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PART V PERSONS INVOLVED
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day after the Court found him guilty of participating in the riots, no sign of bruis- ing was found although such sign would have been visible if a beating such as that alleged had occurred within the previous 14 days.
314. Mr. HEATH's and Mr. SUTCLIFFE'S evidence of seeing LO Kei in good spirits at about this time, and of a conversation with him in which he made no complaint, was also very difficult to reconcile with the suggestion that he had been d severely beaten shortly before. We do not believe this allegation.
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315. In our opinion the substance of LO Kei's evidence could not, in itself, lend any weight to the suggestion that there was any truth in the message which Mrs. ELLIOTT claimed to have received. There was no other material evidence on the point.
316. There remains however the question whether the mere fact that he, during the course of the 7th, did say something, however vague, however change- able in form and however elusive and contradictory in content, about Mrs. ELLIOTT paying people to throw stones, indicates that there was some truth in the alleged warning. In the realm of speculation to which Mrs. ELLIOTT's refusal to speak the whole truth has confined us, one could think of more than one way, apart from pure coincidence or the possibility that each of these events had a common source, which could have led to the occurrence of both without providing any justification for the so called warning but there is little to be gained from mere speculation.
317. One thing is clear, that LO Kei's allegation of direct participation in organizing the riots by Mrs. ELLIOTT did not receive credence from responsible officers at Mong Kok and that-far from trying to exploit it—they were at pains, in the course of a lengthy examination, to expose not only the absence of any grounds whatever for his assertion but also the clutter of inflated fantasy from which it emerged. This task was completed by the afternoon of 7th April, before the receipt by Mrs. ELLIOTT from her 'credible' source, who apparently claimed he could find no other 'honest' policemen to whom to tell his story, of those further messages about beatings and a scholarship which, in her opinion, provided confirmation of the earlier warnings.
318. Before quitting this aspect of the matter it is necessary, however, to refer to one further factor which has both lengthened our task and made it more difficult to discharge.
319. During her evidence, Mrs. ELLIOTT informed us that it had never been her intention to reveal the source of the allegation about the 'plot at Mong Kok' and from that attitude her counsel never sought to dissociate himself before us or to suggest that it formed no part of his instructions on the matter or matters which brought him before the Commission. Nevertheless counsel, from the outset and throughout a period of many weeks, devoted his energies not merely to the perfectly proper, if simple, task of showing that the allegation, traceable to LO
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