Guilty

by Jane Bidder

For a minute she felt resentment towards her son. If he hadn’t gone out that night or if he hadn’t been late, Simon might not have picked up his mobile. If Ben hadn’t been so difficult towards her new husband, none of this would have happened. She let go of him and stepped backwards.

  ‘It’ll be OK, Mum.’ Ben’s voice was gravelly, reminding her of his father. Charlie. The old Charlie, before his affair.

  ‘We’ve got through stuff before, Mum.’ He hugged her. ‘I’ll help you. Promise.’

  Chapter Six

  They put Simon in an unmarked van. For a minute, he had thought they were going to handcuff him but then the officer in a dark heavy serge jacket and trousers with a chain around his waist, seemed to change his mind as though he realised Simon wasn’t the type to make a run for it.

  ‘’Ere we go again, ducks,’ slurred the man sitting next to him. He had tattoos all up his arm which looked, at first sight, like a floral blouse. The orange lipstick resembled a clown’s.

  ‘Back again? Thought you’d have had enough of us, George,’ remarked the other officer tersely who sat in the back of the van with them while the first one drove.

  ‘You know my name is Georgie, ducks.’ The man flicked back his hair which was done up in a sleek, black ponytail at the back. ‘And being bi isn’t against the law you know.’

  Simon listened with distaste. It wasn’t dissimilar to the banter he heard day in and day out from his own clients. But now he was part of it.

  ‘I know it’s not illegal, Georgie.’ The officer laid a heavy sarcastic emphasis on the last part of his name. ‘But nicking your boyfriend’s jewellery is.’

  ‘Borrowing it, actually.’

  There was a snort of laughter from another man on the other side of Simon whose breath stank of stale beer and tobacco. ‘Want to know why I’m here, man?’

  Not particularly, Simon wanted to say. I don’t want to be part of this grubby, seedy little crew. He winced as the large man elbowed him just above his waist where his ribs were still bruised and sore from the seat belt. ‘It’s ʼcos I was stupid, that’s why.’ His eyes glittered and he was laughing as though at himself. ‘Didn’t know when to stop, that’s why.’

  There was a pause during which Simon knew he was being invited to ask more. Eventually his good manners took over. ‘Stop what?’ he asked.

  The man grinned, revealing very straight and perfectly white teeth. ‘I got two grand, man, but thought I could get more.’

  ‘From where?’ Simon was becoming curious now. Besides there was nothing else to do than listen to this maniac; the windows in the van were blacked out so he couldn’t see where he was going. But in the corner of one, someone had managed to scrape away a bit of the black, leaving a small gap through which you could, if you bent down, just about catch a glimpse of the outside world.

  ‘From the building society.’ He spoke as though that should have been obvious. ‘People don’t check their statements, see. So they don’t miss small amounts.’ He waved his hand around as though to make the point but really, Simon suspected, to draw attention to the chunky gold-linked bracelet that matched the heavy chain round his neck.

  ‘But how do you get into their accounts, ducks?’

  Even the prison officer was listening now, Simon noticed.

  ‘Hacking!’ The man was grinning. ‘Easy when you know it. You give a fake ID and then turn up in the branch to get your winnings. Except that, unfortunately for me, this geezer had twigged and there were the police waiting for me.’

  I don’t belong in this set, Simon wanted to scream. I’m not a criminal; I simply made a mistake. How could it be that a woman who was walking, talking, playing tennis for God’s sake only last week, was about to be buried? The only way he could cope was to imagine a heavy metal gate slicing through his head and separating him from the image of her tinkly laugh in the back of the car.

  It was at least a couple of hours before they got there. By this time, Simon had had to pinch the skin on his left arm again and again, in order to keep himself from punching the side of the van. Through the small gap in the window, Simon could see the countryside changing from hilly, sheep-ridden fields to a flatter terrain. Bedfordshire perhaps, where he’d had a girlfriend once. Alex used to joke – with a slight edge of jealousy to his voice – that Simon had had a girl in every county. It wasn’t something he was proud of now. Not now he had Claire.

  ‘Been to Holdfast before, ducks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re in for a surprise and not a very pleasant one if you don’t mind me saying. But hang on in there and you’ll be moved in a bit.’ He chuckled. ‘Mind you, given some of HMP hotels, you might wish you’d been allowed to put up at this one. What did you do then?’

  For a minute, he thought he was being questioned about his job. Then he remembered. ‘I killed someone.’

  ‘Fucking hell, ducks.’ The man visibly edged away.

  ‘I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.’

  The officer snorted. ‘That’s what they all say. Get ready, lads. We’re here.’

  Simon’s first impression, as the back doors were flung open, was that Holdfast was a cross between a public convenience and a run-down polytechnic from the sixties. The sunlight, after the almost windowless van, hit his eyes so that he had to shield them with the flat of his hand to look around.

  ‘In here, you. This isn’t an observation point.’ The officer who spoke was roughly pushing him towards a flat-roofed building. Inside was a smaller room which had an opening halfway up the wall and an officer standing on the other.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Simon James Mills.’

  ‘Classy!’ said the transvestite behind him admiringly.

  ‘That’s enough, you. Address?’

  Simon felt a tremor of unease. He didn’t want to give out that in front of the men behind. ‘I’ll write it down for you,’ he said in a low urgent voice.

  ‘I said “address”.’

  There was nothing for it but to quietly give the details out loud, hoping the building society fraudster wasn’t memorising it.

  ‘Personal possessions in here.’

  A grey tray was being pushed towards him. ‘I haven’t got anything.’

  ‘Sure you haven’t.’

  ‘No. Honestly. I’ve come here straight from bed.’

  ‘Wish I had, ducks!’

  The officer gave a nod to another officer standing behind them and Simon felt himself being searched. ‘Empty your pockets!’ Strange hands ran roughly down his outstretched arms and legs. When he had finished, he felt like saying ‘See? Nothing there’, like a child.

  ‘Stores,’ barked the officer.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  There was a deep throaty chuckle from behind him. ‘Posh, this one, isn’t he, man?’

  ‘He means stores, ducks.’ The purple-bloused man touched him lightly on his arm. ‘It’s where you get your prison fancy dress. We donʼt wear regulation stuff ʼcos weʼre not sentenced yet but you can get joggers here and trainers.’ He glanced at Simonʼs hastily put-on cords and brogues. ‘More suitable than your outfit in this place, if you donʼt want to attract attention. Just make sure it’s clean before you accept it; they don’t always bother to put them through laundry.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, ducks. There’ll be something you can do for me, I ʼspect, before we’re both out of this place.’

  Right through the door and down a long corridor. No point in running off even if he’d intended to because of the officer who was walking behind him.

  Stores turned out to be another counter except this time it was lower down so the officer’s eyes were on his level.

  ‘Chest size?’

  ‘Forty.’

  ‘Forty-two’s the nearest I can do. Waist?’

  ‘Thirty-six.’

  ‘Thirty-eight then.’

  ‘Shoe size?’

  ‘Eleven and a half.’

  ‘Don
’t do half sizes and we’re out of Twelves.’

  Simon found himself the recipient of a navy tracksuit and tight trainers – heʼd stick to his brogues, he decided – before being ordered to take a right and then left. On down another corridor where a huge man with a shiny bald pate did a high-five in the air with the building society fraudster.

  ‘How are you, mate?’

  ‘Great! You?’

  ‘Leave it!’ roared the officer.

  ‘If you want my advice, ducks,’ said a voice from behind, ‘it’s to do what they tell you. Keep your head down and toe the line.’

  Simon glanced over his shoulder and nodded. It seemed impolite not to do so but the gesture now seemed to solicit more advice. ‘You’ll find your room looks bare but you’ll soon pretty it up. When I was in Wandsworth, I found some carpet tiles that someone had chucked out when they was doing a refurbishment. We’re allowed certain personal possessions if you can get a visitor to bring them in: you know, radio, stereo. But if you’re caught with a mobile or speed or a bottle of the hard stuff, you’ll be shipped out.’

  ‘Shipped out?’

  Simon’s mind was buzzing with overload.

  ‘You are new at this, aren’t you ducks? Moved to another prison, mate. I can see you’re going to need a bit of looking after. Just as well your friend Georgie is here.’

  ‘That’s enough.’ The officer rounded a corner and came to a halt. Ahead of them was a line of cells – not the open-bar variety as Simon had seen them on television, but solid fronts and a door that had a grill in front with a sliding partition. ‘In here, Mills.’

  It had been a long time since someone had called him by his surname. Simon found himself being pushed into a room containing two beds. Each had identical grey scratchy blankets, pushed up hard against opposite walls. There was no more than a man’s width in between. Under each bed, he could see an empty cardboard box which had Clothes scrawled on the side. No sink. No window.

  Before he could ask where the loo was, the door slammed behind him. There was no noise. Only a tinkly laughter in his head. And the overwhelming need to cry followed by an even stronger need to put a blank mask over his face so no one – least of all, himself – could know what he was thinking.

  Chapter Seven

  Joanna was in the Death Notices sections of both The Times and the Daily Telegraph. ‘ Beloved wife of Hugh Tarquin Goodman-Brown and stepmother to Poppy. Died after a tragic incident. Justice will be done. Funeral at … ’

  The now familiar knot in Claire’s stomach, began to tighten. ‘Justice will be done? What do you think he means by that?’

  Rosemarie shook her head. They were sitting in her little sunny conservatory out the back, its red geraniums merrily spilling out of terracotta pots. It seemed unbelievable to Claire that life could go on as normal.

  ‘Maybe he expects Simon to go to prison. Sorry – I didn’t mean to say that. Don’t look so upset. Besides, didn’t his partner say that he might just get a suspended sentence?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Claire sipped her sweet tea. Since they’d taken Simon away, it had been all she’d been able to swallow. Already, her jeans hung loosely round her waist and she felt hazy and distant from everything, possibly due to the effects of the tranquillisers which the doctor had given her. She’d had to tell him why she needed the tablets and the glance which had crossed his eyes had made her feel like a criminal. Sordid. Shame through proxy.

  ‘Any luck with the paperwork?’ asked Rosemarie, referring to the security forms which Claire had had to fill in to apply for a prison visit.

  ‘I’m still waiting.’ She ran a hand through her hair which needed washing. Claire was usually fastidious about her hair but since Simon, it seemed self-indulgent to bother about her appearance. ‘It’s so frustrating.’

  ‘We would drive you but it’s miles away, isn’t it? We looked it up on Google.’

  Claire felt a flicker of resentment at the picture of her two closest friends checking out her husband’s prison on the net. It felt ghoulish somehow. ‘It’s all right, thanks.’

  ‘So you’re not scared of driving yourself? That’s good.’ Rosemarie reached out and touched her arm lightly. ‘If it were me, I think I’d be neurotic in case someone ran out in front of me or did something that made me crash. In fact, it’s affected the way I’m driving right now. Do you know, I found myself doing 20 through the high street instead of 30. The car behind was getting quite impatient.’

  Me! Me! Me! Suddenly Rosemarie’s presence felt claustrophobic rather than comforting. Claire rose to her feet, scraping back her Lloyd Loom chair that she’d found at an auction years ago when Ben had been a baby, and paint-sprayed duck blue. ‘Look, thanks for the shopping but I’ve got a deadline and …’

  ‘You’re still working?’ Rosemarie’s voice was shocked as if she had no right to carry on normally.

  ‘I have to.’ She heard her voice rise almost aggressively. ‘I’ve got a deadline and we need the money. The firm is going to pay Simon’s salary for the time being but who knows how long that will go on for. Besides, it helps me to cut off.’

  ‘Goodness!’ Rosemarie looked aghast. ’I don’t know where you get your discipline from.’

  It isn’t discipline, Claire wanted to say. It’s a burning need to draw which, thank heavens, is still there despite everything. Drawing and painting had always been her safety valve. It had got her through that dark time with Charlie and now it would have to do the same with Simon.

  Rosemarie wouldn’t understand. She wasn’t an artist. She was a part-time PA. They had so little in common that if it hadn’t been for the fact that she and Alex were the first couple that she and Charlie had met when they came down to Devon all those years ago, they might not have been friends.

  ‘Have you spoken to him yet?’ Rosemarie was still talking on her way to the door.

  She nodded. ‘Only briefly. They allowed him to make a quick ‘compassionate call’ as they call it.’

  ‘How did he sound?’

  Was she mistaken or was there a sort of inferred glee in the questions? ‘How would you expect someone to sound, Rosemarie, if they were sitting in prison waiting to know if they were going to go down?’

  ‘Go down? But I thought you said he might get a suspended sentence?’

  Claire found herself snapping now. ‘Why not look on the net as you’re so good at it? Last week, there was someone in the news who got eight years.’

  ‘Maybe they deserved it. Anyway, there’s no need to be rude.’ Rosemarie’s light blue eyes looked milky with hurt. ‘We’re doing what we can: getting your shopping so you don’t have to face the stares from everyone in the queue; fielding questions at the tennis club from nosy parkers; going to the funeral …’

  She stopped.

  ‘You’re going to the funeral?’ Claire’s mind darted back to the obit. in The Times, giving details of the service. It was on Monday week. She’d thought crazily of going herself and of telling Hugh how sorry they all were until realising it would only cause a scene and make things worse, if that was possible.

  Rosemarie’s hand tightened on her brown handbag’s shoulder strap. ‘We thought we owed it to Hugh.’ She spoke defensively. ‘After all, we were two of the last people to see her alive.’

  The note of self-importance jarred. Since The Accident, her friend had become almost superior as though relishing her role. Or was it that she, Claire, had changed and was now paranoid about what people thought and said?

  ‘Sorry.’ She reached out and touched her hand lightly. ‘I can’t help feeling edgy.’

  ‘It’s understandable.’ The look in Rosemarie’s eyes softened but only slightly.

  ‘I’d like to send flowers. What do you think?’

  ‘Rubbing salt into the wound, I’d say, to be honest.’ Rosemarie glanced down to the entry in the paper. ‘ Justice will be done. If I were you, I’d keep a low profile. Things will die down eventually.’ She clasped her hand to her mouth. ‘Die dow
n? Dear me. Forgive my choice of words.’

  The date for Claire’s first visit finally came through in the post on the day that their weekly local paper ran a report on the funeral.

  NEW DEVON RESIDENT LAID TO REST AFTER TRAGIC ROAD DEATH shouted the headline.

  More than a hundred people turned up to pay their final respects to the tragic mother who was killed in a road accident, earlier this month.

  She was a step-mother, thought Claire before reading on, not a mother. Then again, what did that matter? She was dead, wasn’t she?

  39-year-old Joanna Marie Goodman-Browne had recently moved down to Windsea from London to start a new life with her husband Hugh. She was killed when a car driven by Simon Mills, one of her new friends from the tennis club, crashed in a country lane.

  Simon didn’t even belong to the tennis club.

  Mr Mills, a lawyer, is currently in custody on a charge of dangerous driving.

  How unfair! Anyone reading this would assume he was guilty.

  A spokesman for the tennis club said ‘It is a terrible shock to us all. Although we only knew her briefly, Joanna was clearly a lovely woman’.

  She was a lovely woman! And nice too! But so was – is – Simon, Claire told herself. Her husband was a good, decent man just as her friend Rosemarie had described him before their introduction. Besides, she had promised to stand by him for better or worse, hadn’t she? Pushing the local paper under the cushions of the sofa, she set off for the prison with Rosemarie’s words still ringing in her ears. ‘ You’re not scared of driving then? That’s good.’

  Actually she was. Every move which she now made seemed alien after an unblemished driving record of twenty years. Should she be in fourth gear or third? At one point when overtaking a lorry, Claire found herself wondering which pedal was the accelerator and which was the brake. The responsibility of driving a vehicle which could kill someone seemed overwhelming. Her mobile was off, locked in the boot. In the past, she had occasionally picked it up when she shouldn’t have. But never again.

  The sheer terror of driving with cold sweat trickling down her back as she negotiated strange countryside and made wrong turnings, was almost but not quite enough to take her mind off her visit to Simon. Silly things were now going round her mind like whether she was wearing the right thing. Claire had put on white jeans at first but then taken them off in case they might be misconstrued as showy. Ordinary denims would look as though she hadn’t bothered. In the end, she’d settled for a knee-length green and white dotted Reiss skirt and matching jacket that she usually wore to her meetings with her agent.