Guilty Not Guilty

by Felix Francis

  I walked down the road to the pub to my car.

  Where to now?

  My life was routinely what one might call incredibly busy. As a rule, my diary was full to bursting and hardly a moment existed when I didn’t have some work to complete, usually something that had to be finished by yesterday.

  Yet, here and now, I had nothing to do.

  My mobile phone, customarily ringing five or six times an hour, had been silent all morning, and my inbox lay strangely quiet, with the arrival of just a couple of spam emails.

  I sat in the driver’s seat of the Jaguar and banged my hands on the steering wheel in frustration at not being able to turn back the clock.

  After a while I called Simon Bassett.

  ‘Bill, I’m so very sorry,’ he said. ‘Amelia was lovely. I can’t think why anyone would want to harm her.’

  Simon had known Amelia for as long as I had. Indeed, he had been seated on the other side of her at that alumni dinner and had often bemoaned the fact that he had let me speak to her first while he had turned the other way.

  He’d even been my best man.

  ‘How can I help?’ he asked.

  ‘I have an interview with the police tomorrow at eleven in Banbury. I’d like you to accompany me.’

  There was a pause from the other end.

  ‘At eleven, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s the purpose of the interview?’ he asked.

  ‘The police think I killed Amelia.’

  Another pause.

  ‘I assume you didn’t.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was making a statement or asking a question. At least he hadn’t asked me straight out, as Douglas had.

  ‘Can you come?’ I asked. ‘I really need you.’

  ‘Why do the police think you are responsible?’

  ‘Because that damn Joe Bradbury has been telling them so. He’s been filling their heads with his lies.’

  ‘But is there any physical evidence?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I was slightly exasperated. ‘I didn’t do it. Can you come or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I could, but I’m not at all sure that I am the right person.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I know you and I knew Amelia. Both very well. And I’ve met Joe Bradbury. He was at your wedding, remember. There’s far too much scope here for a conflict of interest.’

  Bloody lawyers. Why do they always make things so damn complicated?

  ‘I could send one of my colleagues. Someone who specialises in criminal work more than I do.’

  ‘I want you,’ I said despairingly. ‘I need my friend.’ Try as I might, I couldn’t keep an emotional quiver out of my voice.

  Yet another pause, longer this time.

  ‘Okay, Bill,’ he said. ‘I’ll come. Of course I’ll come. I’ll rearrange things. But you will have to appoint someone else if you are charged.’

  ‘Charged! But I didn’t do it. Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said slowly but forcefully, ‘it’s not what I believe that’s important. Charges are laid by the CPS, that’s the Crown Prosecution Service. It is solely what they think that matters.’

  If only that were true.

  6

  Simon Bassett and I walked through the front door of Banbury Police Station on Friday morning at eleven o’clock precisely.

  We had caught the train together from Marylebone after I had spent a second restless night in my nephew’s bed in Chester Square.

  I had nowhere else to go.

  The Welsh castle hardly seemed an option in spite of its abundance of spare bedrooms. It was so far away from London, from where I needed to be for my work. Not that I had much work to do.

  A big London insurance company, with whom I’d been in final contract negotiations to produce a detailed analysis of their full-life business, had emailed me late on Thursday to say that, in the light of the previous day’s events, they had decided to appoint a different actuarial firm to do the work.

  Bad news clearly travelled fast, and I regretted all the time and effort I had already put in on research for which I would now not get paid.

  At least it meant I didn’t need the papers on my desk at home any more.

  On Thursday afternoon I’d spent time buying some new outfits, enabling me to give my suit a rest and wear some casual trousers of the right length.

  I had wandered around the shops at an out-of-town retail park on the outskirts of Banbury more in a trance than in a determined effort to provide myself with a coordinating new wardrobe. Hence, when I’d boarded the train to London, I carried a motley collection of bags from Marks and Spencer, Next, River Island and Primark containing four shirts (all blue), two pairs of chinos (also blue), a blue sweater and two packs each of blue underwear and blue socks.

  My mood must have subconsciously dictated my choices.

  Only when I’d unpacked it all at Douglas’s house did I realise the uniformly monochrome nature of my purchases.

  At least it had made me smile, if only fleetingly.

  So, when I walked into the police station, I was The Blue Boy both in dress and demeanour, although I felt more like the boy in the painting And When Did You Last See Your Father? than in the Thomas Gainsborough version.

  Simon had impressed on me to be extremely careful when answering the police questions.

  ‘They are very adept at getting their interviewees to give away more information than they mean to,’ he’d said to me on the train.

  ‘But I have nothing to hide,’ I’d retorted. ‘The more information that I can give them will surely help them catch the person who is really responsible – Joe Bradbury.’

  ‘I know you believe that your brother-in-law is guilty but it would be far better if you let the police work that out for themselves rather than stating it straight off.’

  I looked at him, wondering if he really did think I’d killed Amelia.

  ‘You wanted me to come to advise you,’ he’d said quite sternly. ‘So take my advice.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I’d replied. ‘I will.’

  So here we were, sitting side by side, in the same interview room as I’d been on Wednesday afternoon, with Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell and another man who kicked things off.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Priestly,’ he said, pushing a business card across the table towards me. ‘I have been assigned to this case as the senior investigating officer.’

  I picked up the card. A detective chief inspector, no less.

  I knew the case had a high profile as some forty-eight hours after the event, and much to my angst, it still featured large on every newspaper front page and had been the second item on the morning’s television news, complete with aerial footage from a drone of the digging activity in my back garden.

  Clearly, it had been a slow news day. Where was a royal baby announcement or a tsunami when you needed one?

  ‘My client wants it recorded that he is attending here today entirely voluntarily,’ Simon said.

  DCI Priestly looked at him and then at me. ‘Yes, of course, thank you for coming in. But can I remind you, Mr Gordon-Russell, that you are still being interviewed under caution.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Now will you please tell us everything you did between lunchtime on Tuesday until . . .’ He glanced down at the notes in front of him. ‘ . . . DS Dowdeswell approached you at Warwick Racecourse at one twenty-six p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘I’ve already told him,’ I said, nodding at the sergeant.

  ‘Yes, as may be,’ said the DCI. ‘But now tell me.’

  I went through everything again exactly as before: worked at home, drove to Birmingham, checked in to the Edgbaston Manor Hotel, walked to the cricket ground, attended a charity dinner, walked back to the hotel, slept, breakfasted, drove to Warwick Races.

  ‘We will need the names and addresses of those at the dinner with you,’ said the DC
I.

  ‘All one hundred and fifty of them?’ I replied. ‘It was a big affair.’

  ‘Those that were on your table, then.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked with irritation. ‘Don’t you believe I was there?’

  Simon glanced at me with a minimal shake of his head as if to say, ‘Don’t go there.’

  ‘We need to verify your story,’ explained the DCI.

  ‘It’s not a story,’ I said flatly. ‘It’s the truth. Check the hotel CCTV. It will show that I was there all night.’

  He changed tack. ‘How would you describe your relationship with your wife?’

  I stared at him. What was he trying to do now?

  ‘Very loving,’ I said.

  ‘Did you have any problems?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No problems at all?’ he asked again.

  Only her brother, I thought, but Simon had said not to talk about him.

  ‘None.’

  The detective looked down at one of the papers in front of him, and then up at me.

  ‘But Mrs Gordon-Russell had been under the on-going care of a psychiatrist, indeed, she had been an in-patient in a psychiatric hospital on several occasions over the past three years. Wouldn’t you call that a problem?’

  ‘It was a medical problem, yes. But it was not a problem in our relationship. If anything, Amelia’s medical condition brought us closer together.’

  ‘So you hadn’t been close before?’

  I now understood why Simon had been so insistent that I be careful with my answers.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I said. ‘We were always close, but her troubles made our relationship even stronger than it had been.’

  ‘Hmm,’ the DCI uttered, as if he didn’t believe it. ‘But is it not the case that you and Mrs Gordon-Russell regularly attended marriage-guidance counselling?’

  ‘No,’ I said with surprise. ‘That is not correct.’

  ‘No? Not every third Monday in the month with a certain Doctor Andrews in Oxford, a specialist in matrimonial problems?’

  The DCI slid a piece of paper across the desk towards me. I glanced down. It was a printout of the front page of Dr Andrews’s website with the headline LET ME SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE written large across it.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘We have been to see Dr Andrews each month but it was not for marriage guidance in the way you are trying to imply. It was part of our family therapy to complement that which Amelia received each week from her own psychotherapist.’

  ‘Family therapy?’ the DCI repeated. ‘That sounds very much like marriage guidance to me.’

  ‘It was to help us cope with Amelia’s illness,’ I said, trying hard to keep calm. ‘To teach us how to live a low-stress lifestyle. To help me to manage her mood swings and to recognise the symptoms and potential dangers. I loved my wife and she loved me.’

  ‘I am sure that O. J. Simpson loved his wife too – at some point.’

  ‘Come now, Chief Inspector,’ Simon Bassett interjected. ‘That cheap jibe is uncalled for. As I said at the start, my client is here voluntarily. If you want him to remain, I suggest you moderate your comments.’

  The DCI looked at him in a manner that I took to be contempt. He clearly didn’t like being told how to behave, especially by a solicitor.

  The chief inspector looked back at me. ‘Was your wife ever the victim of domestic violence?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never.’

  He again looked down at his papers.

  ‘But wasn’t your wife treated at Banbury Hospital emergency department on three separate occasions in the past year for injuries sustained at home?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true, but they were not as a result of domestic violence, at least not violence perpetrated by me. One was accidental and the other two as a result of her self-harming. Sadly, my wife was very troubled and sometimes felt that she was a bad person and needed to be punished. When things were really bad, this misplaced need for punishment could lead her to cut herself. Twice it was severe enough for me to take her to A and E.’

  ‘And the third occasion?’

  I didn’t particularly like where this was going.

  ‘She needed treatment for a facial injury.’

  ‘What sort of injury?’ he asked, while clearly already knowing the answer from having read her medical notes.

  ‘She had a cut over her left eye that required stitches.’

  And a huge black eye, I remembered, but I decided not to mention that.

  ‘And how did she come by this cut?’

  I stared at him. ‘She walked into a door,’ I said. ‘To be precise, she walked into the end of a kitchen cabinet door that she didn’t realise was open. I wasn’t even in the same room as her at the time of the incident.’

  I could tell that he didn’t believe me, and who could blame him, but instead of pursuing the point he reached down to the floor and lifted a large brown paper envelope, laying it on the table and removing a clear plastic bag from within.

  ‘Do you recognise this?’ he asked, holding up the bag with its contents.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a leather dog lead.’

  ‘Have you seen it before?’

  ‘It looks like the one we had hanging on the back door in our kitchen.’

  ‘But you don’t have a dog,’ said the DCI.

  ‘We used to.’

  I suddenly laughed out loud.

  ‘What’s so damn funny?’ demanded the detective crossly.

  I managed to stop laughing – but only just.

  ‘When we first moved out of London we bought a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy. Lovely little chap, he was, but he grew into a large dog, a very large dog. Sadly, last year, he died from an inherited heart condition. I buried him in the garden.’

  I’d only just remembered. And the burial site had been exactly where I’d seen the big yellow digger working on the morning news.

  ‘Found his bones yet, have you?’ I said, trying hard not to chuckle.

  The DCI wasn’t pleased, or amused. And he soon put paid to my own amusement too, big time.

  ‘This dog lead was the murder weapon,’ he said. ‘Mrs Gordon-Russell was found with it still tight round her neck.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Reality struck back. I felt embarrassed at having laughed.

  The DCI put the lead back in the large brown envelope and returned it to the floor. I had the impression that he’d rather enjoyed showing me his prized exhibit.

  ‘Can you tell us what your wife was wearing when you last saw her?’

  I thought back to Tuesday afternoon. I was notoriously bad at remembering what Amelia wore, even on special occasions, and I had no reason to imagine that, when I left to go to Birmingham, it would be the last time I would see her.

  ‘Blue denim jeans, I think,’ I said, ‘with a red sweater. I can’t really recall. She was out in the front garden clearing leaves wearing a green Barbour jacket and gloves as I drove away. I do remember that. She waved at me.’

  I could feel a surge of pain and anguish sweeping over me at the memory. I swallowed hard and tried desperately not to blink for fear that the tears collecting in my eyes would run down my cheeks and be visible to the policemen.

  Why, I wondered, was I so fixated with not showing my emotions?

  Amelia would often harangue me for not opening up to her with regard to how I really felt about her illness instead of being ‘so bloody restrained’ all the time.

  It was my way of coping, I suppose. It was how I’d been brought up.

  I did my ranting and crying in private.

  ‘I would like a few moments alone with my client,’ Simon said, perfectly aware of what was happening. He had known me for a long time.

  ‘Interview suspended at eleven forty-eight,’ said the DCI, stopping the recording machine.

  He and his sergeant left the room and Simon passed me his handkerchief.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Show them you care
.’

  I wiped my eyes and shook my head, more in frustration than as a negative to his comment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Simon replied. ‘I feel the same way. I cried myself to sleep last night over Amelia.’

  That made two of us.

  After five minutes I had regained my composure and the two detectives returned. The recording was restarted.

  ‘Now, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ said the DCI, ‘tell me about your financial circumstances.’

  ‘What have they got to do with things?’

  ‘Do you stand to gain financially from your wife’s death?’

  ‘What sort of question is that to ask?’

  ‘Please answer it.’

  ‘As her husband, I suppose I am her next of kin,’ I said. ‘Therefore, as we have no children, I will inherit everything she owns, including her half of the house, as she would have done if I had died first. But I also inherit her half of the mortgage liability.’

  ‘Does she leave a will?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ I said. ‘We both made one when we were first married, leaving everything to each other. They’ll be in a filing cabinet in my study.’

  ‘How about investments and savings?’

  ‘Huh!’ I uttered. ‘We used to have those but there’s not much left.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Mental illness is not cheap, you know.’

  ‘But, surely, medical care in this country is provided free on the NHS.’

  ‘It can be but that’s not the only consideration. When I was with Forehanded Life I was part of their private health-insurance programme. It covered Amelia too, as my wife. When she first became ill, she was referred to the very best private psychiatrist I could find in Harley Street, and, when she needed it, she was an in-patient at a private psychiatric hospital in Marylebone.

  ‘Then, two years ago it became obvious to me that being in London every day was not sensible. Twice, when I was at work, she overdosed on her medication in failed but serious attempts at suicide, so I decided that I needed to keep a closer eye on her, to keep her safe. Hence, I resigned from Forehanded Life and set myself up as a self-employed consultant working as much as possible from home.’

  ‘Did you resent that?’ asked the DCI.

  ‘No, of course not. She was my wife and she needed me. However, as a result of me leaving the firm, their health-insurance scheme stopped paying for her treatment. By then, she was well used to her psychiatrist and psychotherapist and I was advised that continuity was vital. So I paid the huge private health-insurance premium myself and things went on as before, at least for a while.’