Read Unsafe Convictions Online
Authors: Alison Taylor
The old woman’s jeering voice ringing in her ears, Gaynor ran down the squalid staircase from Primrose Walk, her fine leather boots slipping on the globs of spit and other vile stuff besmearing the concrete. Once at ground level, she stood under the defaced sign for Bluebell Way and used her mobile telephone to call up the number on the back of the taxi receipt, then hurried away from the tenement towards the shop on the street corner, where she waited, shivering, for the taxi to arrive. Half expecting to see Ida Sheridan panting along the road in pursuit, she wondered inconsequentially if Ida’s alliance with a Sheridan was accidental or deliberate, and if the evil old bitch realised that her name was so alliterative.
The argument was still unresolved when Janet, Ellen and McKenna returned to the Church Street house. The cawing churchyard rooks were, he thought, no more raucous than the women’s voices.
‘
I’m not challenging your authority,’ Ellen said to him, ‘but you know perfectly well that we can’t request a comparison of Julie Broadbent’s voice with the tape of the 999 call about the fire. That could only be done if the murder investigation was reopened. The fact that we now have her voice on tape is irrelevant, and anyway,’ she added, draping her coat over the back of a chair, ‘we’ve no cause to suspect she made the call. Nothing emerged from the interview.’
‘
Precisely!’ McKenna snapped. ‘Nothing at
all
emerged from the interview.’
‘
Maybe that’s because she’s not significant,’ Jack suggested.
‘
Whether she is or not, she’s got evasiveness down to a fine art.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘So, whatever else her failings, Lewis was spot on over that.’
‘
Perhaps we could ask for a comparison of
all
the tapes so far,’ Janet said. ‘No one would be singled out that way, and it would just be part of the ongoing inquiry.’
‘
That would let us off the hook up to a point,’ Ellen replied, ‘but what do we do if her voice matches?’
‘
Notify the powers that be,’ Jack said, bored with the discussion. ‘Fred Jarvis wants to know when he’s having his fifteen minutes of fame, and Rene told me Dugdale’s getting his wife back, and that Linda’s scared of being sent down.’
‘
With luck,’ McKenna commented, ‘fear might improve Linda’s memory a bit more. She was extraordinarily stupid.’
‘
So Rene said,’ Jack added. ‘And the letter writers have already been detained, so we’d better sort out the interviews.’
‘
I want to see Ryman again,’ McKenna said. ‘His name keeps cropping up in the most unexpected places.’
‘
Don’t forget we’ve arranged to meet Fauvel this evening,’ Ellen reminded him.
‘
I won’t.’ Glancing through the notes Jack had made in the report book, he asked: ‘Where’s the fax from the National Insurance Register?’
‘
Here.’ Jack extracted a sheet of paper from the stack on his desk. ‘The city of Sheffield and its environs have no less than seventeen pensioners by the name of Hilda Smith, and without a maiden name or date of birth, we can’t narrow them down. However, Sheffield police are willing to go door-knocking on our behalf.’
‘
Get them to do it, then. Has the Federation sorted itself out?’
‘
Singh’s to continue representing Colin Bowden, much to his disgust, but they couldn’t contact Lewis, so she stays out on a limb. Pawsley’s apparently keeping her head down, but Hinchcliffe’s been on to them, pressing for movement with Dugdale.’
‘
As things stand at the moment,’ Ellen said, ‘it’s still Dugdale’s word against Fauvel’s.’
‘
It has been all along,’ Janet commented rather waspishly.
‘
How did you get on with Smith’s mother?’ Davidson asked his star reporter. ‘Is there much more mileage in this story? Maybe Smith’s had his day. Readers like novelty, you know.’
‘
Come on!’ Gaynor coaxed. ‘I’m supposed to be finding out who stitched him up, and I can’t do that if you pull me off the job. It’s big,’ she reminded him, ‘and it can only get bigger.’
‘
Only if you can outmanoeuvre the police investigation. How d’you plan to do that?’
‘
There are always ways and means, and sources of information.’ She fiddled with her pen. ‘I think McKenna and his crew are simply looking for a scapegoat. When did you last hear of coppers shafting one of their own?’
‘
So, what’s your angle?’
‘
I go after the priest.’
‘
No way!’ Davidson was horrified by her suggestion. ‘Exposing a queer-boy wife-basher is one thing. Putting a highly respected Roman Catholic priest in the spotlight is in a different league entirely.’
‘
I was very kind to Smith,’ she protested.
‘
Only if you don’t read between the lines,’ Davidson commented. ‘And when his wife’s reread today’s offering a few more times, she’ll get a different message.’
‘
Nobody twisted their arms!’ Gaynor snapped. ‘They were begging for it.’
‘
Maybe they were, but this priest isn’t. Have you got a death-wish, or something? What d’you think the police’ll do to you if they find out?’
‘
They can’t do anything,’ Gaynor said. ‘It’s all public-interest and right-to-know stuff.’
‘
What
exactly is “public interest and right-to-know”?’
‘
Which one of them’s lying. Dugdale, or Fauvel. Because,’ she added, with uncharacteristic patience, ‘one of them succeeded in causing a miscarriage of justice, which is going to cost Joe Public a bloody fortune in compensation. Not to mention the lawyers’ fees, and what McKenna’s investigation will cost this police force. It all comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets.’
Davidson
was silent, mulling over her proposal, then he said: ‘But Fauvel swore on oath that he handed the letter to Dugdale.’
‘
He may well have done,’ she conceded, ‘but d’you really think we’ll be told if that’s true? Then again,
he
might be lying.’
‘
Why should a priest lie?’
‘
Because he’s a man!’ she said, increasingly exasperated. ‘And he’s not exactly whiter than white. There was a lot of gossip a few years ago about him and a couple of teenage girls.’
‘
What sort of gossip?’
‘
What sort d’you think?’
‘
That still doesn’t make him a liar,’ Davidson said. ‘I’ll sleep on it, and I’ll have to talk to our legal people in any case, so keep your head down till you hear from me. How
did
you get on with Smith’s mother, by the way? I was expecting copy for tomorrow’s paper.’
‘
Not very well, because Ida fucking Sheridan was directing the traffic.’
‘
Yes, but what does she want? And what’s she got to say?’
‘
I don’t know! As I said, Sheridan was sticking in her oar all the time.’
‘
Stop playing games, Gaynor,’ Davidson instructed her. ‘You’re squirming like a fish on a hook. We let Smith bad-mouth his mother from here to hell. She must have
something
to say.’
‘
Sheridan says it’ll cost us fifty grand for Bunty even to open her mouth, and at least twice as much for her to keep it shut.’ The sounds of Davidson’s mirth were like a red rag to a bull. ‘It’s not funny! You weren’t there! And Sheridan’s out of a fucking
nightmare
.’
‘
Met your match, have you? And don’t start swearing at me. That kid in the newsroom complained to the union about your language. They told him it amounts to sexual harassment.’ He continued chuckling. ‘What did you offer?’
‘
Five grand.’
‘
And?’
‘
Sheridan told me to sod off, so I did.’
‘
Then I’ll expect her to call again when she realises you’re not waiting on her doorstep with another offer.’
‘
She can take a running jump for all I care,’ Gaynor told him. ‘And Bunty looks like she’s got cancer, so I don’t see her as a long-term problem. Not fifty grand’s worth of a problem, anyway.’
Jack went first to Manchester, negotiating a road made treacherous by large tracts of black ice, to see the seventy-year-old widower who had responded to Trisha’s advertisement. Then he returned to Haughton, and the second respondent.
The
widower had, he disclosed to the police officers, hoped to find a kind, decent woman to share his modest wealth and comfortable home, and to care for him in his last years. Trisha’s advertisement, a little dog-eared, was tucked in his wallet and, as he showed it to Jack, he said she sounded a really ‘nice lady’, and he was sorry she never replied.
‘
I expect she found somebody younger,’ he added wistfully. ‘I do so hope she’s happy. I’m still looking, but what d’you expect, at my age?’
The
second respondent was very much younger, and considerably wealthier, with kind eyes and a gentle manner. ‘I’d never before replied to such an advert,’ he admitted, ‘because they seem to represent an admission of failure, but I used to read them every week. Indeed, to be honest, I looked forward to them. Hope springing eternal, as they say.’
‘
Why did you respond to this one?’ asked Jack. ‘She sounded different.’
‘
In what way?’
‘
After a while, you learn to read between the lines. You realise there’s a sort of hidden code in certain words or phrases.’ He smiled. ‘And usually to do with sex or money. But this one was open, and honest and, I felt, completely genuine.’ He paused. ‘To be frank, when there was no reply after three weeks, I wrote again.’
‘
To where?’
‘
The newspaper box number, of course.’
‘
Did you get a response?’
‘
No. Why am I being interviewed, anyway? It was a long time ago. Has something happened to her?’
At eight minutes past seven, Wendy returned to some level of consciousness, roused by the bitter cold of her room, the near numbness in her legs, and the seeping wetness under her body. She struggled into a sitting position, tapping her fingers on the bed covers in search of the source of dampness, then the smell of urine reached her nostrils and she fell off the bed in horror, to crawl to the bathroom, sodden skirt slapping icily against her legs.
At
the bathroom door, she began to vomit. Heaving and retching, she dragged herself through a trail of bile and slime to the lavatory pan, just in time to spew up what felt like her whole stomach. The pain was terrible, burning from her lips to the deepest reaches of her insides, and she cried and howled like a dying animal.
It
was a long time before she could summon the strength to crawl to the telephone on the hall table, and dialling Frances’s home number seemed to take an eternity. But there was no reply, and no message on the answering machine, so she called Father Brett’s personal number, to be told by an automated female voice that the number was not responding but that a message could be left. Despairing, betrayed in her hour of greatest need by those closest, Wendy dialled the emergency services, and slumped against the wall, great splashes of vomit on her urine-sodden clothes, while she waited for the ambulance to wail to a halt outside the door.
She
found it gratifying that the paramedics had to batter their way into the bungalow, and somehow fitting, like the siren which whooped overhead while she was rushed the short distance to hospital. As she was stretchered into the casualty department, like Fred Jarvis the day before, one of the reporters on watch outside surged forward, peering at her face, tape-recorder at the ready. He recognised her instantly, which was even more gratifying. She could barely stop herself responding to the questions he threw out as he chased after her, but instead, she gasped dramatically, and rolled her eyes.
Subdued by the oppressive atmosphere between their parents, the Dugdale children had eaten their tea without any of the usual bickering and chattering, and escaped upstairs to play.
‘
They’re confused,’ Dugdale said. ‘And I’m not surprised. I am, too.’
‘
You’ve let things go.’ Susan fidgeted with the ornaments on the sitting-room mantelpiece. ‘There’s dust everywhere, as well as crumbs. Have you been eating in here?’
‘
Yes.’
‘
You know I don’t like food in the sitting-room.’
‘
You weren’t here.’
‘
Oh, that’s typical, isn’t it? Out of sight, out of mind!’
‘
Don’t be so childish! I’ve got more to worry about than a few bloody crumbs!’
Tears
welled in her eyes. ‘And whose fault is that? McKenna was seen at the Willows this afternoon.’
For
the first time in his marriage, Dugdale looked at his wife, and not only disliked what he saw, but could not forgive her for it. Then he felt again that pain for the girl who had trusted him with her scarred body, and taught him how it felt to be loved. ‘Much as you’d like nothing better than to blame Julie, my suspension has nothing to do with her.’ His own tears began to threaten. ‘Priest or not, Brett Fauvel’s a liar, and if you can’t believe in me, then I think you should leave for good, because there’s no future for us if there’s no trust.’ He turned his back on her, and made for the door. ‘We’ll sort out custody and maintenance later. You won’t go short, so don’t worry, and you can have the house if you want. It’ll be far too big for me, anyway.’