The Veteran (8 page)

“You see, Mr. Burns, my client will say that none of his blood was found there because he did not break his nose at that place, because he was never there that Tuesday. Now, Mr. Burns ...”

Vansittart had made a mini speech in place of a question. He knew there was no jury present to be impressed. He was talking to Stipendiary Magistrate Jonathan Stein, who looked at him expressionlessly and made notes. Miss. Sundaran scribbled furiously.

“Penetrating the estate itself, did your POLSA team search for anything else the miscreants might have dropped?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how many binliners did they manage to fill?”

“Twenty, sir.”

“And were the contents searched with the finest of toothcombs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And in twenty binliners, was there one shred of evidence linking my clients to the time and the place?”

“No, sir.”

“Yet, by noon the next day you were actively looking for Mr. Price and Mr. Cornish with a view to arresting them. Why was that?”

“Because between eleven and twelve the next day I had established two positive identifications.”

“From the CRO photographs, the so-called mug book?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And made by a local shopkeeper, Mr. Veejay Patel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me. Inspector, how many photographs did Mr. Patel examine?”

Jack Burns consulted his notes.

“Seventy-seven.”

“And why seventy-seven?”

“Because the twenty-eighth photograph he positively identified as Mark Price and the seventy-seventh as Harry Cornish.”

“Is seventy-seven the total of youngish white males who have ever come to the attention of the police in the northeast quadrant of London?”

“No, sir.”

“The figure would be higher?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many photographs did you have at your disposal that morning, Mr. Burns?”

“About four hundred.”

“Four hundred. And yet you stopped at seventy-seven.”

“The identifications were absolutely positive.”

“And yet Mr. Patel never had the opportunity to look at the remaining three hundred and twenty-three?”

There was a long silence.

“No, sir.”

“Detective Inspector Burns, my client, Mr. Price, seen from the neck up, is a beefy, mid-twenties white male with a shorn head. Are you telling this court there are no others like that among your four hundred photos?”

“I cannot say that.”

“I suggest there must be a score. Nowadays, beefy young men who choose to shave their skulls are two a penny. Yet, Mr. Patel never had the opportunity to compare Mr. Price’s photograph with any similar face further down the list of four hundred?”

Silence.

“You must answer, Mr. Burns,” said the stipendiary, gently.

“No, sir, he did not.”

“Then there might have been another face, further on, remarkably similar to Mr. Price, but Mr. Patel had no chance to make a comparison, go back and forth, stare at both of them, before making his choice?”

“There might have been.”

“Thank you, Mr. Burns. No further questions.”

It had been damaging. The reference to beefy young men with shorn heads being ‘two a penny’ had scored with Mr. Stein. He, too, watched television and saw coverage of football hooligans at play.

Mr. Carl Bateman was purely technical. He simply described the arrival of the unconscious man at the Royal London and all he had done for him before the patient went to neurosurgery.

Nevertheless, when he had finished, Vansittart rose.

“Just one very brief issue, Mr. Bateman. Did you at any point examine the right fist of the patient?” Bateman frowned, puzzled.

“Yes, I did.”

“At the time of admission or later?”

“Later.”

“Was this at someone’s request?”

“Yes.”

“And whose, pray?”

“Detective Inspector Burns.”

“And did Mr. Burns ask you to look for knuckle damage?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And was there any?”

“No.”

“How long have you been in Accident and Emergency?”

“Ten years.”

“A very experienced man. You must have seen the results of many violent blows delivered with the fist, both to the human face and to the fist itself?”

“Yes, I believe I have.”

“When a human fist delivers a blow of such force as to shatter the nose of a much bigger man, would you not expect to find knuckle damage?”

“I might.”

“And what would be the chances of such damage occurring?

Eighty per cent?”

“I suppose so.”

“Abrasions to the skin of the knuckles? Bruising over the metacarpal heads, the thin and fragile bones that run up the back of the hand between the knuckles and the wrist?”

“More likely the metacarpal bruising.”

“Similar to the Boxer’s Injury?”

“Yes.”

“But there was none on the right fist of the man now tragically dead?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bateman.”

What Carl Bateman could not know was that when the limping man smashed Price in the face, he did not use a bunched fist, but a much more dangerous blow. He employed the hard heel of the hand, driving upward from the waist, hammering into the nose from the underside. Had Price not been of almost ox-like strength and an accustomed brawler, he would have been knocked flat and possibly senseless.

The brain surgeon, Mr. Paul Willis, gave his evidence and left the witness box with no questions from Vansittart, but not Dr. Melrose of St. Anne’s Road hospital.

“Tell me, Dr. Melrose, when you examined Mr. Price’s nose between five and five thirty on the afternoon of last Tuesday fortnight, was there blood in the nostrils?”

“Yes, there was.”

“Crusted or still liquid?”

“Both. There were crusted fragments near the end of the nostrils, but it was still liquid further up.”

“And you discovered the nose bone to be fractured in two places and the cartilage pushed to one side?”

“I did.”

“So you set the bone, reshaped the nose and strapped it in order to let nature take its course?”

“Yes, I did.”

“If the patient, before coming to the hospital, had very foolishly and despite the pain tried to reset his own nose, would that have caused fresh bleeding?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Bearing that in mind, can you say how many hours before you saw the nose the injury had been inflicted?”

“Several hours, certainly.”

“Well, three? Ten? Even more?”

“That is hard to say. With complete accuracy.”

“Then let me put to you a possibility. A young man goes out on the Monday evening, gets lamentably drunk in a pub, and on the way home wishes to urinate in the gutter. But, stumbling over an uneven paving stone, he falls heavily forward and smashes his nose into the tailboard of a jobbing builder’s lorry parked by the kerb. Could that have inflicted the injury you saw? The previous night?”

“Possibly.”

“Well, Dr. Melrose, yes or no? Is it possible?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Doctor. No further questions.”

Vansittart was speaking to Jonathan Stein; in code, but it came through loud and clear. What he said was: that is exactly my client’s story and if he sticks to it, we both know the prosecution cannot disprove it.

At the back of the court Jack Burns swore inwardly. Why could not Melrose simply have insisted the injury could not possibly have occurred more than four hours before he tended it? No-one would ever have known. Damn scrupulously honest doctors.

Mr. Paul Finch was the head of forensics. He was not a police officer, for the Met has for years used civilian scientists on contract for its forensic work.

“You received into your possession a large quantity of items of clothing taken from the flat shared by the accused?” Vansittart asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“And every stitch of clothing worn by the victim during the attack?”

“Yes.”

“And you examined everything with the latest state-of-the-art technology to see if any fibres from the one set could be found on the other set?”

“Yes.”

“Were there any such traces?”

“No.”

“You also received a tee shirt soaked in dried blood?”

“Yes.”

“And a sample of blood from my client, Mr. Price?”

“Yes.”

“Did they match?”

“They did.”

“Was there anyone else’s blood on that tee shirt?”

“No.”

“Did you receive samples of blood taken from the pavement in the area of Paradise Way or the streets of the Meadowdene Grove estate?”

“No.”

“Did you receive samples of blood taken from beneath and around a builder’s truck in Farrow Road?”

Mr. Finch was totally bewildered. He glanced at the bench, but received no help. D I Burns had his head in his hands. Miss. Sundaran was looking out of her depth.

“Farrow Road? No.”

“Precisely. No further questions.”

Mr. Hamilton presented his post-mortem report with cheerful self-confidence. Cause of death, he pronounced, was due to severe axonal damage to the brain stem caused by repeated and heavy blows to the skull, compatible with blows administered by boots.

“Did you,” asked James Vansittart, “examine every inch of the body during postmortem?”

“Of course.”

“Including the right hand?”

Mr. Hamilton referred to his notes.

“I have no reference to the right hand.”

“Because there was no damage to it?”

“That would be the only reason.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hamilton.”

Unlike the professionals, Mr. Whittaker, the elderly dog-walker, was slightly nervous and had taken some trouble with his dress. He wore his blazer with the Royal Artillery badge; he was entitled: in his National Service he had been a gunner.

There had already been a pleasing stir at the Over Sixties Club when it was learned he would be a witness in a murder trial, and a grateful but bewildered Mitch had received a lot of petting.

He described to the bench, led by Miss. Sundaran, how he had taken Mitch for his daily walk just after dawn, but how, fearing rain was coming, he entered the walled-off waste ground via a missing panel and headed for home by a short cut.

He explained how Mitch, running free, had come back to him with something in his mouth. It was a wallet; so, recalling the appeal in the Friday paper, he had taken it to Dover Street police station.

When he had finished, the other man rose, the one in the West End suit. Mr. Whittaker knew he represented those bastards in the dock. They would have been hanged in the witness’s younger days, and good riddance. So this man was the enemy. But he smiled in a most friendly fashion.

“Best hour of the day on a summer’s morning? Cool, quiet, no-one about?”

“Yes. That’s why I like it.”

“So do I. Often take my Jack Russell for a walk about then.”

He smiled again, real friendly. Not such a bad cove after all. Though Mitch was a lurcher cross, Mr. Whittaker had had a Jack Russell when he was on the buses. The blond man could not be all bad.

“So you are walking across the waste ground and Mitch is running free?”

“Yes.”

“And there he is, suddenly back beside you, with something in his mouth?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see exactly where he found it?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Could it have been, say, ten yards from the fence?”

“Well, I was about twenty yards into the field. Mitch came up from behind me.”

“So he could have found the wallet about ten yards from the sheet-metal fence?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Thank you, Mr. Whittaker.”

The elderly man was bewildered. An usher beckoned him down from the witness stand. Was that it? He was led to the back of the court and found a seat.

Fingerprints is another discipline the Met contracts out to civilian experts and one of these was Mr. Clive Adams.

He described the wallet that had been delivered to him; the three sets of prints he had found; how he had eliminated those of the finder, Mr. Whittaker, and those of the owner, now dead.

And how he had matched the third set exactly to those of Harry Cornish. Mr. Vansittart rose.

“Any smudges?”

“Some.”

“How are smudges caused, Mr. Adams?”

“Well, one fingerprint imposed over another will cause a smudge that cannot be used in evidence. Or rubbing against another surface.”

“Like the inside of a pocket?”

“Yes.”

“Which were the clearest prints?”

“Those of Mr. Whittaker and Mr. Cornish.”

“And they were on the outside of the wallet?”

“Yes, but two prints from Cornish were inside, on the inner faces.”

“So, those of Mr. Whittaker were imposed on the plastic when he held the wallet in his hand and never smudged by being shoved inside a tight pocket?”

“So it would seem.”

“And those of Mr. Cornish were also imposed in the same way and also remained clear because after that point the wallet was not rubbed against the fabric of an inside pocket?”

“So it would seem.”

“If a man, running from the scene of a mugging, opened the wallet, plucked from it all its contents, then shoved the wallet into the rear pocket of his jeans, it would have his clear prints on the outer cover of the plastic?”

“Yes, it would.”

“But would the denim fabric, the tightness of jeans pockets and the running motion, blue those prints within, say, half a mile?”

“That might be the effect.”

“So, if our runner half a mile later plucks the empty wallet from his rear pocket with forefinger and thumb in order to throw it away, he would leave just that forefinger and thumb print for you to find?”

“Yes.”

“But if a finder came along and so covered the plastic surface with his own prints, could he not over-smudge the forefinger and thumb?”

“I suppose he might.”

“You see, your report says that there were some smudges, over-covered by fresher prints, that could have come from another hand.”

“They are only smudges. The prints under the smudges could also be those of the owner or Cornish.”

In the back of the court Jack Burns’s stomach turned. Miss. Verity Armitage. She had picked up the fallen wallet from the floor of her flower shop.