The Innocent Ones

by The Innocent Ones (retail) (epub)

  There were enough of those people on his wing, but for all the press talk of them being monsters, beasts, most were pathetic. They didn’t socialise, make for idle chat. They stayed as loners, knowing that they were where they ought to be.

  Being on a protected wing kept him safe and alone. Rodney could deal with that.

  The queue for the phone wasn’t too long. Being a protected prisoner had its advantages. A squat man in round glasses had called his mother, sobbing as he spoke, always saying he was sorry, as if it would somehow get his release. The children he’d abused were still prisoners to what he’d done.

  Then there was the tall, skinny man who called his wife, who must have forgiven him for the rapes he’d committed because she’d taken the call, and Rodney had listened to him bleating how it was her fault in the end, because he had needs, dammit.

  Rodney kept his gaze on the floor. He despised these people.

  The ex-copper was next, but his call was brief, apologising as he turned and wiped his eyes and trudged back to his cell.

  Rodney felt for him. He wasn’t evil. He’d just trapped himself into debt and tried to blackmail his way out of it. Bad judgement shouldn’t condemn him, but he was a target for many, those serving their time as part of their rehabilitation still seeing it as a battle of the trenches. There were sides to be taken, lines to be drawn. Cops and robbers.

  The sorrow would pass and the ex-copper would learn to watch the days go by. He’d leave prison eventually. Not for Rodney. He knew he’d never feel the brisk winter of Brampton again. He thought of it often, but he couldn’t dream too hard. He’d put himself in prison. His decision. His actions.

  The phone became free. He paused with the receiver in his hand, his head in the small booth designed to give him privacy. He took a deep breath. This was a phone call he didn’t want to make, but he had no choice.

  He pressed the digits, the number etched on his mind, sent to him in correspondence and memorised, just in case his letters were ever shredded.

  He closed his eyes as it rang out. He imagined her on the other end, wondering whether to answer. He never rang, and he didn’t know how it would show up on her phone, but she’d asked often enough. All those letters, telling him how much she loved him, imploring him to call.

  Had he misinterpreted them?

  Someone answered.

  ‘Leoni?’

  There was silence on the other end, until a woman’s voice said, ‘Dad?’

  A sob broke through and he wanted to say so much, how he’d missed her, was desperate to see her, all those years passed, but instead he steeled himself and said, ‘Tell me about David Green.’

  Leoni’s voice had seemed timid, scared almost, when she’d first answered. When she replied, ‘David Green? Oh, he was just an old boyfriend. It was really sad,’ her voice changed, but he could sense something in it more than hiding a bad memory. She was faking emotion.

  She started to tell him, but he didn’t want to hear. Tears ran down his cheeks as he put the receiver back as she was still talking.

  As he made his way back to his cell, his mind was made up. He knew what he had to do.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Dan was back in Highford, standing in the ruins of his office. He turned as he looked up at the beams running across where the ceiling used to be. Charred and blackened, he could see blue sky beyond, where the flames had been too strong for the roof struts. Steel screens secured the windows and external doors, but upwards there was light.

  They’d gathered for one last look around, to see what they could salvage. Eileen was there, Margaret and Jayne too, both shuffling through the dust and debris, their clothes filthy, silent, their expressions forlorn.

  The heat surprised him. It was still warm in places, as if the embers still glowed, or the bricks had retained the fire.

  ‘I don’t think we should be here,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look safe.’

  ‘But there are still parts of Pat in here,’ Eileen said. ‘We never got round to clearing out his office.’

  ‘It won’t be worth keeping.’

  ‘I’ll decide that.’

  He didn’t need the barbs, but he forgave her for it.

  ‘Have they found whoever did it?’ It was Margaret, unsure whether to address her question to Dan or Eileen.

  Dan spoke up first. ‘If they have, they haven’t told me. They’ve ruled out the person I thought it was. But,’ and he shrugged, ‘that doesn’t mean I was wrong.’

  Eileen had moved towards the back of the building, pushing aside a door that was cracked, the paint scorched, the panel warped at the bottom. It scraped on the ashes piled up behind it.

  She didn’t go in. Instead, she looked down and took a few deep breaths.

  As Dan joined her, he saw why.

  Pat’s old room was destroyed, and worse than the rest of the building, because old paper files had been piled in the corners, underneath where the window had been smashed and accelerants poured in. Pat had always been bad about storing the files properly, even when they were dead files and there were rules about them, but Dan had never got around to doing anything about it. He’d known at some point he’d have to spend time going through Pat’s office, but that spare weekend never seemed to arrive, those other parts of running a business always taking priority.

  The fire had saved him the job, but there was something too final about seeing it all charred and ruined. It was that definitive line that marked the fact that Pat was gone.

  He went to Eileen and put his arm round her shoulders. For a moment, she stiffened, but then she relaxed and rested her head against his.

  ‘I miss him so much,’ she said, her voice softer now, more sadness than anger.

  ‘So do I,’ he said, and held her tighter, because he needed it too.

  The sound of sniffling came from behind them and, as he turned, it was Margaret, Jayne’s arms around her as she sobbed into her chest.

  They all stayed like that for a few minutes until they were interrupted by the buzz of Dan’s phone.

  He stiffened.

  Eileen pulled away and wiped her eyes. ‘Answer it.’

  Dan shook his head. ‘No, I can leave it.’

  Eileen gave a small laugh. ‘I was married to a criminal lawyer. I know what it’s like when the phone goes.’

  The buzzing carried on.

  Dan knew he couldn’t ignore it.

  He held up his hand in apology and turned to answer. ‘Dan Grant?’

  ‘It’s Rodney.’

  For a moment, Dan was uncertain, the call unexpected, but the prison echo in the background gave him away.

  ‘Mr Walker, what can I do for you?’

  He caught Jayne’s eyes; she pulled away from Margaret.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Rodney said. ‘About what we spoke about. When can you come?’

  Dan cursed. He’d tried to forget about Rodney since he left the prison. Without him, they had just wild speculation, and there was no way a judge would let him make it. He wasn’t sure how ready he was for the trial now, but it was too late to step away from the case.

  ‘Rodney, I can’t see you over the weekend and the trial begins on Monday, but,’ and he looked to Jayne, who was nodding and jabbing at her own chest with her finger, ‘my investigator can.’

  Rodney didn’t respond for a few seconds, and Dan thought he was going to hang up, but then he said, ‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll see him Monday then.’

  ‘It’s a her.’

  ‘Fine, whatever,’ and then he ended the call.

  Jayne held out her hands. ‘Well?’

  ‘He wants a visit. He must have something to say. It looks like you’ve got yourself a prison visit with a notorious prisoner.’

  Jayne tried to hide her smile as she said, ‘And if it helps us get one step closer to finding whoever did this,’ she said, ‘it’ll be worth it.’

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  The first day of the trial came too quickly, Dan thoug
ht, as he tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him in courtroom number one, under the high ceilings of the Crown Court in Langton, at the other end of the motorway to Highford.

  The weekend had been spent quietly, Jayne trying to keep Dan’s focus on the trial, despite what else was going on. They’d talked strategies as Dan had read and reread every statement, so that he felt like he knew it from memory.

  Rodney could change everything, but they had to start the case as if Rodney wasn’t getting involved, not knowing what he was going to say to Jayne.

  The weekend hadn’t all been about Nick’s trial though. They’d talked, but it had been different from before, because they were lovers now. Neither knew how it would go, nor for how long it would it last, but it felt good and natural, like it was the one thing that was meant to be.

  He looked around the courtroom, hoping the surroundings would inspire him. Long green curtains covered the vast windows, interspersed by dusty portraits of judges of days gone by. The building was old stone, grand and imposing, pillars at the entrance, the courtroom lined with panelled wood.

  It was so different to how he spent most days, engaged in small scraps in the Magistrates’ Court. The daily grind, long hours spent fighting on behalf of drunks, thugs and thieves, the penalty for losing just a fine or a short prison sentence, and all the options in between, acted out beneath crumbling plaster and faded paint.

  A murder trial was different. There were high stakes, with a life in prison awaiting the convicted. For Dan, it was more than that though, because his case had spiralled out of control, where he didn’t how it would go once it started. The week before had been chaotic, nervy, as the case changed from just another murder. He bore the bruises, although Jayne had applied concealer to hide them from the jurors. It made his skin feel greasy and he worried whether it would attract strange glances, people spotting that he was wearing make-up.

  Just another murder.

  Dan knew how bad that sounded, because all murders are horrific, the ending of a life. At least he was doing the trial himself, so he had some control over what happened, even if it did mean appearances amongst the dusty wigs and black gowns.

  Dan was a solicitor-advocate, qualified to appear in the higher courts, in front of juries and appeal judges. It forced him to mix with barristers from the circuit, those who’d once fluffed him up to keep the work coming but who now regarded him as an interloper. The divide between barristers and solicitors was broken down years earlier, jury trials no longer the sole preserve of Bar School products desperate to impress with their wigs and starched collars, but it didn’t mean it was welcomed. Solicitors could appear in all the courts, provided they’d gained the experience and approval, and cutbacks in funding meant that more were opting to do their own jury work.

  That wasn’t always a good thing. The old closed shop for barristers allowed them to develop their speciality: trial advocacy. Many solicitor-advocates had the skills, but there were too many who didn’t: they opted for the Crown Court for financial reasons.

  For Dan, he could only hope that he could show that he was good enough, not merely that he was cheap enough.

  What marked him out was the lack of a horsehair wig. He wore the gown but left the wig for the barristers and their egos. For all they proclaimed that the wigs helped them maintain their anonymity, that it somehow kept them independent, Dan knew the truth was simpler than that. It was status, nothing more, and he guessed that they had all stood proud before the mirror on receipt of their first wig, knowing that they’d made it.

  He could wear one if he wanted, but he didn’t, because he thought that it gave him a head start before the jury, marked him out as the underdog, that Nick Connor didn’t have the regal trappings of his opponent. When the opposition case was strong, every advantage had to be taken.

  He glanced along the bench. His opponent for the days ahead was calm. Frank McAllister, a man who’d risen through the prosecution ranks to conduct his own murder trials, just like Dan had. Murder trials used to be the preserve of Queen’s Counsels, the QCs, silks, those senior barristers whose abilities allowed them to get the pick of all the good cases. But they came with a big price tag. Budgets were squeezed now, on both sides. Dan couldn’t always get permission to employ a QC, dependent on government funds, and for the prosecution a QC’s bill eats a big way into the budget. No, it seemed that the way forward was to get two lesser lawyers to scrap it out.

  Frank looked his way and smiled. Tall and debonair, his dark hair slicked back, his nose hooked.

  Dan liked him. He was good but fair, knew when to concede but fought hard when he thought he was right. The mark of a good lawyer. For Dan, his own opinions didn’t always count for much, because sometimes clients wanted to fight for every last chance of winning, even if it made the punishment harsher.

  ‘Can I expect any surprises?’ Frank said.

  ‘That depends on what you’re expecting.’ Dan looked back to Nick Connor, sitting in the dock with his eyes glazed, fear etched on his face. ‘I don’t always say this, but I’ve got an innocent one this time.’

  Frank raised an eyebrow. ‘If only we shared the same view. I’ve never prosecuted someone I thought was innocent, and your man.’ Frank tilted his head towards the dock. ‘He’s a long way from innocent.’

  Dan looked away.

  He knew that the jurors would see the same thing Frank did, that Nick Connor was someone who’d chosen to live on the wrong side of the law and had made a bid for promotion, a murder charge this time.

  His client looked like everyone’s late-night fear. Well-built and imposing, a prison build, honed from too many hours to kill awaiting his trial, his hair cropped short but only serving to show the scars of battle, those nicks and marks from fights gone by. Dan had told him to relax more, to cut out the insolent stare, but old habits were hard to break.

  Dan’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the judge, heralded by a knock on the wood-panelled door, followed by the shuffle of feet as everyone in the courtroom rose.

  Judge Deane. Dan was pleased it was her. She was fair and polite, but that disguised a sharp mind. He’d get no chance to charm her, but at least he’d get a proper hearing.

  As she bowed to the courtroom, everyone following, Dan closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

  Now was the time.

  Chapter Sixty

  Jayne shuffled in her chair, in front of a small table in the middle of the room, as she waited for Rodney. She sat forward, then back, tugged on her jacket, uncomfortable in the suit she’d retrieved from her flat in Manchester, a letter of instruction in her pocket. She might have been there in an official capacity, as Dan’s legal representative, but she felt like a fraud.

  She took a deep breath at the sound of the lock and smoothed down her suit. She let out her breath, long and slow, and closed her eyes for a moment. Stay calm, she told herself.

  Rodney appeared through a door, the guard peeling off to the side of the room but always watching.

  Jayne didn’t stand, even though she knew it was the polite thing to do, but she was nervous, back in a prison but on her own this time. Instead, she pressed her knees together and tried to mask her nerves with a broad smile.

  ‘Mr Walker?’ She gestured to the chair opposite, as if she were the host.

  As Rodney sat down, the defiance in his eyes told her who was the guest. It was a look she recognised, the desire to keep some fight as life slowly gets crushed by the routine. He looked dishevelled, with dark rings under his eyes, his skin that light grey prison pallor, from bad food, no sunlight and constant roll-up cigarettes.

  She’d only seen him in photographs that were more than twenty years old. He was smaller than she expected. There were shades of the younger man she’d seen in the pictures, but only shades.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.

  That surprised her. ‘No, thank you for speaking to us. Dan would be here, but he’s in court.’

  ‘Ye
ah, he said, and I know this is urgent.’

  ‘Urgent, after twenty years?’ She failed to keep the sarcasm from her voice, and silently rebuked herself. She couldn’t afford for him to decide the meeting was over.

  Instead, he hung his head and said, ‘Things have changed.’

  ‘Have they?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘If you’re going to tell me what I think you’re about to, then nothing has changed, except your willingness to talk.’

  He pursed his lips as he thought about that. ‘I needed to hear more from you, to find out how certain you are about Leoni.’

  Jayne cocked her head. ‘What’s changed your mind? Dan came to see you last week and told you all we know. You told him you weren’t interested.’

  ‘You’ve got to understand how hard this is for me,’ and he slapped his chest. ‘I’ve been locked up for more than twenty years. I’m hated, reviled. The press talk about me, the monster who killed children. How convenient is this now, me coming forward? It looks like I’ve got sick of prison and I’m looking for a way out.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘What do you think, because what kind of life can I lead, really? Even if I get out, and there’d be no point in me doing this if I didn’t, what chance have I got of living a life like you do? Uncomplicated, simple. And what about Leoni? I don’t want to wish this on her.’

  Jayne pushed aside the thought of explaining her life. It wasn’t important, because the case wasn’t about her. It was about Leoni, and all the lives she’d taken or ruined as she’d grown up.

  ‘Wouldn’t a complicated life but free be better than, well, this?’ She looked around the room.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been here a long time. I’m institutionalised. That’s the word, isn’t it? I can’t change peoples’ minds, and if they knew the truth, they’d hate me just the same.’

  ‘That’s not why you’ve asked me to come though, to tell me that.’

  ‘How do you know? We’ve only just met. You don’t know anything about me.’