Read Unsafe Convictions Online
Authors: Alison Taylor
‘
Are you being funny?’ Linda demanded. ‘Apart from the odd bit of cooking, when he made the kitchen a pig tip and expected Trisha to clean up after him, he did damn all. He was too scared of getting his hands dirty, or breaking his fancy nails.’ She turned to Craig. ‘His nails are longer than mine, aren’t they?’
As
Craig nodded, McKenna, despite himself, glanced at Linda’s nails: neat, pink ovals just reaching the tips of her fingers, and realised that she and her husband were as obsessed with Smith, if not more so, than Smith with himself. He listened without comment or question while, ashen-faced, they competed to recount the worst outrage, coming to see this obsession as the thriving child of their guilt. He heard that Smith used those unseemly nails to tear at Trisha’s face, that he was afraid of honest labour, and forced her to hump coal from the yard in all weathers.
‘
And when Fred went to the house one day, he found her sifting ash for bits of clinker to put back on the fire,’ Craig said. ‘They were that poor.’
But
such poverty, Linda asserted, was rooted in Smith’s greed. ‘He’d think nothing of spending twenty or thirty pounds on a bottle of aftershave, while Trisha had to buy her clothes in the charity shops.’
Before
Craig discovered that his sister-in-law was living in abject terror, he had chastised Linda for lending her money, for paying for little luxuries, as well as replacing the things Smith destroyed in his rages. ‘But you couldn’t ever replace some things,’ added Craig. ‘Like that pretty flowering plant your mum had just before she died, and that photo of her that he smashed to smithereens.’
Linda
brushed her hands across her eyes. It’s water under the bridge.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s time to let her go.’
‘
How can we?’ asked Craig. ‘It’s not finished with.’
‘
In your evidence at the trial,’ McKenna said to Linda, trying to focus her attention, ‘you hinted at unpleasant and destructive secrets between you and your sister.’
‘
No, I didn’t.’ She began to fidget. ‘We didn’t want Dad to know about the beatings because he’d have gone after that bastard with an axe. And we didn’t tell him about the sex part of it because he’d have been mortified with shame for her.’
‘
The “sex part”?’
‘
The way he made her feel dirty for wanting what was normal.’
‘
You also implied that she may have colluded with the violence.’
‘
I didn’t!’ Linda was close to tears. ‘That bastard’s brief put words in my mouth. He pushed me into a corner, and wouldn’t let me say more than “yes”, or “no”. I couldn’t
explain
. I couldn’t say how frightened she was.’
‘
Tell me about the advertisements for escorts?’
‘
Oh, God!’ She put her hands over her face.
‘
Were they your idea ?’
‘
Yes.’ She told him how Trisha dreaded opening the post. ‘There was always something for her to worry about, or more bills she couldn’t pay. I wanted her to have something nice to look forward to, for a change.’
‘
Did you place the advertisements yourself?’
‘
Yes!’
‘
You never told me!’ Craig was astounded.
‘
And who replied?’ McKenna demanded.
‘
A couple of blokes.’
‘
Who? Where did they live?’
‘
One lived outside Manchester, the other near here.’
‘
Do you have their names? Their addresses?’
Reluctantly,
Linda nodded.
‘
Speak for the tape, please, Mrs Newton.’
‘
I know who they are and where they live!’
‘
Did you share this information with Inspector Dugdale?’
‘
No.’
‘
Why not?’
‘
Because!’
‘
Because if you had,’ McKenna said, his eyes as flinty as his voice, ‘suspicion might well have fallen on someone other than your former brother-in-law.’
‘
Trisha never met them,’ Linda insisted. ‘She wouldn’t even write back, or ring up.’
‘
You can’t know that, Mrs Newton. You wilfully suppressed evidence vital to a murder investigation.’
‘I’m not burdened with much of an imagination,’ Ellen commented, ‘but by the time Linda finished, I felt almost inside Trisha’s skin. What really got to me wasn’t Trisha’s nightmares, but the ones she had during the day, when she was ironing, or cooking, or just watching TV. She’d suddenly start shuddering, apparently, and be fighting for her breath within seconds.’
‘
Smith haunts people.’ McKenna rooted on his desk for cigarettes. ‘He worms into their brains like a parasite, and they can’t get rid of him.’ Reaching for his lighter, he added: ‘When she refers to him, Linda spits out the words as if they’re choking her.’
‘
She’s more likely to choke on her own mischief,’ Jack said. ‘What on earth possessed her to keep quiet about those letters?’
‘
She didn’t want Dugdale’s attention diverted.’
‘
Well, if
we
go after the poor saps who replied to Trisha’s lonely hearts ads, we’re technically reopening the murder investigation,’ Jack pointed out. ‘That’s not our remit. Shouldn’t you take advice from the chief constable first?’
‘
He’ll be asked to arrange for the Haughton police to detain the local man, and to liaise with Manchester police about the other one. We’ll sit in on the interviews.’
‘
Fair enough,’ agreed Jack. ‘Are you going to inform Hinchcliffe? Dugdale has a right to know about Linda’s shenanigans.’
‘
So do Bowden and Lewis,’ McKenna said, ‘but as far as we know, they’re currently unrepresented, and I’m not willing to offer information to one party and not to another.’ He tapped the ash from his cigarette. ‘So, while I’m out interviewing Broadbent, you can, on my behalf, warn the Federation that I regard the needless confusion about alternative representation for those two as an attempt to subvert my investigation.’
Between
nine o’clock that morning, and eleven thirty, Wendy Lewis telephoned Frances Pawsley’s office fourteen times and, on each occasion, was asked to hold the line, while the same few bars of Mozart’s
Eine
Kleine
Nachtmusik
tinkled in her ears. When Frances remained ‘not available’, at eleven forty, and after emptying a pack of cigarettes newly opened when she woke, Wendy contacted the Federation, begging for their intervention. She argued for thirteen minutes, demanding representation by Frances or no one, but learned only that her options were reduced to zero. She smoked another cigarette, and once more telephoned Frances’s office, now to be told that Frances was in court for the rest of the day, and had not left any message.
At
twelve twenty-seven she threw the stub of another cigarette into the sitting-room grate, took an unopened bottle of gin from the sideboard, and walked along the corridor to the bathroom, where she slid open the door of the medicine chest and debated which of her mother’s old pills to mix into a cocktail. Brown plastic pill bottles in one hand, tooth glass and bottle clutched in the other, she went to her bedroom, put bottles, glass and gin on her night table, picked up the telephone extension, and gave the minions in Frances’s office a message which no one could ignore.
Smugly
pleased to have discovered an option unconsidered by the Federation, she peered at faded chemist’s labels, shook out pills from this bottle and that, topped up the glass with gin, and swirled the cloudy mess with a yellow biro. White grains and scummy colours stuck to the side of the glass, and, irritated, she watched undissolved powder quickly settle to the bottom. Giving the mixture one more vicious stir, she downed the draught in one swallow. It tasted quite vile, and left sticky powders coating her teeth, so she returned to the bathroom, scrabbling along the wall in case she was suddenly enfeebled by the drugs, rinsed her mouth with copious amounts of running water and, despite the dire warnings of her dead mother, also drank from the bathroom tap. Staggering back to the bedroom, she lay atop the quilt with her arms behind her head, watching the bedside clock tick through the minutes she had allowed for her message to reach Frances, and for Frances, panic-stricken, to respond.
At
one twelve, she fell into unconsciousness without any awareness of the event, and her body began to chill by the minute.
Mineral water brimming in a lead crystal tumbler in one hand, mobile telephone in the other, Gaynor stood at the window of what was once a hunting lodge owned by the Duke of Norfolk, and was now an exclusive hotel. In the drive below, her own expensive car was parked with others of its kind.
‘
It’s a try-on,’ she assured her editor. ‘Linda Newton can’t do anything because she can’t prove she
wasn’t
molested.’
‘
We can’t prove she was,’ Davidson argued. ‘You’ve only got that con’s word.’
‘
She can’t afford a libel trial.’
‘
The lawyers might offer no win, no fee.’
‘F
or libel? They’d have to be out of their minds!’
‘
Newton’s solicitor reckons they can prove the dead sister wasn’t molested, either.’
‘
They can prove she was the Virgin Mary for all I care. She’s dead, and you can’t defame the dead.’
‘
But it’d add weight to Newton’s claims.’ Davidson paused. ‘And what about this business with Smith’s mother?’
‘
What about it? The coppers couldn’t find her before the trial, and we had no cause to think she wasn’t six feet under. We published in good faith.’
‘
You think of every angle, don’t you?’
‘
That’s what you pay me for. How are the sales figures?’
‘
They rocketed yesterday, and today’s should be better still. You really whetted Joe Public’s appetite.’
‘
More fool Joe Public.’
‘
What’s the matter, Gaynor?’ Davidson’s voice had a spiteful edge. ‘Is Mr Smith not quite what you thought?’
‘
He makes even my flesh crawl, so use your imagination. And his wife’s an utter moron. While she thinks she’s embroiled in the romance of the century, he’s sneering behind her back.’
‘
Well, they’ve made their own bed. I take it you’re going to Sheffield to see Bunty Smith?’
‘
Yeah, later.’
‘
Keep me informed. Have the police been after you again?’
‘
No. I’ve already said “sorry”.’ She watched two figures trudging along the crest of the moors, perhaps a farmer and his dog searching for stragglers among the lambing ewes, to bring them to lower ground before the suffocating snows began to fall. Both man and animal were little more than faint smudges against the sombre sky. ‘And I hope you gave our lawyers a rocket. It’s their job to vet copy for things that need to be checked, not mine. I just write the stuff.’ Wandering over to the desk, she put down her glass and reached for a sheet of crested notepaper. ‘What’s Bunty Smith’s address?’
‘
Seventy-seven Primrose Walk. Sheridan lives at seventy-one, and if the coppers could write their ones and sevens properly, there wouldn’t have been a mistake in the first place.’
‘
The beastly Bunty could be overjoyed to get right of reply, you know. How much can I offer?’
‘
Not enough to make her think we’ve got a guilty conscience. I don’t want that Sheridan harpy on our backs for hush money.’
Gaynor
laughed. ‘I’d worry more about being savaged by a dead sheep.’
‘
Never underestimate Joe Public,’ Davidson counselled. ‘We’re not always the only ones with aces up our sleeves. And maybe giving Bunty Smith’s address to the police would be a useful quid pro quo. After you’ve talked to her, of course.’
‘
Why should I?’ she demanded. ‘It’s not my fault they were too lazy to look for her properly.’
‘
Very
Dickensian,’ Ellen said, looking up at the dour façade of the Willows as McKenna’s car drew to a halt in the flagged courtyard. ‘These Victorian mansions always seem to end up as institutions, but I suppose they’re obsolete otherwise in this day and age.’
‘So they’re ideal for housing people who lack the sensibilities the rest of us enjoy, aren’t they?’ Janet asked acidly. ‘Like mental defectives.’
‘
“People with learning difficulties” is the correct terminology.’ Helping Ellen to unload her machines, McKenna saw the almost bitter light in Janet’s eyes, but said no more, because there was nothing more to say. Tape-recorder in his arms, he followed her up the steps and into a hall of baronial proportions, where a massively carved staircase rose heavenwards, and the great leaded windows were inset with crests. A tall, very thin man wearing half-moon spectacles waited for them, snapping his heels on the parquet floor.
‘
I’m Cyril Bennett, the manager.’ He frowned. ‘Julie said you’re investigating this alleged miscarriage of justice. Is she in some kind of trouble over it?’
‘
I can’t comment,’ McKenna replied.
‘
You see, if someone’s under police investigation, we’re supposed to suspend them pending the outcome.’
‘
Our business with Miss Broadbent is not connected with her work. She’s one of a number of people we’re interviewing.’
Bennett
persisted. ‘The police were in and out of here for weeks on end after that poor woman died, and I’d have thought anything Julie had to say was said at the time.’
‘
Our frames of reference are quite different.’
‘
Has the management committee given you permission to come here?’
‘
No,’ McKenna said patiently. ‘To be frank, we’re not obliged to ask, but if you object to our seeing Miss Broadbent on the premises, we’ll make other arrangements. And if anything
should
crop up relevant to Miss Broadbent’s suitability as an employee, rest assured you’ll be the first to know.’