Free Verdict Unsafe by Jill McGown Page A

then to trespass on Lloyd’s. He’d waited for her outside her flat that night, but Lloyd had come home with her, and he’d had to let it go. But he’d get her. One day. He’d get her.
    At last, Whitehouse stood up, and faced the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Colin Drummond was arrested within moments of having sexually assaulted a sixteen-year-old girl in an attack which had begun as three previous attacks had begun; someone had pushed her down to the ground, andsubjected her to an anal assault, after having held a knife to her genitals and uttered a specific threat to ‘cut her open’ if she did not do as she was told. On each of the three previous occasions, the victim had then been bound hand and foot and subjected to further horrific abuse, leaving physical and emotional scars, which in one tragic instance led to suicide.
    “Colin Drummond’s attire at the time of his arrest—black clothing, and a full face-mask—and his means of transport—a black motorbike—matched that of the assailant in the previous assaults; he carried on him materials of the sort used in each of these previous assaults, and in daylight, a knife was found at the scene of this final assault which matched what description the victim was able to give of it. That same morning Drummond made, as you have heard, a full, boastful, and foul-mouthed confession to all four of these assaults. There cam be little doubt of what Miss Benson’s fate was to have been, had there been no interruption of that final assault.
    “But he would have you believe, ladies and gentlemen, that this confession was fabricated by him, pieced together from fragments of information, because he was afraid of being physically harmed. It is true that he had been beaten by a police officer, and you may accept that he was understandably alarmed when he was arrested. But this was just one man losing his temper, and, as a result, his job, and his liberty. Both officers involved were immediately suspended from duty. One was subsequently imprisoned, the other fined, and both were dismissed from the service. In what way could the police be thought to be condoning what they had done, even by a frightened suspect?
    “And then there are the coincidences attendant upon his two brushes with Malworth police,” Whitehouse went on.
    Colin sat in the dock, watching the jury’s faces as Whitehouse drew attention to the parts of his statement which couldn’t be accounted for by anything he had learned during the interviews, and his responses when questioned about them, then took them through the coincidences, one by one. Then he reminded them again of the DNA evidence, the most damning evidence of all.Harper hadn’t even asked the DNA bloke any questions, useless bastard. And you would have thought he could have found out about Rosa, with all the money that was being thrown at him to do just that.
    “No evidence has been offered to back up the veiled suggestion by the defense that the police in some way engineered what went on in Hosier’s Alley that night, or that the statement given by Miss Benson was anything other than a—possibly misguided—translation into standard English of her spoken word. An emergency call was received which resulted in a police car being on the spot, and two independent witnesses have told you what they saw and heard.
    “In light of all the evidence presented, you must find the defendant guilty on all counts,” Whitehouse finished.
    Now. Colin held his breath as Harper got up. Earn your money, you lazy sod.
    “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said. “You have heard much over the last three days of the appalling experiences of three young women at the hands of a brutal and methodical assailant. But please don’t allow your very natural revulsion at the disgusting and damaging acts of violence that they endured to cloud the issue, or your judgment of it.
    “That these attacks took place is beyond doubt, and not in dispute;