by Pat Barker
‘Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.’
‘I wrote to the Home Office, but I got the standard brush-off.’
A pause. Tom was massaging the skin of his forehead, as he always did when he was stressed. ‘You know the English teacher you mentioned? Tell me a little bit more about him.’
‘Angus MacDonald,’ Danny said, in a broad Scottish accent. ‘He was… a very, very good teacher, and I started writing little bits and pieces for him. Extra stuff, not just in the classroom. About animals on the farm, that sort of thing. Then it got on to my parents, and…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Various things that happened.’
‘But not the murder?’
‘No.’ Danny paused to wipe sweat off his upper lip. ‘Look, after the trial I spent one night in prison, proper grown-up prison, there was nowhere else for me to go, and it absolutely stank – piss and cabbage. And I thought – nobody told me anything – I thought, This is it. And then next day the Greenes turned up and took me to Long Garth. And after I was settled in, Mr Greene came and sat on the bed, and he said – I can’t remember the exact words obviously, but it was all to do with putting the past behind me. Just forget it. And that was that, and because I admired him – and because I was shocked out of my skull – I tried to do it. I lived for four years in this sort of eggshell, until Angus came along and smashed it. And he wasright. Even then, I knew he was right, but, at the same time, I was scared out of my wits by it’
‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing happened. He left. It was only a temporary appointment anyway.’
There was a story here, Tom thought, and he wasn’t being told it. ‘And he left before you got to the murder?’
‘Yes.’
‘And no more attempts after that?’
‘In prison I joined a therapy group. Which was pathetic. Load of wankers telling the same lies they’d told in court. But the guy in charge had one really good idea, or anyway I thought so. He used to give people a tape recorder and tell them to say whatever they wanted, let it all… you know, spew out, and the only rule was you had to burn the tape at the end. I really liked the idea of that. So I got the tape recorder, and off I went, and… you were sort of supervised. There was somebody outside the room. And I couldn’t say a bloody word. I just sat there and watched it going round.’
‘What was going through your mind?’
‘Frustration. And then I started to think perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. I mean, what’s to stop somebullshitting from beginning to end? You know…’ His voice became an aggressive whine.’ “It wasn’t really my fault, other people had a lot to do with it, I’ve had a hard life…” Why would somebody tell the truth just because they’re talking to themselves? That’s the world’s most uncritical audience. You need somebody who can say, “Hey, c’mon, it wasn’t like that.”
A sort of a…’
‘Bullshit detector?’
‘Yeah, something like that. A reality checker.’
‘And you couldn’t do that with the therapist?’
‘No, he only did group work. And anyway…
’ Danny stopped, and for a moment Tom thought he wasn’t going to go on. But then, looking out of the window, he said, ‘Whenever I’ve imagined myself trying to talk about it, it’s always been with you.’
‘Because I was there?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘I can see it might make things easier.’
‘No, not easier. But the thing is, I can be Danny with you. I can’t be Danny with anybody else.’
Tom said slowly, ‘I’m surprised you still trust me.’ ‘You mean, because the last time I spilled the beans it all came out in court?’
‘If you think you “spilled the beans”, Danny… You were the most self-contained, wary kid I’d ever met.’
‘There, you see? That’s exactly what I need. Somebody who knows what it was like.’
‘I wasn’t there most of the time.’
‘No, but you’d know if I was lying. To myself, I mean. Obviously, I won’t be lying to you.’ He laughed. ‘No point.’ Despite the laughter, he was sweating. Suddenly, he stood up. ‘Do you mind if I pop out for a bit? I need a cigarette.’
Tom held out a polystyrene cup with cigarette butts floating on the dregs.
‘Yeah, I know, but…’ He jerked his head at the ‘No Smoking’ sign. ‘I’m a good boy, I am.’
That smile, Tom thought, as the door closed behind him. It was enough to make an atheist believe in damnation.
Restless, he got up and went across to the window, wishing that he too could escape from the fetid little room, but reluctant to leave, in case Danny came back and found him gone. There wasn’t too much antagonism there, he thought. Some. Probably rather more than Danny admitted, but not enough to matter. The fact was, anybody trying to help Danny would need a pretty robust identity to cope with some of the things he was likely to throw at them. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but he’d decided to do it. In the end, the question was not whether he would take Danny on, but whether he was prepared to abandon him. This wasn’t the start of a professional relationship, but the continuation of one that had begun thirteen yean ago.
The smell in this room was intolerable. Tom went to the door and flung it open, only to see Danny coming along the narrow corridor towards him, head down, striding along as if he were in open country.
Baulked of his need to escape, Tom retreated into the room, and sat down. ‘Better?’
‘Yeah,’ Danny said, with an apologetic smile. ‘Filthy habit, can’t kick it.’
‘Is that the only one?’
Danny blinked. ‘Apart from temazepam, yes.’
‘I just want to get one or two things straight. Have you seen a transcript of the trial?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think that’s confused your own memories?’
‘No, it didn’t have any impact at all. It was too different. Anyway, it’s the… It’s not the trial I want to talk about.’
‘So we’ll be focusing on your childhood. Well, the bit of your childhood that came before…’
‘That’s all of it. There wasn’t much childhood after.’
‘What we talk about is entirely up to you. I might ask you to fill in something I’m not clear about, but that’s all. Basically, you decide. Is that all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘The other thing is, do you mind if I talk to other people? Obviously, I won’t repeat anything you tell me.’ He saw Danny smile. ‘No, this time the confidentiality is absolute. Only, if I were going to talk to other people, I’d probably need to tell them you were seeing me. Is that all right?’
Danny was shaking his head.
‘It’s entirely up to you.’
‘I don’t want my father involved. As far as I know he doesn’t know where I am, and that suits me fine.’
‘I was thinking of the headmaster at Long Garth.’
‘Mr Greene?’ He looked surprised. ‘Yeah, all right. I don’t mind that.’
‘All right, then. One more thing. If I think you’re becoming more depressed as a result of the sessions, we’re going to have to think very carefully about whether we go on.’
‘I don’t want to start, and then give up.’
‘No, but there’re all kinds of compromises. I was thinking twice a week initially, but if things get a bit tough there’s no reason why you can’t take a week out. All I’m saying is we need to be flexible.’
‘All right. I do want to get on with it, though.’
‘I’ll have a word with Martha, and as soon as I’ve done that we can arrange a time.’
‘Okay.’
Danny seemed subdued now, bracing himself perhaps. The moment Tom made a move, he stood up and held out his hand. As Tom took it, he was remembering the embrace that had ended their first meeting, the child’s hot, sticky face pressed into his midriff. And then the warder’s comment: ‘Well, he is a horror, isn’t he?’ echoing in his head, as he wa
lked back to his car, where, waiting for him, spilling out of the file and over the back seat, were the photographs of Lizzie Parks, the horror of the images impossible to connect with the child he’d just left.
Danny was right, in one way. He did need to do this. He needed to make the connection.
NINE
It was nonsense what Danny had said about the trial, and Tom knew it was nonsense. He had an adult memory of the proceedings and Danny did not. Simple as that. But Danny’s words niggled away at him, nevertheless. Along with other problems. Lauren was proving difficult to contact, and that had to be deliberate. Often when he phoned, she was out, and she didn’t reply to messages left on the answering machine. When he did succeed in getting through to her, she was remote and monosyllabic. The book too had reached a sticky patch, when he simply had to stop and do some more research before he could move on again. Nothing much was going right, but he just had to put his head down and get on with it.
He spent the morning after his interview with Danny in the medical library, looking up papers on the microfiche. He hated the machines, which produced, if he persisted in using them long enough, visual disturbances that resembled a migraine, though without pain. By the time he left the library, feeling physically and mentally sick, he knew he was in for one of them. The sunlight flashing on windscreens and bumpers hurt his eyes. By the time he got to his car, there was a dark spot at the centre of his field of vision in his right eye, surrounded by a halo of tarnished silver light. He moved his head, as he always did, trying to get rid of it, though he knew it was pointless. The black circle moved with his head. A patch of temporary ischaemia on the surface of his retina. As a boy he’d been fascinated by it, because he was looking at the absence of sight, and the paradox pleased him. Now it was merely a nuisance.
Since it wasn’t safe to drive he had to sit in the hot car till it was over. It lasted about ten minutes. After the last flashing light had faded, he sat with his head in his hands, feeling totally washed up. For some reason, despite the absence of pain and vomiting, and all the more distressing aspects of a migraine, these episodes exhausted him. Yet he felt the world was a new place. He looked round the car park, and his unimpeded vision made every object he saw miraculous.
On the spur of the moment he decided to phone Nigel Lewis, who had been Danny’s solicitor at the time of the trial. Phone pressed to his ear, he leant against the side of the car, fully expecting to be told that Mr Lewis was in court and unavailable for the rest of the day. Instead he came on the line at once.
After exchanging greetings, Tom said, ‘You remember Daniel Miller?’
‘Miller? I don’t think –’.
Tom could hear a conversation going on in the background. ‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted, trying not to sound impatient, as Nigel put a hand over the mouthpiece and made some apologetic remark to the other people in the room. ‘The murder of Lizzie Parks. He was ten, remember?’
‘Miller? Oh God, yes. Of course I remember.’
‘Well, he’s out. He came to see me the other day.’
Another aside to the people in the room.
‘Look, can we talk?’ Tom asked. ‘I mean, can we meet somewhere?’
‘Cooperage? One o’clock?’
‘Fine.’ It was almost that now.
The Quayside never failed to lift Tom’s spirits, no matter how low his mood when he arrived. He leant on the railings for a few minutes, listening to gulls cry and grizzle, watching the tough, brown, sinewy river flow under the bridge and on towards the sea. You could smell the sea on windy days like this, imagine cliffs crumbling, the coast nibbled away, big concrete tank traps, eroded by spring and neap tides, blown as specks of grit into the eye.
Nigel, a great believer in liquid lunches, had arrived first and was already standing at the bar, holding his usual pint of lager. ‘I nearly ordered for you,’ he said, as Tom went up to him.
‘Thanks, I will have one.’
‘So. What’s the matter?’ Nigel said, as they set their pints down on a table at the far end of the bar.
‘Nothing’s the matter, he –’
‘So did he just show up? How long’s he been out?’
‘Nearly a year.’
Nigel lifted the glass to his mouth. ‘Oh well, I suppose they couldn’t keep him in for ever.’
‘You’re not his solicitor any more?’
‘No, thank God. So anyway what happened?’
‘We bumped into each other. And then he decided it might be helpful if he talked to somebody.’
‘Helpful to him, of course. Figures.’
‘I’ve said I’ll see him.’
‘Why?’
‘Curiosity, I suppose. Partly. It’s not often you get the chance to follow up a case like that.’ He smiled. ‘It’s not often you get a case like that.’
‘But he’s not a p0061tient? I mean, you’re –’
‘Oh no, no. He’s made it perfectly plain he doesn’t want treatment. He just wants to talk.’
Nigel smiled his well –oiled smile. ‘I suppose it’d be quite a feather in your cap to write that one up, wouldn’t it?’
No point trying to explain to Nigel the effect of Danny’s hot face against his stomach all those years ago. Nigel focused on the lowest common denominator of human behaviour, and over the years had become totally, devastatingly cynical. Which left him, Tomthought, not merely blind to the more-than-occasional goodness of human beings, but to the evil as well. His was a world where people looked after number one, and kept an eye on the main chance. He seemed unable to grasp that some people act out of a disinterested love of destruction. Evil, be thou my good… That had been left out of his repertoire. He was lucky.
‘No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. It was something he said, it’s been bothering me a bit. I mean –. briefly, he said it was my evidence that convicted him – and of course I reminded him about the forensic evidence, and all that, but… he didn’t bat an eyelid. He simply said, “No. It was you.”‘
‘Hmm. Sounds as if he’s read a transcript.’
This was not the response Tom had expected. Nigel put down his lager, wiped his mouth discreetly on the back of his hand and sat back on the bench seat, looking grave. Tom ought, perhaps, to have welcomed this evidence that he was being taken seriously, that his anxiety had not automatically been dismissed as groundless, but he didn’t. He wanted his concern taken seriously, and the grounds for it dismissed. Nigel’s response was just exasperating.
‘You sure you bumped into him?’ Nigel asked. ‘He didn’t come looking for you?’
Tom was not going to mention the attempted suicide, the coincidence of their meeting again like that. He knew, anyway, what Nigel would have said. Instead, he reverted to Danny’s remark about Tom’s
evidence having convicted him, recalling details of the case, reminding Nigel of the vast quantity of forensic evidence that had linked Danny to the crime, the fact that he’d been missing from school that day, the eyewitnesses who’d seen him running away from Lizzie Parks’s house. He was beginning to gabble, to make sarcastic remarks, anything to get Nigel to say of course it was ridiculous. He desperately needed Nigel to say that his evidence had merely confirmed what the jury knew already, but Nigel remained ominously silent. ‘You know, I almost get the feeling he thinks he wouldn’t have been convicted if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘Oh, that’s putting it a bit strong.’
‘A bit strong?’
‘I don’t like the sound of this, Tom. You don’t have to see him, surely?’
‘No, it’s –’
‘And if he starts pestering you, all you have to do is to tell the Home Office. He’ll be back inside in no time. That’s one thing you can say about the system. They’re on a very short leash.’ He raised his glass to his lips, pausing to add: ‘Thank God.’
‘I suppose what I want from you is some sort of reassurance that it’s not true. I mean, I’ve always assumed my contribution was… trivial, really
, and what actually convicted him was the forensic evidence.’
Nigel didn’t actually squirm on the bench, because he was too bulky for his movements to be interpreted in that way.’ Ye –es, but you know the forensic evidence really only connected him to the scene, and he didn’t deny being there. He didn’t deny touching her, he didn’t deny lifting the cushion off her face. There was nothing really conclusive. It’s not as if she had claw marks all over her face and he had her skin under his fingernails.’
‘But his fingerprints were all over the bedroom.’
‘The kittens were in the bedroom. He’d been to see the kittens twice – or so he said. Lizzie wasn’t around to deny it. The point is, Tom, the jury believed him. You know how long I hesitated about putting him in the box. I wasn’t frightened he was going to crack under the pressure and tell a pack of stupid lies – I knew he wouldn’t. I thought he’d come across as an arrogant little bastard – which he was. But in the event it paid off. He stood up straight, he looked them in the eye, he was well turned out, admitted that, yes, he’d been a naughty boy, he’d nicked off school, yes, he’d gone to the house, but only to see the kittens, and he was utterly devastated when he found the body. And when he saw the naughty man at the top of the stairs, he was frightened, he thought the naughty man was going to kill him, and so he didn’t tell anybody. Mad piece of behaviour in an adult, totally normal in a ten-year-old. I was looking at them all the way through. They believed him, Tom. They looked at that kid, and they didn’t believe he’d done it. I didn’t believe it, and I knew he had.’
‘And I convinced them he had?’
‘You convinced them he was capable of it. By the time Smithers was through with you, you’d told them that Danny was capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality…’ Nigel was counting points off on his fingers. ‘Fully understood that killing somebody was seriously wrong, not just naughty. Fully understood that death was a permanent, irreversible state. Now I’m not saying you were wrong, but none of that helped Danny. By the time you’d finished what they had in their minds was not a nice little boy, but a precocious little killer.’