Borrowed Time (20 page)

After Seymour had gone, evidently pleased with the material he’d got on tape, I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said to him. Not every word and inflection. I certainly couldn’t imagine how it would look and sound on television several weeks down the road. And I didn’t much care. Not at the time. It was sufficient to have unburdened myself. To have told it as it really was. Or as it had seemed to be that day. Recalled at last. Without distortion or evasion. Without fear of whatever the consequences might be.

I poured myself another drink and toasted the fragile truth that was all I could throw back at Bella and Sir Keith and my hard-hearted siblings. I’d paid my dues to Louise Paxton. Late but in full. I’d cleared my debts. Now I was free to remind others of theirs.

C  H  A  P  T  E  R
TEN

S
entimental appeals proved even less effective than recriminatory arguments. I tried both over the next couple of weeks without making the slightest impact on Adrian’s determination to push through acceptance of the Bushranger bid. From his point of view, it solved our problems at a stroke, never mind that the problems were of his creation and the solution an humiliating end to a proud piece of history. Simon and Jennifer went along with him, Simon because his share of the sale price would get Joan off his back and Jennifer because she could see no other way out of deficit. As for Bella, when I eventually succeeded in speaking to her, it became apparent that she regarded the dissolution of Timariot & Small as tantamount to a mercy killing. “Hugh should have negotiated something like this years ago. Then he might not have worked himself into an early grave.” My hope that Sir Keith might consider injecting capital into the company to make it independently viable was abandoned before I’d even expressed it.

That left Uncle Larry and me in a decisive minority. Adrian dismissed us as unrealistic romantics and I suppose he had a point. Uncle Larry’s reluctance to see the family firm taken over could be seen as no more than an old man’s refusal to live in the present. While the irony of my position was that I’d become more committed to Timariot & Small—past
and
future—than my brothers or sister, despite remaining aloof from it far longer than any of them. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps I understood what we’d lose by selling out just because I’d spent twelve years away from it. And perhaps they failed to because they hadn’t. Familiarity had bred contempt. Later, I knew, they’d regret it. But their regrets would be futile. We could only destroy what our forefathers had created once. It was an irreversible act. But it was an act they were clearly set on carrying out.

Busy chasing false hopes and faint chances of staving off the Bushranger takeover, I gave little thought to my
Benefit of the Doubt
interview besides savouring the prospect of any small embarrassment it might cause Bella. Seymour had told me the programme would go out sometime in mid-June and had promised to send me a video of it in case I didn’t catch the broadcast. I’d intended to check
Radio Times
to see when it was coming up, but somehow never got round to doing so. If I had done, I’d have known a week in advance that it was scheduled for transmission at eight thirty on Wednesday the sixteenth of June. In the event, my first inkling of that was when I returned home from work two nights before to find a parcel small enough to fit through the letter-box lying in wait for me on the doormat. It was the promised video. I played it straightaway. And long before the end I realized just how big a fool I’d been.

Seymour wasn’t just a handsome front man. He was clever as well. If I hadn’t known that before, I found it out now. The doubt he sowed in the viewer’s mind about Naylor’s guilt wasn’t based on clinching facts or convincing arguments. It relied instead on impressions and implications. The programme started out as a straight-forward summary of the case from the discovery of the murders to Naylor’s conviction. Then Seymour turned his attention to Naylor’s defence. “Let’s see if this stands up,” he coolly said. “Let’s suspend disbelief for the time it takes to subject Shaun Naylor’s version of events to some obvious tests. We’ll begin where he says it began, at the Harp Inn, Old Radnor.” The camera panned across the pub’s façade, then moved to the man who’d testified at the trial that he’d seen Naylor there with a good-looking woman on the evening of 17 July 1990. He seemed more confident now than before that it was Louise Paxton. “I reckon it was, yes. They were getting on well together. Laughing and joking.” If he was right, Seymour pointed out, they could only just have met. At the very least, this indicated a willingness for flirtation on Lady Paxton’s part. Was that credible? Did that fit her character?

Suddenly, Sophie Marsden was on screen, relaxing in the horse-brassed black-beamed interior of her Shropshire home. She looked as much at ease as Seymour had made me feel, perhaps more so. And she was talking freely about the friend she’d known. “Louise wasn’t really the saintly wife and mother she’d been portrayed as. She was a lot of fun. She lived life to the full. Sometimes she flirted with strangers. And sometimes it may have gone beyond flirting. I know of at least one occasion when it certainly did. She told me about it. She wasn’t boasting. It was . . . the kind of secret we shared.”

Before I could absorb the full ramifications of what Sophie had said, Seymour was in the picture, striding up the track from Kington to Hergest Ridge. “So, according to Lady Paxton’s best friend, Shaun Naylor’s account of how they met
is
feasible. What’s more, we know she met at least one other man that evening under similar circumstances. Up here, on Offa’s Dyke, where solitary male walkers are often to be found.”

Then my face was staring out of the screen at me, the sitting-room at Greenhayes visible in the background, including part of the very television set I was watching. And I was saying what Seymour wanted to hear. “Lady Paxton was friendly and approachable. She seemed to want to talk. Not just about the weather. About something else. But she was reluctant to talk at the same time. As if . . . Well, I’ve never really been able to describe her state of mind, even to myself. It was so difficult to assess. When she offered me a lift, I thought it was just a kindly gesture. Now I’m not so sure. I think she must have wanted me—wanted somebody—to stay with her.” Then we were back with Seymour on Hergest Ridge. Leaving me to shout at his video-recorded face: “Hold on. What about the rest? That’s not all I said, you devious bastard.” Just how devious he’d been sunk in only when I replayed the interview several times. Then, at last, I was able to recollect exactly what I’d gone on to say.
“I think she must have wanted me—wanted somebody—to stay with her. To give her some disinterested advice about a problem she was trying to solve. To listen while she talked whatever it was out of her system.”
What I’d recounted couldn’t possibly be regarded as a sexual proposition. But Seymour’s edited version of it could be.
“I think she must have wanted me—wanted somebody—to stay with her.”
The phrase echoed in my mind as Seymour quoted it to camera. “Failing to find that somebody in Mr. Timariot, did Lady Paxton strike luckier half an hour later at the Harp Inn? The evidence available to us suggests she may have done.”

The film cut to the frontage of Whistler’s Cot. Seymour strode into the picture. “The prosecution argued at the trial that Lady Paxton would hardly have risked using somebody else’s house for illicit sex. But her relationship with the owner was never explored. We know she was in effect his patron. He owed her a good deal. Might he have been willing to repay that debt by making his cottage available for her use? Or might she have known he wasn’t going to be there until later that night? With both of them now dead, we cannot hope to find out. But Lady Paxton’s friend, Mrs. Marsden, did say this.”

Sophie returned to the screen. “Louise and Oscar got on well together. There was a spark between them. An understanding. That’s why she appreciated his paintings better than most. You’d think they had nothing in common to look at them. In fact, there was an intuitive bond between them. Platonic, but genuine.”

Then we were back with Seymour. “If the jury had heard that, they might not have been so sure Shaun Naylor was lying about being brought here by Lady Paxton. But they’d still have come up against a substantial objection to his version of events. If he didn’t murder Oscar Bantock and Lady Paxton, who did? And why? Until three months ago, there seemed no other conceivable suspect or motive. Then this book”—he brandished a copy of
Fakes and Ale
—“was published. And suddenly the situation became rather more complicated.”

Henley Bantock I recognized at once. A caption identified his pudgy bow-tied companion as Barnaby Maitland. They seized the chance of a free peak-time advertisement for their book with ill-disguised glee. But they also set out their alternative explanation for the Kington killings with undeniable facility. “Fine art and the criminal underworld have many points of overlap,” expounded Maitland. “Forgery is perhaps the most remunerative—and hence the most dangerous.” “My uncle often told me he could humiliate the art establishment if he chose to,” contributed Henley. “Only when I found his journals did I realize it was true.” “It has to be said,” Maitland resumed, “that there were many reasons why poor old Oscar was worth more dead than alive in the summer of nineteen ninety.”

“Many reasons,” echoed Seymour. “None of which were considered at the trial. If they had been, would they have made any difference to the outcome? Shaun Naylor’s solicitor, Vijay Sarwate, thinks they might have done.”

We switched to the cramped and crowded interior of Sarwate’s office. He was a lean weary-sounding man who looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or bitter about the legal-aid lottery that had handed him such a case. But about one thing he
was
sure. “Evidence concerning Oscar Bantock’s activities as a forger would have been very valuable to my client. It would have supplied the missing link in his defence: a credible explanation for the events that took place that night
after
he left Whistler’s Cot. Circumstantial evidence is often the most difficult kind to refute because, at the back of the jury’s minds, the unspoken question is always there:
If he did not do it, who did?
That question went unanswered at the trial, to my client’s undoubted detriment. Obviously, in the light of these revelations, it would not go unanswered again. Indeed, I am already exploring with counsel the possibility of seeking leave to appeal against the convictions on precisely those grounds.”

“While his solicitor takes advice,” Seymour went on, “Shaun Naylor’s wife and children wait and wait for the husband and father the law decided should be kept away from them for at least twenty years. By then, Mrs. Naylor will be nearly fifty years old.”

The Naylor flat in Bermondsey. Garishly decorated and littered with discarded toys, but clean and homely in its way. Carol Naylor, a thin, haggard and obviously hard-pressed young woman, perched on the edge of a black leather-look sofa, drew nervously on a cigarette and glanced at a framed photograph of Shaun dandling their youngest on his knee four Christmases ago. “What makes you so certain of his innocence?” asked Seymour. “I’ve known him all my life,” she replied. “We grew up six doors apart. I’ve been married to him eight years. I know him better than he does himself. He can be short-tempered and arrogant. But he’s not a rapist. Not a cold-blooded murderer. It’s just not in his nature.” She fought back tears. “He didn’t do what they said he did. He couldn’t have done. I’ve known that from day one.”

“And from day one,” said Seymour, taking up the story outside a prison wall, “Shaun Naylor has consistently denied committing rape and double murder that night in July nineteen ninety. He’s been held here, at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, since his conviction. Home Office regulations prevent us visiting him, but we have exchanged letters with him. In his most recent communication, he says this.” Seymour held up the letter and read from it. “‘I’m hoping this forgery business will make the authorities reopen my case. It’s the first chink of light there’s been since I was sent down. In the end, they’ll realize I really am innocent. I have to believe that. Otherwise, I’ll go mad thinking about the injustice of what’s happened to me.’ ” Seymour paused for effect, then said: “Shaun Naylor still maintains he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Faced with what we now know and can legitimately conjecture about the events of July seventeenth, nineteen ninety, there may be many who agree with him and who feel he has been denied that most crucial component of justice: the benefit of the doubt.”

As the credits rolled, I switched the set off and stared blankly at my reflection in its screen. My few minutes of air-time solidified in my mind as a single hideous recollection, irredeemable and unalterable. In forty-eight hours, I’d be seen and heard in thousands of homes. Those of my colleagues and subordinates. Those of Naylor’s friends and relations. And those of Louise Paxton’s. To them I wouldn’t be fanning a flame of hope. I’d be betraying a fine woman’s memory. And my own solemn pledge. Sophie Marsden’s candour would probably do more damage than mine. But mine was the less forgivable. And complaints of selective editing would probably only make it worse.

I thought of phoning the television station and demanding to speak to Seymour. But I knew it would do no good. Even if I succeeded in contacting him, he’d only deny the charge. Editing of taped interviews was commonplace. Whether it amounted to deliberate distortion depended entirely on your point of view. Besides, I had no record of our conversation to set against his. I had no proof he’d set out to misrepresent what I’d said. Not a shred.

Which left me to consider the fall-out from my contribution to his rotten programme. One thing was certain. If I let Sarah or Rowena or Sir Keith simply come across my interview without warning, they’d be justified in thinking the worst of me. I had to prepare them. I had to explain what I’d been duped into doing. And I had to explain it very quickly.

I phoned Sarah, reckoning she’d at least try to understand. But there was no answer. I left a message, emphasizing its urgency. Two anxious hours passed, during which I replayed the video several times. Then, just as I was about to call Sarah again, she rang back.

“I need to see you, Sarah. Tomorrow. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What?”

“It’s too complicated to go into over the phone. Can we meet?”

“Well . . . I suppose so. But tomorrow’s difficult.”

“It can’t be delayed. Honestly.”

“It may have to be. I’m tied up all—”

“Rowena’s involved,” I interrupted, calculating that her name would persuade Sarah where any amount of pleas in my own right might fail.

“What’s this about, Robin?”