Roger Sumption QC for the Crown Prosecution Service
And you went to see Detective Sergeant Khan the day after Mr. Elmys came to your home. Is that correct?
Harriet Kealty
Yes.
Roger Sumption QC
Please tell us what happened.
Harriet Kealty
He, Sabih, DS Khan, didn’t answer my call and I wanted to tell him about Mr. Elmys coming to my home. I wish I’d never gone now. I had no idea what would happen.
Roger Sumption QC
I understand, but you did go, and you spoke to DS Khan, didn’t you?
Harriet Kealty
Yes, I went to Hanley Police Station. I don’t have many friends left on the force, but there are still a couple of people who will do me a favor. One of them let me through security and I met DS Khan coming out of a meeting. I told him about Mr. Elmys’s unwelcome visit and asked him to log an official complaint in case anything else happened.
Roger Sumption QC
And that complaint is exhibit 3J?
Harriet Kealty
Yes. After we’d done the paperwork, DS Khan told me the hospital footage had come in and asked if I wanted to see it.
Roger Sumption QC
This is the footage from the closed-circuit television camera outside Elizabeth Asha’s hospital room the night she died? Exhibit 4D?
Harriet Kealty
Yes.
Roger Sumption QC
And what did it show?
Harriet Kealty
It showed David Asha and Ben Elmys standing in the corridor outside Mrs. Asha’s room. Mr. Asha looked anguished. Mr. Elmys seemed distracted. They were whispering to each other. Mr. Elmys looked directly at the camera, and just after that the video ended. The hospital says the camera malfunctioned at that point, but when I asked DS Khan to rewind the footage, we noticed something in Ben Elmys’s hand.
Roger Sumption QC
The court will recall I drew attention to this when presenting the footage. What do you think the object might have been?
Grace Oyewole QC for the defendant
My Lord, it is with great reluctance that I find myself on my feet again. There’s no way the witness could know what, if anything, my client was holding.
Roger Sumption QC
The witness’s background as a police officer and her work on this investigation make her opinion relevant.
Justice Thomas
I tend to agree. Please answer the question, Ms. Kealty.
Harriet Kealty
DS Khan and I worked on the assumption the device was some kind of jammer, something that could disable the camera. Twenty-two minutes after the camera went out, Ben Elmys and David Asha were picked up by another camera at the main entrance. I checked the distances and timing. They had long enough to have hidden Elizabeth Asha’s body somewhere in the hospital grounds.
Grace Oyewole QC
Another speculative leap, my Lord. Hospital management still cannot say what happened to Elizabeth Asha’s body.
Justice Thomas
But it is missing, is it not? And therefore it is appropriate to note who might have had the time to move it without detection.
Harriet Kealty
I believe they had time. I believe they could have moved Elizabeth Asha’s body.