Jane Casey - Cruel Acts

Of course, luck wasn’t with us the next day either. The judges’ decision was a foregone conclusion, and everyone knew it, but the tension in the air was as thick as the mist that pressed against the small high windows. The lights were on, the old pearly shades casting a soft glow that fell on the walls of law books, the high wooden bench where three judges sat, sombre in their full wigs and gowns, and on their clerk who was busy with paperwork, his pen racing across the page. It fell on the attentive barristers at their desks in front of the packed benches of the public gallery. It fell on the tiny dock with its over-arching iron bars that separated the prisoner from the rest of us who sat in the courtroom. We were free and he was not.

Not yet.

I sat in the last row of the public benches. Despite its importance, the Court of Appeal was held in a small room, and it was packed. The court reporters were choosy about which cases they covered but this one was a guaranteed front-page splash. A murderer was always news. A murderer of women was even better, especially if the women were beautiful, especially if they had everything to live for, especially if they met a horrible end at the hands of a perverted stranger. But best of all was a gruesome series of murders combined with a miscarriage of justice. That was a story that had everything.

I looked at the man in the dock. Leo Stone, the man who had been haunting my thoughts, a nightmare made flesh. His eyes were closed, his face pale and impassive, his hair dark and greased back from a low forehead. He was tall but gaunt; his skin fell in loose folds from his prominent cheekbones and sagged from his jawline. Often, prisoners didn’t come to the Court of Appeal. It was quicker and cheaper to make them attend by video link, but on this occasion, I could understand why he had wanted to be present. I knew better than to think murderers always looked like what they were but something about Stone’s physical presence chilled me. The words and images from the files I’d read battered the inside of my skull along with a single word: evil .

‘If he’s stuck for cash he can always write the Leo Stone diet book,’ Derwent muttered, leaning over so his elbow pressed against my side painfully. ‘There isn’t a spare ounce on him.’

‘Not the time or the place,’ I hissed. ‘And give me some room.’

Derwent shrugged and folded his arms across his chest, making himself even broader. His knees moved an inch or two further apart, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. I shifted to my right, trying to put some space between his thigh and mine, and collided with my neighbour on the other side.

‘Sorry.’

Godley nodded, preoccupied. Unlike me, he was concentrating on the judge’s speech and sat statue-still. Beyond him sat DCI Paul Whitlock, who was in his late fifties. I’d met him before the hearing started, in the echoing, cathedral-like main hall of the Royal Courts of Justice. He had given me a quick, bruising handshake, without a smile. He had retired after Leo Stone’s conviction, before the crowning achievement of his career had turned into a messy disaster, and he lived on the Kent coast now. I assumed he spent most of his life out of doors because his skin was like old leather. Under his tan, he looked drawn and tired. What we were watching was the dismantling of a case he had built, painfully and in the full glare of public scrutiny. I could imagine how he was feeling.

The words fell from the bench like wood shavings, dry and dusty, delivered in a refined Anglo-Indian accent.

‘It is one of the abiding principles of the British legal system that a jury trial must be fair. A jury must be impartial. They must base their opinions on the words of counsel, on the evidence they hear and on the judge’s guidance. It is abundantly clear that in this case the jury did not do their duty. Rather, they chose to ignore all instructions and plunged into a world of speculation and ill-informed comment, aided by the media’s distorting lens. The duty of a jury is a sacred one. A defendant is entitled to expect that a jury will conduct themselves fairly. Otherwise justice cannot be done. And it has not been done in this case. The appeal is granted. I order that the prisoner, Leo Stone, be returned to prison and a further application be made to the Crown Court for bail pending a retrial.’

A murmur ran through the courtroom. In the dock, Leo Stone opened his eyes for the first time, staring about him as if he had just woken up. His eyes were dark, the pupils invisible. One of the officers with him took his arm, but gently.

‘Come on.’

Stone didn’t move. His eyes scanned the public gallery, row by row, until they stopped. For a moment I thought he was looking straight at me. Then the man in front of me raised a hand to shoulder height: a salute that received an answering nod from the prisoner. Only then did Stone turn, dropping his head and rounding his shoulders as he trudged down the steps to the cells below the courtrooms, where he would wait for a transfer to prison. Freedom was within his grasp but it wasn’t his quite yet.

The judges rose and filed out through a door behind them, and as the door closed the barristers abandoned their respectful demeanour instantly. The juniors gathered up their papers and legal reference books, moving with the speed born of long experience in the Crown Court, where the next case followed on the heels of the first. The opposing silks leaned towards one another as they tucked pens into pockets and settled their gowns on their shoulders more firmly, laughing as if they had been working together rather than competing for the judges’ favour. The journalists had slid out of the benches at the earliest opportunity, scattering down the long, tiled corridor to find a quiet nook where they could call their newsrooms.

On my right, Godley sighed. ‘Well. That’s that.’

‘Nothing else they could do.’ Whitlock stood up. ‘Frustrating, though. In some ways it feels worse than if we’d lost the first trial. I took a lot of satisfaction out of locking Stone up. It made me feel the world was a safer place for him being behind bars.’

‘We’ll put him back there for you. Fucking juries.’ Derwent eased his hips forward, slouching. It wasn’t actually possible to lounge on the high-backed wooden benches but he gave it his best shot.

Harry Hollingwood QC paused at the end of our bench. ‘Quick chat before I go back to chambers?’

‘Of course.’ Godley got up, energised. I made to follow him and Paul Whitlock, but hung back to let someone pass through the heavy doors before me. He hesitated for a beat, looking at me and I returned the scrutiny: dark hair, dark eyes, heavy eyebrows, a slight frame. The man who had been in front of me in the hearing, who had waved at Leo Stone.

‘Come on.’ The man behind him nudged him. He was a head taller and correspondingly broad, his shoulders straining against the fine fabric of his three-piece pinstripe suit. It was exquisitely fitted, I noted, just as I noted that he was strikingly handsome and roughly my age. He had a full beard, which ordinarily did nothing for me, but he made it look good. He stared at me briefly, assessing me in much the same way that I was eyeing him, but whether he was impressed or not I couldn’t tell.