Read Unsafe Convictions Online
Authors: Alison Taylor
The
freelance reporter who witnessed Wendy Lewis’s admission to hospital sold the story to the national daily competing directly with Gaynor’s paper, and earned himself a fat fee. The photographer who caught the policewoman’s tormented face in his camera’s eye was equally well-rewarded.
Wendy
Lewis, the forty-two-year-old detective under investigation in the Piers Stanton Smith miscarriage of justice case, was last night admitted to Haughton hospital suffering from an overdose. After receiving emergency treatment, her condition was said to be ‘stable’.
Lewis
is one of three detectives suspended from duty pending the outcome of a major investigation by an outside force, headed by Superintendent Michael McKenna. Tragedy is stalking the investigation: apart from Lewis’s overdose, the father of the woman Stanton Smith was cleared of killing had a heart attack on Tuesday, and Detective Inspector Barry Dugdale, who headed the original murder investigation, has been deserted by his wife.
Neighbours
are devastated, as the Dugdale marriage was, according to one, ‘as solid as a rock. This is a tragedy, especially for their children.’
McKenna
and his team are keeping completely tight-lipped about their activities and, until last night, Haughton police had no involvement. However, local officers were compelled by McKenna’s deputy to place Lewis under virtual arrest in her hospital bed, where she is being kept incommunicado, even from her own solicitor. Very late last night, again under orders from McKenna’s team, Haughton police also raided an exclusive hotel on the moors outside the town and arrested Gaynor Holbrook, a national daily staff reporter who this week wrote three searching articles about the Stanton Smith case. Holbrook is still in custody, despite a midnight visit from McKenna, and no details have been released about why she was arrested in such dramatic circumstances.
‘And behind bars is the best place for her,’ Rene commented, peering over Jack’s shoulder at the newspaper. ‘She
deserves
to be locked up, because if she hadn’t written that rubbish about Trisha and Linda, Fred wouldn’t be in hospital. He gave me this letter last night, by the way,’ she added, carefully placing a blue Basildon Bond envelope near McKenna’s elbow. ‘He said he was letting the Mountain know why Mahomet wants it to visit.’
Despite
his foul mood, McKenna managed to smile. ‘How is he?’
‘
He can’t wait to get home. They said he can come out tomorrow, provided he’s not left alone for a while, so he’ll be going to Linda’s.’ She pursed her mouth. ‘Not that Linda hasn’t got enough of her own worries.’
‘
Stop fishing, Rene,’ Jack said. ‘You know we won’t discuss her.’
‘
You could set
her
mind at rest, though. People are beginning to think you’re very hard-hearted, like it says in that paper you’re reading, only I know you’re not like that, deep down.’
‘
You know nothing of the sort,’ Jack replied.
‘
You’ve got a nasty job to do, and you’re treating people as fairly as you can,’ she asserted. ‘Even that Julie Broadbent, so I hear.’
‘
What d’you know about her accident?’ McKenna asked.
‘
Accident?’ Rene frowned. ‘You mean when she was little? That was no accident. It was downright carelessness, and those nuns should’ve been taken to court for it.’ She shook herself, as if to get rid of the memory. ‘It was terrible! I wouldn’t wish something like that on my worst enemy.’
‘
How did it happen?’
‘
I suppose she hasn’t told you, not that you can blame her for not wanting to talk about it. Anyway, she keeps herself to herself these days. Pity she didn’t before, isn’t it?’ Rubbing the small of her back as she sat down in the chair McKenna pulled out, she added: ‘I don’t know all that much about the accident, really. There’s always been a big wall between the Catholics and the rest of us.’
‘
I’m sure the gossip managed to get over it,’ Jack commented. ‘It usually does.’
She
smiled at him. ‘You’re sharper than you look, aren’t you?’ Adding two heaped spoonfuls of sugar to her tea, she said: ‘Kathy Broadbent, Julie’s mother, wasn’t from these parts. Her parents put her in the home for unmarried mothers that the nuns used to run, and she was supposed to put Julie up for adoption, but she wouldn’t. She stayed on in town, in a tiny rented flat near the station. The National Assistance paid the rent, I expect, and gave her something to live on.’
‘
Where was the unmarried mothers place?’ asked Jack, lavishing butter and marmalade on the last piece of toast.
‘
At the Willows. Didn’t you know?’
McKenna
experienced a strange frisson, which seemed to shift the focus of his thoughts. There was something both tragic and fitting, he realised, in Julie’s return to the place where she had come into the world unwanted, to care for others for whom the world had no use. ‘When was it turned into a home for the handicapped?’
‘
Oh, years ago,’ Rene replied. ‘Girls aren’t put away these days when they’re expecting. There’s no shame now to having a baby out of wedlock.’
‘
There is for some,’ Jack said, thinking of Janet. ‘What happened to her mother?’
‘
She died,’ Rene told him. ‘Ten, twelve years ago, it must be. She wasn’t even forty.’
‘
What was wrong with her?’
‘
People said it was God’s judgement because of the life she’d led, but not even that Father Brett could answer that one,’ Rene commented sourly. ‘She had cancer. She just wasted away before your eyes, then she died. Give Julie her due, she nursed her to the bitter end, and never a word of complaint.’ She fell silent, biting her lip. ‘I’ve often wondered if Julie’s grandparents are still alive. They might not even know Kathy’s dead.’
‘
You were going to tell us about the accident,’ McKenna reminded her gently.
‘
Yes, well, it’s a miracle there weren’t others, the way those nuns treated the kiddies. Call themselves Christians!’
‘
Is this fact, or gossip?’ Jack asked.
‘
Witnessed with my own eyes,’ Rene snapped.
‘
What was?’
‘
I don’t know if it’s still the custom,’ she said, ‘because I’m too old to bother about some things, and I don’t have call to go past the Catholic school very often, but there used to be an early Mass every morning at the church.’ Making herself more comfortable, she picked up the teacup. ‘The Catholic kiddies were supposed to go. Never mind the weather, never mind anything else, they had to get out of their beds at the crack of dawn to kneel in church for hours on end.’
‘
I remember,’ McKenna commented ruefully.
‘
What happened to you if you didn’t?’ she asked.
‘
Happened? Nothing, although my mother would nag at times.’
‘
Folk must be more human where you come from, then. Round here,’ she went on, ‘the priests and the nuns kept tally on every kiddie, and if they hadn’t been to early Mass, they’d get a real belting off the nuns as soon as they turned into the school gates.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘And I mean a belting. They had a thick leather strap, with a huge metal buckle on the end of it, and you should have seen those kiddies’ legs afterwards. They drew blood.’ She shuddered. ‘The way they’d stand there, beady-eyed and waiting, they reminded me of the rooks in the churchyard, flapping their habits, and the strap in their claws.’
‘
Did anyone complain?’
‘
If they did, they were shut up, because
we
never heard anything.’ She drained her tea, and began to make neat, segregated stacks of the used crockery. ‘You might be thinking the town’s divided because of religion, but it’s not. It’s divided because of the way we’ve seen the Catholics behave. The priests and the nuns don’t answer to anyone. They’ve got too much power, which is why they got away with hushing up Julie’s accident, and not paying a penny compensation.’
‘
We
did
hear,’ McKenna said, ‘that she was larking about in the kitchen, and knocked over the pan herself.’
‘
Well, you heard wrong! The older girls were made to work in the kitchen, as well as doing the cleaning, when they should have been in lessons, and that day Julie was having to cook chips for school dinner. You’ve seen her,’ she added. ‘She’s not very big now, and she was a tiny little mite then, barely able to reach one of the sinks, I’d imagine. But that didn’t stop them making her manhandle a huge pan full of boiling fat, and that’s how it happened. She dropped it, because it was too heavy for her, and the school and the church should’ve got into really serious trouble, but they didn’t. And believe it or not,’ she went on, getting up from her seat and beginning to clear the table, ‘they
still
make the girls do the cooking and cleaning at the school. Let folk get away with something once, and they think they can get away with anything.’
*
Fred Jarvis’s grasp of language was neither as firm nor as clearly educated as Henry Colclough’s, but his letter was equally touching and, while using different words to speak of his own loss, conveyed the same sense of outrage.
William
Bagshawe Ward
Haughton
General Hospital
Wednesday,
3 February
Dear
Mr McKenna
I
’ve asked Rene to give you this letter. She was a good friend to Dorothy, my dear late wife, and she’s been the same to my girls and me since Dorothy died. I trust Rene, and so should you, even if you might think she speaks her mind too often.
She
was very shocked, Linda said, when she heard I’d said I’d get better so I could rip off that creature’s neck and shit down his neck, because Rene’s never heard me utter an oath in her life. Linda hadn’t, either, until then, because I’d kept my sorrow to myself. But things have changed, now, and it’s time to speak my own mind, although the threat and the foul language were just an old man’s fury. Still, it made me feel a bit better, even if it’ll be left to someone else to pay him back for the misery he caused my daughter.
Linda
’s finally told me everything, and I’m very cross with her. I understand she was only trying to protect me, but I’ve told her she was very, very stupid to keep quiet about those letters. She didn’t do it out of spite, or anything like that. She’s not quite sure now why she didn’t tell Barry right at the beginning, but people do things they can’t give reasons for, don’t they? Especially when something dreadful’s happened. Anyway, I hope you understand, not that I’m expecting you to let her off the hook. I can see how what she did makes things look even worse for Barry, though she can’t, because she says he had nothing to do with it — I do believe that, Mr McKenna. Barry’s a very decent young man, and an honest policeman, and even though he was genuinely upset about Trisha, he wouldn’t ever do something dishonest just to put someone in prison, even if he hated the person.
You
’ll have heard a lot about some people in this, but probably not much about my dear dead girl. Linda’s very precious, and she’s all I’ve got left, but she was always the baby of the family, even when Dorothy was alive. She doesn’t remember much about that time, because children of that age don’t, do they? Somewhere along the line they forget, but Trisha was different. She remembered everything, and she was so like her mother in so many ways, where Linda’s more like me — sharper, if you like, when Trisha was very kind and sweet, and always looking for the best in people. That’s why that creature got away with hurting her for so long.
Mr
McKenna, I expect you’ve known lots of people who’ve had their loved ones murdered, but I don’t know anyone else in that situation, except Linda and me. And Rene. Don’t forget her — she loved Trisha like her own, and that’s why you’ll have to forgive her if you think she’s talking out of turn at any time.
In
a way, it didn’t matter at the time if anyone went to prison for killing Trisha, or not, because the only important thing was that she was dead, and she wasn’t coming back. I think I would’ve felt the same if she’d been in an accident, because you’re not supposed to outlive your children. When she went, she took all the memories we’d shared, not just of Dorothy, but of me and her and Linda together too, and I know it sounds dreadfully selfish, but I didn’t feel there was anything left of my life worth bothering about —the real part of it was buried with her and her mother. Anyway, after a while, I got going again, because there was Linda, and her boys, and while they’re not the same, they’re still my blood, so to speak, and I found my heart could beat for them, when I’d thought it was all dead and shrivelled. You’ll have to excuse me rambling on, Mr McKenna, but you might not have the time to come and see me, which I will understand, so I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to tell you.
I
read in the paper, along with the terrible lies about my girls, that that creature is getting counselling — some poor sap to hold his filthy hands. We didn’t have anything like that when Trisha was killed. The doctor offered, but we don’t need to pay people to tell us what we already know. Losing a loved one hurts. It hurts so wickedly you think it’ll kill you, and so much you pray it will, to stop the suffering. Time does heal, but it can’t ever get rid of the scars, and in any case, you don’t want it to — you might forget. Trisha’s death is like a huge, horrible landmark in my memory, a wall going right across our lives. Her alive is one side of it, her dead is the other, and for a long time, I was stuck with my face against that wall, like everybody else who’d known her, including that creature, I suppose. Nothing else seemed as if it could ever matter so much and, until he was let out of prison, nothing did. Now, he’s in clover, isn’t he, and my dear girl’s six feet under, but he’s still not satisfied. He wants more attention, so he’s making up these terrible stories about her. Rene can tell you they’re not true, and how we can prove it, if she hasn’t done already, and Linda can tell you herself.
You
’re a detective, and you might well be saying to yourself ‘no smoke without fire’, and you’re a man, so you might also be asking ‘what did Fred Jarvis do for sex after his wife died? Could it be true that his lovely daughter took her mother’s place in his bed?’ It could be, but it wasn’t. Nobody could take my wife’s place, which is why I never even thought of getting wed again. For a long time, I thought that part of life was buried with Dorothy, but the sap rises whether we like it or not, and once every two weeks, I’d get Rene to have the girls overnight —and she probably knows exactly why, though she’s never said a word — while I had my ‘date’. The lady would come to my house, through the back ginnell so nobody saw, and sometimes we’d just have a drink and a chat, because it was enough. Other times, there’d be more, and I’ve got sweet memories of the few years we had.