by Andrew Hill
Grant’s turn had been a long time coming, when it did all he was required to do was confirm his identity. Grant didn’t pay much attention, never having been in a courtroom before he looked around content with the fact that he wasn’t applying for bail so he would be remanded in custody, which he duly was, without ever knowing if it was Carol’s courthouse or whether she was the court usher but let me tell you it wasn’t the same one. Grant would appear again there the following week.
I’ve never been inside a prison, perhaps you have, perhaps you worked in one or visited someone, maybe you’ve been remanded in custody yourself or even served a sentence. Maybe you’re in prison as you read this. As for me, touch wood, I have no direct personal experience so what I know, or think I know, comes from fiction from The Bird Man of Alcatraz to Porridge, and of course TV documentaries and news.
Older prisons like the one Grant was now living in, always had a permanent echo exaggerating every sound, the sound of a lock turning, footsteps, doors closing and the human voice. The sounds seem endless; there’s always a door slamming, or a lock turning, or someone shouting.
Among all theses sounds one sound of a turning lock was much louder than the others. A door opened, it also was much louder; it was the door behind which Grant, along with two other men, was living. It was no great surprise; this was the morning of Grant’s court appearance for sentencing. He was pleading guilty, anything else would have been pointless and would serve only to lengthen his sentence. Six months to a year was what his solicitor had advised him to expect and three months had already been used up on remand, he would only expect to do two-thirds anyway so he could have as little as one month left.
Grant was to be sentenced by a magistrate who must take into account matters such as his plea of guilty and that he’d co-operated in admitting other offences and that this was his first ever conviction. Grant was hoping for a ‘time served’ decision but that hope was dashed when the deceptively pleasant female magistrate of about sixty years of age passed a term of eight months’ imprisonment.
Grant was taken below to start his sentence proper. It wasn’t until that moment that the gravity of his situation hit home and for the first time he felt some degree of guilt for what he’d done but still regarded himself as a victim. He’d brought what few things he possessed with him because he had been told he’d go back to a different prison, and so it was.
Grant spent his first night as a convicted prisoner in HMP Pentonville. A prison that was quite close to where he had formerly lived. How many times had Grant passed its vast grey walls? Many times, but it never occurred to him that one day he’d be a resident there. Around two months and twenty days left to serve Grant calculated quickly and the best thing to do was keep out of trouble and stay clear of certain people who seemed to think they ran the place.
* * *
Two months and twenty-one days to be precise is a long time to spend among some of the most disagreeable and dangerous men you can imagine. There were some there who would kill you without compunction and not in the prison, of course, but they’d find you on the outside and the ‘boys’ would see you off. Others were different altogether perhaps tax fraudsters who wouldn’t harm a fly, all thrown together in one soup, a convicts’ soup and one can’t help but think that although much bad goes into prisons very little good ever comes out.
What visitors did Grant have apart from official ones? – none. What letters did he write? – none, he also received none. As far as Grant knew, no one, not even his nearest relatives, were aware of his situation and he wasn’t about to change things. Grant was for the time being warm and fed three times a day which, given his recent experiences, was no bad thing.
But wasn’t all this a diversion? It didn’t solve the most important question of his life: how did Verity Faithful copy his work? A question that would be on hold for a few more weeks.
* * *
Carol’s life had taken a completely different route. It was six-thirty in the morning, She turned in her bed and there was Rob, as if he was likely to be anywhere else. The two are not officially living together as Carol kept on her flat but on the day Grant was arrested Carol and Rob spent their first night together and a wonderful night it was too, a short time later they were as good as a couple, not only did they know this but the whirlwind romance had been the talk of the office, though had quietened down lately. Carol knew that if Rob were to utter the old question that she’d say yes, and never look back. But did Rob feel the same way? On the face of it yes, he did all the right things, said all the right things and there wasn’t the slightest reason to suppose otherwise but you can never tell what’s going on in someone else’s mind.
It was a Saturday, so no need to get ready for work. At breakfast the two chatted away about nothing of importance. As early evening came, Rob took from his coat in the hall a small box and opened it, the contents were still there, as if they wouldn’t be. Rob hesitated for a moment and returned to the lounge where Carol was glancing through one of Rob’s books. He approached her and embraced her and they melted into a long kiss before parting and gazing into each other’s eyes. Rob broke the silence.
“Will you marry me?” His voice was gentle and soft. Although Carol had long since decided to say “yes” straight away she was taken a little by surprise but managed to speak:
“I’d marry you right now, this minute if the law permitted it.” He embraced her once more and they kissed again. Rob picked her up and carried her through to the bedroom and they spent a wonderful evening together, Rob had forgotten all about the contents of the little box.
Later, they put on some of their better togs and went out for a meal to celebrate. Rob had felt something sharp in his trouser pocket when putting them on. He knew straight away what it was and approached Carol with a big smile on his face and gave it to her. Carol guessed what it was before opening it and seeing the shining peace of gold with a small diamond looking straight up at her, she made some silly comment like “This is the best day of my life,” as she slipped the ring over the third finger of her left hand.
“No one will ever get this off my finger now.”
I wonder how many women have said that only to regret it after a few years? The next day was the beginning of a four week holiday they’d planned, Rob came up with an idea.
“Let’s get married as soon as we return and treat this holiday as a sort of advance honeymoon?”
Carol did not at first agree. She, like I imagine most women, wanted a big day to remember. But there was no doubt that her family would be concerned about her marrying Rob after such a short time. It became a question of which would cause the greater trouble, telling them or not telling them. Carol decided the former would be more problematic. Even so, Carol did not agree and after a few days she phoned her mother on some other pretext and told her that Rob had proposed to her but declined to say that she had accepted. It was clear to Carol that her mother, though not disapproving of Rob, plainly thought that Carol should put him off for a while. This was not something that Carol was prepared to do and so she and Rob went off to the local registry office on the Monday to arrange a wedding; it was set for four weeks after Rob’s proposal. They told no one until it was over.
Four weeks later, on the Saturday of the wedding, off they went round to Rob’s parents to announce what they had done. As expected there was a bit of a scene with his mother bursting into tears. The following day they went up to Manchester to tell her parents, with the same result. The day after that they were both back at work in the court. There was no keeping it secret from their colleagues. Carol had gone on leave just four weeks earlier wearing no rings and returned with two. All Carol needed now was the final go ahead from Fielding Novels and her life would be complete. Unless you include a baby, of course.
* * *
What of Grant during this period of happiness for Carol? How had he fared in Her Majesty’s accommodation. Grant had now bee
n out of prison for some time and had found accommodation through a prisoners’ aid organisation though he was still without gainful employment. Everyday living was becoming as hard as it had been before he started house breaking in the Waterloo area and there can be little doubt that Grant was very close to recommencing that unfortunate career which, let’s be honest, had done him no good. One facet of doing time is you soon learn a great deal about how criminals work that previously you knew nothing about. Grant now knew a number of businesses that were really only ‘fronts’ for those who deal in stolen goods. This offered a whole new avenue of law breaking, no longer would he be restricted to looking only for small amounts of money but could take almost anything away he could carry in a bag or in his pockets, jewellery was a good example.
* * *
It was dark, fortunately a couple of street lamps were out and no one saw the tall figure of a man making his way to the rear of the house. With the aid of a glass cutter and a plunger this man was able to score a hole in the window at the rear of the house. He applied the plunger to the window. The tall man pulled at it until it came loose taking part of the glass with it. The man carefully placed the plunger with glass stuck to it on the ground and separated the two. He put his arm through the hole and lifted the latch; a particularly easy job. When will people realise these old sash windows are a cinch? This one didn’t even have bars which for a ground-floor rear window was just asking for trouble and gave an easy invitation to the experienced burglar we know as Grant Webster. Grant was engaged in his tenth burglary since leaving prison; he was making up to a thousand pounds a week. He even owned a small van and was able to take away the larger objects such as TVs and desktop computers. This was certainly an easy means of making money fast. Why didn’t he just break into Carol’s place and search for his copy of Dead Letter Perfect? Because the happy couple are now living together in the flat Rob owned and Grant didn’t yet know where that was. Grant didn’t even know that Carol was now a married woman. Perhaps the time had come to follow her home again from work.
Grant stationed himself outside the magistrates’ court on the other side of the road where he had observed the staff coming and going so many times before. This time though, Grant was in a more stable state of mind. He had a regular income, albeit illegal, and somewhere halfway decent to live. Freezing cold nights in shop doorways were over, not just for the time being but forever.
It had been months since Grant was last positioned outside the courthouse at 5pm and Joanna had long since stopped looking out for him, on this first occasion she didn’t notice him but he noticed her. For several days in a row she failed to notice him. This was partly because she wasn’t looking and partly because, unlike the past, Grant didn’t look like a tramp. He was dressed in what you might call ‘smart casual’. Now, to some, smart casual just means casual and to others it means scruffy. But to Grant it meant what it said: neat tailored trousers and a shirt with a collar, no tie but a jumper and sports jacket. His hair was neat and tidy and a pair of glasses with plain glass for lenses, this was just to help his disguise along. To look at he seemed a perfectly respectable young man.
Grant wasn’t concerned with Joanna, if she came up to him and challenged him then he’d simply deny all and she could never prove a thing. The days passed with no sign of Carol.
“I wonder if she still works here,” passed through his mind. He decided the next day to go into the courthouse, it was after all a public building, and see if he could spot her.
Grant was in the reception area and a number of court ushers could be seen directing people, talking to solicitors, witnesses and members of the general public. None were Carol. He busied himself looking at the notice board indicating which cases were in which courtrooms. The ushers were wearing name badges which Grant thought rather odd, surely it’s a security breach, but not one that would be to Grant’s advantage as he already knew Carol’s surname, her maiden one that is. He looked once more at the notice board.
‘Harriet Jean Coppell – Driving without insurance, court number six’ struck his eye so he took his place at the rear on one of the public seats. Coppell seemed to be in her thirties, quite attractive, not slim but not overweight either, she just didn’t have a slim build. Grant was the only member of the public present that day. It was hardly a glamorous case and the matter was coming to a close. Coppell, it seems, had been caught driving without due care and attention and was later unable to produce an insurance certificate. Ironically, the lesser charge had been dropped through lack of evidence. Harriet Jean Coppell had pleaded guilty to no insurance. Apparently it was a second conviction for that offence and the magistrate gave her a right telling off suggesting that if there was a third she could expect a custodial sentence. In the end Harriet was fined £750 and banned from driving for three years, which marked the end of proceedings in court six for the day.
Let’s get back to why Grant was there in the first place, it was to catch sight of Carol but Carol was there none. By five o’clock Grant had stationed himself outside the courthouse but once again it was to no profit. So where on earth was she? There’s no mystery, Carol hadn’t left the civil service, she hadn’t been transferred to another court, nothing drastic at all. She had simply taken a day off sick because of a cold.
This was her second day off in a row from that cold. Carol was walking about the flat she now shared with her new-found husband looking for something from her old place but hadn’t seen since arriving in her new home and hoped very much that it hadn’t been lost in the move. It wasn’t anything special, just an old mug ninety or so years old made to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. It was an inexpensive item purchased by her great-grandmother at the time and somehow over the years it had found itself in Carol’s custody. But she couldn’t find it anywhere. There was the old suitcase with the destination stickers on the lid full of stuff from the old place that hadn’t been opened and so open it she did and searched through and sure enough there it was wrapped in foam and sitting on a large brown envelope with ‘Dead Letter Perfect’ written on it.
“I remember that,” ran through her mind, “that’s the copy I sent to Johnson Books, I think.” Carol picked it up and opened it, looked inside and took out the covering letter and read it once more. Afterwards she replaced it leaving the envelope and the manuscript in the box and still hadn’t noticed the accidental switch perpetrated by Phil Johnson’s secretary. Carol took the mug she had once taken to Southerby’s for valuation which came to around twenty-five to thirty pounds and placed it in the display cabinet. Not that she had any intentions of selling it but just wanted to know for insurance purposes. That’s what they all say isn’t it?
The crucial issue for Carol was Fielding Novels; will they publish? The equally important issue for Grant was proving he wrote it; to this end Grant made an important decision. The publisher who’d shown an interest in Grant’s novel had lost that interest long ago due to the poor revisions Grant had originally sent in and his lack of ability to send in more. He thought: “If I can’t get the book published then maybe this Verity woman can and when she does I’ll sue her for copyright theft. Although she could counter sue me she can no more prove her case than I can prove mine, what would the law do about that?”
Grant contacted the solicitor who had first defended him on the burglary charges. She wasn’t too pleased about answering what she thought as an academic question but gave way and said that if two people write literary works independently and they are so close for there to be insufficient difference for copyright purposes then the two authors would share the copyright on a fifty-fifty basis but she warned him that if he sued her he’d have to do the proving. That’s as far as she would go on the matter unless he wanted formal written legal advice which would cost him two hundred pounds but this information was enough for Grant.
Before returning to Carol’s story I must say a little more about Grant and his psychological state. It was cl
ear he suffered a great deal, it was clear also that he couldn’t get his head around the idea that he and another, as yet not known for certain, person could have written the same novel word for word. It was so unlikely that it just couldn’t happen. Despite Grant’s relative calmness he was still deeply affected by this. There was a young man from a stable, almost middle-class background, reasonably intelligent with aspirations of becoming a novelist and a reasonable talent in that direction. Yet since all this began, since chapter one of the account you’re reading he had become a cool burglar, a man who can enter a house or shop without permission, secretly for the sole purpose of stealing money and precious items which he can then sell through a network of fences after learning a great deal about how to achieve all this from his one experience of prison.
Why the change? Psychiatrists probably have a word for it but the experience caused such an impression and feeling of disbelief; Grant’s mind could not cope with ordinary life and he now lived out a life that would have remained a fantasy had it not been for Carol’s novel. Phil Johnson’s secretary’s blunder had, as far as Grant was concerned, turned out to be life changing in a most negative way but what of Carol? What will happen when she finally sees that the manuscript Johnson Books returned wasn’t hers? Will her new-found idyllic life come to an abrupt end as Grant’s did? Only time itself will provide the answer.
We have seen before that Grant’s mind was in such an obsessive state that he counted the number of times he walked past the main entrance but this time was different. His old childhood problem was recurring. Grant stopped in his tracks, it mattered not if he was opposite the entrance or 100 yards in either direction. It seemed to Grant, though, that he had walked up and down for no reason, none he could think of. This did not indicate a sudden fit of sense getting through his skull, rather the opposite in fact. Grant felt disoriented, out of place.
“Where am I?” was his first response. He couldn’t think, nothing was familiar. If Carol was to leave the building right now Grant would do nothing; he wouldn’t know who she was. His eyes fell upon the public bench, he moved quickly to reach it, when he did he couldn’t sit down – he was still agitated. He decided to go home, “But where is home?” Now Grant didn’t know where he lived, finally, “who am I?” came not merely to his mind but from his lips.
