Jack could only shrug. “I have no idea. Maybe they’re struggling to agree on the Joint Enterprise charges,” he said.
Dillon grunted. “It has to be that,” he agreed. “The evidence against Winston is overwhelming, so the sticking point must relate to one or more of the others.”
Jack leaned back against the wall and stretched his legs out, trying to get comfortable. It didn’t work. “Maybe we should go down to join the others and grab a coffee. At least it’s more comfortable down there.”
Dillon stood up and reached for his jacket. “Good idea,” he said, “and it’s your round if I’m not mistaken.”
Tyler pulled a face as he eased himself to his feet. “It’s always my round, according to you.”
Just then, the heavy wooden door from the corridor opened and Steve Bull popped his head in. He looked excited. “Just spoke to the usher. The jury has reached a verdict and they’re coming back in.”
Tyler felt a jolt of adrenaline rush through his system. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, aware that his heart rate was already climbing. Finally, after all these months of waiting, after all the hard work getting the case trial-ready and the countless hours spent dealing with the never-ending disclosure requests from the four separate legal teams representing Winston, Garston, Marley, and Mullings, not to mention all the underhanded shenanigans they had endured during the six week trial, they were approaching the moment of truth.
The trial had turned into a cut-throat, which meant that three of the four defendants had turned on each other in an effort to clear their own names.
It seemed that blood wasn’t thicker than water in the case of Winston and Garston, as the former had tried to put all the blame for PC Morrison’s death squarely on his nephew’s shoulders. His defence had argued that Garston arrived at the hospital in possession of the weapon that had been used to kill the police officer, and that he had subsequently been arrested in possession of that same weapon a number of days later. Their position was that it had never left his custody and that it had been him, rather than Winston who had callously ended the life of the defenceless policeman.
Garston had retaliated by spilling the beans that Claude had taken the gun from him and needlessly killed the officer even though he had been begging his uncle not to.
Angela Marley had stayed neutral throughout, claiming that she hadn’t known Garston and Heston had been carrying guns when they had entered the hospital. During her evidence in chief, she claimed that she didn’t know who had fired the fatal shot. She was lying, of course, and the prosecution barrister had exposed the impossibility of her assertions during his brutal cross-examination.
Mullings had stuck to his story that he was just acting as a chauffeur and had no idea they intended to break Winston out of lawful custody, and it was Jack’s view that if the jury were going to get twitchy about convicting any of the four defendants, it would be Gifford Mullings. Of course, it hadn’t helped Mullings’ cause that the CCTV the enquiry team had retrieved from the shop where the gang’s four burner phones had been purchased clearly showed young Gifford as being the one who had bought them.
As they descended the stairs on their way to Court Number One, they met the others coming out of the canteen.
“This is it,” Andy Quinlan said with an impish grin. “I reckon guilty for Winston and Garston but not guilty for Marley or Mullings. What about you?”
Jack shook his head at that. “All four are going down,” he said, adamantly.
As they rushed along the corridor, converging on what is arguably the most famous courtroom in the world, Jack spotted PC Morrison’s parents sitting with the Family Liaison Officer and PCs Sharon Lassiter and Alec O’Brien. He nodded an acknowledgement to them as they stood up, but there was no time to stop and talk.
The barristers appeared en masse, led by their man, Jonathan Lacroix, QC, Senior Treasury Counsel.
“Here we go,” Lacroix said in his clipped Etonian voice. He was wearing his silk gown with a flap collar and long closed sleeves, the standard attire of a QC, and the reason they are said to have ‘taken the silk’ after being appointed.
The detectives filed into the court along with everyone else and took their seats under the watchful eye of the court usher, an attractive woman in her early fifties with greying blonde hair.
The clerk, a rather stern-faced lady in her late thirties, nodded at Tyler when she caught his eye, and he returned the gesture in a friendly manner.
Jack couldn’t see up into the public gallery from where he was sitting directly behind Lacroix and his junior, but from all the noise coming from above, it sounded full to capacity.
Jack took in his surroundings with the same sense of awe that he always experienced whenever he sat inside this bleak but illustrious room, which had been home to some of the most sensational trials ever to have been held.
It was both a monument and a living tribute to the law of the land, and a place where the moral and social changes of recent history had been charted. Traditionally reserved for the most serious and high-profile crimes, it had first opened its doors in 1907. Since then, Number One Court at The Bailey had heard it all, and human drama, unspeakable tragedy, tales of hatred, greed, revenge, and betrayal had quickly become its staple diet.
A large enclosed dock stood in the centre of the court, dominating everything around it. Measuring sixteen feet by fourteen feet, it was a room within a room, solid and impenetrable.
Defendants who were evil, depraved, and sometimes just plain pathetic had gripped its rails over the years, accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable.
