His girlfriend, the stunningly attractive Ginny Jensen, clung tightly to his arm, and she too responded professionally to the cameras, her radiant — but fixed — smile and catwalk looks and figure being captured for posterity.
Flanking Sweetman on the other side was his solicitor, Bradley Grant, smooth and smart.
‘Mr Sweetman, do you have any comments to make?’ one journalist yelled, pushing a tiny microphone into his face.
‘What do you think of the police?’ screamed another.
‘Are you actually guilty or not?’ ventured another one.
‘Please, please,’ his solicitor intervened placatingly. ‘Can we have some decorum here?’
Cameras flashed. Sweetman and Ginny posed. Even more flashes.
In the background the armed cops who had been providing protection for the proceedings were being withdrawn from their positions.
Grant shushed everyone. ‘I have a short, prepared statement to make and there will be nothing more said today from Mr Sweetman. . if you please, gentlemen, ladies.’ The solicitor, revelling in the attention, surveyed the assembled media until some sort of quiet came about. Then he started to read from a sheet of paper. ‘I have always maintained my innocence in this matter and also that I was unfairly charged with the offence of a murder I did not commit. May I just say that my condolences go out to the family of Jackson Hazell.’ Grant paused for effect. ‘The police have shown that they are out to get me at whatever cost and I have now shown that their procedures are flawed and very suspect. All I can say is that justice has been done and my absolute faith in the legal system of this fine country remains unshakeable. I will be consulting my legal advisor about how to progress this matter further and, rest assured, it will be progressed.’ Grant folded up the hastily prepared statement with finality. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you would be so kind. Mr Sweetman has been in custody for almost nine months now. He wishes to bring some normality back to his life by returning home to his loved ones and friends so that he can pick up the threads of his shattered life, so cruelly overturned by the vindictiveness of certain police officers.’
Sweetman and his lady friend moved forwards. The journalists and photographers surged towards them, more flash-lights popping, more questions being barked. One newspaperman pushed to the front of the throng and stuck a mike under Sweetman’s nose. It was the same one who had posed the question about Sweetman’s guilt.
‘Mr Sweetman, is it true that the question of your guilt still remains?’ he probed. ‘The police procedure may well be flawed here, but that doesn’t actually mean you are not guilty, does it?’
Sweetman caught the man’s eye and stopped abruptly, dragging his girlfriend to a ragged halt. ‘You saying I’m guilty? I was fitted up.’
‘I’m saying the question of your guilt still remains.’
Sweetman’s solicitor laid a restraining hand on his client’s bicep.
‘My client is not guilty. . that is our final word on the subject. . Come on, let us through.’
Sweetman allowed himself to be urged through the melee, though he kept staring angrily at the journalist who had been so unwise as to ask him that question.
A large stretch limousine was waiting in the car park, hastily rented for the occasion. Sweetman and Ginny dropped into the back seats, whilst Grant jumped into the front passenger seat. The driver, one of Sweetman’s men, accelerated away.
Sweetman leaned back, closing the partition, exhaling an extended sigh as the overlong car whisked him through the streets of Lancaster. ‘Now,’ he said, draping an arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders, ‘there’s a few people I’ll be wanting to slap.’
Detective Superintendent Carl Easton and the DS who had been sat with him at court, a guy called Hamlet, were sitting low in their car, watching the exit and flashy drive-off of Sweetman from the Crown Court.
‘The implications are worrying,’ Easton said. ‘I thought we had him stitched. . Fuck!’
‘Yeah,’ Hamlet said quietly.
‘There’ll be an investigation, probably some other force.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Yeah.’
‘We need to think about how we’re going to sort him out, we need to find out who let the defence know about these alleged other suspects. That’s an internal thing, got to be.’ Easton was counting out the things that needed doing on his fingers, but stopped when Hamlet sniggered. ‘What’s so funny?’ Easton was not laughing. He was enraged.
‘Just thinking about “other suspects”,’ he said.
‘What other suspects?’
‘Exactly,’ Hamlet said firmly. ‘What other suspects?’
Easton sighed a long and very exaggerated sigh, then glowered sideways at Hamlet. ‘There were no other suspects.’
‘I know that, you know that, but nobody else knows it.’
Easton huffed through his nostrils. ‘We should’ve taken the time to cover that one,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s bloody obvious that Sweetman got people to call in about the other suspects. I mean, we knew that at the time, but we should’ve gone through the process of eliminating them properly, blowing them out of the water. But we got complacent and thought we could bury it, but I should’ve known the defence would uncover the phone calls. I shouldn’t be surprised.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, the thing is, we know exactly who was guilty of the murder, don’t we?’
Hamlet shrunk back into his seat. ‘Yes we do,’ he muttered uncomfortably.
‘And it wasn’t our friend Mr Sweetman, was it, even though we did our best to prove it was.’
The articulated lorry thundered down the M62 motorway towards Leeds, Whitlock at the wheel. He was trying to put as much distance between himself and the Port of Hull as possible. Something told him that if he stopped or slowed down, the authorities would catch him up.
What he did not know was that it would have been much better for him to have been caught by the authorities.
The M62 was horrendously busy on the stretch between the east coast and Leeds, and no doubt would be all the way from Leeds to Manchester. It was one of the most congested and turgid motorways in the country and Karl Donaldson held out no hope for a speedy journey, even in the 4x4 Jeep he was driving. He went as fast as possible from tailback to tailback, happy to be passing the slow-moving heavies in the first lane. At least it would be comfortable and the musical accompaniment was first rate — a selection which included the country of Dwight Yoakam, the edge of the Stones and the melody of McFly, who were his eldest daughter’s favourite of the moment.
Donaldson had thought about travelling back to London that same day, but decided against it. Instead he was going to nip across the breadth of the country (although he soon realized that no one ‘nipped’ anywhere by way of the M62) to see an old friend on spec. He phoned his wife, Karen, and told her he would be home the following day. The tone of his voice made her say, ‘It didn’t go well, did it?’
‘You know me so well.’
‘So you’re hoping for a shoulder to cry on and a beer to alleviate the symptoms,’ she laughed.
‘You know me so well.’
Donaldson’s mind strayed briefly to the woman detective back in Hull, as he drove. Hm. . he had taken her up on her offer of coffee, knowing full well where it could have led, or at least where she wanted it to lead, but he’d done a runner even before the cappuccino, much to her dismay. Since taking his marriage vows he had remained faithful to Karen and had no plans to ever stray from that worthy path.
The lengthy roadworks on the motorway between Leeds and Manchester slowed traffic down even more, with three lanes being filtered into one for a four-mile stretch near to Rochdale. Huge, creeping and often stationary queues were formed in both directions.
Whitlock needed a stress break. He was still tense and his middle-aged heart was smashing hard against his chest wall, even now, two hours west of Hull. If it continued he thought he would explode internally and it would be a gory mess.