Guilty Not Guilty

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell.

‘Slowly,’ I said. ‘Rehab is a very lengthy and painful process.’

‘But I see you’re now walking,’ he said.

There was no wheelchair.

‘After a fashion, but only with the help of these damn things.’ I indicated towards the pair of crutches that were leaning up against the wall to my side.

‘They might be a help,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘You may get more sympathy from the jury, and we could certainly do with all the help we can get.’

‘Why?’ I said with concern. ‘Don’t you think we have a strong case?’

‘I’ve seen much stronger cases than this fail before now. Most of what we have is only circumstantial. There’s not a lot of meat on the bones. It will all depend on how the jury react to it in its totality.’

I was sitting on a blue metal seat in the witness services suite of the Oxford Combined Court building. It was the third day of Joseph Bradbury’s trial and I had been summonsed to appear for the prosecution.

I thought back to all the things that had happened to me since I’d hit that tree in October.

There had been plenty of them.

27

My first sensation was an itch on the side of my nose.

I tried to move to scratch it but I couldn’t. Something seemed to be preventing my hands from working properly.

I began to panic.

Where was I?

In hospital, I thought. I could tell from the smell.

I’d been in hospitals before, too often, due to racing falls.

So where had I been riding this time? And on which horse?

I couldn’t remember. It seemed that it was not only my hands that weren’t working properly, my brain wasn’t either.

And the itch wouldn’t go away.

No matter. Amelia would be in to see me soon and she could scratch it, as she always did.

I opened my eyes.

Definitely a hospital. I could see privacy-curtain rails hanging from the ceiling and square lights. The curtains were pulled round my bed. Why did I need privacy?

I tried to turn my head to look at my right hand but it wouldn’t move either, and I realised that I was wearing a very tight surgical collar that was squeezing into my chin. That wasn’t a particularly good sign, I thought.

It must have been a heavy fall.

A face came into view looking down at me. Female, but not Amelia.

The face turned away briefly.

‘He’s awake.’

The face turned back to me.

‘We’ve been worried about you,’ she said. ‘Glad you’re back with us after so long.’

I tried to reply but the collar wouldn’t let me open my mouth, so the muffled gurgling sound that did emerge was completely unintelligible, even to me.

Another face appeared in my field of view. A male one, this time.

‘Don’t try to speak,’ he said, not that I could anyway. ‘Blink your eyes twice if you can understand me.’

I blinked twice and both the faces smiled broadly.

‘That’s a relief,’ the male said to the female.

I was confused. Of course I could understand them. What did they think I was, foreign?

‘You were in a car accident,’ the man said. ‘A bad one. Ten days ago now.’

Car accident? Ten days ago!

Somewhere deep in my head an alarm bell started ringing.

Accident? Car accident?

I knew there was something I should be remembering but, try as I might, I couldn’t recall what.

I felt tired.

I closed my eyes again and went back to sleep.

When I woke the next time it was not just an itch on my nose that I was worried about; everything else now hurt.

‘Ah, he’s back with us,’ said a voice from somewhere over my right shoulder. ‘I thought he might be soon, now we’ve shut off his pain relief.’

Oh, thanks, I thought. Turn the damn thing back on again.

But I also realised that pain was a good thing. My arms hurt, and my legs too, so I wasn’t paralysed. That was a huge relief.

But why did I think that I might be?

Another face appeared and I focused on it.

‘Hello,’ it said. ‘I’m Mr Constance, one of the orthopaedic consultants. You’re a lucky man — a very lucky man. We thought we’d lost you several times.’

I tried to ask where I was but again without any success.

‘You just rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you some more pain relief now that you’re awake. Your whole system had quite a nasty shock from the accident. And we can’t take the collar off just yet, or let you move, because your neck is totally unstable. You need another urgent operation on it.’

Another?

Did he mean after the one I’d had several years ago?

I suddenly realised I could remember that, and then all sorts of other things came flooding back in a rush, not least the awful realisation that Amelia wouldn’t be coming in to scratch my nose.

Car accident?

But she hadn’t died in a car accident.

I was still confused.

I did as the doctor had said — I rested, drifting in and out of sleep or unconsciousness — I wasn’t sure which.

When I woke for the third time, I was in a different place. The lights in the ceiling above me were round, not square, and the sounds were different too, with beeping and bells going off regularly in the background.

And there was also a large tube fixed into my mouth. I could feel it with my tongue.

I looked up at the round lights and wondered what else had changed. I still couldn’t move anything, but the collar round my neck was seemingly less tight.

My body might not be much improved but my mind definitely felt clearer.

‘Hello,’ said a voice.

I swung my eyes round to my right and they settled on the face of a nurse wearing blue scrubs. I tried to reply but without any success whatsoever, not even the internal gurgling of last time.

‘I won’t ask how you’re feeling,’ she said, ‘because you can’t answer. That’s an endotracheal tube in your throat. You were intubated to put you on a ventilator during the operation, to assist your breathing. But it can probably come out now, since you’re awake.’

That was encouraging.

So I’d had an operation. This must be the recovery ward.

After a while the nurse returned with another woman, this time in mauve scrubs, and, between them, they removed the tape around my mouth and then slid the tube out. As it passed my eyes, I was amazed how long it was. It seemed to go on forever and must have stretched all the way down into my lungs. No wonder I hadn’t been able to talk.

Boy, that felt better.

‘Take it easy at first,’ said mauve scrubs. ‘You might be a bit hoarse.’

Did she say that I was a bit of a horse? I almost laughed. Which bit?

Then I realised what she had really said and the amusement subsided. My brain obviously wasn’t completely back to normal.

‘Where am I?’ I croaked.

‘Oxford,’ she said, smiling down at me. ‘The JR.’

I looked quizzically at her.

‘The John Radcliffe Hospital. You’re in the intensive care unit.’

The John Radcliffe Hospital.

What was it I knew about the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford?

Then I remembered. But I wish I hadn’t.

The John Radcliffe Hospital was where the Home Office pathologist had done the post-mortem on Amelia. Perhaps she was still here, lying in the mortuary. Maybe she was just down the corridor.

A wave of panic rose in my chest.

Oh, Amelia.

I could feel tears running down the sides of my head and into my ears.

‘Are you in pain?’ asked mauve scrubs with a concerned look on her face. ‘Do you need something for it?’

Yes, I was in pain, but it was not the sort of pain that drugs could alleviate.

A new face came into view, one that I recognised.

‘Hello again,’ said Mr Constance, the orthopaedic surgeon. ‘How are you doing? I have managed to stabilise your neck using two small metal plates. They should hold everything in place. Your spinal cord is intact but I don’t know how much it’s been affected by the bruising. You gave it quite a clout. It’s now just a matter of time to see how you get on.’ He smiled down at me. ‘Just don’t be having any more road accidents.’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I croaked up at him. ‘It was done on purpose. Someone tried to kill me.’

His smile disappeared and then, after a moment or two, so did the rest of him.

When he came back he had someone else with him, as if needing a witness.

‘Now,’ Mr Constance said seriously. ‘Please say again what you said to me just now.’

‘I said that it wasn’t in an accident. Someone tried to kill me.’

And we all knew who that was, didn’t we?

28

It’s now just a matter of time to see how you get on, was what the orthopaedic man had said, and how I was getting on during the next couple of weeks was variable.

Some things had improved hugely while others remained frustratingly the same. At least physically.

I was moved out of intensive care and into a side room of a regular ward and, thanks to the electrically controlled hospital bed, I was able to sit up, which was a huge advance. It meant I could see more than just the ceiling. The cervical collar around my neck was also removed, which made talking much easier.

Doctors came and went, each of them seemingly testing something different. Neurologists came and poked and prodded me with needles and declared that, as I could feel them pricking me all down my legs and arms, there should be no reason why I couldn’t also move them.

But I couldn’t. All I could move was my eyes and my mouth, although I could also breathe on my own and swallow, but the nursing staff had to spoon-feed me, and also to deal with my other bodily functions, which was desperately humiliating.

Every moment of every day, I tried to move my arms and legs, God help me I tried, but nothing happened. It was as if I had been robbed, not of sensation, but of action.

And it made me hugely frustrated, and very angry.

More doctors came, and then some medical students too, as if I’d become something of a celebrity, or maybe it was just because I was a clinical oddity.

It was during one of these visits, when a member of the clinical teaching staff was talking about me in the third person to his students, as if I wasn’t actually there in the room with him listening, that I noticed something extraordinary.

Movement. Down by my feet.

It must be a mouse, I thought, caught under the sheet.

There, it moved again.

‘Excuse me,’ I said loudly, interrupting the medical class. ‘Can you please pull back the bedclothes?’

The teacher smiled broadly. ‘Indeed I can. I was just about to do that anyway.’

He removed the sheet with a bit of a flourish as if he were revealing some great treasure.

There was no mouse.

The movement was caused by the big toe on my right foot waving back and forth like some demented digit with a life of its own. Except that I was making it happen and I could stop and start it at will.

If anything, the poor man looked rather disappointed, as if his prized freak exhibit was now not so much of an anomaly after all.

I, meanwhile, had more tears streaming down my face.

Tears, on this occasion, of joy rather than of sorrow.

It was around this time that I had a visitor in the form of Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell.

‘Hello,’ he said, standing at the foot of my bed. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Badly,’ I replied.

He pulled up the chair and sat down next to me on my right-hand side.

‘You’ll have to sit at the end,’ I said. ‘I can’t move my head to see you.’

‘What, not at all?’

‘Not at all. In fact the only thing I can move is one big toe.’

He shook his head. ‘I knew you were bad but not that bad.’

He moved the chair until he was in my eyeline.

‘You took your time,’ I said.

‘Not from lack of trying, I assure you,’ he said. ‘The medics wouldn’t let us in. Seems you almost died. They placed you into an induced coma at the scene and it took them ten whole days to wake you up again. They were worried you had brain damage. I’m only allowed in here now because I’ve promised to be quick and not to upset you.’

‘You not being here before now has upset me a lot more,’ I said. ‘You know that it wasn’t an accident.’

‘One of the doctors told me you’d said that.’

‘But surely you knew that already.’

He looked rather sheepish.

‘Traffic attended the scene and the assumption by them was that you had tried to take the corner too fast, skidded on some loose gravel, gone through the hedge and hit the tree beyond. Seems the car was a complete write-off, and that was even before the fire brigade had to cut it to pieces to get you out.’

‘What about the other car?’

‘There was no other car.’

‘Yes there was. It struck me violently from behind and sent me flying towards the tree. I didn’t go through the hedge, I went over it.’

He looked horrified.

‘There was no other car there when you were found. But God knows how long it was before someone spotted the wreck.’

‘When was that?’

‘About eight o’clock on Thursday morning. Someone walking their dog saw the car over the hedge and then they noticed that there was a body still inside.’

‘Thursday morning?’ I said with incredulity. ‘That means I’d been there all night.’

I received more horrified looks.

Overall, I was quite grateful that I couldn’t remember anything after flying towards the tree.

As the doctor had said, I was a very lucky man.

‘It also wasn’t very helpful that Traffic didn’t initially identify you.’

‘Why not?’

‘It seems that both the car’s number plates, front and rear, had been shattered in the crash and were unreadable, so the officers on site used your mobile phone number to run a check. But those records indicated that the phone was registered to a man called Henry Jones from Coventry, so they had to contact West Midlands Police. Only when they tried to go there, did they find that the address didn’t exist.’

It was my turn to be embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid that was my fault. I gave a false name to the shop when I bought it.’

The sergeant looked at me in a highly disapproving manner. ‘Only drug dealers do that.’

‘I was fed up with you lot tracking my movements.’

He snorted.

‘But, never mind all that,’ I said, even though I did mind. ‘Tell me about Joe Bradbury. Have you arrested him yet?’

At that point the senior ward nurse burst into the room.

‘That’s enough,’ she said aggressively. ‘Time for you to go now, officer. We can’t have our patient getting over-tired.’

‘No!’ I shouted loudly back, with equal aggression. ‘The sergeant stays right where he is. We’re not finished.’

She stared at me and pursed her lips.

To totally bastardise the speech by the first Queen Elizabeth, I may have had the body of a weak and feeble invalid, but I had the heart and stomach of an Olympic athlete and there was no way I was going to let her send the detective away right now, just in case I became a little tired. And she could see it.

‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘You can have five more minutes.’

‘Ten,’ I said, but she ignored me and stormed out. The old battleaxe clearly didn’t much enjoy having her authority challenged.

‘Go on,’ I said to the DS. ‘Have you arrested Joe?’

‘Indeed we have.’

I sighed in huge relief.

‘He was arrested two weeks ago on suspicion of theft from his mother and for conspiracy to defraud Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.’

‘Not for murder?’

‘In their infinite wisdom, the CPS consider that we have insufficient evidence for a charge of murder.’ He said it in a manner that made it obvious he thought the Crown Prosecution Service to be a bunch of idiots.

And I agreed with him.

‘But at least his arrest has allowed us to have access to his phone and computer. We are processing the information they hold, so all is not lost.’

‘Where’s he being held?’ I asked.

‘He’s not. He’s out on bail.’

My heart skipped a beat.

‘Bail?’

‘Yes, he was charged and appeared before magistrates in Guildford. Sadly, they gave him bail, but that was to be expected for those charges.’

‘Why Guildford?’

‘It’s close to where the offences were said to have occurred.’

‘So it wasn’t you who arrested him?’

‘No. Surrey Police did that. But we have requested all his phone and computer data from them. After all, it was us at Thames Valley that gave Surrey the lead in the first place.’

And Nancy and I had given it to them before that.

‘You know he’ll go straight to his mother and convince her that she agreed all along that he could have the money. You’ll have no case.’

‘Having no contact with his mother is part of the bail conditions. If he goes near her he’ll end up in prison.’

‘That will be very hard on her when she’s dying of cancer.’

‘She doesn’t want to see him anyway.’

‘Why ever not?’ I asked.

‘I’ve spent quite a long time with Mrs Mary Bradbury over the past three weeks. Nice old lady. I showed her some of the emails our man sent to your wife. To say she was horrified was an understatement. She couldn’t believe how she’d been taken in by him for so long.’

‘But are you sure it will stick?’ I said. ‘She probably won’t remember anything about it by next week.’

‘Don’t be so certain. I found her much more lucid than I’d been expecting, especially after the last time I spoke to her over the carving knife incident. She even told me that she hasn’t lost all her marbles, like everyone thinks she has. Seems this confusion thing is all a bit of an act she puts on to make her life easier. No one expects her to be able to make any important decisions, so she doesn’t have to. Saves arguing with her son all the time, apparently. But she thinks he’s gone too far this time.’

Well I never did. The devious old witch.

‘She was particularly angry with him for stealing money from her. She said she would happily have given him some cash if he’d asked her, so why did he have to go and take it without telling her?’

‘Right, that really is enough now.’ The battleaxe was back. ‘Time for you to go.’

I could tell that defiance was not going to work this time.

‘Come back and see me again,’ I said to the detective. ‘And make it soon.’

He stood up and turned to go.

‘How about a police guard?’ I asked to his back.

He turned round once more to face me. ‘Why do you need one?’

‘Because, with Joe Bradbury on the loose, I don’t feel safe. That’s why. He’s now tried to kill me twice and I fear he’ll try to do it again, and I can hardly fight back when I’m like this. At the moment, a five-year-old could bump me off in a heartbeat.’

‘But what would he gain by it?’

The battleaxe started to tap her foot with impatience.

‘Don’t you ever learn anything?’ I said. ‘Joe Bradbury doesn’t need a reason to try and do me harm. He simply thinks of me as his enemy, someone that needs to be destroyed.’

It was how I was beginning to think of him too.

The DS stared at me. ‘I’ll have a word with the DCI.’

‘You do that,’ I said. ‘And also find that other car. Start with Joe’s Nissan. Then you can add attempted murder to his charge sheet.’

29

The day after my visit from the detective sergeant, the big toe on my left foot started moving, and gradually, during the following week, most of my fingers began to obey my mental commands too, and then my ankles would flex when I asked them to.

My whole body started to feel human again, rather than just a disconnected brain, uselessly attached to an inert lump of meat.

And the improvement seemed to please the neurologists and also Mr Constance, the surgeon.

‘Now that your neck is orthopaedically stable, and the operation site has healed well, I think it’s time we moved you on,’ he announced. ‘You need to go to a specialist rehabilitation centre rather than staying here in hospital. The physiotherapy there is more intensive and they will try and get you back walking again. I’ll arrange it.’

I suppose it was the obvious next step but part of me wanted to stay right here at the John Radcliffe. Stupid as it sounded, I found some comfort in being in the same building, or at least on the same site, as Amelia.

Even though it had now been more than a month since her death, there had still been no mention by anyone of a funeral. I was in no fit state to organise anything, so I just went with the flow and kept quiet. But it was a bridge that would have to be crossed at some stage, although bridge was hardly the right word — minefield, more like.

Mr Constance returned to say that it was all sorted and I would be transferred by ambulance the following Monday.

‘Where to?’ I asked.

‘The National Spinal Injuries Centre,’ he said. ‘At Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury.’

‘But isn’t that for disabled people?’

He laughed, even though I thought it particularly insensitive under the circumstances.

‘So what do you think you are?’ he said, still chuckling.

He could see that I wasn’t joining in with his mirth.

‘Look,’ he said more seriously. ‘The problems you are currently experiencing are due to the trauma your spinal cord received in the accident.’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I said, interrupting him.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘In the incident, then. The nerves in your neck were heavily bruised and we know from experience that bruised nerves often stop working. In your case, it was specifically the motor nerves that shut down. Thankfully, they are slowly beginning to work again, but there are no guarantees that they will ever return to normal function.’

He didn’t pull his punches. He gave it to me straight.

‘Some patients in your situation regain full use and sensation, but there are others who are confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.’

‘Oh.’

‘The spinal injuries centre will give you the best chance. Yes, they have specialist therapies to treat people whose cords have been totally snapped, but they also deal with people like you. If anyone can get you back on your feet, they can.’

‘Right, then,’ I said more positively. ‘The sooner I get there the better.’

Over my last weekend at the JR, I had three visitors.

The first two, on the Saturday afternoon, were Nancy and Dave Fadeley.

‘How are you doing?’ Nancy asked, again nervously fiddling with her ever-present pearl necklace. ‘We would have come before but the hospital...’

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m only just well enough to have visitors, and it’s so lovely to see you both.’

I smiled, and she relaxed a bit and smiled back.

By now I could move my head a little from side to side, which was just as well as Dave and Nancy sat down on chairs placed on either side of the bed.

‘How are things in Hanwell?’ I asked.

‘Much the same,’ Dave replied. ‘We’ve been over to your place a couple of times. We used the key you gave us.’

They had been keyholders for the alarm company since we first arrived.

‘I threw away some stuff from the fridge,’ Nancy said. ‘It had gone off.’

‘Thank you. Was everything else okay?’

‘I turned off the hot water and put the heating right down,’ Dave said. ‘But everything seemed fine.’

No sign of Joe Bradbury, I assumed.

‘It was Mark Thornton who found you. It’s been the talk of the pub.’

Mark Thornton, the local publican. After the way he’d spoken to me when I’d collected my car from his car park, I suppose I should be grateful that he’d called the emergency services at all. Perhaps he hadn’t realised it was me, or maybe he’d thought I was already dead.

We chatted on for a while about a number of mundane things, such as the weather, until I sensed a slight unease in them.

‘Have you heard from the police at all?’ I asked, thinking that must be reason.

‘Not a dicky,’ Dave said.

So it was not that.

I then wondered if their unease was just that of the hospital visitor who wants to leave but doesn’t know quite how to say so to the patient.

‘I’m sorry.’ I forced a yawn. ‘I’m getting quite tired.’

‘Yes,’ said Nancy, her unease disappearing in an instant. ‘Sorry. We’ve just been prattling on without thinking. Come on, Dave. It’s time to go.’

They both stood up just a tad too eagerly.

‘We’ll come again.’

‘I’m moving on Monday,’ I said. ‘To Stoke Mandeville.’

‘Oh, right. Then we’ll come and see you there.’

‘I’ll call you,’ I said, and we left it at that.

Everybody happy.

My third visitor came on Sunday morning.

The return of movement to my feet had been accompanied by a feeling of intense pins and needles in my soles, something that was quite painful. And it had been particularly bad during Saturday night and hence I had slept rather badly.

So, on Sunday morning, I was snoozing quite a lot.

I woke from one such doze to find Mary Bradbury sitting at the side of my bed. She looked concerned, with deep furrows across her brow.

‘Bad, is it?’ she asked.

‘Only when I think about it.’ Which was all the time.

‘I needed to come and see you,’ Mary said. ‘Before I can’t.’

She did look much more frail than when I’d seen her only a few weeks before, and her skin was noticeably more yellow. Her cheeks had also sunken in somewhat and her face had a pronounced skull-like appearance. There was not much doubt that the cancer within was taking its dreadful toll on her body.

‘I need to talk,’ she said, and tears welled up in her deep-set eyes.

‘It’s okay, Mary,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘It’s not okay,’ she said, the tears now openly flowing. ‘And I do worry. I accused you of killing her. I now know that wasn’t true. And I am so very, very sorry.’

‘Mary, my dear, forget it. Everyone else was accusing me as well. I promise, you have nothing to be sorry about.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t just that.’

She paused as if plucking up the courage to go on.

‘I had no idea that Joseph was being so horrid to you and to my dear Amelia. That nice policeman showed me his dreadful emails.’ She cried some more. ‘Why didn’t Amelia tell me?’

She had tried, often, but Mary hadn’t wanted to know — and she certainly hadn’t wanted to believe. Not least because, all the time, Joe had been whispering in her ear that Amelia was mad and untrustworthy.

But I didn’t say that.

‘Maybe she hadn’t wanted to distress you.’

But she was distressed now, and seemingly the more so because it was now too late to tell Amelia how sorry she was.

‘I so wish she was still here so I could speak to her,’ Mary said, the tears still flowing.

So did I. It would have done so much good for her mental health.

‘That is all Joe’s doing,’ I said, twisting the knife in Mary’s heart. ‘He is the reason Amelia isn’t here.’

She nodded, as if aware of the fact.

‘Will the police be able to prove that?’

‘I hope so,’ I said.

She nodded again. ‘I won’t see it, though,’ she said miserably. ‘I’ve not got long now.’ She suddenly smiled. ‘But I’ll be able to put things right with Amelia on the other side.’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed, even though I didn’t really believe in all that. But if the thought gave Mary some comfort, then I would not be the one to mock it.

As DS Dowdeswell had told me, the old dear seemed more alert and more mentally perceptive than in the past, and I so wished that Amelia had known that too.

‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘Fred and Jill, my neighbours, they brought me here. They’re waiting outside.’

‘Thank you so much for coming.’ It had obviously been quite an effort.

She managed another smile. ‘You take care, my dear.’

I watched her go in the sure knowledge that it would be the last time I would see her, and my eyes filled with tears too.

But I was wrong.

No sooner had she disappeared from my sight through the door, than she was suddenly back again.

‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my will. You will now receive Amelia’s half of my estate, and Joseph’s half goes directly to his children.’

Did I detect a slight degree of amusement in her voice?

‘It’ll serve him right.’

30

Three weeks after my arrival at the National Spinal Injuries Centre, I took my first steps, albeit between parallel bars for support and with lots of help from the team of physiotherapists.

My housemaster at school had been very fond of using the expression There’s no such word as can’t, whenever one of his charges had moaned, ‘I can’t do it, sir.’

Here in the rehabilitation gym at Stoke Mandeville, that expression should have been inscribed on the walls in huge flashing letters.

And what the patients could do was remarkable.

Wheelchairs, rather than being simply the inanimate objects that most of us see, take on a personality of their own in the hands of men and women so badly damaged that half their bodies have no use whatsoever, other than to be an encumbrance.

But that didn’t mean that these remarkable people would not participate to the full in love, in life and, especially, in sport.

The precursor to the Paralympic Games was first held at Stoke Mandeville way back in 1948, on the very day that the Olympic Games were declared open in London by King George VI.

In those first Stoke Mandeville Games, there was just one event in one sport, archery, and a mere sixteen competitors took part, all of them from the United Kingdom.

By 2016 the games had grown somewhat such that, in Rio de Janeiro, nearly four and a half thousand athletes from a hundred and sixty countries competed in twenty-two Paralympic sports, still including archery, winning 528 gold medals and setting 220 world records.

And most of the patients at Stoke Mandeville had seemingly set their sights on being on the next Paralympic flight to Tokyo, or the one after that to Paris, or after that to Los Angeles.

The level of determination to make the best of life’s bad deal was inspirational, to put it mildly, and it was as much the encouragement from the other patients as that from the staff that made things happen.

‘Come on, Bill,’ shouted Robin, a fellow patient who couldn’t even sit upright without being strapped to a high-backed wheelchair, and who was unable to breathe without the aid of a ventilator that rhythmically pushed and pulled his chest in and out. ‘You can do it.’

It had taken all his strength to shout like that, and all his breath, and I wasn’t about to let him down, now was I?

Walking was simple, right?

Even tiny kids could do it, right?

Just put one foot in front of the other, and then repeat.

I took five of the smallest steps ever, and I was totally exhausted.

I sat back down heavily into the wheelchair that one of the staff had been pushing behind me.

‘Good job,’ shouted Robin, and then, when the contraption he was wearing gave him another breath, ‘Way to go, Bill.’

And so my life progressed, one tiny step at a time, each one feeling like a gold-medal winning achievement.

By the end of the fourth week, I could walk along the total length of the bars, albeit in a manner that made Hopalong Cassidy look more like a marching guardsman.

And it was after another particularly lengthy stint in the gym that DS Dowdeswell came to see me again.

‘We got him,’ he said, echoing the words that Barack Obama had used when he was informed that a US Special Forces soldier had shot and killed Osama bin Laden.

‘Who?’ I asked, my mind clearly not working properly after such a strenuous session.

‘Who do you think? Joe Bradbury.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Cell-site evidence.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Evidence from his mobile phone,’ the detective said with a laugh. ‘It’s always their mobile phones that give them away. They can’t resist taking the damn things with them wherever they go as if they’re a part of their own bodies. Criminals are so stupid. It’s almost as if they want to get caught.’

And the clever ones never are, I thought.

‘Anyway, like you said to, we examined Bradbury’s black Nissan, but there was no damage on it, not even a scratch.’

‘It could have been fixed. It’s been long enough.’

He shook his head. ‘We can always tell. There are minor changes to the paintwork of the repaired bit compared to the rest. He would have had to have the whole vehicle resprayed and, even then, there would still be telltale signs in the door recesses and also in the boot and the engine compartments. No, we were certain the Nissan was not the car that hit yours.’

I sat silently in the wheelchair and waited for him to go on.

‘But,’ he said, ‘we did a check on his phone and, sure enough, it showed that he’d been in Banbury around four o’clock on the day of your accident.’

‘It was not an accident.’

‘Yeah, that’s right — your non-accident. We get so used to describing every road-traffic collision as an accident. Difficult to forget sometimes.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, the cell-site records show that his phone was switched off for most of the afternoon but he did turn it on for a while when he was in Banbury to make a call to his office. Maybe he forgot, but the phone wasn’t switched off again until later, and it was still on when automatically passed from a mast in Banbury to one close to Hanwell village at twenty-six minutes past five.’

‘The exact time I was on my way home from Waitrose.’

‘Exactly. So if he wasn’t driving his Nissan, what was he driving?’

‘Could have been a tank if the force of the impact was anything to go by.’

‘Anyway,’ the DS said, ignoring my flippancy. ‘Next we checked if his wife had a car, but she doesn’t. So what other vehicles did he have access to? And, sure enough, the first thing we tried came up trumps.’

‘Which was?’ I asked eagerly.

‘I remembered him saying in the Coroner’s Court in Oxford that he was an officer of the High Court. And, if I recall correctly, he was rather pompous about it.’

No kidding. Ever since I’d first met him, Joe had used that phrase to anyone who’d listen, always using the same patronising, self-righteous air, as if it somehow gave him greater importance.

‘So I contacted the High Court,’ said the DS. ‘And they told me that, yes indeed, they did have someone called Joseph Bradbury registered on their books as an enforcement officer, although his registration was currently suspended because he’s been arrested for fraud.’

‘So it’s definitely him, then.’

‘No doubt about it. But he hadn’t been either arrested or suspended on the day of your acc—... incident. He’s attached to one of the west London firms that deals mostly in private rent arrears. We’ve checked the firm’s records and, guess what, he signed out one of their vans on that particular Wednesday. Not that that in itself is incriminating. He signed out a van on most days in order to do his job, which was to enforce High Court writs. Enforcement officers have the power to seize goods from debtors up to the value of the outstanding debts, so he would need a van to transport them.’

He paused and I nodded for him to go on.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘It transpires that the van that Joe had that day was involved in an altercation at one of his jobs. At least, that’s what he claimed. He told his office that someone drove straight into the front of it while he was waiting outside some premises for the occupier to return. Apparently, it’s not that unusual for their vehicles to be attacked. Seems some of the debtors can turn really nasty.’

I wasn’t surprised.

When you have absolutely nothing with which to pay your rent, it must be devastating when some heartless court official arrives in a van to take away the few possessions that you actually do own. It explained why Joe Bradbury’s demeanour was so hard. Over the years, he must have developed a skin as thick as a rhinoceros against the pleading of those in desperate need.

Maybe smashing up the debt-collector’s vehicle made them feel a little better, even if it got them into deeper water, and greater debt, in the long run.

‘The van in question has now been fully repaired and is back in service. It went straight to the body shop so there’s no chance of any forensics. But...’ He smiled. ‘There were ANPR records showing that, rather than being in Ealing as Joe Bradbury had claimed, the van made a journey down the M40, leaving the motorway at junction eleven.’

‘For Banbury,’ I said.

‘Indeed. And, what’s more, forensic examination of what was left of your vehicle has shown that there are traces of white paint on the back end with a chemical composition consistent with that used on Ford Transit vans of the identical type.’

‘My goodness,’ I said to the detective. ‘You have been a busy bee.’

He smiled again. ‘And, after they’d seen what we had, it took the geniuses at the CPS less than five minutes to agree that he should be charged with attempted murder.’

I thought for a moment.

‘Did you say there were traces of white paint on the Fiat?’ I asked.

‘Yes, the van was white.’

I remembered back to when I’d driven away from the Old Forge on that Wednesday afternoon. I’d been looking only for Joe’s black Nissan but I could recall seeing what I had assumed at the time was one of the many white courier vans that regularly delivered to houses in the village.

I now realised that it must have been Joe, watching and waiting for his chance.

‘But it seems incredible to me that he was able to drive that van at all after hitting the Fiat. You’d think it would have been too badly damaged.’

‘Robust things, Transit vans. Especially the long-wheelbase versions as in this case. Much stronger and much heavier than a tiny Fiat 500 runabout. But we did have difficulty in tracking it back to London. I wonder if the front number plate was too badly damaged to be read by the automatic camera system, or maybe it was missing altogether. He should have thought of ANPR beforehand and taken the plates off, or replaced them with ones nicked off another vehicle.’ He smiled at me once more. ‘I’d make a much better villain than most of them.’

‘So where is Joe Bradbury now?’

‘He’s still out on bail.’

I looked at him incredulously. ‘But—’

The DS held up his hand to stop me.

‘Bradbury doesn’t know anything about all of this yet. He’s due to return to court in Guildford tomorrow morning to answer his bail on the theft and fraud charges. He’ll be expecting to have his bail renewed and a trial date set. But little does he realise that I’ll be there waiting there for him, ready to arrest him again, this time for attempted murder.’

‘How about also arresting him for murdering Amelia?’ I said.

‘I’m still working on that.’

31

Mary Bradbury died exactly three months to the day after her daughter. So the doctors had been spot on with their prediction.

It happened four days before I was discharged from the spinal-injury centre, but I didn’t find out until after I arrived home and opened a letter from Mary’s local Chipping Norton solicitor. It informed me of her death and that, not only was I one of the beneficiaries of Mary’s estate, she had also named me in her will as her sole executor.

Joe won’t like this, I thought, and I was dead right.

Further on in the same letter, the solicitor advised me that he was aware that Mrs Bradbury’s son had already lodged a challenge to his mother’s will, claiming she had been bullied into signing it, but, subject to the outcome of the challenge, my appointment as executor would continue for the time being, and what would I like to do about organising her funeral? He hoped that I wouldn’t object that he had taken it upon himself to arrange for her body to be removed from her home by a firm of undertakers, as he wasn’t sure of my whereabouts.

He finished by offering himself as the solicitor I should appoint to obtain a grant of probate, together with a breakdown of the fees he would charge for such a service.

I sat in my wheelchair in the hall of the Old Forge reading and rereading the letter, and all I could feel was deep sorrow.

Poor Mary.

Her last few months on this earth had been pretty dreadful. Not only had she had to deal with a cancer that had eaten away her body from the inside, but her only daughter had been murdered and her only son was now on remand in prison accused of having done it.

Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell had been back to see me at Stoke Mandeville with the news that the CPS had finally agreed to charge Joe Bradbury with Amelia’s murder.

‘What’s the reason for their change of heart?’ I’d asked.

‘New evidence.’

‘Do tell.’

‘We could find no trace in either his or your wife’s phone records of any call made by her to him on the Tuesday evening. We checked all his numbers — work, home and mobile — against all of hers. Nothing.’

‘I told you there was no way Amelia would have called him.’

‘And the location devices on both mobiles showed they didn’t move the whole evening. Joe Bradbury is still maintaining that he received a call from his sister and that was the sole reason he went to your house on Wednesday morning.’

‘He’s lying.’

‘There’s something else as well. The ANPR records for the M40, plus some CCTV footage we have obtained from a petrol station near the motorway junction, indicate beyond any doubt whatsoever that Joseph Bradbury and his black Nissan were in Banbury by eight-twenty on the morning of the murder. Yet he didn’t call the police emergency line to report his sister’s death until ten-seventeen. Almost two whole hours later. Now why was that?’

Why, indeed.

‘Have you asked him?’

‘Yes, I have. I went to arrest him at Bullingdon Prison where he was already being held on remand for your attempted murder. And, with a new arrest, we had another opportunity to question him.’

‘And?’

‘He said that he had agreed to meet your wife at nine o’clock but she didn’t turn up. The traffic had been lighter than he’d expected, so he was early, but he claims that he waited for her at the chosen rendezvous point for an hour before deciding to drive to your house.’

‘And where was this mysterious rendezvous point supposed to have been?’

‘At a disused pub car park in Wroxton.’

‘The Hare and Hounds?’

‘That’s the one. The pub’s all boarded up now.’

‘But why there?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ the DS had said. ‘But that’s what he told us.’

Amelia and I had enjoyed going to the Hare and Hounds in Wroxton, when it was open. The food had been very good and, in happier times, it had been where we had occasionally met Joe and his family for lunch on a Saturday. It had a nice garden with swings for their young girls to play on. But that had been back in the days when we had all been talking, rather than how things were now.

I’d sighed. Nothing ever stays the same.

‘Can Joe prove that he waited there for an hour? And, if Amelia was meant to turn up and didn’t, why didn’t he phone her?’

‘There’s no CCTV footage to prove either way if he was there or not and, because it’s in a dip, there’s no phone signal at that particular spot.’

That had been one of the reasons Amelia and I had loved the place so much. We couldn’t be interrupted by the continuous ringing of phones, both ours and other peoples.

‘He could have always driven up the hill to make a call. There’s plenty of signal there.’

‘He claims that he didn’t want to leave the car park, even for a few minutes, in case he missed Amelia.’

‘It all sounds a bit convenient to me,’ I’d said. ‘Joe knew the place, and also that it didn’t have any phone signal, so I think he’s just made it up about waiting there for an hour while he was, in fact, at my house killing my wife.’

‘As do the big brains at the CPS. That’s why they’ve sanctioned a charge of murder against him.’

I read the letter from Mary Bradbury’s solicitor one more time.

What did I want to do about her funeral?

It didn’t seem quite right, somehow, that it was my decision, but Joe wasn’t exactly in a position to do much about it, and his wife was as far away in family terms as I was — an in-law — and it had been Amelia and I who had done most for Mary when she’d been alive, so why shouldn’t I perform the necessary final duties after she was gone?

I rang the solicitor, a Mr James Fairbrother, MA (Oxon), TEP, according to the letterhead.

‘Oh, yes, um,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Mr Gordon-Russell. Thank you for calling.’

‘Please call me Mr Russell,’ I said. ‘Or even, just Bill.’

‘Oh, yes, right. Okay then... Bill.’

‘Shall I call you James?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ There was a very small nervous chuckle. ‘James. Or Jim. I answer to both.’

‘Okay then, James,’ I said. ‘I have received your letter concerning Mrs Mary Bradbury, my mother-in-law.’

‘Oh, yes, well, thank you. Yes. Such a dear old lady. So sad, so sad.’

I feared that this telephone conversation was going to be a bit sad too.

‘In your letter, you state that she has made me her sole executor.’

‘Oh, yes, well, that’s true. But...’ He stopped.

This was getting painful.

‘I understand that Mr Joseph Bradbury is challenging the will,’ I said, prompting what I thought he was about to say.

‘Oh, yes, well, I understand he’s trying to. But he won’t succeed.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Quite sure. Mrs Bradbury’s last will and testament was properly made and executed. I was present myself at the signing and there were several independent witnesses.’

‘I ought to warn you that Joseph Bradbury can be quite determined.’

‘Oh, yes, well, I know. Mrs Bradbury told me. But so was she. That’s why she insisted on having everything explained to her not just by one solicitor — that was me.’ He laughed nervously again. ‘But also by the head of my firm. Very adamant, she was.’

‘Who were the witnesses?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes, well. The witnesses.’ I could hear papers being shuffled. ‘A Mr Frederick Marchant and a Mrs Jillian Marchant. I believe they were her neighbours.’

Yes, I thought. The ones who had taken her to Oxford on the day she’d come to see me at the John Radcliffe.

‘They are the ones who signed the document as the two legally required witnesses. But there were others present too. I was there, as was Mr Kaplan, he’s the head of our firm. Plus there was also Mrs Bradbury’s doctor.’

‘Her doctor? What was he there for?’

‘Oh, yes, well. After we’d arrived at her house, when we were all having tea in her sitting room, Mary asked her doctor to perform some cognitive assessment tests on her.’

‘Cognitive assessment tests?’

‘Oh, yes, well, to satisfy the golden rule.’

‘The golden rule?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes, well, one always has to satisfy the golden rule. It states that “the making of a will by an aged or seriously ill testator ought to be witnessed or approved by a medical practitioner who has satisfied himself of the capacity and understanding of the testator, and records and preserves his examination or findings”. So the cognitive tests proved that Mary had full testamentary capacity at the time of the signing, in accordance with sections one to four of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. She also insisted on telling us all, several times, that she knew what she was doing, that her decision to sign was being taken freely of her own volition, that she was not being coerced, nor signing against her own free will. She then made us all write witness notes to that effect, which I have kept on file. Finally the executed will was lodged at the Probate Department Registry of the Family Division at the Royal Courts of Justice.’

The canny old bird. She had known that Joe would challenge her will so she had done her best to prevent him succeeding — and it was the full belt-and-braces job by the sound of it.

‘She seems to have covered everything,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes, well, I hope so. But Mr Bradbury could always still apply to the courts and make a claim against the estate under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 on the grounds that he is in need of funds to provide for his wellbeing but, from what I know of his previous conduct, I think such a claim is also unlikely to succeed.’

‘His previous conduct?’

‘Oh, yes, well, the Inheritance Act 1975 does allow for the court to consider any conduct of the claimant which the court may consider relevant. In 2014, during the case of Wright v. Waters, the High Court of England and Wales had ruled that the treatment by a daughter of her late mother had been so deplorable that it outweighed all the other compelling factors in her favour, including the fact that the daughter was in poor health, confined to a wheelchair, and in financial difficulties.’ James paused and took breath. ‘I believe that, in this case, the High Court would similarly decide that Joseph Bradbury’s despicable conduct, having allegedly stolen a hundred thousand pounds from his mother during the sale of her house, outweighs all other factors.’

How delicious, I thought. Joe was set to be undone by a ruling from his own beloved High Court.

‘Hence,’ James laughed nervously once more, ‘I am quite certain Mr Bradbury’s challenge will fail on every count.’

‘How on earth did Mary think all that up?’ I asked. ‘You know, the second solicitor, the doctor tests, the golden rule, the Mental Capacity Act, the Royal Courts of Justice thing and all that other legal stuff.’

He laughed again. This time without the nervousness. It was as if he was quite enjoying himself.

‘Oh, yes, well,’ he said. ‘That may all have been at my suggestion after she explained what she was going to do. We agreed that we should apply the three tests from the judgement in the case of Banks v. Goodfellow way back in 1870. The tests may be a hundred and fifty years old but the High Court ruled only last year that they are still relevant. First, the testator must understand the nature of the will and its effect. Second, the testator must have an understanding of the extent and value of her property, and third, the testator must be aware of the persons for whom she would usually be expected to provide, even if she chose not to, and must be free from any delusion of the mind that would cause her reason not to benefit those people.’

Now I laughed. So it was he who was the canny old bird.

‘So what does the TEP stand for?’ I asked.

‘Eh?’

‘TEP. The letters after your name on your letterhead.’

‘Oh, yes, well,’ he said. ‘It means that I’m qualified as a Trust and Estate Practitioner, so I specialise in wills and probate.’

Oh, yes, well, more like a Totally Extraordinary Person, if you asked me.

I agreed that, yes indeed, I very much did want to appoint him to assist me in obtaining probate of Mary’s estate, and I also said that I’d get back to him about her funeral.

‘Oh, yes, well, the undertakers are rather waiting on your instructions.’

He gave me their details.

‘I’ll call them.’

‘Oh, yes, well, good idea.’

32

I bowed my head as a simple oak coffin was carried past me. Then I repeated the process as a second identical coffin followed it.

I had applied to the Oxford Coroner for permission to have Amelia’s body returned to me and, having consulted both the CPS and Joe Bradbury’s defence team, he had agreed.

So here I was, living a nightmare, sitting in a wheelchair inside Hanwell village church for the double funeral of both my wife and my mother-in-law.

Mother and daughter together, and with no Joe here to come between them this time.

I had asked DS Dowdeswell if it were possible to prevent Joe from attending from prison and he had readily agreed to ensure it, citing the likelihood of a public disturbance as the official reason. And it was quite possibly a true one too.

I could clearly remember back to the day I had collected my car from the local pub car park, when Mark Thornton had told me that Amelia had been very popular in the village and that feelings were running high. At the time, their anger had been directed squarely at me as the prime suspect but now, with Joe Bradbury awaiting trial for her murder, the ire of the locals was thankfully aimed at him.

Not that many of the village folk had been round to apologise for jumping so quickly to the wrong conclusion. In fact, only Nancy and Dave of my neighbours had been to see me during the twelve long lonely days since I’d arrived home from Stoke Mandeville, and I was not sure how I would have coped without them.

I had found that living in hospital for an extended period, with its strict daily regime, was a perfect way of shutting out the real world, and the agonies that came with it.

Wake, wash, dress, eat breakfast, go to the gym for physiotherapy, have lunch, return to the gym for walking practice, have tea, watch TV, hot milk drink, undress, go to bed, sleep — every day the same. It numbed the mind. Even Christmas had come and gone without any noticeable change other than the physiotherapy stopped because the staff were off work enjoying themselves.

But I’d gone to the gym anyway, on my own.

Routine was, well... routine. And comforting.

Douglas had been down from London a few times to see me, and my parents had even made the long journey across the international border from Wrexham to Aylesbury but, overall, my mental life had stood still for the seven weeks I was there.

Fortunately, my physical side improved gradually such that, by the time I was discharged, I could walk a short distance with only the aid of crutches, and even climb a step or two before my legs began to shake uncontrollably and I had to sit down again. But it was enough, and I had finally convinced the doctors I was well enough to go home.

Coming back to my empty house in the dead of winter, however, had been much harder than I had imagined, both physically and mentally.

It was the human-to-human interaction, both with the staff and with the other patients, that I missed the most. For weeks, I had done my utmost to get myself out of hospital and now all I wanted to do was to go back in.

I also found that I had to do for myself all the things that had previously been done for me. Simple tasks like turning on lights or drawing the curtains required a huge effort, not to mention the much more complicated pursuits of washing my clothes and preparing my own food.

The supply of microwaveable frozen ready meals, which I’d so carefully selected at Waitrose on my big food-shopping trip, had disappeared on the back of the recovery truck along with Amelia’s broken and dismembered Fiat 500.

Hence the cupboards were still almost bare.

And, of course, to top it all, there was always the problem of the stairs.

I had lied to the doctors, telling them I lived in a bungalow, just to ensure they would let me go. But now the reality of the undertaking faced me. Not just a single tread or two as I had been practising on, but a whole flight of them, twelve in all.

They might as have well been the north face of the Eiger.

On my first two nights back in the house, I had addressed all of these difficulties by simply sitting hungrily in the dark, and then sleeping fully dressed on the sofa in the sitting room with the curtains wide open.

Thank goodness for remote-controlled television sets. As far as I was concerned, the inventor should have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

But then, on the third morning back, Dave and Nancy had come to my rescue.

Nancy had fed me while Dave had carried one of the twin beds down from the guest room and set it up in my study.

‘Only a temporary measure, mind,’ he’d said. ‘We want you up those stairs in no time.’

I had smiled at him and almost cried at their kindness.

But, all the while, and in spite of Dave and Nancy’s best efforts, the greatest agony was the loneliness and the unspeakable hole that remained in my heart.

Even after more than three months, I found myself bursting into tears for the smallest of reasons, maybe catching a glimpse of the photo of Amelia pinned to the noticeboard in the kitchen, or coming across a lip salve, hidden between the seat cushions on the sofa.

Both were more than enough to turn on the taps and leave me sobbing.

The church was packed, with even the standing room at the back overflowing out through the doors into the graveyard.

My parents, together with my brother Edward and his wife Stella, had made the journey from Wales, and Douglas had come down from London.

DS Dowdeswell and DCI Priestly were both present, representing Thames Valley Police in their dress blue uniforms, as were Fred and Jill Marchant, Mary’s current neighbours, and Gladys and Jim Wilson, her former ones from Weybridge.

Jack Westcott, our GP and the doctor from Warwick Racecourse, was also there with his wife. As was Simon Bassett from Underwood, Duffin and Wimbourne of Chancery Lane.

And, in death as they had done so in life, the village people of Hanwell did Amelia proud, gathering together in great numbers to bid her farewell.

Even, oh, yes, well, solicitor James Fairbrother, MA (Oxon), TEP, had turned up to pay his respects to his ‘dear old lady’.

For me, however, it felt like I existed in my own little bubble of solitude and isolation, an unreality that I found difficult to comprehend.

But it was all too real.

Three days earlier I had finally been taken by a police family-liaison officer to the John Radcliffe Hospital mortuary to say goodbye to my wife. It was a dreadful experience and, once again, I should have taken Douglas’s advice to stay away.

‘Remember her as she was,’ he had told me. ‘Not as she is now.’

But it was something I had needed to do, if only to prove to myself that it really was her and that she was gone for good.

More than three months in a deep freeze had done its worst but the body presented to me under a white sheet on a trolley in the mortuary chapel was undeniably that of Amelia Jane Gordon-Russell.

But, somehow, it wasn’t her — it was just a shell of her.

My vibrant, funny and beautiful wife, full of life and love, had departed long ago, and it was as close as I’d ever come to believing that the souls of the dead go elsewhere.

I had taken her favourite dress with me to the hospital so that she could be buried in it and that was all I could now think of as I sat staring at the right-hand of the two coffins positioned side by side below the altar.

I only half-heard the service although everyone told me afterwards that it was very moving.

Douglas read a eulogy on my behalf.

I had written it the previous afternoon but I had bottled out of delivering it as I wouldn’t have been able to do so without breaking down, and that would have displayed my raw emotions for everyone to see.

‘No one will mind a few tears,’ Douglas had said, but even he could see that it would be too much for me to bear.

As it was, even he cried through the whole thing and maybe I was the only person in the church at that moment with dry eyes. I had done all my weeping as I’d written it, huge splashes of tears on the paper making the words so unclear that Douglas had had to copy the whole thing out again so he could read it.

After forty minutes the sad little procession was reversed, with Mary carried out first and Amelia following, both coffins placed in the waiting hearses ready for the short trip to their final resting place.

Long gone were the days when most village churchyards had the space available for modern burials.

And, anyway, the two women had lived in different parishes. The solution had been to arrange for them to lie side by side in a single grave in the cemetery at Hardwick Hill on the edge of Banbury.

Douglas pushed my wheelchair outside and I sat by the church door as all the mourners filed past in front of me, each one shaking my hand and expressing their condolences.

It was another ordeal I could have done without, but it was also another that had to be done.

How was it, I wondered, that convention and tradition forced a bereaved and broken-hearted husband to suffer the mental trauma of a public funeral of his recently departed lover, at the very moment when he was least able to cope with it?

Mark Thornton came up and stood in front of me. He tentatively held out his hand towards me. I reached out and shook it. He nodded at me twice, before turning away. No words were necessary. We had both understood the significance of that moment.

Mark had arranged that, while the immediate family went away to the cemetery for the burials, everyone else would go along the road to his pub for refreshments, all at his own expense.

Maybe that was the price of a guilty conscience.

At least Joseph Bradbury hadn’t been in the line but, at the very end, when I had thought that the church must be empty, his wife Rachael appeared. It was as if she had been hiding at the back and plucking up the courage to show herself.

‘Hello, Rachael,’ I said.

‘I wish you were dead too,’ she said acidly by way of a greeting.

‘If all you were going to do was to be unpleasant,’ I replied, ‘why did you bother to come?’

‘To tell you that Joe didn’t kill Amelia.’

‘How do you know?’ I said. ‘Were you there?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘But I still know he didn’t kill her. He wouldn’t have.’

The ever-loyal wife, I thought. Still believing in her husband’s innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence. Like Primrose, wife of Harold Shipman, the UK’s most prolific serial killer, who persistently refused to believe that her husband had done anything wrong, and even offered chocolates to the families of his victims during breaks in his trial at Preston Crown Court.

‘And do you also deny that Joe tried to kill me?’ I asked Rachael.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You just had a car accident.’

‘And stealing a hundred thousand pounds from his own mother? Was that an accident as well?’

‘She didn’t need it while we did. Stupid old bag was loaded.’

I stared at Rachael and wondered if it had been she who had actually thought up that particular venture.

‘Go home,’ I said to her. ‘Before someone finds out that you are married to Joe. Your husband is not very popular hereabouts and I’d hate it to be taken out on you.’

If she thought I was threatening her, she’d be right.

And, as if to reinforce my threat, the two Thames Valley policemen came walking over towards me. Seeing them coming, Rachael scuttled away past the waiting hearses and out of sight along the road. I couldn’t imagine why she had come in the first place.

‘How’s it going?’ asked the chief inspector, shaking my hand.

‘You mean apart from being at the funeral of my wife and her mother?’

If he’d expected me to make things easy for him, he was much mistaken.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, looking appropriately contrite.

If anything, his sidekick appeared slightly amused by the exchange, and I found that, somewhat surprisingly, I was becoming quite fond of Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell.

‘I want my car back,’ I said to the DCI.

‘But can you drive like that?’ he asked insensitively.

‘That’s not the point,’ I replied angrily. ‘I want my car back now, whether I can drive it or not. And my computer, and my mobile phone. I also want my wife’s things that you lot took away.’

The DCI looked somewhat stunned that I was being so aggressive, but they’d been hanging on to my stuff now for three months and I felt that, if it didn’t come back very soon, it never would.

‘I’ll sort it,’ said the detective sergeant, getting his boss out of a hole. ‘I’ll get someone to drive the car over and leave it in your driveway. I’ll put the other things in the boot, that’s unless the CPS need to keep something for the trial. I’ll speak to them about it.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and I smiled at him.

Douglas came over and stood behind the wheelchair, ready for action.

It was time to go.

‘Will you excuse me now?’ I said to the policemen. ‘I have to go and bury my wife.’

33

So here I was in June sitting in the witness services area of Oxford Crown Court.

‘How do you think it’s going so far?’ I asked the detective sergeant.

‘Much too early to say, and I shouldn’t be saying anyway, not to you as a witness.’ He paused for a moment, looking around him, but he then continued. ‘But I can tell you that most of the Monday was taken up with swearing in the jury, plus legal arguments and the other formal stuff. The defence were again doing their best to have the indictments separated so that Joe would face three trials instead of one.’

‘Why on earth would they want that?’ I said. ‘I would have thought three trials would be much more of an ordeal for their client.’

‘Yeah, but they think that the evidence for the theft and the attempted murder are much stronger than that for the murder. They are worried that if found guilty for the other two, it will taint the jury in making their decision on the murder. And they’re probably right, although attempted murder is notoriously difficult to prove. Did he really try to kill you or was he just wanting to cause you some pain and suffering? Difficult question to answer.’

‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘He was trying to kill me.’

‘Anyway, the Oxford resident judge had ruled back in March that all three counts should be tried together, but the Justice Department have parachuted in a High Court judge from London for this case because of its high media profile. So the defence tried again.’

He smiled. ‘Thankfully, after hearing the arguments, the new judge agreed with the old one and made the same ruling. And he’s right. The indictments are all interconnected. The motive for the murder is related to the theft, and the motive for the attempted is related to the murder. The defence weren’t happy but we were delighted because we think it gives us a better chance of getting convictions on all three.’

‘How about the conspiracy to defraud the HMRC?’

‘That’s been dropped by the CPS. At least as far as Joseph Bradbury is concerned. They felt that it clouded the issue on the other charges.’

I could understand that.

‘So, after all that was settled on Monday, there was the opening by the prosecution yesterday, laying out the case to the jury and giving an indication of the evidence that’s to come. That took several hours.’

‘So am I the first witness?’ I asked.

‘No, no. The Home Office pathologist was first up, yesterday afternoon. He would have given his findings from the post-mortem. The CPS thought it was a good idea to get that in early, to make the jury fully understand that this is a very nasty murder case.’

I was very relieved that I hadn’t been in court for that. What I’d heard in the Coroner’s Court had been quite sufficient, thank you very much. It had been enough to give me nightmares for weeks, at least it would have if I hadn’t been in a coma for some of the time.

‘And then I’m on before you,’ said the DS. ‘And I’m afraid you might be waiting here for some time. In fact, I’m quite surprised they called you at all for today. I’m quite expecting to be in the witness box all day, and maybe for most of tomorrow as well. I’ve got lots to go over.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to wait.’

I had lots to go over as well — in my mind.

‘Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell,’ shouted a voice. ‘You’ve been called.’

‘That’s me,’ replied the DS, standing up.

‘Good luck,’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and departed, presumably to go to the court.

I spent the next two complete days sitting in the witness suite waiting, thinking, and twiddling my thumbs.

One of the idiosyncrasies of the British legal system is that witnesses who are yet to be called cannot listen to the evidence that others are giving before their turn, in case their accounts of events become tainted by, or are argumentative with, what someone else has said earlier.

Only after having given their evidence are witnesses allowed to sit in the body of the court to observe further proceedings.

Hence, I felt somewhat detached from the trial and that made me hugely frustrated, especially as everyone was in there talking about my wife and me.

It was all too easy to speculate on what was being said in the courtroom and how the jury were reacting to it, so I tried to take my mind off things by thinking back to what had happened to me over the months since the funeral.

I’d heard it often said that a funeral can bring some sort of closure to one’s grief, and I was certainly glad to have put the ordeal behind me, but in my case it did little to ease the pain of loss.

I had spent weeks moping around the Old Forge feeling sorry for myself, eating little and sleeping less, but all the while my motor nerves had improved their communication skills and my mobility improved, such that I could finally manage the full flight of stairs and venture outside into the garden. I had even contemplated having a go at driving my car, which had been returned by the police along with all my other stuff.

So my life went on, lonely, rudderless and miserable.

But I had to earn a living.

I had discovered that, while it could take many years, decades even, to establish a persuasive reputation within the insurance family as a highly accomplished actuary, it could all be undone almost overnight by a single false accusation and malicious gossip.

Insurance, after all, was based on the assessment and control of risk, and hence underwriting companies and practitioners were largely of the opinion that any potential risk to their business had to be mitigated. So it was easier not to employ someone against whom there existed any sort of black mark, real or imagined.

And that was me.

No matter that I had been released from any sort of investigation into Amelia’s murder, and that someone else had been charged with the crime; hiring me, it seemed, even on a freelance single-task basis, was a gamble not worth taking.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said one of my regular account managers. ‘If it were up to me...’

He had left the sentence up in the air because... it had been up to him.

‘Try again after the trial,’ he’d said. ‘Provided her brother gets convicted.’

At least my enforced unemployment had given me time to sort out Mary Bradbury’s estate.

I had placed her cottage with a local office of one of the national estate-agent chains and had almost instantly received an offer of the full asking price, on condition that it was immediately taken off the market.

‘No way,’ I’d said to the prospective buyer. ‘If you want it taken off the market, sign the contract and pay the deposit.’

In the end, this had resulted in a bidding war between three interested parties and I had eventually agreed to accept the highest of three binding, sealed bids, which had resulted in the property raising more than twenty-five thousand pounds above the asking price.

It had taken quite a lot of toing and froing from the agent, but it had all been worth it, not least because half of the sum raised would be coming in my direction. That was, after deduction of the fees, legal charges and inheritance taxes.

As the completion date of the sale had approached, I’d sent an email to Rachael inviting her to come to the property and choose some of the contents for her daughters to have in memory of their grandmother, but she had sent me a rude message back telling me to get lost, and to do whatever I wanted with Mary’s ‘dreadful’ belongings. She also wrote in her missive that she’d never liked any of Mary’s stuff and, as far as she was concerned, ‘it could all go on a bloody big bonfire’.

Charming, I thought.

Needless to say, it hadn’t gone on a bonfire, bloody big or otherwise.

I had kept some of the more personal items for myself, such as some photos and mementoes of holidays that Mary had spent with Amelia and me. Plus I’d retained a few pieces of her best antique furniture, but the remainder had been taken away by a house-clearance company and sold for peanuts at a local Sunday-morning auction.

I, meanwhile, made sure that I maintained a meticulous record of every transaction as I was certain that, at some time in the future, Joe Bradbury would accuse me of stealing.

And, oh, yes, well, Mr James Fairbrother, MA (Oxon), TEP, had lived up to his billing as a trust and estate practitioner. He had proved to be a great help, first seeing off Joe Bradbury’s fatuous challenge to his mother’s will, and then applying on my behalf for a grant of probate from the Chancery Division of the High Court, in order that I could distribute the estate funds to the beneficiaries of the will, plus, of course, a sizable share to the taxman.

As a result, I wasn’t too concerned yet at my lack of paid employment, not with a seven-figure bank balance suddenly to my name. And, at the very least, that had silenced the bank’s threats to foreclose on my property.

At four-thirty on Thursday afternoon, the court rose after the fourth day of the trial, and I still hadn’t been called.

No one apologised that I had spent two whole days sitting on a hard seat facing a blank wall. But at least the Crown Prosecution Service would pay expenses towards my unnecessary taxi journeys both ways from the far side of Banbury. Shame I couldn’t also claim for loss of earnings.

‘Be back tomorrow,’ the witness service instructed. ‘Court reconvenes at ten o’clock sharp.’

My trusty taxi picked me up from outside the court building and we worked our way through the Oxford rush-hour traffic congestion and on towards Banbury.

I had finally been cleared by the medics as fit enough to drive, but only for short distances and Oxford was too far, plus the problem of parking near to the court made a taxi the only sensible option.

‘How’s it going?’ the driver asked cheerfully.

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘All I’ve done so far is wait in a room. But I should be called tomorrow. I’ll need to be there by ten.’

‘I’ll pick you up at half past eight,’ he said. ‘Same as today. Just to be on the safe side.’

‘Fine.’

He drove on in silence. He knew I didn’t really want to talk.

In spite of my loneliness, no amount of conversation with anyone other than Amelia seemed to make me feel any better. After eight months, I was trying to get my life back onto some sort of track, where I could look forward to a future rather than always backwards at the past.

But it wasn’t easy.

Everyone else had done their grieving. They spoke to me about Amelia as if she had somehow once been a character in a film, and one that had now been relegated to DVD, or some old-movie channel on satellite TV. But, for me, her role had been worthy of an Oscar and deserved to be forever in lights above the title for everyone to see.

The taxi dropped me outside the house and I hobbled up the path to the front door.

The trial had put everything in my life on hold and I had been advised by the police that it would go on for several weeks at least, and maybe for a month or more. Long gone were the days when even high-profile murder trials lasted less than a week.

In October 1910, the infamous dentist Dr Crippen was tried, convicted and sentenced to death within the space of just five days, with the jury taking as little as twenty-seven minutes of deliberation to unanimously find him guilty. Within a month he was dead, hanged at nine in the morning at Pentonville Prison in London.

Even forty-three years later in 1953, the trial of John Christie, of 10 Rillington Place fame, was over quicker still, in only four days, and a mere three weeks was to pass between the start of his trial and his execution on the same gallows as Crippen.

And John Haigh, the ‘acid bath murderer’, was amazingly convicted of six murders in just two days, the 18th and 19th of July 1949, with the jury taking no more than seventeen minutes to find him guilty. He was hanged on 10th August.

‘Evidence tends to be far more complicated these days,’ DS Dowdeswell had told me. ‘What with forensics, DNA profiles, phone records and such. And modern juries are also much more sceptical than in the past. They need greater convincing. No one believes the police without question any more.’

He had made it sound like a major failing on the part of the public, but there had been too many examples where police evidence at a trial was later found to have been fabricated in the misplaced desire to guarantee a conviction.

I let myself in through the front door and wished for the millionth time that Amelia were here to greet me. The trial might provide me with some sense of justice, provided Joe was convicted, but it could never bring back what I’d lost.

I popped one of my replenished supply of ready meals into the microwave.

Four minutes at full power.

While I waited for the timer to count down to zero, I again looked at the broken back-door lock and decided that I’d fix it after the trial was over, whatever the outcome.

Life had to go on.

34

‘William Gordon-Russell.’

‘Here,’ I said, struggling to stand up while not dropping the crutches.

The court usher held open the doors for me as I made my way into the courtroom.

It was eerily quiet as I went slowly past the massed rows of court reporters to the witness box, the only sound being the clink-clink of the crutches on the hard blue-carpeted floor.

‘Do you need a chair?’ asked the usher.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not to start with.’

I was determined to stand, if only to demonstrate to Joe Bradbury that I was not the invalid he had tried to make me. I leaned the crutches up against the front of the wooden witness box.

‘Take the testament in your right hand and read from the card,’ said the usher.

I did as he asked. ‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

The usher took back the card and Bible, and I looked around the court.

Slightly to my right and in front was the imposing red-robed and bewigged judge sitting alone behind his raised bench. On the rear wall, above the judge’s head, was a painted moulding of the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom — a reminder that all criminal cases are tried in British Crown Courts in the name of the reigning monarch.

Beyond the judge, on the far side of the court, was the jury and I was facing them directly as they were me. Five men and seven women in two rows of six.

I turned to my left and there he was — the defendant, Joseph Reginald Bradbury, sitting behind vertically slatted glass panels in the dock at the back of the court, opposite the judge, flanked by two uniformed security officers.

The very sight of Joe staring at me with his cold eyes sent a shiver down my damaged spine.

There was a slight pause and then the prosecuting barrister stood up from his place and turned to me.

‘Please state your full name,’ he said.

‘William Herbert Millgate Gordon-Russell.’

‘And are you the widower of Amelia Jane Gordon-Russell, the victim of the murder in this case.’

‘I am.’

So it was now official, I was a widower.

And there was no point in asking to be referred to as just plain Bill Russell. Even I could see that. The whole court atmosphere was extremely formal, from the judge in his red robes and horsehair wig, the barristers in their black gowns, also with wigs, and then the court officials in dark suits, some also with black gowns over. I was in my Sunday best, as was Joe Bradbury in the dock, both, no doubt, trying to make a good impression as honest and respectable citizens.

Only the jury appeared to have been dragged in off the street in their leisure attire, which of course they effectively had. And they had clearly not received any memo concerning an expected dress code. Most of them appeared to be completely out of place in slogan-printed T-shirts and skimpy blouses. But perhaps their choice of apparel was more in keeping with the hot June weather than the heavy garb of the lawyers. One of the young men in the back row, I noticed later, was even sporting Bermuda shorts and flip-flops.

But, I suppose, the jury could wear what they liked. They didn’t have to impress anyone.

The judge might think that he was in charge, and he was in terms of the law, but the jury were the final arbitrators of the facts and it was they who ultimately pronounced on the guilt or otherwise of the man in the dock. They were the kings of the court and everybody knew it, the judge included, bowing down at their every behest, flip-flops or not.

‘Thank you for coming to court today, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ continued the prosecution barrister. ‘I hope the journey wasn’t too onerous for you, especially in your, shall we say, delicate condition.’

He made it sound as if I were eight and a half months pregnant.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘The journey was fine, thank you.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to sit down? The usher will bring you a chair.’

‘I may need to later,’ I said. ‘But I will stand for the time being.’

If anything the poor man looked rather disappointed and I realised too late that, as DS Dowdeswell had suggested, the prosecution were attempting to use my physical incapacity as a lever to extract greater sympathy from the jury.

‘Now, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ he went on. ‘I intend taking you through the events of last October. We will try and keep everything in chronological order and I would appreciate it if you could tell the jury everything and anything that you consider might be relevant to them in making up their minds as to the circumstances of the case. I should warn you, however, against making any form of speculation or opinion. It is for the jury to make their own assessment of the evidence. Just confine yourself to the facts as you remember them. Do you understand?’

I nodded at him. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. So could you please tell the jury where and when you last saw your wife, and where you were, and how you discovered that she had been murdered.’

I knew this would be where he would start. He had told me so beforehand. And I had tried to prepare myself but, even so, I found the next hour or so, while describing the events of that Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, far more difficult than I had expected.

I told the jury how I had left home, leaving Amelia in the garden and how she had waved at me as I drove away. I explained how I had called home when I’d arrived at the hotel and then gone to a charity dinner. I told them how I had been unable to contact Amelia on the Wednesday morning but hadn’t been overly concerned. Not, that was, until I had been informed by the police at Warwick Racecourse that my wife had been murdered.

‘Take your time,’ the barrister said to me as I took some deep breaths to prevent myself from bursting into tears — and I was determined not to do that.

‘How would you describe your relationship with your brother-in-law, the defendant?’

‘Hostile,’ I said. ‘Especially on his side towards me.’

‘Has it always been like that?’

‘Not at all. For many years we got on well. We visited each other’s homes. Joe was an usher at my wedding, and our families were close. Amelia especially loved her young nieces.’

‘So when did it all go wrong?’

‘About four years ago. When Amelia and Joe’s mother moved from Weybridge to near Chipping Norton. Joe seemed to become insanely jealous of the closeness between Amelia and her mother and he clearly set out to destroy it.’

‘Did that affect the bond between the siblings?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘They had been close as children, with Amelia often telling me that she used to look out for her little brother at school but, over the last three years of her life, Amelia grew to hate him over what he was doing to her. She couldn’t even stand talking about him and wanted nothing to do with him ever again.’

‘So she wouldn’t have invited him into her home on the day she died?’

‘No way,’ I said, glancing over towards the dock. ‘She wouldn’t have invited him anywhere, ever.’

Joe was staring at me intensely through the glass and he moved as if to stand up, but one of the security officers put a hand on his arm and he slowly relaxed back into the chair.

I turned back to the prosecutor.

‘And how would you describe your own relationship with your wife?’

‘Very loving,’ I replied. ‘Amelia was not only my wife, she was also my best friend. She was my constant companion, my confidante and my lover.’

My voice almost broke and I fought back the tears once again. It was talking about her in the past tense that I found so distressing.

‘I think we will break for lunch now,’ announced the judge, looking up from his copious note-taking. ‘Mr Gordon-Russell, you may take the time to compose yourself. We will restart at two o’clock.’

‘All rise,’ shouted the usher, and everyone did. The prosecution and defence barristers bowed towards the judge and he returned the gesture, before departing through his own special door. Then the jury filed out through theirs. Joe was taken out of the dock by the security officers through yet another door, and finally I shuffled unsteadily across the court, out to the lobby, and back down to the witness services suite.

At least, with all these separate entrances and exits, I wouldn’t run into my brother-in-law by accident, as had happened outside the Coroner’s Court.

‘Well done,’ said DS Dowdeswell, who was waiting for me. ‘Bit of an ordeal, isn’t it? Do you fancy a coffee or a bite to eat?’

‘Something to eat would be great.’

He went to the canteen and returned with ham and cheese sandwiches, plus two cups of coffee.

‘Overly generous,’ I commented, somewhat flippantly.

‘Court expenses,’ he said, making sure he put the till receipt carefully in his wallet.

We sat down.

‘It seems to be going pretty well so far,’ I said. ‘Have I said the right things?’

The DS shook his head. ‘I can’t discuss your evidence with you, but it always does seem to go well when the prosecution are asking you the questions. But it will be a different matter when you get cross-examined. And you need to be very careful with this particular defence barrister. He’s a right slimy eel. He’ll do his best to tie you in knots and get you contradicting yourself. He’ll also try to convince the jury that you’re lying, so watch out. Never hesitate or he’ll jump at you.’

It sounded like a barrel of laughs.

‘And if he asks you something you don’t know, say so. Don’t let him lead you off on a tangent, and then agree with him that he might be right — because he won’t be.’

‘I thought they weren’t allowed to ask leading questions.’

He gave me a look that I took to mean ‘Don’t be so naive.’

‘I remind you, Mr Gordon-Russell, that you are still under oath.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ I replied to the judge.

We were all back in court after the lunch break, everyone in their allotted places.

The prosecuting barrister briefly went back over the events that we had covered during the morning, as if to emphasise the horror of discovering one’s wife had been murdered, and to remind the jury of its significance.

‘Now, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ he said finally. ‘Let us move on to the events of the last Wednesday in October, exactly two weeks after the murder of your wife, the day on which the defendant also attempted to kill you.’

The judge raised his eyes from his note-taking and gave the barrister a stare as if to admonish him slightly for his forwardness. But he said nothing.

‘Please could you describe to the jury what happened to you on that afternoon, specifically concerning your visit to the Waitrose supermarket in Banbury.’

I wanted to tell him, and the jury, that it wasn’t the first time Joe Bradbury had tried to kill me. I wanted to tell them that on the Saturday prior to the last Wednesday in October, Joe had tried to stab me with a carving knife and I had only escaped thanks to the timely intervention of his mother.

But the CPS didn’t want that episode to ‘cloud the issue’, as they considered that there was insufficient evidence to charge him over it. I, however, felt that it was another prime example of Joe’s obsession with doing away with me.

I also wanted to tell them that, prior to that Wednesday, I had been down to Weybridge to speak to Jim and Gladys Wilson, and I had found evidence that proved Joe had stolen a hundred thousand pounds from his mother. And I wanted to tell them that, on the Tuesday afternoon, Joe had just learned that I was no longer considered a suspect in the death of his sister and he mistakenly believed that killing me was a way of getting himself off the hook.

But the CPS didn’t want me to bring any of those things up either.

‘Just answer the questions that you are asked,’ the prosecuting barrister had said to me in earnest during our pre-trial meeting. ‘And nothing else.’

He was strongly implying that I shouldn’t try and answer those that I wasn’t asked.

He told me they had good reasons for keeping quiet at this stage, and that these matters would be introduced later. Not that they were coaching me or anything. That would have been illegal.

In addition, the CPS had made it perfectly clear that they would prefer it if I also didn’t mention anything about me having been arrested on suspicion of murdering Amelia.

‘But surely the defence will bring that up,’ I’d said.

‘They might or they might not. Depends on how desperate they are. If they do, then they will show themselves as trying to blacken the character of a bereaved widower. Juries tend not to like that. And we would have the last word in re-examination to confirm absolutely that you have an unbreakable alibi and that the police no longer have any interest in you as a suspect.’

So I simply explained to the jury how I had driven my wife’s cream Fiat 500 from my home to Waitrose supermarket in Banbury on that Wednesday afternoon.

‘Did you notice anything during the journey?’ the prosecutor asked.

‘As I backed out of my drive, I spotted a large white van parked further down the road. I assumed at the time it was one of the many similar courier vans that deliver online-shopping packages. I remembered thinking that he wouldn’t be delivering to me as I hadn’t ordered anything. Other than that, I noticed nothing unusual and I arrived at the Waitrose car park about half past four.’

I went on to describe how, after doing my shopping and loading everything into the car, I had set off to drive home a little before five-thirty, and by that time on a dull dank late October afternoon, it was already completely dark.

I had driven out of Banbury and, after indicating to turn right off the main road into Hanwell village, I had realised far too late that the headlights behind were not slowing down.

I told them how someone had driven straight into the back of Amelia’s Fiat 500, shunting it forward with such force that hitting the opposite grass verge had sent the car airborne. It had passed over the hedge, crashing into the tree in the field beyond.

‘And what happened after that?’ asked the barrister.

‘The next thing I remember was waking up in the John Radcliffe Hospital some ten days later.’

‘And what were your injuries?’

I catalogued everything, starting with the break to my neck and the bruising of my spinal cord, which had resulted in my motor-nerve paralysis.

‘And are you fully recovered now?’ asked the prosecutor.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Over the past eight months, with constant physiotherapy, much of my mobility has returned. But I still have problems, with my legs in particular, and I am informed that I may never recover full movement and control.’

‘So would you describe your injuries as being life-changing?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very much so.’

But not as life-changing as losing my wife.

‘Thank you, Mr Gordon-Russell. No more questions.’

The prosecuting barrister sat down, leaving me still standing there in the witness box with a look of total surprise on my face.

No more questions?

But I had more to say.

How about asking me about Joe’s vile emails? And his threats? What about his attempts to brainwash his mother? And the theft of the money? And his false accusation that I had assaulted his daughter?

I had so much more to say.

35

‘Am I right in thinking that you refer to yourself as Bill Russell rather than using your full name?’

The ‘right slimy eel’ defence barrister was on his feet and asking the questions in cross-examination.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

‘Why is that? Is it some kind of reverse snobbery?’

He made it sound like a major failing.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just simpler.’

Specifically, it had been simpler when I’d been riding as an amateur jockey, as ‘Mr W. Gordon-Russell’ had been too long to fit on the racecourse number boards, not that many of them had those any longer.

But maybe the eel was right too, in a way. Being the son of an earl, and with a double-barrelled surname to boot, didn’t make getting spare rides any easier.

Historically, in British horse racing, the jockey was always considered to be the owner’s servant, and the earliest race records show only the names of the horse and its owner, and not that of its rider. Even in modern times, for some of the old school, offering a ride to someone who they considered had a higher social standing than them was a no-no.

‘Mr Russell,’ said the eel, ‘I put it to you that much of what you have told the court today has been a pack of lies.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It has been the truth.’

‘An intricate tissue of lies to cover up your own carelessness and wrongdoing?’

‘Not at all. I have told you the truth.’

‘You have told the jury that your relationship with your wife was a loving one, but I suggest this is far from the reality?’

‘No. I loved my wife deeply. We had a blissful marriage.’

‘But was it not your mental cruelty towards your wife that resulted in her being admitted to a psychiatric institution on several occasions?’

I was doing my best to keep my cool. This was clearly a line that Joe had spun to his defence team. It was what he had accused me of many times in his ranting emails, when it had been his doing all along.

‘No,’ I said.

‘But your wife had been admitted to such institutions?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But not due to any cruelty on my behalf. I suggest you look at your client’s behaviour to find the true reason.’

He ignored me. ‘Your wife suffered from depression. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you say that a happily married person would be depressed? Does not the very word depression imply unhappiness?’

‘That is far too simplistic a view, and one that is totally wrong,’ I said. ‘Depression is a complicated issue and doesn’t necessarily relate to someone’s happiness or unhappiness.’

‘Was your wife suicidal?’

‘She had been, in the past.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And had your wife not been rushed to accident and emergency several times as a result of trying to take her own life?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hardly the behaviour of someone in a blissful marriage, wouldn’t you say?’

‘You are misrepresenting the situation,’ I said.

‘No, Mr Russell. It is you that is misrepresenting the situation. Was your wife not desperately unhappy in your marriage, to the point of trying to end her own life on multiple occasions? Is that not the true situation?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That was absolutely not the case.’

He ignored my answer yet again.

‘And was your wife’s inability to have children a source of further friction between you?’

‘I wouldn’t call it friction,’ I said. ‘It was a source of great sadness for us both.’

‘So it put your marriage under strain?’

‘Yes, it did,’ I said. ‘It was a difficult time for us both.’

I could see DS Dowdeswell sitting behind the prosecution team staring purposefully at me. Then I remembered his warning over lunch.

‘But,’ I went on, ‘it didn’t ever affect the deep love we had for each other. It put us under strain in other ways and, if anything, those difficulties brought us closer together as a couple.’

The detective sergeant nodded at me in approval.

The eel didn’t.

‘Did you stand to benefit financially from the death of your wife?’ he asked.

‘In what way do you mean?’ I asked back, sure that he was on about the life insurance policy. But I wanted him to mention it first.

‘Was your wife’s life insured?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I have been employed in the insurance business all my working life. It would be remiss of me not to have insured my wife, as indeed it would have been if I had not also insured myself.’

‘But is it not the case that you took out a new policy just a few months before her death? A policy that pays out a million pounds to you as the sole beneficiary?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is the case. But I can assure you that no amount of money can compensate for the loss of my wife.’

DS Dowdeswell was nodding furiously.

But the eel pressed his point again. ‘However, you did stand to benefit financially from her death?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not.’

The eel was slightly taken aback. ‘But you have just told the court that you are the sole beneficiary to a life insurance policy worth a million pounds. How is that not a financial benefit?’

‘Because, according to her mother’s will at the time, Amelia stood to inherit half of her mother’s substantial estate, something that would have happened very soon as her mother had been diagnosed with inoperative stage-four pancreatic cancer. However, as my wife was murdered and hence predeceased her mother, and we have no children, the whole estate would have gone to her brother.’ I turned and faced the dock, pointing my left forefinger in Joe’s direction just in case the jury hadn’t understood what I was saying. ‘My wife’s death would have resulted in a huge financial benefit to him, not to me.’

The detective sergeant looked so happy that I thought he was about to burst into applause, and the eel looked like he’d swallowed a wasp.

I could see what the defence were attempting to do. They were trying to sow a seed of doubt in the minds of the jury that it had been the wicked cruel husband whodunit but, in trying to establish a financial motive for me to have killed her, they had only provided me with the opportunity to do exactly the same for their client sitting in the dock.

But the eel wasn’t giving up the thread that easily.

He played what he obviously thought was his trump card.

‘Mr Russell,’ he said, ‘was it not the case that you were arrested by the police on suspicion of murdering your wife?’

‘Yes,’ I said unhesitatingly. ‘But I was wrongly arrested. As I have explained earlier, I was away in Birmingham at the time of my wife’s death — and CCTV has proved it beyond any doubt. The police have accepted that. I have a letter signed by the chief constable of Thames Valley Police.’

I decided not to mention that the letter didn’t exactly state that I was innocent, just that the police would not be pursuing charges against me unless any new evidence emerged. But, even so, I could tell from the eel’s body language that he was suddenly regretting having brought up my arrest in the first place.

But I wasn’t. It had given me the chance to show that I had a watertight alibi.

For the first time, I was even quite enjoying myself and eager to see the eel’s next tactic.

I was pretty sure that he couldn’t refer to the police caution I had accepted as an undergraduate for having had sex with Tracy Higgins when she was only fifteen. That had been twenty-one years ago and was hardly relevant to the matter in hand, but I wouldn’t put anything past him.

‘Mr Russell,’ he said. ‘Would you consider yourself a risk taker?’

‘My work as an actuary involves the evaluation of risk,’ I replied. ‘Every activity we perform carries some level of risk — crossing the road, flying away on holiday, scuba diving, everything. My job is to calculate that level, however small. So, in some respects, everyone is a risk taker.’

‘But would you say that you personally take unnecessary risks?’

‘No.’

I wondered where he was going with this.

‘But did you not ride in steeplechase races, including over the Grand National fences? Would you not consider that an unnecessary risk?’

‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘But it was a calculated risk.’ I smiled at him. ‘If you are on a good horse then the level of risk is acceptable.’

‘But did you not have to give up riding in races due to injury?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what was that injury?’

‘I damaged my neck.’

‘You damaged your neck?’ he sounded incredulous, spreading his hands wide towards the jury. ‘But is it not the case that you broke vertebrae in your neck, the same vertebrae that have caused the current problem with your walking?’

‘Yes.’

‘So your present difficulties may, in some large part, be due to the injury you received several years ago while riding.’

‘I can’t answer that as I’m not a doctor,’ I said. ‘All I know is that I could walk perfectly well before the recent crash, and I can’t afterwards.’

‘Do you like speed, Mr Russell?’

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by speed. Did he mean amphetamines?

He clarified. ‘Does going fast give you a thrill? An adrenalin rush?’

‘I think everyone gets a thrill from riding a fast roller coaster.’

‘But not everyone rides racehorses at thirty miles per hour over Becher’s Brook. Did that give you a thrill, Mr Russell?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Do you miss that thrill, now that you have stopped riding?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you drive a fast, powerful sports car instead?’

‘I wouldn’t call it fast,’ I said.

‘No? A four-point-two-litre V8 supercharged Jaguar XKR-S sports car? With a top speed of one hundred and seventy-four miles per hour? I think I’d call that fast.’

‘It is now more than ten years old,’ I said.

I had bought it during the bountiful years, before the financial crisis, when all City bonuses had been overly extravagant.

‘As maybe,’ said the eel. ‘But I bet it still shifts along pretty nicely, doesn’t it? Enjoy driving it, do you, Mr Russell?’

‘Yes.’

There was no point in denying it. I loved driving my Jag.

‘Do you like going fast? Taking a few risks?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘How many penalty points do you have on your driving licence, Mr Russell?

‘Nine.’

‘Are they all for speeding convictions?’

‘Yes.’

He paused to allow that fact to settle into the brains of the members of the jury.

‘Going fast on the night of the crash, were you, Mr Russell?’

‘No,’ I said, smiling. ‘And I wasn’t driving that car.’

‘Exactly,’ he said triumphantly. ‘A Jaguar sports car is built to corner well. You are very familiar with it. But on that day you were driving a Fiat 500. Is it not the case, Mr Russell, that you simply took the corner too fast in a car you were not used to driving, and one that is not designed for the high-speed manoeuvres that you regularly perform, and far from being hit from behind by another vehicle, you simply lost control and crashed due to your own excessive speed and negligence?’

As the detective sergeant had said, he was, indeed, a right slimy eel.

‘No,’ I replied strongly and loudly. ‘That is not what happened at all. The Fiat was almost stationary when it was struck from behind by another vehicle.’

The eel snorted his disbelief.

‘No further questions.’

He sat down and the prosecuting counsel made no move to stand up again.

‘Thank you, Mr Gordon-Russell,’ said the judge. ‘You may step down.’

In truth, I was somewhat disappointed. I’d been on a roll, and I’d been in the witness box for less than one day when I had quite expected to be there for much longer.

Clearly, so did the court, as the next prosecution witness had not been called to appear.

‘We will adjourn until ten o’clock on Monday morning,’ announced the judge.

‘All rise!’

36

‘Sounds to me like you did pretty well,’ Douglas said.

I had taken the train from Oxford to spend the weekend with my brother and we were talking through the events of the day over a glass of Rioja.

‘The defence barrister was a bit of a bastard.’

He laughed. ‘All barristers can be bastards when we need to be. It’s the defence’s job to throw doubt on the testimony of the prosecution witnesses.’

‘But he didn’t need to be so unkind about Amelia and her problems.’

‘From what you’ve said, I think he was quite mild. When I’m defending I can be far worse than that.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said. ‘Then I’m glad you weren’t there.’

He laughed again and we drank some more wine.

Whereas it would have been illegal for the prosecution to coach me as one of their witnesses in the case, there were no such qualms for my brother, the QC, provided we did not discuss the actual evidence.

Over the past few weeks, Douglas and I had spent quite a lot of time on the telephone together. He had taught me what to expect in the court, how to handle difficult moments, and to keep my composure at all times. His wide experience with juries had given me an insight into what they were looking for and how to present them with it.

Without his guidance, mine would have been a far more nervous performance.

‘How are things in general?’ Douglas asked. ‘Other than the trial?’

‘Much the same,’ I said. ‘I still can’t walk properly and no one will employ me.’

‘But they can’t still believe that you were responsible?’

‘No. I don’t think so. But it’s all to do with risk — all insurance is. They see it as a risk to employ me at the present time with all the publicity still going on. Who was it who claimed there was no such thing as bad publicity?’

‘Phineas T. Barnum,’ Douglas replied. ‘The American circus owner. It was either him or Oscar Wilde.’

I shook my head. ‘Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’

‘Same thing, surely. Or maybe it was Brendan Behan?’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Brendan Behan. You know, the Irish poet and playwright. Used to describe himself as a drinker with a writing problem. Claimed he drank only on only two occasions — when he was thirsty and when he wasn’t. And his favourite tipple was a mixture of champagne and sherry. Totally lethal.’

We laughed, and then took large sips of our own alcoholic beverages.

‘But, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that Behan said that there was no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary.’

We both laughed again. It felt good.

Laughter had been in short supply in my life during the past eight months.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Whoever said it was an idiot. All the fund managers are telling me to wait until the trial is over. Maybe things will settle down then, they say. Thank the Lord for Mary Bradbury, that’s what I say. Without her legacy I’d probably be losing my house by now.’

‘How about Amelia’s life insurance money?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘You know what insurance companies are like. They won’t pay out until the death certificate is registered by the coroner. And that won’t be until the inquest concludes, and that won’t happen until after the criminal proceedings are finished. They’ll drag it out as long as they can.’

‘So how did you have Amelia’s funeral without a death certificate?’

‘I applied to the coroner for a temporary one. That allowed the funeral to take place on condition she was buried and not cremated.’

He gave me a sideways look, which implied I was giving him too much information.

‘How about you?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Have you seen your boys recently?’

He smiled broadly.

‘They were here last week for half-term. Charlotte came with them for some of the time.’

‘That’s great news.’

‘Don’t get excited. We’re not getting back together. In fact, she left a day earlier than originally planned because we found we couldn’t stand being together. Kept arguing over the smallest of things.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I’ve obviously got used to living on my own.’

I wished I could.

One of the main reasons why I had come to stay this weekend with Douglas in London was because I now found the Old Forge to be such a lonely place and I had thought that, after giving my evidence, I would have hated being alone there even more.

And I was right.

The experience had clearly affected me.

I had been building up to this day for so long, believing that it would be the decisive day in the trial, but, somehow, I felt it had been a bit of an anticlimax.

After going up to bed, now back in Douglas’s guest bedroom after the repairs from the water leak, I lay in the dark for a long time, worrying about it.

Should I have done more?

Could I have done more?

By the time I finally went to sleep, I had convinced myself that, in spite of Douglas’s help, I hadn’t done enough, and that Joe Bradbury would get off.

The very thought gave me nightmares.

On Saturday afternoon I went to the races at Sandown Park.

It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I had been invited by the chairman of the Honorary Stewards Appointment Board to discuss my future, a move I had taken as being hugely positive, so I had accepted at once.

My legs were still not up to a journey to the Esher course by train as there was a good half-mile between the railway station and the racecourse entrance. So I booked a car with a driver, one who would wait and bring me back when I became tired.

I asked Douglas if he would like to come with me and, much to my surprise and delight, he agreed.

‘I’ve only been to a horse race once before in my life,’ he announced in the car on the way. ‘And that was to see you ride at Lingfield. Long time ago, now, mind. I was a junior in a trial at Southwark and it was postponed for a day due to a bout of sickness in the jury. So, in a moment of weakness, I caught a train from Victoria.’

I turned in my seat to stare at him. ‘You’ve never told me that before. Did I win?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You were miles in front and I thought you were going to, but you fell off at the last fence.’

I remembered it well. Failures like that seem to stick in the memory longer than the successes.

‘I think you’ll find that the horse itself fell,’ I said. ‘Rather than I fell off it.’

‘Same thing, surely.’

No, it wasn’t, I thought. Totally different thing altogether. But, I suppose, the result was the same. And, in truth, it had been my fault. It had been early in my riding career. I could recall being so elated that I was about to win my first race that I hadn’t concentrated enough in getting my mount balanced for the last. And we had both paid the price, hitting the turf hard.

The incident had bruised my ego even more than it had bruised my body.

‘You didn’t say anything to me at the time about being there.’

‘I would have if you’d won. But I thought, under the circumstances, it was best simply to drift away.’

He was right.

My clever lawyer brother was always right.

He had worked out that I would have been doubly embarrassed and distraught if I had known that he had witnessed the debacle. But, almost two decades on since the event, I was pleased that he had taken the effort to go and see me ride, albeit with such a disaster. Even now, my heart ached with the desire to have done better for him on that day. Maybe it wouldn’t have been his only previous trip to the races if I’d won. Indeed, I was sure of it.

‘At least no one will fall at the last fence here today,’ I said as the car pulled up in front of the Sandown main entrance. ‘It’s flat racing.’

I had never returned my official BHA steward’s pass and I used it to gain access. I even managed to acquire a complimentary entrance badge for Douglas and a racecard.

It felt so good to be back on a racecourse.

I hadn’t been to the races since that appalling day at Ascot just three days after Amelia had died and, even now, I went hot and cold wondering what on earth I’d been thinking of in going.

I clearly hadn’t been myself.

I wasn’t sure I was myself even now.

It was as if the death of my wife had also killed off a large part of me. Sure, I went on breathing and eating, sleeping and thinking, but it was in a parallel universe to how I had been before, seemingly not living in reality.

Part of me even expected to wake up from this torment and find everything was fine again.

I knew it wasn’t really going to happen but, somehow, I received some degree of solace from believing that it might, and I could understand absolutely how Mary had been comforted by her certainty that she would soon meet Amelia again on the ‘other side’.

‘Fancy some lunch?’ I asked Douglas.

‘What time’s your meeting?’

‘After the first race. That’s at five past two. We have plenty of time.’

We went to the champagne and seafood bar and found a table in the window that someone else was just vacating.

‘I’ll get the food,’ Douglas said. ‘You keep the table.’

Walking with crutches was not conducive to carrying anything so I sat and waited while Douglas fetched a bottle of Moët in an ice bucket, two glasses, and a couple of plates of prawn salad with lashings of Marie Rose sauce.

‘Cheers,’ he said, raising a glass of bubbles. ‘Here’s to a fun afternoon.’

‘A fun afternoon,’ I echoed, somewhat forlornly, also raising mine.

I knew that I hadn’t been any fun to be around for months. Maybe it was time I started looking on the brighter side of life. Perhaps I’d be able to soon, once the trial was over, provided we got the right result.

Douglas and I ate our lunch and we finished the bottle of champagne, which was perhaps not the best preparation for an important appointment with the stewarding boss.

‘Where’s your meeting?’ Douglas asked.

‘In the Stewards’ Room,’ I said. ‘It’s in the weighing-room complex. After the first race, unless there’s an enquiry, in which case it will be after the second.’

We went outside into the sunshine to watch the horses circling in the paddock for the first race, a five-furlong sprint for two-year-olds.

‘Which one do you fancy?’ Douglas asked, looking at the racecard. ‘Where should I stake my shirt?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘But I thought you knew about racing,’ he said with a laugh.

‘I know the rules,’ I said. ‘Not which horse will win.’

Somewhat surprisingly, honorary stewards were allowed to bet provided they were not acting for the particular race in question. However, I usually didn’t bet at all while at the races, as I didn’t consider it was the best advertisement for the sport for a known steward to be seen gambling, even if he was ‘off duty’.

And, far more importantly, I didn’t like losing my money, which I invariably did.

‘They look awfully small,’ Douglas said as the runners paraded past us.

‘These are just babies,’ I said. ‘For many it’s their first time on a racecourse. Jump horses are generally much bigger because they’re older.’

‘So will these go jumping when they grow up?’

I laughed. ‘Some might but I doubt it. These days, horses are mostly bred to be either flat or jumps specialists. But that wasn’t always the case. Red Rum, he of three-wins-plus-two-seconds-in-the-Grand-National fame, ran eight times on the flat as a two-year-old. In fact, his first ever race was a dead-heat win in a five-furlong selling plate at Aintree the day before Foinavon famously won the National, after that massive pile-up at the twenty-third fence. But that was back when Aintree used to stage flat races as well as jumps.’

‘Don’t they any more?’

‘No. Aintree is now jumping only.’

‘So how many racecourses are there in total?’ Douglas asked.

‘Sixty in Great Britain. About a third are flat only, a little over a third jumps only, and the rest have both, but not usually on the same day. Mixed meetings used to be quite common but now there are only a very few in the whole year. I know there’s one at Haydock in May. In fact, that might be the only one left.’

‘Why not more?’

‘Different clientele, I suppose. Different trainers. And different jockeys.’

‘But the same stewards?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, smiling. ‘Rules is rules, either code.’

Douglas decided to keep his shirt on his back and to invest just ten pounds to win on a horse whose jockey’s silks were in his college colours.

‘Bookmakers will love you,’ I said, laughing.

We watched the race from the main grandstand.

The babies broke evenly and ran as fast as they could down the five-furlong straight course, the whole thing over in less than a minute — blink and you missed it.

Douglas enthusiastically shouted his support for his selection at maximum decibels, urging it to go faster, but to no avail. It finished sixth out of the nine runners.

‘Mug’s game,’ he said, tearing up his betting slip into confetti.

We went to the unsaddling enclosure to watch the winner come in; as there were no controversial incidents that required any action, I left Douglas there, leaning on the rail, as I went through to the Stewards’ Room.

The chairman of the Honorary Stewards Appointment Board was already waiting for me.

‘Ah, there you are, Bill,’ he said, stretching out a hand for me to shake, which I ignored.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I currently need both my hands to walk with.’

Especially after half a bottle of champers.

Why did I do that?

‘Yes, of course,’ said the chairman. ‘Silly me.’

He pulled over a couple of the chairs and we sat down.

‘How are things?’ he asked.

‘Physically or mentally?’

‘Both.’

‘Physically, I am getting better very slowly. I can now walk pretty well with the crutches and I haven’t brought a wheelchair with me here today, which I would have had to do until about a week or two ago. The doctors tell me they have little or no idea if I will ever be back to normal, but I’m working on it.’

The chairman smiled.

‘As for the mental side,’ I said, ‘I hope things will be better after the trial is over. I am finding that quite stressful at present.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the chairman said again. ‘But other than that?’

‘Well, I won’t say that life has been a bunch of laughs these last eight months. It hasn’t. But I’m still here. And I’m ready and eager to resume my duties as a race-day steward.’

‘Yes, well, that’s why I asked you to come here today.’

Suddenly, I feared that he was going to tell me I wasn’t wanted, and to demand back my official pass card, but he could have surely done that by email or post. And my fears were unfounded.

‘I am pleased to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I will be recommending to the full BHA board that your name be reinstated on the official List of Stewards.’

I smiled broadly.

‘That is very good news,’ I said. ‘But George Longcross won’t be pleased. He told me in no uncertain terms that I’d brought racing into disrepute.’

It was a comment that still irritated me.

‘Yes, well, George can be a bit of a dinosaur at times. But you have always impressed me by the solid reasoning of your arguments and the clarity of your decisions. Welcome back to the team.’

He held out his hand again and, this time, I shook it, warmly.

‘Let’s hope the main board agree with you.’

‘They will,’ he said. ‘I have the Authority chairman’s blessing to hold this meeting. You will hear officially very soon.’ He stood up to indicate that our meeting was over. He smiled. ‘I must now get back to my job of stewarding here today. My colleagues have been holding the fort for me outside.’

I also stood up and gathered my walking aids together.

‘Thank you,’ I said, meaning it.

There was almost a spring in my faltering steps as I went back outside to Douglas and I didn’t need to tell him the outcome — he could tell by the huge grin that I couldn’t wipe off my face.

It was going to be a fun afternoon, after all.

‘I’ll order some more bubbly,’ he said.

‘Only if you want me to fall over.’

We settled on a coffee from a concession stand, which we drank while perusing the runners in the next race.

Douglas chose to place another wager, again ten pounds, this time on a horse with a legal-sounding name, but his renewed high hopes ended once again with more confetti in the wind.

It was a good job my brother was a better lawyer than he was a punter.

37

Week two of the trial was taken up by the prosecution as they slowly tried to build a solid wall of evidence with which to surround the defendant, a wall that we all hoped the defence would be unable to knock down.

After I’d finished giving my own testimony on the first Friday, I sat in the public area of the court for every moment of the trial, and I watched as a steady stream of witnesses made their way in and out again.

First up was Nancy Fadeley. She stood bolt upright in the witness box dressed in a smart floral-printed summer dress, and wearing her signature pearl necklace, this time with matching drop-pearl earrings. The prosecutor began by asking her to tell the jury of her trip to the pub with Amelia on the evening before she died, and to recount the conversation that had taken place between the two of them.

As DCI Priestly had predicted, the defence barrister didn’t like it one bit and, in spite of his complaints having been dismissed once at a previous hearing, he now again protested vociferously to the judge that what Amelia had said to a third party was mere hearsay and should be inadmissible as evidence.

The jury were sent out of the court while the matter was discussed at length between the lawyers. Eventually, the judge ruled that, as Amelia wasn’t able to attend court herself to be questioned due to having been the victim of the murder and hence she was dead, evidence of what she had said to a third party was relevant and admissible.

The jury were brought back in and Nancy continued, explaining how Amelia had told her that she was certain that Joe had stolen money from their mother, and how he would have killed her if he’d known she was aware of it.

The next witness was someone I didn’t recognise, who turned out to be Alan Newbould, the man who had bought the house in Weybridge from Mary Bradbury.

Yes, he agreed, he had given Joe Bradbury a personal cheque for one hundred thousand pounds as payment for fixtures and fittings, plus some of the carpets and pieces of furniture and, yes, Joe had indicated to him that it was best if the lawyers used by each side for the transaction knew nothing about it.

The eel gave him a bit of a hard time in cross-examination, claiming that it had been he who had committed a crime by avoiding a proportion of the stamp duty land tax, but Mr Newbould never wavered from his story that, as far as he was concerned, the payment had been a legitimate settlement for goods received, and he had been unaware of any intention by Joe Bradbury to keep the money for himself.

An executive of one of the High Street banks then arrived to testify that no sum of any amount, let alone one of a hundred thousand pounds, had been deposited at any time into Mary Bradbury’s account by Mr Joseph Bradbury. And, because her son had banked with the same company as his mother, the same executive was also able to provide bank statements to the jury that showed Mr Newbould’s funds being cleared into Mr Bradbury’s personal account just three days after he’d received the cheque.

Next to appear was the solicitor Mr James Fairbrother, MA (Oxon), TEP, who confirmed that, oh, yes, well, prior to her death, Mrs Mary Bradbury had expressed to him her belief that her son had indeed stolen a hundred thousand pounds from her. As a result, she had cut him out of her will, passing his share of her estate directly to his children.

The eel had made another attempt to prevent hearsay testimony being admitted but with the same result — abject failure — and for the same reason: the relevant person was unable to attend the court in person to give it herself as she was dead.

There were brief appearances by Fred Marchant, Mary’s neighbour, followed by his wife Jill, both of whom stated that they had been witnesses to Mary’s signing of her new will, the one excluding Joe, and that, as far as they were concerned, she had been quite aware of what she was doing, and why, at the time of the signing.

The eel had been quick to ask them what qualifications they had for making such a claim and, reluctantly, they both had to admit they had none.

However, this played straight into the hands of the prosecution as they then called Mary’s doctor, the one who had performed the cognitive assessment tests on her, and he did have the necessary qualifications to assert that Mary Bradbury had been of sound mind and did have the required testamentary capacity under sections 1 to 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

There was a smug self-satisfied air to the prosecution counsel as he dismissed the doctor and then moved on from the theft to the attempted murder.

First up in this section was a Thames Valley Police traffic officer, who testified that he had attended a road-traffic incident at the Hanwell village interchange after a call from a member of the public to the 999 emergency line.

‘And what did you find?’ asked the prosecuting barrister.

‘A cream-coloured Fiat 500 in the field beyond the hedge. It was in a heavily damaged condition and there was evidence that it had been in collision with a nearby large oak tree. The ambulance service were already in attendance and they, together with the fire brigade, removed the occupant who had been placed in an induced coma. He was subsequently transported to the John Radcliffe Hospital by air ambulance.’

How disappointing, I thought. I’d always wanted to go in a helicopter and now I had, but I’d been unconscious throughout the whole trip.

‘And what then happened to the vehicle?’

‘What was left of it, after the fire brigade had cut the roof off, was collected by a mobile crane onto a low-loader and removed to a vehicle breakers yard near Bicester. I supervised the removal myself.’

The next witness was a police forensic specialist who testified that he had examined the remains of the Fiat at the breakers yard and had obtained samples of white paint found on the rear of the vehicle. He had further found, by chemical analysis, that the paint was identical to that used on long-wheelbase Ford Transit vans.

An office employee of Joe Bradbury’s High Court enforcement company then told the jury that Joe had signed out one of their vehicles on the day in question, a long-wheelbase white Transit van, and the vehicle had then been sent by Mr Bradbury direct to their regularly used body shop for repair after he had informed the company that it had been driven into by a disgruntled loan defaulter.

Next, another police specialist, this time in IT, gave evidence to show that ANPR cameras had recorded the passage of the van along the M40 motorway from London to Banbury, and mobile phone records had shown Joe Bradbury’s phone connecting to a mast near Hanwell village just before the supposed time of the collision.

Finally in this sequence, my friend Mr Constance, the orthopaedic surgeon, appeared to describe the injuries that he had encountered on my arrival at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

‘He’s a very lucky man,’ said the surgeon, turning towards where I sat at the back of the courtroom. ‘And particularly as he had been in that car all night before being found. Any sudden movement, even involuntary, during that time would have likely severed his spinal cord rendering him, at best, paralysed.’

‘So do you consider,’ said the prosecutor, ‘that, in your expert opinion, the injuries sustained by Mr Gordon-Russell were life-threatening?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Mr Constance. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that more than ninety per cent of people would have died in those circumstances. Mr Gordon-Russell must have the constitution of a horse.’

Oh, no, he’s wrong there, I thought. Horses, for all their great bulk, are very delicate creatures; but we all knew what he meant.

The eel had been mostly conspicuous by his absence during this string of testimonies, only briefly rising to ask the police forensic specialist to speculate on how many vehicles on British roads had that same white paint as a Ford Transit van, but now he stood up again.

‘Mr Constance,’ he said. ‘Are you saying that the injuries sustained by Mr Gordon-Russell are consistent only with there having been an attempt on his life? Could the same injuries not have been caused by an accidental collision with the tree caused only by his own excessive speed?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Thank you, Mr Constance. No further questions.’

The eel sat down and the surgeon was dismissed by the judge.

The final strand of the prosecution’s case concerned the murder of Amelia.

One of the other detectives on the case gave evidence, playing on the court televisions the CCTV footage from a petrol station near the Banbury motorway junction, in which Joe Bradbury was clearly shown filling his black Nissan with fuel. The time and date on the footage indicated that he was there at 8.20 a.m. on the morning Amelia died.

The same detective then told the jury that the emergency call from Joe to report his sister’s death was taken at 10.17 on that same morning. He further stated that the distance between the petrol station and the Old Forge in Hanwell had been measured by him at precisely 4.2 miles.

The prosecutor didn’t need to ask him why he thought it had taken Joe almost two hours to cover such a small distance by car. I could tell from the faces of the jury that they had worked that one out for themselves.

Next up was a forensic scene-of-crime officer who testified that he had attended the house in Hanwell on the morning of the murder.

He explained how he had examined the broken lock on the back door, damage he considered consistent with a violent forced entry into the premises from outside. He also described how he had obtained DNA swab samples from the body of the victim and from various surfaces in the kitchen.

‘And what did those samples reveal?’ asked the prosecutor.

‘DNA from three different individuals was found on the kitchen surfaces. Comparison with known profiles has allowed me to identify those individuals as the victim, her husband and the defendant.’

‘From just three individuals, you say?’ asked the prosecutor. ‘Was there any other person’s DNA present?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And how about on the body?’

‘Swabs taken from the victim’s skin provided just two profiles. That of the victim and another of the defendant.’

‘From whereabouts on the body were the swabs taken?’

‘From the exposed skin,’ said the forensic officer. ‘From the hands, face and especially round the neck.’

‘And where exactly on the victim’s skin was the defendant’s DNA found?’ asked the prosecutor with a rather smug look on his face. It is said that no barrister should ever ask a question in court to which he doesn’t already know the answer, and the prosecuting barrister in this case clearly did.

‘On the neck.’

‘And did you also take swabs from the ligature used as the murder weapon?’

‘Yes, sir, I did.’

The prosecutor waiting expectantly and waved a hand to the witness in encouragement to go on.

‘DNA from both the victim and the defendant were present on the leather dog lead.’

‘Thank you, officer,’ said the prosecutor. ‘No further questions.’

The eel was quickly to his feet.

‘But would it not be the case,’ he said, ‘that you would expect the defendant’s DNA to be present on the victim’s neck and on the ligature if he had been attempting to remove the dog lead from around his sister’s throat?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ said the forensic officer. ‘My job is only to determine if DNA is present, not to speculate on how it got there.’

‘They’ll surely find him guilty after all that,’ I said to DS Dowdeswell over another coffee.

‘I very much hope so,’ he replied somewhat hesitantly. ‘But it’s all rather circumstantial.’

‘There’s surely nothing circumstantial about Joe’s DNA being all over Amelia’s neck,’ I said.

‘That’s true but, according to his defence statement, he found your wife dead with the dog lead already in place. He claims that he broke in through the back door to try and remove it, and that is how his DNA would have been transferred to both her neck and the lead.’

‘What do you mean by his defence statement?’ I asked.

‘Before the trial starts, the prosecution have to disclose to the accused all the evidence they have, along with the list of any prosecution witnesses. They also have to disclose anything that might help the accused or undermine their own case, even if they don’t intend to raise it at the trial. Basically, the prosecution have to disclose everything they know.’ The sergeant didn’t sound like he much approved of the practice. ‘Then the accused has to deliver a document back to the prosecution outlining his intended line of defence, including any defence witnesses he will be calling. That document is what’s known as the defence statement.’

‘So what else does Joe’s defence statement say?’

‘On the theft, he says that his mother knew about the payment and it was a gift from her to him for all his help in selling the house.’

‘But that’s nonsense,’ I said.

‘You know it and I know it, but that’s what he will be telling the jury. And, on the attempted murder, he claims that no collision ever took place and you simply must have crashed into the tree by going too fast round the corner.’

‘How about the white paint found on the back of the Fiat, and the fact that his mobile phone was in the Hanwell area at the same time?’

‘He maintains that those are merely coincidences.’

‘Surely the jury won’t believe that.’

‘In my experience, juries can believe all sorts of strange things. And remember, he doesn’t need to convince all twelve of them. Just three would be enough to ensure he’s not convicted.’

Now he really had me worried.

38

Joseph Bradbury took the stand at the start of the third week of the trial, as the defence opened their case.

I watched as one of the security guards used his key to unlock the door from the dock to the courtroom proper, and as he then escorted Joe across the floor of the court to the witness box, sitting down right beside him. Meanwhile, the second security officer also took up station, standing four-square in front of the exit double doors out to the concourse.

They were clearly taking no chances that their prisoner might escape.

For the second time I listened as Joseph Bradbury swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and, for the second time, I didn’t believe a word of it.

The defence barrister was quickly on his feet and there was no building up to the murder indictment for him, he went straight into it from the off.

‘Why did you go to see your sister on that fateful Wednesday morning?’ he asked Joe.

‘Because she called me on the previous evening and asked me to go and see her. Our mother had just been diagnosed with cancer and she wanted to discuss her treatment.’

I knew better than to repeat my shout of ‘liar’, as I had done in the Coroner’s Court. So I just sat on my hands and ground my teeth in frustration.

‘But why could you not discuss it with her over the telephone?’ asked the eel.

‘Amelia was quite emotional when she called me and she said she didn’t want to discuss matters over the phone. Hence, she specifically asked me to go over and see her the following morning.’

‘But not at her house?’

‘No,’ Joe said. ‘She wanted me to go to her house but recent relations between Amelia’s husband and me have not been as good as I would have liked, so I suggested we meet elsewhere so that her husband wouldn’t be around to be rude to me, as he always is.’

He turned and looked towards me with his usual pretentious sneer.

It was as much as I could do not to jump to my feet and shout out that it was he who was always rude to me, rather than vice versa. In actual fact, I did my utmost to have no communication with him whatsoever, in order to not inflame the situation. I refused to answer his calls and I certainly did not reply to his ranting, vile emails. Not that that had stopped him sending them. Only him being on remand in Bullingdon Prison had done that.

I pressed my lips together tightly, and gripped the sides of my seat hard to keep myself from standing up.

‘So where did you arrange to meet your sister?’ asked the eel.

‘She said that if I wouldn’t come to her house then we should meet in a pub car park in Wroxton. The Hare and Hounds pub. It’s closed now but we both knew where it was because we had met there before. It’s only three miles from where she lived’

‘Why not meet at your mother’s house?’

‘I suggested that but Amelia was insistent that we couldn’t speak about mum’s future when she was there listening, so we finally agreed on the pub.’

‘And at what time was this meeting due to take place?’

‘Nine o’clock in the morning. I was there a few minutes early so I waited but Amelia didn’t come. In all, I waited there for about an hour. I tried calling her in case she had forgotten but there was no mobile phone signal at that point in Wroxton, so, in the end, I did drive to her house. I rang the front-door bell but there was no answer and it was locked, so I went round the back. It was then that I saw Amelia through the kitchen window. She was lying face down on the kitchen floor.’

His voice trembled. He always had been a good actor.

‘The back door was also locked so I broke in by kicking the lock off. I went straight to Amelia and tried to remove the dog lead wrapped around her neck. Her skin was so cold and her lips were blue. I was quite certain she was dead. I’ve never felt so helpless.’

This time he made out that he was actually crying, covering his face with his hands and blowing his nose loudly into a tissue.

God, it made me so angry.

I knew what real tears were like. I’d wept buckets of them.

‘Then what did you do?’ asked the eel.

‘I immediately called the police and waited for them to arrive.’

The eel shuffled his papers.

‘Now let us move on to the supposed theft,’ he said. ‘Do you admit that you received a personal cheque for one hundred thousand pounds from Mr Newbould in payment for fixtures and fittings, and for some pieces of furniture left at your late mother’s property in Weybridge, which Mr Newbould was purchasing at the time?’

‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘That’s right.’

‘Was your mother aware of this payment to you?’

‘Of course she was. It was her property that I was selling. She was fully aware of the fact and she agreed that I should keep the money in recognition of the work I had done in selling the house for her.’

‘But we have heard from the detective in this case, and also from your late mother’s solicitor, that she told them both shortly before her untimely death from cancer that she was convinced that you had stolen the money from her. How do you explain that?’

‘Convinced is the right word,’ Joe said. ‘My mother was a frail old lady who was often confused and forgetful, whatever her doctor might say. Just prior to her death, she was convinced by my brother-in-law, William Gordon-Russell, that, among other things, I had stolen this money from her when the reality could not have been more different. She had given it to me as a gift. I remember her clearly saying so to me at the time of her house sale. The fact that, all these years later, she couldn’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If it was stolen, would I have been so stupid as to pay the cheque straight into my own bank account for all to see? There simply was no theft. No theft, that is, other than that of half my mother’s estate by him.’

He pointed straight at me and I could see the members of the jury looking across the courtroom to where I was sitting.

He sounded so damn convincing and believable, when I was so sure that what he was saying was completely untrue. But neither Mary nor Amelia were here to refute his lies.

Could the jury not see through this travesty?

I found it impossible to read their thoughts.

Only time would tell.

‘And finally,’ said the eel. ‘Let us move on to the attempted murder charge. Please tell the court what you were doing on that particular Wednesday.’

‘I was at work in the morning, in Ealing, west London. I was carrying out my duties as a High Court enforcement officer, executing a writ of repossession on a property where the tenants were in arrears with their rent.’

‘And did you have a company vehicle for this purpose?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Joe said. ‘A long-wheelbase white-painted Ford Transit van.’

‘And how about in the afternoon?’

‘The repossession took a lot less time than I had expected. The tenants had already packed up their stuff before I arrived, and it was simply a matter of seeing them out of the property and then changing the locks. An hour’s work at most. So I found myself with time on my hands. I regret it now, but I decided to go to Banbury. I had been bereft over the loss of my sister and I somehow felt that being close to where she had died would give me some sort of comfort.’

‘And did it?’ asked the eel.

‘It did at the time but it has caused me all sorts of trouble since.’

‘The prosecution have claimed that you were there in order, on purpose, to crash into a car driven by your brother-in-law. Is that right?’

‘No, of course not. I’ve never crashed into anything on purpose and certainly not near Banbury. That would have been really stupid. If, as they say, the crash was so severe, how come the van wasn’t so badly damaged that it was impossible to drive? How would I have then got back to London?’

‘So where did you have the crash?’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing, really. I wasn’t concentrating and I ran into a concrete post near the company vehicle depot in Harrow. I know I told the staff in the office that someone else had driven into the van, but that was so I wouldn’t get the blame. Things like that happen all the time. That’s also why I took the van straight to the body shop.’

He looked shamefaced at the jury and some of them even nodded back at him in understanding.

How could they believe such a load of claptrap?

‘So let me just confirm what you’re saying to us, Mr Bradbury,’ said the eel. ‘You say there was no theft because the money was a gift from your mother to you; you say that you did not crash into any other cars; and you say that your sister was already dead when you arrived at her home. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Joe said, smiling. ‘Totally correct on all three counts.’

He confidently removed his spectacles and polished the lenses with a handkerchief.

‘No more questions,’ said the eel, and he sat down.

The prosecution barrister stood up eagerly, but the judge quickly intervened.

‘I think we’ll take a short break there,’ he said. ‘Before the cross-examination. To allow the jury to stretch their legs.’ He looked at the clock situated on the wall above the exit doors. ‘We will reconvene in twenty minutes.’

‘All rise!’

‘He’s going to get off, isn’t he?’ I said to DS Dowdeswell over a cup of coffee. ‘I could see the jury believing every damn lie he uttered.’

‘It always looks bad just after the defence have asked their questions of the defendant. Let’s wait until after our man has had a go at him. I’m sure he has some tricks up his sleeve to catch Bradbury out.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘At the moment I’d put all my money on an acquittal.’

39

‘How would you describe your relationship with Amelia Jane Gordon-Russell?’

The prosecuting counsel was opening his cross-examination.

‘We loved each other,’ Joe said. ‘As a brother and a sister.’

‘I suggest to you that you did no such thing. When did you last talk to your sister prior to the supposed telephone call the night before she died?’

‘The call was real, I tell you,’ Joe said. ‘She called me.’

‘But when did you speak to her prior to that night?’

‘I can’t recall for sure.’

‘Would you say that you were in regular communication?’

‘Quite regular, yes. I sent her emails.’

‘Yes,’ said the prosecutor dryly. ‘Your emails. We will come to those.’

Joe suddenly looked rather worried. As well he might.

‘But when did you last actually speak to your sister prior to the call you say she made to you on that Tuesday evening?’

‘I’ve already told you. I can’t remember the exact date.’

‘Is that not because your sister hadn’t spoken to you for nearly two years prior to her death? Indeed, did she not refuse to speak to you after you had been so nasty to her and her husband?’

Joe said nothing.

‘Do you recall receiving an email from your sister in the January, twenty-one months before she died?’

‘No, I don’t,’ replied Joe.

‘Then I’ll read it out to you, to remind you,’ said the prosecutor. He lifted a piece of paper. ‘Joseph, I hate you, I hate you. You are causing so much hurt and pain. I never want to see you again, ever. I have blocked your calls and I do not want to receive any more of your horrid emails. Leave us alone.’ He waited in silence for a few moments before looking up at the witness. ‘Would you say that was the sort of email you might expect to be sent between two people who love each other as a brother and a sister?’

‘All siblings have their minor problems occasionally.’

‘But this is not a minor problem, is it, Mr Bradbury? Let me read your reply to that email, a reply sent by you in spite of being asked not to.’ He picked up another piece of paper. ‘This was found in Amelia Gordon-Russell’s inbox on her computer. It arrived the day after your sister sent the previous one to you. Amelia, it is not me that is causing so much hurt and pain, it is you and your vile husband. He is like a cancer in our family and the sooner you get rid of him, the better. He has destroyed his own family and he is now trying to destroy ours too. He is a hateful, hateful man who is trying to ruin my relationship with my mother. I wish he were dead. The whole family hate him and I have the evidence to prove it. He is a fraud and a liar and I am building a dossier against him.’

He laid the piece of paper back down on the table.

‘Not much brotherly love shown there, wouldn’t you say, Mr Bradbury?’

Joe said nothing and the prosecutor waited patiently, looking at him.

‘The witness will answer the question,’ interjected the judge.

‘No,’ Joe said in a whisper.

‘Speak up,’ commanded the judge. ‘The recording equipment won’t catch what is said if you whisper.’

‘No,’ Joe said again, louder.

‘And that is not the only email you have sent to your sister since that time, is it, Mr Bradbury?’

‘No,’ Joe said again.

‘No, indeed,’ replied the prosecutor. ‘In fact, since then you have sent no fewer than twenty-six equally unpleasant emails to either your sister or your brother-in-law, in spite of receiving not a single reply back from either of them. Would you call that harassment, Mr Bradbury?’

Joe said nothing and, this time, the judge let it go.

But the prosecutor wasn’t finished with the emails just yet. ‘The jury will be given printed copies of all these emails as an evidence bundle.’ He held up a wad of papers. ‘It is not contested by the defence that these emails were sent by you to your sister and brother-in-law from your personal computer. Isn’t that right, Mr Bradbury?’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

‘Let me remind you of just one more of them. You sent the following to your sister just five days before she died.’ He picked up one of the pieces of paper from the wad and read from it. ‘I hear from Mum that you have been bullying her again, telling her that I am wicked and evil. Her words not mine. I am hugely disappointed that you should choose to target a frail old lady with such abusive comments about her own son, shouting at her and threatening her. You are a stupid, stupid woman. Are you aware how much of a relief it is to everyone else that you can’t have children, so that you can’t pass on your crazy genes to the next generation? I will not tolerate behaviour like this towards our mother and will take severe action against you if it continues.’ The prosecutor paused. ‘What sort of severe action would that be, Mr Bradbury?’

‘It was just a turn of phrase,’ he mumbled.

The prosecutor left it hanging, and the jury looked suitably horrified by what they’d just heard. After a fitting pause, the prosecutor went on.

‘Let us now turn to why you drove a Ford Transit van belonging to your High Court enforcement firm all the way from Ealing in west London to Banbury and back, a distance of some seventy miles each way. You have told the jury that you undertook the journey solely because you believed that being close to where your sister died might give you some comfort in your grief. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ Joe said.

‘But when you were first questioned by the police, did you not deny ever having been in Banbury on that day, and then, when confronted with the automatic number plate recognition evidence that showed the van on the M40, did you not then deny being the driver? Were you lying to the police then, Mr Bradbury, or are you lying to us now?’

‘I was lying to the police then,’ Joe said at little more than a mumble.

‘And why would that be?’ the prosecutor asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I panicked.’

‘Now let us turn to this concrete post that you claim to have hit. Where is this post exactly? Does it also have white paint on it from the Transit van?’

‘I don’t know of its exact location. I can’t remember.’

‘I suggest, Mr Bradbury, that you can’t remember because the post doesn’t exist. I further suggest that the white paint found on the back of Mr Gordon-Russell’s car was from the white van you drove to Banbury. And you went there with the express intention of murdering Mr Gordon-Russell and that is exactly what you attempted to do by crashing the van into his car.’

‘No,’ Joe said. ‘I can’t think why you would say that.’

‘Maybe because it’s true.’

The prosecutor picked up yet more papers.

‘Finally, let us turn to this supposed telephone call of the Tuesday evening. I have here the phone records of both Mrs Gordon-Russell and yourself, for your landlines and mobile phones. In them, there is no indication of any call from her to you on that evening, from any of her numbers to any of yours. How do you account for that, Mr Bradbury?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Joe. ‘She definitely made the call. Perhaps she used a public call box.’

‘If so, then that too would be shown on the documentation. But it isn’t. The records show that only one call was received by you on that evening, at five past eight, from your mother.’

‘Then the records must be wrong. I’m telling you, Amelia called me.’

‘I suggest,’ said the prosecutor, ‘that no such call was ever made. That you made it up to justify your actions in going to your sister’s house on that Wednesday morning, and there you strangled her as the severe action that you had previously threatened her with.’

‘No,’ Joe shouted at him in desperation. ‘That’s not true. I didn’t kill her.’

I looked at the jury and wondered how many of them were believing him now.

And then, if things weren’t bad enough already for Joe, they were about to get a great deal worse.

The second witness for the defence was Rachael Bradbury, Joe’s wife.

In the United Kingdom, as in the United States, other than in very limited circumstances of domestic or child abuse, a wife cannot be compelled to give evidence in court against her husband, nor a husband against his wife.

This is known as spousal privilege and stems from the English common law position that a husband and wife are considered, by ‘legal fiction’, to be one person.

Every individual has the right in law not to incriminate themselves through their testimony, a right originally established by common law in England, and by the fifth amendment to the constitution in the United States, which states that ‘no person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself’. Hence the term ‘taking the fifth’ as the excuse for a witness not to answer a question in a US court.

It is also the basis for the ‘right to remain silent’ on arrest and in police questioning.

As ‘one person’, therefore, a wife also has the right to remain silent and cannot be forced to testify against her husband.

But she could do so voluntarily.

Or by mistake.

Rachael had been called by the defence to further the claim by Joe that he had received a telephone call from Amelia on the night before she died.

Having given her testimony in answer to questions by the eel, she was then open to cross-examination.

‘Hello, Mrs Bradbury,’ said the prosecutor, smiling at her. ‘It must be very difficult for you to come to this court and give evidence when your husband is sitting in the dock.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she replied, glancing across at Joe. ‘Very difficult indeed.’

‘Now, tell me,’ went on the prosecutor, ‘did you personally speak with Mrs Gordon-Russell on the telephone during the evening in question?’

‘She spoke to my husband.’

‘But not to you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I could hear their conversation.’

‘All of the conversation?’ asked the prosecutor. ‘Or just your husband’s side?’

‘Well, just his side, I suppose, but I could hear a voice from the other end of the phone even if I couldn’t hear the exact words.’

‘Then I suggest that your evidence is of no value to the court. For all you know, your husband could have been talking to the speaking clock. Isn’t that right, Mrs Bradbury?’

‘The speaking clock doesn’t call us,’ she said. ‘I know he was talking to his sister.’ There was a touch of desperation in her voice, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as the jury, and they all heard it.

And the prosecuting barrister wasn’t finished with her, not by a long way.

‘Now, Mrs Bradbury,’ he said. ‘Were you aware at the time that your husband received a hundred thousand pounds from the sale of some of your mother-in-law’s belongings?’

‘Yes, of course,’ replied Rachael. ‘It was a gift from his mother. I was there when she gave it to Joe.’

‘And what did you do with the money?’

She seemed somewhat surprised by the question, but I had briefed the barrister and we both thought it was a question worth asking.

‘Some of it went to paying off debts, and some on a new car.’

‘A black Nissan?’

‘Yes.’

‘So were you heavily in debt before he received the hundred thousand?’

‘Quite heavily,’ she said. Then she smiled. ‘You know what it’s like with three small kids. They can be a considerable draw on the family finances.’

Perhaps she said it as a way of trying to garner a little sympathy from the jury. But she didn’t get it.

The prosecutor pounced. ‘Did your mother-in-law not help you out with some of your children’s expenses, as their grandmother?’

‘You’ve got to be joking. She was tighter than a duck’s arse when it came to money.’ She emitted a hollow laugh.

There was a long pause in which her laughter died away. And no one else joined in.

‘And yet,’ said the prosecutor gleefully, ‘you would have us believe that she simply gave your husband a hundred thousand pounds. I suggest to you that the hundred thousand was stolen by your husband because of the financial difficulties in which you found yourself as a couple. It was just too good an opportunity not to take what you felt was rightly yours, don’t you agree, Mrs Bradbury?’

Just as at the funeral, Rachael stupidly couldn’t resist having a dig at her late mother-in-law.

‘She wouldn’t miss it,’ she said. ‘She had millions.’

There was a groan from the dock that the whole court could hear, in spite of the glass panels. Rachael looked over to her husband with shock and surprise on her face, but the damage had been done, and everyone knew it — everyone, that was, except her. But she soon worked it out.

‘No further questions,’ said the prosecutor, and he sat down.

Rachael, now in floods of tears, was dismissed.

How the fortunes in a criminal trial could ebb and flow like the tide.

Such was the power of cross-examination.

Just a few hours ago, I’d have staked my house on an acquittal, but now, and especially after Rachael’s debacle, I was more confident of a conviction.

40

The last two days of the trial proper were taken up with closing arguments by the barristers, legal submissions and the summing-up by the judge.

First up was the prosecutor, still on a roll after his cross-examination of the defendant and his wife.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, facing them. ‘I have laid before you a compelling banquet of evidence in this case, evidence that must lead you to the inevitable conclusion that the defendant, Mr Joseph Bradbury, is guilty of all three of the indictments he faces: theft, attempted murder and murder itself — the murder, no less, of his own sister, his own flesh and blood.’

He was like an actor on stage, giving everything to his performance.

He outlined the prosecution evidence, reminding the jury of what his witnesses had said about the hundred thousand pounds, the ANPR results of the Ford Transit van on the road to Banbury, the white paint found on the back of the Fiat 500, the CCTV footage of the black Nissan at the petrol station early on the morning of the murder, the defendant’s DNA on the neck of the victim and on the murder weapon, and the lack of any record of a supposed telephone call made by the victim to the defendant on the night before.

He also reminded them of the monetary gain that Joe had stood to receive as a result of Amelia predeceasing her mother, and of his financial plight that Rachael had so clearly signalled in her testimony.

Finally, he turned to Joe’s emails, reading out some of his most offensive comments, many of which contained veiled, and not so veiled, threats against both Amelia and me.

‘I am sure that you are all fair-minded individuals and you may say that much of the evidence in this case is circumstantial, and you would be right. But circumstantial evidence is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece on its own may seem fairly meaningless but, when all of them are fitted together, they build up a picture of guilt that should be clear for you all to see.’

And we had to hope that the defence couldn’t knock enough pieces out of the jigsaw puzzle such that the picture became impossible to discern.

‘My learned friend, the counsel for the defence, will try and tell you that there is uncertainty in this case, that there is no “smoking gun” that would prove, beyond any shadow of doubt whatsoever, that the defendant is guilty. But I say to you, that there is ample evidence to demonstrate the defendant’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. This is not a fantasy movie where special effects can defy the laws of nature and the most improbable and unlikely exploits can seem commonplace. This is the real world and the heinous crime of murder has been committed, depriving Amelia Gordon-Russell of the most precious commodity that each of us possess, life itself. We have shown that Mr Bradbury had both the opportunity and the motive, as well as the mental attitude to kill and to attempt to kill, and his DNA was found all over the murder scene. It is now your duty, as the jury in this case, to ensure that the perpetrator of these appalling offences, that is the defendant in the dock, is justly condemned and punished for his actions by finding him guilty.’

He sat down. Those would be the prosecution’s last words in the case. He had done all he could.

The eel stood up and straightened his gown and wig.

‘Members of the jury,’ he said. ‘There has been much argument and counter-argument in this case but one fact stands out above all others: there is no direct evidence to prove that Mr Joseph Bradbury has committed any of these offences, and you must, therefore, return verdicts of not guilty.’

He took a drink of water from his glass to give time for that sentence to be absorbed by the jury.

‘Mr Bradbury does not need to prove his innocence, that is presumed by the law until shown otherwise. Instead, it is for the prosecution to prove to you that he is guilty, something that I contend they have singularly failed to do.’

Another sip of water.

‘The term beyond reasonable doubt is one that my learned friend has raised with you. “What is beyond reasonable doubt?” I hear you ask. So I will tell you. It is the burden and standard of proof that you must apply in this case. In order to convict you have to be sure, not just almost sure, that the defendant has performed the actions of which he is accused. If you only think that he might have done them, or even that he probably did them, then that is not good enough and you must acquit. In order to convict, you must be sure he did them.’

The eel is good, I thought.

No reasonable doubt about that.

‘And I put it to you, members of the jury, that you cannot be sure of what happened in that kitchen on that fateful morning, you cannot be sure that Mrs Gordon-Russell wasn’t already dead by the time the defendant arrived at her house, you cannot be sure that the van driven by the defendant did collide with a car driven by Mr Gordon-Russell, and you cannot be sure that Mrs Mary Bradbury didn’t give a hundred thousand pounds to her only son. And, because you cannot be sure of any of these things, it is your solemn duty to return three verdicts of not guilty.’

He sat down. His time was up too.

I was totally confused. And if I was, then how were the jury faring? They were the ones that now had to make the decisions and I had absolutely no idea of what was going on in their minds.

I was thinking that an acquittal was back to being odds-on favourite.

Next it was the judge’s turn.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, turning towards them. ‘You and I have separate functions in this trial. My job is twofold. Firstly, to rule on all aspects of the law to ensure a fair hearing for the defendant, and secondly, to sum up the evidence and give you direction in the law to assist you in reaching your verdict. Your function, however, is to determine the facts in the case. The facts are your domain, and solely yours.’

He paused and looked at each of them in turn.

‘You have heard the closing speeches of the prosecution and the defence counsels but those were just that, speeches. They are not evidence in this case. The evidence is what you have heard from the witness box, or read in the uncontested evidence bundle provided to you by the prosecution. You have the responsibility of deciding upon the evidence that has been brought before you, and only upon that evidence, whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of the offences of which he has been accused.’

He paused again.

‘Now that all the evidence has been heard, and the prosecution and defence counsels have addressed their arguments to you as to the conflicting conclusions they would each ask you to draw from that evidence, I will give you directions upon the law, which you are required to apply.

‘The prosecution have the burden of proving the guilt of the defendant. That burden never shifts. The defence at no stage in this case have to prove anything whatsoever to you. Before you can convict the defendant on any of the counts, the prosecution have to satisfy you so that you are sure that he is guilty of that count. If you are sure, you convict him. If you are not, you acquit him. That is all there is to it.

‘Let me deal with the three indictments in turn. First, on the matter of the theft, there is no dispute that the defendant did receive a payment of one hundred thousand pounds from Mr Newbould. The only matter in contention is whether that payment was known to Mrs Mary Bradbury and, furthermore, if she had then sanctioned it as a gift to her son. If you think that the defendant and his wife may be telling the truth when they say that the hundred thousand was a gift, then you must find him not guilty. If, on the other hand, you believe the evidence given concerning Mrs Mary Bradbury’s belief that it was stolen, and also that you are sure the defendant knowingly kept the payment for himself even though he was fully aware that he was not entitled to it, then you must find him guilty of theft.’

The judge took a drink of water.

‘Secondly, let me turn to the attempted murder charge. There is agreement between the prosecution and defence concerning the fact that the defendant drove a white Ford Transit van from London to Banbury. Even though he initially denied the fact to the police, and you may apply whatever weight to that denial as you may decide, he now admits that he was the driver of the van and he was in the vicinity of the crash in which Mr Gordon-Russell was seriously injured. You don’t have to worry about whether that bit is true. It is. What is in dispute is whether he was the cause of the crash. If you think that the defendant’s account may be true and that he did not crash into the car, and that he damaged the van later by striking a concrete post in Harrow, then you should find him not guilty.’

There was a hefty degree of scepticism in his tone.

‘However, if you believe the prosecution’s claim that he was responsible for the crash and that the white paint found on the rear of Mr Gordon-Russell’s car was from the van that the defendant was driving, and you are sure, not only that the defendant did purposely crash into the car, but also that he did so in an attempt, not just to injure Mr Gordon-Russell but to kill him, then you should find him guilty of attempted murder.

‘Now let us turn to the murder itself. The prosecution have told you that the defendant had both the opportunity and the motive to have carried out this murder. It has been established by a forensic expert that the defendant’s DNA was present on the victim’s neck and on the dog lead used to strangle her. This is not contested by the defence. What is in contention is whether Mrs Gordon-Russell was alive or dead when the defendant arrived at her house. If you think that the defendant may be telling the truth that she was already dead when he arrived and that someone else was responsible, then you should find him not guilty. If, however, you believe that the defendant is lying and you are sure that he did, in fact, break in and strangle Mrs Gordon-Russell, then you should find him guilty of murder.

‘Now, members of the jury,’ went on the judge, ‘you will retire to consider your verdicts. You should elect a foreman from your number who will act as a conduit for your discussion and your spokesperson, but be aware that each of you has an equal voice and your deliberations should be as a complete jury of twelve. Do not split up into smaller groups, or discuss matters when some of you are not present. By a process of discussion of the evidence, the group of twelve of you must decide, after applying the law as I have directed you, whether your verdict should be guilty or not guilty on each count, and it should be the verdict of you all. You may have heard of something called a majority verdict, but that does not apply in this case. If, at some time in the future, it does become relevant, then I will give you the necessary direction in the law. Until that time, I require a unanimous decision.’

The usher then led the jury out of the court.

I watched them go, trying but failing to read what was going on in their minds. One or two of them glanced across at Joe sitting in the dock behind the glass but, even then, I found it impossible to discern if they were pro or anti.

Now it was up to them.

What had Douglas said? In my experience, juries are always a bit of a lottery.

My own profession was all about measuring chance and calculating probability, but still I had little or no idea what would happen.

Would the jury believe Joe or not? He had certainly been resolute and unwavering about finding Amelia already dead. And I had to admit he’d been fairly convincing on that point, even if his hitting-the-concrete-post-with-the-van story had been far more suspect.

All we could do was wait for the jury to decide.

Now where was my money?

41

And wait we did. For hours. No ‘seventeen or twenty-seven minutes of deliberation’ in this murder trial.

‘Is it a good sign or a bad one?’ I asked DS Dowdeswell.

‘You never can tell,’ he replied unhelpfully. ‘Juries are a law unto themselves. But if they’re spending the time reading through all those nasty emails, it might be a good one.’

We waited.

And then we waited some more.

‘I wonder what they’re saying in there,’ I said absentmindedly.

‘We will never know,’ said the detective. ‘Unlike in the United States where jurors are interviewed on television after high-profile cases, and some of them even write books about their jury deliberations, here they are not allowed to speak about it — not then, not ever.’

We went on waiting.

At the end of the day the judge had the jury brought back into court.

‘Members of the jury,’ he said. ‘I am going to send you home now for the night. You will reconvene here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to continue your deliberations. Please take note, you must not discuss the case with anyone else, not anyone else at all, and that includes your family. Nor are you at liberty to discuss it between yourselves unless all twelve of you are together in the jury room. And, as I have told you before, you must not seek to discover any details of this case in the newspapers, on the television or radio, or via the internet or social media. To do any of those things would be to hold this court in contempt and may make you subject to imprisonment.’

And, with that dire warning still ringing in their ears, the twelve trooped out of the court.

As on most nights during the trial, I went home by taxi to the Old Forge.

This waiting and not knowing was interminable torture but, if it was bad for me, it must be so much worse for Joe. I almost felt sorry for him, but only almost. He had brought all of this on himself. I just hoped that the jury could see through his lies and protestations.

I kicked my heels around the house all evening and wondered if I would still be living here a year from now. My love for the place had evaporated on that October morning, and it had never returned.

Maybe I’d move back to London.

A new home? A new job? A new life?

Same old heartache.

I tried to watch some television but I was too nervous to concentrate. I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. By the early hours, when I finally dozed off, I had convinced myself that the jury would find him innocent.

What would I do then?

By lunchtime of the second day of jury deliberation, I was almost climbing the walls with tension, fear and frustration, at least I would have been if my legs had been working correctly. As it was, I couldn’t even pace up and down properly to rid myself of the nervous energy.

Why was the jury taking so long? What were they doing in there?

Midway through the afternoon, the judge called them back into court to ask how things were going and whether it was likely that they would be able to reach a decision on which they were all agreed.

The foreman stood up. He was the man who had been in shorts and flip-flops for much of the trial but now was wearing a sober shirt and trousers, maybe in deference to his position. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think we may be able to reach verdicts if given a little more time.’

So the judge sent them back to the jury room.

And his intervention must have galvanised their thinking because, less than an hour later, word came through that the jury were ready with their verdicts.

I wasn’t.

My heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and, as I took my seat in the court, I could hardly breathe.

Everyone took their allotted places and, when all were ready, the jury were brought in.

Douglas had told me that he reckoned he could always tell if the jury were going to give a ‘not guilty’ verdict. ‘They will look at the defendant,’ he’d said. ‘If it’s guilty they tend to keep their eyes down.’

But I couldn’t tell however hard I tried by watching them walk in. Most of them just looked at the judge.

When they were all seated, the clerk of the court stood up and turned to them. ‘Would the foreman of the jury please stand.’

He did so.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ said the clerk. ‘Have you reached verdicts on the indictments upon which you are all agreed?

‘Yes,’ replied the foreman.

‘To my next questions,’ said the clerk, ‘only answer guilty or not guilty: on count one, theft, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

‘Not guilty.’

NOT GUILTY!

I couldn’t believe my ears. Were the jury stupid or something? Hadn’t they been listening? How could they not find him guilty based on the evidence?

I glanced briefly at Joe in the dock and he was smiling.

I felt sick.

I could hear the blood rushing in my head and my hands were shaking. Was this all going to be for nothing?

But the court clerk moved swiftly on regardless.

‘On count two, attempted murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

‘Guilty.’

I hardly heard it, such was my panic. I looked again at Joe. He wasn’t smiling now. And we weren’t finished yet.

‘On count three, murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

I held my breath and my heart pounded even more. I really had no idea which way it would go.

The foreman stood bolt upright facing the judge.

‘Guilty.’

It felt to me that he had said it in slow motion, the word seemingly stretched over several seconds.

I started breathing again, letting out a small sigh of satisfaction.

But the reaction from the dock was far more dramatic.

Joe stood up and banged on the glass with his hands while shouting at the jury. ‘No. No. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. I never killed her. It was him.’ He pointed at me. ‘He killed her. It wasn’t me. He did it.’

The two security guards in the dock moved quickly to either side of Joe and they manhandled him back into his seat, where he sat in a heap.

He started crying.

The judge just watched and waited for calm to be restored. Contrary to popular belief, judges in British courts don’t have gavels to bang as they do in the United States.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said finally, facing them. ‘Thank you for your diligence in this trial and for doing your duty as citizens. You are hereby discharged.’

Then he turned to the body of the court.

‘This case is now adjourned until tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock, when sentence will be passed.’

After all that waiting, the verdicts had been over so quickly.

It felt surreal.

‘All rise,’ shouted the usher and we all did, except for Joe, who remained seated with his head down. He was then led away by the security guards, out through the door at the back of the dock.

I watched him being taken away with a mixed bag of emotions: disbelief that he had been found not guilty of the theft; pleasure that he’d at least been convicted of murder and attempted murder; anger at what he’d done to Amelia; plus a huge amount of sorrow.

And the sorrow won.

How had we come to this?

Joe and I had once been good friends, so much so that I had nearly asked him to be my best man at my wedding. And Amelia and I had both been so pleased when his and Rachael’s girls had been born, revelling in being an uncle and aunt, even if we couldn’t be parents ourselves.

And, now, all of that was gone for ever.

Amelia was dead and Joe was facing a life term in prison.

After the apparent disaster of her testimony, Rachael hadn’t returned to the court and she hadn’t been present for the verdict. But her life, too, had been destroyed. As had her children’s. They would now have no father around during their formative years, with only infrequent visits to see him in prison to look forward to.

The whole situation was a complete tragedy for all of us.

There was nothing to celebrate.

Not that that stopped DS Dowdeswell from doing so.

‘What a great result,’ he said to me, all smiles, slapping me on the back outside the court.

‘I can’t believe he was acquitted of the theft.’

‘The jury may have thought the money was a gift,’ said the DS, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘But don’t worry about that. Bradbury was convicted of the other two, and they were the big ones. You must be so pleased.’

How could I tell him that I wasn’t?

‘I suppose I’m happy it’s finally over,’ I said.

But was I?

The build-up and then the trial itself had given me a purpose in life. Now, with the delivery of the jury’s verdicts, it had suddenly finished, and in spite of mostly getting the result I wanted, I was already feeling a sense of loss.

‘I expect you’ll be reading your Victim Personal Statement to the court in the morning prior to sentencing,’ said the detective.

I shook my head. ‘I haven’t written one.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘What good would it do?’

‘You could explain to the judge how much the attempted murder has caused you such physical pain and hardship, and also how your wife’s murder has affected your life and made it so much worse.’

It had certainly done that.

‘He’ll get a life sentence anyway,’ I said. ‘All murderers do.’

‘But the judge also has to decide the minimum term. Your statement might make a difference to the length of that.’

Did I really want that responsibility?

‘There’s still time,’ said the DS enthusiastically. ‘You can do it tonight.’

‘I suppose I could,’ I replied, but without his eagerness.

‘Great. I’ll make sure the CPS know it’s coming.’

My cheerful taxi driver dropped me outside the Old Forge.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ he said.

‘Yes, please,’ I replied. ‘But it will be the last day.’

I wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or not. For him, the trial had been a nice little earner, with guaranteed journeys to and from Oxford.

I paid his fare and went into the house. As always, it was cold and quiet, in spite of the warmth of the day.

Perhaps I should have been elated. At long last, Joe was going to get his just deserts. But it did nothing for me. The torment of loneliness continued.

When alone, I had taken to talking to Amelia.

I knew it was irrational but, nevertheless, I did it, imagining what she might have said in reply. It helped.

‘The jury found Joe guilty of your murder,’ I said out loud in the kitchen. ‘He’s going to prison for a very long time.’

I think she would have been pleased, certainly more pleased than I.

Over the past three or four years, Amelia had grown to hate her brother with a passion.

Any inter-sibling love that had once existed had been totally overridden by the pain and mental suffering he had caused to her. She had been one for whom forgiveness was something other people did, especially with respect to her brother.

‘One day I’m going to explode,’ she would often say. ‘You watch, I’ll wipe the floor with the bastard.’

I had tried my best to keep her calm, not least because anger was a serious precursor to her becoming depressed.

It had been I who had insisted that she have nothing to do with Joe, and I would plead with her not to read his emails. But I know she did, and they stoked her fury. I encouraged her to let it all wash right over her. But she couldn’t, and every one of his insults was like a dagger in her heart.

But now the court had wiped its hard blue-carpeted floor with him and, whatever the judge might say in the morning, a long stretch in the slammer awaited.

However, no length of sentence could ever bring Amelia back.

How long did I want as sufficient punishment?

Or was it revenge that I needed?

I went and sat at my desk in the study, trying to write a Victim Personal Statement.

According to the Ministry of Justice website, my statement should explain the impact the crime had had on me.

It had totally destroyed my life, but how could I put that into words?

What I wasn’t allowed to include was any comment concerning the length of the sentence that I was hoping for. Lock him into a dank fetid dungeon and throw the key into the River Thames was not appropriate, even if I’d wanted it.

I tried four times, explaining not only the physical injuries I had suffered but also the emotional and psychological ones. I wrote about how the loss of my wife had immeasurably damaged the quality of my life on a day-to-day basis, and how any hopes for my future had been extinguished by her death.

But every time I read through what I’d typed on the computer screen, it all seemed inadequate and somehow rather trite.

For the fourth time, I deleted the words and then closed my laptop.

I had made my feelings perfectly clear during my testimony, so I decided I would now leave it up to the judge.

42

‘The prisoner will stand,’ said the clerk of the court.

Joe stood up and faced the judge.

If anyone had been hoping for a quick ‘I sentence you to life imprisonment — take him down’, after which the rest of us could go for an early lunch, they were to be disappointed.

Sentencing took the best part of an hour and a half, and Joe stood in the dock throughout.

The judge didn’t once mention the theft. Instead he merely summarised the actual convictions and applied the Sentencing Council guidelines to each, taking into account any aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

For the attempted murder, the judge took into account Joe’s forward planning and his premeditation in driving all the way from London, as well as the seriousness of my injuries and the long-term effects on my health. He did give Joe credit for his previous exemplary record and his previous good character but, nevertheless, he sentenced him to fifteen years imprisonment.

I glanced at Joe in the dock. He wobbled a bit but remained standing.

In England and Wales, there is a mandatory life sentence for murder. All the judge had to decide on was the tariff, the minimum term to be served before he was eligible for parole.

In mitigation, the judge ruled that, as Joe had not taken the murder weapon with him but had used something already to hand in the kitchen of the Old Forge, it suggested that the degree of pre-planning had been small, but that was more than offset by his breaking into the premises and killing within the victim’s own home, a place where she should have felt safe.

The guidelines stated that the minimum term of imprisonment for a person over the age of eighteen sentenced to life for murder started at fifteen years but, with the aggravating circumstances, plus the degree of violence used on a blood relative for financial gain, and bearing in mind the sentence already passed for the attempted murder, the judge set the tariff at twenty-five years.

Joe did more than wobble this time. He stepped backwards and sat down heavily.

And there was a gasp from some of the others in the court, me included.

Even without a Victim Personal Statement from me, the judge had thrown the book at him.

However, DS Dowdeswell, understandably, was delighted.

When I’d met him earlier he’d been disappointed, and not a little angry, that I had declined the opportunity to read out a victim statement prior to the sentencing, but all that had now gone. He was in jovial spirits.

I suppose, for the detectives in a murder case, the length of the sentence handed down to a guilty offender must be a measure of their success in the investigation. For some, and that obviously included DS Dowdeswell, life should mean life, but a tariff of more than twenty years was the next best thing.

But for me, the deep sorrow of yesterday returned. It was such a waste of so many lives, and especially of Amelia’s.

I declined an invitation from the police team to join them for a celebratory lunchtime drink in a local pub, and managed to avoid the media scrum outside the court by slipping away during the statement read by DCI Priestly to the waiting TV cameras.

I’d phoned my taxi driver, and he picked me up around the corner in Speedwell Street and took me home.

‘Good result?’ he asked as I settled into the back seat.

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

And, indeed, it was, in spite of my lack of enthusiasm. And I’d have been much more devastated if Joe had been acquitted of all the charges and had walked free.

But there were no winners here, just losers.

The driver took me to Hanwell in silence, for which I was grateful.

Life now had to get back to normal, at least as normal as I could make it.

Perhaps I’d give those insurance account managers a call and ask them to put me back on their persona grata lists, and maybe I’d invite a few estate agents round to value the Old Forge with a view to selling. Would a high-profile murder in the kitchen increase or decrease the price?

‘Don’t s’pose you need me any more,’ said the driver as he dropped me.

‘Not immediately,’ I said, giving him a generous tip. ‘But I’m sure I’ll use you again sometime.’

‘Always available,’ he said with a smile. ‘Give me a call.’

I stood and watched him drive away. Even though he didn’t know it, his friendly face every morning and evening had done much to keep me sane during the stress of the past weeks. And I’d miss him.

I went in to my quiet, lonely house.

Now what did I do?

I wandered aimlessly from room to room, unable to settle to anything, and ended up, as always, in the kitchen.

I looked at the broken lock.

‘I think it’s finally time I fixed you,’ I said out loud to it, and I dug out my toolbox from beneath the sink.

I had hoped it was just a matter of securing everything back into place, but the lock wasn’t just hanging off the wooden door, its metal casing was also twisted and useless, so I used a screwdriver and a pair of pliers to remove it completely.

I tried to straighten out the casing but without success and, if anything, I made it worse. I decided that I’d need a replacement lock, which was a bit of a shame as the broken one was old and in keeping with the age of the house.

Maybe I’d be able to match it with a modern reproduction. No time like the present, I thought, and I knew exactly where to go to find one.

There have been markets in Banbury since Anglo-Saxon times and one was still held in the centre of the town every Thursday and Saturday.

One of the regular stalls was run by a man with whom Amelia and I had become quite friendly over the years, since we’d moved into the Old Forge. He dealt in specialist hardware, especially little bits and bobs that you couldn’t get anywhere else. And much of his stuff was aimed at people like us, owners of listed buildings, for whom English Heritage laid down strict regulations concerning what we could and couldn’t use in repairs on our houses.

If anyone had a replacement lock of the right sort, it would be him.

Today was a Thursday and, if I asked him now, he might be able to delve into his huge stock at home to get the right part by Saturday. Otherwise I’d have to wait a whole week.

I drove my 174 m.p.h. supercharged Jaguar sports car into Banbury at a very sedate pace, and not just because I was worried about picking up another three points on my licence, something which would have triggered a ban. The collision with the tree and my resulting injuries had undeniably made me far more wary.

I parked as close as I could and shuffled down to the market square.

‘Hi, Bill,’ said my friend, warmly shaking my hand. ‘Haven’t seen you for a very long while.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been rather busy.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear about your lovely wife,’ he said. ‘Dreadful thing. I was so shocked, as I’d been talking to her only a few days before she died. She dropped by for a chat and to buy something.’

He spent several minutes talking about Amelia’s last visit to his stall, not that it made me feel any better. Would I ever get used to her not being around? Eventually, I showed him the broken lock.

‘I can’t match it exactly,’ he said. ‘But I think I can get pretty close. Come again on Saturday and I’ll see what I can find in the meantime.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

As I drove home, I mulled over what the market stallholder had told me and, instead of immediately going in through my own front door, I went across the road to the Fadeleys’ place and rang their bell.

Nancy answered.

‘Hello, Bill,’ she said. ‘Dave and I have been thinking of you a lot these last few days. You must be pleased with the outcome of the trial. I heard it on the news.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘At least no one will still think that I’m responsible for Amelia’s death.’

‘Would you like to come in for a cuppa?’

We sat in her kitchen, alongside her vast array of cookbooks, and, while we were drinking the tea, I asked her a question.

After about fifteen minutes or so, I got up to go.

‘Dave will be home from London around seven,’ Nancy said. ‘Would you like to come over and join us for supper? I’m making seared scallops in a champagne cream sauce.’

It sounded delicious and a huge improvement on my usual individual ready meals, but I didn’t want company — not tonight.

And I had far more important things on my mind than eating.

I sat on the cold hard stone kitchen floor of the Old Forge and sobbed.

I had come straight home from Nancy’s house and searched for something and, to my absolute horror, I had found it almost immediately.

Not that I was pleased that I’d found it. Far from it.

It would have been infinitely better if I hadn’t.

For all her mental health problems, and whatever her brother might have claimed, Amelia hadn’t been stupid. Quite the reverse. She had been a very smart lady, very smart indeed. But she hadn’t been able to hide everything — not forever — and not from me.

I couldn’t drag my eyes away from what I’d found. It was only small and I might have never noticed it, that was if I hadn’t been expressly looking for it.

But I had been, and there it was.

Again, I felt sick.

Just like the jury, I deliberated with myself and came to the only logical conclusion from the evidence, a verdict beyond a reasonable doubt.

Amelia hadn’t been murdered at all.

She had committed suicide.

The police were very accustomed to investigating unexplained violent deaths to determine if they were really murders made to look like suicides. But now they needed to have a closer look at Amelia’s death, as I had done, and then they would likely come to the same conclusion as I had, that this had been a suicide made to look like murder.

Was she really that scheming?

Yes, she was. Especially when it came to her brother.

Furthermore, Joe hadn’t been lying after all.

Amelia had indeed called her brother on that Tuesday evening to arrange their strange rendezvous at the disused pub car park in Wroxton for the following morning, knowing that, when she failed to appear, he would eventually drive to our house and find her cold dead body. And she had done that partly to prevent me from having the trauma of finding her, but mostly in the hope and expectation that Joe would be accused of her murder.

She had killed herself at a time when she knew I had the cast-iron alibi of being at a charity dinner in Birmingham, and made it look like murder so I could still collect her life insurance money. Perhaps she hadn’t realised that, by pre-deceasing her mother, Joe would have inherited all of the estate.

But maybe she had.

Had she appreciated how important motive was to the police? Was that, indeed, part of her scheme to frame her brother from beyond the grave?

I thought she had been much better in the few months before her death, and her talk of ‘ending it all’ had seemingly faded. But it had always been there in the background and her mother’s cancer diagnosis, together with Joe’s final hate-filled email, had caused it to rear its ugly head again, only more so.

Amelia had known all about her mother’s cancer — Jim and Gladys Wilson from Weybridge had made that perfectly clear. Had she just not told me in order to prevent me from working out her plan?

I wanted so much not to believe that she had killed herself after all that expensive therapy, and after I had worked so hard to prevent it, but...

Let us consider the evidence.

Amelia was dead.

Of that there was absolutely no doubt. I’d seen her lifeless body with my own two eyes. And she had died of strangulation with our old leather dog lead round her neck — I didn’t doubt the pathologist on that one.

But the man from the market stall in Banbury had told me that Amelia had bought something from him that totally changed everything else.

‘She was after one of those self-locking buckles,’ he’d said. ‘You know the type, like those on a compression strap that you put round a sleeping bag or such when you’re trying to get it really small to fit into your rucksack. She said she wanted it for a belt.’

A belt?

What had DCI Priestly said to me in my first interview with him at Banbury Police Station?

This dog lead was the murder weapon. Mrs Gordon-Russell was found with it still tight round her neck.

Tight.

That had been the important word, but I hadn’t realised it at the time.

Then I’d been across to talk to Nancy, to ask her a single question about that Tuesday evening.

‘Yes,’ she’d agreed. ‘I did see Amelia go out in her little car shortly after we’d walked back from the pub. But she was only gone for an hour. I saw her coming back again later. She put the car away in the garage.’

Nancy was ever the inquisitive neighbour, watching all the village comings and goings.

Only gone for an hour.

Amelia might have nipped out to the shops for milk, or for bread, or for any number of other things, but I knew she hadn’t. An hour was just long enough to have driven over to her mother’s house and used the landline there to call her brother, a call the prosecutor had claimed in court was made by Mary.

And Amelia had made sure that she’d left her mobile phone at home.

Normally, she didn’t go anywhere without her phone, certainly not to the shops, not even to the loo. It had been like an extension of her own arm. The fact that records showed her phone hadn’t moved that night had made me believe that she hadn’t either.

I’d been wrong.

And the final piece in this particular circumstantial jigsaw puzzle was the thing I’d just found.

I sat on the kitchen floor and stared at it, willing it not to be there.

But it was.

A small, almost insignificant blemish in the woodwork between the frame and the door from the kitchen to the hall. A bruise in the paint about five feet from the floor, just below the top hinge. A mark the width of the dog lead.

Amelia had pinched the leather between the door and the frame to hold it tight and had then used that anchor point to jerk the ligature very tight around her own neck, and the self-locking buckle had done the rest.

As the pathologist had so rightly said, it had then taken a minute or two for Amelia to lose consciousness. Plenty of time to open the door and remove the dog lead from its fixing point before falling to the floor.

Had she dug her fingernails into her own neck in a true attempt to remove the lead because she had suddenly changed her mind, or had that been a calculated move to further the lie that she’d been murdered?

No one would ever know, and I wasn’t sure which of those thoughts gave me the most comfort.

Neither of them.

‘Oh, my darling Amelia,’ I cried out loud in pain. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’

I sobbed some more, a lot more.

I sat on my kitchen floor deep into the night, not knowing what to do next, and I spent the time thinking.

The simple answer, of course, was to call DS Dowdeswell and tell him what I’d found. Maybe that was also the right and proper thing to do.

But was it really that simple?

As far as DS Dowdeswell and his colleagues were concerned the case was over — arrest, charge, conviction and sentence. Job done and dusted. Now off to the pub to celebrate.

How had they or the pathologist not seen what was under their noses? Why had they not recognised the relevance of a self-locking buckle? Had they been so blinkered by their determination to find a culprit for their ‘murder’, first me and then Joe, that it had overridden simple common sense?

The law courts take their time over correcting any perceived mistakes. The decision of a jury to convict is not one that is overturned lightly, or quickly, by the Court of Appeal. Not that time was really an issue here. It was only the murder conviction that was in doubt, not that for attempted murder.

And would the police or the courts take any notice of me anyway? They certainly wouldn’t thank me.

And Joe was guilty of Amelia’s murder.

There was no uncertainty in my mind about that.

He may not have physically strangled her, as the jury in Oxford had believed and decided, but he’d killed her nevertheless. He’d been the one who had driven her to suicide with his merciless attacks on her state of mind over a period of three years. That final vicious email, sent just five days before she died, had simply been the last straw.

Yes, I thought, Joe deserves to be convicted of her murder.

So what should I do?

If Amelia’s soul was indeed somewhere else, lost in the ether, and she could somehow read my mind, what would she be saying now? She would be screaming in frustration that I had discovered the truth, and urging me to do nothing about it.

So would I be betraying her if I went to the police?

However, there was also the financial position to consider.

All my life I had been an insurance man, and an honest one too. Other than the occasional speeding conviction, I’d done nothing for which I felt any sense of guilt. I’d never fiddled my taxes, nor even exaggerated my expense claims.

So was I about to accept a million-pound payout for my wife’s life insurance when I knew it to be a fraud?

But no one else knew, or even suspected. The market stallholder hadn’t appreciated the significance of what he’d told me. He’d been simply making conversation. Similarly, Nancy didn’t realise why Amelia having gone out on that Tuesday evening was important.

And I hadn’t lied under oath in court. I had told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — as I’d then believed it to be.

All I had to do now was to keep quiet.

But I would always know, and one cannot unlearn something. If the human race could unlearn how to make nuclear bombs, the world would be a safer place.

However, that was not an option, and nor was this.

Around four in the morning it started to get light and I was still sitting on the kitchen floor. And still considering my options.

I was certain that Joe would appeal his conviction and sentence — anyone would in these circumstances.

Did that not mean that it was his defence team’s responsibility to produce any new evidence to indicate that his conviction was unsafe?

Was I under any obligation to assist them?

Would Joe have done the same for me if the roles had been reversed?

Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

Then I thought about Rachael and her girls. Twenty-five years is a very long time. Without the life-sentence tariff, Joe would be out on parole in under a third of that, having served half his sentence for attempted murder.

But did that really make me feel any safer?

He had tried to kill me twice, that’s if you counted the knife attack at his mother’s house, which I certainly did. Wouldn’t the long years in prison simply make him more determined to be third time lucky just as soon as he was released?

Very likely.

So wasn’t it better for me to keep him in prison for as long as possible?

Undeniably.

So what should I do?

I decided to sleep on it and went to bed.