A Matter for the Jury Read online

  A MATTER FOR THE JURY

  1964 brings fresh challenges to Ben Schroeder, now a member of Chambers headed by Bernard Wesley QC. A courting couple have been attacked on the banks of the River Ouse near Ely. The news of the beating, rape and murder soon become January’s sensational headlines.

  Schroeder is called to assist the defence but lead QC, Martin Hardcastle, has a reputation that goes before him. As the pressure mounts, talk of alcoholism fills the courtroom with Hardcastle’s repeated absences and seemingly reckless actions risking the support of his team. And when a shock decision is made, it is left to Ben and his colleague, Jess, to deal with the consequences.

  With the case drawing mass media attention and public opinion turning against capital punishment, Schroeder must once again face the prejudice, scandal and corruption of the brutal courtroom reality and its verdict on the fate of a man’s life.

  After graduating from Cambridge University Peter Murphy spent a career in the law, as an advocate and teacher, both in England and the United States. His legal work included a number of years in The Hague as defence counsel at the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal. He lives with his wife, Chris, in Cambridgeshire.

  About the Author

  Critical acclaim

  Critical acclaim for Removal

  ‘A brilliant thriller by a striking new talent. Murphy cracks open the US Constitution like a walnut. This is Seven Days in May for the 21st Century’– Clem Chambers, author of the Jim Evans thrillers

  ‘Peter Murphy’s debut Removal introduces an exciting talent in the thriller genre. Murphy skilfully builds tension in sharp prose. When murder threatens the security of the most powerful nation in the world, the stakes are high!’

  – Leigh Russell, author of the Geraldine Steel mysteries

  Critical acclaim for A Higher Duty

  ‘A gripping page-turner. A compelling and disturbing tale of English law courts, lawyers, and their clients, told with the authenticity that only an insider like Murphy can deliver. The best read I’ve come across in a long time’ – David Ambrose

  ‘Weighty and impressive’ – Barry Forshaw, Crime Time

  ‘An absorbing read’ – Mystery People

  ‘A very satisfying read’ – Fiction is Stranger than Fact

  His ‘racy legal thrillers lift the lid on sex and racial prejudice at the bar’ – Hugh Muir, Guardian

  ‘If anyone’s looking for the next big courtroom drama… look no further. Murphy is your man’– Paul Magrath, The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting Blog

  ‘Peter Murphy’s novel is an excellent read from start to finish and highly recommended’ – Historical Novel Review

  ‘This beautifully written book had me captivated from start to finish’ – Old Dogs and New Tricks

  Also by Peter Murphy

  Removal (2012)

  Test of Resolve (2014)

  The Ben Schroeder series

  A Higher Duty (2013)

  Title

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the judges, barristers and solicitors who, at such cost to their own lives and well-being, undertook the extraordinary burden of dealing with capital murder cases in this country before the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965.

  1

  January 1964

  The Fenstanton lock keeper’s house was the only home Billy Cottage had ever known. The house stood by itself on a small plot of muddy, barren ground, less than a hundred yards from the lock. The lock lay about half a mile from Fenstanton and about a mile from St Ives, as the crow flies – though neither the river nor the walkways along its banks followed a path anything like the crow. Billy’s father, Tommy, had been the Fenstanton lock keeper for more than thirty years. Billy and his sister Eve, two years his junior, had been born in the house to Tommy and his wife, Marjorie, and had never lived even a minute of their lives anywhere else. Tommy had died suddenly, some seven years earlier, followed in a matter of months by Marjorie. No one inquired into the two relatively early deaths, both almost certainly the result of years of heavy drinking, and as no one seemed to object or suggest any alternative, Billy simply took over his father’s role as lock keeper. He was now 28 years of age.

  The house was a small two-storey stone structure with a grey tiled roof, the exterior walls painted in a rough off-white cement paint. At the rear was a garden, marked off by a low brick wall, in which someone more enterprising than Billy might have grown vegetables, or at least flowers. The ground floor consisted of a living room and kitchen, with a storage area under the stairs. Upstairs were two bedrooms, separated by an airing cupboard. The airing cupboard also housed the geyser, which supplied the house with modest quantities of hot water. The walls of the living room and bedrooms were papered, in green or blue floral patterns; the doors varnished in a dark brown. The wallpaper was faded and torn, the plaster crumbling, and the window panes cracked in places. Billy had no idea how long the house had looked like this, though it was certainly for as long as he could remember. The only improvement made during his lifetime had been made by Tommy, who had converted the outside earth closet at the rear of the house into a water closet, a venture which seemed to exhaust all the energy and money he had to spend on the house. Its exposed position made it vulnerable to the bone-chilling east winds which blew in from the fens in winter. Even in summer it was rarely warm.

  The lock keeper’s work was hard. His main duty was to open and close the gates of the lock, and control the sluices. When a craft arrived, the pilot would summon him by ringing a large school bell affixed to a post by the gate. The pilot would pay the fee, manoeuvre his craft in and out of the lock, and be on his way. That was the easy part. There was no money to pay other workers to cut back the reeds or shovel away the silt, tasks which must be performed diligently for the river to remain navigable. Already, parts of the Great Ouse upstream towards Northamptonshire, where the river rose, were almost impassable; and long stretches towards the Wash, where it ran to sea, were difficult for larger craft. Tommy had taken it upon himself to work the banks for almost a quarter of a mile, upstream and downstream of his lock. The St Ives keeper did the same on the opposite bank and, between them, they kept their section of the river flowing between the infrequent visits of the dredging barges sent by the Great Ouse Catchment Board.

  Neither Billy nor Eve had received much in the way of education. Billy was too useful to Tommy to be wasted on something with as little practical value as reading and writing, and he was always in trouble for playing truant. He was cutting back reeds by the age of seven. At ten he could help with the removal of silt. At twelve he could operate the lock just as well as Tommy and, in the case of an unpowered barge, he would assist the pilot in guiding his horse along the tow path in and out of the lock. Trade had slowed during the years when Tommy was keeper, and even before. Ever since the coming of the railways, river traffic had been in decline. The Great Ouse had fared better than some waterways, and some commercial traffic still continued. There was a slowly increasing volume of leisure traffic. But few locks had full-time keepers now. It was difficult to eke out a decent living and, within a year or two of taking over, Billy found himself working evenings behind the bar at pubs in St Ives to make some extra cash.

  Eve kept house and looked after Billy. It had never occurred to her to move away from home. At primary school she had been labelled ‘slow’, based on no particular evidence, by a teacher who found her natural quietness disturbing. It was a label Eve and her family had accepted without critical inquiry as an accident of life. Every day she did the housework, put on a clean dress, and went shopping for the essentials in Fenstan
ton or St Ives, walking both ways, and carrying her purchases in large cotton shopping bags. She prepared Billy’s supper before he went to St Ives and was in bed by eight.

  2

  What Billy liked most about working in pubs was that it got him out of the house during the quiet evenings, when the memories returned with a particular vengeance. There was not much to do at home in the evenings. There was an old, temperamental wireless set which picked up signals spasmodically, but the programmes rarely interested him. His reading skills were limited. He could thread his way painstakingly through a simply written book, but he did not often find the patience for it in the dim gas lighting – Tommy had never seen the point in installing electric lights. It was easier for Billy to follow the example he had been set. Whisky was not a cheap commodity. He assumed that the nameless hooch Tommy and Marjorie had drunk every night must have been cheaper. No doubt it was produced locally, but Tommy had never divulged the source. So Billy had to hoard some money away for whisky or, occasionally, persuade a colleague at the pub to turn a blind eye while a bottle vanished from the cellar. But it was during those long evenings at home, with only the silent Eve and his bottle for company, that the memories were at their most potent.

  It was not that sex had ever been much of a mystery to either Billy or Eve. Tommy and Marjorie had sex several times a week after two or three hours of drinking hooch, and never made any secret of it. Often they left the door of their bedroom open. Billy and Eve shared the other bedroom, occupying single beds. There was nowhere else for them to sleep. When the noise woke them up, they would often creep along the short stretch of corridor and peer in through the open door, to see Tommy and Marjorie naked on the bed, the covers thrown back, in the throes, or immediate aftermath, of sexual intercourse. Marjorie’s usual reaction, on seeing the children at the door, was to laugh. Sometimes she would seize Tommy’s penis and wave it in their direction.

  ‘Look at that,’ she would say. ‘Daddy’s giving Mummy a right bloody seeing to, isn’t he? Isn’t Mummy a lucky girl?’

  ‘Shut up, you silly bitch,’ Tommy would say. But this only made Marjorie laugh even more.

  But the memories that truly disturbed Billy were of what came later. Later, when Marjorie was asleep, Tommy would start the singing. Tommy was a Lincolnshire man and made a show of being proud of it, though he had not returned to his native county once during the thirty-five years before his death. As a Lincolnshire man, more than any other song, he liked the Lincolnshire Poacher. Tommy knew every verse, of course, and as a child Billy could sing each one with him. But now he remembered only the first and the last.

  When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire,

  Full well I served my master for nigh on seven years,

  Till I took up to poaching, as you shall quickly hear,

  Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year.

  Success to every gentleman that lives in Lincolnshire,

  Success to every poacher that wants to sell a hare,

  Bad luck to every gamekeeper that will not sell his deer,

  Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year.

  Often Tommy would sing during the day, while operating the lock or shovelling silt. But what Billy and Eve remembered most clearly was when he sang late at night. They would hear him singing softly as he lifted himself quietly out of bed, and during the short walk from his bedroom to theirs. When it started, Billy could never recall. It was a long time ago, that was certain. Eve could not have been more than ten or eleven. But once it started, it happened so often that no one occasion stood out particularly. Tommy would wear a cotton dressing gown, under which he was naked. He would point towards Billy’s bed.

  ‘You – turn the other way and go to sleep,’ he would command Billy. ‘Or else.’

  Billy would turn the other way as commanded, but of course, as soon as Tommy’s attention was fully fixed on Eve, his curiosity made him turn back quietly to watch. The pattern never varied very much. First, Tommy would take off his dressing gown. By that time, if Eve had been asleep before, she would be wide awake. And the whole time, the singing, now almost a whisper.

  When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire,

  Full well I served my master for nigh on seven years,…

  He would take off Eve’s nightdress and underwear and pull back the covers on her bed.

  ‘You are such a special girl. You are Daddy’s little princess.’

  Then he would kiss her, up and down her body, as she lay in place on her back, frozen and motionless.

  ‘Daddy’s little princess. Be a good girl for Daddy. You know what Daddy likes, don’t you?’

  Till I took up to poaching as you shall quickly hear,

  Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year.

  Then he would take her frozen hand, unclench her fingers, which she held stiff without actively resisting, and place them where he wanted them. She never tried to remove them, but neither did she actively cooperate, so Tommy had to put his hand over hers and move it up and down until he was satisfied. When she was about twelve, he began to vary it sometimes by pulling Eve up off the bed and bringing her head down to his groin. Billy would see him holding her hair and moving her head up and down until his body suddenly went limp, he released her hair, and her body sank back down on to her bed.

  ‘You are such a perfect little girl. Daddy’s little princess.’

  Once she was about thirteen, and her breasts had grown nicely, he began to lie down on top of her, just as he did with Marjorie.

  Success to every gentleman that lives in Lincolnshire,

  Success to every poacher that wants to sell a hare…

  When it came time to return to the marital bed, he would place a finger over her lips.

  ‘Remember, princess, this is our secret. No one must ever know. My beautiful little princess.’

  They would hear his footsteps retreat along the corridor outside.

  Bad luck to every gamekeeper that will not sell his deer,

  Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year.

  Billy could never remember whether he had ever heard Eve protest or complain. If she ever had, she gave up at an early stage. She never cried, and she appeared to go to sleep soon after Tommy left. Whether his mother ever knew about Daddy giving Eve a right bloody seeing to, Billy never knew. If she did, he never heard her mention it, nor did he detect any change in her behaviour towards his father. Having no other frame of reference, Billy concluded that what he had witnessed must be normal behaviour for men and women. After all, his parents made no secret of it. Marjorie obviously enjoyed what Tommy did, so perhaps Eve did too. When this view took shape in his mind, Billy was seventeen and struggling to deal with his own emerging sexual desires. One night it seemed to him natural enough to approach Eve himself. She did not seem surprised, and cooperated by undressing herself and guiding him inside her.

  ‘I like it better with you,’ she told him, as he left her bed to return to his own. ‘You don’t smell of drink.’ It was the only comment she ever made to him about it.

  Billy’s insight into human sexuality was now fully developed.

  * * *

  For some years, Billy had no real opportunity to meet women other than Eve and his mother. By the time his parents died, he and Eve had settled into a comfortable routine. But when he began to see young women in the pubs in St Ives, it seemed obvious that, just like Eve, they would be freely available to him if only he could arrange the right circumstances. Often the young women would be with young men. But Billy had no reason to see that as a drawback. The young woman would surely be available if he wanted her. He watched many of these couples closely, and sometimes followed them along the street when they left the pub.

  One evening he followed a young couple for about half a mile
to the girl’s home. They kissed and cuddled for a few minutes on the doorstep while Billy watched from behind a tree. When the young man left, Billy approached the house and hid in some bushes in the garden to the left of the front door. It was not the first time he had kept watch on a house, but it was the first time he had any real luck. A few minutes later the girl appeared at the window of an upstairs room, no doubt her bedroom. Billy watched, fascinated, as she undressed in the most natural way imaginable, utterly oblivious to his presence. She seated herself, naked, at a dressing table, still clearly visible. By now, Billy had unbuttoned his flies and was touching himself as she began to remove her make-up. He was summoning up his nerve to knock on the door and ask if he could come in. He was so absorbed that he failed to notice the approach of PC Willis. The officer happened on the scene purely by chance in the course of a routine patrol and, in the stillness of the evening, easily spotted the movement in the bushes as he cycled past. As he got closer, he distinctly heard the whispered tones of a verse of the Lincolnshire Poacher, which struck him as odd.

  Having put his hand on Billy’s shoulder, PC Willis thought briefly about what to do. Willis was an old-fashioned copper who believed in dealing with situations as quietly as possible and not getting people into too much trouble if it could be avoided. If Billy had been a teenager, he would have given him a clip around the ear and warned him not to do it again. But at his age, Willis thought with regret, that wouldn’t do. He might move on to something more serious; he needed a bit more of a lesson. So he arrested Billy, charged him with indecent exposure, and kept him in a cell overnight. The next morning he took Billy to the magistrates’ court, where Billy pleaded guilty to the charge and was conditionally discharged for twelve months. Eve did not ask where he had been. Billy told her that he had had a couple of drinks too many at the pub and had spent the night there rather than trying to walk home.