A Room Swept White (46 page)

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘Tell her, Angus.’

‘I assume you know the catchphrase Judith Duffy was famous for: “so unlikely, it borders on impossible”?’

I tell him I do.

‘Do you know what she was talking about when she said it?’

‘The odds of there being two cot deaths in one family.’

‘No, that’s a popular misconception.’ He looks pleased to be able to contradict me. My heart’s thudding so hard, I’m surprised the camera’s not shaking. ‘That’s what people think she meant, but she told Ray otherwise. She wasn’t talking about general principles, but about two specific cases – Morgan and Rowan Yardley – and the likelihood that they died naturally, given the physical evidence in both cases.’

‘Are you going to tell me why you sent me those lists?’ I ask.

‘I’ve got my own likelihood principle, which I’ll happily explain to you,’ says Angus. ‘If Judith Duffy testifies that Ray’s a murderer, and Ray denies it, what are the odds of Duffy being right?’

I think about this. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I say honestly. ‘Assuming Duffy’s an unbiased expert, and that Ray might have a strong motivation to say she was innocent even if she wasn’t . . .’

‘No, leave that out of it,’ says Angus impatiently. ‘Don’t think about motivation, impartiality, expertise – none of those things can be scientifically measured. I’m talking about pure probability. In fact, let’s not use Ray and Duffy – let’s make it more abstract. A doctor accuses a woman of smothering her baby. The woman says she didn’t do it. There are no witnesses. What are the odds of the doctor being right?’

‘Fifty-fifty?’ I guess.

‘Right. So the doctor, in that scenario, might be totally and completely correct in her judgement, or she might be totally, utterly wrong. She can’t be a bit right and a bit wrong, can she?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘The woman either did or didn’t murder her child.’

‘Good.’ Angus nods. ‘Now, let’s up the numbers a bit. A doctor – the same doctor – accuses three women of murdering babies. All three women say they’re innocent.’

Ray, Helen Yardley and Sarah Jaggard
.

‘What are the odds of all three of them being guilty? Still fifty-fifty?’

God, I hated Maths at school. I remember rolling my eyes when we did quadratic equations:
Yeah, like we’re really going to need
this
skill in later life
. My teacher, Mrs Gilpin, said, ‘Numerical agility will help you in ways you can’t possibly imagine, Felicity.’ Looks like she was right. ‘If, in each case, the probability of the doctor being right is fifty-fifty, then the chance of her being right in all three cases would . . . still be fifty-fifty, wouldn’t it?’

‘No,’ says Angus, as if he can’t believe my stupidity. ‘There’s only a one in eight chance of the doctor being right, or wrong, in all three cases.’ Ray and I watch as he pulls a crumpled
receipt and a pen out of his jacket pocket and starts to write, leaning on his knee. ‘G stands for guilty, I for innocent,’ he says, handing me the receipt once he’s finished.

I look at what he’s written.

‘You see?’ he says. ‘There’s a one in eight chance of the doctor being right in all three cases, and a one in eight chance of her being wrong in all three cases. Now, imagine there are a thousand such cases . . .’

‘I see what you’re getting at,’ I say. ‘The more cases there are of Judith Duffy saying women are guilty and them protesting their innocence, the more likely she is to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes.’
That’s why, in your email, you also made sure to tell me that on twenty-three occasions, Judith Duffy testified in favour of a parent. Sometimes she’s for, sometimes she’s against – that was your point. Sometimes she’s right, sometimes she’s wrong
. In other words, Laurie’s portrayal of her as a persecutor of innocent mothers is a flat-out lie.

‘Precisely.’ Angus rewards me with a smile. ‘The more wrongly accused innocent women Laurie Nattrass pulls out of his hat, so-called victims of Duffy’s alleged desire to ruin lives, the more likely at least some of them are to be guilty. I have no trouble believing in a miscarriage of justice, or that a doctor can get it wrong. But to expect people to believe in an endless string of miscarriage-of-justice victims, in a doctor who gets it wrong every single time . . .’

‘And I was supposed to work that out, from those lists you sent me?’

‘Hines’ Theorem of Probability, I call it: one woman accused of murder by Judith Duffy might be guilty or innocent. A hundred women accused of murder by Judith Duffy must be guilty
and
innocent.
Lots
of them are likely to be guilty, just as lots of them are likely to be innocent.’

‘And you wanted to make sure I knew this, because Laurie didn’t seem to,’ I say quietly. ‘He seemed to think
all
the women Duffy accused of child murder had to be innocent. He couldn’t see that there must be guilty ones too, hiding among the blameless.’

‘He couldn’t see the trees for the wood,’ says Ray, nodding.

The doorbell rings.

‘Do you want me to get it?’ she asks.

‘No, I’ll go. Whoever it is, I’ll get rid of them.’ I force myself to smile and say, ‘Stay put, I’ll be back in a second.’

In the hall, I panic and freeze halfway to the door, unable to take the next step. Judith Duffy opened her front door and someone shot her, a man with shaved hair.

The letterbox opens and I see brown eyes, part of a nose. ‘Fliss?’ I recognise the voice: it’s Laurie’s zippy-trousered brother. Hugo. Why did he ring the bell? It’s his house, for God’s sake.

I open the door. ‘What do you want?’ Without authorisation from my brain, my hand starts performing a winding-up gesture:
come on, get on with it
.

‘I wanted to apologise for the way I—’

‘Never mind about that,’ I say, lowering my voice. ‘I need you to do something for me.’ I pull him inside and into the room nearest to the door, the music room. I point at the piano stool and he sits down obediently. ‘Wait here,’ I whisper. ‘Just sit, don’t do anything apart from sitting. In silence. Turn your
mobile off, and pretend you’re not here. Don’t play the piano, not even one note. Not even “Chopsticks”.’

‘I can’t play “Chopsticks”.’

‘Really?’ I thought everyone could play ‘Chopsticks’.

‘I can, however, just sit and do nothing apart from sitting. That’s a talent of mine that’s often been remarked upon by those close to me.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Wait here, and don’t leave. Promise you won’t leave.’

‘I promise. Do you mind if I ask—?’

‘Yes.’

‘But what—?’

‘I might need you to drive me somewhere,’ I tell him.

‘Where’s your car?’ he asks, also in a whisper.

‘Still in the Rolls-Royce showroom, waiting for me to win the lottery or find a rich husband. Now sit quietly until I come back.’ I turn to go back to the den.

‘Fliss?’

‘I’ve got to go. What?’

‘How about me as the rich husband?’

I flinch. ‘Don’t be stupid. I’ve had sex with your brother.’

‘Would that be a problem for you?’

‘I don’t know why you’re using the conditional tense,’ I hiss at him. ‘It
is
a problem for me, a huge one.’

‘It’s a huge problem for me too,’ says Hugo Nattrass, beaming like an idiot. ‘Do you think that counts as us having quite a lot in common?’

22

12/10/09

Simon passed his phone back to Charlie. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who that was or what they said,’ she predicted.

‘When I’m ready.’ He was having one of his workouts, as Charlie liked to call them. Unlike other people’s workouts, they didn’t involve treadmills or rowing machines; they involved nothing but Simon and his brain. Anyone who tried to join the party was quickly shown how irrelevant they were.

‘That’s the third secret call you’ve taken since we set off. Are there going to be more?’

No answer.

‘It’s a safety issue apart from anything else,’ said Charlie tetchily. ‘If you weren’t so keen to keep me in the dark, you could put your phone on speaker-phone and drive with both hands.’

‘Just because you’ve got a can of Diet Coke and you’re fat, doesn’t mean you’re on a diet,’ said Simon, as they turned into Bengeo Street.

‘Oh, not this again!’ Charlie banged her head on the passenger window.

‘You’ve got an umbrella with you, and it’s raining. Doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got an umbrella with you
because
it’s raining.’

‘Meaning?’

Simon parked outside Stella White’s house. ‘Dillon White told Gibbs he saw the man with the umbrella in Helen Yardley’s lounge. At first we didn’t take it seriously, because it didn’t rain on Monday, nor had rain been forecast, and Stella White, our only other witness, saw no umbrella. She also said there was no way her son could have seen the man in the Yardleys’ lounge that morning. Subsequently, we find out Dillon saw the man on a previous occasion – in Helen’s lounge, where he, Dillon, was too. So were Stella, Helen and Paul Yardley, and another man and woman Dillon couldn’t name. That day it
was
raining, and rain from the man’s umbrella was dripping on the carpet.’ A long pause. Then Simon said, ‘Anything you want to ask me?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Will you please tell me what it is you think you know?’

‘You don’t want to ask me if the Yardleys have a hall?’

‘Not especially.’

‘Well, you ought to. They
do
have a hall, with a wood-laminate floor. Leading through to the lounge. Why would you take a sopping wet umbrella into a carpeted lounge? Why not leave it in the hall, especially if the hall isn’t carpeted?’

‘Because you’re inconsiderate?’ Charlie suggested. ‘Busy thinking about other things?’

‘What if you’re not inconsiderate?’ said Simon. ‘What if you’re thoughtful enough to make up an entertaining story for a little boy, about space travel and magic? And yet you deliberately take your umbrella into the lounge and let it drip on the carpet. Why would you do that?’

‘Is the umbrella a crucial prop in the magic story?’

Simon shook his head. He had the nerve to look disappointed
that she hadn’t worked it out yet. Had he forgotten it wasn’t her case? She wasn’t supposed to be in a car with him on the way to Bengeo Street; she was supposed to be getting on with her own work.

‘Dillon said the other man who was there, the one who wasn’t Paul Yardley or Magic Umbrella man – he had an umbrella too, but it wasn’t magic so he left it outside.’ Simon took his eyes off the road and looked at Charlie. ‘When Stella told Gibbs that last Monday was a sunny, bright day, Dillon said, “It wasn’t bright. There wasn’t enough sun to make it bright.” That’s what he’d heard the man say – he was parroting word for word.’

‘He didn’t mean last Monday,’ said Charlie. ‘He was talking about the “beyond” day a long time ago, when it was raining and presumably overcast.’

‘When
there wasn’t enough sun to make it bright
,’ Simon emphasised.

‘Tell me in the next five seconds, or I’ll tell your mother that you’re involved in a conspiracy to lie to her about the honeymoon,’ Charlie threatened.

‘In a way, the man was right about the magic. The umbrella had at least one special power: to create light. That’s what it was: a photographer’s light umbrella, black on the outside, shiny silver stuff on the inside. It belonged to Angus Hines. He’s Pictures Desk Editor at
London on Sunday
now, but he wasn’t always. He used to be a photographer, worked for various papers, including one that featured an article about two extraordinary women – Helen Yardley and Stella White.’

‘So the other man and woman Dillon mentioned . . .’

‘I’m guessing a reporter from the paper and a make-up person,’ said Simon.

‘How often do we see those things at press conferences, where’s there’s never
any
natural light, let alone enough?’ said Charlie, cross that she hadn’t guessed. How many photographers’ light umbrellas had illuminated her unhappy face in 2006, when all the papers had wanted pictures of the disgraced detective, and the Chief Constable had told her she had to agree if she wanted to keep her job?

‘Angus Hines had no choice but to drip rain on the Yardleys’ lounge carpet,’ said Simon. ‘It was the most photogenic room in the house, and he wanted to take his photos in it. When Stella White gave me a list of everyone she remembered meeting at Helen Yardley’s house, of course Hines’ name wasn’t on it. Stella’s been photographed for the papers hundreds of times – the marathon runner determined to defeat cancer. She’s not going to remember the names of individual photographers, is she? When I asked her about Dillon seeing the man with the magic umbrella, she didn’t make the connection with a light umbrella because I’d already told her it was raining that day – in asking the question, I gave her the reason for the umbrella to be there, so she didn’t bother thinking beyond that.’

‘But . . . Helen Yardley was part of JIPAC,’ said Charlie, frowning. ‘She lobbied for Ray Hines’ release, didn’t she? She must have known who Angus was when he turned up at her house, and if Stella White was there with her . . .’

‘Helen behaved as if she didn’t know Hines from Adam, greeted him as you would a stranger,’ said Simon. ‘The first of the three phone calls I’ve just taken was Sam. He’s spoken to Paul Yardley. Yardley remembers the “beyond” day only too well. Angus Hines is one of the bad guys as far as Yardley’s concerned – he didn’t stand by his wife the way Yardley stood by Helen, the way Glen Jaggard stood by Sarah. When
a reporter turned up at the Yardleys’ house with Angus Hines in tow to take the photos, Yardley expected his wife to kick up a stink and throw him out.’