by Ruth Mancini
At least – I had an explanation for my actions. I had absolutely no explanation for Martin’s. But I’d been in no doubt whatsoever that the accident had been his fault. He’d left me no time to stop! What else could I have done? I’d been driving carefully. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen him. In fact, I’d had him in my line of vision the whole time, right up to the moment when he’d suddenly jumped out in front of me, and in an attempt to minimise the impact, I’d slammed on the brake. Only it wasn’t the brake, it was the accelerator. I’d done what Helena had done, the very first time she’d driven the car. But, given the circumstances, given that Martin had jumped right out in front of me and frightened the hell out of me, surely that couldn’t amount to murder? Surely the whole thing couldn’t have been my fault?
I now knew better than to try to explain all this to the officers. Instead, I went with them quietly and did everything they asked. When I arrived at the police station and was read my rights, I asked for a lawyer. I was also allowed one phone call, to someone who wasn’t connected with the arrest, namely Helena, Martin or Sky. Sky? What the hell did he have to do with this? I called Tim and Annalise’s phone number, in the presence of the custody sergeant and the female detective, and told Annalise what had happened. Ten minutes later, a colleague, highly recommended by Annalise, was on the phone. Her name was Sarah. She was kind and reassuring, as well as professional. She made me promise not to speak to the police about what had happened until she was present, and told me to remain calm and patient while the officers continued their investigation and took their remaining statements.
“What statements?” I sobbed down the phone. I was in a private room now, next to the custody sergeant’s desk. “I don’t understand who else they need to talk to. It was an accident. What’s it got to do with my daughter? Or Sky?”
Sarah spoke slowly and gently. “Lizzie, I understand how upset you must be. You must be extremely frightened, and I’m going to do my level best to help you. But I’m going to be honest with you. From the little I’ve been told, this is about more than just a road traffic accident and some vague assumption that you’ve caused it. Martin’s in a serious condition. He was crushed by your car against the wall, from the waist downwards. His injuries are life-threatening; he could die. But despite his injuries, he was conscious for a short while at the scene. He hasn’t made a full statement yet, but it seems he told the police that you put your foot down and drove at him deliberately, whilst he was crossing the road.”
My legs gave way underneath me. I lost my grip on the phone receiver and dropped it onto the table. I stumbled into a chair, then picked up the phone again and put it back to my ear. The civilian jailor heard the noise from outside and opened the door.
I looked up at her, tears streaming down my face. “Please,” I mouthed. She nodded and stepped back out of the room.
“Helena and Sky were two of the first on the scene,” Sarah was saying. “They heard the crash from inside the building. They’ve both given statements to the effect that you’d phoned Martin beforehand.”
“What? What do you mean? Helena was unwell...” I realised as I said this that it hadn’t, in fact, been true.
“Slightly before the crash, Martin told Helena and Sky that you’d phoned, that you’d become jealous when you’d found out that he was with Helena still, at her lodgings, and that you’d made threats to him, saying you were on your way down there to ‘sort him out’.”
“Oh my God! It’s not true!” I sobbed. “None of it. He hates me. He tried to rape me, and then he tried to turn my daughter against me... and now he’s done this. He jumped out in front of me, I swear! He’s done this deliberately. He’s crazy...”
“Lizzie, listen to me,” Sarah interrupted me. “I need to get full, written disclosure from the officers in the case. I need to find out what else – if anything – they’ve got, and then I will be taking a full and detailed account from you of what happened. But until the police have finished taking their statements, you need to keep calm and exercise your right to silence. I really need you to do that for me. I promise you, you’ll have all the time you need to talk to me about this. I’m going to want your full instructions. But, just not now, not here, over the phone.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“As soon as they call me, I’ll be on my way.”
“Are they going to remand me? Am I ever going to get out of here?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s going to be an uphill struggle if you’re charged. But if that happens, we’ll put a strong bail application together at court. For now, let’s just take this one step at a time.”
The officers were ready for interview at around seven on the Sunday evening. Sarah arrived, wearing jeans, trainers and a fleece top, and instantly put me at ease. The police hadn’t let her see the statements they’d taken, but they’d given her a written disclosure notice that made it clear that they’d now taken statements from Helena, Sky, and the doctor looking after Martin. My heart wrenched in pain as Sarah read it out loud to me – I still hadn’t got myself any proper reading glasses – and I heard my daughter’s account of what had happened, how I’d been unable to accept Martin’s presence in her life, and the shock and pain she’d felt on running out of McLaren House to find her father crushed and bleeding in the street.
The evidence from Sky was the most shocking of all. He, too, had run out of the building with Helena and witnessed Martin’s injuries first-hand. But during the interview, his ten page statement was read out in full and I was astonished at the vitriol within it. It detailed the entire history of the feud between me and Martin: Sky’s very own, personalised account of my abortive attempts to steal his father away from his mother all those years ago; my invasion of Helena’s privacy by accessing her phone and reading the text messages he’d sent her; my announcement, within his earshot at the poolside in Guildford that I wanted to kill Martin and wipe the smug smile off his face – along with numerous other things I’d supposedly said or done that evidenced my ‘obsession’ with both Sky and Martin, and an entirely unreasonable amount of speculation as to why I might have been driving down to Southwark with Helena’s fencing sword in the back of my car.
Sarah interrupted several times, pointing out anomalies, hearsay and general weaknesses in the evidence, and telling me not to answer a question if she believed it to be unfair or unfounded, or if the officer had asked the same question more than once. I was immensely comforted by her presence and it wasn’t just to do with her knowledge of the law. I was locked up in a building that consisted entirely of people whose sole aim was to gather evidence against me so that they could charge me, convict me and then have me locked up again. It felt something of a relief to have someone there who was on my side, someone I could talk to in confidence, someone who would pass me tissues while I cried, and who would fight my corner, at a time when I had so little control over the situation, when the odds seemed so overwhelmingly stacked against me.
But I didn’t need Sarah to point out to me that the evidence was indeed stacked against me. Why, after all, would someone risk their life to deliberately jump out in front of a car? I, myself, couldn’t comprehend how Martin could have been quite that crazy, crazy enough to have taken such a ridiculously dangerous chance in order to nail me, to teach me a lesson, to get me out of Helena’s life, once and for all.
I did my best to give the police an explanation for his actions; I told them about the threats he’d made to me, the attempted rape last September and the false pretences under which he’d got me into my car and heading down to Southwark two days ago. But I was at a loss to explain the accident itself. I’d been driving slowly, I told them. Martin had known I was coming by car. He clearly hadn’t expected me to put my foot on the wrong pedal. He clearly hadn’t anticipated that the outcome would be anything as bad as this. He hadn’t intended the scene of the accident (the scene that Helena and Sky would stumble upon, moments later) to be anywhere near as grueso
me or severe.
But it wasn’t until after the interview, when I was back in my cell – no longer being filmed and recorded and feeling like a rabbit caught in the headlights – that I was able to even begin to absorb the ‘evidence’ that had been put to me and to comprehend the full extent of what Martin had done. He’d staged the whole thing. He’d set me up. He may not have known that the outcome would be as serious as it had turned out to be, but he’d taken a massive risk, all the same.
He couldn’t have thought it through, I concluded. He’d wanted to see me, to cause trouble in some way, and so when I’d phoned Helena (she’d been having a bath, according to the police, while Sky and Martin waited for her in the common room), Martin, having gone briefly back to her room and ‘just having happened’ to answer her phone, had taken the opportunity to summon me there.
But jumping out into the road in front of me – well, that had to have been a stupid, spur of the moment decision. Though, in hindsight, I could see now that he’d already had it planned when he’d waved at me as I’d driven down Westminster Bridge Road towards him. He’d been aiming to get me to slow down enough so that the impact wouldn’t be too great when I hit him. And the reason he’d been looking around him as my car had headed closer had been to make sure that no-one was watching, that there would be no witnesses to what he was about to do in that split second before he jumped.
My cell was freezing cold. I lay down on the hard, thin mattress, pulled the single blanket I’d been given over my shoulders and closed my eyes. I had a long hard road ahead of me, I knew; I needed to be strong. The pure injustice of the situation was going to be impossible to bear if I thought about it for too long, or too deeply. I needed to find a way to carry on.
Something inside me froze at that very moment, reflecting the temperature around me. I realised that I was angry, angrier than I had ever been in my life. In the past, I’d often cried when I felt angry, and my tears of frustration had easily been mistaken for weakness. I was a woman. Being emotional was part of that – it was what made us female. I’d never tried to deny my femininity or behave like a man. But I would no longer cry. I would no longer feel anything, I decided. It was all just too painful. The only way I could deal with this was to die, just a little, inside.
21
My bail application was heard at Southwark Crown Court eight days later. I’d spent the past week at a women’s prison in Middlesex and it had been the worst week of my life. I’d spoken to my solicitor, Sarah, via video-link, when she’d informed me that she’d instructed a barrister from a local chambers on my behalf, an excellent and experienced lawyer named Daniel Bradstock. But I didn’t meet him until the morning that I arrived at court in the Serco prison van, wearing the ugly uniform prison track suit (I had nothing else, the clothes I’d been arrested in having been seized by the police), my hair dry and stringy from the prison shampoo. I knew that I looked awful, and it did nothing to enhance my mood. If first impressions were what really counted, then I didn’t hold out much hope of things going my way today.
“Your mother, your sister, and your friends, Zara and Catherine, are here,” was the first thing Dan told me, on entering the court cells and shaking my hand. “I think I’m going to leave some of them outside the courtroom, though. I understand that there is a good chance that Zara, at least, will be able to provide a witness statement in support of your case.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. I cleared my throat, which was dry. I’d spoken very little to anyone in the past week, my instincts having told me that this was the best way to survive. “She’s not been well... in the past. I don’t want to put her through any of this if I can help it.”
Dan shook his head and smiled. “I think you’ll find she’s insistent. She came to find me, as soon as I arrived this morning. She’s already been to see your solicitor, I understand.”
I nodded. “That’s... that’s good news. She knows what he’s like – Martin, I mean. She knows I would never have done this. Not deliberately, anyway.”
“And Catherine? I understand that she’s the mother of one of the prosecution witnesses, which puts us – and her – in a slightly difficult position. But she’s here to support you, she made that clear.”
“She knows what Martin’s like too,” I said. “More than anyone. She was engaged to him. She lived with him for years. She’s witnessed his violence firsthand. He was even violent towards Sky, when he was a baby. But I don’t want her to be pitted against Sky, in all of this. He obviously hates me. But he’s her son, after all.”
“Why do you think he hates you?” asked Dan.
“It seems from his statement,” I told him, “that Sky holds me responsible in some way for his mum – Catherine – breaking up with his dad, many years ago. He’s got it all wrong, of course. It was nothing to do with me. But he’s never accepted that, it seems. Martin is a violent and controlling man, but Sky wants to think of him as some kind of hero. He loves his mother, so he’s looking for someone else to blame, namely me. He also wants desperately to please his father, and giving this statement against me in support of him... well, it’s the ultimate in father-son solidarity, I suppose.”
“That seems like a very well thought out assessment.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think.”
“And Helena?”
“She’s clearly been taken in by him too.” I looked up from the old wooden desk where my hands were sitting, where Dan’s hand was scribbling onto an A4 notepad with a bright blue cover. “We’re really close, we always have been. He struggled hard to pull her away from me. But it seems he’s finally done it. He’s won.”
Dan sat back in his chair and gave me a half smile. “I’m not going to pretend this is going to be easy, Lizzie,” he said. “But he hasn’t won, not yet. I’m going to do all I can to help you. And the first thing I’m going to do is to try and get you out of here.”
*
My mum and Keri were the only people I recognised in the courtroom. I was disappointed. I’d hoped to see Helena there, in spite of the statement she’d made against me. I just wanted to see her face, to look into her eyes and to be sure that she was okay. I knew now that Martin had been lying to me when he’d said that there was something wrong with her, but I still wanted to see that for myself after the fright he’d given me.
The judge seemed very fair, and open to hearing both sides of the story, which might sound a stupid thing to say, but after my experience in the police station – where nothing I’d said had been believed, where my account had been ignored, yet again – I’d half expected the judge to ignore anything Dan said on my behalf as well, and to side with the prosecutor against me straight away. The prosecutor had made a strong argument in favour of keeping me locked up, using the unproved knife incident last September and the presence of the fencing sword in my car as weapons in the Crown’s armoury against me, as proof that I was inherently unstable and may go running after the prosecution witnesses again at any time.
But Dan also made a good argument in my favour. I would be contesting this case, loudly and clearly, he told the judge. What had occurred was, from my perspective, a shocking and unfortunate accident, nothing more. I refuted the suggestion that I was prone to carrying weapons and would actively welcome the opportunity to expose the flaws in Martin’s story, in Sky’s evidence, and to have the opportunity to clear my name. I’d been a law abiding and model citizen for over forty years, one who had just spent the worst week of her life locked up in a prison cell. Why would I risk worsening the serious situation that I was already in? I had a good job as a translator and research assistant to a doctor who was recognised as the top in his field. I had a home, and a daughter that I was willing to fight for by exposing the truth and the malice behind Martin’s lies. What good would it do me, instead, to approach Martin in his hospital bed, or Sky, or my daughter, to make pleas or threats towards them in any way?
The judge retired, which I was told was unusual, and re
turned ten minutes later to tell me that he was going to grant me bail. I almost fainted with relief – the cells security staff had to hold me up – but the judge went on quickly to tell me in no uncertain terms that there were a number of conditions which, if broken, would bring me straight back to prison again until the conclusion of my trial. I wasn’t allowed to contact Helena, or go anywhere near her – that was the only condition that mattered to me. But, on the other hand, I had my freedom, at least for now.
Zara and Catherine were waiting with my mum and Keri behind the court building when I walked out. All four of them surrounded me in an instant, shielding me from the local press and their cameras, which were popping behind me. We hugged, our heads together in a huddle, me in my track suit in the middle, feeling and looking not unlike a rugby player caught in a scrum.
I could feel Zara’s tiny hand on my back, firm and strong. “I’ve got you some clothes,” she said, pushing a bag into my arms. “There’s a cafe next door. Lets nip in there and you can get changed.”
“Thank you.” I stroked her arm gratefully and hugged her again.
“Really,” she said, smiling and pointing at the bag of clothes and then at the cafe. “I’ve gotta tell you, you smell.”
I laughed for the first time in over a week.
Dan walked up to us and I shook his hand. “Thank you,” I told him. “Thank you so much.”