Return

by Brian Freemantle

  A stir of uncertainty came from the two support officers and Basildon couldn’t prevent a slight shift.

  ‘See!’ demanded Taylor, triumphantly. ‘I’ve won!’

  ‘I hope I haven’t wasted my time coming all this way for a vaudeville act,’ jeered Powell. ‘I thought you had something to tell me.’

  ‘I want to know where I am going to be tried – here in England? Or in America?’

  ‘Here, in England,’ said Townsend.

  ‘I elect to be tried in the United States,’ the man declared.

  Why? wondered Powell. He said, ‘You don’t have the choice.’

  Fuck! thought Taylor. He hadn’t wanted that. He wouldn’t ask – make himself the supplicant any further – but he didn’t think television was permitted in English courts as it was for American trials, which was what he wanted: the biggest possible audience, global village fame. ‘You absolutely sure about that?’

  ‘Choose a lawyer and ask him,’ said Basildon.

  Taylor remained silent for several moments. ‘So the British get the glory?’ Time to recover: taunt.

  Worried about formalities, Christopher Pennington filled the convenient silence by informing Taylor of his right to be questioned in the presence of a lawyer, which Taylor waived, and then pedantically recited the official caution of any statement being used in court if considered relevant.

  ‘You’ll want to use it,’ insisted Taylor. ‘This is going to be the biggest case of your careers. You’re going to be famous for the rest of your lives.’

  Would the arrogance crack if the man realized the evidence there already was against him? wondered Powell. ‘We know about Myron Nolan. The fingerprints. His handwriting—’

  ‘Don’t forget the Pittsburgh photograph,’ Taylor cut him off, triumphantly. ‘But how do you explain it! That’s the mystery, isn’t it? What the media are so hysterical about.’

  ‘Why don’t you put us out of our misery?’ sneered Basildon.

  ‘Only too pleased,’ said the man, brightly. ‘I am the reincarnation of Myron Nolan. Who was the reincarnation of Patrick Arnold. Who was the reincarnation of Maurice Barkworth – until now his was the best of my returns – who in turn was the reincarnation of Luke Thomas. As whom I was born again from having originally been Paul Noakes …’

  He laughed, even louder, at the expressions on all their faces. ‘Isn’t that the most incredible thing you’ve ever heard! Now listen very carefully. No-one will believe it – just as you don’t believe it at the moment – unless it’s proven, so I’m going to give all the details of every previous life, so you can find the facts to support all I’m going to tell you. We don’t want to get it wrong, do we?’

  There’d been no conversation in the cars coming from the prison and there was a reluctance to begin back in Townsend’s office. Unasked, the man poured whisky for all of them and all of them accepted.

  At last Powell said, ‘The absurd thing is, it makes it all perfectly logical.’ It was embarrassing to say.

  Basildon and Townsend exchanged looks.

  ‘A lot of people believe in reincarnation,’ offered Bennett, hopefully.

  ‘I don’t,’ stated Townsend. ‘He’s a bleeding nutter.’

  ‘Non-stop, for three hours!’ recalled Basildon. ‘The detail was incredible.’

  Only now, as the adrenalin began to seep away, did Powell begin to feel the pull of fatigue. He said, ‘And we’ve got to check out every single thing he told us.’ He might, he supposed, have to recall some of the support staff to help Amy. At least they’d know where to look now: Taylor had supplied dates – often times – and even numbers of streets for every claim he’d made about his supposed American existences.

  ‘If it all checks out …’ started Bennett, slowly.

  ‘… he’s the world’s first reincarnation,’ picked up Townsend. ‘But I’ll give ten-to-one that I’m right.’

  Jeri Lobonski accepted Powell’s division of labour without comment, going at once to a side office with a secretary to transcribe each of Harold Taylor’s three full tapes for the detail Washington was going to need.

  There had been no incoming messages waiting for them but when Powell reached Amy she said Beddows had come three times into the incident room, asking about contact from London. There had been no familiarity or curiosity to indicate that the man had any suspicion about them. She listened silently to Powell’s précis of the interview with Harold Taylor, together with his permission to reactivate the incident room with as many extra staff as she needed to check every detail that would be faxed as soon as possible.

  When he finished she said, ‘I seem to remember saying something about it being creepy as a joke, a long time ago.’

  ‘No-one’s laughing here.’

  ‘You believe it?’

  ‘I’m trying hard not to. I won’t find it easy unless you can disprove it, from what we’re going to send you.’

  ‘It is scary, Wes.’

  ‘I remember you saying that some time ago, too.’

  ‘What do I say to Harry Beddows if he comes back?’

  ‘Tell him what I’ve told you. Show him the statement.’

  ‘What about the other business?’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You going to tell me about it?’

  ‘Just trust me. What you don’t know about you can’t inadvertently make a mistake about.’

  Clarence Gale listened without interruption, too, not immediately speaking when Powell finished. Then he said, ‘You are aware of the implications of what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you wish to make it official?’

  ‘As official as I possibly can. It’s not only a personal attack upon me. It affects you, personally, and the Bureau.’ There was a risk, he supposed, of Gale himself being identified as the cause of the initial problem.

  ‘You’ve a copy of the letter, to the Police Commissioner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want it included tonight in the diplomatic bag from the embassy, addressed personally to me. Have you spoken to Beddows?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t, not even if he tries to make contact with you. Refer him to me. Everything now’s the subject of an official inquiry.’

  Powell was lucky to reach the custody lawyer on his first attempt and was glad he’d made the effort, because he’d almost acted upon impulse.

  ‘No!’ The man refused at once. ‘Leave it to what he appears to have done professionally. If you include the personal stuff in your application for Beth it looks malicious: maybe as if you created an entrapment for him, instead of his attempt to create one for you. It’ll make a bigger impression on our judge if I can show you had the integrity not to use it.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Even though her evidence formed no part of any American case Wesley Powell wanted to meet Janet Hibbs, but the previous day’s bewildering encounter gave added importance to the interview. He was hopeful of the one that was to follow, with the prosecuting lawyer, too. He seemed to be achieving a lot very quickly.

  Townsend and Basildon – as well as Lobonski – went with him, leaving their support officers to check as much of the statement as possible. The woman remained the chief British prosecution witness and after the media frenzy about a suggested romance she’d been moved from her London flat into a safe house. It was in Basildon’s division, in Barnes, overlooking the river but like all protected witness locations Powell had ever visited it was sterile and unlived-in, fully furnished and equipped but lacking even the artificial homeliness of an hotel.

  Janet’s sweater was stained and missing a button on the shoulder and she hadn’t bothered with make-up or even, he suspected, to brush her hair. Despite the carelessness and the black hollows pouching her eyes she was clearly an attractive woman, although even more clearly one who had given up, on herself and everything else. She smiled in sad recognition at Jeri Lobonski and said, ‘You’re the one wh
o gave me your coat. I never thanked you. You were the first to be kind.’

  ‘How are you?’ he said, smiling in return.

  ‘How do I look?’ she came back at once, bitterly. After being introduced to Powell she said in weary resignation, ‘What more do you want?’

  ‘To know everything I possibly can about the man you knew as Maurice Barkworth but whose real name, as far as we’re aware, is Harold Taylor,’ said Powell. He outlined the killings in America, despite her insistence that she’d already read about them, and said it still might be possible to arraign the man there on charges he wouldn’t face in England.

  Responding to her obvious need, Powell said, ‘If he is extradited to the United States the trial will be in Texas. Which has the death penalty.’

  There was no resignation in Janet’s smile now. Leaning intently forward she said, ‘To see killed the bastard who killed my mother and did what he did to me I’ll tell you whatever it is you want to know.’

  She did in far greater detail than in the police statement she had already made, unembarrassed even at describing her fellatio when sex hadn’t been possible. She had trusted Taylor, she told Powell, and sincerely believed herself to be in love. At Powell’s urging she recounted as much as she could of the precise words he’d used when he’d finally attacked her and her mother.

  ‘He actually told you it was because of what your father had done to him?’ pressed Powell. ‘Not to someone named Myron Nolan?’

  She nodded. ‘It excited him, to talk about it. He described everything: the courtroom, what the weather was like, what it was like to be in Berlin in those days. It was as if he’d really been there.’

  ‘Did he mention anyone named Myron Nolan?’

  ‘No. I’ve read the name in the papers since, of course.’

  ‘You called it excitement,’ said Townsend. ‘Was that all it was? Could it have been more than that? Madness?’

  ‘Of course I thought he was mad, suddenly turning on us like he did. But only then, at the last minute.’

  ‘What about in the days leading up to it?’ asked Basildon.

  ‘Totally gentle, totally calm,’ replied Janet. ‘I’m not trying to invest the time with things that weren’t there but having thought about it as much as I obviously have, I’ve come particularly to remember the calmness. Even when he attacked us he was always aware of himself, watching himself. The only exception was when I tried to reason with him. He screamed that I was patronizing him.’

  ‘So his demeanour was a conscious act?’ said Lobonski.

  ‘It had to be, didn’t it?’ she said, bitterly again. ‘All a great big fucking act!’

  ‘Anything else you’ve thought about, since?’ asked Powell.

  Janet gave the question time. ‘He was fanatically neat. And clean …’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Can you believe it attracted me to him! Wiped his restaurant cutlery on his napkin, before using it. Rubbed his hands together sometimes, as if he was washing them. Did it a lot at the end, when he was telling us how he was going to kill us.’

  Basildon said, ‘That night, when we burst into the house? You told me he changed his face. I didn’t include it in your statement, then or later. I thought you were hysterical. You had every reason to be.’

  Janet shuddered but said indignantly, ‘He did! Several times. It was horrible. Everything was horrible! But when he became someone else was the worst. That’s what killed Mother!’

  ‘Do you mean he physically distorted his face: twisted it out of shape, to look like someone else?’ pressed Basildon.

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ she insisted impatiently. ‘He had the young face – the face I knew – and then he made it change into a totally different man, whom I didn’t know. It was the older man in the photographs I’ve seen.’ She paused, looking between the four men. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? No-one will. I’m not just going to be humiliated by what I’ve got to say publicly, in court. They’re going to think I’m mad, as well. Laugh at me.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Powell.

  She looked curiously at them, waiting. It was Town-send who recounted their previous day’s interview. He began embarrassed, warning her she wasn’t going to believe it, and as he talked her face twisted into disgust.

  ‘I don’t want to believe it!’ she babbled, her words colliding. ‘People don’t come back from the dead … They can’t … that’s … I don’t know what it is!’ She stopped. ‘How much more unreal is this all going to get …?’ She forced herself to stop, a physical effort. ‘That’s what he did say, when he read out part of a letter my father had written, from Berlin! About an inhuman monster. He gloated and said that it was him my father had been talking about. It was the first time he changed his face …’ She stared imploringly at Powell. ‘Tell me what’s happening … what it’s all about …’

  Powell looked at the other men, then at Janet, knowing he had to say it at last. ‘I think it’s true. I don’t want to – I’ve been refusing to – but the only explanation I have is that Harold Taylor is a reincarnation …’

  He waited for the sniggers. There weren’t any. No-one spoke, either. Then Janet said, ‘Are you going to tell the court that?’

  ‘That’s what’s in Taylor’s statement,’ Townsend reminded her. ‘It’ll be produced as evidence.’

  To Powell she said, ‘So they won’t think I’m mad, will they? I’ll be humiliated but no-one will think I’m mad.’

  ‘They’ll probably think we’re all mad,’ said Powell.

  ‘It’s no part of any prosecution case to humiliate you,’ said Townsend.

  Janet shrugged, not reassured. ‘Will he be tried in America?’

  ‘I don’t know, not yet,’ admitted Powell. ‘We’re going to try to find a way.’

  ‘If he is – and is sentenced to death – I want to see him die. I want you to promise me you’ll arrange that for me.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Powell, meaning it.

  Hector McLeash QC, the lead counsel for the Crown V. Harold Taylor, was a flamboyant Scot who affected bow ties and overly long hair and had a connoisseur’s taste in whisky. He had taken the prosecution brief for its publicity potential but was worried after reading Harold Taylor’s statement that astonished sensation might too easily spill over into ridicule. It was a measure of his concern that he’d abandoned the normal procedure of leaving the preliminary official meetings to his instructing solicitor to come personally to New Scotland Yard to discuss it with the investigating officers, both English and American.

  The solicitor, Dennis Riley, was a necessary balance to McLeash’s frequent theatricality. A professionally emotionless pinstriped man, he took constant notes and enjoyed the reputation of isolating the one incongruity that proved a client’s guilt or innocence.

  The barrister waited until Riley finished reading, wanting the other man’s opinion. Riley pursed his lips, doubtfully and said, ‘No court’s going to like this. I can see an argument about admissibility.’

  Turning at once to the two British detectives, McLeash said, ‘Did he have legal representation when he said it all?’

  ‘It was taken strictly according to the book,’ said Basildon defensively. ‘All the warnings and cautions are on tape.’

  Riley carefully put his copy of the statement on Townsend’s desk and said, ‘Reads like the ramblings of a madman.’

  ‘We’ll anticipate the judge and try for psychiatric reports,’ decided McLeash. ‘That been suggested to him?’

  ‘We wanted to get your views first,’ said Townsend.

  ‘Defence will insist,’ predicted the lawyer. ‘Insanity is the obvious plea.’ To Riley he said: ‘I’ll want three separate assessments, to be on the safe side. Best psychiatrists you can find.’

  ‘Unfit to plead,’ queried Townsend. None of the sensation – and therefore none of the benefit – would come out if the court ruled that.

  ‘I’d try it, with the proper reports, if I was defending,’ admitted McLeash. ‘Do
es he look, seem, obviously insane?’

  ‘Totally rational,’ said Townsend.

  ‘A lot of completely insane people do,’ said Riley, unimpressed.

  ‘What about this woman, Hibbs? And funny faces?’ demanded McLeash. ‘I’m not happy with that.’

  ‘Neither’s she,’ said Townsend, irritated at the other man’s dismissal. ‘She’s frightened of being humiliated and laughed at.’

  ‘So am I,’ said McLeash. ‘I’ll want to go very carefully through her evidence before we call her. We’ll get as many women on the jury as we can, during selection. I want as much sympathy as I can get for Janet Hibbs.’

  ‘I’m not sure we should introduce face changes,’ warned Riley.

  ‘Neither am I,’ agreed McLeash. He tapped the statement. ‘So what about all this? It been checked out?’

  ‘Being done,’ assured Basildon.

  ‘And in America, too,’ said Powell, seeing his opening.

  ‘If it is a matter of public record, he could have researched the whole thing,’ Riley said. ‘Tailored everything to fit.’

  ‘That wouldn’t account for the forensic and scientific evidence,’ Basildon pointed out. ‘That couldn’t be made to fit.’

  ‘His account, absurd though it looks, is the only thing that does fit,’ insisted Townsend.

  ‘I’ll need pre-trial conferences with all the forensic and scientific experts,’ McLeash told Riley. ‘That’s the evidence that’s going to get the headlines. I don’t want to be caught out on anything there.’

  Riley made a note. ‘We’ll need experts on reincarnation, too.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed McLeash. ‘Line up theologians: professors of religious philosophy, if there are such people.’ He looked at Powell. ‘A person would have had to be living in Outer Mongolia not to know something about the cases already, but I’ve got to be careful against prejudicing a British jury with any reference to your killings in the United States. But they’re so inextricably linked I don’t see how I can avoid something arising. And there are too many loose ends to allow any more. I’m going to need you here, throughout the trial. Maybe with some of your scientific and technical people, too. I’ll make the formal request, of course, but I thought you’d like to warn your Director and legal officials, in advance.’