Eight of the jury, including herself, were ready to deliver a ‘not guilty’ decision. She just needed one more to get a 9–2 verdict, once the judge had said he would accept a majority verdict.

Hopefully, after his night of thinking over the spreadsheets, geeky oddball Rory O’Brien would have arrived at the same conclusions as the majority of them – and Laura would be safe.

And if O’Brien didn’t, she was confident she could work on him and on the other two who had voted ‘guilty’, one of whom had to be Harold Trout.

She made sure she arrived early, and was already seated by 9.30 a.m. The rest of the jurors filed in over the next twenty minutes, and there was a relaxed, end-of-term feeling in the room.

At 10 a.m., there was just one absentee. Rory O’Brien.

Where was he, Meg wondered? Five minutes later he had still not appeared, and a dark thought crossed her mind. Had something happened to him? Surely there would have been nothing to gain by Gready’s henchmen doing anything to him?

A couple of minutes later, the geek hurried in, muttering an apology, something about a change in the bus timetable.

With all eyes on him, he took a while to settle down and find his place in the bundle of documents he had left in situ from yesterday. He then apologized again, to Meg, for his tardy arrival.

‘No problem, Rory,’ she said in an encouraging tone.

The jury were summoned to the courtroom for a short time before being escorted back to the jury room by the bailiff, as before, to continue their deliberations.

102

Thursday 30 May

‘Have you arrived at your own verdict?’ Meg asked the young man.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m there. But I don’t think you are going to like this.’

Meg looked at O’Brien and felt, suddenly, very scared. There was something about the calm way he had spoken that unnerved her. His words ground into her brain like the whine of a chainsaw.

I don’t think you are going to like this.

She held her breath for a moment then said, ‘Tell us your thoughts, Rory?’

The man looked nervous, as if unused to having an audience. He stammered a little. ‘Well – um – the thing – the thing is – the d-d-d-dates – this is what I find in-in-interesting.’

He fell silent.

‘Dates of what, Rory?’ Meg asked, maintaining her gently inquisitive tone.

‘I’ve checked the dates of the classic car importations and also the large deposit transfers involving the overseas accounts and the classic car company. From these dates provided I’ve discovered that, if Mr Starr is to be believed, Mrs Gready was very conveniently abroad, judging orchids in international competitions, on each of those dates. All the competition dates were in the document bundle.’

‘And your point is?’ Meg asked.