Powerful courtroom dramas are meat and drink to peak time TV viewers. We are all so familiar with court procedure that we often assume that the judicial system can be viewed 24/7 on The Justice Channel or some other service way down the Freeview list. Surely there's a program on in the afternoon called Live From Her Magistrates or What's My Old Bailey? There's probably an outtakes reel on You Tube showing various QC's stumbling over their sentences - remember when Lord Justice Dillnutt handed out 300 years instead of 30? Everyone fell about!
Anyway, the fact is, The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming (BBC2 9pm 8th & 9th Jan 2020) represented the first time cameras had been allowed to film a real-life murder trial. It was rather jarring to realise that every other serious crime trial I had ever witnessed was some kind of dramatisation or reconstruction. This was the real thing. I braced myself for some reality.
The prosecution and defence lawyers were an uneven balance of 2 against 1. This was due to each defendant having their own barrister. Edward Cairney and Avril Jones stood jointly accused of murder (pronounced the Scottish way of course - Muld-del) and sat apart in the dock, rarely looking at each other. Their advocates, on the other hand, often glanced at each other. Whether to exchange knowing looks regarding the mounting evidence against them or simply to check the straightness of their ill fitting wigs, there was more eye contact between lawyers than accused.
Cairney cut a particularly tragic figure. Wheelchair-bound now, unkempt and dishevelled he contrasted dramatically from his former self. Shown as confident, stocky and gregarious, photographs of him portrayed, if not a flamboyant figure, then certainly a popular one, holding get-together's in his riverside house with his partner, Avril Jones and their charge at the time, the young Margaret Fleming. The intimacy of the relationship between Eddie and Avril was unclear to all, however, their role as carer to Margaret was as obvious as it was necessary. Here was a child with learning difficulties and limited mental ability who, although loving, trusting and kind, was vulnerable due to her capacity. Eddie and Avril had been entrusted with her care by her late father who passed away in the 1990's due to cancer.
The prosecution, the deliciously named Iain McSporran QC, cross examined Cairney in the climax to the trial at the end of episode 2. The court looked on helplessly as the exchange proceeded along the same lines as a father questioning a lying 6-year old about his involvement with a broken window and a football. Eddie had nothing to offer except insults. At one stage it looked as if his defence was going to be that the Judge had murdered Margaret Fleming. His suggestion that McSporran should go and 'boil his head' was not acted upon.
Avril Jones, as had been her modus operandi for the previous 17 years, said nothing. You were left wondering who was the most evil. The lying, conniving Cairney with all his bluster and assertions that he was being fitted-up by the law; or the silent Jones, obviously aware of the truth but in denial about all except the benefit cheques that kept coming her way throughout the 17 years Margaret was missing.
Maybe the real guilt lay at the door of the welfare services who lost all contact with this sad and vulnerable child when she needed them most of all.
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