Unsafe Convictions (8 page)

Chapter Five

Taking the first batch of laundry from the washing machine, Julie Broadbent wondered if she worked the graveyard shift more often than the other staff at the Willows because she lived in, or because this was yet another imposition she allowed the world to thrust upon her. She opened the door of a tumble drier, to find clumps of fluff stuck to the inside and, biting her lip with annoyance because she also seemed to be the only person ever to carry out the irritating little chore, she detached the filter, pulled off the blanket-like layer, replaced the filter, loaded the machine, and put another batch of soiled sheets in the washer. Every night the same four or five residents would wet the bed and, at times of particular stress, many more followed suit, as if punishing the staff. Summer and winter, the laundry stank of urine, because the machines had to be used when cheap off-peak electricity was available, and Julie had lost count of the spring and summer nights spent loading and unloading washers and driers, folding and smoothing sheets, pillowcases, quilt covers, and mountains of clothing, while the rest of the world was free to chase its dreams.

The
machines busy for the next forty-five minutes, she went to the kitchen to make a drink, and found herself donning rubber gloves to scour greasy sinks and work tops while the kettle boiled. The Willows employed cooks and cleaners, but like the fluff in the driers, the grease in the kitchen was left for her attention. Sprinkling scouring powder, rubbing surfaces, wringing out cloths in steaming water, she stared absent-mindedly through the big window over the sink, watching lights pop off one after another in the raw brick houses which now overran the decimated grounds. In her childhood, the Willows had been surrounded by acres of terraced lawns, formal flowerbeds, and trees, all a source of heart-twisting envy to one from a damp-infested two-up and two-down with a backyard barely long enough for the clothes-line, and a front door flush with the pavement. She would kneel for hours on end at her bedroom window, her fingers prodding relentlessly into the rotten wood of the frame, and dream of being a real daughter of that imposing hillside house.

As
she hung the dishcloths to air over the edges of the sinks, Julie remembered that horrible afternoon when reality had punctured her eleven-year-old’s dreams like a rusty nail popping a pretty balloon. She had been exploring a new way home from school to avoid the tedium of an endlessly repeated journey and, about to cross the road by the old grammar school building, she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves behind her. Dramatic, heroic scenes of rescue flashed through her mind at the speed of light, but then Beryl Kay rounded the corner, tensely astride the pretty dapple-grey horse for which her grandfather had just paid £7000. The animal pulled at the bit, saliva dripping from its mouth as it tried to release the stranglehold, while Beryl, indoctrinated with the belief that animals must be controlled if they were not to run amok, reined back so hard that the bit drew blood, streaking the saliva with red.

At
the time, Beryl was eighteen, and had her own car as well as the horse. Julie could not know, because she could not differentiate between those luxuries, that Beryl infinitely preferred the mindlessly obedient car to a horse, which required a level of empathy and communication completely beyond her ken. All Julie could do was judge the incongruity and utter unfairness of a beautiful animal at the mercy of this sullen-faced girl whose eyes were dulled by constantly looking only inwards upon herself. While her gaze followed Beryl and her heart kept pace with the beat of the hooves, her mind assessed the unbridgeable differences and rammed the knowledge down her throat like a purgative. In that instant, Julie was near overwhelmed by the need to rush into the road, to startle the horse into throwing Beryl or to be trampled under the dancing hooves; but to make a defining gesture and create a memorable moment. As it was, she simply hung against the wall until Beryl went out of sight.

To
Beryl’s grandfather, the horse symbolised the achievements spawned by his own early envies, so she was obliged to perform her role in his scheme of things, and whether she liked or loathed the animal was not the point. When she sulked around the paddock in the grounds of the old parsonage, he saw the incongruity in a different light, and feared that while his money might give her the proverbial leg up and keep her astride her patch of the world, he could not buy her breeding, for all he could buy her a thoroughbred horse. The blood which filled her veins was sluggish with commonness, and her voice and manners spoke only of vulgar money.

Julie
no longer envied Beryl, whose eyes grew duller each year, and, having realised the dream of living at the Willows, albeit by strange default, she knew that too was far from enviable. It had nothing to do with the ravaged acres of once forbidden gardens, the Formica tables and plastic chairs strewn across the parquet floor of the dining-room, the rickety chipboard furniture in the bedrooms, the cheap flowered cretonne at the windows, or the smells of urine in the laundry, but was simply her response to a building constructed, like Beryl’s life, for its own sake, and without reference to the shape of its occupants.

While
her teabag brewed in its mug, Julie leaned on the work-top, a cold draught touching her ankles. A north-easterly wind, yet to reach full strength, whined around the gable ends, and she fancied there was already the smell of snow in the air. Tea in hand, she went into the hall, to listen for a few moments at the bottom of the huge carved staircase, but heard only the noises which belonged to the house itself, and the wind thumping in the chimney behind the blocked-off fireplace. Two other members of staff were in the house with her, sleeping-in on call, as the jargon went, while she was on waking duty. Satisfied her charges were quiet for the present, she unlocked the office, switched on the overhead light, sat behind the desk, and opened the log book. Cyril Bennett, the manager of the Willows, had left no instructions for her and, for once, the residents had passed an uneventful day. Their individual files disclosed neither novelty nor urgency and, the regular trips to the laundry excepted, she would be hard pressed to fill the hours until the day shift arrived at seven. No one would know, or mind, if she went to the flat in the old attic nursery, which had been her home for the last five years, but she would not settle if she did. Readying herself for the night shift, she had slept most of the afternoon, dreaming a confusing jumble of images and impressions, which made sense in sleep but none when she woke to the summons of the telephone beside her bed. She knew from the colour of the sky that darkness had not long since come and, listening to the voice on the other end of the line, she wondered if the man who, she was told, insisted on seeing her on Wednesday, might be the same man she had seen earlier today, trying to escape from Trisha’s house.

But
whether he were or not, it made no difference. She would keep her own counsel, for even if he believed her, whatever she might say would come too late. Staring unseeingly at the candy-striped curtains that Mrs Bennett believed might bring some colour to the dismal room, her thoughts jumped once more on to the mental treadmill they were condemned to trudge, getting nowhere because there was nowhere to go. It was her own vision of hell, without an exit, so she put up her hands and gripped fistfuls of hair, tugging until the pain turned to pleasure.

As
a child, she was beset by the fears that haunt all children who think beyond the immediate. She feared hunger, homelessness, her mother dead, her mother taken away, herself dragged screaming from her mother’s arms, but nothing prepared her for what she would bring upon herself, simply by breaking the unconscious habit of a lifetime. In Trisha Smith she recognised the shape of a fellow being, and cast aside innate caution to share her thoughts and her secrets. In so doing, she brought about Trisha’s death, while her own, infinitely smaller punishment was to have Trisha’s friendship replaced by mortal terror, which had now kept her company through 825 days. And Julie remembered, all those long nights since she had first realised, as she was climbing into bed, that she might be about to spend her last night on earth, a notion that scuttled through her mind like a spider invading a house each time she laid her head on the pillow.

Until
Smith left, Trisha’s life was not worth living, but afterwards she would tell Julie of the small excitements and little pleasures which were, unbeknown, only lighting her path towards the flames that would consume her. Julie was on her way to Trisha’s house when she first saw the smoke rising from the copse. Knowing the billowing grey mass told of more than a fire in the sitting-room hearth, she ran towards the derelict mill, terrified that Smith, who loved destruction, had been seduced into some violent extravagance. She went through the gap where the mill gates once stood, and into the yard, stumbling among the strewn rubbish and broken bricks, crunching over shattered glass, towards the short-cut to the house. When the front of the house came into view, she stopped dead in her tracks. Later, she thought of the fire as an orgy, flames alighting on objects and each other with consuming passion, but then she thought only of Trisha. By the time she saw him, careening out of the lane in a small blue car, she was in the telephone kiosk, panting out a frantic message to the emergency services, and praying that Trisha, if she had not escaped, was already dead.

To
this day, she did not know if Trisha’s killer had seen her. He went about his usual business without a sign of the extra burden on his soul. But, Julie admitted to herself, so too did she, for life forced such accommodations on guilty and innocent alike. She stopped tugging her hair, and began to count the strands she had torn from her scalp.

Part Four

Tuesday, 2nd February

Morning

Chapter One

COMING
OUT

Our chief reporter, Gaynor Holbrook, has an exclusive interview with Piers Stanton Smith, whose conviction for the murder of his first wife, Trisha, was recently quashed on appeal.

Piers
Stanton Smith and myself sit in matching wing chairs in the study of his home. It is a tasteful, book-lined retreat with fine antique furniture. Firelight plays on the chiselled bones of his face, emphasising his brilliant blue eyes. Smoking incessantly in nervous little puffs, he wears an open-necked silk shirt, an Aran cardigan, designer jeans, Gucci loafers, and a Rolex watch. Bitter memories haunt his eyes as he describes the terror of going to prison for a crime he did not commit.

Throwing
his cigarette in the fire, he runs his fingers through his fair curly hair. He is finding it hard to believe in his freedom. ‘I’m terrified it was just a dream,’ he says. He fears being taken back to prison, and now has a counsellor. But nothing can change public opinion about Trisha’s death. Beaten senseless by her killer, she suffocated in her blazing house. He says her family will always be after his blood. ‘I’m like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail.’ He is afraid the police will also hound him. ‘I’ll get the blame when the officers who put me away get prosecuted themselves.’ He regards Superintendent McKenna, who is investigating the actions of Naughton police, as a ‘saviour’. ‘I hope he comes to see me soon,’ he adds.

He
has never denied that he was occasionally violent towards Trisha during their marriage. Without that history, people would have been less inclined to believe he killed her. But he denies being a vicious bully. Explaining the build-up of pressures and tensions which led to their rows, he talks of the pain and frustration which led him to lash out. ‘Trisha never understood me, and I know her sister Linda just fed into her fantasies about me. Trisha
started the rows every time, knowing exactly how they’d end. She did it on purpose to make me feel like a monster.’

Shuddering,
he reaches for another cigarette. ‘I didn’t say much at the trial, because everybody had enough grief, but Trisha was incredibly screwed-up, and she projected it all on me. She couldn’t be nasty enough. She called me a work-shy parasite because I couldn’t get a job. Then I bought myself a teddy bear. I never had one when I was little. It was comforting, so I carried it around sometimes. She said I looked as camp and silly as Sebastian Flyte in the Brideshead Revisited film, so I threw the bear on the fire to shut her up.’ He looks at me steadily, his eyes opaque. ‘She tried to destroy me, and that’s why the violence erupted. I felt I was in the thick of a battle, and the only thing on my mind was getting out alive.’

Trisha
’s divorce petition referred to an horrendous attack after she had been in hospital. ‘It wasn’t like she said,’ he insists. ‘I never kicked her. She started bleeding because she’d come out of hospital too soon, and wouldn’t take it easy. I was thunderstruck when I saw what she’d written.’

During
the marriage, he became a Roman Catholic convert, and that led to further problems. ‘Religious convictions are the most deeply personal things, but Trisha was forever sneering. When Father Brett tried to talk to her about what me becoming a Catholic meant for us, she wouldn’t even let him in the house. She accused me of putting up another false front, like when I changed my name. Thank God Father Brett stopped her from poisoning my faith the way she’d poisoned everything else that mattered.’

When
he was sixteen, he discarded the name ‘Peter Smith’. His new name was an extension of the childhood fantasy life which allowed him to survive the brutal reality. His marriage to Trisha at the young age of twenty-one was another part of the fantasy. She was several years his senior, like Beryl. ‘I hoped for a new history by giving myself a new identity,’ he tells me. ‘But the real challenge is to make something of little Peter Smith from the council flats.’

At
the trial, it was claimed that little Peter Smith watched his teacher Joyce Colclough burn to death in her crashed car. When I broach the matter, his body jerks into the foetal position, arms locked around his head. ‘Only you know what happened that day,’ I add.

Slowly,
he exposes his face. ‘Mrs Colclough was kind to me. Before we moved to the council flat, she used to take me home from school. We lived well out of Sheffield, in a dreadful hovel near a stream. The floors were just tiles on top of mud, and every time it rained, the mud soaked through the mats. I had to wear wellingtons indoors.’ There is a long, sad silence. ‘I don’t remember what happened. Maybe a rabbit ran into the road, or a cat. She cried out and swerved, and we hit the tree. There was an awful noise, then nothing. When I tried to move, I couldn’t feel my legs, and I think I passed out. I remember being outside the car, trying to open her door. Then I smelled petrol, and at the same moment there was a sort of whooshing noise, and my legs started to burn. I ran up to the road, praying for somebody to come, but nobody did.’

His
physical scars amounted to slight burns, a few scratches and a bruised head. But the mental trauma of the accident was pernicious. It was almost too shocking to talk about, like his squalid childhood. After he left home at sixteen, he never saw his mother again, and burned the few photographs he had. But memories of her are ingrained in his mind like the dirt and nicotine stains ingrained in her skin.

‘
Her real name was Hilda,’ he says. ‘But she liked being called Bunty. That’s probably how I got the idea of changing my name.’ He takes another cigarette from a slim gold case chased on both sides, then puts it back. ‘All 1 know about my father is that he took up with her, stayed around long enough to father me, joined the army, went AWOL, got run over by a train, and had both his legs cut off.’

I
ask myself how one innocent person can be pursued by so much tragedy. He continues talking, his moods shifting unexpectedly in a way I begin to find quite disturbing. Some of the things he says are striking. Bunty was ‘his only point of reference’, because there was no extended family. He recalls grinding poverty, filth, rats, head-lice and bedbugs. His childhood memories are like the ‘mess dogs make of a bin bag’. As he succumbs to the temptation inside the golden cigarette case, he tells me about the ‘uncles’ Bunty entertained. The shame she never felt is another tin can tied to his tail. Trisha knew all about that childhood. It was something else she used as a weapon after twisting it into a horrible new shape.

Suddenly
he says: ‘In a way, it’s Bunty’s fault Mrs Colclough died.’ His glance flicks over me, like fingers. ‘I used to walk the three miles back from school to keep out of her way as long as possible. Mrs Colclough found out what I was doing, and made me have lifts in her car.’

I
remember what was said at the trial about that accident.

‘
Forensic examination of the car yielded no clues,’ Counsel for the Prosecution commented. ‘And at the scene, there were only the marks some forty feet away where she skidded off the road before plunging down an embankment and into the tree.’

‘
Joyce was the most careful driver,’ Henry Colclough insisted ‘I think he pulled the steering wheel. I know he did something!’ Wringing his hands, he added: ‘I saw him when the police drove me there, and there was a light in his eyes as if the flames were still blazing in front of him. And I know he hated Joyce. She told me about the trouble she was having with him at school, and all because she was trying to help!’

‘
None the less, Mr Colclough, that’s a far cry from suggesting he precipitated your wife’s accident.’

‘
He’d threatened her. And she took it seriously. He said if she didn’t leave him alone, he’d make sure she had to.’

But
as good teachers have always done, Joyce Colclough was simply trying to help a poor, inadequate mother.

Bunty
claimed benefits, never declaring her casual jobs. Swindling the system landed her in prison. ‘First the social security people came knocking on the door,’ he says. ‘Then the police turned up.’ He was sent to a children’s home run by nuns. ‘It was like going to heaven. I prayed they’d keep her locked up for ever.’

He
paints vivid pictures of his dead mother. One of Bunty’s jobs in the black economy was sweeping up in a knife and fork factory. ‘She’d come back with her shoes and trouser hems silvery with swarf.’ She also worked nights in a chip shop. ‘Then the whole house stank of stale fat.’ Her unwashed hair hung like weeds round her face, and smeared grease on the chair backs.

After
the trial, I visited the corporation block where he lived as a child. It is still notoriously deprived. I saw another generation of under-class children playing in squalor. They had runny eyes and noses, and sneezed a lot. Somebody told me it is an allergy to cockroaches.

Bunty
occasionally hit her son. Most of the time, she paid him little attention. ‘After I spent those few blessed months with the nuns,’ he explains, ‘I saw my foul little world with different eyes. It wasn’t from spite that people called Bunty a “dirty slut”. Even in that dump, she marked us out, and I got bullied for it. The other kids chucked stones at me, like I was a mangy dog, so I started going on the attack first. That’s why I could be violent to Trisha. I was sensitised by experience.’

He
talks at some length of the insights counselling has provided. Uppermost in his mind was the deep need to escape his circumstances before they destroyed him. Books were his first escape. He quotes a telling remark by Rousseau. ‘When society treats someone as ugly, they become ugly.’ Shockingly, he saw himself as others must. It was the spur to leave Bunty. He rented a bedsit and worked as an office boy for a while. After he got a job with an advertising agency, he was sent to Haughton to help with Kay’s spring campaign. Trisha was one of their salesgirls.

‘
Would to God I could put back the clock!’ He looks inward, eyes darkened. ‘I came out of the marriage with the clothes on my back and a few books. I didn’t want any reminders. But I can’t forget!’ Anguished, he talks of the vain hope he had cherished of a reconciliation. And of the way Trisha’s own hidden instability resurrected his childhood terrors. While he feared his own violence towards her, he was growing increasingly afraid of hers. More and more often, she threatened him with kitchen knives and fire-irons.

Such
violence is often a projection of unresolved feelings towards others who have caused harm. When I ask him about the sexual problems in their marriage, he is clearly very uncomfortable. Trying to avoid a direct answer, he blames his own low self-esteem for affecting intimate relationships. But he admits that he began to see a pattern in Trisha’s behaviour. She would deliberately provoke a row as a ploy to avoid sex. Taking a deep breath, he says: ‘I realised she hated anything to do with sex, so I challenged her. ‘Trisha eventually admitted that she had suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of a male relative. ‘She wouldn’t say who, but there weren’t many to choose from. Linda could’ve been another victim. Even if she wasn’t, she must have known. She and Trisha were closer than twins.’

He
explains why he did not unburden himself of this terrible knowledge at his trial. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to cause her family more pain.’ Trisha’s abuser must be a potential suspect for her murder. But he fears the police will not see it that way. ‘They still think Beryl might have done it. Because she’d have been paying Trisha’s alimony until I got a job.’

That
seems a very unlikely motive for murder. Money is the least of his new wife’s problems. There is pride, of course, and resentment. But is she that kind of person? We shall find out tomorrow. The self-effacing Beryl Stanton Smith has agreed to set the record straight exclusively for our readers.