Calling Down the Storm

by Peter Murphy

  ‘Well, would you like to tell us why you killed your wife?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Henry replied, after a long silence.

  ‘Was it to make sure that she didn’t get custody of the children?’

  ‘No. Well, I don’t think so. I can’t remember.’

  ‘You can’t remember stabbing your wife six or seven times with this large kitchen knife? You can’t remember sitting on the ground, watching her bleed out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what do you remember?’

  ‘I remember getting ready to leave home to go to Mrs Cameron’s house. After that, I remember arriving here from the hospital this morning. That’s it.’

  Webb exchanged glances with Raymond.

  ‘You don’t remember anything between those two times?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  Webb banged both palms down on the table. He then stood, and walked to the wall behind his chair and studied Henry’s face. Henry looked steadily ahead of him and did not seem to react.

  ‘You’ll forgive me, Mr Lang,’ Webb said, ‘if I tell you that I don’t accept that. It’s very convenient, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. If you can just answer “I don’t remember” to any question I ask you, it means you don’t have to give us an explanation, doesn’t it? And I’m not sure what explanation you could possibly give us for what you did.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ Henry conceded.

  ‘And to be perfectly candid, Mr Lang, I don’t think a jury is likely to accept what you say about your loss of memory, any more than I do.’

  ‘Well, it’s not very convenient for me then, is it?’ Henry replied.

  17

  Friday 1 October 1971

  The prison officer unlocked the conference room and ushered Ben, Barratt and Jess inside. It was a procedure that had become wearily familiar: the trip from the Temple to Brixton prison, where Henry Lang was on remand; the time-consuming process of being checked in, having briefcases and handbags emptied and examined; the delay while prison officials found an unoccupied conference room, protesting surprise at the visit even though it had been booked long in advance; the further delay while they searched for an officer free to escort Henry; the discomfort of the small claustrophobic windowless room with its hard metal table and chairs. And, of course, the frustration of interviewing a man who remembered everything except the events they needed him to remember. But now, there was the added pressure of the trial. This was Friday, and the trial was fixed for Monday. All they had left was a weekend.

  Time after time, Jess had used her knowledge of the family proceedings to establish a full history of Henry’s life – his home background, education, business success; and the essential details of his marriage, the birth of his children, the beginning of the break-up, Susan’s leaving home with the children, and his decision to divorce her. Jess was patient in her questioning, and skilful in drawing information out of him. The trust she had gained during the family proceedings was intact, and he seemed at ease with Ben, who deliberately stayed in the background, asking only an occasional question to clarify something.

  But each time, they had run into a brick wall which shut out any image of the occasion on which he had killed his wife. His last memory was leaving the house at about 11.30 in the morning on his way to see Wendy Cameron. After that, his mind was a complete blank until they returned him to Holborn Police Station from Barts hospital, two days later.

  At first, Ben had found himself sceptical. They had confronted Henry time after time with the evidence of the police officers who had attended the scene. It was a compelling account of terrible violence wrought by a man with no history of violence, but with every reason to resent, and perhaps even to hate, his wife. As a trial lawyer, Ben struggled to believe that none of this vivid and dreadful evidence had released any fragment of memory at all, however small.

  But as he got to know Henry better, he gradually came to share Jess’s belief that the amnesia was not an act. If it was an act, he grudgingly conceded to himself, it was a performance worthy of an Oscar. Very few people, if any, could have acted so well over such a prolonged period. He and Jess were not Henry’s only audience. Ben had seen the notes of two police interviews in which DI Webb and DS Raymond had gone over exactly the same ground as he and Jess, had tried just as hard, and had met with exactly the same result; and he had seen the report of a Dr Harvey, an expert in both neurology and psychiatry, whose opinion was that Henry’s inability to remember was not inconsistent with the evidence of what had happened on the fateful Wednesday.

  But while he was glad to think that Henry was genuine, Ben knew that it offered little hope for the trial that was about to start. If he couldn’t offer the jury some explanation for what he had done to his wife, he would leave them with little choice. A conviction for murder and a sentence of life imprisonment were staring Henry Lang in the face.

  Ben was arranging his papers on the table, Jess was whispering something to Barratt, when Henry entered the cell. The prison officer slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside, leaving the four of them alone together. Ben got up to shake hands, but Henry stood rigidly just inside the door, making no movement towards him.

  ‘I’ve remembered,’ he said quietly.

  For some time, no one spoke.

  ‘What?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I’ve remembered what happened,’ Henry replied.

  He suddenly sat down on the floor, and began to weep, more and more loudly until his weeping became a howl and finally a scream.

  18

  May 1970, almost eighteen months earlier

  Deborah Rainer waited just long enough for her husband to lift himself off her and roll over on to his back before pulling her white lace nightdress down to cover her body. The gesture eased her anxiety a little. She was already fretting about how she was going to prepare for the Bible study she was supposed to be leading at church in two hours’ time, and she was resenting him for asking for sex on a Wednesday afternoon, when he knew she always had Bible study on Wednesday evening. Their time for sex was Sunday afternoon, after lunch, when she had got through morning worship and Sunday school and could relax until it was time for evening worship. And he was still asking her to take off her nightdress, when he knew that she preferred to keep it on. She had pulled it up for him while they were under the covers, as she always did. What more did he expect?

  He was still naked and breathing heavily, looking up at the ceiling as if he were unaware of her. Why hadn’t he covered himself up? Why was he so remote, so inconsiderate? Did he still love her? Why didn’t he hold her in his arms after sex any more? He used to when they were first married. Was it because she couldn’t have children? What had she done to make God punish her like that?

  He was aware of her. Out of the corner of his eye, he had watched her go through the routine of pulling down her nightdress, signalling the end of their intimacy for the day. And as he gazed up at the ceiling, he was wondering how he had allowed his life to come to this: to a childless house in Guildford; to sex once a week by appointment with a woman who fretted about Bible study and pulled her nightdress up and down to announce the beginning and end of play, like a referee with his whistle; to a sexual adequacy dependent on summoning up fantasies about old girlfriends, or women he met professionally, or socially, or saw at a distance on the train or in the street.

  ‘I don’t know why you have to stay up in town over the weekend, Conrad,’ she was grumbling as she climbed out of bed and began to dress. ‘You’re going to miss church again on Sunday, and I know Pastor Brogan has started to notice; and I was hoping you might come to Bible study with me this evening. I feel more confident when you’re with me.’

  He got up and reached for his dressing gown.

  ‘I’m sorry, Deborah. I can’t. It’s this fraud case I’ve told you about. I
t’s coming on next month and I’m not ready. Besides, you lead Bible study perfectly well. You don’t need me there every time.’

  ‘Every time? I can’t remember the last time you came with me.’

  ‘It was last month.’

  ‘It’s been at least two months, closer to three.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I can’t do it tonight. I have work to do.’

  ‘That’s the excuse you make every time you stay up in town.’

  ‘I’m a Silk now, Deborah, a QC. You know what that means. Professionally, I can only take more difficult cases, more complicated cases; and complicated cases take time. I explained all that to you when we took the flat in London. I told you there would be nights away. I don’t know why you have to keep bringing it up.’

  ‘It’s not just nights away, though, is it, Conrad? You’re sometimes gone for most of the week.’

  ‘I’m gone when I have to be. I came home yesterday evening, didn’t I? We’ve had a fuck on a weekday afternoon. I’m doing what I can, Deborah.’

  ‘Don’t use that word. You know I don’t like it.’

  She was dressed now, apart from her shoes. She looked at him in silence for some time as he opened the wardrobe to take out his suit.

  ‘I need you for church committee next Tuesday evening. I promised Pastor Brogan you would talk to him about planning permission for the new church hall.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Yes, all right; not that I know anything about planning permission – it’s hardly my field.’

  ‘You know a lot more than he does, and you know who to talk to about it.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘What train are you catching?’

  ‘The first one I can get. I’m off to the station now.’

  ‘Phone me before you go to sleep,’ she said, leaving him alone in the bedroom.

  It was after 7 o’clock by the time Conrad arrived at his flat in a fashionable block in the Barbican, the City of London’s new upmarket residential area. He unpacked the few things he had brought with him. It didn’t take long. There was not much he had to carry back and forth between Guildford and the flat any more. During the five years of his tenancy, he had made himself more or less self-sufficient there. Deborah still seemed to have a mental image of him camping out, sitting on packing cases and brewing tea over a paraffin burner, huddling over it to keep warm in winter. But Deborah, by choice, had hardly ever set foot in the place, and had no real idea of what it was like. She preferred to pretend that it was no more than a temporary expedient, or a fad of which he would eventually tire. But it had long since become a comfortable home from home. He had furnished it tastefully, with every imaginable comfort, and he lacked for nothing. It was an extravagance, but he could afford it. He was doing well in Silk, and if he ever had a quiet period there was always Deborah’s trust fund, over which he now had as much control as she did. Just as well, too, given her propensity to be an easy touch every time Pastor Brogan came calling for a contribution to whatever new project he had in his sights.

  Opening the sideboard in his living room, Conrad gratefully selected another reason for enjoying his London sanctuary – a bottle of good whisky. Deborah wouldn’t have it in the house in Guildford. He could barely get away with a beer at the weekend, or wine with dinner once in a while. Pastor Brogan wouldn’t approve even of that; there was always the feeling of dabbling in a forbidden pleasure, like some Prohibition-era American taking a solitary, nerve-racking drink of some nameless hooch in the darkness of his cellar. But not here. In the Barbican, he could enjoy a glass of beer, or wine, or whisky, or whatever else he wanted, whenever he wanted it; and now he sat relaxing on his sofa, nursing a large glassful, looking out over the quiet night-time City streets, and thinking again of Barbara, a free-spirited friend of his student days, the memory of whose generous hands had been the inspiration for his laboured passion with Deborah during the afternoon. Whatever had become of Barbara? He had heard that she had taken a job in Canada. Was that true? Had she stayed, or returned?

  By 9 o’clock he was ready to eat something. The other benefit of the flat was that it had made him take an interest in cooking. Conrad would never be an adventurous or experimental cook, but he had taught himself to prepare a range of basic meals that didn’t take too long and didn’t leave a huge pile of washing up. He knew his limits as a domestic manager, and the rule was to keep it quick and simple. Tonight, a cheese omelette seemed right, with a glass or two of Beaujolais.

  At 11 o’clock, he called Deborah to tell her that he was ready for bed, and listened patiently to her account of Bible study, and how much better it would have been with him there, and how Pastor Brogan sent his prayers and best wishes for his fraud case. When the conversation ended, he put on his jacket and adjusted his tie, switched off all the lights except the one by the front door, and made his way out of the building.

  19

  ‘Conrad, do come in.’

  John Aspinall had walked down from his office on the top floor to welcome the Clermont Club’s newest member personally. During the course of his progress from Oxford undergraduate with a passion – and talent – for gambling to the owner of London’s leading gaming club, Aspinall had learned a few things about managing an exclusive clientele. It was the personal touch that mattered.

  Opening his club in 1962 in the exquisite Georgian architectural masterpiece at number 44 Berkeley Square, he catered for the client with good taste in every department – and the money to pay for it. The building itself offered a peaceful, refined setting for high-stakes gaming in the heart of London. The food and drink, often free of charge to members who ventured large sums of money at the roulette wheel and the card tables, were superior to anything on offer in the Capital’s more traditional gentlemen’s clubs. A troublesome debt was dealt with by friendly advice in Aspinall’s office, never by so much as the hint of a threat; after all, the whisper that a member was unable to pay his debts carried more weight in London than any threat, and it was said that because Aspinall knew how to whisper, he never had to. In any case, if you were rich and socially well-connected enough to be an asset to the Club, debts at the Clermont were sometimes negotiable.

  But what summed it all up was the personal touch. Aspinall knew all his members, and their friends and spouses, by their first names, and he did his best to attend to their every whim. As a result, the right kind of people flocked to join. Conrad Rainer, successful Silk, whose wife had a trust fund, was one of them.

  ‘Let me walk you through the Club,’ Aspinall said, ‘then we’ll have a chat up in my office, and then I’ll introduce you to whoever may be here and leave you to get on with it.’

  They walked together from the front hall and, with the bar on their left, gazed up at the house’s magnificent staircase.

  ‘This isn’t your first time in the building, of course?’ Aspinall said.

  ‘No. Ian Maxwell-Scott showed me around when he introduced me,’ Conrad replied, ‘though I didn’t have time to take it all in properly. I’ve spent more time down in the basement, in Annabel’s.’

  Aspinall smiled.

  ‘Ah, yes. Mark has done wonders with the place hasn’t he? That’s good for us, too, of course, having such a prestigious night club downstairs. It was the house’s wine cellar originally, you know. There’s a staircase just on your right there, that they would have used for access in the old days but I don’t think it’s seen any traffic for many years now. I’m not even sure it would be safe, so I’ve closed it off.

  ‘Originally, the house was the residence of Lady Isabella Finch, a daughter of the Earl of Winchilsea. She was a spinster, quite a character by all accounts, well connected at Court – and she obviously wasn’t short of money. She bought the land in 1740 and commissioned no less than William Kent to build this house on it. She lived here from about 1744.’

  ‘I have to confess, I don’t know much about architecture,�
� Conrad admitted, ‘but the name William Kent rings a bell.’

  ‘It should. He also built Devonshire House and Holkham Hall, though sadly this is the last surviving example of his London town houses. Just look at the staircase, and the way he’s made the curves correspond to the curves of the dome.’

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ Conrad said, as they looked up together.

  ‘It’s one of the glories of London,’ Aspinall replied, ‘and if I hadn’t got my hands on it, someone like Charlie Clore would have bulldozed it to build more of his ghastly modern blocks of flats.’

  They began to climb the staircase.

  ‘But now, it’s all ours. The staircase and landing are like Holkham Hall in miniature. Kent reused a number of his best ideas, and you can see some of them in the rooms upstairs.’

  They paused halfway up to admire the dome again.

  ‘I took the name of the Club from a member of the Fortescue family, the Earl of Clermont. Lady Isabella died in 1771, and the house remained empty for five years or so, but eventually Clermont bought it and made it something of a social centre in London. Apparently, there were all kinds of notorious goings on involving the rich and famous of the day, but fortunately, he didn’t do any damage to Kent’s work. We’ll come back down to the gaming rooms. Let’s go all the way up to the top, to my office, for a minute or two.’

  ‘So, it was Ian who introduced you?’ Aspinall said, once they were seated. ‘I’ve known him ever since we were up at Oxford. Have you known him for a long time?’

  ‘Actually, I know Susie better than Ian,’ Conrad replied. ‘We’re members of the same profession.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Aspinall said. ‘She was Susie Clark before her marriage, wasn’t she? One of the youngest, if not the youngest, woman to become a barrister in England.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I met Ian through Susie.’

  Aspinall laughed.

  ‘They seem to do very well together. But to be honest – and I’m not telling tales out of school; they’ll be the first to tell you themselves – it’s something of a miracle they’re not both bankrupt several times over.’