Heaps of Trouble (19 page)

The father responded with such an expression of mock horror on his face that it was a performance worthy of an Oscar. ‘Ma Lud, I am terribly sorry, I understood that the question directed at me was in relation to anything in the boot of my car that could have damaged the gas bottle. Well, of course I answered ‘no'. But as to the contents of the boot, well…let me think. Spare tyre, jack, wheel brace, some old newspapers, the Primus stove, a football, fishing-rod, golfing umbrella and…yes, I do believe an old pair of white underpants of mine that I left there to be used as swimming trunks in an emergency.' And he beamed at the barrister who had asked him the question as if he had just explained Einstein's theory of relativity.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – or a pissed-off barrister made to look like a fool in front of his peers. The exchange now turned into a chess match between two masters, move and counter-move, until the judge finally called lunch, which came as a welcome relief to the two mentally exhausted sparring partners.

After lunch, as soon as the father took the stand, Bulldog stood up and waited a good minute before saying a word. Standing with his head bowed, he gave the impression that he was contemplating deeply what he was going to say next and when he finally spoke there was an audible sigh of relief from his colleagues.

‘Mr Heaps,' he said, in a soft voice that bespoke unlimited patience and even hinted an attempt at humour, ‘a spare tyre, jack, wheel brace, old newspapers, a Primus stove, a football, fishing-rod, golfing umbrella, and old, white underpants of your own – an interesting collection of articles. However, you would have had to lay the gas bottle on its side, as the boot of a Ford Popular does not have enough room to place the bottle upright without leaving the boot open. Is that correct?'

‘Yes.'

‘So, as you drove back to the caravan site, the bottle could have been rolling back and forth in the boot?'

‘No, because I wedged it in the corner with the umbrella.'

‘Come, come, Mr Heaps, the bottle could have broken free and rolled all over the place.'

‘It could have, but it did not.'

At this point Bulldog changed tack completely and asked, ‘Do you know the weight of a re-filled gas bottle?'

‘Not off hand…no,' replied the father.

‘Sixty-five pounds, or so I am reliably informed by the gas company. Now I put it to you, sixty-five pounds is a lot of weight. Suppose the gas bottle did, in fact, roll around in the boot as you drove home and, as you rounded a corner, it smashed into the Primus stove that you have already testified was in the boot of your car with such force that it fatally damaged it. So much so, that when you lit it on the day of the accident, it exploded.

‘Look I have already told y…'

The Bulldog cut across him with ‘no more questions Ma Lud' he left the father simmering.

*

During the next few days the Calor Gas defence council called on a whole bunch of other witnesses. Some I recognised as doctors I had visited, and some I didn't. They brought them up from Ardkeen Hospital in Waterford – and the only reason I could deduce for their appearance was to testify that we were, in fact, the people that had arrived, burned, at their door that day. The police, who had inspected the cul-de-sac after the accident, gave a very good and precise account of the state in which they had found the clearing when they arrived on the scene, and described the immediate area as being badly scorched and blackened. Of the foam mattress on which Catherine had been lying, the only piece that remained was the long zip that held on the dust cover. The base of the crate on which I had been sitting had melted, along with most of the tar on the old road.

When questioned by our side, the police confirmed that, on arrival in the cul-de-sac, they had noticed that the gas bottle had been blown into the ditch closest to the caravan door. They also confirmed that they had removed everything they thought relevant as evidence, and had stored the gas bottle in the back of their police station. However they couldn't explain what had happened to the gas bottle, only saying that, somehow or other, it had gone ‘missing'. I thought our lot would go berserk about the ‘missing' gas bottle as it was a major piece of evidence in our case, but, much to my disbelief, they didn't. The only comment our white wig made was to say ‘that is unfortunate'.

At the end of the day the father tackled Curly, Larry and Mo with regard to the missing gas bottle. He insisted that the next morning our white wigs drag the police back onto the stand and demand a full explanation for the disappearance of key evidence from the backyard of a Garda station. He finished by saying, ‘I'll tell you what happened. That flatfoot in there left the gas company representative just walk in and take it. The whole lot of them are in cahoots, I'll get the press down here and tell them my side of the story.'

Larry calmed the father down by explaining, ‘Attacking the Garda will not get us any brownie points with the judge. Anyway, at this stage, it is not that critical as we are a long way towards proving to the judge, without a shadow of a doubt, that it had to have been the faulty gas bottle that caused the explosion.' Patting the father on the back, Larry concluded by saying, ‘Don't worry, leave us do our job'; and with that the three stooges disappeared off up the quays.

Arriving the following morning, we found all the barristers huddled together, theirs and ours, until eventually our lot broke away and, drawing the mother and father aside, began talking in frantic whispers. From what I could gather the gas company had made another offer. To my parents it seemed ludicrously low, but for some reason our wigs were advising them to consider it, as they appeared to be worried about something that for the moment they were keeping to themselves. The father stormed off in a temper, telling them to convey a message back to Calor Gas: namely, ‘Go to hell.'

All through the court case they considered whether or not to put me on the stand, leaving me in a perpetual state of panic. The last thing I wanted was to have Bulldog tear into me, as I was positive that by the time he had finished with me I would be so confused I might even doubt that I had been there in the first place. To my utmost relief they finally decided against it and left the gas company to continue having their bash at refuting the evidence given.

The Primus stove had reappeared as their ‘exhibit number one': amazingly the police had been able to look after that piece of evidence, but not our disappearing gas bottle. The father was recalled to the stand, where he was reminded that he was still under oath and asked to confirm that it was his. For the rest of that day we listened to various ‘experts' for the defence discussing the hypothetical process by which the Primus stove
might
have ignited and burned through the rubber hose connecting the gas bottle to the caravan, thus releasing the gas. Every time Bulldog, through his ‘experts', tried to suggest this as a probable cause for the explosion, one of our white wigs would hop up and ask the so-called expert to explain, given this scenario, how the mattress on which Catherine had being lying could possibly have erupted in a sea of flames. Or what had caused the tar on the road to ignite and melt if the gas in the bottle had not been leaking for some time?

At the end of that day another offer was made to the parents, but whatever was said to the father resulted in him turning, without a reply, and stamping off down the steps of the Four Courts in a raging temper. As the mother went to follow him, our leading barrister grabbed her by the arm to stop her in her tracks and hissed in a voice full of anger, venom and exasperation, ‘For God's sake, woman, don't you know your husband's history?', and with that he stomped off in a different direction, leaving the mother standing there dumbfounded.

We didn't have long to wait to find out what he meant, as the next morning Bulldog hit back with renewed diligence and a completely different line of attack. They had dug out the father's history of self-inflicted interment for alcoholism in St Patrick's Hospital. They argued that the man was a confirmed alcoholic with a proven track record. They were able to produce dates and times when he had been in the place. They had details of AA meetings he had attended and suggested that they had available, if required, the head psychiatrist who had treated him, concluding with the argument that, while their gas bottle may have had a minor leak due to some technical malfunction, our case was, ‘still unproven, Ma Lud'. The father, they maintained, had shown gross negligence in placing the Primus stove in such close proximity to their harmless gas bottle.

‘That's absurd, Ma Lud, how do you explain the death of a four-year-old girl lying on the ground some 25 feet away?', retorted our white wig.

But, by the time they had finished, they had presented a case to show that the mere act of lighting the match was nothing short of gross negligence on the part of a certified drunkard. Suddenly, the case had concluded. I didn't quite know what to expect or how it was supposed to end, as I my knowledge of court procedure was based on American cases I had seen on TV, in which the defence and then the prosecution got up and gave a final rousing speech demanding justice. In our case Bulldog, after he had seen off their final witness, informed the judge that they had finished. Whereby the old beak asked our lot if they had anything else to offer, resulting in a lot of muttering from our table until, with nods of agreement, one of the wigs jumped up and roared out, ‘No Ma Lud.'

With that, the judge pounded his wooden hammer on his desk and declared to all that he would now retire, but that before he passed judgement and awarded any settlement, he wanted to see me privately in his chambers, which nearly caused me to faint with fright.

Within seconds I became the centre of attention. The court clerk beckoned me from my seat and, along with the mother who was to accompany me, we set off through a side door and down a short corridor, before finally being ushered into the judge's chambers. He was seated at his desk, in an open-necked shirt held up with blue braces, as he had removed all of his regalia. Without his ‘working clothes' he appeared almost normal. After asking me a few questions regarding Catherine's death, he requested me to show him my scars. I felt like a performer who had made the big time, because now I was even stripping for a high-court judge. After peering at the scars he compared them to a set of colour photographs he had of my body, taken well over a year before. Then he told me to get dressed, saying that he wanted to have a quick chat with the mother. I left and rejoined the mob that had adjourned to the main hall. The father didn't look impressed with the events that had taken place and especially with the gas company trying to insinuate that he was a drunkard and an alcoholic to boot.

The drive home that evening was silent, with none of the usual banter between the parents regarding the day's happenings. The mother stared straight ahead, emitting a force field of hostility towards the father, which was ten times worse than if she had been roaring and screaming at him. When we got home the father didn't make any attempt to enter the house; he just got out of the car and went straight across the road to the Workman's Club.

The following morning, to a hushed court, the judge made his deliberation. He was awarding us £11,500 in compensation, includingexcluding costs, which made our barristers and solicitors breathe an audible sigh of relief, as I am sure their bills racked up to over double that amount. After the commotion died down, with the law people jubilant and the parents devastated, there was more to come. He then broke down the numbers to show how he had arrived at this figure. In the eyes of the court, since Catherine was only four, her death was worth £3,000, of which I (being her brother) was to get one third, the parents the rest. Out of the total settlement, my parents were to get a final payment of £8,000. I was also being given £2,500 in consideration of my scars, bringing my total to £3,500. And I was to be made a ‘ward of court' until the age of twenty-one.

Not understanding what he was saying, at first I thought he was going to lock me up for the next eight years; well, a ‘ward of court' did sound serious. Later one of our barristers explained that the courts were going to hold the money for me until I reached the age of twenty-one, at which time I would be entitled to collect it, plus the compound interest that it would have gained over the years. Out in the hallway the father had collared the head of our solicitors' firm and was demanding that we appeal the verdict.

‘Eleven and a half thousand pounds, with us only getting eight, that will just barely pay our bills. I want you to go back in there and demand an appeal.'

‘That is precisely what the Calor Gas company is doing right at this minute, but I don't think they will succeed, as that judge's word is normally final.'

‘Three thousand pounds for my daughter – is he completely mad and inhumane?'

‘Well, you know the argument the defence has put forward, especially with your past record. It could have been a lot worse: he could have found in favour of the gas company. All in all the compensation figure isn't that bad.'

At that point I thought the father was going to take a swing at him.

‘What do you mean? You're all the same, nothing but a bunch of shysters, you lot got together and worked it all out between you, didn't you, how much will all of your bills come to?'

‘Given the circumstances, I think that you did all right. You never told us about your drink problem; if you had, we could have been better prepared for the evidence when it was presented.'

‘What has my drinking to do with a faulty gas bottle?'

‘Prove it Mr Heaps. Prove it.' And with that last remark, he left the father boiling with temper, standing in the middle of the hallway of the Four Courts.

*

The father was quite right in his arithmetic: the eight grand would just about cover the cost of the new car and the bills that had accumulated from months of living in hotels and general spending in anticipation of a huge amount of ‘compo'.