Chapter 11 The Trial
The Trial
The first day of the trial is likely to remain the most vivid in Miles’s memory.
The build-up to it was so intense, and when it finally came, it seemed utterly surreal.
He had been partly prepared for the experience; his plea hearing ten months earlier was in the same courtroom, with a similar level of media interest. But that day was more about navigating his way to the court – the photographers and camera crews.
Now, it was all about what happened inside the court.
How this played out would determine how he was going to live the rest of his life.
When the jury was sworn in, it was time for the prosecution to open its case.
It was clear that, for the media, this was the key moment.
They scribbled their notes more vigorously for the next hour than at any other point of the trial.
They, and the public, had waited for the best part of a year to hear the juicy details they so hungrily desired, and now, the Crown’s senior barrister was about to lay it all out – exactly what the prosecution thought had happened to Caira and why they were so certain Miles was a murderer.
The lead prosecutor, William Cox KC, was exactly how Miles had imagined a senior barrister to be: broad, bellied and booming, with eyebrows so grey and unkempt that they matched his fraying old wig.
When he stood to open the prosecution’s case, he did so while holding a picture of Caira, which he raised aloft to show the jury.
‘This woman,’ he began, ‘was a beloved daughter, cherished sibling and doting auntie.
She was forty years old when she met the defendant, Miles Deverill.
And she was, to coin a phrase popular with her millennial generation, living her best life.
Caira Kennedy had a job that she found purposeful and rewarding, and, due to her warm personality and infectious sense of humour, she had a wide group of friends.
She was single, and she enjoyed being single.
As a gregarious character who loved meeting new people, she enjoyed going on dates.
But the arrangement of one of these dates began a chain of events that would ultimately prove fateful for Ms Kennedy, and her happy life was to be prematurely brought to an end.
‘That chain of events began in November of last year, when Ms Kennedy met the defendant, Miles Deverill, on an online dating app. The two of them hit it off, regularly chatting via WhatsApp, and eventually made a date. That date took place on the third of December. It was a typical first date, the sort of which most of you will have experience. Thanks to CCTV footage, receipts and phone data, we have a very clear picture of what they did. They went out for dinner – steak frites for him, and pan-fried sea bream for her. Afterwards they went for drinks, and then Miles Deverill walked Ms Kennedy home to her flat on Victoria Crescent. Ms Kennedy went inside, and so too did Miles Deverill. We know he entered her flat because Miles Deverill’s fingerprints and DNA were found in the hallway and living room.
‘Miles Deverill became the last person known to have seen Ms Kennedy alive. It was at that point that the trail of Miles Deverill’s movements – as recorded by CCTV, phone data and receipts – went cold until the next morning.
‘What happened inside that flat is to be disputed during this trial. There were no witnesses to the crime that took place. Instead, what we have is a collection of facts and evidence that creates a clear picture of how and why Ms Kennedy was murdered.
‘As you will discover during this trial, Miles Deverill is a man who is accustomed to getting what he wants. He’s a man who is used to having his whims and desires satisfied.
It is the Crown’s case that when Miles Deverill entered Ms Kennedy’s flat that night, he was presented with a rare scenario in which he discovered his whims and desires were not going to be willingly satisfied.
In short, Ms Kennedy rejected him. And he responded with violence.
Miles Deverill strangled her, and the ligature he used was the very scarf she had worn on their first date.
And then, in a display of calculated callousness, he took that scarf from the property and disposed of it in order to cover his tracks. ’
As Cox went on with his opening, Miles’s eye travelled around the room.
He watched faces twitch and expressions morph as they listened to the prosecution’s hideous explanation of what had happened to Caira.
He glanced at each member of the jury – a mixture in terms of age, sex and race – and wondered who among them would be prepared to give him a fair hearing.
Which of them had already decided he was guilty?
He looked into the public gallery, where his friends and family were sitting.
A couple of them met his eye and responded with the customary half-smile.
He scanned across the benches, his eye moving more quickly as it passed over the section where Caira’s family – her parents, sister and brother – were seated.
His gaze was drawn to a man on the front bench of the public gallery.
He had a wide, bald head, and hooded eyes that were focused directly on Miles.
Something about the man’s unflinching stare, and its openly toxic energy, seized his attention.
It might have only been for a second or two, but eye contact with that level of intensity seemed to tip time off its axis, making it feel much longer, and when Miles flicked his eyes back to Cox, he found an image of that hateful face seared permanently on his mind.
At the time, Miles had no clue who he was.
And it remained that way for weeks, because the man only stayed for the first day of the trial.
But he knows now. He was Caira’s ex-boyfriend, Ben Knight.
The same man who gave a full interview to The Chronicle, the same man who donned a baby-blue knit sweater and sat on his sofa, arms folded, as he posed for their photographer with a sad frown on his face.
Ben told The Chronicle’s reporter that he once lived with Caira in a state of domestic bliss.
But from the loathful look of him that day in court, the unguarded menace in his eyes, Miles found it hard to believe that anyone had ever, or could ever, live with that man in anything approaching bliss.
More likely, he suspects, it was the complete opposite.