Chapter 35
It was Easter Sunday. Ben was at his dad’s for the day and Sarah was in the kitchen at home, trying to trace Joe’s whereabouts, which had been no mean feat on a bank holiday. She put down her phone.
‘Well?’ asked Will. ‘Where has he gone?’
‘Bullingdon,’ she said.
‘Oxfordshire?’
‘Yes. It’s a Cat C. It has a vulnerable prisoner wing.’
Will shook his head. ‘Those aren’t good places. They’re full of … well, not the best kind of people.’
‘The kind of people other prisoners want to kill.’ Sarah sighed. ‘God knows what he’s going through. He was already in a bad place, mentally.’
‘So, what happened? Why was he recalled?’
‘Breach of licence. They’re saying he met with a prosecution witness. He was also reported to have entered a university campus, which put him in breach of another of his conditions.’
Will frowned. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘Chas doesn’t know either. Joe called him from the police station, but he didn’t get much out of him.’
‘Can you get a visit this week?’
‘I hope so. But I’m afraid I have more bad news to break to him.’
Will eyed her. ‘What’s that?’
‘The police can’t find Christy’s clothing.’
‘You’re kidding?’
She shook her head. ‘Which means that we can’t instruct our own expert to do the testing.’
‘They can’t find any of it?’
‘Nope.’ Sarah shrugged. ‘It’s been destroyed, by the look of things.’
‘But he’s a lifer. They should have kept the clothes for at least thirty years.’
‘Joe wrote to them, too,’ Sarah said. ‘Straight away, in 2003, asking them to preserve it. He got back all the reassurances they would do that.’ She eyed him. ‘It’s starting to feel personal, if I’m honest, as if the police might have something to hide.’
‘Hmm. It would be tempting to think that,’ Will said. ‘But you know this happens all the time, right? And not just in cold cases.’
‘Yeah. I know,’ she conceded.
‘I believe I saw a study that showed something like twenty thousand trials collapsed between October 2018 and August 2021 due to missing and lost evidence – including evidence linked to a significant number of murders and sex offences.’
‘Twenty thousand?’ Sarah said. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘How many police officers does it take to close a freezer?’
‘It’s not funny, Will.’
‘I’m being serious,’ he said. ‘It’s a big problem.
The evidence freezers are literally overflowing.
There was an article about it in The Justice Gap.
The answer is three, by the way. One to push the door closed, one to hold it shut and one to secure the lock.
Police staff are literally doing that. Which doesn’t inspire you with confidence about the quality of the samples. ’
Sarah sighed. ‘It’s a bloody mess. I’ll try the forensic archives.
Maybe they will have kept something – something that hasn’t degraded.
But I’m worried for Joe. This is another big door that’s closed in his face, and I’m going to have to be honest with him that I’m running out of options for finding fresh grounds for appeal. ’