Apple Tree Yard (37 page)

The jury all break into relieved smiles at the realisation that the judge has, quite unexpectedly, made a joke.

‘As a result, we will not now require your attendance until after the lunch break. You are free to go until 2 p.m.’

That is it. They are ushered out. I wonder that the judge does not apologise for their unnecessary journeys that morning but suppose that might undermine his authority. Jokes may be dispensed from on high; apologies may not.

‘Be upstanding in court,’ the usher barks.

We all rise, bow to the judge as he departs.

Ms Bonnard turns to you, my co-defendant, where you stand in the dock and says, ‘I’m coming down to see you straight away.’ I’m a little confused. Wasn’t getting the report printed the immediate problem? Your defence team gather papers and folders and leave the court in a flurry.

DI Cleveland turns back to look at his colleagues by the door and raises his eyebrows, then wanders over to the prosecution table. Mrs Price turns to him as he approaches and raises her hands. ‘They’re playing for time,’ she says. Then, lowering her voice only slightly, she adds, ‘Internet connection my arse.’

Robert is still sitting with one arm along the chair, his expression thoughtful. Beside him, his junior sits in her chair, silent.

*

Dr Sanderson fills me with fear the minute he enters the court. He has a heavy face, like a bulldog and fluffy grey hair. He seems deeply unimpressed to be there, although I presume he is being paid. He stands in the dock and Mrs Price takes him through his psychological assessment of you during which, in summary, he asserts that there is no chance whatsoever that you are suffering from a personality disorder. He cites your good behaviour while you are on remand, your lack of a previous psychiatric history and solid work record. Most damning of all, he asserts that you are what he calls, ‘an unreliable historian’, and as evidence of that, he cites the calculated way in which you have pursued your interest in extra-marital sex. In other words, you are a liar. You are not mad, or disturbed, or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or a borderline or anti-social personality disorder. You’re just a liar.

*

Ms Bonnard does what she can. She attempts to deal with Dr Sanderson in the same way she dealt with the other prosecution witnesses: she goes on the attack. She asks him for his track record in giving evidence and establishes that he is almost always on the prosecution side. She quotes a report he wrote for the Home Office entitled: ‘Criminal Defences and Malingering’. She gets him to describe how malingering is a technical term for the way in which criminals try to avoid responsibility for their crimes by pretending to be psychologically disturbed and how some of them can research their disorders quite carefully.

‘You often think people are malingering, don’t you?’ she asks him.

He looks at her coldly, the bulldog man, unrattled, and says, ‘I think they are malingering when there is no evidence they are suffering from a serious psychiatric disorder and are merely pretending they do in order to get off.’ He looks over at the jury after he says this in a way that suggests he would roll his eyes at them if he thought he could get away with it.

Ms Bonnard then pulls out the final weapon in her arsenal. She asks Dr Sanderson to comment on a case in which he gave evidence for the prosecution of a woman who had stabbed her stepfather after years of sexual abuse. ‘Your evidence, as I understand it, was that this woman was not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?’

‘That is correct,’ he replies. ‘In my opinion, she was not.’

‘You are sceptical as to whether post-traumatic stress disorder actually exists,’ states Ms Bonnard, looking down as she always does when she lobs in one of her killer statements.

Dr Sanderson does not budge one inch. ‘It is not my job to be sceptical or otherwise. It is my job to make a diagnostic assessment according to the law.’

Now I know why Ms Bonnard played for time after reading Dr Sanderson’s psychological assessment of you. It is devastating for your case. Dr Sanderson combines his cynicism with just enough moderation to avoid appearing harsh. I think he is a hateful person, without one shred of human empathy, the sort of person who, a few years ago, would have said that sexual abuse itself didn’t exist except in the mind of the victim – but I have to concede that he means every word he says. He loves his job and is good at it. He is perfectly sincere.

*

When Robert comes to see me at the end of the day, I can tell he is unhappy. ‘Although our defence doesn’t rely on Mr Costley’s innocence, obviously we would like him to be found not guilty because then you are automatically not guilty too.’

‘How do you think Ms Bonnard did against the psychologist?’ I ask, although I know the answer.

Robert frowns. His gown is still hanging off one shoulder – his wig is minutely askew; he looks tired. ‘Let’s just say, she’s handling things a little differently from how I would handle them.’ He sniffs derisively. ‘I normally have a slightly better working relationship with the other defence team in multiple-defendant cases. It’s in our interests to work together, after all.’

We both sit in silence for a minute or two, alone together in the small consulting room. Tomorrow, it will be my turn.

*

The prosecution case against me is straightforward. They rubbish their own victim. They present George Craddock as a monster. They do not attempt to discredit or diminish the story of his assault against me, in the way a defence would have done were it Craddock in the dock: they do the opposite. The worse they make him look, the more motive it gives me. They have evidence from the police computer expert about the pornographic websites Craddock visited. The ex-wife is unavailable – they have been unable to track her down in America – so they bring in her sister to give evidence about the Craddock marriage and the allegations made of domestic abuse. I didn’t know you could bring bad character evidence against a dead victim but apparently you can. You can do anything in this trial, I am beginning to think, because this is an upside-down trial. It is like the large mirror in the café where you and I met Kevin. It is through the looking-glass. Everything that should count for me is against me.

Kevin himself is the next prosecution witness against me, and gives convincing evidence about how I was measured and articulate during our discussion but how he still sensed, beneath my controlled exterior, a great deal of distress about what had happened to me. Kevin is a good witness, as likeable in court as I found him in the café, a sympathetic man whose job it is to help women: he couldn’t be worse for me. Upside-down, wrong way round: during Kevin’s evidence, I come the closest I come during the whole trial to wanting to put my hands over my eyes and scream.

Kevin’s speculation about the nature of the relationship between you and me is not something that is raised by Mrs Price. It has been ruled inadmissible. There are only two people who are allowed to be asked about the nature of our relationship: you, and me.

The taxi driver who drove me home after that night – he is a prosecution witness too. They traced him from the receipt he gave me, which they found amongst my papers when they searched my house. He comes over well, too, strong London accent, a little bumbling but heartfelt, a nice man.

‘What did you observe between the defendant and the victim in this case?’ Mrs Price asks him. By defendant she means me. By victim, she means Craddock.

Robert gets to his feet – it is the first time in the trial he has raised an objection and several people on the jury look at him, surprised. ‘My Lord, this witness is being asked to give his opinion…’

My Lord raises his hand to interrupt Robert mid-sentence, then pauses for a moment’s reflection, then says, ‘I think this witness is being asked what he observed. Mrs Price, you will ensure that your questions do not stray from that, won’t you?’

‘Of course, My Lord.’

‘Then you may proceed.’

Robert sits. It is his first interjection, and he has been slapped down. I think how anything that makes him look weak must surely make our whole case look weak.

‘Well, like I said to my wife that night, I was a bit concerned,’ the taxi driver continues, carefully, a little self-importantly, glancing from counsel to the jury and back again. ‘It was my last job that night, I live out in west London myself so was quite pleased to get it and thought I’d knock off a bit early and get myself home and my wife was waiting up and I said, I think this woman I took home was in a bad way, in the corner of the cab like. Dunno what was going on but she didn’t look good.’

*

The upside-down evidence is eventually concluded – and here is where the case against me falters. Without proof of the nature of our relationship, the suggestion that I urged you to kill Craddock sounds implausible. Other than making it clear that what he did to me was very bad, there is little the prosecution can do. I wonder if they know this, in their heart of hearts. I wonder if Mrs Price is thinking, oh well, as long as we get him, that’s good enough. We will do our best to get her but it’s not looking very good. I wonder, not for the first time, about her degree of emotional investment in what is going on here. How much do these people care?

*

It is Friday afternoon. The jury are still settling back in their seats, still doing the small shuffling motion most of us do as we sit down, when junior counsel for the prosecution rises. Mrs Price stays in her seat for this bit. Clearly, the junior barristers have to be given something to do. ‘My Lord, we have some submissions…’ The young man of the Murray Mints reads out a paramedic’s statement – the paramedic himself has not been called as a witness as he is in hospital having his appendix out. But his statement will suffice and the judge is directed to it. ‘This is in My Lord’s bundle page two one three…’
My Lord’s bundle
: it sounds like a baby wrapped in a blanket. There is a pause while My Lord flicks through his bundle. I don’t really understand the relevance of the absent paramedic’s evidence but later Robert explains to me that it concerns the amount of clearing up that was done after Craddock was killed. This is important because your defence is going to be diminished responsibility. The more thorough you were in your clear-up, the more organised, then the more responsible – or sane – you appear to be. The detail that follows still seems excessive to me. The prosecution has already demonstrated that you knew what you were doing. But we still get to hear about how both paramedics placed surgical gloves over their boots before entering the property. Normally, they would wait for protective suits and boots to arrive in order to preserve the evidence – the 999 call had stated a dead body, after all – but because of the length of time they were taking to arrive, the decision was taken to enter the property anyway in case resuscitation was required for any persons who may be on the property. This seems to me yet another example of where information is given in order to protect someone from criticism later, rather than because it has any relevance to our case. Mr Murray Mint continues to stand in for the paramedic, ‘When I entered the property, I proceeded immediately into the kitchen, where I found an unknown male lying on his back with his head towards the fridge freezer. I noticed a large pool of blood beneath the head…’ We are back to the beginning again: the body. Again and again, the body is what we circle around – not the man, the body. The body is always there, like a corpse in a horror movie that appears wherever the main character looks; the bedroom, the kitchen, the sitting room, in their office at work, sitting in their car. This body does not follow us in that way – it is a real body, it stays in one place – but all the same, none of us can get away from it. The callow boy is still reading out the paramedic’s statement, about the scene-of-crime officers arriving, then, eventually, the police doctor, ‘…and at eighteen hundred hours, life was pronounced extinct.’

Extinct. Gone for good. Not just absent, not just away for a bit – extinct, never to return.

The word extinct is still hanging in the air when junior counsel says, ‘And just one more submission, My Lord,’ and drops a small depth charge into the already murky waters of what the jury know about you. ‘In 2005, Mark Costley pleaded guilty to the charge of common assault.’

The jury members look surprised, and a little baffled. They feel this is relevant information and, of course, want more detail. They have not been privy to the legal arguments over the admission of bad character evidence, during which it emerged that you were found guilty of assault after getting into a fight with a man outside a pub. The man had insulted your wife, apparently. The jury is not allowed to hear the details of the case because Ms Bonnard has argued that it might prejudice the jury.

I am still watching the jury’s reaction to this information as Mrs Price stands. I only just catch her saying quietly, ‘My Lord, that concludes the case for the Crown.’

The prosecution has wrapped up so quietly and undramatically that I look around the court to see if anyone else is as surprised as I am. I can’t help feeling there should have been some grand conclusion but that will come later, in the closing statements. That is when I can expect the flourishes, if indeed there will be any.

The jury all look a little surprised as well. The judge turns to them and says that, as it is nearly 3 p.m. on a Friday, he sees no reason to ask the defence to open at this point. He reminds them that they are to discuss the case with no one over the weekend. They are free to go until 10.15 on Monday morning. The prosecution case against us has taken two weeks. As it turns out, the defence will be a lot quicker.

One by one, the jury members get down from the jury box and file out in front of us. We all watch them go, off to their normal lives.

There is a collective exhalation in the court. The prosecution and defence barristers turn to each other. The woman from the CPS closes her file with a sigh. The judge turns to Robert and asks if he will be making a submission and Robert says yes, he will have it on the judge’s desk by midnight.