The Veteran Read Online Free PDF Page A

reason.
    “Look, Mark, we’ve got you bang to rights. There’s a witness, saw it all. Everything. Start to finish. And he is going to testify.”
    He waited. Nothing.
    “For the tape, my client declines to make a statement,” murmured Slade.
    “Then he hit you right on the nose. Mark. Broke your ruddy hooter. No wonder you lost your rag. Why on earth did an old guy like that do it?”
    Price might have muttered, “I dunno,” or “Stupid old git.” That would have gone down well with the jury. Admission of presence at the scene. Bang goes any alibi. Price glared but stayed silent.
    “Then there’s your blood. Mark. Pouring out the broken nose. We’ve got samples, laddie.”
    He was careful not to say he only had blood from the tee shirt, not the pavement, but he did not tell an untruth. Price shot a panicky glance at Slade, who also looked worried. Privately the lawyer knew that if samples of his client’s blood, proved by DNA tests to be Price’s blood and no-one else’s, had been found on the pavement close to the beaten man, there would be no defence. But he still had time for a change of plea, if necessary. Under the disclosure rules, he would insist on everything Burns had got, and long before any trial. So he just shook his head, and Price’s silence went on.
    Burns gave each defendant an hour of his best efforts, then packed it in.
    “I shall need to make an application for extension of police custody,” he told Slade when Price and Cornish were back in their cells. “Four this afternoon?”
    Slade nodded. He would be present, but say virtually nothing. There would be no point.
    “And I am setting up two identity parades for tomorrow morning at St. Anne’s Road. If I get two results, I shall go for a formal charge and then a remand in custody,” he added.
    Slade nodded and left.
    As he drove back to his office, the duty solicitor had little doubt this was not going to go his clients’ way. Burns was good at his job: meticulous, thorough, not given to silly mistakes that the defence could exploit. He also thought privately that his clients were guilty as hell. He had seen their record sheets and so would the magistrates that afternoon. Whoever the mystery witness was, if he was a respectable person and stuck to his guns. Price and Cornish would not be seeing much daylight for a long time.
    Years before, the police used to carry out identity parades inside the station. The new method was to have Identification Suites dotted at various places around the city. The nearest to Dover nick was in St. Anne’s Road, just down the pavement from the hospital where Dr. Melrose worked and Price had had his nose attended to. It was a more efficient system. Each suite was equipped with the latest in parade platform, lighting and one-way mirrors through which the identification could be made without the chance that a real hard case could ‘eyeball’ the witness and terrify him into silence without a word being said. The suites also had an on-call panel of men and women of different sizes and aspects to make up the parade at short notice. These volunteers were paid to appear, stand in line and then walk out again. Burns asked for two parades, giving careful descriptions of his prisoners, for eleven a.m. the next day.
    Luke Skinner was left to handle the media, to whom Burns had a deep aversion. Anyway, the D S did it better. He was that fairly rare phenomenon, the public-school-educated policeman, with a polish much mocked in the canteen, but very useful on occasion.
    All press enquiries had to funnel through Scotland Yard, which had an entire bureau dedicated to public affairs, and they had asked for a brief statement. It was still a low-interest case, but apart from a serious wounding there was also a missing-person angle. Skinner’s problem was that he had no good description and certainly no picture, because the injured man was simply unsketchable with his bloated head swathed in bandage.
    So Skinner would