by Gary Bell
Zara handed me the next sheet in the pile, and I smoothed it across the oak, rapping upon it with one knuckle.
‘Allow me to ask a basic question,’ I went on. ‘Does evidence of an alibi either undermine the prosecution case or assist the defence case?’
Stunned silence from DeWitt.
It was a few more seconds before the judge interceded. ‘Could you answer the question please, Superintendent DeWitt?’
‘Yes,’ he conceded grudgingly. ‘Evidence of an alibi assists the defence.’
‘It does,’ I nodded firmly, ‘and yet you didn’t think it necessary to disclose the fact that our client, Mr Barber, had an alibi between the hours of one and five o’clock on the morning of the murder?’
A few gasps, but mostly perplexed frowns stretched from the jury to the prosecution and beyond. I had to go for broke.
‘In simple terms,’ I sighed, ‘Mr Galos and William Barber were engaged in sexual intercourse with one another, during and beyond the time of The Girl’s killing. And you knew about this all along, didn’t you, Detective Chief Superintendent?’
33
It was well over a minute before the silence in the courtroom was broken by a long howl echoing from the public gallery.
Glancing up, I saw the last of Sarah Barber as she was shepherded, retching, from the balcony by several ashen members of the family, while Billy buried his head in the massive crooks of his arms.
There was nothing to do but carry on.
‘Mr Barber was a regular client of Mr Galos, a relationship he’d begun almost a year before the killing. Furthermore, you knew of this! It had been revealed to you after one of Mr Galos’s aforementioned arrests. You were entirely aware about this alibi from day one of the investigation! So, I ask, why did you decide not to disclose that fact?’
DeWitt’s eyes were burning now, but he did a surprising job of holding in his temper.
‘Fact?’ he scoffed. ‘You have absolutely no evidence of this, beyond the word of some drug-abusing rent boy! If this were true, why wouldn’t Barber have admitted it from the start? You seriously expect the jury to believe that a man would risk being sent down for a murder he didn’t commit, simply to hide his homosexuality?’
‘Most men, no, of course not. But this man? Absolutely! Just as you were banking on him doing!’
‘My Lord!’ Garrick was on his feet alongside me. ‘This is an outrageous, totally inappropriate attack on a commended chief of police! Where is this so-called witness, I ask?’
Mr Justice Pike frowned, scratching his nose. Then, to my surprise, gave me the slightest of nods. ‘Go on, Mr Rook.’
By now, DeWitt was spinning wildly between judge, jury and myself. ‘I suppose Galos gave you an explanation for the burned clothes while he was at it, did he?’ he growled.
‘Evidence of an affair that Mr Barber would, understandably, have wanted to destroy. Would it be fair to say that in this courtroom, your job as an investigating officer is to present the evidence, all of the evidence, to the jury?’
‘Only the credible evidence,’ he snapped.
‘Whether evidence is credible is not a matter for you to decide, Officer, but for the jury.’
There came no reply, so I altered my approach. ‘Let’s go back to the arrest of Mr Barber, shall we? You bundled him into the back seat of … what car was it, again?’
He was paling now, blond as the hair upon his head. ‘What car?’
‘Yes. I’m sure that you, commended Chief Super, rarely have to squabble for the keys from the board in the parade room. Having your own, unmarked car is one of the perks of your position, isn’t it? No logbook to fill. No officers to share it with. In fact, you drive an unmarked BMW 5 Series, don’t you?’
Of course you do, I thought. You tried to haul me into it, and I wasn’t the first.
He nodded.
‘Nodding doesn’t help, DCS DeWitt,’ Pike said. ‘You need to say yes or no so it can be recorded.’
‘Yes.’
‘So,’ I went on, ‘it goes without saying that you were driving your unmarked BMW that morning?’
‘I don’t remember what car I was driving.’
‘But wait,’ I said, ‘Ms Dickinson, the upstairs neighbour, clearly told this courtroom yesterday of her relief when the panda car arrived on the scene! It certainly stuck in my mind, as people rarely use that expression these days, but I’m sure we can have the court reporter go back to that evidence if memories need refreshing?’
‘I told you, I don’t remember what I was driving. Maybe she was speaking metaphorically?’
‘Maybe so. But tell me, if you took the defendant straight out of the shower, dressed in what must have been clean clothes, then how did he make such a mess in the back seat?’
DeWitt held my gaze, blinking rapidly. More papers came up to me from the pile; God bless Zara and her night of work.
‘Are you familiar,’ I asked, ‘with Nottinghamshire Constabulary’s Use and Maintenance of Police Vehicles Guidance?’
‘Yes,’ he managed through tight teeth.
‘Including the passage that states: “Where professional cleaning of a police vehicle is required to remove bodily fluids or other contamination, Business Services can arrange for completion of any witness statements, and all cleaning should be done through approved contract arrangements”?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, all police cars have to be taken to the same approved car wash – is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then tell me, Superintendent DeWitt, was there any particularly pressing reason for one of your cars to be taken for a full valet, by you personally, only minutes after the car wash opened on the morning of the fifteenth. This is while Mr Barber was in your custody, sobering up, and you were supposedly on your way to the scene of a young girl’s murder?’
He looked like he was getting short of breath, leaning against the balustrade. ‘What are you insinuating?’
Cross-examination. A chance to find the truth.
‘Answer the question, please,’ came the steely voice of the judge.
‘I don’t remember! The car was probably dirty – what of it?’
‘Well, let’s recap, shall we?’ I said. ‘You knew that the defendant had an alibi, but it was one he’d never use. You decided not to disclose details of that alibi to anybody. You picked him up in a standard patrol car, while your unmarked vehicle was waiting to be cleaned of bodily fluids, only hours after a killing. There was another failure to disclose evidence of DNA found under the victim’s fingernails, which did not come from the defendant, and you were so eager to arrest Mr Barber for this murder that you did so before the body had even been discovered! As if by psychic ability you arrested him for a crime which, at that moment, nobody else knew had been committed! Nobody, but the killer, of course. How was this possible?’
He didn’t answer. Along the panel, faces were turning to and fro like spectators of a Grand Slam tournament. I had him on the ropes.
‘Why did you move to Nottingham, DCS DeWitt? You were previously working in Sheffield, up until you were subject to police disciplinary proceedings, weren’t you?’
‘I was cleared,’ he managed.
‘Of all allegations?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Cleared or not, the charges of misconduct were severe enough to be reported in the national news at the time. Without detail, of course.’
‘Cleared of all, yes, except one, and all I got for that was a rap on the knuckles.’
‘A rap on the knuckles?’ I ran my finger along the printed article. ‘Is that how you describe a warning over future conduct?’
‘It was nothing.’ Sweat was gathering now, rolling from his temples to his jaw.
‘Again, that’s a matter for the jury to decide, not you,’ I said coolly. ‘Why don’t you tell us what you were accused of? It might be in the court’s interest, after all.’
‘There were some issues …’ he mumbled, and then swallowed. It took him a whi
le to finish. ‘With disclosure.’
I tried not to smile. ‘In other words, you were accused of withholding evidence?’
‘The allegations were a load of rubbish! Everything I did, I did to –’
‘But those allegations were enough to make you move to a new city, weren’t they?’ I pressed. ‘I wonder, if that was enough to make you leave Sheffield, then what must have driven you to leave Pretoria in ’96?’
‘What the hell has me leaving South Africa got to do with this case?’ he blustered.
‘Well, you were a police officer in South Africa, were you not? You willingly upheld apartheid, in a city only ten miles east of Vlakplaas, the farm infamously used by death squads, and only after the collapse of apartheid did you come to England. I suppose it had nothing to do with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission coming down hard on members of the South African Police?’
He was falling apart at the seams, and then he uttered two simple words that changed everything.
‘No comment.’
On hearing these words, my legs seemed to vacate the floor. Checkmate. ‘No comment? Did you not tell this jury, only yesterday, that such an expression is common among guilty men?’
Ten seconds of silence. Twenty. Thirty.
Mr Justice Pike leaned forward. ‘Well?’
Across the balustrade, the detective’s hands were shaking.
‘DCS DeWitt,’ I said, ‘do you consider yourself a guilty man?’
‘Guilty of what?’ He looked broken, confused, lost.
‘Before this continues,’ I said, ‘I am obligated to warn you of the rule against self-incrimination. This essentially means that, should the answer to the question I’m about to ask you be incriminating, you have the right to refuse to answer.’
He only blinked, so I took a huge breath.
‘Did you have something to do with the victim’s murder on the night of Good Friday?’
His answer came without words.
Time distorts in moments like this, and what happened next somehow occurred both quickly and incredibly slowly. DeWitt was out of the witness box. He was charging across the well. He threw his bulk onto our row, sending a storm of papers into the air, and reached for me with both hands.
All I could think to do was shunt my head forwards, butting my wig down over my face and into his nose, knocking him back before Harlan Garrick, Zara and two court officers managed to prise him away.
34
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ Garrick said, relocating a cracked version of his earlier voice twenty minutes after DeWitt had been escorted from the room. ‘In my opening statement, I undertook the task of convincing you that this man, this pathological liar, this proven reoffender, is nothing better than a cold-blooded murderer.
‘We, the prosecution, have called witness after witness to testify to his unstable, violent character, while the defence have provided no physical witness of their own. Instead, they are relying on a sudden, supposed and, you may think, unbelievable alibi, which they have conjured out of little more than thin air.
‘The defence would have you believe that the defendant – this extremist of far-right principles – was engaged in a homosexual affair on the night of the victim’s death. In making your decision, I implore you to consider the credibility of this statement, and the witness who made it. A sex worker with no registered address, and with his own history of prior arrests. The defence might have caused a stir with their cross-examination, but I will remind you that it is their job to do so, and simply because Detective Chief Superintendent DeWitt allowed my learned friend Mr Rook of Queen’s Counsel to get under his skin, that doesn’t undermine the evidence called by the prosecution one jot.
‘I ask you, then, to look at the defendant, who still hasn’t stepped forward to confirm or deny this alleged alibi. Focus on his behaviour in the dock during this very trial! Focus on the fact that he was in the area at the time, he was discovered burning evidence, and he did, most certainly, murder that poor young girl, with the sheer strength of his own brutal hands.
‘We, the prosecution, ask that you find the defendant guilty as charged.’
As I stood to make my closing speech, I could feel the bump already growing on my forehead, my hands still trembling from all that had just happened.
I looked back into the dock, and saw him there.
Billy – the outlaw, the mountain, the monster of my youth – now utterly broken.
All the glib, sarcastic comments, the cruelty and the arrogance that had brought us to this moment had vanished, and what remained was a man so much smaller than before.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ I said. ‘As a barrister, I see a lot of pride. People live by it, and people die by it. We all have private lives, and things we will hide at any cost.
‘Is it really so unbelievable, considering the defendant’s public image, that he would go to any lengths, including the sacrifice of his own liberty, to hide the truth of his sexuality from family and peers?
‘From the moment of his arrest, Mr Barber has been the victim of a case laden with lies, subterfuge and repeated failings to disclose evidence and answer crucial questions. The entire investigation, in fact, was spearheaded by a man so desperate for a hasty solution that he himself may have skirted the boundaries of the laws he is sworn to protect. A man who has responded to the simplest of questions with absolute aggression, the likes of which I have never witnessed in the courtroom.
‘In this case, the prosecution bear the burden and standard of proof, which is to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt. In closing the case for the Crown, Mr Garrick invited you to find Mr Barber guilty. I’m not going to tell you to find him not guilty, but simply ask you to consider the evidence in this case, and bear in mind that burden and standard of proof. If you are sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that William Barber murdered that poor girl, well, then you go ahead and find him guilty, and he will deserve it.
‘If, on the other hand, as a result of the things that have come to light during this trial, there is any doubt in your mind as to what happened, doubt as to who did it, then William Barber – ghastly, racist, violent thug though he may well be – is entitled to a verdict of not guilty.
‘Thank you.’
We sat on the stone steps outside, watching the protesters nearby, the news cameras around them, the banners sailing above.
The members of the jury were off doing their Twelve Angry Men routine around a large table, hashing it out over sandwiches and coffee; soon, one would be elected as foreman or forewoman, and asked to deliver their unanimous verdict.
I was chain-smoking, working my way through a whole pack until my throat would surely burn.
Beside me, Zara was tugging at loose hair that had slipped out from underneath her wig, staring past the crowd. I followed her eye, and saw Caine and Declan Barber, surrounded by a handful of family members, walking away. They weren’t even waiting around for the verdict.
I hadn’t gone down to see Billy, even though the nervousness that had plagued my earlier visits had withered altogether. In some deep, hidden place I almost felt sorry for him, though I’d never speak of it out loud. It certainly wasn’t sympathy, but it might’ve had roots in some sort of empathy.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Zara said. ‘What really frightens people. You look at a man like that, harbinger of hostility, and yet he’s more frightened than anybody I’ve ever met. He’s so utterly petrified of himself, of his own sexuality, that he’d risk spending the rest of his life in a cell. He’d sacrifice the entire world just to save face, and for what?’
‘For the life he wanted,’ I muttered, more to myself than to her. ‘For the man he so desperately wanted to be.’
‘He’s a coward,’ she said, ‘that’s all. He unloads his self-pity onto others by being vile. He could’ve been true to himself from the beginning and spared those around him so much anger. So much misery.’
‘He could have,’ I
nodded, ‘but would anybody in his shoes, I wonder? In that culture? In his world?’
She turned to face me, removed her glasses, and studied me hard. ‘All people face judgement in some shape or form, Mr Rook. That’s life. Shit, half of my extended family are strict practising Muslims, and I still managed to come out. The people around you get over it, eventually, or you just have to get over them. Nobody ought to live a lie.’
It took me another moment to catch on. ‘You’re …’
‘Gay?’ She laughed lightly. ‘I thought silks were meant to be pros at reading people?’
‘Hmm,’ I flushed. ‘I suppose I didn’t think about it one way or the other.’
‘Which is all I’ve ever wanted,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve had labels enough before now. I just want to be taken for, well … me.’
‘Some people don’t have your courage, Miss Barnes. Who knows? Perhaps Billy always wanted to be sent down in the end. Maybe he thinks he deserves it.’
‘And he probably does, for plenty of other reasons,’ she said, ‘but if a man truly wants to be punished, then isn’t the very concept of punishment made redundant? Wouldn’t that undermine the legal process altogether, in giving him what he wants?’
‘Punishment takes many forms,’ I told her. ‘Whether he’s found guilty or not, his life will never be the same again. All we did in there was present facts.’
‘And beauty is truth, truth beauty, right?’
‘Right,’ I said, though I knew that wasn’t always true. ‘Those are very eloquent thoughts. What happened to the ruffian that stepped into my room not so many weeks ago?’
‘Well, I guess we all pick things up along the way, don’t we?’
‘We do,’ I said. ‘We certainly do.’
‘What about DeWitt?’ she asked. ‘What happens now? I thought he’d be in cuffs. I thought we had this solved.’
Honestly, I thought to myself, so did I. ‘As far as the law is concerned, we have no proof. Discrepancies alone never won the day. All we had was a theory, enough to blow the prosecution’s case open, and little more than that. All we ever had was doubt to cast, and that’s what we needed. We were never going to discover what really happened that night ourselves, and neither should we. That’s not our job.’
