Blind Justice

by Nathan Burrows

  “As soon as we have new evidence, or new witnesses, or — even better — both, I’ll lodge the appeal at Norwich with Judge Watling. He’ll then sign it off. At least, that’s the plan. I know James well, so have got a good idea of how to put it to him.” It was no surprise to me that Paul knew the judge.

  “What sort of timeframe are we looking at?” I asked them. They looked at each other briefly before Paul replied.

  “Well, witnesses and evidence will take time to collect and prepare. But I’m very optimistic that we’ll get there. It will just take a while to do it properly. I can’t really put a timeframe on that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It could be weeks, but more likely it will be months.” Although what Paul said made perfect sense, I couldn’t help but be gutted, especially after what had happened yesterday. From the sympathetic look that Laura gave me, I knew my disappointment was obvious. She slid her hand across the table and wound it around mine. I almost jumped at her touch. She was the only woman I had touched since Jennifer had died. Even though it was only a brief touch of her hand, it still sent a shock wave through me. I looked down at her hand, her cool fingers touching the back of my hand. No rings, no nail polish.

  “So, Gareth. Once we have the witnesses and evidence prepared, and the judge has signed the appeal paperwork, it’ll be quick from there,” Laura said, giving my hand a quick squeeze before letting go of it. I resisted the temptation to grab it back and realised that I was probably reading far too much into what was an innocent touch. “Once the papers are lodged with the Court of Appeal, the waiting time should only be a week or so,” Laura said, breaking my concentration which was probably just as well.

  “Yes,” Paul said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. “Nothing to do with justice, but everything to do with compensation.” I frowned, not understanding his point.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “The compensation clock ticks from the day the appeal is launched. Quite reprehensible in my opinion, but what would I know?” Paul explained. I had not even thought about compensation. Thinking about it, I realised that I couldn’t care less about it, anyway.

  “So, that’s where we are with the appeals process,” Paul said. Although I didn’t really know anything now that I hadn’t known already, I was grateful to them both anyway. “So, moving on to the appeal itself, there’s not much to tell you really. We might have found another witness, though.” My eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “Really?” I said. I was sure that there were no other witnesses, apart from the dog walker and he was miles away from me. Mind you, I’d been sure there were no CCTV cameras either, and I’d got that very wrong. Paul turned to Laura.

  “Why don’t you tell Gareth about the response to the posters?” The smile returned to her face.

  “Okay,” she said. “There was, how can I put it, quite an enthusiastic response to them.” Laura laughed. “I never realised Norwich had so many nutcases.” I smiled at her, hoping she would continue. She flipped open her notebook. “Right, there were three people who say they saw you even though they weren’t even in Norwich on the night in question. There was another witness who is convinced that you’re her long lost son, and finally, the star witness and front runner for the reward.” She looked at me, her eyes sparkling, but said nothing.

  “What? Tell me?” I asked.

  “Well, according to this witness, you were in fact dropped off at the recreation ground just prior to the murder.” Her eyes sparkled even more. “In a spaceship.”

  A few seconds later, Mr McLoughlin’s face appeared at the door to see what we were all laughing so hard about.

  Almost a week later, I sat on the hard plastic chair in the lawyer’s room while Mr McLoughlin plugged a telephone into the wall. I had been in this room I don’t know how many times, and never noticed a socket on the wall for a landline. He lifted the handset of the telephone and pressed the plastic prongs on top of the handset a couple of times as he held it to his ear.

  “Okay,” Mr McLoughlin said. “Good to go.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or talking to himself, so I remained silent. He pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. Moving so he was blocking my view of the telephone, I heard the keypad beep four times before he looked down at the paper. There must have been a PIN lock on the telephone. The next session of beeps would be the number I could see written on the piece of paper. He paused, the handset to his ear, before speaking a few seconds later.

  “Hello? Is that Miss Flynn?” He paused. “HMP Whitemoor here. I’ve got Mr Gareth Dawson with me. Will I put him on?” Another pause before he nodded. He turned and handed me the handset. “You know the drill,” he said fixing me with a hard stare. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to warrant a look like that, but maybe he was just having a crap day at the office. “Just bang on the door when you’re done,” he reminded me as he walked toward the door.

  I waited until he had left the room, and I’d heard the lock being closed. The other times I’d been in here, the lock had stayed open. I guessed that was only when there were other people in the room.

  “Hello, Laura?” I said. “It’s Gareth.”

  “Hi, Gareth,” I heard Laura reply. The line was terrible. It sounded as if Laura was in a wind tunnel.

  “Hi, Gareth,” I heard Laura say through the static. I missed the next few words she said as they were too broken up for me to understand. I caught a few partial words through the hiss.

  “It’s not a great line, Laura,” I said, tightening my grip on the handset. This wasn’t what I needed. I heard her say something but again couldn’t make it out. Something about a pullover? “I can’t hear you,” I almost shouted down the line.

  “I said, I’ll pull over,” she yelled back, the line suddenly clear. Wincing, I pulled the handset away from my ear. I’d heard that okay.

  The next time Laura spoke, the line was much clearer. Almost as if she was in the next room.

  “Sorry about that, Gareth,” she said. “I’m in the car and had you on Bluetooth. It’s a crap connection at the best of times, but I’m in the middle of nowhere at the moment.”

  “Where are you?” I asked her, fascinated because I had a link to the outside world even if it would only be for a few minutes.

  “Er, I’m somewhere between Elveden and Thetford,” she said. I closed my eyes for a moment as I knew the area well. Thetford was a large forest maybe half an hour away from Norwich. It covered miles of land, some of it shut off but a lot of it open to the public. I’d always imagined that it would be a fantastic place to take kids for a holiday and remembered a conversation I’d had with Jennifer one evening to that effect.

  “So, Gareth,” Laura’s voice snapped me out of my daydream. “Thank you for getting back to me.”

  “No problem,” I replied. “I wasn’t busy.” Laura laughed, her voice tinkling down the telephone line. It brought a smile to my face.

  “I’ve got some news,” she said. “Good news.”

  When Mr McLoughlin had said earlier that my legal team needed to speak to me, my initial reaction was mixed expectations. The last few times I had spoken to them, there had been no real developments at all. Lots of activity, but nothing tangible at the end of it. Laura telling me it was good news brightened my day a lot. Maybe there had been another result from their investigator, or some new evidence, but after all this time I couldn’t see how either option would be possible.

  “So Gareth,” Laura said. Not for the first time, I noticed the endearing habit she had of starting most of her sentences with the word ‘so’ followed by the name of the person she was speaking to. It was almost as if she used it as a punctuation mark or a way of gathering her thoughts together before she spoke. “Are you ready for this?” She was talking quickly, and I could hear the excitement in her voice. I could feel my hopes raising.

  “Yes, what is it?” I said.

  “Well, I’m just on my way to London from Norwich. I’ve been at the Crow
n Court all day.” I waited for her to continue. “Your application for an appeal went to Judge Watling this morning,” Laura said. I hadn’t even known it was going in front of him, so this was a real surprise.

  “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know for sure what he said, I wasn’t there. But I do know the judge and Paul were in the judge’s chambers for ages,” Laura said. “Paul said afterwards they’d been talking about an appeal ‘out of time’, but judging by the smell of whisky coming off him, I don’t think they’d been discussing it for that long.” I could hear from the tone of her voice that she was smiling, and the thought of Paul getting pissed with the judge who’d sentenced me to life in prison brought an ironic smile to my face. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Laura rattled on. “Judge Watling signed the paperwork, the NG, that’s all that matters.”

  “What’s an NG?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry,” she said. “It’s the form that goes to the Court of Appeal. They’ll look at it and then decide whether or not to grant an appeal. That’s why I’m driving to London, to take it down there and deliver it. Paul said it’s a formality, but he still wanted it there as soon as possible.”

  “What happens next, then?” I asked. Her enthusiasm was infectious. I felt, for the first time in weeks, as if I might have a chance.

  “Er, a single judge panel is first,” she replied. “One judge has a look at it and decides if it should go to a full panel of three of them. Weeds out all the crap, basically,” she said, laughing again. “Then, if they say yes — which they will — they’ll order a retrial.”

  “How long will that take, do you think?”

  “Paul reckons it might take a while. Up to two months, maybe longer.” My heart sank. That was not what I wanted to hear. “Don’t get your hopes up, Gareth. I’m being honest with you, that’s all,” Laura continued. I tried to relax my grip on the handset and just sat there, listening to the rumble of cars and lorries I could hear in the background thundering up and down the main road between Norwich and London. I couldn’t think of anything to say, anyway.

  “Are you okay?” Laura asked a moment later. I didn’t reply. “It’s great news, Gareth. Paul’s put together a superb case. It went to the prosecution team last week, and they sent it straight back uncontested. Just like Paul said they would.” I sighed, trying to process it all in my head. I needed time to think about what Laura had said, and what it meant.

  “When are you coming in to see me next?” I asked Laura.

  “I think Paul will be in at the weekend. He’s got paperwork for you to sign, and he’ll bring you up to speed on the appeal.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Me and Seb are going to Brighton for the weekend.”

  “Seb?”

  “Sebastian. My boyfriend.”

  “Your boyfriend’s called Sebastian?” I was trying not to laugh. “I bet he’d be thrilled to know you were on the phone to a convicted murderer.” An image popped into my head of a fop haired Hugh Grant look-a-like, with an accent to match.

  “I won’t tell him if you won’t,” Laura replied, the smile back in her voice. “You’re right, he wouldn’t be impressed at all. I mean, he knows I’m a lawyer and that I have to deal with prisoners, but even so.”

  “Is he a pouter?”

  “What?”

  “Is he a pouter? Does he pout at you when he’s annoyed?” Laura laughed at my question. It was almost, but not quite, a cackle. In another life, I’d have described it as a filthy laugh, but that didn’t seem to fit given the circumstances. I’d not heard her laugh like that before, but it was a sound I would love to hear more of.

  “That’s enough, I need to go.” She was still smiling though. I could tell from her voice. “We’ll talk soon, okay?”

  “Okay,” I replied, realising that I didn’t want the conversation to end.

  “Bye, bye, bye,” Laura said in quick succession. The next thing I knew I was listening to a dial tone. Smiling at the memory of Laura’s laugh, I put the phone down, got to my feet and banged on the door.

  “How did that go?” Mr McLoughlin asked as we walked back to my cell. If it had been any other prison officer, I would have kept silent. His hard stare had disappeared, and I wondered again what all that was about.

  “Pretty damn good, to be honest,” I replied. “That was one of my lawyers. She’s taking my appeal paperwork to the Court of Appeal in London. The judge signed it off.”

  “Really?” Mr McLoughlin stopped and looked at me. “You serious?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Straight up.” To my surprise, he smiled. I don’t think I’d ever seen him smile before. It changed the shape of his face and made him look like a different man. A much nicer one, to be honest.

  “That’s great news, Gareth,” he said. I wondered for a moment if he was taking the piss, but looking at him, I didn’t think he was. “You’ll probably get shipped out if it goes through. Back to Norwich, I’d imagine.”

  “Seriously?” I replied. “That’d be magic if that happened.” Mr McLoughlin carried on walking down the corridor to the door that led back to the general population.

  “That’s what normally happens,” he said. “You’ll get ghosted back to the original area, even if it’s a lower cat. You’ve got a good record, so I can’t see the Guv’nor objecting.” Mr McLoughlin opened the door at the end of the corridor and stood back to let me go through it before he locked it behind me. “Have a good afternoon,” he called through the observation window in the green metal door.

  I stood with my hands on the bannister of the walkway and looked down at the prison wing in front of me. There was a bustle about the place, which was normal during ‘sosh’, or social time. I watched as prisoners hustled each other, doing deals, sorting out arrangements. If, and it was a huge if, if I got out of here, I would never be coming back. Not to this prison, not to any prison.

  All I needed to do was to get out first.

  I was lying awake on my bed when the note got pushed under the door. I’m not sure what time it was, but it was late. More than likely it was early. I’d not been sleeping well at all for the last couple of weeks and had been tossing and turning for what felt like hours when I noticed a shadow pass across the observation window of my cell door. The prison officers looked in at random intervals anyway, presumably to make sure that no one had hung themselves after lights out, but this time the shadow stayed in front of the window for longer than normal. I heard a noise at the bottom of the door, and when I looked up, I could see a single sheet of paper had been pushed under it.

  Swinging my legs off the bed, I got to my feet to retrieve the note. I didn’t have to worry about disturbing Mac as he was back on the hospital wing. Coughing up blood again. I’d never once seen him cough up anything other than thick phlegm, but he was insistent. Besides, he’d said, the food was better on the hospital wing. Although we bickered like a husband and wife most of the time, I missed him.

  I knew some of the prisoners preferred to be in solitary, even to the point of staging fights to get assessed as high risk and locked up, but I didn’t think I’d manage that for long. I’d even heard a story about a lad who wet the bed all the time just to get his own cell, but I’d heard it from so many people I figured it was an urban legend. I picked the paper up off the floor and held it to the light coming in the observation window so I could read it.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” I muttered as I read the text. It was an instruction to pack my things up and be ready to move at lights up tomorrow morning. That didn’t give me a chance to speak to anyone before I left. They always shipped prisoners out before the doors to the cells opened. I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to the few mates I’d made in Whitemoor, and that included Mac. The instruction didn’t say where I was being moved to, just that I was being moved. “What am I supposed to pack my stuff into, anyway?” I said under my breath, looking around the cell. In reality, my personal possessions would fit into a shoebo
x.

  One of the main advantages of being ‘ghosted’ out of Whitemoor was that Gejza or whatever his name was would be miles away. I didn’t doubt he could find out where I had gone, but it put at least one degree of separation between me, the Romanian, and his gorillas. I still hadn’t worked out what I would do about that problem, but perhaps being moved away would buy me some time until I’d come up with something. Lying back down on the bed, I stuffed the paper under my pillow. I stared at the bottom of the bunk above me, knowing I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep now. I closed my eyes anyway.

  The next time I opened them it was morning, and my cell door had just been unlocked. I’d drifted off to sleep after all. With a start, I realised that I’d not packed any of my stuff. Wherever I was going, I didn’t want to leave any of it behind. I pulled the picture of Jennifer off the wall of the cell, trying to rub the congealed homemade glue off the back. It was made out of coffee whitener mixed with a dab of water and was as strong as superglue, but it messed the photos up for good. It was my one remaining photograph of her. I looked at it and frowned. I’d have to get Andy to send me another one in and hope it got through the postal system intact.

  “You sorted, then?” a voice shouted through the open door. It wasn’t Mr McLoughlin, but one of the other prison officers. Mr Philips, I think his name was. “Come on, I haven’t got all day.” I moved about the cell, trying to get as much of my stuff together as I could.

  “Have you got a box or anything?” I asked. “Please?” I heard a muttered swearword in response and a few seconds later a battered shoebox came sailing through the door. I dumped my few possessions into it and picked it up before leaving the cell without a second look.