Unsafe Convictions Page 7
Chapter Four
‘Damn it!’ Janet thumped the steering wheel. ‘Damn it!’
‘Stop over-reacting,’ Ellen said. She looked back at the bungalow, where the light from the room they had just vacated glowed warmly behind closed curtains, dimly illuminating the ice-rimed shrubs and hedges of the little suburban garden. ‘Pawsley’s an embittered, frustrated old dyke panting to get her hands inside Lewis’s undies and, living in hope, she’ll dance to whatever tune Lewis plays. Right now, her “little girl in distress” routine is plucking at the old bat’s heartstrings.’
‘And very successfully,’ Janet commented, firing the engine.
‘Then again,’ Ellen added, ‘it could be her only tune. In my opinion, Lewis reached the limits of her emotional and intellectual development about twenty years ago, and she’s spent the time since perfecting the art of manipulation. When Mother kicked the bucket, probably out of utter desperation, Pawsley became the poodle.’ She yanked down the seat-belt. ‘They’re both seething with sexual frustration, and I thought the atmosphere was very girls’ boarding-school. Didn’t you?’
‘It was something,’ Janet agreed, ‘and rather suffocating, but all that aside, they’ve presented us with a serious problem. Dugdale’s obviously been shooting off his mouth.’
‘Don’t fall into Pawsley’s trap. She wants us to drop on him like a ton of bricks, but she probably got her information from Hinchcliffe.’ Massaging her cold hands in front of the warm-air vents, Ellen added: ‘The legal profession survives on internal networks and tittle-tattle. These solicitors will be in touch constantly, updating, querying, planning strategies, while, in total ignorance, Dugdale and co. think only their interests are calling the shots. Believe me, I know.’
‘I’m sure you do.’ Driving along the poorly lit road, Janet several times felt the rear wheels lose grip on patches of black ice.
‘What’s your impression of Lewis?’ asked Ellen. ‘As a police officer?’
‘My impression of her as a person, which will entirely determine how she functions professionally, is that she’s weak, indecisive, lacking in insight, influenced by emotion and passing thoughts, and has poor reasoning.’ Reaching the High Street, she turned left. ‘And because she herself hasn’t a clue what she’s doing or why she’s doing it, she creates confusion in others. Quite frankly, she’s the last person I’d have in charge of area child protection.’
‘She’s very taken with her own hunches.’ Gazing through the window at empty pavements, darkened shops, and garishly lit pubs, outside which ugly-looking men circled and taunted bare-legged women in tiny skirts, Ellen shivered. ‘God! This is one depressing town.’
‘It’s no different from a lot of other towns, although I do find the moors rather sinister. But that’s inevitable, I suppose, being so near the old haunts of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.’
‘And if they’d lived somewhere else, perhaps they wouldn’t have turned out quite so bad. Your perspectives and behaviour depend on your environment.’
‘Human pain and misery are much the same everywhere.’ Seeing the Junction Inn ahead, Janet prepared to turn.
‘But pain and misery are usually the outcome of what people do, not the reason,’ Ellen commented. ‘After all, you didn’t embark on last year’s holiday romance with a life-threatening upshot in mind, did you?’
The car jerked as Janet’s hands tightened on the wheel, her knuckles gleaming white.
‘Hard though it may be,’ Ellen went on, ‘it’s time to put it behind you. We’re all liable to lapses of one kind or another.’ She smiled gently. ‘After all, I was five months pregnant on my wedding day.’
‘But your child lived.’
‘And yours didn’t, because an ectopic pregnancy is completely unsurvivable. It was no one’s fault.’
‘I thought of having an abortion,’ Janet admitted, ‘and when the decision was made for me, it seemed like God’s judgement.’ She fumbled in the open cigarette pack on the dashboard, clicking her lighter three times before it flared. ‘I became my own child’s tomb.’
‘Don’t be so Gothic,’ Ellen said. ‘What d’you think made Lewis what she is? Whenever push comes to shove, I’ll bet she collapses with relief on the indoctrination of a lifetime, where the authority and infallibility of the Church, and of God’s representatives on earth, otherwise known as Father this, that or the other, rule her head and her heart. She’s irrational and irresolute because unquestioning obedience was drummed into her from birth. She wouldn’t even dare a reasonable doubt, let alone active heresy, for fear of eternal hell-fire. And don’t say,’ she added, as Janet almost rammed the wall of the Bull’s car-park, ‘that your religion’s any different. You’re completely indoctrinated with guilt over matters of the flesh.’
‘It’s one way of keeping the beast under control.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Ellen was exasperated. ‘That’s complete drivel, especially from a woman of your intelligence!’
Janet stared through the windscreen, with tears in her eyes.
‘I’m willing to offer a shoulder to cry on,’ Ellen went on, ‘but only up to a point. You’ve already had more than adequate support from your colleagues, and it’s time you took yourself in hand. Career-wise, McKenna’s given you a plum job by bringing you into this investigation, but if I come to the conclusion you’re not functioning on all cylinders, believe me, Janet, you’ll be back in North Wales so fast your feet won’t touch the ground. And you’ll be facing a compulsory medical and psychological evaluation.’ She opened the car door, shivering in the blast of freezing air. ‘You’re not a child, and you’ve got to take responsibility for yourself. And you can start by eating properly. Just remember, I’ll be watching you.’
Chapter Five
Taking the first batch of laundry from the washing machine, Julie Broadbent wondered if she worked the graveyard shift more often than the other staff at the Willows because she lived in, or because this was yet another imposition she allowed the world to thrust upon her. She opened the door of a tumble drier, to find clumps of fluff stuck to the inside and, biting her lip with annoyance because she also seemed to be the only person ever to carry out the irritating little chore, she detached the filter, pulled off the blanket-like layer, replaced the filter, loaded the machine, and put another batch of soiled sheets in the washer. Every night the same four or five residents would wet the bed and, at times of particular stress, many more followed suit, as if punishing the staff. Summer and winter, the laundry stank of urine, because the machines had to be used when cheap off-peak electricity was available, and Julie had lost count of the spring and summer nights spent loading and unloading washers and driers, folding and smoothing sheets, pillowcases, quilt covers, and mountains of clothing, while the rest of the world was free to chase its dreams.
The machines busy for the next forty-five minutes, she went to the kitchen to make a drink, and found herself donning rubber gloves to scour greasy sinks and work tops while the kettle boiled. The Willows employed cooks and cleaners, but like the fluff in the driers, the grease in the kitchen was left for her attention. Sprinkling scouring powder, rubbing surfaces, wringing out cloths in steaming water, she stared absent-mindedly through the big window over the sink, watching lights pop off one after another in the raw brick houses which now overran the decimated grounds. In her childhood, the Willows had been surrounded by acres of terraced lawns, formal flowerbeds, and trees, all a source of heart-twisting envy to one from a damp-infested two-up and two-down with a backyard barely long enough for the clothes-line, and a front door flush with the pavement. She would kneel for hours on end at her bedroom window, her fingers prodding relentlessly into the rotten wood of the frame, and dream of being a real daughter of that imposing hillside house.
As she hung the dishcloths to air over the edges of the sinks, Julie remembered that horrible afternoon when reality had punctured her eleven-year-old’s dreams like a rusty nail popping a pretty balloon. She had be
en exploring a new way home from school to avoid the tedium of an endlessly repeated journey and, about to cross the road by the old grammar school building, she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves behind her. Dramatic, heroic scenes of rescue flashed through her mind at the speed of light, but then Beryl Kay rounded the corner, tensely astride the pretty dapple-grey horse for which her grandfather had just paid £7000. The animal pulled at the bit, saliva dripping from its mouth as it tried to release the stranglehold, while Beryl, indoctrinated with the belief that animals must be controlled if they were not to run amok, reined back so hard that the bit drew blood, streaking the saliva with red.
At the time, Beryl was eighteen, and had her own car as well as the horse. Julie could not know, because she could not differentiate between those luxuries, that Beryl infinitely preferred the mindlessly obedient car to a horse, which required a level of empathy and communication completely beyond her ken. All Julie could do was judge the incongruity and utter unfairness of a beautiful animal at the mercy of this sullen-faced girl whose eyes were dulled by constantly looking only inwards upon herself. While her gaze followed Beryl and her heart kept pace with the beat of the hooves, her mind assessed the unbridgeable differences and rammed the knowledge down her throat like a purgative. In that instant, Julie was near overwhelmed by the need to rush into the road, to startle the horse into throwing Beryl or to be trampled under the dancing hooves; but to make a defining gesture and create a memorable moment. As it was, she simply hung against the wall until Beryl went out of sight.
To Beryl’s grandfather, the horse symbolised the achievements spawned by his own early envies, so she was obliged to perform her role in his scheme of things, and whether she liked or loathed the animal was not the point. When she sulked around the paddock in the grounds of the old parsonage, he saw the incongruity in a different light, and feared that while his money might give her the proverbial leg up and keep her astride her patch of the world, he could not buy her breeding, for all he could buy her a thoroughbred horse. The blood which filled her veins was sluggish with commonness, and her voice and manners spoke only of vulgar money.
Julie no longer envied Beryl, whose eyes grew duller each year, and, having realised the dream of living at the Willows, albeit by strange default, she knew that too was far from enviable. It had nothing to do with the ravaged acres of once forbidden gardens, the Formica tables and plastic chairs strewn across the parquet floor of the dining-room, the rickety chipboard furniture in the bedrooms, the cheap flowered cretonne at the windows, or the smells of urine in the laundry, but was simply her response to a building constructed, like Beryl’s life, for its own sake, and without reference to the shape of its occupants.
While her teabag brewed in its mug, Julie leaned on the work-top, a cold draught touching her ankles. A north-easterly wind, yet to reach full strength, whined around the gable ends, and she fancied there was already the smell of snow in the air. Tea in hand, she went into the hall, to listen for a few moments at the bottom of the huge carved staircase, but heard only the noises which belonged to the house itself, and the wind thumping in the chimney behind the blocked-off fireplace. Two other members of staff were in the house with her, sleeping-in on call, as the jargon went, while she was on waking duty. Satisfied her charges were quiet for the present, she unlocked the office, switched on the overhead light, sat behind the desk, and opened the log book. Cyril Bennett, the manager of the Willows, had left no instructions for her and, for once, the residents had passed an uneventful day. Their individual files disclosed neither novelty nor urgency and, the regular trips to the laundry excepted, she would be hard pressed to fill the hours until the day shift arrived at seven. No one would know, or mind, if she went to the flat in the old attic nursery, which had been her home for the last five years, but she would not settle if she did. Readying herself for the night shift, she had slept most of the afternoon, dreaming a confusing jumble of images and impressions, which made sense in sleep but none when she woke to the summons of the telephone beside her bed. She knew from the colour of the sky that darkness had not long since come and, listening to the voice on the other end of the line, she wondered if the man who, she was told, insisted on seeing her on Wednesday, might be the same man she had seen earlier today, trying to escape from Trisha’s house.
But whether he were or not, it made no difference. She would keep her own counsel, for even if he believed her, whatever she might say would come too late. Staring unseeingly at the candy-striped curtains that Mrs Bennett believed might bring some colour to the dismal room, her thoughts jumped once more on to the mental treadmill they were condemned to trudge, getting nowhere because there was nowhere to go. It was her own vision of hell, without an exit, so she put up her hands and gripped fistfuls of hair, tugging until the pain turned to pleasure.
As a child, she was beset by the fears that haunt all children who think beyond the immediate. She feared hunger, homelessness, her mother dead, her mother taken away, herself dragged screaming from her mother’s arms, but nothing prepared her for what she would bring upon herself, simply by breaking the unconscious habit of a lifetime. In Trisha Smith she recognised the shape of a fellow being, and cast aside innate caution to share her thoughts and her secrets. In so doing, she brought about Trisha’s death, while her own, infinitely smaller punishment was to have Trisha’s friendship replaced by mortal terror, which had now kept her company through 825 days. And Julie remembered, all those long nights since she had first realised, as she was climbing into bed, that she might be about to spend her last night on earth, a notion that scuttled through her mind like a spider invading a house each time she laid her head on the pillow.
Until Smith left, Trisha’s life was not worth living, but afterwards she would tell Julie of the small excitements and little pleasures which were, unbeknown, only lighting her path towards the flames that would consume her. Julie was on her way to Trisha’s house when she first saw the smoke rising from the copse. Knowing the billowing grey mass told of more than a fire in the sitting-room hearth, she ran towards the derelict mill, terrified that Smith, who loved destruction, had been seduced into some violent extravagance. She went through the gap where the mill gates once stood, and into the yard, stumbling among the strewn rubbish and broken bricks, crunching over shattered glass, towards the short-cut to the house. When the front of the house came into view, she stopped dead in her tracks. Later, she thought of the fire as an orgy, flames alighting on objects and each other with consuming passion, but then she thought only of Trisha. By the time she saw him, careening out of the lane in a small blue car, she was in the telephone kiosk, panting out a frantic message to the emergency services, and praying that Trisha, if she had not escaped, was already dead.
To this day, she did not know if Trisha’s killer had seen her. He went about his usual business without a sign of the extra burden on his soul. But, Julie admitted to herself, so too did she, for life forced such accommodations on guilty and innocent alike. She stopped tugging her hair, and began to count the strands she had torn from her scalp.
Part Four
Tuesday, 2nd February
Morning
Chapter One
COMING OUT
Our chief reporter, Gaynor Holbrook, has an exclusive interview with Piers Stanton Smith, whose conviction for the murder of his first wife, Trisha, was recently quashed on appeal.
Piers Stanton Smith and myself sit in matching wing chairs in the study of his home. It is a tasteful, book-lined retreat with fine antique furniture. Firelight plays on the chiselled bones of his face, emphasising his brilliant blue eyes. Smoking incessantly in nervous little puffs, he wears an open-necked silk shirt, an Aran cardigan, designer jeans, Gucci loafers, and a Rolex watch. Bitter memories haunt his eyes as he describes the terror of going to prison for a crime he did not commit.
Throwing his cigarette in the fire, he runs his fingers through his fair curly hair. He is finding it hard to believe in his freedom. ‘I’m
terrified it was just a dream,’ he says. He fears being taken back to prison, and now has a counsellor. But nothing can change public opinion about Trisha’s death. Beaten senseless by her killer, she suffocated in her blazing house. He says her family will always be after his blood. ‘I’m like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail.’ He is afraid the police will also hound him. ‘I’ll get the blame when the officers who put me away get prosecuted themselves.’ He regards Superintendent McKenna, who is investigating the actions of Naughton police, as a ‘saviour’. ‘I hope he comes to see me soon,’ he adds.
He has never denied that he was occasionally violent towards Trisha during their marriage. Without that history, people would have been less inclined to believe he killed her. But he denies being a vicious bully. Explaining the build-up of pressures and tensions which led to their rows, he talks of the pain and frustration which led him to lash out. ‘Trisha never understood me, and I know her sister Linda just fed into her fantasies about me. Trisha started the rows every time, knowing exactly how they’d end. She did it on purpose to make me feel like a monster.’
Shuddering, he reaches for another cigarette. ‘I didn’t say much at the trial, because everybody had enough grief, but Trisha was incredibly screwed-up, and she projected it all on me. She couldn’t be nasty enough. She called me a work-shy parasite because I couldn’t get a job. Then I bought myself a teddy bear. I never had one when I was little. It was comforting, so I carried it around sometimes. She said I looked as camp and silly as Sebastian Flyte in the Brideshead Revisited film, so I threw the bear on the fire to shut her up.’ He looks at me steadily, his eyes opaque. ‘She tried to destroy me, and that’s why the violence erupted. I felt I was in the thick of a battle, and the only thing on my mind was getting out alive.’