Page 31 of The Elements

Some of the jury smile and nod. They like him.

He is one of them. He understands their guilty pleasures because they’re his pleasures too.

“Miss Mackintosh, the complainant, entered a bedroom with Robert Wolverton, and engaged in what, in my day, used to be called a little slap and tickle. Some kissing, some touching. Nothing unusual there, and nothing to be ashamed of. Young people, young women particularly, have agency over their own bodies these days, and this, I think we can all agree, is a good thing. But when Mr. Wolverton decided that he wanted to go further, that he was not prepared to stop at a little harmless fun”—he raises his voice now, sharply; he’s suddenly incensed—“he refused to take no for an answer! And ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he did what so many entitled men before him have done. He didn’t listen.

He chose to ignore her when she said that she did not want to have sex with him because he did not believe that was a choice that she had any right to make.

So he pinned her down. As you can see, Mr. Wolverton is a strong, athletic man, and Miss Mackintosh, as you will discover, is a rather petite young woman.

But before this even began, his friend, his teammate Mr. Evan Keogh, an Irishman, who had followed them upstairs, looked inside and, rather than stopping Mr. Wolverton from committing this heinous crime, he chose to film the encounter.

Mr. Wolverton even invited him to have sex with his victim afterward!

No, excuse me, I misspoke. Not to have sex with her.

Because Mr. Wolverton did not, in fact, have sex with Miss Mackintosh.

He raped her. And these are two very different things.

What is it with these footballers that makes them apparently unable to perform sexually unless one of their teammates is there, watching them, cheering them on like the fans in the terraces as they, metaphorically speaking, score?

They share young women in the way you or I might share a bag of toffees.

We’ve all seen the videos leaked online as they’ve been publicly shamed, suspended briefly from their clubs before being taken back again.

What is that all about, would someone please explain to me?

It’s something I simply do not understand.

But these young men, sadly, do not see women as human beings but as physical objects to be used, exploited, and then tossed aside.

Now, you will hear Mr. Wolverton and Mr. Keogh deny their parts in this grotesquerie, and you might ask why the police and forensic investigators have not searched Mr. Keogh’s phone for evidence.

Well, they would have, had Mr. Keogh not, by the most extraordinary piece of misfortune on his part, lost his phone later that same night.

A phone, I might add, that he had owned for two years and that had gone everywhere with him.

But on this particular night, when the footage would have given us the truth of the matter, Mr. Keogh…

somehow misplaced it! And bought a brand-new one the next morning!

Do you find this credible? I don’t. He didn’t bother to call Mr. Wolverton to see whether he’d left it behind in his apartment, as any normal person might do.

Nor did he ask the concierge of his building whether it had been handed in.

No, instead, he went directly into town and purchased a new one.

The fact is, he knew that the old one would never be held by human hands again.

It’s terribly inconvenient for the defendants, isn’t it, this distressing and inconvenient loss?

Because, if what they say is true, and Miss Mackintosh was a willing participant in their swordplay, then the footage would presumably have exonerated them and none of us would be here today.

But no, the phone just vanished into thin air, which allows the defendants to paint my client as a liar.

The Crown will prove that these two privileged young men, blessed with sporting talent and good looks, their moral compasses destroyed by financial success and the adoration of honest football fans, simply took what they wanted, caring nothing for the pain inflicted upon their victim.

Their vile WhatsApp messages will show how little remorse they felt afterward.

Some of the most disgusting pieces of conversation I have ever had the misfortune to read and which I do not look forward to presenting to you.

Those messages left fans throughout this city reeling.

In fact, they have disgusted people across the country, and also in Ireland, where they caused shock waves, for Mr. Keogh was a vital and much-admired presence in that country’s national team, a hero to children, teenagers, and adults alike from Dublin to Skibbereen to Donegal.

But, worst of all, they left a young woman, just entering adulthood, traumatized and ashamed, unable to go out and enjoy her life as any young woman should be able to do. ”

He shakes his head now and looks as if he is about to sit down, but a final thought occurs to him. “The whole thing is sickening, is it not?” he asks, his voice lower now. “We cannot allow society to be infected by such brutality. But how do we stop it?”

He considers this, as if he’s not quite sure of the answer, but then it comes to him, as if out of nowhere.

“ You can stop it,” he says, his eyes panning across each of the jury members, who are captivated by him now.

“I can’t. My learned friend Miss Brenton can’t.

Judge Kerrey can’t. The police, the press, the agents, the coaches, the club managers—they can’t.

The prosecution will prove the defendants’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which means that you can stop it, each of you, individually and as a collective.

If you choose to.” A pause. “And I hope you will,” he adds, sitting down and pulling his gown around him as he turns his gaze to the floor, his face lost in a frown, as if there’s nothing left for him in life but to contemplate the evils of the universe.

Although I’ve been told not to look at him, I find myself glancing toward Robbie, whose face is rigid, contemptuous, and angry.

I turn to the press pew and note the presence of a writer known for both his fiction and for his sports columns in Irish newspapers.

We’ve met a few times, sharing drinks in a hotel bar in Budapest during the Euros qualification campaign, when I scored a goal that put us second in the group.

I don’t like many people, but I always liked him.

Perhaps he feels my eyes on him because he turns and looks directly at me.

His expression forces me to turn away. No matter the result of the trial, I know he will never drink with me again.

I search the room for other faces I might recognize and feel that familiar twinge in my left arm where the bones didn’t knit together correctly after it was broken.

Naturally, no players from the club are present.

They’re under strict instructions not to say or do anything which might either jeopardize the case or damage the reputation of the club any more than it already has been.

Several participated in the notorious WhatsApp messages anyway, so they’ve been keeping their heads down for months, knowing their reputations are already balancing on a pinhead.

When it’s Catherine’s turn to rise, she sighs a little before looking at the jury.

“This might surprise you,” she begins, after introducing herself, “but I actually agree with a lot of what my learned friend Mr. Armstrong has said. We live in strange times, where young men are placed on podiums for nothing more complicated than dribbling a ball down a pitch and kicking it into the back of a net. I’m a football fan myself.

I always have been.” Of course she is. Like Mr. Armstrong, she must not be seen to be elitist. I notice that her accent, which had been quite refined in all our conversations to date, has suddenly taken on a more Yorkshire twang—she is from Halifax—and somehow, this doesn’t surprise me.

“When I was twenty, I ran into Gary Lineker in a nightclub in Leicester,” she continues, “and embarrassed myself so badly that my closest friends joke about it to this day. And I won’t even tell you about the time I found myself in conversation with Gary Neville at a wedding.

Maybe it’s the name Gary, maybe that does something for me? ”

A cough from the bench, and despite the laughter of the jury, Judge Kerrey is clearing her throat for a reason. Catherine looks at her and offers an apologetic nod.

“My Lady,” she says, before turning back to the twelve.

“My learned friend has spoken at some length. But, of course, it takes a lot of words to persuade people of a lie. The truth, happily, requires less energy, and the defense intends to let the evidence in this case speak for itself. All I ask of you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is that you base your judgment on the evidence, and on the evidence alone. Evidence that will show that Mr. Wolverton and Mr. Keogh are innocent of the charges laid against them. That said, please remember that Miss Mackintosh is not on trial here, nor will I put her on trial. That level of misogyny is beneath me, beneath this court, and beneath all of you. However, it will be important that you understand that Miss Mackintosh has a history of troubling behavior when it comes to relationships. I am cognizant of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which places restrictions on the extent to which a complainant in a sexual offense can be examined over his or her sexual history, but, before my learned friend cites this as a reason not to discuss such matters, I would remind him of Section 2 of that act, which allows such history to be examined if it has taken place in close proximity of time to the alleged offense, and the defense will prove that it has. And yes, while it might seem strange that Evan’s mobile phone was lost, that is the simple fact of the matter—which of us has not lost a phone?

—so we cannot surmise what may or may not have been on it and it cannot be part of this trial.

Miss Mackintosh engaged in a mutually consenting sexual experience that she regretted the next day.

We all make mistakes. I believe it’s called being human.

Under no circumstances should we condemn Miss Mackintosh for her mistake, but nor should we destroy the lives of two innocent young men over that same error.

Is that what you would want if Robbie and Evan were your sons?

Or would you want proof, demand proof, incontestable proof, that a crime had actually taken place? I know I would.”

She retakes her seat, and the same twelve faces that were looking at us with contempt ten minutes ago now appear more sympathetic.

I glance back at Juror no. 6, who has been listening carefully to everything Catherine has said.

Like the sportswriter, she senses me looking at her and turns in my direction, but her expression is inscrutable.

It’s hard not to wonder whether all of this will simply come down to who speaks last.