"It will, I'm sure. Then there's the little matter of your parents."
"I know. I'll tell them about the engagement first, if there is one, let them get used to that, then take it from there. There's no hurry, not for a while."
"Your dad will be disappointed."
"That's true, but only until he's a granddad, then he'll be as soppy as ever."
"No, I meant about having a son-in-law called Digby."
"Mmm, that is a problem." She chuckled and sniffed at the same time and I found a tissue for her in my pocket. "But there are compensations."
"Compensations?"
"Yes. His family own half of Shropshire."
"Ha ha! Good for you. Which half?"
"That's what Dad will say."
There was thunder in the distance through the night. Just before dawn it trundled off the hills and away down the valley like a powerful army, content to have reminded us of its presence. I spent the night on the settee, listening, until with a final rumble the storm shook its fist at the town before skulking off and I fell asleep.
Sophie slept through the dawn chorus and through the noises of the people next door hitching their caravan to the Volvo, dad shouting orders to everyone, before they went off for a day's fun queuing on the bypass. I had some Frosties and a cup of tea, and at ten to nine took a tray upstairs.
I knocked at my own bedroom door and asked if I could come in. A sleepy voice granted me permission.
Sophie was sitting up, the duvet drawn up under her armpits. Holding the tray on the fingertips of one hand I pulled the drawstring for the curtains to open them slightly, letting the morning sunshine spill into the room. Her hair had fallen on to her shoulders and it shone like spun gold where the sunlight caught it. She yawned and made noises of contentment, stretching her arms and smiling at me.
I said: "Orange juice, coffee, Frosties and toast. Will there be anything else, Ma'am?"
"Ooh, thank you. I like this hotel. No, that should be everything. I wasn't asleep, just dreaming."
"Did the thunder disturb you?"
"Thunder? No, did it thunder?"
"Just a little. Flattened two houses down the street and blew the roof off next door."
"Well, I didn't hear it."
I placed the tray on her lap and dropped another pillow behind her head. "Don't be all day," I told her. "There's a faint chance that your dad might call."
"Is that why you told me to bring my shoes and bag upstairs?"
"Yes." She laughed and called me silly, but I told her that there was nothing silly about self-preservation.
I turned to go, but she said: "Uncle Charles."
"Mmm." I stopped and leaned on the doorjamb, my hand on the handle.
"About last night."
"What about it?"
"I'm glad we… you know… that we didn't."
"Good. So am I."
"But somehow, it feels as if… as if it was still a bit special. I feel… closer to you, if you know what I mean. I was upset when I decided to come to see you, all mixed up. You were the only person I could think of. Thank you for looking after me. I love you, I really do. You're my best friend."
"Yes, Sophie," I replied. "I know what you mean, and I love you more than ever. That's not always the case, the morning after, believe me. Now eat your breakfast. I want you downstairs in ten minutes."
As I crossed the landing I heard her call: "Can I have a shower, please."
"Yes!" I yelled back.
I drove her down to Cambridge and we breakfasted at a Little Chef on the Al. Sophie said she was determined to get her degree, even with a baby to look after. If Digby stayed on for his masters it shouldn't be a problem. Near Cambridge we stopped again and had a chat sitting in a car park outside a greasy-spoon. I warned her that her mother's birthday was looming large and that she'd be in big trouble if she forgot to send a card. She said that might be a good time to introduce them to Digby and announce their engagement. We said our goodbyes, swore our undying love, and I told her that I'd always be there for her.
"And don't forget to send me an invite," I said as I started the engine for the last few miles.
"You're top of the list, Uncle Charles."
"Thank you."
"Shall we make it and friend?"
"No, I don't think so. Which way?"
"Follow the ring road. Is there anybody?"
"Not really. I thought there might be, but suddenly she doesn't want to know."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know."
"What's she called?"
"Rosie."
"She's a fool. When she knows you better she'll change her mind." Sophie reached out and touched my face. "Your hair'ji long."
I tilted my head to trap her fingers between my cheek and shoulder. "It needs cutting."
"I like it long. It suits you."
"Thanks. I don't think Rosie will ever have the chance to know me better."
"In that case you'll have to work at it, won't you? And then we can all be happy."
"Are you happy, Sophie?"
There was the slightest hesitation before she said: "Yes, I am."
"Then I'm happy too," I told her.
I hadn't tried to put a face on Digby, but he wasn't quite what I expected. He was an inch shorter than Sophie but broad-shouldered, with sandy hair and a rugby player's nose. The rugby image was reinforced by the county shirt he was wearing, and I suspected that he'd earned it, not bought it at JJB Sports. He was clearly devoted to Sophie and his face lit up like an herbaceous border as he hugged her. He shook my hand, then asked Sophie how her parents were.
"They're fine," she replied, lying with a facility that would have been the envy of most of the villains I meet. "Uncle Charles came round and insisted on driving me back."
"That's really nice of you," he told me.
"My pleasure," I replied. "We see so little of Sophie these days."
They gave me afternoon tea and Digby said he was studying computer sciences and had been offered a job with Intel in Dublin. I liked him, and thought Sophie's dad would, too, once he'd cleared the Digby hurdle.
"Look after her," I told him as we shook hands again, standing on the pavement next to my car.
"I will," he promised, and I believed him.
Sophie gave me a peck on the cheek as she hugged me and I rubbed the small of her back in a non-avuncular way. "Don't forget to talk to Rosie," she said, matter of fact, as much for Digby's benefit as mine, I suspected. Round the corner I stopped and sorted through my CDs for the long drive north. "Desire" would do for starters:
I married Isis on the fifth day of May But I could not hold on to her for very long.
So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.
Hooray for 24-7 supermarkets. It was early evening as I hit Heckley, so I called in Grainger's and did a medium shop. The place was manned by schoolgirls, earning money for riding lessons and the latest Pop Idol CD, but I wasn't complaining. I had a calorie-counter's sweet-and-sour chicken for tea, followed by sticky toffee pudding and custard, all done in the microwave. Very tasty. As weekends go this one had been pretty serendipitous. OK, be honest, it was one of the most serendipitous weekends of my life. I was on a roll, so I decided to push it. I found my diary and dialled Rosie's number. She picked up the phone after the first ring.
"Um, hello Rosie," I said, slightly off guard. "It's Charlie Priest." This time I didn't add the as in Roman Catholic.
"Hello Charlie. How are you?"
"I'm splendid. Fine, thanks. And you?"
"Oh, I'm all right."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
"You don't sound it."
"Well I am."
"Good. So how about that drink sometime?"
"I don't think so, Charlie. I thought I made that clear the last time we spoke."
"Rosie," I began, "I'm not very good at this sort of thing, and I don't want
to be a nuisance, but I thought we were getting on reasonably well, and then, I don't know, you suddenly became distant. Did I say something I shouldn't have, or offend you in any way?"
"No, of course not, Charlie. It's just that… I don't want to become involved."
"Going out for a Chinese is hardly becoming involved."
"I know. I tried to tell you, on the phone. I come with baggage-"
"To hell with baggage, Rosie. I don't give a toss about baggage. We were doing fine until I said that I was a cop. That's when your attitude changed. Now, I don't think you're a master criminal — a Mafia godmother or head of an international drugs cartel — so what's it all about?"
She was silent for a while and I expected her to come back and tell me to mind my own, but eventually she said: "You're right, Charlie. It is to do with you being a detective. I'm involved in a legal procedure and I've been advised not to speak to any policemen, that's all."
"What, by a solicitor?"
"Not exactly."
"Then by whom?"
"By a TV production company. First Call TV."
"And why don't they want you talking to any policemen?"
"Because they say you'll try to influence me. We're taking out an action against the police, and they say you'll apply pressure for me to drop it."
"Oh, I see. Well, no I don't see. If you had a case, Rosie, we'd probably help you. There are procedures for this sort of thing. Do you want to tell me what it's about?"
"It's about my father. I'm trying to clear his name and they're helping. They want to do a documentary about his case."
Alarm bells started clanging when I realised that journalists were involved. For Rosie's sake, not the police's. As with politicians, there are some good ones. And there's probably life on Mars, too.
"What did your father do?" I asked.
"He didn't do anything," she protested, her voice beginning to crack. "It's what he had done to him."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I guess I'm conditioned to adopt an attitude. I've been in the job too long. What did they do to your father?"
"They hanged him, Charlie," she sobbed. "They hanged him for a murder he didn't commit."
I did a quick calculation. The last people to be hanged in the UK were two hapless souls in Lancashire, back in 1964. Rosie would have been a little girl, a baby, then. I tried to think of names but they wouldn't come, and Rosie's mother may have changed hers after the event. Capital punishment doesn't punish just the accused. A vast cone of misery extends out from under the gallows, enveloping everyone involved with the whole rotten process, including the victim's family. Their expectations that a life for a life would ease the burden always proved to have been a hollow promise.
"Rosie," I began. "We can't leave it like this, and I'm not happy with you being involved with a TV company. They want a story, that's all, and they don't care who gets hurt. I'm coming round to see you. I'll be ringing your doorbell in about fifteen minutes. If you don't want to let me in, fair enough, but I'll be there."
"I don't know…"
"Fifteen minutes." There was a long silence as I waited for her to either reply or replace her handset, but before she could my brain reminded me of a simple fact. I said: "There's just one thing. You told me in the pub that you live on Old Run Road. It's a long road and I don't know the number. I could ring the station and ask someone to consult the electoral roll, but it would be easier for you to tell me."
After an even longer silence she said: "Two hundred and twelve. It's number two hundred and twelve."
On the way over I called in a filling station artd bought a bunch of flowers. Pink carnations. Outside her house I wondered if they were appropriate, but decided to risk it. She lived in a small bungalow with a neat garden and her Fiesta was parked on the drive. Its presence confirmed that I was in the right place and something in my stomach did a little fandango at the thought of seeing her again.
Rosie was watching for me and opened the door as I extended my hand towards the bell push. I thrust the flowers at her, saying: "Last bunch in the bucket, I'm afraid, but they look OK."
"Flowers," she said, with obvious pleasure as she took them from me. "It's a long time since anyone bought me flowers."
We had tea in china cups, with home-made carrot cake. Rosie was bare-footed, wearing red jeans and a baggy V-necked sweater, with no jewellery or make-up. That strange mixture of confidence and vulnerability struck me again and I had to remind myself that this wasn't a date: I was here in the role of friend, adviser and confidant. But her toenails were painted scarlet and the sweater clung to her and although one shoulder was poking out of it I couldn't see a bra strap. When she lifted the teapot and looked at me I nodded a "Yes please" and she leaned forward to fill my cup.
I said: "First of all, Rosie, I'm not here as a policeman. I'm here as your friend. I don't know anything about the case and if you don't want to tell me I'll understand, but I must warn you about any involvement with television. You want to prove your father innocent; they want a story. They have a documentary to produce. I don't know what your father is supposed to have done or if he is innocent or guilty, but just suppose — just suppose — that he is guilty. The crew won't go home saying: 'Oh well, we lost that one.' No, they'll put a spin on it so that they become the heroes of the plot: they proved your dad was a villain and the public will get their half-hour of entertainment. Your feelings will be cast aside like… like… I don't know, yesterday's tea bags."
She sat back in her easy chair, white-faced, pulled the sweater on to her shoulder and sniffed.
I went on: "That's all I want to say, Rosie. Be careful, because the chances are you'll get hurt. If you want the case re-opening there are other ways of doing it. Safer ways."
The picture over the mantel was an interpretation of Malham Cove, semi-abstract but still quite distinctive. Very appropriate for a geologist. I stood up to inspect it more closely and Rosie asked if I liked it.
"Yes, it's good. Puts my own efforts to shame, I'm afraid."
"Oh, I'd forgotten you were an artist," she said.
"Mmm." I turned and sat down again. "I used to be an art student. That's where I learned to draw." I smiled at her. "Then it was either graphic design or the police, and the police won."
Rosie returned the smile. "More tea?"
"Ooh, go on then."
"They're small cups." She poured for both of us, then said: "It may be too late to stop the TV people."
"If they're on to a story it will be impossible to stop them. Have you signed a contract or anything?"
"Not a contract, as such. A request for an exhumation. They've applied to the coroner's office for a warrant to have my father's body exhumed, and for something called… what is it… a faculty of the diocese, or something?"
"I think that's just permission from the Church of England to do work on their land," I said. "What are the grounds for conducting the exhumation?"
"Because of the availability of DNA profiling. And they said that there are new techniques that can show if statements have been interfered with."
"ESDA," I said. "It's called ESDA."
It was nearly dark outside. Rosie drew the curtains and switched on the light. It was a pleasant room, small and minimally furnished, with plain walls and the odd splash of colour from a painting or poster. There were candles in the hearth and she was halfway through Pride and Prejudice. I looked but I couldn't see a television. Maybe it's at the foot of her bed, I thought.
I finished my tea slowly, watching her above the rim of the cup. She drew her legs under her and gazed at a spot somewhere to the left of the fireplace, her brow furrowed. Eventually she said: "I was in the school play. Eleven years old. We were doing A Midsummer Night's Dream and I was Mustard Seed. It wasn't much of a part but I put my heart and soul into it. We had a rehearsal after school but I forgot to tell my parents. Dad came to collect me, as he often did, but I wasn't ready to leave, so he walked back home alone."
I slowly replac
ed my cup and saucer on the low table and waited for her to continue. "The girl was called Glynis. Glynis Evelyn Williams, aged thirteen. Lived three doors away from us. When she didn't arrive home from school a search party went out to look for her. They found her body on the hillside. She'd been strangled. Not raped or anything, just strangled. There was blood under her fingernails, group B, less than ten percent of the population. They tested all the men in the village and a week later arrested my father and charged him with murder. He made a full confession, they said, and hanged himself in his cell later that night. He plaited strips of material from his shirt into a rope and hanged himself. The police took great delight in telling Mum that it would have been a slow death, but only what he deserved."
"Have you seen the confession?"
"No, not yet."
I didn't know what else to say. Rosie's loyalty towards her father was only what I expected, but she was very young at the time, living a childhood that was close to perfection. I could imagine the scenario. Her father got himself into a situation with a girl from the village, a girl that he knew, and ended up with a dead body on his hands. We stand on our soapboxes and rail at the guilty party, then say a secret prayer that begins with the words: "There but for…" She was heading for more heartbreak, of that I was certain. All I could try to do was prepare her for it, ease the blow when it fell.
"Apparently you have something called noble cause corruption," she said. "The producer told me that a signed statement could easily be faked, especially when otherwise you wouldn't have enough evidence. It was dictated by my father, the police claim, and written down by the investigating detective. Why would it be done like that when he was perfectly capable of writing it himself?"
"I don't know," I replied. "That's just how it was. Probably to save time because most of our clients have difficulty spelling MUFC." Normal procedure was to ask the suspect to sign the statement directly below the last line of writing, but many an old-time bobby wasn't averse to asking for a signature at the bottom of the page, then adding a few words of his own.
"There's fitting up," I told her, "and there's this thing called noble cause corruption. We know fitting up goes off because there have been cases of it proven in the West Midlands and in the Met, but I've been in the job a long time and I've never met a policeman who would willingly fit up an innocent person just to improve the clear-up figures. Noble cause corruption is slightly different. Let's say we've arrested someone for rape, or persistent burglary. You know he did it, he's done it before and he'll do it again, but the evidence is circumstantial and he's on legal aid and you're not allowed to reveal his previous convictions to the court. You want him off the streets, so there's a temptation to take steps to strengthen your case. It happens, I'm sure. I've no proof but I've had my suspicions once or twice." And Charlie Priest could lie for England, I reminded myself. "What I'm saying is… even if the statement is faked, it doesn't prove anything. It might help show that he was wrongly charged, but that's not the same as innocent. Do you know if the autopsy samples have been saved?"
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