Apple Tree Yard (27 page)

The electric clock on the ceiling says 3.40 a.m. I can just make out from its dim light that Guy has roused himself on to one elbow and is turned away from me, reaching out a hand to his bedside lamp. When he turns back, his face is crumpled and questioning.

Bang-bang-bang
, hard and loud again, hard enough to shake the timbers of the frame, I think. Guy rises and snatches up his cotton gown, which is flung over the wicker chair close to his side of the bed.

Bang-bang-bang
– then the buzzer again. He strides around the bed to the bedroom door. It is only as he reaches the door and opens it that I think to warn him by saying, ‘It’s the police.’

My darling Guy. He glances at me, then leaves the room and runs down the stairs. I realise that when I said, ‘It’s the police,’ he has thought of Adam, that something has happened to Adam. He actually runs. I sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. I do not run anywhere because I know it is not about Adam: they have come for me.

Adam, Carrie, my children… What will Guy say to them? It will be in the papers, he won’t be able to keep it hidden.

Downstairs, there is the rustle and clamour of people filling the house, Guy’s indignant voice, raised in query. My house, I have brought it into my house, my home – everything will come out now. As the men’s feet thump up the stairs towards the bedroom, I am frozen where I am, sitting on the edge of the bed. I do not even jump up to put on my dressing gown. I imagine Guy, on the phone to Carrie, later that morning. I imagine him saying, ‘Darling, you’re not going to believe this but Mum’s been arrested.’

‘What for?’

It’s the first question anyone will ask. 

Part Three

DNA

15

DNA made me and DNA undid me. DNA is God.

When people think about DNA, they are usually thinking about their genetic inheritance. They are thinking of how they have their father’s brown eyes. When geneticists think about it, we think about how little we know, how environmental factors often turn the most identifiable of genetic traits into no more than tendencies and how the inexplicable outweighs the provable by a ton. The genome is like a huge muddy lake, and us so-called scientists are like divers, but blind ones, swimming slowly beneath the water, picking up objects from the silt at the bottom, turning them over in our hands and trying to smooth the mud away with our clumsy gloved fingers, unsure if what we have picked up is a pebble or a pearl or a discarded button.

But there are some ways in which DNA is certain; forensics, for instance. DNA is one of the few discoveries of humankind that mean there’s no point in being a liar.

*

The first mistake I make, although not the last, is to lie to the police who come to arrest me. You have to be really stupid to be a liar – or really arrogant: I am neither, but I panic. When I am taken into custody, shocked and nauseous, my blood sugar low, the first thing I am asked is, ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon, Mrs Carmichael?’

‘I took some clothes to the recycling depot.’

As far as my relationship with the investigating officers is concerned, it’s downhill all the way from there. They show me the CCTV footage of my car driving along Northolt Road and I say, ‘I went for a drive.’ My car has been impounded, so later they find your DNA and a small smear of George Craddock’s blood, in the passenger footwell, where it transferred from one of your socks.

*

Later I tell the truth – or rather, I tell some of the truth. You are arrested immediately, but I stick to the story we have agreed: you are an acquaintance that I confided in because I was desperate. There must be a reason why you have told me to say this. You knew what you were doing. You’re a spook. You know about DNA too, after all – and you’re not stupid or arrogant either.

*

I am not sure what it says about me but even when they tell me more about Craddock’s death, I remain unafraid. It all seems so absurd – not that a man is dead, of course, there is nothing absurd in that, or even that they are saying you did it, but absurd that I am caught up in it. Surely when the facts are known, it will be over; it is that simple. Perhaps it is this, my desire for simplicity, that keeps me focused on one thing: your welfare. When the police question me, I am not seriously contemplating my own complicity – I know myself to be innocent of that and of course you will have told them I am innocent of that too – I am thinking,
How can I help him? Even if he is proved to be responsible for that man’s death, I cannot believe he intended it – how can I help him
?

So I stick to the story. I do as you told me to, that day in the car. I tell them about what Craddock did, how I went to you for advice when I didn’t know where else to turn, that we had the discussion with Kevin, that I picked you up at the Tube to drive you to Craddock’s house that day so that you could have a word with him. When, during my interview, the woman detective in the grey suit looks at me and says, ‘And how would you describe your relationship?’ I look back at her and say, ‘We were friends.’

‘Just friends?’

I even manage a shrug. ‘I’m very fond of him, he helped me, he gave me advice when I didn’t know where else to turn.’ I look at the table when I say this.

*

Later, she comes back. She says that you have given a statement saying you and I are lovers, that we met when I gave evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee. It’s a good try, but she can’t give me any details. She doesn’t say anything about sex in chapels or disabled toilets. That’s how I know they are trying it on. She doesn’t mention Apple Tree Yard.

They have nothing on us, no phone records because we used the pay-as-you-go phones that you will have disposed of by now, no emails – there are the letters on my computer, which they confiscated the day after my arrest, but if they had found those, they would have confronted me with them. Only one person other than you and I knew about our affair, and that person is dead.

I look the woman detective in the face this time. ‘I can’t imagine why he would say that because it isn’t true.’

*

DI Cleveland is the one they bring in to break me: a bulky man, a rugby-playing type, straight brown hair and pale eyes, handsome, slightly crooked teeth, the kind of man who was popular at school I would guess, uncomplicated and fair-minded. He drinks pints with his male colleagues and looks after his team well. He has an air of kindness that belies his bulk. He is the sort of detective that vulnerable women would want to please, believing he would look after them. He leans forward in his seat, crossing his arms on the table so that his suit jacket hunches up a little from his shoulders. He looks directly at me, his pale eyes gazing into mine, and asks me how I am holding up. Then he says he’s sorry, and presents me with the statement Kevin has made about the meeting we had, in which Kevin says that he did, at the time, speculate that there was something more than friendship between you and me. (The crucial word here, of course, is speculate.) Kevin’s recall is very good. They have a lot of detail about the assault, all written down. DI Cleveland takes me through it, politely, and asks me to confirm what happened, item by item. Very gently, DI Cleveland is disassembling me. They tell me Craddock was divorced with one child and that his wife once made a domestic abuse complaint against him but withdrew it later and emigrated to America with the child. They tell me about the pornography they found on his computer, about the sort of sites he accessed. They tell me about the content of those sites in a lot more detail than I need to know. Throughout this, DI Cleveland is apologetic. He doesn’t want to distress me any further than I have already been distressed. He’s just doing his job.

I want to please this man. I want to break down and tell him yes, he’s quite right, I urged my lover to crack my assailant’s skull, it was planned and wanted – that’s what DI Cleveland would like to hear. I cry a little, when he gets to the point in Kevin’s statement where he repeats what I told him about my son’s illness. DI Cleveland says he knows how difficult this must be for me. He says he can only imagine how angry and frightened I must have been after what George Craddock did, and then the stalking, he could completely understand how I would have wanted someone to beat the shit out of him. After all, says DI Cleveland, if someone did that to his wife, that’s what he would want to do.

I lift my head, blow my nose with the damp tissue I’ve been wrapping round my fingers, and say, ‘I didn’t suggest that and neither did he. We’re just friends. ’

DI Cleveland gives me a disappointed look and leaves the room.

*

My solicitor is called Jaspreet Dhillon, of Dhillon, Johnson & Waterford. He isn’t the duty solicitor I was given at Harrow Police Station, he comes recommended by a legal friend that Guy spoke to, the morning of my arrest, the morning he spent on the phone, ringing everyone he knew to find out what to do. Jaspreet – Jas, he invites us to call him – is in his mid-forties, bespectacled, immaculate. He’s the best, we’ve been told, and we like him immediately. Jas’s first victory is to get me bail – he’s on board straight away, at the magistrate’s hearing, and we are up at the crown court for a bail hearing within two days. Everything happens a bit quickly for me, but it is thanks to this speed that I do not find myself splattered all over the press or the Internet: once I’ve been charged, it’s all sub judice, no one can report anything in case they prejudice the trial. You are not there for either of these hearings – you will be charged later. Bail is unusual with such a serious charge but my previous good character swings it. The conditions are strict. I am to reside at my normal address. No one else is to reside there during this time other than my husband. I am to report to my local police station three times a week and wear an electronic tag at all times. I must surrender my passport and a bond of one hundred thousand pounds – we sell our premium bonds, cash in savings and borrow from friends to raise this while we wait for the remortgage on the house to come through. Above all, I am to have no communication whatsoever with you or any of your associates. The thought of you having associates is a slightly baffling one, and how would I have any contact with you anyway when you are locked up in Pentonville Prison? You do not get bail, of course. You are remanded in custody.

*

Guy and I take Jaspreet for a pizza after the bail hearing. Neither Guy or I particularly like pizza and we have no idea whether Jas does either but we feel grateful to him and after several days in custody, I want to be in a restaurant on principle. I also want a long shower – but I will be spending a lot of time at home in the coming months. Home will be my prison.

The three of us are seated at a round table that is slightly too small, hunched together. We have ordered, and I am really only making conversation when I say to Jas, ‘So when they’ve investigated more, at what point – I’m just wondering – at what point do the charges get reduced to manslaughter?’ I have never thought of you being guilty of any more than that, and I am guilty of no more than driving the car to the venue where you got into a fight that was not of your own making. This is what has happened and this is surely what everyone will see once we go to court.

Jas looks at me, and actually freezes. His glass of sparkling water is raised in his hand, halfway to his mouth, the bubbles in it fizzling and the slice of lemon swooshing to and fro.

I look from him to Guy. ‘But it will end up as manslaughter, and some sort of deal, won’t it?’ I say. ‘They won’t waste a lot of public money if he says he killed that man but didn’t mean to, surely?’

Jas gives one of his tight little smiles. ‘I’m sorry to tell you’, he says, putting his glass down without drinking from it and looking at me, ‘that it’s quite common for the prosecution to refuse to accept a plea of manslaughter and to insist upon a murder trial. Then of course the burden of proof is different, they don’t have to prove who was responsible for the death, just whether or not they intended to commit murder,
or
…’ he pauses for emphasis, ‘grievous bodily harm. That’s enough for a murder charge to stick.’

Guy frowns. ‘How does that affect Yvonne?’

The waitress appears holding a steak knife. ‘Who’s having the calzone?’ she asks.

‘Thank you,’ says Jas, and she puts the sharp knife down in front of him, turns away. Jas takes a small, inward breath. He looks a little pale. I wonder if he is an asthmatic. ‘It affects Yvonne because if they are saying it was a joint enterprise, then that means she will be charged with whatever he is charged with. If they accept a plea of manslaughter from him, then that’s the most she can be charged with too. But they quite often press for murder; I mean, people who know they have to admit to the actual act of killing will commonly try and get away with manslaughter. The minimum tariffs for murder are, well, twenty, twenty-five if it’s a knife, thirty if there’s proof of financial gain. With manslaughter you might get away with fifteen or even ten, depending on the circumstances of course. So you can see how, if you were charged with murder you might try and get away with a manslaughter plea.’

The numbers make my head spin. They are no more real than the five-hundred-pound notes in Monopoly.

‘So if he’s charged with murder and presuming he pleads not guilty, what will he say, what will his defence be?’ asks Guy quietly. He is absorbing information more efficiently than me.

Jas shrugs. He’s my solicitor, after all, not yours. ‘Well it’s impossible to say at this stage, all he has to say at this stage is not guilty and the grounds, and they could change as things progress, depends on the advice he gets. Dim rep, perhaps.’

‘Dim rep?’

‘Diminished responsibility. It’s grounds for a reduction in the charge, but the burden of proof shifts. It’s the defence that has to prove diminished responsibility. Under the circumstances, if I was advising him, I would be going for loss of control but there would need to be what’s known as a qualifying trigger.’