by Dick Francis
‘It’s not a disease you know,’ she said with a laugh, the sparkle back in her eyes. ‘It’ll be gone by Monday, or Tuesday.’
‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘Monday or Tuesday,’ I repeated rather vaguely.
‘And I’m not on call on either night,’ she giggled.
I didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed, excited or just plain foolish.
The publican came over to our table to save me from further blushes. There was another man behind him. ‘There’s a chap here who used to play cricket with Jack,’ he said. ‘He may be able to help you.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
The man pulled up a chair and sat down at the table.
‘Pete Ritch,’ the man said by way of introduction. ‘Hear you’re looking for Jack Rensburg.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m Geoffrey Mason and this is Eleanor.’ He nodded at her.
‘What do you want him for?’ he asked.
‘I’m a lawyer and I’d like to talk to him,’ I said.
‘Is he in trouble?’ he said.
He was the second person who thought he might have been in trouble.
‘No. No trouble,’ I said. ‘I just need to talk to him.’
‘Is it some inheritance thing?’ he asked. ‘Has some aunt left him a pile?’
‘Something like that,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m sorry, then, ’cause I don’t rightly know where he is no more.’
‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.
‘Years ago now,’ he said. ‘He went on holiday and just never came back.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
‘Somewhere exotic it was,’ said Pete. I thought that anywhere out of Oxfordshire might seem exotic to him. ‘Far East or something.’
‘Can you think exactly when that was?’
‘It was during the last England tour to South Africa,’ he said with some certainty. ‘Him and me had a wager on the result and he never came back to pay me when England won. I remember that.’
‘Cricket tour?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Dead keen on his cricket was Jack. His name was actually spelt with a “ques” at the end, like that famous South African cricketer Jacques Kallis. He was proud of that. But we all just called him Jack.’
‘Do you know anything else about him?’ I asked. ‘Does he have any family here, or did he own a house or a car?’
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I only knew him from in here, and at the cricket club. He could bowl a bit. Spinners, mostly.’
‘Thank you so much, Pete,’ I said to him. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
He made no move to stand up or to leave our table.
‘Sorry,’ I said, understanding. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘That would be handsome,’ he said.
I waved at the publican, who came over.
‘Would you please give Pete here a drink on me,’ I said. ‘And one for yourself as well.’
They went off together to the bar and, subsequently, Pete waved a full pint in my direction. I nodded at him and smiled. Eleanor was trying very hard not to completely collapse in a fit of giggles.
‘Stop it,’ I said to her under my breath while trying hard not to join in. ‘For goodness’ sake, stop it.’ But she didn’t, or she couldn’t.
∗
My taxi arrived at ten fifteen sharp, as I had ordered, and it whisked me off to Oxford, leaving Eleanor waving to me from the pub car park. The evening had flown by and I wasn’t at all ready to go when the driver arrived. But he couldn’t wait. He had other trips booked after mine.
‘Now or never,’ he’d said.
I was tempted to say never, but I would just have to wait until Monday, or Tuesday.
Eleanor and I kissed each other goodnight firmly, with open mouths. It was a revelation to me after such a long time. Something stirred inside me and I so reluctantly struggled into the back seat of the taxi to be borne away from her to the City of Dreaming Spires. I, meanwhile, was dreaming of the future, and especially of Monday, or Tuesday.
CHAPTER 15
I spent an hour early on Saturday connected to the internet, dealing with my e-mails, paying bills and generally managing my bank account. I also looked up when England had last played cricket on tour in South Africa. The rest of the morning was spent going through, yet again, the boxes of papers for the case. By now I knew many of them off by heart but one or two of them were new since I had last been through them.
At last, after several more threatening requests, the bank had finally produced Millie Barlow’s bank statements and I spent quite a while examining these. They did indeed show that Millie had a regular payment into her account over and above her salary from the equine hospital veterinary practice. And Scot’s statements showed that the money didn’t come from him, or at least it didn’t come from his bank account.
The amounts weren’t that big, just a few hundred every month, and, from the statements that had been sent by the bank, I was able to tell they had been paid to her for at least a year and a half before she died. But I didn’t have any information for before that.
I thought back to when I had met her parents at Scot Barlow’s house. Were they likely to have been sending their daughter money? One never knew. Their ill-fitting clothes, their cheap coach travel and their simple ways didn’t necessarily mean they had no spare cash. It might just mean they were careful with their money, and there was no crime in that.
Scot, meanwhile, had been doing very well indeed, thank you very much. Almost all his deposits were from Weatherbys, the racing administrators, who paid all the riding fees and win bonuses to owners, trainers and jockeys. There had been a few other minor deposits but nothing that amounted to much. Scot had been at the top of his profession and earning accordingly, but the statements indicated that there was nothing unusual in any of his transactions, at least nothing that I had been able to spot.
I met with Bruce Lygon on Saturday afternoon and we fairly gloomily went through the prosecution case once again. At first glance the evidence seemed overwhelming but, the more I looked at it, the more I began to believe that we had a chance to argue that Mitchell had no case to answer. Everything was circumstantial. There was no proof anywhere in their case that our client had ever been to Honeysuckle Cottage, let alone killed its owner.
‘But the evidence does show,’ Bruce said, ‘that whoever killed Barlow used Mitchell’s pitchfork as the murder weapon, was wearing Mitchell’s boots as he did it, probably drove Mitchell’s car from the scene, and,’ he emphasized, ‘also had access to Mitchell’s debit card slips.’
‘But that doesn’t mean it was definitely Mitchell who did it,’ I said.
‘What would you think if you were on the jury?’ he said. ‘Especially when you add in the fact that Mitchell hated Barlow. Everyone knew it, and Mitchell had often been heard to threaten to kill Barlow in exactly the manner in which he died.’
‘That’s why we have to argue that there’s no case to answer,’ I said. ‘If it goes to the jury we are in deep trouble.’
On Sunday, I went by train to have lunch with my father in his bungalow in the village of Kings Sutton. He came down to the village station to collect me in his old Morris Minor. He had always loved this old car and there was nothing he adored more than tinkering for hours with the old engine beneath the bulbous bonnet.
‘She’s still going well, then?’ I said to him as the car made easy work of the hill up from the station.
‘Never better,’ he said. ‘The odometer has just been round the clock again.’
I leaned over and saw that it read just twenty-two miles.
‘How many times is that?’ I asked.
‘Can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Three or four at least.’
This car had been the greatest delight of his life and he had been married to it for far longer, and much more passionately, than he had been to my mother.
It had been the first car I had ever driven.
I am sure that the Health and Safety Executive would not have approved of the practice, but I could remember the joy of sitting on my father’s lap and steering at an age when my feet wouldn’t reach the pedals. Thinking back, it was a surprise that I hadn’t wanted to become a racing driver rather than a jockey.
My father’s stone-built bungalow sat in a cul-de-sac at the edge of the village with six other similar bungalows, all of them subtly different in design or orientation. He had four bedrooms in a house that looked smaller, but he had converted the smallest bedroom into an office with bookshelves full of law books and Morris Minor manuals.
Just as he had been an infrequent visitor to Barnes since Angela died, I had only been here to Kings Sutton to see him about half a dozen times in the previous three years. My father and I had never been really affectionate towards each other, even when I had been a small child. I suppose we loved each other in the way that parents and children must, and I think I would probably miss him after his days, that is if Julian Trent didn’t see me off first. But closeness and a cosy loving relationship between us was something that neither of us had wanted for a very long time, if ever.
However, that Sunday, I had a lovely time with him, sitting at his dining-room table eating a roast beef lunch with Yorkshire puddings and four different vegetables that he had cooked for us.
‘I’m very impressed,’ I said, laying down my knife and fork. ‘I never realized you could cook so well.’
‘You should come more often,’ he said in response, smiling.
Over lunch we hadn’t discussed the Mitchell case, or any other case. I think, in the end, he had been pleased that I had become a barrister, but there had been so many things said between us in those early years, things we probably both would now regret having said, that the whole question of my job and career had never been mentioned again.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ I asked him as we moved with our coffees into his sitting room.
‘Depends what it is,’ he said.
‘Would you contemplate going away for a couple of weeks?’ I said.
‘What on earth for?’ he said.
How could I explain to him that it might be for his own protection? How could I say that it was so he couldn’t be used as a lever to make me do something I didn’t want to?
‘I’d like to give you a holiday,’ I said.
‘But why?’ he said. ‘And where would I go?’
‘Wherever you like,’ I said.
‘But I don’t want to go anywhere,’ he said. ‘If you really want to give me something then give me the money to have my windows and guttering painted.’
‘It might be safer for you to go away,’ I said.
‘Safer?’ he said. ‘How would it be safer?’
I explained to him just a little about how some people were trying to influence the outcome of a trial by getting me to do things I didn’t want to do.
‘You ought to go and tell the police,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I will. But for the time being it might be best if the people concerned didn’t know where you were.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, boy,’ he said, putting on his most authoritative voice. ‘Why on earth would anyone care where I live?’
I took a photograph out of my pocket and passed it to him. It was the one of him standing outside his front door wearing the green jumper with the hole in the elbow.
He studied it carefully and looked up at my face.
‘Are you saying that someone else took this?’ he said.
I nodded at him. ‘Last November,’ I said. ‘Do you remember me calling you about that hole in your jumper?’
‘Vaguely,’ he said, still staring at the picture.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I just don’t want these people coming here to trouble you again, that’s all.’ Iwas trying to play down the matter and make light of it so as not to frighten him unnecessarily.
‘But why would they want to?’ he persisted.
‘Because,’ I said with a forced laugh, ‘I have no intention of doing what they want me to do.’
Steve Mitchell’s trial started at ten thirty sharp on Monday morning in court number 1 at Oxford Crown Court with a red-robed High Court judge parachuted in from London for the purpose. This was a murder trial with a celebrity, albeit a minor one, in the dock and nothing was to go wrong.
As expected, I had received no call over the weekend from Sir James Horley QC asking me to request an adjournment and had, in fact, been advised by Arthur in an e-mail that Sir James was now doubtful of making it to Oxford at any time before Thursday at the earliest. I thought that he was in danger of being severely reprimanded by the trial judge, but, as they were probably old golfing chums, that wouldn’t have amounted to much.
The first hour of any trial is taken up mostly with court procedures. The jury members have to be selected and sworn in, the judge needs to become acquainted with counsel, the clerk of the court has to be happy that the right defendant is in the right court, and so on. Boxes of papers are sorted and everything has to be just right before the judge calls on the prosecution to start proceedings proper by outlining the case for the Crown.
Without exception, all criminal proceedings in the English Crown courts are prosecuted in the name of the reigning monarch. The court papers in this case were headed by R. v. Mitchell, meaning in this case Regina, the Queen, versus Steve Mitchell.
Criminal cases under English law are adversarial. There are two sides, the prosecution acting for the Crown and the defence acting for the defendant. The two sides argue against each other with the judge sitting like an independent and neutral referee in the middle. The judge is solely responsible for ensuring that the law, and its procedures, are correctly followed. The jury, having heard all the arguments and also having listened to the answers given by the witnesses called by both prosecution and defence, then decide amongst themselves, in secret, what are the facts in the case before pronouncing on the guilt, or otherwise, of the defendant. If the verdict is guilty, then the judge determines the sentence, in theory following guidelines as laid down by the Sentencing Advisory Panel.
The system has operated in this way for hundreds of years and the spread of English-style administration around the world in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries carried this legal system with it. Consequently it remains the practice in much of the world, including in the United States and in most of the old British Commonwealth.
However, in most of continental Europe the courts follow a different pattern known as the inquisitorial system where the judge, or a panel of judges, investigate the facts in the case, question the witnesses, determine the verdict and then pass sentence, all without the use of a jury. Exponents claim that it may be more precise in finding out the truth, but there is no real evidence to say that one system is more accurate than the other in reaching the correct conclusion.
Number 1 court at Oxford was set out for the adversarial system, as was every other Crown Court in the land, and both the prosecution and the defence teams were laying claim to their space. In our case, the defence consisted solely of Bruce Lygon, his secretary and me. I had asked him to bring his secretary to court so that we didn’t, as a line-up, appear too thin on the ground. To be fair, we also had Nikki Payne at our disposal. Nikki was an eager young solicitor’s clerk from Bruce’s firm, but she wasn’t in court at the start of the trial because she was busy in London trying to discover the answers to some questions I had set her the previous evening.
The prosecution, meanwhile, had seven players in situ. A top QC from London was leading, with a local barrister as his junior. These two sat in the front row, to our right, and also slightly to the right of the judge’s bench as we looked at it. Two CPS solicitors sat behind them, with two other legal assistants in the row behind that, plus a cross between a secretary and a gofer in row four. If they were trying to impress and intimidate the defence by weight of numbers, it seemed to be succeeding.
�
�They look very well organized,’ Bruce said to me quietly.
‘So do we,’ I replied. ‘So appearances can be deceiving.’
Members of the public and the press were admitted, taking their respective places on the right-hand side of the court. The press were represented in force, both front-page and back-page reporters of the national dailies filling all of the green upholstered seats in the press box. This trial was going to be big news, and the thirty or so seats reserved for the public were mostly full as well.
Mr and Mrs Barlow, Scot’s parents, were both seated in the front row of this public area, which, in Oxford, was not an elevated gallery as at the Old Bailey, but on the floor of the courtroom alongside the press.
Next, Steve Mitchell was brought into court from the cells by a prison officer in uniform. Both the prison officer and Steve sat in the glass-fronted dock at the back of the court, behind the barristers’ benches. I turned round and gave Steve an encouraging smile. He looked pale and very nervous but was dressed, as I had suggested, in the blazer, white shirt and tie that I had bought for him in Newbury the previous Saturday. Courts are formal places and most of the trial participants were in legal dress or lounge suits. Only juries and the public galleries were casual, and seemingly more so each year.
‘All rise,’ announced the clerk. Everyone stood and the judge entered the court from his chambers behind. He bowed. We bowed back. And then everyone sat down again. The court was now in session.
The court clerk stood up. ‘The defendant will rise,’ she said. Steve stood up.
‘Are you Stephen Miles Mitchell?’ said the clerk.
‘Yes, I am,’ Steve replied in a strong voice that was partly muffled by the glass front of the dock that ran right to the ceiling of the court.
‘You may sit down,’ said the clerk, so he did.
‘Are you leading for the defence, Mr Mason?’ the judge asked loudly, making me jump.
I struggled to my feet. ‘Yes, My Lord,’ I said.
‘Do you not think that your team needs strengthening somewhat?’ he asked.
It was his coded way of asking whether I thought that a QC might be more appropriate, as he clearly did.
