“She hasn’t done anything ...” screams Trina, but gives up when she feels wetness on her foot and realizes she is standing in something messy.
“Come on. Leave that stuff and get out,” orders Brougham, and Trina relinquishes everything apart from Ruth’s roll of posters, her bead bag, and what feels like a pound of squashed tomatoes on one foot.
“Put those back,” says Jordan’s mother, tussling with Trina over Ruth’s posters, but Brougham steps in.
“She might as well take them. They’re allowed posters in jail these days.” Then he turns to Trina sternly. “Now stay out of there and leave it alone or I’ll arrest you again.”
“I’m telling Ruth what you’re doing,” Trina spits at Gwenda Jackson as she squelches away, trailing pureed tomato.
But telling Ruth is not as easy as Trina had hoped. A bureaucratic roadblock awaits her at the police station. “You’re only allowed one visit, and you saw her yesterday,” Noreen tells Trina, anxious to keep Ruth’s injuries from public scrutiny, then spends twenty minutes trying to come up with the relevant regulation.
“I’m not leaving ’til I see it in black and white,” says Trina crossing her arms, and she laughs when Noreen threatens to arrest her for trespassing.
“Go on then,” says Trina, holding out her hands with her wrists together. “Then I’ll get to see Ruth.”
“This isn’t a joke,” says Noreen sternly. “Your friend is in very serious trouble.”
“So will you be if you’re lying to me,” shoots back Trina. “Now where does it say that I can’t visit my friend again?”
Ten minutes later, with Ruth tidied up a bit and her hair brushed, Trina walks into the interview room bubbling with excitement, laughing, “I nearly got arrested ...” then she stops in horror. “What happened to your face? And look at your fingers. What happened to your nails?”
Noreen and Annie stand, arms folded, and stare at the ceiling as Trina carries on. “And what about your clothes? They were nearly new. And where’s your glasses?”
“I fell over,” sobs Ruth, and she carries on crying as Trina gives the guards a dirty look and tries to cheer her up with a cuddle. “Never mind. I’ll bring you some more clothes. You’ll just have to be careful, that’s all. You’ll soon be out of here.”
“How?” whimpers Ruth.
“I’ve started a campaign to get you released,” says Trina with new-found bounce.
“Tell me it doesn’t involve dynamite, Trina.”
“No. It’s a publicity campaign. I put it on the Internet last night. You’ve already got supporters in Moscow, Senegal, Sydney, and a couple of places I can’t pronounce. I’ve even got half a dozen American lawyers offering to take your case to the UN Human Rights commission.”
Ruth painfully raises her eyebrows. “How much will that cost, Trina?”
“Oh ... I hadn’t thought of that. I thought they were just being helpful.”
“Lawyers?” queries Ruth.
“OK. But the Sun is going to do an interview with me this afternoon. Don’t worry. Jordan will turn up and tell them it’s all been a mistake, then you’ll be out.”
The thought of getting out overwhelms Ruth, but then every thought overwhelms her, and the tears flow again.
“Your mother-in-law is tidying the place up for you, and she gave me some of your things to take care of,” says Trina, landing another punch, then she finds herself crying alongside her friend. “Cheer up, Ruth,” she implores through the tears. “Mike says that his friend in England is going to find your father for you.”
Trina, as always, has erred on the side of optimism and, in truth, David Bliss has virtually given up any hope of tracing the man on the sketchy information supplied by Mike Phillips. However, in a last ditch effort, he has decided to visit Liverpool and is nearing the Beatles’ Merseyside home with Daphne Lovelace as navigator. It’s early evening in England and the wintry drizzle contrasts sharply with the bright morning sun that still shines in Canada. Vancouver, nestling under the Coastal Range, is still cool and crisp in the mountain air, but Inspector Wilson is rapidly warming up as Trina Button tears into him.
“She’s been beaten up,” Trina yells into Wilson’s face, once Ruth has been led back to her cell.
“She fell ...”
“Don’t fucking lie to me. I’m a nurse. I can see when someone’s been smacked around.”
“She attacked the doctor,” Wilson protests.
“No more beatings,” orders Trina. “You keep your hands off her. She’s getting a lawyer right now.”
“She hasn’t got any money. She’ll have to apply to a judge for legal aid.”
“I said, ‘she’s getting a lawyer,’” snaps Trina as she storms out.
Liverpool’s cramped back streets of terraced houses are gleaming under a fresh glaze of sleet as David Bliss gingerly navigates in search of a hotel. The Beatles are pumping out “Day Tripper” on the car’s CD player—“It’ll put us in the right mood,” Daphne had insisted—while Bliss’s injured leg is throbbing in time.
“I’ll have to stop soon,” says Bliss, as he furiously kneads his thigh.
“I’m sure it was around here somewhere,” says Daphne, peering determinedly through the gloom to spot the Norbury, a hotel she has eulogized as a gem among gems for the past two hundred miles. “I distinctly remember it; they did a wonderful lobster bisque.”
“But that was ten years ago,” moans Bliss testily as the pain from his leg shoots up his spine.
“More like twenty,” replies Daphne, and Bliss hits the brakes.
“This will have to do,” he says as he slides into the driveway of The Royal Hotel ten seconds later. “My leg is killing me. I can’t drive another inch.”
“Are you sure you can drive all right with that leg?” Daphne had asked as he’d rented the car in Westchester that morning and, although he’d been emphatic, he had been forced to halt every fifteen or twenty minutes to shake out the cramps. “You should let me drive,” she had offered several times, but he had convinced himself that the pain was therapeutic and soldiered on.
“Maybe you can drive back,” he’d told her eventually, with little intent.
Inspector Wilson is still in his office, smarting over Trina’s attack, and is praying for something concrete to bolster his case. The possibility that Ruth could be telling the truth doesn’t cross his mind, but the possibility that Trina Button might come back with some high-priced reinforcements does. We just need a break, he is thinking, when a phone call sends him flying back to the Corner Coffee Shoppe.
“You might want to take a look at this,” enthuses Sergeant Brougham as he meets Wilson at the café’s front door and guides him across a floor of splintered boards.
“I need some good news. I’ve just had that Button woman ripping into me.”
“I’m gonna screw her if she doesn’t back off,” agrees Brougham, then points to an area where a force cameraman is rigging a spotlight.
“It’s under the floorboards just there,” says Brougham, “You can see it quite clearly.”
Wilson kneels to peer into the hole and his face lights up. “Gotcha,” he says under his breath, then calls, “Well done,” to the officers standing around.
An hour later, Noreen stands over Ruth as she slumps snivelling at a desk in the interview room, while Wilson is in the next room watching her on a video screen and combing his hair in preparation for his performance. “Right, Dave,” he tells Brougham, “keep the camera rolling. Let’s see what the lovely lady has to say about this.”
The interview room door opens and Ruth cringes at the sound. Noreen has softened under the heat of the camera and is soothing, “Don’t worry, Ruth. No one’s going to hurt you,” but Ruth is so infused with fear that she cowers like a wounded animal in a leg trap as Wilson enters and towers over her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Jackson,” he begins solicitously as he hams for a future audience of twelve. “I am going to show you something, and I wan
t you to tell me what it is.”
Ruth’s eyes go the floor. She knows what’s coming. From the moment Trina told her she’d been arrested for stepping on the toes of the forensic officers at the café, she knew her luck would give out and they would unearth her secret.
“What is this, Mrs. Jackson?” Wilson asks as he lays a folded document on the table in front of her.
Ruth’s eyes stay down, though her whimper turns into a continuous pitiable whine.
Wilson has no pity and shrewdly lets the moment build before he takes a breath and tries again. “Mrs. Jackson. I’m asking you to explain what it is that I’ve placed on the table in front of you. Would you please do that?”
“Insurance,” she mumbles without lifting her head.
“Sorry,” he says. “I missed that. Would you speak up, please?”
Ruth can’t speak up. The nightmare she has endured for two days has turned into reality and casts a pall over the rest of her life. “It’s insurance,” she mumbles again.
“What kind of insurance?”
“Life insurance.”
“And this insurance was on whose life?” carries on Wilson, leading Ruth by a nose-ring through an interrogation maze for the benefit of tidiness. The answers are all printed in bold black and white on the insurance policy on the table, but Wilson wants blood. “Whose life?” he repeats, but Ruth can’t bring herself to answer.
“Jordan Artemus Jackson, it says here,” prompts Wilson. “Who is Jordan, Mrs. Jackson?”
“My husband.”
“Correct. Now I want you to look carefully at ...”
And so it goes, detail after pointless detail, page after page—a dripping tap that threatens to drown Ruth in anguish and remorse. There can be no dispute. Ruth Jackson took out a life insurance policy on her husband’s life to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars just days after he slipped from the Coffee Shoppe’s radar screen.
“Look at the date please, Mrs. Jackson,” continues Wilson, the scent of victory lifting his voice. “What is that date?”
“September nineteenth.”
“Yes. September the nineteenth of this year. Just over three months ago—but only just.”
“I know what you’re thinking ...” sobs Ruth, but Wilson cuts her off.
“Just one more question, Mrs. Jackson, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. Ready?”
Ruth nods, but she already knows the question, and knows that she has no satisfactory response.
Wilson pauses for a second to give the camera an opportunity to savour the moment, then he gloats, “Wasn’t the nineteenth of September almost a week after you claim that your husband tested positive for cancer?”
“Yes, but ...”
“And wasn’t the nineteenth of September almost a week after your husband was last seen by anyone but you?”
“But ...”
“One second, Mrs. Jackson,” says Wilson, holding up his hand while he prepares for his big finish. “Would you please read this line for me?”
Ruth knows the line well enough to recite it from memory, but she stutters and sniffles her way through it in a small voice. “This policy shall not take effect until ninety days following its acceptance.”
The trap has shut and Ruth gives in. “I knew I’d get caught,” she is crying as Wilson informs her that, in addition to drug trafficking and various assaults, she will also be charged with fraudulently obtaining life insurance; then Sergeant Brougham scuttles in, sidles up to Wilson, and whispers in his ear.
“Oh, shit,” mutters Wilson and switches off the microphone as he turns to Ruth.
“Well, apparently you now have a lawyer, Mrs. Jackson.”
Ruth Jackson doesn’t have just any lawyer. Trina has hired Wilson Hammett, known as “The Hammer” to constables and crooks alike—for good reason. He may be small and prematurely balding, but he sits on a throne above the Vancouver underworld and skims the scum off the top. Common murderers and everyday rapists rarely interest him, or can afford his fees, and he seeks out the headline grabbers. Nothing gets him off the golf course faster than a bent politician, a kiddie-porn merchant, or a whiff of heavy-handed police tactics.
“They’ve beaten her to a pulp,” Trina had exaggerated, as she’d handed over the first instalment of a thousand dollars.
“This could get very expensive,” Hammett had warned with a heavy lisp, as he took the cheque. “Are you quite sure about this?”
“Quite sure. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t peeked I would never have known he’d gone, and she wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Well, I’m not sure ...”
“Plus, I was the one who took her to kick boxing class.”
“Well, I don’t know if you should blame ...”
“But I do. And if I hadn’t put the guinea pig in the oven ... Oh, never mind. You probably wouldn’t understand.”
Ten minutes later, Ruth is still crying as she is led into the visiting room, surrounded by a posse. Noreen and Annie have been reinforced by a male officer, and as Ruth sits, the three fold their arms and make a wall. “Stop snivelling,” barks Noreen. “You’re not a kid.”
“I can’t afford a lawyer,” Ruth whimpers as Hammett enters with his young assistant and sits opposite her.
“It’s legal aid,” he says, exactly as Trina had suggested, then he turns to the officers. “I’ll call you if I need anything.”
“She’s very violent ...” starts Noreen, but Hammett waves her off.
“Mrs. Jackson will be fine, I’m sure.”
“What happened to your face?” he asks as she sits, but Ruth waits for the “click” of the door behind her before saying, “I couldn’t stop crying. Nobody believes me. The doctor thinks I’m crazy.”
“Miss Dawson will just take a few photos of you,” says Hammett and he has a sly glance at the room’s surveillance camera as his assistant takes out a miniature digital camera. As expected, Noreen blusters back in with her sidekicks and starts bleating about photographic regulations. Miss Dawson swings the lens to catch the enraged matron and has the camera snatched from her hand. Hammett slowly stands and fills the room with his energy as his lisping voice angrily sibilates, “I suggest you give my assistant that back immediately, unless you wish to add a further assault charge to those we are already contemplating.”
Noreen backs off, but Hammett hasn’t finished, “And tell your Inspector that I am entitled to a private conversation with my client; that means I expect that surveillance camera turned off immediately.”
“I’ve spoken to Inspector Wilson,” Hammett tells Ruth, once he’s listened attentively to her side of the story. “They’ll point to the insurance policy, and they’ll say, ‘Why did you hide it under the floorboards?’”
“I didn’t want Jordan to think I was trying to make money off of his death.”
“Fair enough, but it seems that everyone has a problem with Jordan’s cancer.”
“My husband had only a few weeks to live. Why won’t anyone believe me?”
“I want to believe you, but you’ve got to give me something to go on. Who was his doctor? Which hospital? What kind of cancer?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpers.
“Ruth, It’s not the most credible defence I’ve come across, and what’s your explanation for his disappearance?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Ruth. I’m your lawyer. No one knows better than me that you didn’t kill him. I’d stake my own life on that. But the judge might think I have a vested interest.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” she whimpers.
“As it stands, all they’ve really got is a little blood on a knife and the fact that you took out a hefty insurance policy on someone who’s vanished. Your next court appearance is tomorrow. I’ll demand bail, but I may as well warn you,” he shakes his head, “I don’t see it happening.”
“But I’ve got to get out. Jordan needs me.”
As Ruth cries her way
back to the cell, Wilson and Brougham are watching on the bank of surveillance screens in the jailer’s office.
“What do you think of her, Dave?” asks Wilson.
“If my wife blubbered that much I’d probably take out life insurance on her.”
“I spoke to the insurance broker,” continues Wilson, ignoring the quip. “She didn’t mention any cancer—even signed a form saying there was nothing wrong with him. The broker said the only thing that bothered her was that she couldn’t claim if he died in the first three months.”
“So you think it was premeditated?”
“Nah. Probably got into a fight over money or another woman. I think he was already dead by the time she took out the policy, then she realized that she had to keep him alive for three months before she could claim. Look at the way she’d hidden it. If that Button woman hadn’t noticed his bed was empty she would’ve waited until his body was found and neatly buried, then dragged the policy out and laughed at us.”
“But where’s the body?”
Wilson has a grandstand view of the mountains from his windows and he peers thoughtfully into the snowy peaks as they blush in the setting sun. “He’s probably up there somewhere, in the forest or under the snow. A hiker will probably find what’s left of him in the spring, unless she comes clean.”
There is no view from Ruth’s barred window, and the dark shadow of a high brick wall leans in on her, turning day to dusk.
“My eyes hurt,” she whimpers to the evening officer. “Would you turn off the light, please?”
As the light dims, Ruth lays in the quiet gloom surrounded by the shards of her life, and she stares at the remnants of her nails and prays for salvation from a god that she doesn’t have any faith in. Why is this happening to me? she wants to know. What did I do to deserve this?
The sins of the father shall be visited on the son, replies the god inside her mind—her only god; the god who had turned her from her mother’s course; the god who had steered her resolutely along the path of honesty and integrity, until the day she had veered off track and fraudulently taken out life insurance on her husband.
A Year Less a Day Page 12
