Chapter Two
DEPRESSING AS IT WAS, THE doctors were right. Peter Diamond was still in hospital when Dana Didrikson's trial for murder opened at Bristol Crown Court. True, he'd reached a stage of convalescence when he was no longer considered enough of an emergency to justify occupying a room of his own near the sister's office; instead, he'd been moved into a six-bedded ward near the stairs that was, in effect, a poker school. The inmates were all concussion cases restored to sufficient consciousness to tell a sequence from a flush. Their slick play was a testimony to the nursing. Diamond had never been much of a card-player, so after a few hands to demonstrate goodwill he had escaped to the day room and the morning papers.
There was not much call in the RUH for the quality newspapers, according to the newsagent who supplied the wards. Diamond's information about the first day of the trial had to be drawn from the tabloids. Among the glamour shots of Gerry Snoo and banner headlines of the ANGRY GERRY'S LAST HOURS variety were meagre accounts of the court proceedings. Diamond managed to glean that Dana had pleaded not guilty and a jury of eight men and four women had been empanelled. Prosecuting counsel, Sir Job Mogg, QC – known in and out of the courts as 'Claws' – had opened the prosecution's case with his outline of the events leading up to the charge of murder. Reference was made to the accident at Pulteney Weir that had brought Dana Didrikson into the ambit of the Jack- mans. She was portrayed as a single parent – DESPERATE DANA, in one paper – struggling to bring up a son and stretched to pay his school fees. Jackman's fatherly acts of kindness to the boy in the summer months were seen as the seed of a motive – LONE MUM'S LOVE PLOT- nurtured by Dana's discovery that the Jackman marriage was in crisis. The lengths to which she had gone to obtain the Jane Austen letters as a gift for Jackman were stressed as significant, and so was the acrimonious visit of Mrs Jackman to her home – GERRY'S MAN-STEALER FURY. It was pointed out that Dana had admitted visiting the Jackman house on the morning of the murder when she'd heard that the letters were missing. Motive and opportunity were thus spelt out to the readers at least as vividly as they had been to the jury.
The papers all insisted that recent developments in forensic science would dominate the case. The Crown would be calling experts in DNA analysis – genetic fingerprinting -to prove that the body had been placed in the boot of Dana's car prior to its being recovered from Chew Valley Lake. She had sworn a statement that the car had never been driven by anyone but herself. And she had been unable to explain the disappearance of the mileage log.
Thus outlined, the prosecution case appeared formidable. So, also, did the hostility of the tabloids towards Dana. Diamond had long ago ceased to believe in unbiased reporting. But he did feel embittered by two feature articles eulogizing genetic fingerprinting as the infallible method of detection. No direct reference to the Jackman case was made, but when an editor chose to publish such a piece on the day a major trial opened, the inference was clear. One paper had a centrespread of forty mugshots of murderers and rapists trapped by the DNA test in the past two years.
The old antagonism stirred again. He'd thought he had got it out of his system when he'd quit the police. Yet here he was bridling at the assumption that science had taken over completely from the detectives.
He heard a sound behind him and saw a staff nurse and probationer approaching with a trolley.
'How is my Mr Diamond this morning?'
'Just about coming to his senses,' he answered. He'd given up trying to speak normally to this Nightingale who reduced every exchange to the level of the children's ward.
'Ready to have his dressing changed?'
'Indeed. And if staff could arrange to make it a little flatter to the head – a litde less obtrusive, shall we say? -Mr Diamond would be mightily obliged.'
'Why? Going to the pictures, are we? Or a football match?'
There was a supportive giggle from the probationer.
Diamond said, 'A murder 'What are you saying?'
'That your Mr Diamond will shortly be leaving you. Discharging himself.'
A shocked silence was followed by, 'We'll see what Sister has to say about that.'
'Fair enough. And when she's said it, Mr Diamond will thank Sister sincerely for her tender, loving care and bid her good day.'
By 11.30 he was sitting in the public gallery in Bristol Crown Court listening to Dr Jack Merlin giving evidence. The pathologist was being as cautious as ever, declining to name a cause of death. Pressed by the prosecution to comment on asphyxiation as a likely cause, he would say only that it was not inconsistent with the findings. The main thrust of the forensic screening that had followed the autopsy had been towards toxicology to determine whether drugs or alcohol had been present. The screening tests carried out by the Home Office forensic laboratory had proved negative. Under cross-examination, Merlin admitted that there was a threshold point for analytical suitability, and that samples from a corpse submerged in water for more than a week might not yield significant traces. However, he believed it was unlikely that death had been caused by a toxic substance.
Merlin was followed in the witness box by another forensic scientist, called Partington, who spoke somewhat long-windedly about fibres found in the bedroom at John Bry-don House. Peter Diamond's attention moved elsewhere.
Dana Didrikson, dressed in a dark green suit, listened from the dock, her hands clasped in her lap. She had her brown hair pinned back severely, perhaps to discourage the suggestion that she was a husband-stealer. She wore no make-up. Image was an important consideration, and her solicitor would have advised her to dress demurely. It appeared to Diamond that the months in the remand centre had marked her. She'd put on weight – not much, but enough to give her face a decidedly mumpish look that combined with her sagging posture to suggest that she was already resigned to a long prison sentence.
'The colour was distinctive?' Sir Job Mogg was saying to his witness.
'Certainly,' the scientist responded. 'A shade of dark red or maroon achieved by dyeing the garment with some home dye. We matched it with samples taken from a lambswool jumper found in the defendant's home.'
The judge – a world-weary Welshman – intervened. 'Sir Job, unquenchable as my interest is in the findings of the forensic science laboratory, I should like to know where this line of questioning is taking us.'
'My lord, the Crown is seeking to establish that the defendant was present and wearing the garment in the bedroom where the murder took place. Taken together with the hair samples and the skin tissues also found in the bedroom, and subjected to DNA analysis, the evidence is fundamental to the prosecution case.'
'The evidence of what?' persisted the judge. 'My understanding is that several weeks passed before the house was searched. We cannot safely conclude that these fibres and tissues were deposited on the day Mrs Jackman was murdered. Suppose the defendant visited the house some day after 11 September?'
'In that case, my lord, with the greatest respect, it would be highly relevant to inquire what the defendant was doing in Professor Jackman's bedroom some day after 11 September, or – one might conjecture – some night.'
There was some subdued amusement at this and defence counsel was on her feet. 'My lord, I must object.'
'Sit down,' said the judge. 'That remark was unworthy of you, Sir Job.'
'I withdraw it unreservedly, m'lord, and apologize to the court.' Smoothly, Sir Job added, 'We now pass on to the matter of the Mercedes car driven by the defendant. Did you examine the car, Mr Partington?'
'I did. On 11 October. I removed samples of skin and hair from the boot of the vehicle and subjected them to DNA analysis.'
'For the benefit of the court, would you now explain the signficance of such a test? This is what is commonly known as genetic fingerprinting, is it not?'
'Yes. It is a way of producing genetic profiles of individuals which are unique in each case except for identical twins. The genetic material known as DNA can be extracted from samples of blood, skin, semen or hair-roots and separated into strands. Chemicals known as restriction enzymes are used to chop the strands into unequal pieces which are sorted on a piece of gelatine by a process known as electrophoresis. We then tag the bits with radioactive probes and expose them to X-ray film to produce a series of black bands not unlike the bar codes used in supermarket checkouts.' not unlike the bar codes used in supermarket 'Every one unique to the individual?'
