The chief reporter on one of the tabloids, it was well known, had done time for murdering his wife. He behaved well, got out early and went back to reporting salacious stories for Rupert Murdoch.
‘And?’ I said. ‘Any other possibility?’
‘Yes, there’s the hybrid, by which you plead guilty to manslaughter but not guilty to murder by reason of diminished responsibility.’
‘The loony defence.’
‘If it’s accepted, you go to an establishment that’s more of a hospital than a prison. But no picnic. And it’s not easy to get released. In any event, whatever you plead, I shall have to brief counsel. I have one or two very good barristers in mind.’
I thought for a minute. ‘If I’d killed more than one person, would the diminished responsibility plea have a better chance?’
He looked at me a little strangely. ‘I really couldn’t say at this stage. I advise caution. You certainly shouldn’t admit to anything you haven’t done. Best to say not guilty at this stage.’
‘I see. Then what happens?’
‘We wait for a date for the trial. It’ll be weeks, maybe months. It’s a big case for the Crown and they’ll need time to prepare.’
‘And meanwhile I stay here.’
‘Yes. They won’t grant bail in murder cases.’
‘This DNA stuff,’ I said. ‘Will they accept it?’
‘It’s too soon to say. It’s only been used by the defence in this country so far, though it’s been used by the prosecution to convict in America – in Washington, I think. But it’s new and untried and it’s something the defence could certainly attack vigorously.’
‘But if I plead not guilty and the jury accepts the DNA evidence and finds me guilty, then I’ll go down for murder with the maximum time in a standard prison.’
‘Correct. Though your mental condition can be reviewed later.’
I felt I needed time to think. Time was what I had. Time to think, time to do.
In my cell, I had a lot of diary sessions. I wished that Jen had written more because I knew them all too well by now. In that respect – only – they were like Vermeer’s paintings.
The sole consolation was that there were one or two special entries – revealing, surprising – that I didn’t allow myself to go over. I kept them back even from myself.
My barrister came up from London to see me. He was a fleshy man in a suit with grey curly hair and a high colour. His name was Nigel Harvey, QC, and he was accompanied by a ‘junior’ (who looked older than Harvey, though thinner and more anxious) and by Davies, the solicitor. We met in a stuffy little room set aside for such visits.
‘Very well, Mr Engleby,’ said Harvey, unscrewing the top from a fountain pen and opening a blue foolscap exercise book, ‘I’ve seen what you said to Mr Davies, but if you don’t mind, I’d like you to go over it again for me. In your own words.’ He had a rich brown voice that reminded me of Tubby Lyneham.
My own words? Who else’s words could my mouth frame?
I told him about the party in Malcolm Street and how I left early and returned to my car in Park Street, how I drove round the corner into Jesus Lane to wait for Jennifer.
‘Let’s leave you there for a moment,’ he said. ‘I’d like to know more about this girl. How well you knew her, your feelings for her. Anything you think might help us.’
I thought very carefully. I was inhibited by the warnings I’d received about how I mustn’t confess or say anything that incriminated me and still expect to be defended. This florid man was the closest I had to an ally and I didn’t want him to walk out of the door; so it was a bit like being on trial already.
The trouble was, I only knew how to tell the truth.
I chose my words – my very own – with precision. ‘she was attracted to me. Though perhaps she didn’t know or admit how much. I felt I had to make her see how much she needed me. She wasn’t right with the boy she was with and I didn’t want her to go off with someone else, as a kind of second best, or rebound. I was the right man for her.’
‘What were your feelings for her?’
‘Profound.’
I told him a lot about my family and my father and mother and childhood. He kept nodding. He made a few notes. It was surprisingly enjoyable. I must have wanted to get some of this stuff out of me.
‘Let’s go back to your car.’
‘I saw her coming up the street. She hesitated, then turned into Jesus Lane. She saw my car. She recognised me. I think she wanted to get in with me. But then she must have changed her mind. But I stopped alongside, and she sort of bowed to the inevitable.
‘She was in my car and I was happy. It was as though everything had come right. We were happy together. She was laughing and it was easy, there was something right about it. I wanted it to last. For ever, maybe. I didn’t want to have to let her out and go back to everything being all wrong again. But it ended too soon. And I couldn’t face it ending. So at the moment I should have turned right, I went left – just to prolong it. To prolong my time with her.
‘Then I was worried that she’d jump out if I stopped, so I had to drive fast, very fast, through this sort of housing estate, then once I’d got out onto the Histon Road – the main road – I had to put my foot down.’
‘Why?’ said Harvey.
I thought for a long time. ‘Because I felt a fool.’
‘Go on.’
‘The trouble was that she was reacting badly. She was behaving like a child and I didn’t like that at all. It made me feel as though I was some kind of freak. She was screaming and shouting and banging at my arms. I felt she’d backed me into a corner.’
‘What were your feelings towards her then?’
‘I didn’t like her any more. I wanted her to be like the girl I’d known before, not like this. She’d humiliated me and I wanted her to shut up. Yes, I wanted her to shut up.’
‘All right. Gently does it, Mr Engleby. Carry on.’
I tried to remember. ‘I thought I’d find somewhere quiet and let her out of the car and then drive off. That was bad, but not that bad. I could apologise, I could make it up. I wouldn’t have harmed her. But I couldn’t find anywhere quiet. It was all villages, you know, like ribbon developments almost. Then finally I got to this place, Rampton. There was a dead end.’
‘And?’
I looked at him.
He coughed. ‘I’m sorry. I understand. Please take your time.’
The road called Cuckoo Lane wasn’t tarmac, it was made of concrete, what’s called hardstanding, I think. At the end was a cart track into the Fens. I turned off the headlights. I didn’t want Jennifer to get out and run. There were houses not far away. I didn’t want her to make a noise. I squeezed her wrist very hard till she screamed; then I said, ‘stay there while I come round.’
I got out and went round to her side. I pulled her out. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, but she was quiet. She wasn’t screaming.
I said, ‘Keep quiet and it’ll be all right.’
She whispered, ‘What do you want? I’ll do what you want.’
She meant sex, I suppose, but that wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was for her to say something that would make it all right, that would turn time backwards, that would turn her back into the old Jennifer and would give me a way out.
I was gripping both her wrists very tightly.
I said, ‘say something.’
‘I thought you wanted me to be quiet.’
‘Say something quietly. Say my name.’
She struggled in my grip.
‘Say: “Please, Mike.”’
I don’t remember how, but I became aware that she had wet herself. Was there a smell? Did I hear it? I don’t know, but she’d made herself disgusting.
And she wouldn’t say my name.
‘Say it, Jennifer.’
Her face was ugly with sobbing. She couldn’t speak. I felt naked and humiliated by what I’d done.
My memory of what happened nex
t is patchy. There are only flashes.
One thing I knew: I couldn’t go back, and I couldn’t let her go back. There was a piece of loose concrete at the end of the hardstanding, where it met the earth of the field. Holding one of Jennifer’s wrists, I bent down and picked it up. Then I swung it down on the back of her head. She cried out and fell to her knees. I hit her harder the second time and I heard her skull crack.
I went on hitting her. I think. I don’t remember.
I think I went on hitting her because I had no choice. Then I carried her for as long as I could manage and threw her in a ditch beside the field. I covered her as best I could. I listened to her to make sure she wasn’t breathing. She was dead. I lay on top of her with my face in her hair and I cried. I didn’t know how she’d died, but I was filled with fury at her, for what she’d made me do. I was furious with her for being dead, for making me do this thing. There was another piece of concrete not far away, on the side of a sort of small canal or watercourse. I smashed it into the back of her head once more to be sure, then I broke her leg with it. I was intensely relieved that it was over. I felt more like myself again.
It was what I’d done with Baynes, except with him I’d planned it better. I’d planned it for weeks, lain in wait by the bridge, and I didn’t kill him. Not at first.
The day after I killed Jennifer, I drove back to the place at three in the morning, parked my car in the village and walked down the lane, then the track, to where I’d left her. I had a spade with me that I’d taken from the gardener’s hut near Jesus Ditch on Midsummer Common.
I dug for two hours or more, then dragged her body in. It was stiff and ugly and her fine hair was clogged. I didn’t consider raping her, or even looking at her body. Then I covered her with earth, then with lumps of concrete that I fetched from the ragged end of the hardstanding, then with an old railway sleeper from the side of the track, then with more earth that I compounded hard. Finally, I roughed it up with the edge of the spade to make it look natural.
I felt relieved. Dawn was beginning to seep into the Fen horizon as I turned and left.
I told this – or a version of it, at least – to Harvey. It took a very long time, because I had to give him all the Chatfield stuff, all the background, as well.
When I’d finished there was a long silence in the small room. I could hear the rain outside in the prison yard.
Then I said, ‘I think there may have been a third person I killed. A German woman called Gudrun Abendroth.’
He nodded.
I said, ‘Do you think we could run the diminished responsibility plea?’
He said, ‘I think we could.’
I said, ‘Will I have to see a lot of shrinks?’
He said, ‘Yes, you will.’
I said, ‘That’s fine.’
Then a warder came in with some tea.
The preparation of the case has taken several weeks. It’s been very hot in my cell through the summer, but luckily I’ve been alone. With all the overcrowding, you’d expect that I’d be doubled up by now, but I think the nature of my case and the publicity around it has made them want to keep me apart.
I was also told by a doctor that it was for my own protection as ‘people like me’ were not good at ‘reading the intentions of others’ and could therefore be victimised. I exercise alone and don’t join in group work activities.
I’m not on the nonces’ wing or anything, it’s just that I have very limited contact with the other prisoners – just at meals, really, or occasionally in the library. Fine by me.
I have done numerous psychological tests, including the Rorschach ink-blot tests, which were ridiculous. One was a squashed cat, one was a bat in flight, one was a three-legged abominable snowman, but most were not suggestive at all. The psychologist sat behind me taking notes, presumably thinking I was unaware of what she was up to. I think she wanted me to say that various splodges resembled reproductive parts of the anatomy, but they didn’t; they looked like ink blots.
I’ve seen four psychiatrists, including the prison medical officer. Although I gather he’ll be for the prosecution, he endeared himself to me by prescribing some blue pills at our first meeting; I was allowed one at midday and one at night – by which I really mean nine o’clock, which for some incalculable reason is when they put the murderers to sleep, or anyway turn their lights off.
The shrink I’ve seen most of is called Julian Exley, who’s instructed by the defence. I told him I’d kept a sort of journal, off and on, and he encouraged me to bring it up to date. (Some plods brought the papers from my flat in Bayswater.) It’s been a good exercise for me; it’s given me something to do. I haven’t changed anything in it, I’ve just tidied it up and smoothed it over a bit. I sometimes work in the library and sometimes in my cell. The early parts are handwritten; between the typed lines of the later sections I write corrections with a ballpoint pen. I’m aware that there are long gaps, but it didn’t seem worth padding them out just for the sake of it.
This, of course – what you’re reading now – is it. Or rather, the preceding pages are. As I sat in the library on Monday, looking back, I noticed how much my style had changed – how much less crabbed and self-defensive it became, how much more rhetorical – and I thought perhaps I ought to try to homogenise it for art’s sake; but then I thought maybe Dr Exley could read something into the changes – some significant psychological development, or lack of. (Because obviously they all pored over it after it had arrived from London, and photocopied it, before they gave it back to me.)
And anyway, who knows or cares about unity or harmony of style these days? I read book reviews where the journalist doesn’t even know the distinction between ‘tone’ and ‘style’ – something even Plank Robinson had more or less mastered by O level. Ah, the treason of the clerks – the 1970s schoolteachers who decided, for some perverse political reason, to withhold knowledge from our schoolchildren. The first generation thus deprived are now themselves the teachers, so it’s less treasonous for them: they don’t have the knowledge to hold back. We were bound to see the results of this anti-teaching before long. Stellings tells me the graduates who apply to Oswald Payne with firsts from Oxford and Cambridge can’t spell or write grammatically; they have to send them on a basic six-week course before they can write a literate internal memo.
Anyway, when Dr Exley predictably asked if he could see the latest instalments of my journal/narrative, I said, ‘Why don’t we do a deal? I’ll show you my evidence if you let me see yours.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Show me what else you’ve gathered. Show me my test results, your diagnosis, any character references from other people. All the stuff you’re using.’
He stroked his chin, something he did quite a lot, and smiled. ‘I can’t do that at the moment. In due course, though, I don’t see why you shouldn’t know what’s being said about you. I’ve always believed in patients having access to their records as far as possible, so far as the law allows. The idea that the men in white coats keep your own secrets from you is very Big Brotherish, I think.’
I should have mentioned that this Exley character is not quite what the phrase ‘forensic psychiatrist’ suggests – which I take to be someone like the old film actor Richard Wattis: severe, horn-rimmed. Exley wears floral ties and a corduroy jacket; he smokes roll-up cigarettes; he looks like a slightly left-wing publisher.
‘Are you worried about what other people may have said about you?’ he said.
I guessed this was preliminary question one in the Paranoia Profile, so I just shrugged.
In the course of one of our sessions he had to leave the room for about five minutes, and I read some of the papers in his folder. The one on top was this:
R v Engleby. Witness Statement. James Stellings, Partner,
Litigation Department, Oswald Payne, 75 Finsbury Pavement,
London EC4 7JB.
Is this thing working? Testing . . . Testing. Right. OK.
I suppose the first er the first word you’d use if you were describing Mike is that you’d say he was a loner. He . . . er . . . at college he was always on his own, he never seemed to be with other people. In the dining hall for instance he’d quite often sit apart. He’d get his tray if it was the self-service thing and go to the end of the table and if it was formal dinner, when it was laid and you sort of had to sit next to someone, then he’d sort of take his place. But he wouldn’t try to engage anyone in conversation.
He . . . he didn’t really seem to have any friends that I was aware of either in college or out. Though I know that he used to go out quite a bit in the evening but I don’t know where he went to.
I first met him I think probably on the very first day we were there. I just happened to find myself sitting next to him at er at dinner and I thought it was friendly to introduce myself and we had a chat and I wouldn’t say it was a very easy conversation, I mean, he wasn’t er . . . the sort of person who was very at ease in company at all. He was awkward, he was physically awkward, and he was er, er . . . ill at ease, it wasn’t, he wasn’t a man who appeared to be well in his own skin as it were.
But . . . er, he was, he had opinions, he had views, and he had extremely strong views in fact [laughs] on pretty well everything. I mean, I think if you had to sum up Mike you’d say he was an interesting man but he just wasn’t much fun to be with. I mean, unlike a lot of people where completely the reverse is true. They haven’t got anything interesting or worthwhile to say, but they’re actually quite easy or amusing to be with.
Of course one of the first things you notice about Mike is his appearance. Um . . . you know, he’s incredibly badly dressed and I remember him coming to dinner once at our house in London and turning up in some sort of bootlace cowboy tie and hideous sort of caramel-coloured slacks. I mean, you know, just the whole thing was . . . appalling. And his hair which was sort of wiry and always needed cutting but it wasn’t long in the sort of student style, it just looked as if it hadn’t been cut. And his thick glasses which were defiantly . . . Everyone in those days wore John Lennon-style round glasses but Mike had these er . . . thick sort of I suppose horn-rimmed at the top then rimless at the bottom. And physically he was he was pretty, to be crude, he was pretty unprepossessing. He was . . . Quite short, he wore these horrible clothes, I mean I seem to remember he’d occasionally have on a tee shirt of . . . with something rather inappropriate on the front of it. That was about his only concession to, you know, fashion at all. He grunted quite a lot, he made a lot of noise breathing.
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