Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

‘And was your wife’s inability to have children a source of further friction between you?’

‘I wouldn’t call it friction,’ I said. ‘It was a source of great sadness for us both.’

‘So it put your marriage under strain?’

‘Yes, it did,’ I said. ‘It was a difficult time for us both.’

I could see DS Dowdeswell sitting behind the prosecution team staring purposefully at me. Then I remembered his warning over lunch.

‘But,’ I went on, ‘it didn’t ever affect the deep love we had for each other. It put us under strain in other ways and, if anything, those difficulties brought us closer together as a couple.’

The detective sergeant nodded at me in approval.

The eel didn’t.

‘Did you stand to benefit financially from the death of your wife?’ he asked.

‘In what way do you mean?’ I asked back, sure that he was on about the life insurance policy. But I wanted him to mention it first.

‘Was your wife’s life insured?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I have been employed in the insurance business all my working life. It would be remiss of me not to have insured my wife, as indeed it would have been if I had not also insured myself.’

‘But is it not the case that you took out a new policy just a few months before her death? A policy that pays out a million pounds to you as the sole beneficiary?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is the case. But I can assure you that no amount of money can compensate for the loss of my wife.’

DS Dowdeswell was nodding furiously.

But the eel pressed his point again. ‘However, you did stand to benefit financially from her death?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not.’

The eel was slightly taken aback. ‘But you have just told the court that you are the sole beneficiary to a life insurance policy worth a million pounds. How is that not a financial benefit?’

‘Because, according to her mother’s will at the time, Amelia stood to inherit half of her mother’s substantial estate, something that would have happened very soon as her mother had been diagnosed with inoperative stage-four pancreatic cancer. However, as my wife was murdered and hence predeceased her mother, and we have no children, the whole estate would have gone to her brother.’ I turned and faced the dock, pointing my left forefinger in Joe’s direction just in case the jury hadn’t understood what I was saying. ‘My wife’s death would have resulted in a huge financial benefit to him, not to me.’

The detective sergeant looked so happy that I thought he was about to burst into applause, and the eel looked like he’d swallowed a wasp.

I could see what the defence were attempting to do. They were trying to sow a seed of doubt in the minds of the jury that it had been the wicked cruel husband whodunit but, in trying to establish a financial motive for me to have killed her, they had only provided me with the opportunity to do exactly the same for their client sitting in the dock.

But the eel wasn’t giving up the thread that easily.

He played what he obviously thought was his trump card.

‘Mr Russell,’ he said, ‘was it not the case that you were arrested by the police on suspicion of murdering your wife?’

‘Yes,’ I said unhesitatingly. ‘But I was wrongly arrested. As I have explained earlier, I was away in Birmingham at the time of my wife’s death — and CCTV has proved it beyond any doubt. The police have accepted that. I have a letter signed by the chief constable of Thames Valley Police.’

I decided not to mention that the letter didn’t exactly state that I was innocent, just that the police would not be pursuing charges against me unless any new evidence emerged. But, even so, I could tell from the eel’s body language that he was suddenly regretting having brought up my arrest in the first place.

But I wasn’t. It had given me the chance to show that I had a watertight alibi.

For the first time, I was even quite enjoying myself and eager to see the eel’s next tactic.

I was pretty sure that he couldn’t refer to the police caution I had accepted as an undergraduate for having had sex with Tracy Higgins when she was only fifteen. That had been twenty-one years ago and was hardly relevant to the matter in hand, but I wouldn’t put anything past him.

‘Mr Russell,’ he said. ‘Would you consider yourself a risk taker?’

‘My work as an actuary involves the evaluation of risk,’ I replied. ‘Every activity we perform carries some level of risk — crossing the road, flying away on holiday, scuba diving, everything. My job is to calculate that level, however small. So, in some respects, everyone is a risk taker.’

‘But would you say that you personally take unnecessary risks?’

‘No.’

I wondered where he was going with this.

‘But did you not ride in steeplechase races, including over the Grand National fences? Would you not consider that an unnecessary risk?’

‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘But it was a calculated risk.’ I smiled at him. ‘If you are on a good horse then the level of risk is acceptable.’

‘But did you not have to give up riding in races due to injury?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what was that injury?’

‘I damaged my neck.’

‘You damaged your neck?’ he sounded incredulous, spreading his hands wide towards the jury. ‘But is it not the case that you broke vertebrae in your neck, the same vertebrae that have caused the current problem with your walking?’

‘Yes.’

‘So your present difficulties may, in some large part, be due to the injury you received several years ago while riding.’

‘I can’t answer that as I’m not a doctor,’ I said. ‘All I know is that I could walk perfectly well before the recent crash, and I can’t afterwards.’

‘Do you like speed, Mr Russell?’

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by speed. Did he mean amphetamines?

He clarified. ‘Does going fast give you a thrill? An adrenalin rush?’

‘I think everyone gets a thrill from riding a fast roller coaster.’

‘But not everyone rides racehorses at thirty miles per hour over Becher’s Brook. Did that give you a thrill, Mr Russell?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Do you miss that thrill, now that you have stopped riding?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you drive a fast, powerful sports car instead?’

‘I wouldn’t call it fast,’ I said.

‘No? A four-point-two-litre V8 supercharged Jaguar XKR-S sports car? With a top speed of one hundred and seventy-four miles per hour? I think I’d call that fast.’

‘It is now more than ten years old,’ I said.

I had bought it during the bountiful years, before the financial crisis, when all City bonuses had been overly extravagant.

‘As maybe,’ said the eel. ‘But I bet it still shifts along pretty nicely, doesn’t it? Enjoy driving it, do you, Mr Russell?’

‘Yes.’

There was no point in denying it. I loved driving my Jag.

‘Do you like going fast? Taking a few risks?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘How many penalty points do you have on your driving licence, Mr Russell?

‘Nine.’

‘Are they all for speeding convictions?’

‘Yes.’

He paused to allow that fact to settle into the brains of the members of the jury.

‘Going fast on the night of the crash, were you, Mr Russell?’

‘No,’ I said, smiling. ‘And I wasn’t driving that car.’

‘Exactly,’ he said triumphantly. ‘A Jaguar sports car is built to corner well. You are very familiar with it. But on that day you were driving a Fiat 500. Is it not the case, Mr Russell, that you simply took the corner too fast in a car you were not used to driving, and one that is not designed for the high-speed manoeuvres that you regularly perform, and far from being hit from behind by another vehicle, you simply lost control and crashed due to your own excessive speed and negligence?’