Find Them Dead

88 Thursday 23 May

It was pelting with rain outside and most of the jurors, mindful of the forecast of heavy rain all day, had brought their lunch in with them. The few that didn’t had made a quick dash outside to get food and had brought it back with them. By 12.30 p.m. they were all seated around the table.

Meg’s hopes had been lifted by the defence QC’s handling of the handwriting evidence. No one could argue against what they had all just heard, could they? As she removed her egg and tomato sandwich from Laura’s lunch box, which had animals all over it, she was starting to feel increasingly optimistic. She put it down and made a note on the pad she’d been carrying in her handbag since the start of the trial: Safety deposit box signature.

It was one more piece of evidence in Gready’s favour as there was some doubt as to its authenticity. As strong as the earlier challenges to the Financial Investigator’s evidence. There was nothing linking Terence Gready to any of the overseas bank accounts and transactions, other than circumstantial evidence. Until Michael Starr’s evidence — which Meg knew she would have to work on to discredit its validity — there was no evidence of him and Gready ever having met.

She glanced back through some of her notes. Some very strong arguments to put to her fellow jurors. Maybe, just maybe, she was going to be able to pull this off.

God, please.

‘You know something,’ Mark Adams said. ‘If that bloody windbag defence woman doesn’t wrap it up soon, I’m going to vote guilty just to piss her off.’

‘Don’t you think we need to put emotions aside, Mark?’ Harold Trout reprimanded. ‘We are here to do our civic duty and judge a man on the facts — this is not about tactical voting because we like or do not like the person defending him.’

‘Yes, well, my civic duty is to put food on my family’s table. I’m already struggling to do that with all the competition out there these days without losing two weeks’ income — running into a third might suit a retired person like yourself, living on your fat pension, but it would be a bloody disaster for me.’

‘And me, too,’ responded Singh.

‘And me,’ chipped in Toby. ‘The daily amount we’re getting paid is a joke. I’m facing missing an audition that could give me a part in a series that would offer me six months’ lucrative work I badly need.’

‘And a man facing years in prison isn’t important?’ Meg asked, her sandwich still untouched. ‘We’re all sitting here having to decide whether a fellow human being is guilty or innocent. Just take a moment to think what that means. Imagine he is innocent — are you willing to make possibly a wrong judgement, one that might destroy his life forever, just so you can get out of here?’ Her anger was rising as she went on.

‘Any one of us could be in a dock, accused of an offence we haven’t committed. How would one of you feel knowing the jurors there to decide your fate were more interested in getting the trial over than actually coming to the right verdict?’ She looked at them and waited. From their expressions, her point had hit home.

‘Mark, you are anxious to get back to earning money as an Uber driver. And you, Toby, are worried about missing an audition. Well, I’m in the same boat, OK? I’m out of work having been made redundant — thank you for asking. I’ve got a job interview which I should be attending on Monday. I’m prepared to sacrifice that interview, and the chance of a really good job that would put food on the table for myself and my daughter, out of my civic duty. So, I suggest everyone calms down and accepts the situation for what it is. Several of us may suffer financially, temporarily, but I for one know that if I do make that sacrifice, at least I will be able to sleep easily for the rest of my life knowing I did the right thing. Do you want it on your conscience that you may, possibly, have ruined someone else’s life for your own gain?’

There was a long silence.

Mike Roberts broke it. ‘Very well said, Meg.’ He picked up the thick bunch of trial documents and opened them at a page he had bookmarked. Then he looked at Mark Adams. ‘This lady you have described as a windbag, Primrose Brown, is an eminent criminal barrister. She will call more witnesses this afternoon. When she has finished with those, we will then have the closing speech from the prosecution, followed by the closing speech from defence. After that we will have the judge’s summing up, before we are sent out for our deliberations. It is highly unlikely you will get your wish of the trial ending this week, so as our foreperson has eloquently said, you’d better get over it.’

‘If I had one shred of doubt about the defendant’s guilt, then yes,’ Adams said, defensively. ‘But can you really, honestly, say you have, Meg?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I can. There are already plenty of arguments for reasonable doubt — and we still have more witnesses to come.’

‘I’m sorry, you just have to look at Terence Gready’s body language to see he is guilty,’ Toby DeWinter said.

‘Really?’ Meg quizzed. ‘You’re an expert on body language?’

‘Actually, yes. I’m an actor. Body language is part of what I do.’

Hari Singh chipped in. ‘There’s a saying we should all be aware of. Before you judge any man, first walk ten miles in his shoes.’

‘Isn’t that an old Groucho Marx joke?’ said Pink. ‘Before you judge a man, first walk ten miles in his shoes. Then you’ll be ten miles away and you’ll have his shoes.’

The tension in the room was broken by some laughter and smiles, except for Meg, who sat thinking.

‘I suggest,’ she said, tartly, ‘before we judge the defendant, we do what we are here to do, the thing we are sworn in to do, and that is to listen to all the evidence. The time to do our judging is after that.’

Rory O’Brien, the geek who had remained silent since they had entered the room, looked up from one of the stacks of spreadsheets in the bundle he had open in front of him and said, quietly, ‘I agree with our foreperson. We should hear all the evidence before we start coming to conclusions.’ He returned his focus to the spreadsheet.

Perhaps because O’Brien had barely spoken since the trial had begun, what he had to say had an oddly calming effect on the room.