Fictional phone calls
How to deliver a script by Mark Gadsden of the CPS
THERE wasn’t much in the way of evidence in this case. Not what most people would consider evidence. No photographs, eye witnesses, DNA evidence, dirty money, odd travel arrangements and – because Geoff’s company bought him a nice salary – no need for the money so no motive. What there was though were phone billings that showed a twice-removed connection between Geoff and John Town, the man who admitted knowingly driving an Astra van with 77kg of cocaine in the back.
We don’t know the name of the man who phoned Geoff and spun him a line about dodgy brakes. All we know is that he told Geoff he used to work for someone who up until recently had worked out of the same Chertsey yard running an importation firm that did business with Spain and Portugal. And because the police don’t appear to know who he is, they can’t catch him and bring him to court. In his absence, and to get around the fact that no one appears to know who this mystery man is, he was referred to throughout the trial as the “green phone”.
John Town, meanwhile, was having phone conversations with someone else said to be involved but, again, as the police said they didn’t know who he was – and John Town wasn’t telling – he remains a mystery and on the run. He was to be called the “orange phone”. Police scientists found out that green and orange had been phoning each other on the night. So here, they said, was a tenuous link between Geoff and someone who admitted their part in the plot.
No one disputes these calls took place. But what is in dispute is what was said in them. No recordings were made of these phone calls - or if they were the jury didn’t hear them. What they did hear from the CPS was an imagined script, a series of dialogues scripted to support the suggestion that Geoff was a knowing conspirator.
So, instead of, “I’ve got a lorry with knackered brakes,” we got, “The lorry with the cocaine is on its way.”
And instead of, “I can’t get through to my driver, are you still there?” we got, “Shit, we’ve been rumbled – stick to the cover story."
And instead of, “Can you let your driver know we’re in the yard because we’re fixing some brakes,” we got, “Tell your driver not to interfere with the unloading of the cocaine.”
There were eight conversations in all – the longest was 1min 31sec, the shortest 35secs. And because there were no transcripts, the jury was asked simply to decide whose account was more convincing – Geoff Hyde the haulier, or seasoned crown court barrister Mark Gadsden. They chose the barrister. It was this slimmest of evidence of phone traffic that gave the CPS the hook upon which they could hang their elaborate story and persuade the jury to convict an innocent man.
Without these calls between Geoff and the green phone there was nothing. But if, as the CPS told the jury, Geoff was a wily and ruthless gangster he would have known the evidential value of his mobile phone - and not been the only one in the gang not to use an unregistered pay-as-you-go SIM that would have been impossible to trace. But Geoff is not a wily and ruthless gangster – far from it. Only this can explain why he volunteered himself to the police carrying the only thing that linked him to the crime.