Although it was Black who’d walked the police conference through the fingerprint maze, Sasha decided the fingerprint technician would have more gravitas for the jury.
Doreen Winslow, a rotund, curly-haired woman in her fifties, described the processes she used for analysing and comparing fingerprints. She pulled up the Dench, Donaldson and Apsley fingerprint cards and systematically identified and counted off all the matching points of comparison. She did the same with Thomas, closing a tight web of culpability around him.
Fitzpatrick made a great play of the fact that Winslow couldn’t identify a date or time when any of the deceased or the accused left their prints on any surface. Then he focused the jury’s attention on the presence of other fingerprints.
‘Yes, there were two sets of prints taken off that door that have not yet been identified,’ answered Winslow.
‘So an unidentified person may have been at that door after Mr Thomas?’
‘That could be the case.’
‘Let’s focus on the inside of the apartment. You must have lifted Mr Thomas’s prints off the glass table?’
‘Not his prints.’
‘Whose were they?’
‘They have also remained unidentifiable to date.’
‘Well, how many of them did you examine before you classified them as unidentifiable?’
Winslow sought and was given permission to refer to her notes. ‘Seven identifiable prints inside the apartment, sir.’
‘Seven?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not so much an apartment as a bus terminal then?’ More laughing in court.
‘Not necessarily seven people, though,’ replied Winslow, trying to be helpful.
‘Dare I ask why not?’ Fitzpatrick knew the answer but was enjoying entertaining the jury.
‘Well, it could be seven people. Then again, it could be one person with different fingers from each hand.’
‘Or various possibilities in between?’
‘Yes.’
‘But because you had all Mr Thomas’s finger and thumb prints off each hand, you know he wasn’t in the apartment.’
Sasha looked up at the witness, anxious she didn’t fall for that.
‘Oh, he could have been there, or not. That’s not my job to say.’
Sasha couldn’t resist a small grin but Fitzpatrick sat down, beaming at the jury, some of whom nodded their appreciation in return.
Sasha had one question in re-examination. ‘Ms Winslow, these other unidentified prints you’ve told my friend about. Did they ever show up at any of the other scenes or on anything belonging to any of the other deceased?’
‘No.’
Sasha treated the court to a surprise when she called Barry Hart to the witness box. He described the results of the search warrant. When Thomas was committed for trial, the police hadn’t yet looked at a 1965 Time magazine found at the house. It was found to contain an article describing how succinylcholine had been used as a murder weapon in the United States.
Ignoring the buzz of excitement in the gallery, Fitzpatrick got Hart to agree that the article gave no clue on how to make succinylcholine, how to acquire the drug, or how to administer a non-fatal dose. When the policeman opened the magazine at Fitzpatrick’s request, he agreed that page 23 described financial services specific to rural economies in the States and South America. ‘The same type of service the accused provides to Canterbury farmers,’ thundered Fitzpatrick.
As Sasha stood to call Detective Woods to the witness box, Fitzpatrick said he had an application to make in the absence of the jury. Bowen looked visibly annoyed. When the last juror had left the courtroom, he said, ‘Well, Mr Fitzpatrick, I thought we’d been pretty thorough in disposing of motions on admissibility.’
‘I’m sorry, Your Honour, but if I failed before, I cannot do so again. Can I ask that this part of the trial be suppressed from publication?’
Bowen sighed. ‘I’ll make an interim order of suppression which may be reviewed at the end of the trial.’
Fitzpatrick argued that Woods’ evidence should be excluded on the grounds that the alleged overheard confessions of guilt were sufficiently ambiguous so as to destroy any probative value and leave only prejudicial material with the jury. ‘At best, Your Honour, Mr Thomas said that once the police believed he was guilty, that was it, there’d be no shifting their view on the matter.’
‘Is that it?’ Bowen asked, his derision obvious to everyone.
‘With respect, Your Honour….’ He stopped when Bowen held up his hand and looked at Sasha.
‘I don’t need to hear from you on this, Ms Stace.’
Galbraith looked disappointed. He’d been delegated responsibility for the legal argument about Woods’ evidence.
‘Mr Fitzpatrick. I trust this jury to listen carefully to your cross-examination of Mr Woods and your submissions about this evidence when it comes time for closing arguments.’ He looked at the court attendant and forced a smile. ‘Bring the jury back.’
Fitzpatrick was unable to shake Woods on what parts of which comments he heard and the policeman dismissed suggestions he’d taken Thomas’s comments out of context. As Fitzpatrick sat down, Sasha saw the jury exchange glances, some of them whispering to each other.
Sasha’s last witness was Black. ‘Despite evidence about the longevity of prints we’ve heard in this court, we were unable to find a single fingerprint from Christine Thomas or anyone other than the accused on the jar of succinylcholine.’ As Black read his notes of the conversation he had with Thomas while the search was under way, the accused gave an encore performance of yelling ‘liar’ at a witness.
Fitzpatrick crafted a clever series of questions about prints to which Black could only reply ‘yes’ or ‘correct’. This was the point at which the Irishman should have sat down. But he was tired. ‘So you contend that Mr Thomas took particular care not to leave his fingerprints at Apsley’s home, yet he placed them outside the house of the man in whose murder he was the most obvious suspect? Is that what you argue?’ It was a question better put to the jury. Sasha knew her opponent had made a mistake asking it of Black.
Black folded his arms. ‘History has shown there’s no end to the reasons why criminals make mistakes, Mr Fitzpatrick.’
After getting no traction from Black that Ron Point should have been considered a suspect, Fitzpatrick closed in on the area where Tuck had weakened the Crown’s case. ‘You understand we argue the letter from Dench to Donaldson is not authentic, don’t you?’
Black looked solemn. ‘But it had Dench’s fingerprint on it.’
Spreading his arms, Fitzpatrick said, ‘All that acrimony, all that history and you say Donaldson and Dench started business together just like that?’ He clicked his fingers.
‘Again, any number of reasons might explain this.’
‘You took possession of Dench’s computer, didn’t you?’
‘Not personally, but my team did, and they took possession of the computer your client threw out of his ten storey office window just before we executed a search warrant.’ Sasha made eye contact with Bowen. They both knew what was coming.
Fitzpatrick’s eyes narrowed, but he ignored the provocation.
‘And your team lost that evidence.’
‘We were unable to extract anything from your client’s hard drive and we can’t say what happened to Mr Dench’s computer.’
Anger rising in his voice, Fitzpatrick said, ‘You know full well I’m not talking about Mr Thomas’s interminable frustration with the lemon he bought. I’m asking you about the authenticity of the note allegedly written by Dench to Donaldson. A note we say was written by the person framing Mr Thomas.’
‘I can only apologise to the court,’ said Black. ‘From our point of view we know we had that letter on Dench’s hard drive when it was password protected, otherwise our IT expert couldn’t have recognised the documents produced.’
Fitzpatrick stood shaking his head in disgust for several
seconds before he sat down.
****
Sasha arrived back at her chambers in time to share a wine with Heather and catch the six o’clock news. It hadn’t been a great finish to the day. Fitzpatrick was doing well. He’d demonstrated the link between Thomas and Apsley was weak, that the police hadn’t done all they should have at the Apsley scene to treat the death as a homicide. But her professionals were good witnesses. Albertson’s surprise evidence was a bonus for the Crown, although Fitzpatrick recovered. She thought his evidence would compel Thomas to go into the witness box. She’d need to prepare.
‘Look, here’s our trial,’ Sasha said, as the graphic behind the newsreader changed to a needle, syringe and noose with a heading that read, ‘Christchurch Financier Killings’. The two women watched as a reporter outside the High Court summarised the day’s events. A picture of Niven appeared on screen. Sasha’s gasp was involuntary, her eyes wide.
The reporter said, ‘The Attorney-General today expressed great regret that Justice Peter Niven had resigned for personal reasons that have required him to leave the country indefinitely. It was only four months ago that Justice Niven was sworn in to take up his position in the Auckland High Court.’
After listening to the President of the New Zealand Law Society lament the loss of talent, Sasha shouted, ‘Good riddance, arsehole!’ and grabbed her phone to call Mac.
‘I called you and left a message on your mobile,’ said Mac, his tone as upbeat as she’d ever heard.
‘I’ve just turned the bloody thing back on. How did you do it, Mac?’
Mac unfolded the strategy with every detail, pride evident in his description.
Sasha couldn’t help but laugh at Mac turning the marbles insult back against Niven. ‘Oh, you’re a darling, you never cease to amaze me. This is such an enormous relief – not having to face that deviant again.’ She turned to see Heather looking completely bewildered. Still smiling she said, ‘In the fullness of time Heather, in the fullness of time.’
Chapter 41
Trevor Thomas walked to the witness box with an air of defiance and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Sasha sat back from the table, legs crossed at the ankles, one arm resting on the table. Thomas wouldn’t look at her, his gaze firmly on his counsel. Fitzpatrick led him through his lengthy statement – the early days, the friendships, the business, the bust-ups – but avoided the unseemly details.
Thomas explained that Vickers had harboured a long-standing grudge, that there was no lack of people who’d relish the chance to do him harm because he’d been a tough person to work for and do business with and that his print was on Jack Dench’s door because he went there to bury the hatchet. ‘But I couldn’t get in.’ Thomas turned to the jury, his face full of anguish.
It was a tragic coincidence his prints were on pornographic material found in Dench’s apartment. ‘We’ve had stuff going round the office. It’s my fault. I’ve been too lax with discipline. I should have stopped it when it first started.’ Another tortured glance for the jurors.
Sasha pushed a note to Galbraith. ‘Well coached.’
Thomas said, ‘Obviously I’ve picked up stuff circulating in our offices, glanced at it, then binned it. I realise now that I should’ve put it through the shredder. So I’m not surprised to hear Jack’s fingerprints were on the same material. But if both our fingerprints were on that pornography, mine were there before his. As we all know, our staff have always socialised with his staff.’
Sasha had to admit it: this was a clever, but well-worn strategy to explain unassailable fingerprint evidence.
Thomas maintained Dench’s note to Donaldson was false. ‘It’s part of setting me up. I feel cheated by the police that we can’t test the authenticity of that evidence. Their unfairness has driven me crazy.’ He clenched his fists in exasperation. ‘I’m sorry I’ve shown that in this court.’
‘Your fingerprint is on the envelope that appeared to contain the note allegedly written by Mr Dench. What do you say to that?’ asked Fitzpatrick.
‘I’ve always been in and out of Derek’s apartment, particularly after his illness. To be frank, Derek wasn’t the tidiest of housekeepers. He left things lying around and sometimes it was hard to find a clear space to sit. I’ve no specific recollection of touching an envelope but I wouldn’t be surprised if I shifted it to sit down. I certainly didn’t see any child pornography at Derek’s place. He’d have had nothing to do with that, or with Jack Dench.’
Thomas said that before the trial he’d never heard of succinylcholine and apologised for calling Albertson a liar – ‘but he is terribly mistaken or horribly confused’.
Fitzpatrick’s face was solemn. ‘Trevor, did you kill Neil Apsley?’
‘Of course not. I barely knew the man, met him once or twice back in the fifties. I had no idea Derek’d made contact with him. I hadn’t even heard his name mentioned in the office until Detective Sergeant Black visited Derek and told him that Mr Apsley had died.’
‘Did you kill Derek Donaldson?’
Defiant, ‘Even hearing that question disgusts me. He was my best mate.’ Thomas saw Fitzpatrick holding his arms out indicating he was still to give an answer. He responded ‘No I did not.’
‘Did you kill Jack Dench?’
‘No, I did not.’
****
When court resumed at 2.15 PM, the chilled white faces of recent arrivals in the gallery contrasted with those who had enjoyed the courtroom warmth and eaten their cut lunches without giving up their seats. Thomas, keen to end his ordeal, was already in the witness box. The judge reminded him he was still on oath. ‘Ms Stace.’
Sasha glanced briefly at her father’s photo, then stood and spoke in a puzzled tone. ‘Mr Thomas, can you think of anyone in New Zealand who despised Jack Dench more than you?’
‘I don’t know everyone in New Zealand, Miss Stace, and I couldn’t know everyone who knew Dench.’
She smiled at his clever answer. ‘Nevertheless, you accept that you despised the man?’
‘We disliked one another, but the feeling was mutual.’
For the next twenty-five minutes, Sasha showed why Thomas couldn’t be believed when he down-played his hatred. She made him revisit everything he’d done to and said about Dench. She tortured him with a blow-by-blow account of the 1980 Christmas party and his humiliation of Dench in front of the entire staff.
Fitzpatrick tried to object stating that those events were not only monstrously old but the evidence was that the directors had kissed and made up. Bowen dismissed the objection, pleasing a gallery that was delighted Thomas hadn’t been spared the grubby stuff.
Thomas looked for wriggle room, insisting it was too long ago to remember the details. He denied any recall of slowly unzipping his fly after being caught with his tongue down Dench’s girlfriend’s throat.
Changing tack, Sasha had Thomas look at phone records and confirm his wife called him at 9.45 PM on the night Dench died. ‘That was the night she went to the movies with Christine, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘In demanding that your wife Michelle be an alibi for you, had you forgotten about her making that phone call?’
‘I didn’t ask, demand or even request her to be an alibi.’
‘Detective Woods is lying then, is he?’
‘I’d like to believe he was mistaken, rather than lying.’
‘It’s not the sort of word a detective investigating a murder could mishear, is it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sasha paused, allowing his answer to settle with the jury, then looked down at her papers. ‘At 9.53 PM, there’s another call to you from a different mobile.’ There were beads of sweat now on Thomas’s s face. ‘Who was that from?’
Thomas looked at his copy of the records. ‘I don’t recognise the number.’
Caustic, ‘I’m not asking you to identify the number. I’m asking you who you talked to.’
‘
I don’t remember.’
‘Do you accept the Crown’s evidence that the movie, Muriel’s Wedding, started at 9.00 PM and ran for a hundred and six minutes?’
‘Of course.’
‘So, allowing for Hilda and Elsie Forest to get to their car and drive down Park Terrace to where they collided with you, do you accept that must have been after 10.30 PM?’
‘No, I don’t accept that. If you’re trying to trap me into saying I visited Dench late at night, that’s not correct. It was around 6pm, that I went there. I can’t be exact but I know it was hours earlier than you’re suggesting.’
Sasha, sounding confused, asked, ‘So what are you saying about the evidence given by the Forest women?’
‘I think they’re confused about the actual day they went to the movies, even the day of the collision.’
Sasha glanced at the jury, then shook her head in disbelief. ‘But when they collided with you, you were in a rage, weren’t you?’
‘They rear-ended me, but it was a very minor collision, as your mechanic said.’
‘The gravity of the collision was irrelevant. You gave them the finger because you were in a rage about Dench. Isn’t that the truth?’
‘They’ve exaggerated.’
Sasha’s voice was dripping sarcasm. ‘Oh, so it was half a finger, or a knuckle?’ With muffled laughter in court, two jurors brought their hands to their mouths.
‘There was no gesture.’
‘Wouldn’t that make them liars, rather than exaggerators?’
‘I guess it would, if you put it like that.’
Fitzpatrick groaned, causing Sasha to turn and ask if he was all right. He propped his head up with his left hand, blocking his face from the jury and whispered, ‘I’ve had better days.’ She whispered back, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’
Sasha continued. ‘I take it you don’t accept the paramedics’ evidence that they saw your vehicle leaving the vicinity of Mr Dench’s apartment at 10.55pm, the night he died.’
‘No. As I said, I was there much earlier in the evening.’
Sasha pursued Thomas on his volatile personality, suggesting rage was de rigueur for him, even within his own family.
‘I don’t accept that, at all. I accept I’ve been under pressure and responded badly to hearing false evidence about me from your witnesses.’