“The defence calls Detective Superintendent Malcolm Griffiths,” Paul said in a monotone voice.
I watched as Malcolm made his way to the witness stand, taking a copy of the Bible from the usher as he entered the small wooden enclosure. The policeman was wearing a smart fitted dark grey suit with a maroon shirt and a slightly darker coloured silk tie. He looked sure of himself, and I wondered how many times he’d given evidence in court. He’d been a copper for a while, so it must have been hundreds of times. Not for the first time, I thought it would have been useful to get some coaching from him before the trial if he wasn’t on the other side.
Malcolm handed the Bible back to the usher and sat down in the witness stand. Age wise, he looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. He’d been promoted to Superintendent since then, which is something I hadn’t known until Paul had used his full title just a few seconds ago, and he had a nicer suit on than he was wearing last time around. Other than that, he looked no different apart from perhaps a few extra pounds around the middle.
Paul led him through the preliminary questions, establishing who he was, how many serious crimes he’d investigated as a policeman, and what his role was in my particular case. I’d thought Paul would go over everything with Malcolm in the same way he had done with me, but that wasn’t his plan at all.
“Detective Superintendent Griffiths, please could you tell the court how you came to regard my client, Gareth Dawson, as your prime suspect in the murder of Robert Wainwright.” Paul was straight to the point, no messing about.
Malcolm looked surprised, and I figured that he’d been expecting to go through the case chronologically. He shifted in his chair before replying.
“Er, well,” he said. “I knew Mr Dawson from prior to the events of the night in question. I was the Senior Investigating Officer following the accident in which his wife died.” Malcolm was talking in the stiff, formal way I remembered from the last trial. He was every inch a policeman. “As soon as I found out who the victim was, Mr Dawson became a person of interest straight away given his previous relationship with Mr Wainwright.” I don’t know if I’d have called it a relationship.
“So, you went to see him?” Paul asked. “Popped round for a chat?”
“Yes, we went to interview Mr Dawson to ascertain his whereabouts during the evening in question,” Malcolm replied.
“Did you have any other suspects at this stage? Any other persons of interest, as you put it?”
“Not at that stage, no. But we were actively pursuing several leads. Door to door interviews, appeals for witnesses, that type of activity.”
“Then why were there four of you?” Paul asked.
“I’m sorry, when?”
“When you went round to interview him. Why were there four of you?”
“Well, er, that’s standard procedure.” Malcolm was looking uncomfortable.
“Really? So when the police interview someone informally, it’s standard procedure to send round four policemen, and hide one of them at the back of the property.”
“Not every time.” Paul paused, obviously thinking carefully about what to say next. “It depends on the risk assessment. In Mr Dawson’s case, we considered that he could be a flight risk, so we took precautions against that situation developing.”
“A flight risk?” Paul repeated. “But why would you think that? This is a man with no criminal record, no history with the police at all. Whatever would make you think he was a flight risk?” Malcolm paused for a second before replying.
“Experience, more than anything else,” he said, looking uncomfortable.
“Did you have any other suspects at all? How many other people of interest did you interview?” Paul stared at Malcolm, unblinking. It was quite a few seconds before Malcolm replied.
“None,” he said eventually.
“But you looked into Mr Wainwright’s friends, acquaintances, that sort of thing?”
“We did the standard background checks into him, yes. But it was only a couple of hours later when we retrieved CCTV footage from a house just up the road from the alleyway. The footage clearly showed Mr Dawson heading in that direction with a baseball bat and leaving again a few minutes later. Mr Dawson then became a suspect, as opposed to a person of interest.”
“Ah yes,” Paul said as if he’d forgotten something. “The CCTV footage. I take it you watched the full tape.”
“Yes, we did,” Malcolm said confidently.
“And there was no one else on it?”
“No, there wasn’t.”
“Could you see the entrance to the alleyway on the tape?” Paul asked.
“No, the camera angle didn’t extend to that area.”
“So although you saw Mr Dawson heading to and then leaving the immediate vicinity of the alley, you couldn’t actually see him enter or leave the alley itself?”
“That’s correct,” Paul said, frowning for a few seconds before sitting back in his chair. I knew exactly where Paul was going, and as I watched Malcolm’s face I knew from how his expression changed that he’d worked it out as well.
“So if you couldn’t see Mr Dawson enter the alleyway, you also couldn’t see if anyone else entered it. If they approached from the opposite direction then the camera wouldn’t pick them up, would it?”
“That’s correct,” Malcolm said. Paul looked at him expectantly, but Malcolm said nothing else.
“Were you able to get the time of the attack from the footage?” Paul asked after a pause long enough to let the idea of another attacker hang in the air. Malcolm explained that the time hadn’t been set on the CCTV camera, but they’d been able to use the footage to calculate how long I’d been in the alleyway. Just under sixty seconds. “So how did you time the attack?”
“Mr Wainwright called for a taxi at 9:57 pm. The ambulance service received a 999 telephone call at 10:45 pm when the barman from the pub found the victim. According to Mr Wainwright’s phone records, his phone dropped from the network at 10:22 pm, so we assume that this was the actual time of the attack itself,” Malcolm explained.
“Sorry, dropped from the network? What do you mean by that?” Paul asked.
“The phone was smashed, we assume during the attack. This was at 10:22 pm. These timings are from the carrier, so we know that time is accurate regardless of the time on the phone itself. That’s when the signal from the phone stopped.” Paul turned to the map and placed a sticker over The Griffin pub. Before he continued, he wrote 10.22 pm on the sticker, adding a question mark after it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, could I refer you to photograph number seventeen in your folders?” Paul asked the jury. They all shuffled through their folders with Paul watching until he thought they had all got to the right photograph. “As the picture shows, Mr Wainwright’s phone is completely smashed. Broken to the point of destruction, I would suggest. Certainly more than just a cracked screen, which is what Mr Dawson reports.” Paul paused, looking at Malcolm. “Those timings don’t work though, do they? My client followed Mr Wainwright into the alleyway straight after the phone call was made to the taxi firm, so that would have been just after ten in the evening. He can be seen on the footage just after the victim finished his call, and leaving around 60 seconds later.”
“Your Honour,” the prosecutor called out. I’d almost forgotten she was there, she’d been so quiet. “Surely my learned friend is calling for his witness to speculate here?”
“Your Honour, this witness is a policeman with over twenty years service. This is hardly speculation.” Judge Watling looked at them both before replying.
“Yes, but even so I do think that Miss Revell has got this one right,” he said. “Please rephrase or retract the question, Mr Dewar.” Paul made a show of looking exasperated but again, he’d got his point across.
“I’ll retract the question, Your Honour. I apologise.” Paul looked down at his notes before continuing. “Detective Superintendent, in your experience, is it possible that while Mr Dawson did attack Robert Wainwright at or about ten o’clock, the victim was then subsequently attacked by an unknown party later on? And it was during this second attack that the phone was smashed, dropping it from the network?”
“It’s possible,” Malcolm replied. “But it’s also possible that Mr Dawson came back to the alleyway from the opposite direction, when he wouldn’t have been seen by the camera. We only have his word for the exact sequencing of events.”
“But there’s also CCTV footage from The Heartsease pub that shows Mr Dawson arriving there at 10:16 pm. If the attack that killed Mr Wainwright was at 10:22 pm, then it doesn't work.” I glanced up at the jury to see several of them frowning. Paul crossed over to the map and wrote 10:16 pm on the sticker covering The Heartsease pub.
“You’re right, but we discounted the accuracy of the CCTV timing at the Heartsease,” Malcolm said. Paul turned back to Malcolm, eyebrows raised.
“Why?” Paul asked, frowning. My stomach lurched as Malcolm leaned forward and shot a dark look in my direction.
“Well, you know who installed the cameras at the pub?” He looked back at Paul.
“Please enlighten us,” Paul said. Malcolm glanced back at me for a second, and I saw a slight frown cross his face.
“Mr Dawson did,” he said. Both Paul and Laura looked at me. “Given the other measures he’d taken to avoid detection, we didn’t believe the time on that camera was accurate.” Oops. I’d not adjusted the time on the camera at The Heartsease, but hadn’t mentioned to Paul and Laura that I’d installed it. I felt the colour rising in my cheeks.
Paul recovered from the surprise first, and continued talking after adding a question mark after the time marked on the sticker. As he asked Malcolm his next question, something about whether or not he’d been able to verify that the time on the cameras was incorrect or if it was only an assumption, Laura continued to stare at me, her face as dark as thunder. I looked down, ashamed.
“So were you able to verify that the camera had been tampered with?” Paul asked.
“No,” Malcolm replied. “We sent the device to a firm we have a contract with for forensic analysis. They looked at it, and couldn’t tell either way.”
“What was the firm called?” Malcolm checked his notes before replying to Paul’s question.
“Digital Solutions Incorporated,” he said.
“But if they had confirmed that the time was accurate, would that be admissible evidence to the court?”
“Yes, it would. That’s part of the contract, that they provide evidence that complies with the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.”
“Which then means it can be used in court, is that correct?” Paul looked over at the jury as he said this.
“That’s correct, yes,” Malcolm said.
“Okay, Detective Superintendent Griffiths, let me ask you a question. If it had been possible to demonstrate that the time on the CCTV camera was accurate, and Mr Dawson was in that location at that time, would this have changed your investigation?”
“It would, to an extent,” Malcolm replied, looking thoughtful. “But he’s admitted hitting Mr Wainwright, so I don’t understand how it would be possible.”
“Thank you,” Paul replied. “Do you know a gentleman called Florin Caren?” Malcolm frowned at the abrupt change in direction, as did most of the jury.
“Er, yes. I know of him,” he said.
“Could you tell the jury about him, please?” Paul asked. “Just a précis will be fine.” Malcolm shifted in his chair, and the creases on his forehead deepened.
“I wasn’t expecting to be asked about him, but he was a Romanian criminal who SOCA put away earlier this year,” he said. Paul was about to ask him a question when he continued. “Serious Organised Crime Agency, sorry.” Paul nodded in response.
“And what was your involvement with the case?”
“It was quite minor as far as I remember. The individual in question was based in London, but had close links to Norwich so SOCA asked us for input. It was just in an advisory role as we know the area.”
“Do you remember what Mr Caren was convicted of?” Paul asked as Miss Revell rose to her feet.
“Your Honour, how is this relevant?” she said. The Judge looked at Paul for a reply.
“It will become clear in due course, Your Honour,” Paul replied.
“I shall hold you to that, Mr Dewar. Please continue.” Miss Revell sat back down at the judge's words, turning to one of her colleagues and whispering something in his ear.
“Detective Superintendent, please carry on. Do you remember what this Mr Caren was convicted of?” Paul repeated his question.
“It was a long line of convictions if I remember correctly. Some quite serious ones. He was not a nice man,”
“And the most serious conviction?”
“I’m not one hundred per cent sure.”
“In which case, allow me to refresh your memory. Mr Caren was arrested in April this year, and subsequently convicted of murder and conspiracy to murder. He is currently incarcerated in Belmarsh Prison.” There was silence in the courtroom for a few seconds, probably as everyone tried to work out how this was connected to my case. “Thank you, Detective Superintendent. No more questions,” Paul said, turning away from Malcolm.
I zoned out as the Prosecutor got to her feet and started asking Malcolm questions. They were all about how I’d ‘confessed’ to everything once I found out Robert was dead, and I tired of them quickly. Looking at the jury they looked as bored as I was. I saw one of them looking at me, the older chap Albert, with a curious expression on his face. I wondered what he was thinking. There’d not been much so far in the trial that was particularly explosive, but I knew Paul was laying the groundwork out carefully. I just wasn’t sure what he was building up to. When we’d been preparing for the trial during the last few weeks, I’d tried very hard to find out what avenues he was going to explore. He’d refused to share his strategy and when I tried to press Laura, she clammed up immediately. I was going to find out at the same time as the jury.
I nodded at Albert as he was still looking at me, and to my surprise, he nodded back.