I strode into the robing room on the first day of the trial of Tasha Roux like a colossus. It felt great. I was in a murder trial and I wanted everyone to know about it.
‘Hi Russ, you’re not prosecuting a two-handed robbery are you?’
‘No, I’m in the murder case.’
‘Russ, what are you up to today? Could you cover a bench warrant in court four?’
‘No, sorry, I’m in the murder case.’
Yes, I don’t mind admitting it, that morning I swanned into the robing room like I was the biggest hunter-gatherer in the pack.
Roger Fish and Josh Benedict-Brown were sitting down by a desk on the far side of the robing room. With them were a couple of the young and beautiful clerks from Extempar Chambers who were unloading the case papers from some fancy wheeled suitcases with the logo: Extempar Chambers, ‘We Don’t Judge, We Just Care’ emblazoned on them. Normally, that would have annoyed me, but not today. I wasn’t bothered that I had my papers in a couple of Asda bags, hell, that morning, I even carried my blue bag of shame with a swagger.
I confidently went over to them. ‘Hi Roger,’ I said, making sure that everyone knew that I, Russell Winnock, was in a case with Roger Fish, the Fishmeister.
Roger was sitting impassively, reading through some documents, making efficient notations with his rather expensive fountain pen.
He looked up at me. ‘Good morning, Russell,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some late additional evidence for you. Sorry that’s it’s come to light on the morning of trial. You know how these things are in a case like this.’
That was the problem, I didn’t know, I’d never done a case like this before. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react: should I make a fuss? Should I stamp my feet at this eleventh-hour service of new material?
I didn’t know.
In the end I just sort of grinned and murmured something about how I was sure it would be okay.
Josh Benedict-Brown smirked. ‘It’s not good for you, old boy,’ he said. ‘We’ve just had the phone records back from the mobile phone specialist. There are a few messages on there that you might want to have a look at.’
He then handed me two copies of the same document. ‘One for you and one for Charlie Parkman,’ he said. ‘Where is your leader by the way?’ he added. ‘I hope for your sake he’s going to turn up. Don’t suppose you’ll want to do this solo.’
Cocky bastard. And who uses the phrase ‘old boy’ for crying out loud.
By now Kelly had arrived. She was taking her coat off.
I went over to her and told her about the new evidence.
‘Bastards,’ she said, ‘they’ve had her phone for ages, it’s outrageous that they’ve only got round to serving it today. What did you say to Fish? I hope you gave him what for?’
I decided to lie, I didn’t want Kelly thinking I was a pushover.
‘I told him that we weren’t very happy.’
She scowled.
‘Where’s Charlie Parkman?’
This was now starting to bother me. I had spoken to Charlie the previous day, when he had told me that he would see me in court.
‘He’ll be here any second,’ I assured her, ‘probably held up in traffic.’
She scowled again.
I sat down and started to read the new document. It wasa list of the text messages that had been sent to and fromGary Dickinson’s phone that were recorded on Tasha Roux’s phone.
Kelly was right, they’d had Tasha’s phone and Dickinson’s phone since the night of the incident, there was no reasonable excuse for them serving this evidence on the first day of the trial. This was wrong. But even worse was the fact that Josh bloody Benedict-Brown was right – the messages were damning. My eyes fell on the very first one.
4pm, Saturday 5th March: ‘Gary I mean it, if u do that again I’ll fuckin kill u.’
5.15pm, Saturday 5th March: ‘U R a bastard! I hate U.’
Then on the night Dickinson was killed: ‘I don’t ever wanna C U again. U come near me I’ll kill U.’
I sighed. This wasn’t good.
And where was my bloody leader?
I tried phoning him but received an answerphone voice telling me to leave my message after the beep.
I read more of the messages.
2.13pm, Friday 15th April: ‘You don’t scare me Gary – I mean it.’
Together with the odd. ‘I love U XXXX’ and ‘I can’t wait to hold you again! U R my man Gary!’
It didn’t read like a woman who was in any way scared of the man she had killed. I needed to talk to my leader about these. I felt myself becoming frantic. I knew I shouldn’t have instructed a family lawyer, I knew he’d bottle it. He was probably at Gatwick airport or Dover getting the first plane or ferry out of here, leaving me to pick up the bloody pieces and try to defend a woman who had killed the man who one minute she wanted to hold and the next she wanted to kill. Fuck.
‘Any sign?’ asked Kelly.
I frowned. ‘Not a bloody sausage.’
Josh Benedict-Brown had now appeared behind me. ‘So what do you want to do about the telephone material?’ he asked.
I scowled at him. ‘I’m going to take instructions,’ I said, adding quietly under my breath, ‘just as soon as my bloody leader shows up.’
‘Perhaps he’s outside the courtroom already?’ said Kelly.
We went to find him. We looked outside court three, which was where we were listed. There was no sign of him.
I went to the security queue: there was no sign of him.
I looked in the lobby and up the corridors: nothing.
He’d bottled it. He couldn’t handle the pressure. I felt myself wanting to scream in fear, anger and exasperation, but mainly fear.
Finally we tried the public canteen, which was about the last place most barristers go, as it invariably means bumping into clients, or worse, clients’ families. But, lo and behold, there he was. Charlie Parkman QC, sitting having a cup of coffee, and with him was Shandra Whithurst.
She had both his hands in her own and was clearly talking to him in impassioned tones. Charlie was nodding at her and occasionally smiling, kind, gentle smiles. As I got closer I could hear what she was saying. ‘You must help her, Mr Parkman, she is a good girl.’
‘Well,’ said Charlie, ‘perhaps we can help her together. Now you know what you’ve got to do?’
Shandra sucked in her lips as if fortifying herself for whatever it was Charlie had told her to do. ‘I understand,’ she said, and with that, she got up and walked away, giving me a wave as she did.
‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘you’re here.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I prefer it in here. I can get some peace and quiet away from the robing room bullies.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’re going to love this.’ I handed him the new telephone material.
He looked at it for a short while, then looked up at me. ‘When did we get this?’
‘Just now.’
‘That’s a bit sneaky isn’t it?’
‘I thought so.’
Charlie sighed then took a final swig from his cup of coffee. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s go and make acquaintance with Mr Fish.’
We made our way back upstairs to the robing room where Fish and Benedict-Brown, now minus the beautiful Extempar clerks, were sitting down robed and ready for action.
Parkman went over. ‘Good morning Roger,’ he said, then without waiting for a response, he added tersely, ‘now what’s this new evidence that you’ve served on me this morning?’
‘Telephone evidence,’ replied Fish, before adding with snake-like smoothness, ‘very sorry, I realise that you should have had it a few weeks ago but I’m afraid that these things do happen in the Crown Court.’
‘Not in this trial,’ replied Parkman, ‘I’m not having this type of caper. If you’ve got any more surprises I want to know about them now.’
I stood behind Parkman, my chest heaving with pride as he stood up to the formidable Roger Fish.
‘Steady on, old chap,’ replied Fish, ‘I’m just the messenger.’
‘Well, you can give a message to the Judge that we can’t start today, because the defence need another day to deal with this new evidence that has been served weeks late.’
And with that my new hero Charlie Parkman turned on his heels and walked out of the robing room, with me, star-struck, in awe and half tempted to blow a raspberry at Josh Benedict-Brown, following in his wake.
It was only when I got outside into the corridor that I realised that Charlie was shaking slightly and that beads of sweat had formed on his brow. ‘I can’t be doing with this kind of slippery nonsense, but more significantly, we’ve got a problem, those text messages don’t help us at all.’
We went to see Tasha. We sat across from her. It was no longer time for soft, cuddly avuncular lawyers, now was the time to prepare her for the roasting that she was going to get from the prosecutor.
‘Why did you send a text message telling Gary Dickinson you were going to kill him?’ asked Charlie. Tasha was taken aback by his tone.
‘Because he was a bastard,’ she replied.
‘A bastard who deserved to die?’ continued Charlie. ‘A bastard who you were quite happy to throw over a banister?’
‘No.’
‘Because you knew that if you managed to get him over that banister he’d be seriously injured didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt him.’
‘Then why send him the message saying you were going to kill him?’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Well what did you mean?’
Charlie grilled her and grilled her. We went through every message, over and over again.
‘Did you love him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you weren’t scared of him, were you?’
‘Not always.’
Tasha struggled and I sat there silently watching her struggle. I listened to her as she tried to explain why she had sent a particular message at a particular time. It wasn’t easy. None of us send texts that we think will come back and haunt us, but often they do. Of course Tasha hadn’t planned to kill him, of course those messages were idle threats. If Tasha had planned to kill him she would have done it with a weapon, a knife probably, she wouldn’t have tried to throw him over a bloody banister. I knew that, but I also knew that the Crown would take those messages and use them to goad her and provoke her, to try to get under her skin in order to try to prove to the jury that she intended to hurt this man, that she wasn’t scared of him and that he was no threat to her.
By the time we left, Tasha was tired and tearful and under no illusions that this was going to be tough. Charlie was tired as well. The slight tremor to his hand had returned and he looked drained, his face lined and grey.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.
‘Absolutely fine,’ he said, ‘tomorrow we’ll get the jury sworn.’
I walked back to chambers with Kelly.
‘What do you think of Charlie?’ I asked her.
‘I think he’s going to find this tough,’ she said, ‘he’s good, but he’s fragile. I just hope he makes it to the end.’
‘So do I,’ I said, ‘otherwise I’ll be stepping into the breach.’
‘Yep,’ she said, ‘and we don’t want that do we?’
Which wasn’t exactly the response I was looking for.