child would make him putty in your hands. That’s what you thought isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You had considerable of experience of Judge Campion as a trial judge, didn’t you?’

  ‘I had covered a few cases he tried, yes.’

  ‘And you rated him as a tribunal?’

  ‘He was better than some I could mention.’

  She avoided looking at Mr Justice Hornbeam by staring directly ahead.

  ‘And, of course, he was not bound by either of those previous decisions, was he?’

  ‘That is outside my knowledge and experience.’

  ‘I don’t think so. You knew perfectly well that neither decision bound Judge Campion?

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘But there could be no guarantee he would find in Benson and Doyle’s favour?’

  ‘There’s never any guarantee in litigation. I learnt that a long time ago.’

  ‘Unless, of course, the judge was subjected to intolerable pressure?’

  ‘Not by me.’

  Cronshaw paused and leafed through the papers on his lectern. His junior handed him a note which he made a show of reading before placing it to his side.

  ‘Let us consider the alternative scenario. Perhaps your original purpose was to make sure the judge freed Doyle, but the question arises whether you later joined in the Grayling plan, not to free him, but to put the blame on him for the abduction. If that had worked, he would probably never be released. Is that what you wanted?’

  Julia scoffed.

  ‘Why would I do that? To the father of my child? That’s a ridiculous suggestion. At that time, I wanted him with me – not locked up for the rest of his life.’

  Cronshaw paused. ‘At that time?’

  She paused and looked down for a moment.

  ‘I’ve already told you, I don’t know how he feels about me now.’

  ‘But is he the father of your child? You have denied he was in the past have you not? Did you discover later, perhaps, that he was not the father?’

  Everdene was on his feet in an instant.

  ‘Is that a serious suggestion? Does the Crown have any evidence to support such a suggestion?’

  Cronshaw smiled.

  ‘It is not a suggestion, merely an enquiry.’

  The judge frowned.

  ‘Shall we move on?’

  Cronshaw indicated he would with a slight incline of his head.

  ‘Now, Miss Hamilton. Apart from what you may have said to Doyle, have you had any serious doubt as to young Michael’s paternity?’

  ‘Never. Both Doyle and I know he is Michael’s father.’

  ‘Does he now? Didn’t he commence proceedings in the Family Court in order to have the paternity of the child ascertained beyond doubt by DNA testing?’

  Julia swayed slightly but held her nerve.

  ‘What if he did? That was obviously because of what I had told him. He abandoned the proceedings when I sent him the letter in October confirming the child was his. As the registered father, he has full parental rights.’

  ‘So, you do know some law, Miss Hamilton?’

  ‘I didn’t only cover criminal cases, Mr Cronshaw.’

  Cronshaw paused and sipped some water from a glass. Julia took the opportunity to speak directly to the judge. She was becoming increasingly concerned that prosecution counsel was going to come up with something very damaging. A diversion was necessary.

  ‘I’m finding it very warm in here, my Lord. Could I remove my jacket and perhaps sit down?’

  ‘Of course. If you would like a break we could take one now? I see it’s after four o’clock.’

  ‘I would rather get this over with. I’m finding it very distressing.’

  She looked daggers at Cronshaw. His relentless cross questioning was making its mark.

  ‘As you please.’

  Julia removed her jacket, revealing her beautifully toned arms. Her perfectly-fitted dress emphasised her quite perfect figure. She sat down, slowly, placing her jacket on her lap. The men on the jury could hardly take their eyes off her, just as she intend
ed. The judge, too, was temporarily distracted, but Miss Duston simply smiled. She knew what Julia was about.

  ‘Are you quite comfortable, Miss Hamilton?’ asked Cronshaw without a trace of sarcasm. He indicated for the usher to provide her with a glass of water. Not a plastic beaker, a glass.

  ‘I’m sure I will be when you’ve finished!’

  ‘I shall not be much longer. I have noted the time.’

  He took possession of a sheet of paper handed to him by his junior.

  ‘In December nineteen ninety-eight, you were engaged in a case for a Nottingham firm that overran slightly?’

  ‘What has that to do with anything?’

  ‘Please bear with me. Your client, a man called Bruce Duggan, was charged with robbery, was he not?’

  ‘Yes. He was also convicted and sent to prison for nine years.’

  ‘The trial delayed your joining Mr Doyle in Dorset for a planned Christmas break?’

  ‘Yes, a juror was ill. We did not sit for two days as a result. I was in fact covering two cases at the time. My other client was also convicted. Not a very good week.’

  ‘Two cases?’

  ‘Yes. It does happen, what with legal aid rates being what they are.’

  ‘Shall we concentrate on the robbery case? The sick juror. His absence just happened to coincide with the date of the Charnwood robbery?’

  ‘As you say, a coincidence. I didn’t arrange for the juror to suffer from food poisoning, you know. He managed that all on his own.’

  Her voice was heavy with mockery. She wasn’t beaten yet! She attempted a smile, but Cronshaw simply pressed on.

  ‘Your client’s defence was alibi?’

  Everdene jumped to his feet. About time too! thought Julia.

  ‘I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning, my Lord. Is my friend venturing into matters that may be subject to legal professional privilege?’

  Cronshaw showed a degree of justified irritation.

  ‘If my friend will only be patient, it will become quickly apparent that I am doing no such thing. I shall be referring only to matters in the public domain.’

  ‘Very well. Proceed,’ said the judge.

  ‘You will recall that one of the alibi witnesses was Adam Leckie’s brother, Angus.’