Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

So here we were, sitting side by side, in the same interview room as I’d been on Wednesday afternoon, with Detective Sergeant Dowdeswell and another man who kicked things off.

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Priestly,’ he said, pushing a business card across the table towards me. ‘I have been assigned to this case as the senior investigating officer.’

I picked up the card. A detective chief inspector, no less.

I knew the case had a high profile as some forty-eight hours after the event, and much to my angst, it still featured large on every newspaper front page and had been the second item on the morning’s television news, complete with aerial footage from a drone of the digging activity in my back garden.

Clearly, it had been a slow news day. Where was a royal baby announcement or a tsunami when you needed one?

‘My client wants it recorded that he is attending here today entirely voluntarily,’ Simon said.

DCI Priestly looked at him and then at me. ‘Yes, of course, thank you for coming in. But can I remind you, Mr Gordon-Russell, that you are still being interviewed under caution.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Good. Now will you please tell us everything you did between lunchtime on Tuesday until...’ He glanced down at the notes in front of him. ‘... DS Dowdeswell approached you at Warwick Racecourse at one twenty-six p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.’

‘I’ve already told him,’ I said, nodding at the sergeant.

‘Yes, as may be,’ said the DCI. ‘But now tell me.’

I went through everything again exactly as before: worked at home, drove to Birmingham, checked in to the Edgbaston Manor Hotel, walked to the cricket ground, attended a charity dinner, walked back to the hotel, slept, breakfasted, drove to Warwick Races.

‘We will need the names and addresses of those at the dinner with you,’ said the DCI.

‘All one hundred and fifty of them?’ I replied. ‘It was a big affair.’

‘Those that were on your table, then.’

‘Why?’ I asked with irritation. ‘Don’t you believe I was there?’

Simon glanced at me with a minimal shake of his head as if to say, ‘Don’t go there.’

‘We need to verify your story,’ explained the DCI.

‘It’s not a story,’ I said flatly. ‘It’s the truth. Check the hotel CCTV. It will show that I was there all night.’

He changed tack. ‘How would you describe your relationship with your wife?’

I stared at him. What was he trying to do now?

‘Very loving,’ I said.

‘Did you have any problems?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘No problems at all?’ he asked again.

Only her brother , I thought, but Simon had said not to talk about him.

‘None.’

The detective looked down at one of the papers in front of him, and then up at me.

‘But Mrs Gordon-Russell had been under the on-going care of a psychiatrist, indeed, she had been an in-patient in a psychiatric hospital on several occasions over the past three years. Wouldn’t you call that a problem?’

‘It was a medical problem, yes. But it was not a problem in our relationship. If anything, Amelia’s medical condition brought us closer together.’

‘So you hadn’t been close before?’

I now understood why Simon had been so insistent that I be careful with my answers.

‘I didn’t say that,’ I said. ‘We were always close, but her troubles made our relationship even stronger than it had been.’

‘Hmm,’ the DCI uttered, as if he didn’t believe it. ‘But is it not the case that you and Mrs Gordon-Russell regularly attended marriage-guidance counselling?’

‘No,’ I said with surprise. ‘That is not correct.’

‘No? Not every third Monday in the month with a certain Doctor Andrews in Oxford, a specialist in matrimonial problems?’

The DCI slid a piece of paper across the desk towards me. I glanced down. It was a printout of the front page of Dr Andrews’s website with the headline LET ME SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE written large across it.

‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘We have been to see Dr Andrews each month but it was not for marriage guidance in the way you are trying to imply. It was part of our family therapy to complement that which Amelia received each week from her own psychotherapist.’

‘Family therapy?’ the DCI repeated. ‘That sounds very much like marriage guidance to me.’

‘It was to help us cope with Amelia’s illness,’ I said, trying hard to keep calm. ‘To teach us how to live a low-stress lifestyle. To help me to manage her mood swings and to recognise the symptoms and potential dangers. I loved my wife and she loved me.’

‘I am sure that O. J. Simpson loved his wife too — at some point.’

‘Come now, Chief Inspector,’ Simon Bassett interjected. ‘That cheap jibe is uncalled for. As I said at the start, my client is here voluntarily. If you want him to remain, I suggest you moderate your comments.’

The DCI looked at him in a manner that I took to be contempt. He clearly didn’t like being told how to behave, especially by a solicitor.

The chief inspector looked back at me. ‘Was your wife ever the victim of domestic violence?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Never.’

He again looked down at his papers.

‘But wasn’t your wife treated at Banbury Hospital emergency department on three separate occasions in the past year for injuries sustained at home?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true, but they were not as a result of domestic violence, at least not violence perpetrated by me. One was accidental and the other two as a result of her self-harming. Sadly, my wife was very troubled and sometimes felt that she was a bad person and needed to be punished. When things were really bad, this misplaced need for punishment could lead her to cut herself. Twice it was severe enough for me to take her to A and E.’

‘And the third occasion?’

I didn’t particularly like where this was going.

‘She needed treatment for a facial injury.’

‘What sort of injury?’ he asked, while clearly already knowing the answer from having read her medical notes.

‘She had a cut over her left eye that required stitches.’

And a huge black eye , I remembered, but I decided not to mention that.

‘And how did she come by this cut?’

I stared at him. ‘She walked into a door,’ I said. ‘To be precise, she walked into the end of a kitchen cabinet door that she didn’t realise was open. I wasn’t even in the same room as her at the time of the incident.’

I could tell that he didn’t believe me, and who could blame him, but instead of pursuing the point he reached down to the floor and lifted a large brown paper envelope, laying it on the table and removing a clear plastic bag from within.

‘Do you recognise this?’ he asked, holding up the bag with its contents.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a leather dog lead.’

‘Have you seen it before?’

‘It looks like the one we had hanging on the back door in our kitchen.’

‘But you don’t have a dog,’ said the DCI.

‘We used to.’

I suddenly laughed out loud.

‘What’s so damn funny?’ demanded the detective crossly.

I managed to stop laughing — but only just.

‘When we first moved out of London we bought a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy. Lovely little chap, he was, but he grew into a large dog, a very large dog. Sadly, last year, he died from an inherited heart condition. I buried him in the garden.’

I’d only just remembered. And the burial site had been exactly where I’d seen the big yellow digger working on the morning news.

‘Found his bones yet, have you?’ I said, trying hard not to chuckle.

The DCI wasn’t pleased, or amused. And he soon put paid to my own amusement too, big time.