Chapter 1 - Hewson

PC Justice. What a terrible name for a police officer. If you saw it in a book you’d stop reading before the end of the first sentence

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Unfortunately, Neville Justice was stuck with the name, having ruled out both gay marriage and the UK deed poll service. Yes, the name attracted flack, but he could live with flack. It was his birth name, and he was a copper. That was that.

 

“Tell me about your relationship with McGinty.” Justice leant forward across the interview table, as if to breathe the next question on the prisoner rather than ask it out loud.  Or it might have been some devilish interview tactic, involving the aroma of the squid dhal that his wife had made him for lunch.

“What sort of work do you do for him? What’s he pay you for?”

 

Though young, Justice had done more than his share of interviews, and knew the importance of making the prisoner feel the pressure. He kept his eyes trained on the man all the time, just as he’d practiced in interview training. At least he tried to. Instead, he felt a corner of his eye drift over towards the solicitor.

 

The solicitor went by the name of Horatio Jacobite, and if his name sounds extraordinary then it’s nothing compared to the man’s reputation. If you so much as wished him “Good morning!” Jacobite would turn it into a plausible cause for his client’s release – ‘Clearly the police were biased against my client from the start, they wished me a good morning but denied my client any sort of morning whatsoever, let alone a good one’.

 

This was Justice’s first interview with Jacobite present and the lawyer’s reputation unnerved him. He clearly expected to be interrupted, to be told that every question he’d asked was unreasonable. However, on this occasion Jacobite did nothing. He was leaning back on his chair, saying nothing and seemingly taking little interest in proceedings, as if he were sitting in his deckchair on a summer’s evening enjoying the sunshine. 

 

Justice turned his gaze back to the prisoner, a petty crook by the name of Hewson. He looked at him closely this time, as if trying to squeeze an answer from him using only his eyes. Oh yes, this was pressure. With any luck Hewson would make the mistake of answering the last question first, denying the payments, at which point Justice would whip out the incriminating bank statements. Oh yes, Justice was good at this interview lark, he’d make Hewson sweat, Horatio Jacobite or no Horatio Jacobite.

 

However, if Hewson was feeling the pressure he didn’t show it, taking all the time in the world to respond. When he finally spoke, his voice resonated clearly, as if he’d enjoyed years of theatrical training, as if he was desperately keen for his voice to be clearly heard at the back of the stalls.

“Every evening in May my wife and I fill the hovercraft with tadpoles and sail to Dorset for the annual pipe cleaning championship.”

 

Justice continued to stare straight ahead, as if waiting for the words to make sense. However, no matter how many times he replayed them in his head they didn’t.

 

“This isn’t a place for nonsense, Hewson. A serious crime has been committed. I’d rather you just answer the question rather than play me for an idiot.”

 

Hewson looked genuinely surprised.

 

“I’m trying to answer as best as I can. It’s just that the reality is a lot more complex than your questions imply.”

 

“Did you or did you not work for McGinty?” Justice said, firmly, resolutely, in a voice that was not playing games.

 

“When?”

 

“Anytime.”

 

The officer turned a corner of his left eye to his colleague, who subtly nodded his approval at the question.

 

Hewson paused slightly before answering. “Well, 7.00 pm to 7.15 pm on 22 April this year … I definitely didn’t work for him then.”

 

Justice glanced at his colleague again. This time the response was a shrug. Neither of them had encountered this scenario during their interview training. All Justice could do was play by his gut instincts, which unfortunately were about to let him down.

 

“What about 7.16 pm? Or any other time that day? Or any time that week?”  Shit, Justice knew he’d blown it before he’d finished the first sentence, but it was too late.

 

Hewson paused for a long time, counting his fingers, as if calculating a complex equation. Eventually he spoke.

 

“No, definitely not. I was busy with a fridge all that week. Can I have Cornetto?”

 

Justice noticed how empty the interview room was, bland white walls, generic table, generic chairs. There was nothing in the room he could turn to, his colleague, he noticed, had placed his head in his hands, never a good sign.

 

“No, no Cornetto for you, just answer the question. What’s your relationship with McGinty?”

 

“I’m not related to him. What did you think he was, my mother? Can I have my Cornetto now?”

 

At this point the solicitor rose from his proverbial slumber. “My client has answer all your questions in full, without hesitation, pause nor repetition. A break seems reasonable at this point. I can think of no reason why you shouldn’t comply with his request.”

 

“Because I’m not an ice-cream van.” Justice was getting quite angry and his colleague placed a well-timed hand on his shoulder to calm him down. 

 

“Okay,” said Justice, “You can have a break from questioning. We’ll start again in twenty minutes.  I’ll sort out some tea and coffee, but NO CORNETTO.”

 

This was Justice’s first encounter with Hewson’s interview technique. After the tea break it continued in the same vein. “I am a chip-man made of hamster nibbles,” Hewson said, in answer to Justice’s question about the payments from McGinty.

 

“All butter is deadly when mixed with arsenic and sold to parakeets called Maraduke,” he answered to a specific question relating to the bank statements.

 

When asked about the crime, a robbery he was suspected of carrying out on behalf of McGinty, he merely informed Justice that he was a weeble and no matter how hard you pushed him he wouldn’t fall down, although, he confessed, he might wobble somewhat.

 

Jacobite said nothing throughout, clearly enjoying Hewson’s nonsense. Eventually, after forty-seven minutes of abstract jabber, Justice finally gave up.

 

The interview hadn’t gone well, but there was more than enough evidence to bring the case to trial. There were witnesses, CCTV footage that place him in the vicinity of the crime and, crucially, Hewson had no alibi. Justice was more than confident that he’d get a conviction, which would be a big feather in his cap.

However, the prosecution lawyer made a mistake. He wanted to demonstrate Hewson’s refusal to give a straight answer to any of the police questions, to highlight the fact that he couldn’t account for his whereabouts.

 

The result was a farce.

 

In order to demonstrate that his client “Had done everything possible to assist the investigation,” Jacobite brought Justice to the witness stand and made him read out every single one of Hewson’s answers. At first the slightly dull policeman reading out statements about hovercrafts full of tadpoles brought a slight titter to the courtroom, which the judge silence with a well-trained stare.

 

However, as the questions progressed it became impossible to quell the laughter. The jury tried hard to suppress their sniggers, but at the third request for a Cornetto they, as one, gave up and all twelve burst into sustained laughter that continued for the rest of Justice’s statement. One elderly woman laughed so much she literally soiled herself and the court had to adjourn while emergency pants were provided for her.

 

The verdict was universal and took just seconds, the prosecution case had been reduced to a farce and Hewson walked free. Justice never lived it down. It didn’t help that it was a quite news period and the story made its way from the local rag to the national press. For the rest of his working life Justice would have to endure endless Cornetto references, not to mention the song from the advert several times a day. And that was just from his fellow cops.

 

Hewson used the same interview technique for the rest of his life. Only the requests varied: a Mars bar, a pleasant pheasant sandwich, a signed photo of Rita Hayworth, on one occasion he insisted he should have a snooker table with a picture of Snoopy painted onto all six of the pockets.

 

The technique worked. Justice never made the same mistake of reading out Hewson’s statement’s again, but the effect was that he was never once, in a twenty-odd year career, able to use a single word Hewson said against him in court. No matter how many times Justice arrested him, no matter how much evidence he accumulated, he could never bring a successful conviction. It was the bane of his life, it was the reason (the one he admitted to) he was constantly turned down for promotion.

 

You’d think he be glad that Hewson was dead.