A Fatal Verdict (18 page)

The difficulty for Sarah was that it was not Terry Bateson, but Will Churchill, who had written out this man’s statement for him. And Churchill, in Sarah’s opinion, had about as much respect for the truth as a fox had for the life of a chicken.

‘Did you read what he wrote, before you signed?’

‘Yes, well ... not exactly. He read it to me.’

‘He read it aloud to you, after he had written it. Then you signed?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. Did he offer you the chance to correct what he had written, then? To put in a sentence explaining how difficult it was to remember, perhaps?’

‘No sir. It was all correct.’

‘All correct, was it? And very precise. He couldn’t have been in the shop more than four minutes in total. Do you have a stopwatch on your counter, Mr Patel?’

‘No sir, of course not.’

‘And yet you state very precisely how many minutes this man spent in your shop. Did DCI Churchill explain to you exactly why the timing was so important?’

‘Well yes sir, of course. Because the young man had murdered his girlfriend.’

‘Oh really? He told you that, did he?’

Sarah groaned softly to herself. Oh Terry, Terry, why didn’t you interview this man yourself?

‘Well, yes, sir, of course. Everyone knew it. That’s why we are here.’

‘Let me be clear about this. He told you Mr Kidd had murdered his girlfriend, did he? Not that he was investigating her death, but that it was a murder, and Mr Kidd had done it?’

‘Well yes, sir. I think that’s what he said.’

‘Very well. You are being very honest, Mr Patel. And so that’s why you remembered this visit to your shop in particular, is it? Because you knew, or believed you knew, that Mr Kidd had murdered his girlfriend. Did the policeman also explain to you why the length of time Mr Kidd spent in your shop was so important?’

‘Yes, I think ... if he had spent a long time in my shop, then she must have killed herself. But if it was only a short time, then he was the murderer.’

‘He said that to you, did he? Before you made your statement?’

‘I’m not sure when he said it. But it’s true, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what I’ve heard.’

‘Are you telling this jury, Mr Patel, that before you made this statement to the police, DCI Churchill told you that if you said Mr Kidd had only spent a few minutes in your shop, that would be proof that he had murdered his girlfriend?’

‘I’m not sure if it was before. Maybe after I made the statement. I don’t know.’

‘But he did tell you this, did he?’

‘I think so, yes.’ Something about the reaction to his evidence, maybe the way the judge and Sarah were staring at him so intently, was beginning to unnerve the elderly shopkeeper even more than Savendra’s questions. ‘Perhaps, yes. I may have got this wrong.’

Savendra studied the witness carefully. The man was sweating, his plump hands clasping and unclasping nervously as he gazed anxiously at the faces in front of him. ‘You’re being very honest, Mr Patel. That’s good, that’s very important in a court of law. You’re saying you can’t remember precisely what the Detective Chief Inspector told you about this crime when he wrote down your statement more than seven months ago?’

‘Yes sir, that’s right.’

The man looked relieved, but Sarah, watching, guessed that his relief would be short-lived. It was often when he was being kind to a witness that Savendra was at his most lethal.

‘And yet you can remember, very precisely indeed it seems, exactly how many minutes Mr Kidd spent in your shop on the 21
^st
May. Is that what you’re asking this court to believe?’

The shopkeeper hesitated. ‘Well, I’m not sure. I thought ... remembered it then.’

‘You remembered it then, when the Chief Inspector was sitting in front of you, writing down words for you to sign. Do you remember it now? Are you sure that these words which the detective wrote down for you are the truth?’

The pudgy hands on the witness stand clasped each other in agony. ‘I don’t know. It’s a long time ago. I thought they were true.’

‘You thought they were true, yet you didn’t even read them before signing. And you can’t remember now, exactly what the Chief Inspector told you before you signed this paper, can you? That’s the truth, isn’t it?’

‘I think he said what I told you. That David had murdered his girlfriend. That’s why I tried so hard to remember. It was my duty, you understand. She was a lovely girl. She had been in my shop many times.’

‘You tried hard to remember what the Chief Inspector wanted you to remember. That’s the truth, isn’t it? And he wrote it down for you. Think hard now, Mr Patel. You’re on oath, in the court of her Majesty the Queen. Can you honestly tell this court that my client, Mr Kidd there, was in your shop for only four minutes? Could he have been there for six minutes, maybe? Eight minutes? Ten perhaps? Fifteen? Can you really be so sure?’

The man took a folded handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead anxiously.

‘It is very difficult to be sure, sir. But he was not there for fifteen minutes, certainly. Ten minutes ... well, perhaps. Possibly eight. But I honestly believed four at the time. I was not lying, sir, you understand. I was trying to do my duty. To help the police solve a murder. That poor girl - she was murdered!’

‘You don’t know that, Mr Patel. None of us do. It is quite possible that she committed suicide. That is why your evidence is so important, you see. Now, let me ask you one more time. Can you be sure that he was there for only four minutes?’

Patel took a deep breath, and seemed to withdraw into himself for a moment as he searched his memory for the truth. Then he sighed, and looked up.           

‘No sir. If I am honest, I cannot be sure.’

It was, as both lawyers knew, a terrible admission - possibly the decisive moment in the trial. As Savendra sat down, he smiled at Sarah and made a quiet clicking noise with his mouth. Very soft, but Sarah knew exactly what it meant: you’ve lost this, darling, he’s dropped you in the sewage. If David Kidd had been in that shop for ten or twelve minutes, with at least two more minutes walking to and from his flat and another couple talking to the priest outside his door, then his alibi worked in the way he had always claimed: he would have been away from the flat for fifteen minutes or more, too long for Shelley to be still alive by the time he had returned, phoned 999, and waited a further seven minutes for an ambulance. But plenty of time, on the other hand, for her to have got out of the bath, found a knife, and cut her own wrists while he was away. Mr Patel had just given Kidd a lifeline, by denying the written statement he had given to the police.

22. Recriminations

Sarah stormed out of court at the lunchtime adjournment, Mark Wrass following anxiously behind. ‘Where is that man Churchill? I want to speak to him right now.’

‘I rang as soon as this started and left a message,’ Mark said apologetically. ‘He’s out on a case, it seems.’

‘Well, ring again and get him here now. This case is going down the pan unless something is done.’

But as Mark began urgently punching numbers into his mobile phone, Sarah spotted Will Churchill running jauntily up the stone steps outside the court. She strode smartly over to confront him as he pushed his way into the foyer. Seeing the scowl on her face, he raised an ironic eyebrow. ‘Problems, Mrs Newby, is it? Cock-up on the legal front?’

‘I’ll say. Come with me, through here, now.’

She led the way swiftly to a small conference room, holding the door open when she got there so that Churchill, following with deliberate slowness, was shown as if into her office. She stood behind the table and glared at him.

‘A key witness, a man interviewed by you, has just gone back on his evidence. Unless something is done about it David Kidd is going to walk free.’ Briskly, she outlined the events of the morning, while Churchill stood opposite her, stunned, his insouciance blown away by her story. ‘He now says that Kidd was in his shop for eight or ten minutes, which means that if Kidd cut her wrists, Shelley Walters would have had to survive for more than twenty minutes with a pierced artery to be still alive when the ambulance came. Which the defence are going to claim is impossible.’

‘The little bastard! Why did he do that?’

‘He’s saying you bullied him into making that statement. Did you?’

‘Of course I bloody didn’t! What do you think I am?’

A man who wants to get to the top, fast, Sarah thought bitterly. A man who needs successful prosecutions and will bulldoze his way through until he gets them.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time a policeman has manufactured evidence. If this man had come up with this story before, I doubt I’d have advised the CPS to bring this case.’

‘Are you saying I lied, woman?’ Always on a short fuse, particularly where women were concerned, Churchill had raised his voice several decibels. The bitter history of their previous conflicts replayed ghostly battles between them.

‘I’m
not saying it,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s Mr Patel who’s saying it, on oath, in court. You told him Kidd was a murderer, he says, wrote out his statement for him, and bullied him into saying what you wanted to hear.’

‘I didn’t bloody bully him, the toe-rag,’ said Churchill controlling his voice with an effort. ‘I sat him down nice and quiet, helped him make up his mind, and wrote down every word he said. Then he read it all over carefully, and signed it. It’s called procedures, Mrs Newby, doing things properly. The way I always operate.’

‘Helped him make up his mind?’ Sarah said. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Just what it says. It’s hard to remember exactly how long a conversation took, even you must realise that. So I focussed his mind on the things he did, the words he could remember, and made him think how long each one took. Then we added the times up together.’

‘And you call that objective?’                                                                                                           

‘I call that careful investigation, getting at the truth. Why, what would you call it?’

Putting pressure on the witness to come up with the right story, Sarah thought grimly. That’s what I’d say if I had this man on the stand in front of me.  But right now, we’re on the same side.  Gritting her teeth, she said: ‘This still looks like a murder but it’s going to be a lot harder to prove. Some of those jurors have been brought up on stories of police brutality, and you’ve just  played right into their fantasies.’

‘I’ve done nothing of the sort. I wrote down exactly what he told me.’

‘What you wanted him to tell you, you mean.’

‘Look.’ Churchill pressed his hands to the table and got his feet. ‘We’re getting nowhere with this. You know it was a murder and I know it was a murder so when that man Patel said Kidd was in his shop for only a few minutes that has to be the truth, however much you lawyers have muddled his brains now. Witnesses get confused all the time, you know that, but it’s your job and mine to make sure that wicked murderers like David Kidd get locked away for good. And if you’re not up to that, Mrs Newby, perhaps you’re in the wrong job!’

Not me, Sarah thought as she watched the door close behind him. Not me, William Churchill, you. She had loathed the man ever since she had met him, but never before, so far as she could remember, had he so clearly condemned himself out of his own mouth.

When court resumed after lunch, Sarah stood up and said, rather lamely: ‘My lord, that concludes the case for the prosecution.’

As she had expected, Savendra immediately asked for the jury to be sent out during legal argument, which consisted of his attempt to get the case dismissed on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to put before a jury. ‘My lord, the entire prosecution case rested on the evidence of this morning’s witness, who was supposed to disprove my client’s alibi that he was out of the flat while Shelley Walters met her death. His original statement, signed it now seems under police pressure, made it possible that the defendant cut Miss Walters’ wrists, went out to the shop, and returned in time to find her still alive. This is no longer the case. Mr Patel’s new evidence entirely destroys this possibility. Therefore the only rational conclusion is that she took her own life.’

‘That is not so, my lord,’ Sarah argued firmly. ‘In the first place, it seems highly likely that this morning’s witness is simply confused, and has no idea how long the accused was in his shop. His evidence is now so contradictory that it should be disregarded altogether. And with Mr Patel out of the equation, we are left with the fact that Miss Walters was found dying in the defendant’s bath, in a flat to which no one but he had access, with bruises on her neck and the artery pierced in her right wrist - not her left - and the defendant’s fingerprints on the knife. Quite sufficient to put before the jury, my lord.’

‘A strong prima facie case, certainly,’ said the judge. ‘But you must admit, Mrs Newby, your case is damaged. Your chances of conviction seem rather less of a certainty than they did. Do you have witnesses to call, Mr Bhose?’

‘Yes, my lord, two. Miss Walters’ psychiatrist and the defendant himself.’

Sarah sighed. Earlier she had argued strongly for the exclusion of Dr Giles MacDonald, Shelley’s psychiatrist, on the grounds that he had no first-hand knowledge whatsoever of the circumstances of Shelley’s death, but the judge, reluctantly, had overruled her. Since the defence relied on the possibility of suicide, he said, the grounds for that possibility must necessarily be explored. After this morning’s debacle she saw no point in a further almost certainly futile attempt to reopen that debate. Instead, she bought herself a sandwich and a bottle of water, and phoned Terry Bateson.

‘Hi,’ she said, sitting on a bench by the riverbank, and ripping open the packet with her left hand while she held the phone in the other. ‘What are you doing now?’

‘Preparing to interview a drug dealer. Why?’

‘I thought you might like to know how things went in court this morning with your shopkeeper. The one whose evidence you were so certain about. Remember?’

Was his mobile clear enough to convey the full bitterness behind her tone of waspish disillusionment? She hoped so. She took a bite of her sandwich and waited. His response, when it came, sounded cautious and wary.

‘Why? What happened?’

‘He changed his story. Said Kidd might have been in his shop for up to ten minutes. He only said four in his statement because Will Churchill bullied him into it. And not only that, he claimed Churchill told him four would get Kidd convicted of murder.’

‘Shit.’

‘My sentiments exactly. Only it was me that was dropped in it. I only just managed to stop the judge from throwing the case out altogether.’

There was a pause, during which she bit hungrily into her sandwich and waited for a response which didn’t come. What was he doing, she wondered irritably? Shaking his head? Biting his lip? Ignoring her completely while he read some document about his drug dealer?

‘Terry?’ She unscrewed her bottle of water. ‘I trusted you to get this right!’

‘Yeah, well. I’m sorry. I’ll talk to Churchill. He’ll deny it, of course.’

‘I’m way ahead of you. I’ve talked to him already.’

‘And?’

‘He denied it, of course. Said he did everything by the book, the smug bastard.’

‘Yes, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? What did you expect?’

She let him wait for a moment while she sipped from her drink. The water cleared her mouth, so her answer came crisply. ‘What I expected, Terry, was that you would double-check everything, and that this case, which I only agreed to take on because you were in charge of it, would be watertight. Now it’s holed below the waterline, damn you!’

‘Look, Sarah, I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have checked.’ His voice, she was pleased to note, sounded suitably contrite. She began to feel a little sorry for him, as he went on. ‘ ...  you do appreciate the man’s my boss, don’t you? I can’t just go picking holes in everything he does, you know. Especially when ...’

‘He only did it because one of your kids was ill. I know.’

‘I wasn’t going to say that, Sarah, though it’s true. Christ, suspected meningitis - for a few days there I thought Esther was going to die. So I was grateful to him at the time. But what I was going to say was ... well, this is still a murder, Sarah, and Kidd did it, whatever that shopkeeper Patel says now. So when Will Churchill brought back a statement saying Kidd was only in his shop for four minutes, I believed it. I mean, it has to be true, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s not what he’s saying now.’

‘Well, what is he saying now? That he’s sure Kidd was in his shop for ten minutes?’

‘No, not really. He’s saying he can’t remember.’

‘Well, exactly. That’s the trouble with this kind of evidence. Sod Will Churchill, he’s screwed it up by trying to be too precise. But in this case ... well, he’s got to be right, hasn’t he? I mean, who else murdered Shelley if Kidd didn’t do it? There was no one else there.’

‘She murdered herself.’ Sarah took another bite of her sandwich. ‘That’s what the defence are saying. Some of the jury are starting to believe that now.’

‘Yes, well, she didn’t, Sarah. You know that and so do I. It’s your job to convince them of the truth, that’s all.’

‘That, DI Bateson, is exactly what Will Churchill said to me half an hour ago. To cover up the fact that he’s been caught falsifying the evidence. Again. In a noble cause, no doubt. Just as he did with my son.’

‘Okay, Sarah, look, I’m sorry. We’ve got to do things the right way, of course we have. But it’s not the same as your son, not this time, really. All the evidence shows Kidd’s guilty, all the rest of it, anyway. And if he isn’t put away, it’ll be that girl’s family who will suffer, all over again for a second time. Can you imagine what that would be like?’

‘I can try, but I don’t think imagination takes you very far, do you? The real thing must be so painful it doesn’t bear thinking about. Okay, Terry, look, you’re right. I think this Patel was just confused, that’s all, and Will Churchill’s made it worse. But I’ll do my best. This afternoon I’ve got the girl’s psychiatrist, God help me. That isn’t going to help either.’

Sarah got to her feet, threw the remains of her sandwich to some ducks, and dropped the wrapper in a bin. In a few minutes she was due back in court.

‘You’ll manage,’ Terry said. ‘You always do.’

‘Do I? We’ll see.’ Sarah clicked off her phone, drained her bottle, threw it after the wrapper, and strode purposefully back across the road.