Silks

by Dick Francis

  ‘My Lord,’ I replied. ‘Sir James Horley is nominally leading for the defence in this case but is unable to be here today due to another case in which he is acting having run over time.’

  ‘You have not asked for an adjournment,’ he said, somewhat accusingly.

  ‘No, My Lord,’ I said. ‘Sir James and I have made the preparations for the case, and my client is content for the case to proceed today with me acting for him.’ I couldn’t exactly tell the judge that my client had been ecstatic that Sir James was not here when I’d told him earlier in the cells beneath the court.

  ‘I need to make it clear to you, and to your client, that this will not be grounds for an appeal if the case goes against you.’

  ‘I understand that, My Lord,’ I said. ‘And so does my client.’

  Steve Mitchell nodded his agreement to the judge from the dock.

  ‘Very well,’ said the judge. ‘I have, in fact, spoken to Sir James this morning when he called me to present his apologies.’

  Then why, I thought, did you ask me in the first place, you silly old fart?

  The prosecution team were all looking at me and smiling, confidence oozing out of their every pore. I simply smiled back.

  ‘The defendant will rise,’ the clerk said again.

  Steve stood up in the dock.

  ‘You are charged,’ the clerk said to him, ‘that on the seventeenth of November 2008, you did murder Hamish Jamie Barlow, also known as Scot Barlow. Do you understand the indictment?’

  ‘Yes,’ Steve replied.

  ‘How do you plead?’ the clerk asked him.

  ‘Not guilty,’ Steve said strongly.

  Next came the selection and swearing in of the jury.

  Everyone watched as a mixed bag of individuals entered the court and sat on more green-covered seats on the other side. There were eighteen of them in total, drawn randomly from the electoral roll and summoned to attend the court, whether they wanted to or not. Unlike in the United States neither the defence nor the prosecution had any prior knowledge of who they were or where they lived. We were not allowed to ask them any questions and, since 1989, the defence has not been able to object to a juror simply because they didn’t like the cut of his coat. Objections to jurors now had to be based on firm grounds and, even then, the judge was most likely to dismiss the objection.

  Twelve of the eighteen had their names drawn from a box by the court clerk and each one, in turn, took their places in the jury box to my left and were sworn in, on oath, promising to try the case according to the evidence.

  The six people, four women and two men, who had not been selected looked decidedly disappointed as they were excused by the judge back to the jury rooms upstairs, maybe to get luckier in one of the other courts.

  And now we were ready to begin in earnest.

  The court clerk stood up and read out the indictment to the jury. ‘That on the seventeenth of November 2008, Stephen Miles Mitchell did murder Hamish Jamie Barlow, known as Scot Barlow, contrary to common law.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ the prosecution QC was on his feet almost before the clerk had sat down. ‘You will hear, in this case, of a bitter feud in the world of horse racing that was so acrimonious that it led to the gruesome killing of one jockey at the hands of another. A story of rivalry and revenge that goes far beyond the accepted limits that exist in any competitive sport.’ He paused briefly to draw breath, and also to find a sheet of paper that he picked up from the desk and consulted, not that he probably needed to. It was simply for show. ‘Members of the jury, you will hear how the defendant did premeditatively murder the victim by driving a metal-pronged pitchfork deep into his chest, deep into his heart, and how the defendant now claims that he is innocent of the charge and is being framed by person or persons unknown. But the evidence presented to you will convince you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is, in fact, culpable of the murder, and that his claims of being framed are meaningless and unfounded, nothing more than the last refuge of a guilty soul.’ He replaced the paper onto the desk.

  He was good, I thought. Too damned good. He was also far too melodramatic for my taste but it was working. I could see some of the jury members glancing at the dock with distaste.

  In all, it took him more than an hour to fully outline, in considerable detail, the case for the prosecution by which time every one of the jury members was eyeing Steve with contempt. As was always the way with the English legal system, the prosecution had first go in the jury persuasion stakes. The defence would have their turn, in time. I just hoped that something would turn up by then that I could use to help me.

  The judge adjourned proceedings for lunch. The slow pace of trials, especially murder trials, was becoming clear to both the jury and the defendant. The rest of us knew already.

  I went straight down to the cells to see Steve.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘Did you see the way the jury was looking at me? They all think I’m guilty. I’ve got no bloody chance. I wanted so much to call that lawyer a bloody liar.’

  ‘Calm down, Steve,’ I said. ‘It’s always like that at the beginning of a trial. We’ll get our turn later.’ I didn’t add that it might get worse when they started calling their witnesses. ‘Have some lunch. I’ll see you in court when we resume, and try to keep calm. Remember what I said to you earlier – don’t say anything, ever. It will not look good to the jury, and it will antagonize the judge. Just bite your lip and keep quiet. You will get your turn. Do you understand?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s bloody difficult, though.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But it’s very important. I’ll see you later.’

  I went up in the lift and made some calls on my mobile.

  There was no reply from Nikki’s phone, so I tried Arthur.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘Same as always at the start of a trial,’ I said.

  ‘That bad, huh?’ he said.

  ‘Worse. Have you heard from Nikki Payne?’ I asked him.

  ‘Who?’ he said.

  ‘Nikki Payne,’ I said again. ‘Solicitor’s clerk from Bruce Lygon’s firm. She said she would pass a message to me through you.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ I could hear him rustling papers. ‘Apparently she’s got something from the embassy and she’s chasing the lead. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Good. And thank you for my hotel. Very amusing.’

  ‘Thought you’d feel at home,’ he said, laughing.

  Arthur had made reservations for me in Oxford at a hotel conveniently placed just a few hundred yards from the court building. And the reason he amusingly thought that I would feel at home was because the hotel had been created by converting the old Oxford Prison, which had housed a different clientele as recently as 1996. My room was in what had been ‘A’ wing of the prison, with galleried landings and rows of old cell doorways. It had all been tastefully converted but it still looked just like the interior of an old Victorian prison, except, of course, for the carpets. The hotel had obligingly left one cell as it had been in the prison days so the hotel guests could see how miserably the other half had once lived. I was amused to notice that porridge was on the breakfast menu.

  ‘Tell Nikki to call me later if she calls you again,’ I said to him. ‘I want to hear how she’s doing.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I will. Anything else you need?’

  ‘A cast-iron alibi for the defendant would be nice.’

  ‘See what I can do,’ he said, laughing, and hung up. Arthur would have to really work a miracle, I thought, to get Mr Mitchell out of this hole.

  The afternoon proved to be as frustrating as the morning had been, with the investigating police officer in the witness box for the whole two and a half hours. Only once did the judge briefly adjourn things for a few minutes for us all to stretch our legs and visit the lavatories, and to give me some relief from the damn body shell cutting into my groin. How I wis
hed I could have had my recliner chair from my room in chambers, instead of the upright seats of the court.

  The policeman, having consulted his notebooks, went through the whole affair in chronological order, from the moment that the police had first arrived at Barlow’s house to discover the body until they had arrested Steve Mitchell at eight fifty-three that evening. He also went on to describe the investigation after the arrest, including the interviewing of the suspect and the forensic tests that the police had performed on Mitchell’s boots and car together with his understanding of the results, but, as he said, he was no expert on DNA testing.

  We were assured by the prosecution that they would be calling their DNA expert witness in due course, together with a member of the police forensic team that had carried out the tests.

  ‘Inspector,’ said the prosecution QC. ‘What model of car did the defendant own at the time of the murder?’

  ‘An Audi A4,’ he said. ‘Silver.’

  ‘Yes,’ went on the QC, ‘and in the course of your enquiries did you determine if this car was fitted with a security alarm and immobilizer system?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was.’

  ‘And was the system found to be functioning correctly when the car was examined after the defendant’s arrest?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘It was.’

  ‘So would it be accurate to say that the car could only be unlocked and then driven if the correct key had been used for the purpose?’

  ‘That is my understanding, yes,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Did you find any keys for the vehicle?’ the QC asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There were two such keys found in Mr Mitchell’s premises when he was arrested. One was on the defendant, in his trouser pocket on a ring with other keys, and the other one,’ he consulted his notebook, ‘was in the top drawer of Mr Mitchell’s desk in his study.’

  ‘And did you approach an Audi dealer and ask them about keys for their cars?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘They informed me that it was normal for two keys to be issued with a new car and also that replacement or additional keys are only provided after strict security checks.’

  ‘And had any additional keys been requested for Mr Mitchell’s car?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They had not.’

  ‘One last thing, Inspector,’ the QC said with a flourish. ‘Was Mr Mitchell’s car locked when you went to his home to arrest him?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was.’

  ‘Your witness,’ the prosecution QC said, turning to me.

  I looked at the clock on the courtroom wall. It read twenty past four.

  ‘Would you like to start your cross-examination in the morning, Mr Mason?’ asked the judge expectantly.

  ‘If it pleases My Lord,’ I said, ‘I would like to ask a few questions now.’

  The judge looked at the clock.

  ‘Ten minutes, then,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, My Lord.’ I turned to the witness and consulted my papers. ‘Inspector McNeile, can you please tell the court how it was that the police first became aware that Mr Barlow had been murdered?’

  He had left that bit out of his evidence.

  ‘I can’t remember how I first heard of it,’ he said.

  ‘I asked, Inspector, not how you personally found out, but how the police force in general was informed.’

  ‘I believe it was a call to the police station reporting an intruder at Mr Barlow’s residence,’ he said.

  ‘Who was this call from?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have that information.’

  ‘But surely, Inspector, all emergency calls to the police are logged with the time they are made, and who they are from?’

  ‘That is the usual practice, yes,’ he said.

  ‘So how is it that you have no record of who it was that called the police to tell you that an intruder had been seen at Barlow’s house?’

  He looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘The call was taken by the telephone on the desk of a civilian worker in the front office of the police station.’

  ‘Was that not unusual?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘And was the number of that telephone widely available to the public?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not that I’m aware of,’ he said.

  ‘Do you not think it is strange that the call was taken on a telephone where the number was not widely known, a telephone where no log was taken of incoming calls, and a telephone on which no recording equipment was attached so that the caller and his number would be unknown?’

  ‘Mr Mason,’ the judge interjected. ‘That’s three questions in one.’

  ‘I’m sorry, My Lord,’ I said. ‘Inspector McNeile, would you agree with me that, until the police arrived at Mr Barlow’s house to discover his body, it is likely that the only person or persons who knew that Mr Barlow was dead would be those responsible for his murder?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes,’ he said.

  ‘Inspector, how many years in total have you been a detective?’ I asked him.

  ‘Fifteen,’ he said.

  ‘And how often in those fifteen years,’ I said to him, ‘have you been telephoned anonymously, on an unrecorded line, to report an intruder in a property so that the police would turn up there and discover a murder victim surrounded by a mass of incriminating evidence?’

  ‘That’s enough, Mr Mason,’ said the judge.

  ‘My Lord,’ I said respectfully, and sat down. It had been a minor victory only, in a day of unremitting bad news.

  ‘Court adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ said the judge.

  ‘All rise.’

  Eleanor didn’t come to Oxford on Monday night. In one way I was relieved, in another, disappointed. When I arrived back at the hotel from court I lay down on the bed, my head aching slightly from all the concentration. This slight headache soon developed into a full-on head-banger.

  It was the first such headache I had suffered for some time and I had begun to forget the ferocity of the pain behind my eyes. During the first three weeks immediately after the fall at Cheltenham, I had suffered these on most days and I knew that relaxing horizontally on a bed for a couple of hours was the best and only remedy. A couple of paracetamol tablets took the edge off it, but I had carelessly left my stronger codeine pills at home. They were somewhere in the shambles that had once been my bathroom.

  At some point I drifted off to sleep because I was awakened by the phone ringing beside the bed.

  ‘Yes?’ I said into it, struggling to sit up because of the shell.

  ‘Mr Mason?’ a female voice said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘This is Nikki Payne here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been to the Home Office and the South African embassy as you asked and neither of them had any record of a Jacques Rensburg. But they did of someone called Jacques van Rensburg. In fact there are three of them who live in England. Apparently van Rensburg is quite a common name in South Africa.’

  It would be.

  ‘Two of the South African Jacques van Rensburgs living here are at university, here on student visas. One is at Durham and the other is a post-graduate at Cambridge and both have been here for the past two years.’

  I suppose it was possible that the Jacques we wanted had given up working with horses for a life of academia, but somehow I doubted it.

  ‘What about the third one?’ I asked.

  ‘His visa has expired, but it seems he’s still here although his right to work has expired too. But, apparently, that’s not unusual. That’s all I have for the moment.’

  ‘Well done,’ I said to her.

  ‘I’m not done yet,’ she said. ‘Anice chap at the embassy is searching for the third Jacques back in South Africa just in case he went home without telling the Home Office. There aren’t any proper records kept when people leave the UK, only when they arrive.’

  It was true, I thought. No one from th
e immigration department checks your passport on the way out, only on the way in. The airlines only check their passengers’ passports to ensure they have the same names as on their boarding passes.

  ‘But you did show them the photo?’ I asked her.

  ‘Of course I did,’ she said. ‘My friend at the embassy is trying to get me a copy of this Jacques van Rensburg’s passport snap sent from the South African Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria so I can see if it is actually him.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Call me tomorrow if you get anywhere.’

  She hung up and I rested my head back onto the pillow. My headache was only slightly better, so I lay there for a while longer, reclosed my eyes and drifted back off to sleep.

  The phone on the bedside cabinet rang once more, waking me again. Damn it, I thought, can’t a man have any peace?

  ‘Hello,’ I said, irritated.

  ‘Just make sure you lose the case,’ said a whispering voice.

  I was suddenly wide awake.

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded loudly down the line.

  ‘Never mind who,’ said the whisperer. ‘Just do it.’

  The line went dead.

  CHAPTER 16

  Detective Inspector McNeile was back in the witness box on Tuesday morning for further cross-examination.

  ‘I remind you that you are still under oath,’ the judge said to him.

  ‘Yes, My Lord,’ he replied.

  I levered myself to my feet, pulling on the lectern on the bench in front of me.

  ‘Inspector McNeile,’ I said. ‘Yesterday afternoon you told us how the police came to find out about the murder of Mr Barlow from a phone call to a non-recorded, non-emergency number, is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. There was no harm, I thought, in reminding the jury.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. ‘Now I believe that the police also discovered that Mr Barlow had received a text message on his mobile telephone on the day of his death. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again.

  ‘And did this text message say, and I quote.’ I picked up a sheet of paper myself and read from it. ‘“I’m going to come round and sort you out properly you sneaking little bastard”?’ I paused for effect. ‘And then the message was signed off with Mr Mitchell’s name?’