A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘About why you should want to access the file on Joshua Derbyshire all of a sudden?’ Spate replied. ‘A twenty-eight-year-old case …’

  Maurice Mundy sat back in his chair. ‘It’s not all of a sudden. It’s something that has been nagging away at me for a while.’

  ‘Oh, and what might that be?’ Spate pressed. ‘I would be interested to know.’

  ‘Probably nothing. I’m probably worrying about nothing at all.’ Mundy sat forward and hung his head. ‘I’ve done that before … worry about nothing.’

  ‘You can try me,’ Spate encouraged. ‘Can’t hurt, can it?’

  ‘Why? Do you know the case?’ Mundy asked, speaking slowly. He was by now feeling deeply curious and cautious.

  ‘I know of it. It was the last major conviction my father won before he retired,’ Spate explained.

  ‘To Wimbledon,’ Mundy added.

  ‘And to Spain. With extended angling holidays in Ireland, he really made full use of his retirement.’

  ‘Seems so,’ Mundy growled. ‘It certainly sounds as though he did.’

  ‘Well, he had the money.’ Spate smiled.

  ‘Yes, his pension,’ Mundy replied. ‘You said.’

  ‘So what worries you about the conviction of Joshua Derbyshire?’ Spate pressed. ‘It was a very safe conviction. It still is.’

  ‘Yes. Going by the evidence it does read safe,’ Mundy conceded. ‘It reads to be as safe as houses.’

  ‘So why the interest? What’s nagging you?’ Spate continued to press Mundy.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on the reason,’ Mundy replied determinedly, ‘but do you think your father would agree to see me?’

  ‘I can ask, but remember his mind isn’t what it used to be. He forgets words and has a poor short-term memory.’

  ‘So he’ll remember the Joshua Derbyshire case?’ Mundy asked hopefully. ‘If his long-term memory is still healthy.’

  ‘Very clearly.’ Spate reached into his jacket pocket for his mobile phone. ‘He still mentions it from time to time. I’ll see if he is at home.’ Spate keyed in a number in his mobile phone and pressed the ‘call’ button. Mundy heard as Spate said, ‘Hello, Father … Chris here … yes, I have found Mr Mundy. He says he’s asking if he can call and see you about the Joshua Derbyshire case. OK, I’ll ask him.’ Spate took the mobile phone from his ear. ‘How about this evening … early doors?’

  ‘Ideal.’ Mundy smiled. ‘That’s ideal.’

  ‘It’s a goer,’ Spate spoke into the mobile phone. ‘OK … yes.’ He switched the phone off and looked at Mundy. ‘Between six and seven … suit you?’

  ‘Ideal,’ Mundy repeated. ‘Just ideal.’

  ‘Good. I’ll let you have the address,’ Christopher Spate advised coldly. ‘Have you got a notepad handy? It’ll have to be early because he gets tired easily these days.’

  ‘Understood.’ Mundy smiled. ‘I’ll be there as soon after six as I can.’

  ‘This is twice in as many days.’ Stanley Kinross turned and limped towards Maurice Mundy, who stood at the reception desk in the Criminal Records department. ‘Good to see you again, Maurice.’ The two men shook hands warmly. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve just had an interesting conversation,’ Mundy replied. ‘A very interesting little chat.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kinross raised his left eyebrow.

  ‘Up in the canteen about half an hour ago,’ Mundy explained. ‘I waited for a while until the other geezer had gone before coming down here. I suddenly have the sense of being followed.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kinross repeated. ‘That is interesting. It’s also a bit worrying. How can I help, Maurice?’

  ‘Tell me,’ Mundy began, ‘how would an officer in “the Yard” find out where another officer lives?’

  ‘By phoning the personnel section,’ Kinross explained. ‘If the call came from within the building and was not an outside line, and if the person seeking the information had a friend in the personnel section, they could very easily, and if he was asking on the QT … Quite against the rules, of course, but very easily done.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy nodded thoughtfully. ‘I had assumed that that would be the answer. So, Stanley, the next question is how would someone know that I had read a particular file?’

  ‘If some other officer is recorded as being an interested officer,’ Kinross explained. ‘I entered your accessing that file the other day into the log, as I had to do – a computerized log …’

  ‘I see,’ Mundy replied. ‘Again, I had assumed that that would be the case.’

  ‘And the computer would automatically send a signal to any officer nominated as an “interested officer” in that case,’ Kinross explained. ‘These machines … I am not of the computer generation but apparently it follows the Yorkshire Ripper investigation in the eighties when they did the post-mortem on the investigation.’

  ‘Which was a mess,’ Mundy sighed.

  ‘Indeed … one mistake after another.’ Kinross also sighed. ‘But when they did the post-mortem on the whole sorry affair they found out that quite a few officers were interested in Sutcliffe and were all reading the file they had on him but each officer was doing so unknown to the others.’

  ‘Ah … I see where you are going.’ Mundy nodded.

  ‘Yes, so if they each knew about the other officers’ interest they would have conferenced Sutcliffe and shared their suspicions. It might have led to an earlier arrest and the prevention of one or two murders,’ Kinross explained. ‘So now any “interested officer” is automatically notified if another officer accesses any file with a said “interested officer”.’

  ‘So how does a copper become an interested officer?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘Quite simply by requesting myself or any other person working down here in Criminal Records to be entered on to any file as an interested officer. It’s all quite simple and painless,’ Kinross advised. ‘It just takes a matter of seconds.’

  ‘Upon his own initiative and without the approval of a senior officer?’ Mundy drummed his fingertips on the surface of the desktop. ‘It’s that easy?’

  ‘Upon his own initiative,’ Kinross confirmed, ‘and yes, without the approval of a senior officer. Like I said, it’s all very simple and painless.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Maurice Mundy smiled. ‘OK, thanks. Look, we really will have that beer sometime soon. But that’s very interesting, Stan, thank you.’

  ‘Look forward to it.’ Kinross returned the smile. ‘Take care, me old mate, and be careful to watch your back. No one else will.’

  ‘I confess I was hugely disappointed in our counsel’s performance. I was very saddened. I felt he had let us all down.’ Thomas Greenall’s office was lined with law books – none of which, by the absence of creasing down their spines, appeared to Maurice Mundy to have been read, but their shiny blue leather binding did, he felt obliged to concede, look impressive. Greenall’s desk, Mundy noticed, was surprisingly clear of clutter. Greenall’s office building was a thirties semi-detached house on Greencourt Road in Burnt Oak. His office was the room designated to be the front bedroom of the house and his secretary, Mundy had found, occupied the ground-floor front room immediately beneath Greenall’s office. The front lawn of the home, like many on Greencourt Road, had been paved over and, in Thomas Greenall’s case, it accommodated a black Audi with tinted windows which indicated to Mundy that, despite the absence of paperwork on Greenall’s desk, he was nonetheless clearly making a handsome living. Greenall himself, who sat with his back to the bay window, was a tall but slightly built individual, dressed in a dark blue three-piece suit. He had a drawn face and very closely cut silver hair, and he spoke with Received Pronunciation. ‘I thought – I still think,’ he said, ‘that he could have worked a lot harder for Joshua than he did … a lot harder. He could have worked harder to put doubt into the jury’s mind. You know, it’s cases like that which make me so envy the Scots with their third verdict of not proven, but as you know, in Engl
and and Wales and Ulster, juries can only return a verdict of guilty or not guilty.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Mundy nodded.

  ‘But the Scots, lucky them,’ Thomas Greenall continued, ‘can return a verdict of not proven which means just that. It means that the accused might indeed have committed the crime in question but the Crown has simply failed to prove its case. And a counsel with more fire in his belly could easily have achieved a not proven verdict in Joshua’s trial had the case been heard north of the border. Down here he could still have worked to a not guilty verdict by default by so weakening the Crown’s case that the jury would have been made to feel that a guilty verdict was unsafe. There was no motive. The murder … the act of extreme violence was out of character. It was wholly out of character for Joshua to commit an act of violence. He had no motivation, and Joshua’s unquestioning devotion to Miss Tweedale was hardly mentioned. Also, our man refused to put Joshua in the witness box, which always makes an accused look guilty.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy glanced at the sky behind Greenall and noticed it beginning to cloud over, with the clouds appearing to move northwards. Rain, he felt, would by then be falling steadily on central London. ‘Perhaps that was a sensible thing to do, though,’ Mundy pointed out. ‘I have met Joshua. He would not have been able to stand up to aggressive questioning by a Crown barrister out for his blood.’

  ‘Perhaps … but with a courtroom full of police officers all staring at the jury, no strong defence argument and I think a weak jury,’ Greenall opened his right palm, ‘a guilty verdict ought not to have been a surprise, and frankly it wasn’t. The jury was intimidated, I think. It was then compounded by the fact that Joshua went in front of Mr Justice de Vere, who was also known as the “Hanging Judge”. He is no longer with us and our counsel’s refusal to address the jury at the conclusion of the trial also served to make Joshua look guilty.’

  ‘Why engage such a poorly performing barrister in the first place?’ Mundy asked. ‘Who was he anyway … Levy, I think?’

  ‘Yes, an old boy called Daniel Levy. The sad, burnt-out old case that he was, we simply couldn’t find anyone else. It’s as straightforward as that. I was with Pope and Steadman then and our clerk worked hard but no defence barrister worth anything wanted the case. The evidence weighed so much against Joshua that the barristers our clerk approached would only take the case if Joshua pleaded guilty, and so they could argue in mitigation of sentence, but Joshua insisted on going NG and, of course, we had to take his instruction. All we could get was bumbling old Daniel Levy, also no longer with us so, all in all … A high level of sympathy for the victim – such a violent crime, including the betrayal of the victim’s trust in Joshua, taking him into her home – a courtroom full of uniformed police officers all staring at the jury, like I said …’

  ‘I didn’t know about that,’ Mundy remarked. ‘About the police, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Greenall nodded. ‘The police fielded the full squad all right and, as I also said, probably a weak jury.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You know the old story about the graffiti on a wall in the cells beneath the Old Bailey which reads, “I have just been convicted by twelve people who are all too stupid to avoid jury service” is probably apocryphal.’

  Mundy smiled. He had indeed heard the story. Many times.

  ‘But it is quite true that the professional, well-educated people we really very badly need to make up our juries are the ones most adept at avoiding jury service. The ones we do get are the bored housewives and the chronically unemployed men who are only too pleased to do jury service to provide an escape from their dull routine.’

  ‘That’s probably quite cynical but also probably quite true.’ Mundy observed rain beginning to fall. ‘You appealed, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, yes, we did. We appealed against the conviction but there were no new grounds to make the original verdict unsafe and so it stood, as did the life sentence with the thirty-year tariff.’ Greenall shrugged. ‘Like I said, and like I keep saying, de Vere was a hanging judge. The sentence brought gasps of surprise when it was announced. A minimum of thirty years for a seventeen-year-old, and a seventeen-year-old who was borderline diminished responsibility. We could have appealed against the sentence but if we had done that we would have had to change Josh’s plea to one of guilty, and Joshua would have none of that. So … the conviction stood, as did the sentence. He’ll be approaching the tariff now.’

  ‘Two more years,’ Mundy advised, ‘then he will have done the thirty.’

  ‘Thirty years.’ Greenall shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘I still can’t help feeling that some terrible injustice has been done. I can’t help feeling that I failed him somehow. But we have to take clients’ instructions and work with what material we have been provided with. We can’t do anything else … and you feel the same, you say?’

  ‘About the lack of safety about the conviction,’ Mundy replied quietly. ‘Yes, yes, I do.’

  ‘Despite being involved in the investigation?’ Greenall smiled.

  ‘Only on the periphery. I was a “penguin”,’ Mundy explained. ‘I was right on the edge.’

  ‘A “penguin”?’ Greenall queried. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘It’s a term of abuse within the police force.’ Mundy glanced at the rain now falling heavily over suburban Burnt Oak. ‘The plainclothes officers refer to uniformed officers as “penguins”.’

  ‘Ah …’ Greenall nodded his head. ‘I see. That’s a new one on me.’

  ‘“Woodentop” is also another term of abuse and also means the same thing,’ Mundy continued. ‘Though the uniformed officers don’t have any term of abuse for the plainclothes officers because they all want to be one.’

  ‘I see … interesting. I live and learn,’ Greenall smiled. ‘“Woodentops” and “penguins” … indeed.’

  ‘So what do you think happened?’ Mundy asked. ‘That is, just between you and me and the gatepost? What is your theory?’

  ‘Pleased you said that.’ Again, Greenall’s expression became solemn. ‘I won’t be going on record about this. I must make that quite clear … perfectly clear.’

  ‘Accepted,’ Mundy replied. ‘I have the same attitude. I am reluctant to go on record or make wild allegations.’

  ‘Good, good … well, on that understanding …’ Greenall glanced to his left out of the bay window, ‘… oh, rain. Anyway, on that understanding I think that the evidence against Joshua was planted.’

  Mundy smiled. ‘So do I. I think that very strongly.’

  ‘It really is the only explanation,’ Greenall continued, ‘but thereafter it is open to speculation as to the motive for the planting of said evidence. For myself, I think the evidence was not so much planted to wilfully implicate an innocent man, nor to convict a local oddball or misfit for a high-profile murder to “solve” the crime … but, speaking for myself, and speaking for myself only, I see it as the police being genuinely convinced of Joshua’s guilt that they were determined to use any means they could devise to ensure his conviction. That’s how I saw it and that’s how I still see it. In their own eyes they were furthering the ends of justice. That happens a lot and it is quite different from fitting up a man the police know to be innocent. That also does happen but less so.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Mundy replied. ‘And yes, I know that also.’

  ‘And that is an issue a barrister with a bit more lead in his pencil might have raised and exploited but sad old Daniel Levy, burnt out, never took silk, felt himself a failure … The wreck of a human being that he was, he just didn’t have the energy.’

  ‘So much more could have been said in Joshua’s defence,’ Mundy groaned.

  ‘Yes … yes.’ Greenall turned again to look at the rain. ‘Better than drought.’

  ‘What?’ Mundy glanced at Greenall. ‘Sorry, what’s better than drought?’

  ‘Rain,’ Greenall explained. ‘We might complain about it but it’s better than drought. Rain is life-giving …’ />
  ‘Oh, I see.’ Mundy stroked his chin. ‘Yes, as you say, better than drought and life-giving …’

  ‘But I saw Joshua at his appeal,’ Greenall continued, ‘and he said that he was enjoying prison.’

  ‘Enjoying it!’ Mundy gasped. ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘Yes … granted he’d rather be out than inside doing bird, but he knew that he was innocent and he explained that that was carrying him through. He had occupied the moral high ground, you see. He had been attacked by the other prisoners but by the time his appeal was heard he had found his place and had developed his survival techniques. Anyway, his attitude made me even more convinced that a great injustice has been done. I think if I was in his shoes I would also enjoy prison.’

  ‘Knowing that you had been wrongfully convicted, you mean?’ Mundy clarified.

  ‘Yes … yes, that’s exactly what I mean. It is exactly what I mean.’ Greenall shifted his position in his chair. ‘If I had been rightfully convicted it would destroy me. I would feel that I had betrayed my family and my friends, and my enemies would gloat. Knowing myself, I would be suicidal with the guilt and the shame of it all. But if I knew I was innocent, wholly innocent and not just innocent because of a technicality …’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy nodded his head vigorously. ‘Yes, I understand … I think I would feel the same.’

  ‘But were I wholly innocent, then I too would enjoy prison. I would also relish the smugness of knowing I occupied the moral high ground. So yes, I knew what Joshua meant.’ Thomas Greenall glanced up at the ceiling of his office. ‘I fully understood him and I think that is really quite impressive thinking for a boy who attended a special school.’

  ‘Yes, he was probably ill-served there as well,’ Mundy growled.

  ‘Oh?’ Greenall raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s another story. Tell me, did the family live close to here?’ Mundy asked.

  ‘Yes. The Derbyshires lived in the council estate on the other side of Burnt Oak Broadway, on the delightful-sounding Silkstream Avenue, though it is much less delightful to walk down. And Miss Tweedale lived up the hill, as befits a moneyed lady with a Rolls-Royce. She lived on Penshurst Gardens, just beyond Edgware tube station. She owned a very nice property.’