Opportunity

by Grimshaw, Charlotte

  I went to his office in town. Murray Ray was a tall, stooped, greying man with sharp, noticing eyes. He was dressed in a fashionable suit and tie. He was hearty in his manner, but there was something elegant and soft and cunning about him too. I told him I was interested in the plight of Andrew Newgate. I said I'd done a bit of my own research on cases of this nature, and on this case in particular, and that unlike most members of the public I knew the justice system got things wrong. I spoke a bit about the power of the state, and how it was up to ordinary people like me to do anything possible to fight when human rights were being eroded. I had my spiel all worked out. The more I talked the more eloquent I felt, and when I finished I thought I'd done a good job.

  He studied his fingernails, considering. 'That's all true. We want to take it further. But there's the issue of funds.'

  'I'm a businessman.'

  He looked at me, sizing me up.

  'Let me meet young Andrew,' I said. 'I hear he is a wonderful pianist.'

  A fortnight later Murray Ray drove me to the prison. He'd been reluctant at first, but he'd opened up over the days. I can be extremely persistent when I set my mind to something. He'd let me see his files, and we spent a lot of time talking about Newgate's trial and what had gone wrong. Jon Sligo had been right: the Crown case was full of holes. It was a sieve. The police had acted unfairly and covered up significant pieces of evidence, some of which Murray had only discovered after Newgate's conviction and subsequent appeal. No wonder the family wanted to take the further appeal. They'd set up a group to campaign on Andrew's behalf. They were passionate about their cause but short of resources. I studied the file and took a lot of notes. Once Murray realised how quick I was at cutting to the heart of the matter, how I knew a bit about the law, and how serious I was, he took me more and more into his confidence. He had an assistant, a chain-smoking young guy called Sean, and he had Sean take me through the files page by page. I had that excited feeling I get when I'm starting something new.

  When we got into the prison a sense of dread came over me at the sight of the razor wire, the claustrophobic buildings, the lines of surveillance cameras. I felt the ugly, dead weight of it. The feeling turned to apprehension when we were about to meet Newgate. I had a memory of my dream about the infinite parallel universes and the droning voice: 'You do not exist, you do not exist.' I was nervous, rehearsing in my head what I was going to say. I felt the way I feel before making some really important pitch. My lips were dry and my throat closed over. And then the door opened and a fresh-faced, freckly young man came hurrying in.

  Andrew Newgate's freckles. Dear oh dear. He was sprinkled; he was strewn with them. Not just on his face but all over his arms and hands. And yet he was a very good-looking boy. He was medium height, with clumsy boyish limbs. You'd think of him as gangly, but he wasn't thin, just awkward. He had big, powerful hands. You could see he'd played sport. (He'd been a keen soccer player, it turned out.) His eyes were steady and he had a nice, willing smile. He'd keep up that smile and then you'd see sadness creep into his face, as if he had moments of pure enjoyment, when he forgot his situation, before reality came back to him.

  He listened politely while I introduced myself and told him why I'd come. I was a businessman, I said, but I was also a fellow citizen who had a responsibility to act when the state was presiding over an injustice. I said I had a whole raft of ideas about the case, and why it was full of holes. I got carried away and ran on. Andrew sat up suddenly and said, 'That's good, Mr . . . Carstone. Thank you. It's just . . . I don't want to win.'

  'Eh?' I stopped.

  'I don't want to win, like it's a competition that's got nothing to do with the truth. I want to be proved innocent.'

  He'd set his chin firmly. He gazed at me with his clear eyes. I was moved. 'Of course,' I said. 'My God, you've suffered. And yet you've kept yourself together. You want to be proved innocent. Of course you do, and you shall. How old are you, Andrew?'

  'Twenty-two.'

  'My God,' I said again. I'd lost my train of thought. There was something so straight and unaffected about him that it made me feel a fool. Here I was grandstanding, holding forth about his fate while he listened, politely and calmly. What interested me was that he didn't chime in, or make protestations of innocence. He didn't try to add to what I was saying. Let's face it, when you've been in business as long as I have you get to be a fairly cynical judge of character, and no one could put anything over on me without the flags going up. But the way he'd cut across me in that boyish way . . . I looked into his face, into his clear, grave eyes. The kid was an open book. In fact, with his honest outburst he'd shut me right up. I sat staring at him with a kind of subdued respect.

  He and Murray talked and I was glad to sit, quietly listening. I was struck by Andrew's plainness and simplicity. Not that he was stupid, but he was softly spoken and calm, and got Murray to explain a number of things he didn't understand. He also asked Murray, very courteously, to help him make some requests of the prison authorities relating to his playing of the keyboard. He frowned with a pain that he quickly suppressed when Murray mentioned the problem of funding his appeal. His parents had died in a car accident when he was a child, and he'd lived with his elderly aunt and uncle. They'd spent all their savings on the case.

  It was time to go. I shook his hand, hard. 'We're thinking of you Andrew,' I said.

  'Thanks, Mr Carstone.'

  'Please. Call me Terry.'

  'Terry,' he said, and looked at me with his calm eyes.

  In the car I was excited. 'That's a murderer? No way. No way, Murray. I've been around. I've been in business, sporting environments. You name it. Terry Carstone knows people.' I lunged around in my seat. I was energised. 'We're going all the way with this.'

  I called Russell. I told him I was going to use a chunk of our money. I called Claudine. 'Baby,' I said, 'I'm on to something meaningful here.'

  We went to Murray's office. Over a bottle of wine we talked practicalities.

  I would fund the appeal. I could easily meet Murray's expenses, which were very modest. To be honest, Russell and I had more money than we'd ever had. It had been a very good year, and I took my hat off to my partner's genius. Russell could make a deal out of thin air, the dear old cowboy.

  I would be part of Andrew's defence team and could study his files at my leisure. I was looking forward to going over them looking for clues. I would leave no stone unturned, I told Murray. He sighed and listened. There were purple shadows under his eyes. He was looking at me the way Jon Sligo did when I had ideas about our computer case. Just because I didn't have a law degree, these guys thought I couldn't be any use. But I had other advantages. I was tenacious and sharp. I could pick up any subject extremely quickly. I was intuitive. I'd been a lot of places in my life and, most important of all, I knew people.

  'You want to go to the Privy Council, don't you?' I said cheerfully.

  Something flicked up in his eyes. I could see he wanted it more than anything.

  'It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,' he said. He looked at his nails. 'You know they're going to stop appeals to the Privy Council soon?'

  'Well. Let's make it happen. Springtime in London.'

  He smiled coldly. 'And you?'

  'I'm going to help that poor young man fight the state.'

  He made a wry face. He waited.

  We were sitting in his office. The room was growing dark. I could see a ferry crossing the harbour, strung with lights.

  'I'm a businessman, Murray,' I said. He didn't move. I was looking at the outline of his body against the window, the harbour behind him.

  'What do you want?' he said.

  'As my mother used to say, "Nothing more than my rights".'

  'Rights.' He turned his hands, studying them.

  'Well. Speaking hypothetically, what if there were books? Or interviews, magazine articles and so forth?' I paused.

  He looked up sharply. 'You want a cut?'

  'A cut?'
I hesitated. 'You're right. That would seem fair. But I'm acting on Andrew's behalf.' I thought about Russell, but dismissed the idea. 'Andrew and I would have to share equally.'

  Murray switched on a lamp. He picked up a pen and pad. He said, expressionless, 'Let's get it down.'

  I sat back and put my feet up on his desk.

  We roughed out an agreement and the next day Murray and I took it to Andrew for him to sign. This meeting and the ones that followed between Murray, Andrew and myself only confirmed my first impression. This calm, sensible, nice young guy was a murderer? No way.

  I became a regular visitor to the prison, and each time I found Andrew the same. He kept his spirits up, and he was always pleased to see me, in his quiet way. A real bond grew between us. I was his connection to the world. If I ever had any doubts going into the prison, when some fact had come up that I couldn't account for, I always came away refreshed in my conviction that this young man was the simplest and gentlest of souls, and that the injustice he had suffered was enormous.

  Murray began his preparations for the Privy Council, and while I didn't neglect the business hours I kept with Russell, I kept right on ploughing through the mountain of files. We spent many hours together in Murray's office as night came on and the harbour went dark and the ferries made their way across to the islands. Sometimes I came home at midnight and Claudine would be letting herself into my house after her evening at The Land, and we would sit on my deck talking about the case. I told her about an idea I had. I knew the Newgate case like the back of my hand now. I didn't know how it was going to turn out but I'd already consulted a number of people in the publishing trade. I was going to write a book.

  One night I had that dream again. The endless stuffed toys, the droning voice telling me I didn't exist. It's always hard to describe the atmosphere of dreams, but the bad thing about this one was the horror when I realised that what the voice was saying was true. I woke up feeling ill, and bloody old. It was morning; the sun was streaming into the bedroom. Claudine was sitting up. I reached up and stroked her hair. I was still blurry and spooked with sleep. She looked at me and I saw something in her beautiful eyes. What was it? It reminded me, strangely, of Andrew Newgate. Was it youth, inexperience? (Claudine was about Andrew's age.) No, more than that, it was a look that seemed to go beyond me, as if she was searching for something she couldn't find. Had I seen that look on Andrew's face? And then she smiled, and I had the strange impression (I suppose I was still upset by the nightmare) that her smile wasn't connected to me. That between the smile and me there was nothing but a terrible void.

  I got up quickly and went to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. I shaved and showered. By the time I'd dressed the spooked feeling had gone. I kissed Claudine, took my briefcase and went out to the car.

  I looked at my diary. I was meeting Russell for a power breakfast, and a journalist after that. In the afternoon I'd scheduled Murray Ray and a TV researcher. Our campaign was gaining momentum. We were going to get Andrew in the news. I was gaining a media profile myself, something I knew would be useful for Andrew, and for me when I came to write my book. In the afternoon I'd agreed to go to a school play with Adele and the girls. Life was good. Life was full.

  I had another idea up my sleeve, one that made me whistle when I thought about it. I was going to marry Claudine. A girl as good-looking as that wasn't going to come along every day. She would be gaining a lot by hooking up with me. After all, what did she have when she moved in? Nothing but a single suitcase and an old alarm clock, the poor girl. Life was a series of chances and it was up to Terry Carstone to grab them when they came along. To take the life I had, and the breaks that came my way, and use them, in any way I could.

  opportunity

  When I was nineteen, two of my friends went down to Dunedin to study for a year, and I went with them. We found a flat in the city, and the three of us got on well and were happy. I started doing a diploma in tourism and my friends were enrolled at the university. We used to have fun cooking dinner together when we got home, doing our shopping in the weekends, going to the beach in summer. We kept the flat nice and clean and sometimes we went to cheap furniture places and bought things to make it look brighter. I could have lived there forever, except I had in the back of my mind that one day I'd find a boyfriend and move in with him. On Sundays I went to church by myself. Up in Auckland I'd usually gone with my mother. I've always got on well with her. My father died when I was seventeen, but she and my brothers and I are a tight family, and when I was living down in Dunedin I missed going to church with her and helping her in the dairy she owned with my uncle, her brother, who had come out from Manchester after her.

  One day I came home and found my flatmates sitting in the kitchen looking at a map of England. I didn't say anything at first and they went silent and kept looking at each other. Finally I said, 'What's up?' They told me they'd decided to quit their studies for a year and go to Europe. I listened and nodded and said that sounded great. Then I went away into my room upset, because they hadn't talked about it with me, and hadn't asked me if I wanted to come, and because I didn't know what would happen to our flat.

  Dee came in and sat on my bed, and I pretended to be asleep. She told me, 'You'll have lots of time to advertise for new flatmates.'

  I sat up and said, 'No, I won't do that. I'm leaving.' I didn't say anything more, just packed my things up and left a few days later. I didn't want new flatmates, because everything about the house was spoiled for me. I knew my friends were closer to each other than to me, because they went to university and I was doing tourism. They used to tease me about going to church and sometimes they made jokes about God, but I'd always thought it was in fun. Now I thought perhaps they'd been snobs all along. I was hurt and I left, but I had a problem then, because I'd always told my mother how happy I was in the flat, and I was too proud to tell her it had gone wrong. So that weekend I answered an ad in the paper and ended up moving in with Reid and Sean.

  Sean was a law student and Reid was a policeman. Sean had wanted to be a policeman too, but his eyesight was poor. The first time I met him he showed me his collection of guns. He was proud of his .303, which had a telescopic sight on it. He let me hold it. He had a couple of smaller guns, too, but the .303 was his favourite. He even gave it a name: Melissa. Sean was thin and white-faced and a chain smoker. He fancied me at first and kept touching my hands and wanting to put his arm around me, but I made it clear I wasn't interested. Reid was dark-haired and unusually good-looking. He was a bodybuilder. He looked nice in his police uniform. Sometimes he walked around the flat in shorts and no shirt. He had a little star tattooed on his shoulder. You could tell he was clever because he was always reading novels. He said he was going to be promoted to detective soon. He wanted to do undercover work. I moved my stuff into the empty room and thought everything would be fine.

  I wasn't happy for long. For one thing, Reid and Sean kept the place an absolute pigsty. I used to clean it up, until I noticed something strange about Sean — my cleaning up annoyed him. He would go silent and stare around the room as if I'd messed up some special order of things. Once he said, out of the blue, 'Remember, .303s go through walls.' I asked him what he meant. I was angry. He just gave me a funny smile and walked out of the room. Reid was cheerfully messy. He was always eating, and his sandwiches spilled out everywhere and his kebabs exploded and leaked sauce, but he never noticed. He mixed up health tonics and vitamin drinks and left the stuff puddled all over the floor. I stopped trying to clean up after a while. The flat was up on the fifth floor and sometimes the rubbish wasn't taken out, and it rotted and maggots got in. When I thought of my old flat with its cheerful rooms, I felt depressed. I tried not to think about my two friends, but I was lonely too. I told my mother everything was going well. She liked it that I was living with a policeman. She said I would be nice and safe.

  I liked Reid but I wasn't so sure about Sean. There was something about him. The only doubt I had abou
t Reid, apart from his mess, was that he and Sean had been friends since they were kids, and this seemed to put a bit of a shadow on his — Reid's — character.

  Sean had a laser fitted to Melissa's telescopic sight. He sat up late at night pointing the red dot at the buildings opposite. He had three or four girlfriends and he made sure they never came to the flat at the same time. They were law students and they got a thrill out of holding the gun, you could tell. I used to stay in my room when Sean's friends came around. Sometimes I came out and sat with the group, but I couldn't really join in. They talked about law and legal cases and about politics, and I didn't know much about that stuff. In my family we talked about who was sick and who was well, who'd lost money, who had big bills to pay, who'd bought a new car. My mother could spend a long time talking about a new fridge or a dishwasher. She and my uncle didn't talk about politics except to say that politicians were no good. They talked a lot about the church, because it was a big part of their lives. Anyway, I felt uncomfortable with the law students, and often I'd go back into my room and watch TV.

  After I'd been there a few months things started going badly between me and Sean. He paced and slammed doors when I was vacuuming. He called me into his room and said I'd got makeup on his towels. A couple of times I got so fed up with the rubbish that I threw some of it into the lightwell. The caretaker complained and Sean had me on about that.

  One night he came back with one of his girlfriends, and I don't know how it started, but she and I had an argument about God. She started off by saying she'd heard I went to church, and at first I thought she was being friendly. I said did she want to come along, and she thought that was a huge joke. She said there was no God and I said that's your opinion. She said it was a load of bullshit and I said it was a matter of faith. She was a smartarse cow, and drunk too. I was angry and tired, and sad and lonely, and disappointed that I couldn't make any friends in the place. She made a stupid joke about Jesus Christ on the cross and I lost my temper and tossed a cushion at her. It landed on the coffee table and all their glasses and ashtrays went flying, and there was wine and ash all over the floor. She shrieked, Sean shouted at me and I fled into my room.