‘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.