The twelve members of the jury seemed to all be waiting with baited breath as Will Gleeson appeared to be searching his mind for the answer.
Finally, after what seemed like minutes, he answered. “No. I cannot be one hundred per cent sure he was the driver.”
It took the jury less than four hours before they were led back into the court.
“Foreman of the jury, have you reached a decision?”
“We have your honour.”
“Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”
“NOT guilty.”
The courtroom erupted, with Kevin O’Connor’s family and friends hooting and hollering from the public gallery.
The judge called for silence, and finally, the court was brought to order.
“Kevin O’Connor. The jury have found you not guilty. You are free to go.”
Roger drove Francis back to the house she now shared with her partner. Roger still had the packet of powerful sleeping tablets the doctors had left on the evening of their daughter’s death.
As he left the house, Roger handed them over to his ex-wife.
It had been three days since the jury had found Kevin O’Connor not guilty. Roger Maynard was still trying to come to terms with the verdict. All the things he had worked so hard to obtain didn’t seem important anymore.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door.
“Hello, Mr Maynard. We’ve come to say sorry we let you down in court.”
“Please come in.”
The caller was Detective Chief Inspector Eden Gold along with his partner DS Tracy Archer.
For the next ten minutes, they discussed the situation and what had gone wrong in court.
He didn’t say it directly, but the officer gave Roger the impression the witness had either been scared off or paid off. It was almost certainly the deciding factor in the jury’s decision.
“We will be keeping an eye on the witness. It may be they’ll want to shut him up permanently, or at least make sure he stays scared, so he doesn’t change his mind.”
As Roger showed the two detectives to the door, Eden turned and shook his hand.
“Once again, I’m so sorry we let you down.”
Roger went through to the kitchen and put on the kettle.
With the cup of tea he had just made, Roger sat down in his favourite armchair and picked up a copy of the local newspaper to take his mind off everything. However, the headline he saw on the front page was a story that made his blood boil.
Chapter Fourteen
TAKEN OFF THE DRIVEWAY
The headline on the front page of the Trentbridge Times read ‘Police powerless after stolen caravan found on Fen Road’. The article told how an elderly couple in their late sixties, having spent over thirty-six years working in the NHS, had found their caravan worth £30,000 stolen from their front driveway. Two weeks later, the police had found a traveller family living in it.
Due to an oversight, it appeared the elderly couple didn’t have the caravan insured when it was taken.
When the police interviewed them about it, the travellers claimed they had bought the vehicle from a man in a pub, and they produced a handwritten note simply saying ‘Received £3,000 cash for Swift Challenger 590 Caravan’. And with a rough signature of ‘J. Murphy’ at the bottom.
One of them was claiming that he was using the caravan as his home. It was parked in the grounds between the Two Oaks Caravan Park and the house owned by Kevin O’Connor. And the traveller was his son Lennox.
Mr & Mrs Bannister, who could prove the caravan belonged to them thought now it had been found the police would seize it and return it to them. However, they were in for a nasty shock. The police had told them they had ‘no lawful powers’ to take it back.
They told the couple their only option was to begin expensive and time-consuming civil proceedings. But if the current occupant decided to move or sell the vehicle, then there was little hope of ever seeing it again.
‘The police had informed the Bannisters that it would breach the travellers’ human rights and that they would have to be rehoused before it could be seized. Even though it was on land attached to where the family lived in a five bedroomed house.
Mr Bannister was quoted as telling the reporter, “We spent all our retirement money on that caravan because we thought it would last us a lifetime. We’re devastated. It seems as though no one cares about our human rights.”
As he read the newspaper report, Roger couldn’t believe what he was reading.
At the end of the article in a small box, it gave the name Ian Young, local crime reporter and an email address of ‘[email protected]’.
Roger decided he would like to help Mr and Mrs Bannister but before he did he needed to get more facts on the situation. So he sent an email to the reporter telling him who he was and giving a vague idea of what he wanted to discuss and asking if they could meet. He received a reply within the hour and Ian said he was happy to meet and suggested the following day and asked where and when.
The next day, Roger drove into town to keep his appointment with the reporter. Roger had invited him to lunch at the Pagoda restaurant at 1 p.m.
After introductions were over and soft drinks had been ordered Roger asked Ian if
