Mrs Cassidy nodded. ‘He never done it, Mr Tyroll. Do your best for him. You always has for my boys and girls.’
I suppose I’d have taken it on for Mrs Cassidy’s sake anyway, but I remembered how Inspector Saffary had come within an ace of jailing and ruining me last summer. I’m not a very vengeful sort of person but I make an exception for Saffary. The slenderest chance of ruining him attracted me.
I drew a long breath. ‘All right, Mrs Cassidy. I’ll read your papers, I’ll go and see Alan and then I’ll tell you what I think. OK?’
‘You cor say fairer than that, Mr Tyroll.’
4.
Down the road from the café we turned into an entrance. Sheila read the sign as we walked in — ‘Her Majesty’s Prison, Wormwood Scrubs’.
She laughed. ‘Lovely sense of tradition, you Pommies. You have royal jails just like the Royal Navy.’
‘You should be grateful for a look at this place,’ I said. ‘This was built because your lot refused to take any more convicts. It’s all grist for your book.’
‘Great, I can’t think of a better way to spend a cold winter afternoon than in one of Her Majesty’s jails.’
‘If you really don’t want to come,’ I said, ‘you can wait in the car.’
‘No thanks. Do you think I’ll pass as a solicitrice or a solicitrette or whatever you call them?’
I looked her over. She was wearing a soft brown leather jacket with a fur collar over a white sweater and khakis tucked into short brown boots.
‘You’ll do for me,’ I said.
There was a long queue at the visitors’ entrance, wives with carrier bags slowly funnelling into the door. At last we shuffled along the narrow corridor behind the door until we came to a reception window on our left. From behind it a narrow, pale face looked out from under a vertical cap peak that almost covered the eyes.
The Brigade of Guards wear caps with vertical peaks. Among the many other people who wear peaked caps are a percentage who think that the vertical peak is smart, so they cut across an ordinary peak and distort it. In the forces it’s forbidden. When you come across a civilian who’s done it, it’s a pretty fair bet you’re dealing with a plonker.
I was. I stated my name and business and he asked, ‘Have you got a letter from your firm?’
‘What would I want a letter from my firm for?’
‘To identify who you are, sir.’
‘I own my firm. Wouldn’t it be pretty odd if I carried letters from me, saying that I was me?’
‘A driving licence, then?’
I drive so rarely that I don’t carry my licence. So we went on until I had emptied all my pockets and most of my briefcase, looking for ID while the queue swayed and muttered behind me, and then Sheila intervened and called the officer ‘Adolf’, and we had to be taken to a senior officer and I explained that she was Australian and eventually they let us in. When prisons riot I’m surprised it’s the convicts, not their visitors.
Walton was waiting for us in a small square room with nasty yellow walls and worn brown furniture — one small table and three upright chairs. He stood up as we entered and shook hands with both of us as I introduced myself and Sheila as ‘my clerk’.
He was smaller than I had expected, a neat stocky man in his fifties, brown hair greying and thinning above a face that I suspect would have been less pale if he had had access to pubs. His dark eyes behind old-fashioned spectacles were prisoner’s eyes that gave nothing away.
‘I understand’, I began, ‘that you and Peter Grady have renewed your applications for leave to appeal against conviction?’
He nodded.
‘Do you understand what happens now?’
‘Yes, sir. That application goes before one judge of the Court of Appeal and he decides whether we can have leave to appeal to the full court.’
‘That’s right. If he says yes, that’s fine. You’ll get Legal Aid to present your application to the full court.’
‘You don’t think he’ll say yes, do you, Mr Tyroll?’
‘To be frank — no, I don’t. However, if he refuses you that isn’t the end. You can still renew your application to the full court, but you won’t get Legal Aid.’
‘Mrs Cassidy — me mother-in-law — says she’ll pay what’s necessary, Mr Tyroll.’
‘Don’t be so quick to spend your mother-in-law’s cash. The Court of Appeal is the toughest criminal court in England. It’s not there to let people out — it’s there to convince the public that convicted people get a fair crack of the whip, but they don’t. If you take that court on you don’t just need cash, you need a damned good case. Have you got one?’
‘I never did it, Mr Tyroll.’
‘You said that to a jury at Stafford Crown Court. They didn’t believe you. The rules say that, whatever the Court of Appeal thinks or feels about a case, they can’t just overturn the decision of a jury. There has to be evidence that something was seriously wrong with the trial or new evidence which might have led the jury to a different verdict. What was the evidence against you at Stafford?’
‘There was Pete’s statement to the police. In that he said that Billy Simpson planned it and got the guns and that me and him and a man he didn’t know pulled it off.’
‘But Grady says that statement is a fake?’
‘Yeah — he said that at Stafford.’
‘And the jury didn’t believe him, either. What other evidence was there? You can’t be convicted on the unsupported evidence of a partner in crime.’
‘There was Glenys bloody Simpson, that’s what other evidence there was. She said she knew that Billy planned the job and that Peter and Freddy and I did it. She said she helped hide the loot after.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve read her statement. Why did she say those things if they weren’t true?’
‘Because she hated Billy. He thought she was having it off on the side and she was. She did it to get rid of him.’
‘And why did she name you and the others? What had she got against you?’
‘Well, four blokes did the robbery. She had to have four names and we was Billy’s best mates.’
‘Billy committed suicide before he was arrested. Why was that?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t really know, Mr Tyroll, but me and Peter and Freddy were already arrested. I suppose he realised his missus had done for us and he couldn’t face it.’
‘So you were convicted on a mixture of Grady’s statement and Glenys Simpson’s evidence. Nobody could place you at the scene of the crime, or connect you with the money. Nevertheless, a jury convicted you. So what have you got that’s new?’
He lifted a thick manila envelope from his lap and pushed it across the table. ‘There’s a copy of my application for leave to appeal, Mr Tyroll. It’s all in there.’
I opened a pack of cigarettes and put them on the table so that he could help himself while I scanned through the papers in the envelope. When I’d done I laid the envelope back on the table and lit another cigarette.
‘Congratulations, Mr Walton,’ I said. ‘You’ve written as good an application as any lawyer.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s see if I understand your argument. You say here that you and Grady were interviewed by DCI Hawkins, Inspector Watters and Sergeant Saffary a number of times in various combinations and that those interviews were improperly conducted, that you were assaulted and threatened, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You go on to say that the investigation into the Central Midlands CID has led to Hawkins and Watters facing disciplinary charges, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, you argue, Grady and you were telling the truth at your trial about the way you were treated, Grady’s confession is a fake and your conviction is unsafe and unsatisfactory. Right?’
‘That’s it, Mr Tyroll.’
‘So, at the trial Grady was in trouble because of his confession and Mrs Simpson’s evidence. Why were both of you tried together? Didn’t your counsel try to get the cases separated
?’
‘He did, Mr Tyroll, but the judge weren’t having it. He said Grady’s statement wouldn’t affect my trial and he’d warn the jury about it.’
‘And did he?’
‘Oh, yeah, he warned them that everything they’d heard from Grady’s statement wasn’t evidence against me, even if they believed the statement was true about Grady. Well, that’s nonsense, isn’t it, Mr Tyroll? Once they’ve heard all that stuff they ay going to forget it, are they?’
‘No, they’re not — and they didn’t. Tell me about Freddy Hughes.’
‘Freddy? What about him?’
‘The three of you were arrested. Grady signed a faked confession naming Simpson and you but not Hughes, and he was charged. You made a statement maintaining your innocence, but you were charged. Why wasn’t Hughes charged?’
‘Because he day make any statement, I suppose.’
‘But your statement only said you were innocent and Glenys Simpson named you and Hughes. Why wasn’t he charged?’
He shook his head. ‘I really don’t know, Mr Tyroll.’
‘OK, you don’t know. Now just suppose — only a supposition — that the judge grants you permission to apply to the court, and suppose that the court believes that Grady’s confession was faked. Where does that leave you, Mr Walton?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it leaves me not being named by Grady.’
‘Precisely. It leaves you with the question of Mrs Simpson. It leaves the Court of Appeal with the chance to say that, even if the police misbehaved and broke the rules, there was still credible evidence on which the jury could have convicted you.’
He still looked puzzled. ‘Why would they say that, Mr Tyroll?’
‘To put it bluntly, because you and Grady were convicted of robbery and murder in a case where one man was shot dead and another had a hole blown in him that left him permanently disabled. If the Court of Appeal were to let you walk out because a few coppers broke the rules, the next morning’s papers would be screaming that the courts are unrealistic and that murderers and maniacs go free because of technicalities.’
‘Does that make a difference?’
‘Does it make a difference? Listen — the only person who can sack a judge is the Lord Chancellor; the Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Prime Minister; if the press gives the government a hard time about law and order the opinion polls go down; if the opinion polls go down, the Prime Minister leans on the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chancellor leans on the judges to keep the sentences long and stop letting people out — that’s the difference it makes.’
He looked glum and said nothing.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m being tough, but you’re in a tough game. You might get leave to present your application, but unless you can prove — prove, mark you — that Glenys Simpson lied, all the bent coppers in the world won’t help.’
5.
It was dark when we left the prison and the sleet had started again. We threaded our way through the beginning of the rush hour and on to the motorway. Sheila said nothing, knowing how hard I have to concentrate to drive a car.
At Scratchwood Services I pulled in, hoping the sleet would stop while we had a tea-break. The café was crowded with half the population of the North and the Midlands who’d had the same idea.
As we found places and cleared a space on a table Sheila looked around her. ‘Do you know,’ she said, wonderingly, ‘right up to the time I left people who I like and respect, students and colleagues and friends with good brains, were saying how much they envied me, because I was flying off for a year in England. I was going to have the chance to really see the Old Country.’ She shook her head. ‘So far, it’s snowed and I’ve been to a snag-and-chips café, spent the afternoon in a Victorian prison and here I am, dining with the man of my dreams in a motorway services.’
‘It’s not snow,’ I said, ‘we call it sleet when it’s mixed with rain.’
‘Yeah? The Eskimos have a lot of words for it too. We only have one, because we don’t have snow in South Australia.’
‘You may not know it,’ I said, ‘but this is a historic spot in its own right.’
She looked around again with an expression of utter disbelief. ‘Oh, really?’ she said flatly.
‘You might not believe it,’ I said, ‘but this was once a huge rubbish dump, famous as the spot where two tramps — known as Moosh and Tiggy — who lived in the dump murdered a mate of theirs and buried him in the rubbish.’
‘Fascinating,’ she said, even more flatly.
I raised both hands. ‘All right! All right! I admit that it’s been a bit of an odd day and not the brightest welcome back to Britain but you did come at me rather sudden and I have to fit things in where I can,’ and regretted the last phrase as soon as I said it.
‘OK, Tyroll, apology accepted. What are you going to do to make it up to me?’ and she rubbed a leg against mine under the table.
‘Er, how about a traditional English Victorian Christmas with all the trimmings?’
‘Oh, you mean starving beggars and kids up chimneys and girls down coal mines and all that?’
‘Well, no, actually. We don’t have many coal mines left and the chimneys have given way to central heating. We still have the starving beggars, though. Actually I was thinking of turkey and stuffing and brandy and that.’
She grinned. ‘Some of it sounds good, anyway.’ She swigged her coffee. ‘What about this Walton character, then? You were pretty tough on him, weren’t you?’
‘I told him, he’s in a tough game and he’s not likely to win.’
‘Is he really innocent, do you think?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
She gave me a peculiar look. ‘Doesn’t it matter?’ she said.
‘Not to me it doesn’t — it can’t. It’s the court’s job to decide guilt or innocence, not mine or the cops’.’
‘But don’t you think about it?’
‘Of course I do. But I don’t know enough about Walton’s case and there are a number of peculiarities about it.’
‘So he’s got a lawyer who doesn’t care whether he’s innocent and thinks he’s got Buckley’s.’
‘Buckley’s?’
‘It’s Aussie for a slim chance — as in “You’ve got two chances, mate, Buckley’s and none.” ’
‘What chance did Buckley take?’
‘I don’t remember — jumped his horse off an impossible cliff, or something.’
‘Well, that’s right. That’s about Alan Walton’s chance with the Court of Appeal, and anyway, I’m not his lawyer. I’m his mother-in-law’s lawyer. If I’m lucky he’ll get Legal Aid and a barrister will be assigned to present his case and I won’t have to think about it again.’
‘You really don’t want to do it?’
‘I really don’t want to do it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s old and difficult and peculiar and because Saffary’s in it which will distort my judgements, and because I may get to believe Alan Walton is innocent and I won’t be able to get him out. Are those enough reasons?’
‘And when it goes wrong, little Granny Cassidy will smile at you and twinkle those bright, black eyes, and you’ll do it, won’t you?’
‘Stop trying to cheer me up. Let’s go.’
We crept back to Belston along the sleet-shrouded motorway and at last I pulled gratefully to a halt outside my home in Whiteway Village. I saw the porch light and the sitting-room light on and knew that Mrs Dunk, my cleaner, had carried out her instructions.
We lumbered Sheila’s luggage into the hall, shucked off some outer layers and went into the sitting-room. Mrs Dunk had done me proud. A well-established fire burned in the grate and on a side table by the settee were an inviting bottle and a covered tray of snacks.
‘Welcome,’ I said, ‘to the essential of an English Christmas — an open fire.’
‘Beauty!’ Sheila said. ‘But shouldn’t the
re be nuts roasting on it?’
‘Complain, complain, complain! You’ve been listening to too many American songs.’
I pulled her down on to the settee with me and stifled her response. It was quite a long time before she shook herself free and reached for the wine.
Later, when she had turned out the lamps, she sprawled on the rug in front of the fire with a glass of wine. ‘Come down here,’ she invited.
‘I’ve had a long hard day,’ I said.
‘So have I,’ she said. ‘How about finishing with a long, hard evening? There’s nothing on the telly.’
‘The last time you lured me with that excuse somebody fire-bombed us,’ I said.
‘Trust me — I’m a doctor!’
‘Yeah — of history!’
‘So nothing I do can kill you.’
With that guarantee I slid down to her side.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I want to know what roasted nuts are like.’
6.
From that point on, Christmas got better and better. On the last working day the office closed at lunch-time. Out came Jayne’s Birthdays Bottle and her Accidents and Emergencies Bottle and several others as well. With a couple of Mary’s robust cakes we all sprawled around the general office, while friends and colleagues dropped in to bring us a drink or to scrounge one or several.
Macintyre the pathologist came, bringing a bottle of Talisker, kissing the secretaries and sending them into shrieks with his seasonal tales of death and disembowelment. Claude the Phantom, our friendly neighbourhood private eye, joined us, bringing a huge bag of mince pies. Acting Detective Inspector Parry arrived. The stuffed kangaroo, a popular gift with the staff, squatted on top of a filing cabinet, a paper hat askew over one ear and a bottle of Oxford Landing in its pouch.
I squatted in a corner with Sheila and looked around me.
‘What about Christmas in England so far?’ I asked her.
She toasted me with her glass. ‘Bonzer!’ she said. ‘You’ve got some good mates here, Chris Tyroll.’
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