And, with that dire warning still ringing in their ears, the twelve trooped out of the court.
As on most nights during the trial, I went home by taxi to the Old Forge.
This waiting and not knowing was interminable torture but, if it was bad for me, it must be so much worse for Joe. I almost felt sorry for him, but only almost. He had brought all of this on himself. I just hoped that the jury could see through his lies and protestations.
I kicked my heels around the house all evening and wondered if I would still be living here a year from now. My love for the place had evaporated on that October morning, and it had never returned.
Maybe I’d move back to London.
A new home? A new job? A new life?
Same old heartache.
I tried to watch some television but I was too nervous to concentrate. I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. By the early hours, when I finally dozed off, I had convinced myself that the jury would find him innocent.
What would I do then?
By lunchtime of the second day of jury deliberation, I was almost climbing the walls with tension, fear and frustration, at least I would have been if my legs had been working correctly. As it was, I couldn’t even pace up and down properly to rid myself of the nervous energy.
Why was the jury taking so long? What were they doing in there?
Midway through the afternoon, the judge called them back into court to ask how things were going and whether it was likely that they would be able to reach a decision on which they were all agreed.
The foreman stood up. He was the man who had been in shorts and flip-flops for much of the trial but now was wearing a sober shirt and trousers, maybe in deference to his position. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think we may be able to reach verdicts if given a little more time.’
So the judge sent them back to the jury room.
And his intervention must have galvanised their thinking because, less than an hour later, word came through that the jury were ready with their verdicts.
I wasn’t.
My heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and, as I took my seat in the court, I could hardly breathe.
Everyone took their allotted places and, when all were ready, the jury were brought in.
Douglas had told me that he reckoned he could always tell if the jury were going to give a ‘not guilty’ verdict. ‘They will look at the defendant,’ he’d said. ‘If it’s guilty they tend to keep their eyes down.’
But I couldn’t tell however hard I tried by watching them walk in. Most of them just looked at the judge.
When they were all seated, the clerk of the court stood up and turned to them. ‘Would the foreman of the jury please stand.’
He did so.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ said the clerk. ‘Have you reached verdicts on the indictments upon which you are all agreed?
‘Yes,’ replied the foreman.
‘To my next questions,’ said the clerk, ‘only answer guilty or not guilty: on count one, theft, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’
‘Not guilty.’
NOT GUILTY!
I couldn’t believe my ears. Were the jury stupid or something? Hadn’t they been listening? How could they not find him guilty based on the evidence?
I glanced briefly at Joe in the dock and he was smiling.
I felt sick.
I could hear the blood rushing in my head and my hands were shaking. Was this all going to be for nothing?
But the court clerk moved swiftly on regardless.
‘On count two, attempted murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’
‘Guilty.’
I hardly heard it, such was my panic. I looked again at Joe. He wasn’t smiling now. And we weren’t finished yet.
‘On count three, murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’
I held my breath and my heart pounded even more. I really had no idea which way it would go.
The foreman stood bolt upright facing the judge.
‘Guilty.’
It felt to me that he had said it in slow motion, the word seemingly stretched over several seconds.
I started breathing again, letting out a small sigh of satisfaction.
But the reaction from the dock was far more dramatic.
Joe stood up and banged on the glass with his hands while shouting at the jury. ‘No. No. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. I never killed her. It was him.’ He pointed at me. ‘He killed her. It wasn’t me. He did it.’
The two security guards in the dock moved quickly to either side of Joe and they manhandled him back into his seat, where he sat in a heap.
He started crying.
The judge just watched and waited for calm to be restored. Contrary to popular belief, judges in British courts don’t have gavels to bang as they do in the United States.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said finally, facing them. ‘Thank you for your diligence in this trial and for doing your duty as citizens. You are hereby discharged.’
Then he turned to the body of the court.
‘This case is now adjourned until tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock, when sentence will be passed.’
After all that waiting, the verdicts had been over so quickly.
It felt surreal.
‘All rise,’ shouted the usher and we all did, except for Joe, who remained seated with his head down. He was then led away by the security guards, out through the door at the back of the dock.
I watched him being taken away with a mixed bag of emotions: disbelief that he had been found not guilty of the theft; pleasure that he’d at least been convicted of murder and attempted murder; anger at what he’d done to Amelia; plus a huge amount of sorrow.
And the sorrow won.
How had we come to this?
Joe and I had once been good friends, so much so that I had nearly asked him to be my best man at my wedding. And Amelia and I had both been so pleased when his and Rachael’s girls had been born, revelling in being an uncle and aunt, even if we couldn’t be parents ourselves.
And, now, all of that was gone for ever.
Amelia was dead and Joe was facing a life term in prison.
After the apparent disaster of her testimony, Rachael hadn’t returned to the court and she hadn’t been present for the verdict. But her life, too, had been destroyed. As had her children’s. They would now have no father around during their formative years, with only infrequent visits to see him in prison to look forward to.
The whole situation was a complete tragedy for all of us.
There was nothing to celebrate.
Not that that stopped DS Dowdeswell from doing so.
‘What a great result,’ he said to me, all smiles, slapping me on the back outside the court.
‘I can’t believe he was acquitted of the theft.’
‘The jury may have thought the money was a gift,’ said the DS, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘But don’t worry about that. Bradbury was convicted of the other two, and they were the big ones. You must be so pleased.’
How could I tell him that I wasn’t?
‘I suppose I’m happy it’s finally over,’ I said.
But was I?
The build-up and then the trial itself had given me a purpose in life. Now, with the delivery of the jury’s verdicts, it had suddenly finished, and in spite of mostly getting the result I wanted, I was already feeling a sense of loss.
‘I expect you’ll be reading your Victim Personal Statement to the court in the morning prior to sentencing,’ said the detective.
I shook my head. ‘I haven’t written one.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘What good would it do?’
‘You could explain to the judge how much the attempted murder has caused you such physical pain and hardship, and also how your wife’s murder has affected your life and made it so much worse.’