Find Them Dead

81 Wednesday 22 May

Just after 5 p.m., Primrose Brown, her junior counsel, Crispin Sykes, and Nick Fox sat once more with Terence Gready in an interview room at Lewes Crown Court.

To all three of them, Gready was looking shell-shocked, as if all the fight had gone from him. He sat, hunched over the metal table, defeat in his eyes. ‘What the fuck happened?’ he said, quietly, almost as if he was talking to himself.

‘Terry, you tell us,’ Fox said. ‘Michael Starr was meant to be our prime witness. He was going to swear on the Holy Bible in the witness box that he had never met you before in his life and was acting alone. What the hell happened?’

Gready looked up at him, haplessly. ‘Someone must have got to him. Who and why? This has got to do with the murder of his brother. That’s what’s behind this — he thinks I’m responsible. OK, so I did—’

Fox raised a hand, calling him up short. ‘Terry, be very careful what you say.’ He nodded at the two barristers. Gready heeded the warning. He knew that if he gave any hint that he might have been involved in any way, his defence counsel would be compromised and no longer able to act for him.

Primrose Brown, notebook in front of her, looked across the table at him, very seriously. ‘Terry, I’m afraid that evidence from Michael Starr has holed you below the waterline. It is very damning, and I could see that the jury were with him. In all my years at the bar, I honestly cannot remember many more convincingly damning witnesses.’

He looked at her with fury. ‘You’re a top criminal brief and you’re throwing me under a bus on the evidence of one total shit who’s switched allegiance?’

‘I’m not throwing you under any bus, Terry. I’m just suggesting we need to reconsider our strategy. We’ve hung a big part of our entire defence around you and Starr never having met — on your assurances.’

‘I’ll fucking kill—’ He halted in mid-sentence, realizing that anger wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He looked at the three of them and didn’t like what he saw in their faces.

‘Let’s just review everything calmly, Terry,’ Nick Fox said. ‘That Financial Investigator is smart, and Starr was pretty convincing. We’re not in a good place right now.’

‘Really, Nick? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that one out,’ he retorted, bitterly.

After an uncomfortable silence Brown said, ‘Nick is right, Terry. On what we’ve heard so far, to be brutally honest, we’re going to struggle to get an acquittal. Your best bet might be to change your plea.’

‘Change my plea? To guilty?’

She nodded. ‘I’m afraid we are looking at the likelihood of a long custodial sentence, but we might be able to work on the tariff, using your previously good character to reduce the length of sentence.’ She picked up her pen and unscrewed the top. ‘Let’s start with all the charities you support.’

Gready shook his head. ‘No way, Primrose, you are wrong. You are being defeatists — all of you. We’re not rolling over, paws-up. We are going on the attack!’ He caught Fox’s eye. Nick knew something neither Primrose nor her junior did, nor anyone else in the courtroom apart from themselves: that they had two jurors in the bag, including the foreperson.

Gready continued. ‘I’ve been watching the jury, and I think a lot are on my side. That Financial Investigator hasn’t been able to link me conclusively to any of those offshore shell companies, nor to LH Classics. She has delivered a credible circumstantial story of sorts, she might have convinced some of the jurors, but by her own admission under your cross-examination, she admitted she doesn’t have hard facts. And as for Starr, he’s nothing more than a crafty but not-very-bright opportunist who’s tried to fit me up. Well, he’s not succeeding. Put me on the stand. I know how to handle myself. I know what to say, trust me, I’ll have the jury eating out of my hand.’

It was an eternal dilemma that defence counsels had. Whether or not to put the accused into the witness stand. If they didn’t, in anything other than an open-and-shut case, the jury would wonder why the defendant was being kept silent. But if they did, the client might say something stupid under cross-examination and all but convict themselves. It was a risky tactic either way.

For days and maybe weeks on end, the jurors would listen to the evidence, with the defendant silent in the dock, unable to speak. Someone who was at the same time both the fulcrum of the trial and an inanimate third party. Putting the defendant on the witness stand was the defence’s one opportunity to show the jury that, contrary to the monster painted by the prosecution, this was actually a decent, caring fellow human being. But it could backfire terribly on your case if that person came across as cold, or arrogant, or pretty much conceded their guilt under cross-examination by a cunning barrister.

Originally, in Primrose Brown’s defence plan, she had been relying on Mickey Starr to deny any association with Terence Gready, and she had been certain that with his testimony, she would have put sufficient doubt into the jurors’ minds that they would have to acquit. Now it was a wholly different scenario. Starr had been devastatingly convincing. And she wasn’t sure that Terence Gready, despite all his professional experience, would be able to do anything more than dig his hole even deeper if he went into the witness box.

But then again, what did she have to lose? The evidence against him, despite his protestations, was overwhelming. He might knock a few years off his potential sentence by changing his plea, but he was still going to be an old man when he came out, if he came out at all. She could tell from the look of distaste on the judge’s face. No one in the legal profession liked one of their brethren gone rogue. There was little chance of any leniency from Jupp, even if Gready did roll over. What the hell.

‘Go for it,’ she said.