Border Crossing (7 page)

‘My own wasn’t marvellous.’

‘I thought you didn’t see anybody?’

‘I saw Dr Seymour. That was enough.’

‘But that was for an assessment

‘Yes – and his assessment landed me in court. And his evidence landed me in prison. Well done, Dr Seymour.’

They were driving into a valley now. The headlights revealed a huddle of farm buildings, their bricks turned sombre red by the rain.

‘And anyway, I don’t want treatment. I don’t need it. I just want to talk to somebody.’

‘I’ll ask around.’

She felt, rather than saw, him smile. ‘What are you going to ask, Martha? How are you with murderers?’

That word, said flatly, was enough to bring the fear – no, she wouldn’t admit to fear – the anxiety thudding back. ‘I’ll ask around, try to find out who’s leak-proof,’ she said. ‘It should be all of them, but it isn’t.’

‘No, well, wives get told. Secretaries. Girlfriends.’ He was smiling again. ‘Better not do it at all.’

‘No, I think it’s a good idea.’

They were behind a long vehicle that was sending up arcs of spray and grit on either side, and trailing a white rag from a girder sticking out at the rear. Martha pulled out to overtake. The spray hit the windscreen, and for a few seconds she drove blind, until they pulled clear and the lorry dwindled in the rear-view mirror.

‘Decisive driving,’ Ian said. He hadn’t moved.

The rush of adrenalin loosened Martha’s tongue. ‘It’s not fair, blaming Dr Seymour for your conviction.’

‘Who else should I blame?’

‘How about the police who collected the evidence? The pathologist who examined it, the judge who summed up, or the jury who brought in the verdict?’

‘No, no, no, no, no, no. Dr Seymour. I’d have been acquitted if it hadn’t been for him.’

No point arguing. It was insane.

‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’ Almost crooning the words, he went on, ‘But they believed me, Martha. They did. I know they did.’ His tone hardened. ‘I trusted him.’

Martha wanted to ask, Are you saying you didn’t do it? She kept quiet, distrusting her motives for doing so. If they’d been somewhere else, somewhere less isolated, would she have challenged him?

Ian brooded. ‘It was a disgraceful performance.’

It was bad for him to slip into thinking of himself as the victim, and yet she’d never met anybody who thought the Lizzie Parks murder trial had been handled well. It was difficult for him not to feel victimized.

‘These aren’t your memories, are they, Ian?’

He glanced sideways. ‘Ian hasn’t got any memories.’

‘It doesn’t help to say things like that.’

‘No, they’re not memories. I got the transcripts through my solicitor.’

Now, hot and nauseous in the sunlit office, Martha sifted through her memories of that night. Events had moved on. He had something to thank Tom for now, after the coincidence of Tom’s being the one to rescue him from the river.

Martha twisted from side to side. Her chair might as well have had spikes in the seat. Coincidences do happen, she told herself. People travel to the other side of the world, and find themselves standing in a queue next to somebody who lives in the same street. It happens all the time. Well, obviously, not
all
the time, or nobody would exclaim over it, but it does happen. No point saying you don’t believe in coincidence. But she’d have found it easier to believe in this one if she hadn’t heard the hatred in Ian’s voice in the car.

Hatred? No, wrong word. Something more painful than that. Betrayed trust. A sense of something good gone disastrously wrong. Whatever it was, she’d been left in no doubt that Tom was the last person Ian would go to for help. And yet, less than a month later, he’d become the only person. And she didn’t know why.

EIGHT

Tom arrived at the probation office ten minutes early, to find that Martha had had to dash out to see another client. He spent the time till Danny arrived pacing up and down the small waiting room. It turned out that Martha shared her office, and both interview rooms were occupied, so he was going to have to see Danny here.

The room reeked of sweat: the accumulated total of the perspiring and anxious humanity that had squeezed into it. Polystyrene cups with grey coffee dregs, and holes burnt in the sides where illicit cigarettes had been stubbed out. A ‘No Smoking’ sign hung on the wall above the blocked-up fireplace, but the regular visitors to this room were not known for abiding by the rules.

He heard footsteps in the corridor. A young woman’s voice – the receptionist’s – and then a murmur, without distinguishable words: Danny. He came into the room quickly, smiling and holding out his hand.

Tom waited until he was settled in his chair. ‘Well, I’ve spoken to Martha, and we thought it would be a good idea if you and I met and had another chat, and then you could decide if you wanted to go ahead, or not.’

‘I’ve decided. I thought this was to help you.’

Tom let that pass. ‘I’ve been thinking back to when I was ten, trying to work out what I remember. And the thing that strikes me is that I probably don’t remember… You know, the important things, the kind of things my parents would remember. The memories are quite vivid, I was surprised at how much I remembered, but they’re… memories of a child’s world. And I’ve been wondering how much you remember.’

Danny cleared his throat. ‘Quite a bit.’

‘For instance, the time I came to see you in the remand centre. What do you remember about that?’

‘You wanted me to play with dolls. I thought, Christ, if this gets out, I’m dead.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘I remember you. And of course one or two things I said were quoted in court.’

A slight edge to his voice. ‘Did that surprise you?’

‘Yes. Because I thought it was confidential.’

‘But an assessment can’t be confidential. It’s designed to be produced in court.’

‘I know. But I was ten, and nobody told me that.’

‘So you felt –’

Danny was groping for his cigarettes, but then he saw the notice over the fireplace and put the packet back.

‘What did you feel, Danny? Betrayed?’

A deep breath, caught and held. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Danny spread his hands.

‘Did you know why I was there?’

‘I knew you were meant to find out whether I was… mental? I don’t know. Round the twist? Bonkers? Crazy? I don’t know what word I’d have used. But, yeah, I knew why you were there, only of course in my mind it was a pretty pointless exercise because I hadn’t done it anyway.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t do it?’

‘No, I’m saying I believed I hadn’t. I believed my own story. I had to.’

‘And at the trial?’

‘I still believed it. I went to the house to see a litter of kittens, I found Lizzie dead on the floor, and there was a man walking about upstairs. I ran like hell, and didn’t tell anybody because I was too frightened. That was it. That was what happened.’

‘What else do you remember? About the trial.’

‘Just being bored. I was so bored my mind ached. I used to look at the clock, and the minute-hand jerked, you know, it didn’t move smoothly, and I used to wait for the next jerk. I wasn’t allowed to play with anything, because, I think, if they’d given me toys to play with, they’d have been admitting a whole lot of things. I was always being told to sit up straight, listen, look at the person who’s speaking, and half the time I didn’t understand a word.’

‘So what do you remember?’

He took a moment to think. ‘The judge, because of his robes and his wig. Do you know, I still… if there’s something in a room that’s bright red, I sit with my back to it, or put it somewhere I can’t see it? And that comes from the trial.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Playing squiggles with one of the warders. This was in the lunch hour. You know, one person draws a squiggle, and the other has to try to turn it into something. I took the paper into court with me, and the social worker scrumpled it up and threw it away. What else? I remember my father sneaking out for a fag, because his shoes squeaked, and he sort of tiptoed out, and the more he tiptoed the more they squeaked. I used to hate that.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I remember you. I used to look at you. And I remember you saying all that about the chicken. If you wring a chicken’s neck, you don’t expect to see it running round the yard next day, do you? And everybody went…’ A sudden, audible intake of breath. ‘That was the moment. They didn’t believe I’d done it till then.’

‘And you really think they convicted you on that?’

‘Yes.’

Tom smiled, patiently. ‘I don’t think it was as simple as that, Danny. There was a lot of forensic evidence.’

‘Yes, but they didn’t believe it. They believed me.’

The defence had put Danny into the witness box. God knows how they’d summoned up the courage to do it, but they had. He was superb. He began well, by being good-looking, but he also stood up straight, spoke clearly, didn’t fidget, made eye contact, appeared confident (but never cocky), and remembered to address the judge as ‘My Lord’ and counsel as ‘Sir’. He gave the impression he was telling the truth, and indeed he was – 98 per cent of the time: Altogether, he came over as the sort of boy you’d be proud to introduce as your nephew.

Tom had looked at him across the courtroom, and thought, How can so many things be right?

The jury had been impressed. But to say that they’d believed his story was ridiculous. Of course they hadn’t. There’d been too much hard evidence to contradict it. ‘No, you’re not remembering it accurately, Danny. It wasn’t like that.’

Danny shrugged. ‘It was, you know. But don’t let’s argue about it. I’m not blaming you. You did the best you could in the circumstances.’

Tom remembered the courtroom, the stillness as he stepped into the box. ‘I think by that time I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to get you out of there and into treatment.’

‘Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.’

‘I wrote to the Home Office, but I got the standard brush-off.’

A pause. Tom was massaging the skin of his forehead, as he always did when he was stressed. ‘You know the English teacher you mentioned? Tell me a little bit more about him.’

‘Angus MacDonald,’ Danny said, in a broad Scottish accent. ‘He was… a very, very good teacher, and I started writing little bits and pieces for him. Extra stuff, not just in the classroom. About animals on the farm, that sort of thing. Then it got on to my parents, and…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Various things that happened.’

‘But not the murder?’

‘No.’ Danny paused to wipe sweat off his upper lip. ‘Look, after the trial I spent one night in prison, proper grown-up prison, there was nowhere else for me to go, and it absolutely stank – piss and cabbage. And I thought – nobody told me anything – I thought, This is it. And then next day the Greenes turned up and took me to Long Garth. And after I was settled in, Mr Greene came and sat on the bed, and he said – I can’t remember the exact words obviously, but it was all to do with putting the past behind me. Just forget it. And that was that, and because I admired him – and because I was shocked out of my skull – I tried to do it. I lived for four years in this sort of eggshell, until Angus came along and smashed it. And he was
right.
Even then, I knew he was right, but, at the same time, I was scared out of my wits by it’

‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing happened. He left. It was only a temporary appointment anyway.’

There was a story here, Tom thought, and he wasn’t being told it. ‘And he left before you got to the murder?’

‘Yes.’

‘And no more attempts after that?’

‘In prison I joined a therapy group. Which was pathetic. Load of wankers telling the same lies they’d told in court. But the guy in charge had one really good idea, or anyway I thought so. He used to give people a tape recorder and tell them to say whatever they wanted, let it all… you know, spew out, and the only rule was you had to burn the tape at the end. I really liked the idea of that. So I got the tape recorder, and off I went, and… you were sort of supervised. There was somebody outside the room. And I couldn’t say a bloody word. I just sat there and watched it going round.’

‘What was going through your mind?’

‘Frustration. And then I started to think perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. I mean, what’s to stop somebullshitting from beginning to end? You know…’ His voice became an aggressive whine.’ “It wasn’t really my fault, other people had a lot to do with it, I’ve had a hard life…” Why would somebody tell the truth just because they’re talking to themselves? That’s the world’s most uncritical audience. You need somebody who can say, “Hey, c’mon, it wasn’t like that.”

A sort of a…’

‘Bullshit detector?’

‘Yeah, something like that. A reality checker.’

‘And you couldn’t do that with the therapist?’

‘No, he only did group work. And anyway…

’ Danny stopped, and for a moment Tom thought he wasn’t going to go on. But then, looking out of the window, he said, ‘Whenever I’ve imagined myself trying to talk about it, it’s always been with you.’

‘Because I was there?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘I can see it might make things easier.’

‘No, not easier. But the thing is, I can be Danny with you. I can’t be Danny with anybody else.’

Tom said slowly, ‘I’m surprised you still trust me.’ ‘You mean, because the last time I spilled the beans it all came out in court?’

‘If you think you “spilled the beans”, Danny… You were the most self-contained, wary kid I’d ever met.’

‘There, you see? That’s exactly what I need. Somebody who knows what it was like.’

‘I wasn’t there most of the time.’

‘No, but you’d know if I was lying. To myself, I mean. Obviously, I won’t be lying to you.’ He laughed. ‘No point.’ Despite the laughter, he was sweating. Suddenly, he stood up. ‘Do you mind if I pop out for a bit? I need a cigarette.’

Tom held out a polystyrene cup with cigarette butts floating on the dregs.

‘Yeah, I know, but…’ He jerked his head at the ‘No Smoking’ sign. ‘I’m a good boy, I am.’

That smile, Tom thought, as the door closed behind him. It was enough to make an atheist believe in damnation.

Restless, he got up and went across to the window, wishing that he too could escape from the fetid little room, but reluctant to leave, in case Danny came back and found him gone. There wasn’t too much antagonism there, he thought. Some. Probably rather more than Danny admitted, but not enough to matter. The fact was, anybody trying to help Danny would need a pretty robust identity to cope with some of the things he was likely to throw at them. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but he’d decided to do it. In the end, the question was not whether he would take Danny on, but whether he was prepared to abandon him. This wasn’t the start of a professional relationship, but the continuation of one that had begun thirteen yean ago.

The smell in this room was intolerable. Tom went to the door and flung it open, only to see Danny coming along the narrow corridor towards him, head down, striding along as if he were in open country.

Baulked of his need to escape, Tom retreated into the room, and sat down. ‘Better?’

‘Yeah,’ Danny said, with an apologetic smile. ‘Filthy habit, can’t kick it.’

‘Is that the only one?’

Danny blinked. ‘Apart from temazepam, yes.’

‘I just want to get one or two things straight. Have you seen a transcript of the trial?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think that’s confused your own memories?’

‘No, it didn’t have any impact at all. It was too different. Anyway, it’s the… It’s not the trial I want to talk about.’

‘So we’ll be focusing on your childhood. Well, the bit of your childhood that came before…’

‘That’s all of it. There wasn’t much childhood after.’

‘What we talk about is entirely up to you. I might ask you to fill in something I’m not clear about, but that’s all. Basically, you decide. Is that all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘The other thing is, do you mind if I talk to other people? Obviously, I won’t repeat anything you tell me.’ He saw Danny smile. ‘No, this time the confidentiality is absolute. Only, if I were going to talk to other people, I’d probably need to tell them you were seeing me. Is that all right?’

Danny was shaking his head.

‘It’s entirely up to you.’

‘I don’t want my father involved. As far as I know he doesn’t know where I am, and that suits me fine.’

‘I was thinking of the headmaster at Long Garth.’

‘Mr Greene?’ He looked surprised. ‘Yeah, all right. I don’t mind that.’

‘All right, then. One more thing.
If I
think you’re becoming more depressed as a result of the sessions, we’re going to have to think very carefully about whether we go on.’

‘I don’t want to start, and then give up.’

‘No, but there’re all kinds of compromises. I was thinking twice a week initially, but if things get a bit tough there’s no reason why you can’t take a week out. All I’m saying is we need to be flexible.’

‘All right. I do want to get on with it, though.’

‘I’ll have a word with Martha, and as soon as I’ve done that we can arrange a time.’

‘Okay.’

Danny seemed subdued now, bracing himself perhaps. The moment Tom made a move, he stood up and held out his hand. As Tom took it, he was remembering the embrace that had ended their first meeting, the child’s hot, sticky face pressed into his midriff. And then the warder’s comment: ‘Well, he is a horror, isn’t he?’ echoing in his head, as he walked back to his car, where, waiting for him, spilling out of the file and over the back seat, were the photographs of Lizzie Parks, the horror of the images impossible to connect with the child he’d just left.

Danny was right, in one way. He did need to do this. He needed to make the connection.