The Murder Book by Stuart Littlemore

Author:Stuart Littlemore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

‘Jesus! They sandbagged you!’ Harry was struggling not to shout on the phone. ‘Why didn’t you ask for time to obtain instructions?’

‘From a cretin, Harry? Go down to the cells to ask him? Wouldn’t my judgment be preferable to his?’

‘Everyone knows it isn’t your client who decides these issues, Bella: you had to talk to Dave and me before you fell into that trap. And I certainly would have said no.’

‘Why? Be fair, Harry. A jury would have hated this fellow the minute they laid eyes on him. One look at him in the dock would be enough to terrify them, and that’s without hearing about him telling lies to the police, beating the victim’s head in with the iron bar, or seeing the photographs of the body. Plus we have the benefit that Thatcher will have to write a very careful judgment about provocation, which, if it doesn’t work for us, you can run an appeal on.’

‘What an attractive strategy — waste my time arguing an appeal in front of a court where everyone knows one of them’s already written the judgment, and the other two see their job as ridiculing anything they don’t like the sound of, whether they understand it or not.’

‘And why was it a trap that I fell into, Harry? Why couldn’t judge-alone favour the defence?’

‘Because if the bloody Crown want it, you don’t. They’re scared of a sympathetic jury. By definition, it’s a trap. And the whole strategy of identifying the enemy simply won’t work without a jury.’

‘Q.E.D.?’

‘Precisely.’

Neither said anything for quite a long time. Harry was sitting outside the Burragate house on the verandah, with the sun descending quickly behind the mountains to his left, no warmth left in it at all. He watched a small group of black wallabies grazing on the other side of the river, raising their heads to check for danger, hopping slowly to a new patch of grass and grazing again. The biggest of them turned its head to watch a rusa deer come out of the tree line. From somewhere deep in the national park a large-calibre rifle crashed a single echoing shot, and the animals fled back into the trees.

‘That bastard’s shooting again. I got the National Parks out here, but they stood around with their ponytails — they were blokes, I mean — and solemnly told me that they’ve spoken to him, and he said he’s only shooting vermin.’

‘Which they accepted without further enquiry?’

‘As you say. Bloody useless.’

‘Well, what’m I going to do, Harry? Shall I have David put it back in for mention and tell the judge that my instructions have changed, and Tony won’t consent — that he wants a jury?’

‘No.’

‘No, I suppose not. My fault.’

‘All you can do is run a bloody good trial, Bella. If you haven’t got a jury that you can make fall in love with you, you’ll have to settle for his Honour. Shouldn’t be all that hard. Billy the Pig used to fancy himself as a bit of a pants man.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.