‘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.
‘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.