“Are you okay, Mr McLoughlin?” I asked. His solemn expression changed to one of surprise, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake.
“I’m fine,” he said sharply. His face then softened. “But thank you for asking.” We stood in silence for a few seconds. “You’re not though, are you?”
I sighed. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have.
“I told your colleagues, Mr McLoughlin. I walked into a—” He cut me off with a sharp laugh.
“Of course you did. And I’m playing up front for Norwich City this weekend.” He held up a hand at the prison officer who was about to open the door from the control room. “Look, I know you can’t tell me what happened. Or at least, you can’t be seen to tell me what happened. But at the end of the day, you were attacked on my wing when I wasn’t on duty. And that pisses me off.” He paused, looking at me with a hard stare. “But I will find out what happened.” There was another uncomfortable silence before he nodded at the control room window. With a metallic thump, the door to the lawyer’s room swung open and he pointed inside the room. I walked into the room, and the door swung shut behind me.
Paul and Laura both got to their feet as I entered the room.
“Gareth, my dear boy,” Paul said. “How are things?” he asked as he shook my hand. “My God, whatever’s happened to your face?”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” I replied.
“That doesn’t look like nothing, Gareth. Are you in trouble?” I could see him examining my swollen nose and black eyes.
“Not too bad,” I replied. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Paul shot a dark look at Laura, who was staring at my ruined face with her mouth open.
“Yes, sorry,” she mumbled. I felt bad as I hadn’t wanted to get Laura in trouble. Maybe she had should have organised the visit, but hadn’t?
“Laura, good to see you.” I extended a hand to Laura, which she looked at for a few seconds before shaking it. I flashed her a quick smile, hoping that she would return it and I would get a glimpse of her dimples.
“Gareth,” she replied in a muted voice. No smile for me today.
“I’m just glad my secretary arranged my meetings so that there was a free slot in my diary for you both,” I said, attempting to lighten the atmosphere. I looked at Laura as I said this and saw a brief smile appear on her face. Not broad enough to show her dimples, but it was something.
We all sat down, and Laura pulled a notepad and manila folder from her briefcase. She was wearing the same business suit I’d seen her in before, but this time with a satin green blouse that threw me completely. I was taken back to a day with Jennifer in the large Marks & Spencer in the middle of Norwich. She was trying to find something to wear for a job interview and had found a green blouse just like the one Laura was wearing. It must’ve been the fifth or sixth blouse that Jennifer had tried on that day, and by that time I was happy to say anything she tried on looked amazing.
“Gareth?” Paul’s voice snapped me out of my daydream. I realised that I’d been staring at Laura’s blouse, and that she had pulled her jacket across her chest.
“Sorry,” I said, looking at Laura’s face and realising she was blushing. “I’m so sorry. Jennifer used to have a blouse just like yours, and I was just remembering the time she bought it.” Laura tilted her head, not unlike the way Jennifer used to, and looked at me with a shy smile creeping across her face. I could just see the faintest outline of her dimples through it, but they didn’t last for long. The minute Paul started talking again, her smile disappeared completely and Laura was straight back to being business-like.
“I’m going to speak to the guards about this. You’ve been attacked.”
“Paul, please. Don’t do anything,” I pleaded with him. “It’s nothing, honestly. Nothing I can’t deal with.” I looked between him and Laura. “Please don’t.” Paul stared at me for what seemed like ages before taking a deep breath in through his nostrils.
“Right, if you say so,” he said. I could tell from the look on his face he wasn’t happy at all, but for the time being at least, would let it go. I gave Laura a wan smile but got nothing in response. “So, Gareth,” Paul said, getting back to business. “There are two reasons for us visiting today. I want to bring you up to date on the progress towards your appeal, and then Laura here will walk us through the lead up to the attack on Mr Wainwright.” The preliminaries were over, and Paul was straight down to it. I leaned forward and crossed my arms on the table, mirroring Paul’s body language.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Now then, it’s been two weeks, or is it three, since we last spoke?” Paul said. It had been four weeks and two days, not that I was counting the days or anything like that. Paul leant back in his chair as he continued. “Now obviously we missed the first twenty eight day window for an appeal. Or at least, your previous legal team did. I know they looked into it, but decided against lodging one.” I remembered Toby and I arguing about this at the time. He had said lodging an appeal without enough evidence could be prejudicial. I couldn’t see how that could be the case. If I’d understood it correctly, if we’d lodged an appeal anyway the worst thing that could have happened would be that my sentence could have been extended by a few weeks. Believe me, when you’re staring at a life sentence, a few weeks is nothing.
“Effectively, we need to launch an appeal from scratch,” Paul continued. “And the only way we can do that is with new evidence or new witnesses.” I nodded, the poster now making a lot more sense.
“Did you have any responses to the poster?” I directed the question at Laura, who looked up and to my surprise, laughed. She looked across at Paul, who was also smiling, before replying.
“Yes, you could say that,” she said. She was about to say something else when Paul interrupted.
“I’d like to come back to that in a little while, if I may?” From the look on Laura’s face, this wasn’t a question. Her laughter hadn’t lasted long, which was a shame.
“Now, where was I? Witnesses and evidence,” Paul said, looking at the ceiling of the room. “We need either new witnesses — or new evidence — to take to the judiciary. They’ll then decide if an appeal is what is called ‘safe’ before it gets sent to the Court of Appeal.” From what I’d read, this was a court in London, not Norwich. “Now, you’ve heard about the posters obviously. I’ve also hired a superb investigator to help us out. Ex-policeman, in fact, which I think will be useful. Still well connected, although he left under, shall we say, a cloud.” I saw Laura suppress a smile as Paul said this. I wondered what their investigator had done. “He’s still bitter about it, which helps us,” Paul concluded, which left me even more curious.
“As soon as we have new evidence, or new witnesses, or — even better — both, I’ll lodge the appeal at Norwich with Judge Watling. He’ll then sign it off. At least, that’s the plan. I know James well, so have got a good idea of how to put it to him.” It was no surprise to me that Paul knew the judge.
“What sort of timeframe are we looking at?” I asked them. They looked at each other briefly before Paul replied.
“Well, witnesses and evidence will take time to collect and prepare. But I’m very optimistic that we’ll get there. It will just take a while to do it properly. I can’t really put a timeframe on that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It could be weeks, but more likely it will be months.” Although what Paul said made perfect sense, I couldn’t help but be gutted, especially after what had happened yesterday. From the sympathetic look that Laura gave me, I knew my disappointment was obvious. She slid her hand across the table and wound it around mine. I almost jumped at her touch. She was the only woman I had touched since Jennifer had died. Even though it was only a brief touch of her hand, it still sent a shock wave through me. I looked down at her hand, her cool fingers touching the back of my hand. No rings, no nail polish.
“So, Gareth. Once we have the witnesses and evidence prepared, and the judge has signed the appeal paperwork, it’
ll be quick from there,” Laura said, giving my hand a quick squeeze before letting go of it. I resisted the temptation to grab it back and realised that I was probably reading far too much into what was an innocent touch. “Once the papers are lodged with the Court of Appeal, the waiting time should only be a week or so,” Laura said, breaking my concentration which was probably just as well.
“Yes,” Paul said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. “Nothing to do with justice, but everything to do with compensation.” I frowned, not understanding his point.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“The compensation clock ticks from the day the appeal is launched. Quite reprehensible in my opinion, but what would I know?” Paul explained. I had not even thought about compensation. Thinking about it, I realised that I couldn’t care less about it, anyway.
“So, that’s where we are with the appeals process,” Paul said. Although I didn’t really know anything now that I hadn’t known already, I was grateful to them both anyway. “So, moving on to the appeal itself, there’s not much to tell you really. We might have found another witness, though.” My eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Really?” I said. I was sure that there were no other witnesses, apart from the dog walker and he was miles away from me. Mind you, I’d been sure there were no CCTV cameras either, and I’d got that very wrong. Paul turned to Laura.
“Why don’t you tell Gareth about the response to the posters?” The smile returned to her face.
“Okay,” she said. “There was, how can I put it, quite an enthusiastic response to them.” Laura laughed. “I never realised Norwich had so many nutcases.” I smiled at her, hoping she would continue. She flipped open her notebook. “Right, there were three people who say they saw you even though they weren’t even in Norwich on the night in question. There was another witness who is convinced that you’re her long lost son, and finally, the star witness and front runner for the reward.” She looked at me, her eyes sparkling, but said nothing.
“What? Tell me?” I asked.
“Well, according to this witness, you were in fact dropped off at the recreation ground just prior to the murder.” Her eyes sparkled even more. “In a spaceship.”
A few seconds later, Mr McLoughlin’s face appeared at the door to see what we were all laughing so hard about.
28
Almost a week later, I sat on the hard plastic chair in the lawyer’s room while Mr McLoughlin plugged a telephone into the wall. I had been in this room I don’t know how many times, and never noticed a socket on the wall for a landline. He lifted the telephone and pressed the plastic prongs on the top a couple of times as he held it to his ear.
“Okay,” Mr McLoughlin said. “Good to go.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or talking to himself, so I remained silent. He pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. Moving so he was blocking my view of the telephone, I heard the keypad beep four times before he looked down at the paper. There must have been a PIN lock on the telephone. The next session of beeps would be the number I could see written on the piece of paper. He paused, the handset to his ear, before speaking a few seconds later.
“Hello? Is that Miss Flynn?” He paused. “HMP Whitemoor here. I’ve got Mr Gareth Dawson with me. Will I put him on?” Another pause before he nodded. He turned and handed me the handset. “You know the drill,” he said fixing me with a hard stare. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to warrant a look like that, but maybe he was just having a crap day at the office. “Just bang on the door when you’re done,” he reminded me as he walked away.
I waited until he had left the room, and I’d heard the lock being closed. The other times I’d been in here, the lock had stayed open. I guessed that was only when there were other people in the room.
“Hello, Laura?” I said. “It’s Gareth.”
“Hi, Gareth,” I heard Laura reply. The line was terrible. It sounded as if Laura was in a wind tunnel. I missed the next few words she said as they were too broken up for me to understand, only catching a few partial words through the hiss.
“It’s not a great line, Laura,” I said, tightening my grip on the handset. This wasn’t what I needed. I heard her say something but again couldn’t make it out. Something about a pullover? “I can’t hear you,” I almost shouted down the line.
“I said, I’ll pull over,” she yelled back, the line suddenly clear. Wincing, I pulled the handset away from my ear. I’d heard that okay.
The next time Laura spoke, the line was much clearer. Almost as if she was in the next room.
“Sorry about that, Gareth,” she said. “I’m in the car and had you on Bluetooth. It’s a crap connection at the best of times, but I’m in the middle of nowhere at the moment.”
“Where are you?” I asked her, fascinated because I had a link to the outside world even if it would only be for a few minutes.
“Er, I’m somewhere between Elveden and Thetford,” she said. I closed my eyes for a moment as I knew the area well. Thetford was a large forest maybe half an hour away from Norwich. It covered miles of land, some of it shut off but a lot of it open to the public. I’d always imagined that it would be a fantastic place to take kids for a holiday and remembered a conversation I’d had with Jennifer one evening to that effect.
“So, Gareth,” Laura’s voice snapped me out of my daydream. “Thank you for getting back to me.”
“No problem,” I replied. “I wasn’t busy.” Laura laughed, her voice tinkling down the telephone line. It brought a smile to my face.
“I’ve got some news,” she said. “Good news.”
When Mr McLoughlin had said earlier that my legal team needed to speak to me, my initial reaction was mixed expectations. The last few times I had spoken to them, there had been no real developments at all. Lots of activity, but nothing tangible at the end of it. Laura telling me it was good news brightened my day a lot. Maybe there had been another result from their investigator, or some new evidence, but after all this time I couldn’t see how either option would be possible.
“So Gareth,” Laura said. Not for the first time, I noticed the endearing habit she had of starting most of her sentences with the word ‘so’ followed by the name of the person she was speaking to. It was almost as if she used it as a punctuation mark or a way of gathering her thoughts together before she spoke. “Are you ready for this?” She was talking quickly, and I could hear the excitement in her voice. I could feel my hopes raising.
“Yes, what is it?” I said.
“Well, I’m just on my way to London from Norwich. I’ve been at the Crown Court all day.” I waited for her to continue. “Your application for an appeal went to Judge Watling this morning,” Laura said. I hadn’t even known it was going in front of him, so this was a real surprise.
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know for sure what he said, I wasn’t there. But I do know the judge and Paul were in the judge’s chambers for ages,” Laura said. “Paul said afterwards they’d been talking about an appeal ‘out of time’, but judging by the smell of whisky coming off him, I don’t think they’d been discussing it for that long.” I could hear from the tone of her voice that she was smiling, and the thought of Paul getting pissed with the judge who’d sentenced me to life in prison brought an ironic smile to my face. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Laura rattled on. “Judge Watling signed the paperwork, the NG, that’s all that matters.”
“What’s an NG?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” she said. “It’s the form that goes to the Court of Appeal. They’ll look at it and then decide whether or not to grant an appeal. That’s why I’m driving to London, to take it down there and deliver it. Paul said it’s a formality, but he still wanted it there as soon as possible.”
“What happens next, then?” I asked. Her enthusiasm was infectious. I felt, for the first time in weeks, as if I might have a chance.
“Er, a single judge panel is first,” she replied. “One judge
has a look at it and decides if it should go to a full panel of three of them. Weeds out all the crap, basically,” she said, laughing again. “Then, if they say yes — which they will — they’ll order a retrial.”
“How long will that take, do you think?”
“Paul reckons it might take a while. Up to two months, maybe longer.” My heart sank. That was not what I wanted to hear. “Don’t get your hopes up, Gareth. I’m being honest with you, that’s all,” Laura continued. I tried to relax my grip on the handset and just sat there, listening to the rumble of cars and lorries I could hear in the background thundering up and down the main road between Norwich and London. I couldn’t think of anything to say, anyway.
“Are you okay?” Laura asked a moment later. I didn’t reply. “It’s great news, Gareth. Paul’s put together a superb case. It went to the prosecution team last week, and they sent it straight back uncontested. Just like Paul said they would.” I sighed, trying to process it all in my head. I needed time to think about what Laura had said, and what it meant.
“When are you coming in to see me next?” I asked Laura.
“I think Paul will be in at the weekend. He’s got paperwork for you to sign, and he’ll bring you up to speed on the appeal.”
“Are you coming?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Me and Seb are going to Brighton for the weekend.”
“Seb?”
“Sebastian. My boyfriend.”
“Your boyfriend’s called Sebastian?” I was trying not to laugh. “I bet he’d be thrilled to know you were on the phone to a convicted murderer.” An image popped into my head of a fop haired Hugh Grant look-a-like, with an accent to match.
“I won’t tell him if you won’t,” Laura replied, the smile back in her voice. “You’re right, he wouldn’t be impressed at all. I mean, he knows I’m a lawyer and that I have to deal with prisoners, but even so.”
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