A Question of Identity (3 page)

The trial continues.

The best one was the one in the chair. The one who was already awake. That was the best, no question.

29 MAY, 2002

‘
WHAT DO YOU
reckon?’

It was warm outside, sun, blue sky. The trees round the perimeter of the Crown Court building were bright fresh green.

Charlie Vogt and Rod Hawkins sat on a low wall out of the press of people near the main doors, with plastic cups of coffee and Hawkins with his usual hand-rolled. Charlie was local, Rod Hawkins senior crime reporter for the
Mail
. They went back a decade, to the dilapidated old Crown Court building in Barnsley Square and several high-profile murder trials, but this was the biggest here for some years. Television, radio, every national paper as well as the agencies and the regional press were represented, a couple were doing updates as the trial had rolled on. They were nearing the end now, prosecution and defence had put their cases, the judge had summed up and instructed the jury, who had gone out the previous afternoon, and were still out. It was twenty minutes to three.

Charlie swigged his coffee. ‘I reckon the same as you reckon, don’t I?’

‘I reckon you do.’

‘Felt sorry for the defence – but then you always do in these open-and-shut jobs. Hiding to nothing.’

‘Didn’t think he was that strong actually.’

‘Oh come on, he saw the forensics woman off a treat. Love it when they pull bloody experts apart.’

‘“Dr Culshaw, would you please tell the court on what basis you and your expert colleagues have decided that the odds of the DNA from samples from the accused and the cat is one in two hundred million? How many feline DNA samples have been tested?”’

‘“Members of the jury, can you be certain, beyond all reasonable doubt, that you can rely on this new, emerging and so far unproven and previously untested type of evidence? If you cannot then you are under a duty to acquit.”’

Rod dragged on the last of his disintegrating roll-up. ‘Right, that was a good left hook on one dodgy expert . . . come on.’

‘Oh I know, I know. He’s guilty as hell, I just like it when I see a defence come out fighting. He had her in a corner.’

‘Bugger it though, Charlie . . . you got any elderly rellies?’

‘Nah. My mum died ten years ago, breast cancer, Dad remarried, lives in Tenerife. You?’

‘Too right I have, my mum is eighty-one, her sisters are, what, eighty and eighty-three, something like that, and they’re looking to sheltered housing, got their names on lists. We’ve encouraged it – there are some smashing places not far from Pete and me, we’d make sure Mum and Aunt Lil were all right – the other’s up in Liverpool. But now what? The old girls are out of their minds with fretting about all this and I don’t blame them. Think about it. Locked and bolted, alarm by the bed, all tucked up and he slides in through the bedroom window, not a peep . . .’

‘What do you reckon about the wife?’

‘Shitting herself, what else?’

‘I bet there’s a record somewhere – she rang the emergencies when he’d been having a go. She’s terrified of him.’

‘Weasely little bugger as well.’

‘Not sure I agree . . . Easy to read something into how they look when you know they’ve murdered old ladies but he’s not that bad-looking actually. He’s not stupid either.’

‘Psychopaths aren’t stupid.’

‘Is he one?’

‘Murdering three defenceless old women in their beds
without any motive other than his own sick enjoyment? Not a psychopath?’

‘Take your point. I wonder how it started? Where do these things start? Nothing – then three in a row. Come on! Got to be more to it.’

‘Something back then. Always is. He had a witch for a gran. That’s what he’ll come up with, on appeal.’

‘No chance.’

‘None. You know, doing this job, you get a bit blasé.’

Rod shook his head. ‘There’s always one though.’

‘That’s what I mean. You get blasé until someone like Keyes comes along and you get the creeps just looking at him, knowing what he’s done, hearing it all. You never get used to the worst of them.’

‘My dad did this job. Sat through the whole Moors murderers trial for the
News
and
Star
. It did for him. He said he knew he’d never get it out of his head. He used to brood about it. Really did for him.’

‘I bet. Jeez.’

‘They’re going back in . . .’

Rod crushed his plastic cup and threw it in a bin as they walked towards the steps. People were pushing back through the doors, relatives of the dead women easily picked out by the way they hung back in separate little groups, by the dead look in their eyes, the way it had left its marks on their faces. Grey-suited CID, having a last quick drag on a cigarette. The press pack, trying to stay near the back, ready to exit fast and phone in the verdict when it came.

Charlie Vogt held the door open to let in a woman he knew from CID. She nodded to the defendant who had just come back into the dock and made a face. Alan Frederick Keyes. Not bad-looking. Charlie wanted to ask her for a woman’s opinion but there was no chance, she’d gone along the benches. Besides, was it relevant? He had the blood of three elderly women victims on his hands. What else mattered except that he’d be leaving that dock and going down for life? Charlie felt a spurt of bile come into his mouth. Once in a while, anger and loathing turned your stomach.

The door bumped to immediately behind him, deadening the murmur from outside, where the news that the jury was back had filtered out. The TV cameras were getting ready, furry mikes swaying on their extension rods. Beyond them, the crowd had filled out, the news having travelled like magic to those who had just been waiting to hear and then shout, punch the air, call Keyes every filthy name they knew. The murders of little children and old ladies – it brought the mass hatred out and roaring like nothing else.

In the street beyond, cars slowed, even a bus, faces peered out before the lights went green again. Police stood about, arms folded, watching, waiting to hold back the rush when the prison van emerged later, Alan Keyes in the back, cowering as fists thudded on the metal sides.

I read about this Russian. He was fine but then when there was a full moon – or maybe it was a new moon? – no, a full moon, definitely – when that came, he went mad inside, he had to do it, that was when his head was bursting.

THE COURT WAS
full to overflowing, the public benches packed. Charlie and Rod stood pressed against the doors poised like greyhounds in the slips.

You never got over it, Charlie thought, your blood pressure went up with the tension and the excitement. Better than any film, better than any book. There was just nothing to beat it, watching the drama of the court, eyes on the face of the accused when the word rang out. Guilty. The look of the relatives, as they flushed with joy, relief, exhaustion. And then the tears. These were the final moments when he knew why he was in his job. Every time.

Alan Keyes stood, face pale, eyes down, his police minder impassive.

Charlie’s throat constricted suddenly as he looked at him, looked at his hands on the rail. Normal hands. Nothing ugly, nothing out of the ordinary. Not a strangler’s hands, whatever they were supposed to look like. But the hands, resting on the rail, hands like his own, one beside the other resting on the rail, resting on the . . . those hands had . . . Charlie did not think of himself as hard-boiled but you did get accustomed. But nothing prepared you for the first time you saw the man in front of you, ordinary, innocent until proved guilty, however clear his guilt was, nothing prepared you for the sight of a man like Keyes, there in the flesh, a man who had strangled three elderly women. Nothing. He couldn’t actually look at Keyes at all now.

The lawyers sat together, shuffling papers, fiddling with box lids, not looking at one another, not murmuring. Just waiting.

And then the door opened and they were filing back, concentrating on taking their seats, faces showing the strain, or else blank and showing nothing at all. Seven women, five men. Charlie was struck by the expression on the face of the first woman, young with dark hair pulled tightly back, bright red scarf round her neck. She looked desperate – desperate to get out? Desperate because she was afraid? Desperate not to catch the eye of the man in the dock, the ordinary-looking man with the unremarkable hands who had strangled three old women? Charlie watched as she sat down and stared straight ahead of her, glazed, tired. What had she done to deserve the past nine days, hearing appalling things, looking at terrible images? Been a citizen. Nothing else. He had often wondered how people like her coped when it had all been forgotten, but the images and the accounts wouldn’t leave their heads. Once you knew something you couldn’t un-know it. His Dad had tried to un-know what he’d learned about Hindley and Brady for years afterwards.

‘All rise.’

The court murmured; the murmur faded. Everything went still. Every eye focused on the jury benches.

In the centre of the public benches a knot of elderly women sat together. Two had their hands on one another’s arms. Even across the room, Charlie Vogt could see a pulse jumping in the neck of one, the pallor of her neighbour. Behind them, two middle-aged couples, one with a young woman. He knew relatives when he saw them, very quiet, very still, desperate for this to be over, to see justice being done. Hang in there, he willed them, a few minutes and then you walk away, to try and put your lives back together.

Schoolteacher, he thought, as the foreman of the jury stood. Bit young, no more than early thirties. Several of them looked even younger. When he’d done jury service himself, several years ago now, there had only been two women and the men had all been late-middle-aged.

‘Have you reached a verdict on all three counts?’

‘Yes.’

‘On the first count, do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?’ The first murder, of Carrie Gage.

Charlie realised that he was clenching his hand, digging his nails into the palm.

‘Not guilty.’

The intake of breath was like a sigh round the room.

‘Is this a unanimous verdict?’

‘Yes.’

‘On the second count of murder, do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?’ Sarah Pearce.

‘Not guilty.’

The murmur was faint, like a tide coming in. Charlie glanced at the faces of the legal teams. Impassive except for the junior barrister of the defence who had put her hand briefly to her mouth.

‘Is this verdict unanimous?’

‘Yes.’

‘On the third count, do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?’

His Honour Judge Palmer was sitting very straight, hands out of sight, expression unreadable.

‘Not guilty.’

‘Is –’

The gavel came down hard on the bench and the judge’s voice roared out: ‘Order. There must be silence for the clerk to finish his question to the foreman of the jury and for him to reply. If there is not I will clear this court immediately.’ Judge Palmer’s eye glittered. ‘These are the gravest moments of the entire trial and the court
must
remain silent. Will the clerk now please ask his final question and the foreman give his reply?’

‘Is this verdict unanimous?’

The foreman had been composed. Now, briefly, he looked terrified. ‘Yes.’

The court erupted.

Charlie caught Rod Hawkins’s eye as they both made for the doors through the crowd, trying to beat the rest of the press pack to it. By the time they were outside, the news was ahead of them, the corridors and front lobby of the building seething with people relaying the verdict. The few police on duty outside
were calling for backup and getting into position to restrain the crowd and prevent them surging into the front area.

Charlie Vogt stood on the steps listening to the sound of anger that was growing, becoming a roar, like a tide racing in towards the court building.

Rod was beside him. ‘What the fuck . . . That lot are baying for blood. What’s going on in there?’

Without consulting one another, they headed back down the corridor, weaving and dodging through the crowd coming out, others standing about the hall in stunned groups, briefs charging past, gowns flying.

By the time they reached the doors of Court Number 1 the mass of people had left, driven out by the officials. Alan Keyes stood in the centre of a knot of police and clerks, his defence counsel and the rest of the team behind.

‘You can’t stop me,’ Keyes was shouting, his eyes swerving round the group, to the clerk, to the uniforms, to anyone who could hear him. ‘I’m a free man, didn’t you bloody hear? Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. He said so.’ He pointed to the empty jury benches, then round to the judge’s chair. ‘Not guilty. I’m a free man and I’m going out there to tell them so, I’m walking out those gates, I’m discharged, and you can’t hold me in here.’

The police stood conferring. The barristers looked troubled.

Charlie and Rod stood by the doorway, their presence not noticed in the scrum.

‘He’s right,’ Charlie said.

‘If he goes out through those doors he’ll get torn apart.’

‘Get the fuck out of my way, clod.’ Keyes lurched forward and took a swing at the copper. The blow made no contact, but within seconds Keyes’s hands were behind his back and cuffed. In the middle of yells and curses of protest, he was cautioned by one officer and restrained by two others.

‘Gotcha,’ Rod said. ‘Though they can’t hold him for a fist that didn’t connect.’

But Charlie Vogt was already sprinting for the doors.

She had sandals on with a mended strap which came apart as she ran so that she tripped and almost fell on her face, but didn’t
quite, recovered, ran on. She had never moved so fast; she felt like a rugby player dodging this one coming towards her, then that one, then a knot of them together. She ducked and dived, banged her arm against the corridor wall, dodged again, almost pushing over a man carrying a pile of boxes, hearing them crash to the floor as she went on, through a pair of swing doors, down a long corridor where there were fewer people, right to the end, down a short flight of steps. Then there was only the sound of her own running footsteps, the broken sandal slapping unevenly on the tiled floor. She had no idea where she was going but somehow she’d get out, even if it was much later, when they’d all gone. When he’d gone. She’d find an empty room and stay there until the place went quiet, people had all left for home, then try. Nobody would notice her.