Find Them Dead

31 Thursday 9 May

In the court, Richard Jupp gave the jurors another we’re all in this together smile of reassurance and silently hoped that was the case. Then he shot a glance at the defendant. Terence Gready sat behind the glass shield, all nicely shaven, with his neat blue suit and butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth expression. Wrongfully accused. Fitted-up. The police getting their own back on the legal profession. Only the flimsiest circumstantial evidence to link him to any of the crimes for which he was standing trial.

Jupp had read through all the documents, every word. He’d read the evidence stacked against the accused solicitor and studied the defence’s arguments. He was confident Stephen Cork, the prosecutor, would drive a coach and horses through those.

He gave Gready, who was staring, deadpan, straight ahead, another quick look. The man disgusted him. Not only a traitor to his profession but actually, in doing what he was accused of, in many ways a traitor to his country. In Jupp’s view, laws were the glue that held civilized society together. When legal practitioners perverted them, they were committing a far worse sin than lining their pockets through greed. They were threatening the very fabric of the nation they fed off. They were like leeches that attached themselves to their host.

That leech in the dock, Jupp had a feeling, by the time this court had finished with him, would not be harming anyone again for very many years. With luck, maybe even forever. Just so long as, he hoped fervently, this wasn’t going to turn out to be a jury dominated by numpties.