The Mother, page 14
‘Wasn’t sure you’d come,’ I say finally.
‘Neither was I,’ Amy says.
‘I’m glad you did.’
She doesn’t reply and we fall back into uneasy silence again.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ I say, without looking at her. ‘For what you’ve done with the boys. For being there for them while I was . . . away. It was a comfort to know that you were still part of their lives, that they’ve had that continuity at least.’
She is quiet for a long moment.
‘Being an auntie to those two is the best thing that ever happened to me.’
On the hilltop behind us, the air is thick with the shouts and laughter of children in the little playground, and I’m glad of the background noise, glad this is a neutral venue. It had been here where Liam had first told me he wanted to become an MP, to take his life in a new direction and make a difference in the lives of others. A Sunday afternoon walk here on a frosty winter’s day so many years ago, the sky a perfect blue from horizon to horizon, the air sharp and cold enough to sting our cheeks as we huddled together with hot chocolates looking out over the city. And Liam had suddenly come out with it, this idea he had been working up to, a change of direction that he would only commit to if I agreed. Only if I gave my blessing. Neither of us with any idea of the dark trajectory our lives would take from that day onward.
Amy turns to me as if to say something else, then stops.
‘What is it?’ I say.
‘I need to say something to you. To get it out.’
‘OK.’
‘I hated you. For a long time.’
‘I understand.’
‘No,’ she says, more forcefully. ‘I really, really hated you. It didn’t seem like enough, what you got. You were in prison, but I knew you’d get out eventually, you’d carry on with your life. I prayed every day we’d get the news that you’d fallen down the stairs or been attacked in your cell, beaten to a pulp or scalded or stabbed.’
‘Well,’ I say slowly, ‘most of your prayers were answered.’
I still remembered the first time, my first week inside, catching the wrong kind of attention as a celebrity inmate whose trial had made all the papers. When I discovered my status as the infamous newcomer to B Wing who deserved to be taken down a peg or two. A stuck-up bitch who thought she was better than the rest of us. Killed her husband in cold blood and let her kids discover their dad’s body. My first trip to the sickbay with a black eye and a sprained wrist, a clump of hair gone from the crown of my head and a cracked rib that sent shooting pains into my chest every time I coughed.
Amy looks down at the hard-packed dirt beneath our feet.
‘I know it was wrong for me to wish for those things.’
‘But it wasn’t you that did them,’ I say with a shrug. ‘It was other women. Other inmates, most of them just as messed up as me.’
‘What I mean is, it felt like jail time wasn’t enough for what you’d done, not nearly enough. It felt like a betrayal, first by you, then by the system that was supposed to punish you. A betrayal twice over. That’s how I felt.’
I let her words settle between us, choosing my response carefully.
‘Do you still feel that way?’
‘When he . . .’ She clears her throat. ‘When it happened, I don’t know what you heard, but I was in a really bad place for a long time.’ She trails off, breathing hard through her nose.
I had heard second-hand that she’d had some kind of breakdown after her brother’s death, had spent time in a treatment facility.
‘There’s no shame in it,’ I say quietly. ‘In seeking help, in admitting you need it. I wish I’d been brave enough to do the same.’
‘I was going to visit you once,’ she says, drumming a nervous fingertip against the rough wooden bench seat. ‘In prison. But only because . . . I wanted to see you suffering. I wanted to see you paying for what you’d done to my brother, to see with my own eyes what your life had become. To focus all my anger and pain and grief on you like I could pass it on, get rid of it.’
It had been six or seven years ago but I remembered the visiting order, my surprise that she had responded. Then waiting in the visitors’ hall for the full hour, alone at a table with a red tabard like all the other prisoners, even when it was obvious Amy had changed her mind.
‘I sat in the car park,’ she says, ‘just sat there in my car, going over and over it, trying to work out what I was really doing there. How I could possibly have thought it would make things better, sitting in my car crying and shouting and cursing you. Eventually, I just turned around and drove home again, didn’t tell Mum or Dad where I’d been, didn’t tell anyone.’
‘Do they know you’re here now?’
‘God no! They would freak out if they knew I was talking to you.’
‘What about your dad’s offer, yesterday,’ I say. ‘Paying me off, setting me up in the north of Scotland, was it for real? Or just a set-up to lure me to their house and get me arrested? Stitch me up for breaching the terms of my probation?’
‘Both, I think,’ she says quietly. ‘If you’d taken the offer, you’re gone and he wins. If you refuse, there’s a decent chance you’ll want to tell him that to his face, make it clear that you won’t be bought off. And then you end up in the back of a police car anyway. So it was a win-win for him.’
‘He figured I’d probably come to the house.’
She leans forward, elbows on her knees. ‘Why did you ask to meet, Heather? What did you want to tell me?’
I’ve thought about how much to share with my sister-in-law, how much to reveal about what I’m planning to do, about what I’ve already done since getting out of Eastwood Park. We’d got on well from the beginning, since she’d been a bridesmaid at my wedding. After my mum, she had been the closest I had left to family beside the boys. The closest I had to a sister. I’d even had her on my prison paperwork as next of kin, alongside the boys.
‘I’m not going to Scotland,’ I say softly. ‘I’m not taking your dad’s money. I’m going to stay and find out what really happened that night.’
‘How, though? Not being funny, Heather, but I don’t see how you’re going to find something new, ten years on.’
I describe my conversations with Owen and Nishan, the unexplained notations in Liam’s diary and the stranger in the library who had been following me. The storage box left by my mother, filled with memories from my old life.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amy says suddenly. ‘About your mum.’
‘Thank you.’ The weight of tears is heavy behind my eyes. ‘I know you were kind to her when you didn’t have to be. Helping her sort out the house and everything when she started to struggle.’
‘None of it was her fault.’
‘Well, I appreciate what you did for her, and I’m sure she did too.’
We fall into another long silence before Amy turns to me again.
‘So what happens now?’
‘Someone knows something about what happened ten years ago,’ I say. ‘They’re out there, somewhere, I just have to find them.’
‘You’re asking for my help?’
‘No. I just wanted you to know, that’s all. To hear it from me. And I don’t want you to get in any trouble.’
‘Why would there be trouble?’
‘Because . . . whoever set me up is not going to like me digging into it again. Who knows what lengths they might go to. Lines are probably going to be crossed.’ I lean an elbow on the back of the bench to look at her properly. ‘And if that happens, I need to know you’ll still be there for Theo and Finn.’
‘Of course.’
‘My card is already marked with the probation service, the police, with everyone, and if things go sideways for me I need to be sure you’ll still be there for your nephews. To look out for them if I end up back inside.’
She’s nodding, looking away from me, all her earlier anger seemingly spent.
‘I see so much of Liam in the boys, you know? So much of his light, his energy. Theo reminds me so much of what my brother was like, when he was fourteen.’
‘The age gap between you and Liam must have seemed much bigger when you were growing up.’
‘Not to me.’ She shrugs, cuffing a tear away. ‘I always idolised him. Right from when we were kids, I always knew that he was special, that he’d do great things. He would always play with me and make sure I was included even though I was probably really annoying at that age.’
‘You looked very sweet in all the family photos.’
She gives me a sad smile. ‘I mean, Mum never wanted there to be a seven-year gap. She had a few miscarriages.’
I knew, from long-ago conversations with Liam, how desperate his mother had been for a girl to complete her little family. His earliest memories were of his mother crying and crying, of being sad all the time, Liam being unable to console her and being told simply that Mummy was sad because the baby went away. Not understanding what it meant or knowing how to make her better. And then finally: a miracle. A little girl, a sister, with white-blonde hair and a beautiful sunny smile and the youngest sibling’s ability to get away with almost anything.
Her mother had doted on Amy, and Amy – in turn – had doted on her brother.
‘I always looked up to him,’ she says, ‘but it wasn’t just me. Everyone loved him.’
‘They did.’ My throat is thick. ‘Everyone.’
A train creeps into view below us, pulling slowly to a halt in the station. We are too far away to hear the engine and the whole thing happens silently, as if in an old movie.
We exchange numbers and I tell my sister-in-law that I’ll keep her updated with what I find. She wipes more tears away with the sleeve of her top.
‘I should probably go,’ she says abruptly, checking her watch and standing up. ‘I have a million meetings today.’
‘I’m glad you came, Amy.’
She nods, turning away and walking back up the hill without another word.
26
Owen buys coffees from the vending machine in the reception area of Total Storage and the two of us sip them as we lay out the contents of the big plastic box once it is retrieved from the rack. It would help to get a handle on anything significant, he tells me, if we can see everything laid out in one place, sorted according to whether it’s likely to be useful. We have the cavernous room to ourselves, and before long the big central table is almost completely covered with documents, books, photo albums, letters, cards, keepsakes and other assorted things from the bulky storage locker.
‘Can’t believe there’s this much paperwork,’ I say. ‘Thought most of it would be digital, stored in the Cloud or on a hard drive somewhere.’
Owen doesn’t look up. ‘Ten years ago, remember? Much more paper-heavy then, especially parliamentary business. And digital copies of anything incriminating will probably have been erased years ago, that’s why hard copies are probably our only chance.’
‘So what are we actually looking for?’ I gesture at the collection of stuff laid out in front of us. ‘In here?’
‘Inconsistencies,’ Owen says. ‘Anomalies. Wrong notes. Basically any document in among this stuff that might contradict the police’s bullshit theory of what happened.’
He describes the concept of ‘noble cause corruption’, a term he had first come across coined by American defence lawyer David Rudolf. It can happen when police lose sight of their real role as investigators, Owen explains. Detectives stop trying to solve the crime and instead focus all their energy on proving the culpability of a single suspect – because they believe they are doing the right thing.
‘It’s not that they’re trying to frame you,’ Owen says. ‘More that they have this total faith in their own ability to know “what really happened”. When you throw confirmation bias into the mix and their desire to ensure the suspect doesn’t walk away scot-free, they get totally focused on proving guilt, rather than looking at the whole picture. It’s one of the ways innocent people end up in prison.’
‘What about the evidence?’ I say. ‘The phone, the fingerprints, the pictures?’
‘The police found the evidence that corresponded with what they thought had happened,’ he says. ‘If you’re trying to fool someone, that’s half the battle, isn’t it? Tell them a story they want to believe.’
I pick up an old paperback book from the box, In the Woods by Tana French. ‘So what are we hoping to find?’
‘Any mention of money changing hands, or of the select committee inquiry Liam was chairing at the time of his death. Or anything relating to a US company who might have been paying for information and influence in Parliament – that’s what I think Liam was about to blow the whistle on, before they silenced him. This thing has been stitched up for so long already, and lots of people want it to stay that way. We’re the only ones who actually want the truth.’
‘But won’t all the useful stuff have been taken by the police as evidence? It’ll still be in a box in some police warehouse, won’t it, can we get access to that too?’
‘Not without a formal appeal process against the verdict,’ he says. ‘Which was already thrown out. And besides, a lot of the police evidence went missing last year.’
‘What?’ I stare at him.
‘Evidence storage was contracted out to the private sector. Loads of it ended up in landfill by mistake – allegedly – and not just from this case. But that’s another story, for another day.’
‘That’s bloody outrageous.’
‘And all the more reason for us to be careful with whatever new leads might come our way.’ He gestures at the assortment of material spread out on the table. ‘And in any case, the police mostly went over documents from his office. But Liam kept a lot of the most sensitive material at home, according to a source that I trust.’
I sip my coffee. ‘Who’s your source?’
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘And why would Liam even do that?’ I say. ‘Keeping files at home would be a breach of the rules, wouldn’t it?’
‘Technically yes,’ Owen says, ‘although it does happen. The question is, why do we think Liam kept the most controversial, potentially explosive stuff at home?’
I frown, reaching back a decade and more to recall any conversations Liam and I might have had on this topic. We had talked about our jobs often enough over the kitchen table, but he had never gone into specifics about the confidential aspects of his work. I’d always assumed he was merely being professional, discreet, and in any case it had been that time in our lives when the two of us never seemed to actually finish a conversation – or a bottle of wine, a meal, a film – without being interrupted by the demands of looking after two small children, of work and housework, meetings and messages and calls, a new puppy and everything else. I had always longed for more time, more hours in the day to do things properly rather than bouncing from one task to the next, feeling as if I’d not done any of them properly. Until that dark Rubicon in July 2013, the dividing line between my old life and my new one. After that day I’d had only time. Nothing but time, and nothing with which to fill it.
I shrug, scanning the assorted paperwork. ‘Liam had so much work on, he could barely keep up. I guess he brought some of it home because . . . he had to plough through it in the evenings and at weekends? Or perhaps because the office wasn’t secure?’
‘Maybe the office. Or maybe the staff in the office.’
‘Christine?’
‘That’s my guess,’ Owen says with a nod. ‘He had to keep it away from his constituency manager.’
‘Where exactly does Christine Lai fit into all this?’
‘That,’ he says, ‘is what we need to find out.’
27
Two hours later, we’re still looking.
I’ve been going through a thick stack of newspaper cuttings from around the time of my arrest and trial. Mum had even managed to get parts of a court transcript of my case, dog-eared pages held together with fraying treasury tags, many of the sheets annotated in her handwriting, phrases in the witness testimony circled or marked in yellow highlighter, question marks and looping arrows in fading black ink. I had no idea she had taken so much time, going back over what was said in court.
Owen has been on his laptop, combing through one of the USB memory sticks we found in the box.
Finally, he snaps the laptop shut, his big shoulders slumped.
‘Shit,’ he says. ‘I thought it might be here.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’ He blows out a breath. ‘Something. But this all seems to be pretty routine stuff. We need to keep looking.’
He’s taken his black sweatshirt off to reveal a Clash T-shirt and a selection of swirling Celtic tattoos up and down strongly muscled arms. My eye is drawn to the biggest of the tattoos, on his inner forearm, stretching from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. A bearded figure in robes, with a staff and a medallion around his neck.
He sees me looking. ‘Don’t tell me – you didn’t think a Guardian journalist would have so much ink?’
‘Just didn’t have you pegged as the religious type.’
‘Lapsed Catholic. Got my first tattoo in Cardiff when I was doing my postgrad.’ He taps a stylised dragon beneath the swell of his right bicep. ‘Did a bit of door work on weekends to pay the bills, got friendly with some of the other guys and just got into it. Been adding them ever since.’
I point at the robed figure on his forearm. ‘That one looks really familiar but I can’t place it.’
‘St Jude,’ he says.
‘Patron saint of journalists?’
He shakes his head. ‘Lost causes.’
‘Is that what I am?’
‘No cause is ever truly lost, Heather.’ He says it quietly, holding my gaze. ‘If even one person can hold on to hope.’
I’m about to tell him I don’t agree – that hope is for gamblers and dreamers, that losing all hope in prison had been almost a release for me, a freedom, because it was the moment I stopped expecting things to get better on their own, the moment I realised I had nothing and no one left to rely on except for myself – but Owen has already broken eye contact. He picks up a greeting card from the pile in front of him. This one blank inside apart from the words ‘Dear Heather’ in familiar handwriting, as if my mother had forgotten to write the rest of it. I’ve no idea what it’s doing in this box but there had been Christmas and birthday cards like that when I was in jail, more signs of the disease progressing, cards with just my name, some left completely blank. One year I had received three separate Christmas cards a few weeks apart, all from my mother.
