Voice dropping, Dawn gripped the rail of the witness box. “No, we didn’t go out again. But my mum heard Bella when she rang in the afternoon. She told me to give her a kiss.”
“Miss Elliott, please could you keep your voice up so the learned judge and jury can hear your evidence?”
Dawn cleared her throat and mouthed, Sorry, to the judge.
“Your mother heard a child’s voice in the background, but that could’ve been on the television, Miss Elliott, couldn’t it? Your mother told the police she didn’t speak to Bella, didn’t she?”
“Bella wouldn’t come to the phone; she ran off to get something.”
“I see. And then she went outside a couple hours later.”
“She was only out of my sight for a few minutes.”
“Yes, thank you, Miss Elliott.”
Dawn made to step down from the box, but Sanderson halted her. “Not quite finished, Miss Elliott. I see you are wearing a ‘Find Bella’ badge.”
Dawn touched the badge instinctively.
“You believe that Bella is still alive, don’t you?” the barrister asked.
Dawn Elliott nodded, uncertain where the question was going. “Indeed, you have sold interviews to newspapers and magazines saying exactly that.”
The accusation that she was making money out of her missing child made the press benches vibrate, and pens paused for the response. Dawn was defensive and suddenly loud: “Yes, I do hope she’s alive. But she’s been taken, and that man took her.”
She pointed at Taylor, who looked down and began writing on his legal pad.
“And the money is for the Find Bella fund,” she added quietly.
“I see,” the barrister said, and sat down.
He had to wait through another week of neighbors, police experts, sick jurors, and legal argument before DC Dan Fry entered the witness box to give his evidence.
It was Fry’s big moment, and he stood with trembling legs, despite the frequent rehearsals with his bosses.
The prosecutor painted the picture of a young, dedicated officer, backed by his superiors and the legal process and determined to prevent another child from being taken. She lingered over the words used by Glen Taylor, glancing over to the jurors to underline the importance of the evidence, and they began to glance over at the accused. It was going well.
When Sanderson rose to take his turn, there were no hands in pockets, no lazy vowels. This was his moment. The young officer was taken through the conversations he’d had as Goldilocks line by ghastly line. He’d been prepared by the prosecution for the pressure he’d be put under, but it was much worse than anyone could have foreseen.
He was asked to read out his replies to Bigbear’s obscene banter, and in the cold light of the courtroom, they took on a surreal, sniggerish air.
“What’re you wearing tonight?” the barrister, his face drink-mottled and his shoulders dusted with dandruff, asked.
Straight-faced, six-foot-three Fry read: “Baby-doll pajamas. My blue ones with the lace.” There was a suppressed bark of laughter from the press box, but Fry kept his nerve and read on: “I’m a bit hot. I might have to take them off.”
“Yes, take them off,” the barrister intoned in a bored voice. “Then touch yourself.
“It’s all a bit adolescent, isn’t it?” he added. “I assume you were not wearing blue baby-doll pajamas, Detective Constable Fry?”
The laughter from the public gallery bruised him, but Fry took a deep breath and said, “No.”
Order was quickly restored, but the damage was done. Fry’s crucial evidence was in danger of being reduced to a dirty joke.
The barrister basked in the moment before entering the most dangerous area of the cross-examination: the last e-mail conversation with Glen Taylor. He addressed it head-on.
“Detective Constable Fry, did Glen Taylor, aka Bigbear, say he’d kidnapped Bella Elliott?”
“He said he’d had a real baby girl before.”
“That’s not what I asked you. And was this after you, as Goldilocks, asked him to tell you that?”
“No, sir . . .”
“He asked you, ‘Would you like that, Goldie?’ and you told him you’d like that very much. You said it was a turn-on.”
“He could’ve said no at any stage,” Fry said. “But he didn’t. He said he’d found a baby girl once and her name began with B.”
“Did he use the name ‘Bella’ ever in your conversations?”
“No.”
“This was a fantasy conversation between two consenting adults, DC Fry. This was not a confession.”
“He said he’d found a baby girl. Her name began with B,” Fry insisted, the emotion beginning to break through. “How many baby girls with names beginning with B have been taken recently?”
The barrister ignored the question and scanned his notes.
Bob Sparkes looked at Jean Taylor perched on the edge of a bench, below her fantasizing, consenting-adult husband, and saw the numbness. It must be the first time she’s heard the whole story, he thought.
He wondered who felt worse—him with the case falling apart in front of him or her with the case piling up in front of her.
Fry was beginning to stutter now, and Sparkes silently willed him to pull himself together.
But Sanderson continued his attack: “You coerced Glen Taylor into making these remarks, didn’t you, Constable Fry? You acted as an agent provocateur by pretending to be a woman who wanted to have sex with him. You were determined to get him to make damning statements. You would do anything, even have Internet sex with him. Is this really police work? Where was the caution or the right to a lawyer?”
Sanderson, who was well into his stride, looked almost regretful when his victim finally stepped down from the witness box, diminished and exhausted.
The defense immediately called for an adjournment and, with the jurors safely tucked away in the jury room, made the case that the trial should be halted.
“This whole case rests on circumstantial evidence and an entrapment. It cannot continue,” Sanderson said. “The Goldilocks evidence must be ruled as inadmissible.”
The judge tapped her pencil impatiently as she listened to the prosecution’s response.
“The police acted entirely properly in every respect. They followed procedures to the letter. They believed they had proper cause, that this was the only way to get the final piece of evidence,” the prosecutor said, and sat down.
The judge put down her pencil and looked at her notes in silence. “I will retire,” she said finally, and the court rose as she walked back to her chambers.
Twenty minutes later, the clerk called, “All rise,” and the judge delivered her decision. She ruled the Goldilocks evidence out, criticizing Fry’s encouragement and prompting and the exposure of such a junior officer. “The evidence is unsafe and cannot be relied upon,” she said.
Sparkes knew it was simply a formality for the prosecution team to throw in the towel and offer no further evidence and began packing his briefcase.
In the dock, Taylor listened to the judge carefully, the reality slowly dawning on him that he was about to be freed. Below him, Jean Taylor looked stunned. “I wonder what she’s thinking,” Sparkes muttered to Matthews. “She’s got to go home with a porn addict who has cybersex with strangers dressed as children. And a child killer.”
Suddenly it was over. The judge ordered the jury to return formal verdicts of not guilty, and Taylor was taken down to the cells to prepare for freedom. In the courtroom, a press free-for-all began with Jean Taylor as the main prize.
She half stood, surrounded by reporters, white-faced and silent as Tom Payne tried to extricate her from the pew in the well of the court. Finally, the press parted, and she struggled sideways like a fleeing crab, her legs knocking against the bench in front and her bag strap catching on edges.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Widow
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008