by Martina Cole
‘I have all your papers here, everything pertaining to your case.’
‘How thrilling. Well, you can argue what you like, I have nothing more to add. I took the hammer and I killed him. Simple as that.’
Colin smiled half-heartedly. ‘It’s not as simple as that though, is it, Susan? Something triggered that violent action. We know he beat you regularly, we know he was a violent criminal. I know he beat you badly a few days before you killed him. Why didn’t you kill him then?’
She smiled nastily.
‘I didn’t feel like killing him then. I was sore, hurt, my ribs were broken and my face looked like someone had jumped on it. But the last trial proved that none of that matters. Mine was a premeditated act of murder, I’m surprised they’re even allowing an appeal.’
‘Well, things have moved on since then, haven’t they? You only ever made one statement, on the night the incident occurred. In that statement you claimed you had had enough and that it was time for him to die. Those were your exact words. Now of course we can plead just cause. We’d have to prove he was going to harm you again, that you were terrified of him. If we can convince the court of that, I think we can get the sentence reduced to manslaughter then get you out on time served.’
He smiled, pleased with himself. Expecting her to be as pleased as he was.
‘I have to pretend I was nutty at the time, is that it?’
Colin looked suitably chastened.
‘I don’t want you to think I’m asking you to lie . . .’
Susan shrugged.
‘Listen, Colin, when I hit that ponce with the hammer it was the sanest I had ever been in my life. Now I know that might sound strange to you, but that’s tough. I should have done it years before.’
Colin recognised the truthfulness of her statement. It was in her voice, in her eyes. Seeing her today, with her hair neatly put up, her face clean and scrubbed, she looked a different person from the one in the newspaper photographs of two years before.
Then she had looked fat and frightening. Her face so hard-looking. So bereft of anything remotely like remorse or even worry, certainly nothing like fear. She had sat stone-faced through her trial; her brief, realising what he was dealing with, did not put her in the witness box. Each and every psychiatrist had written the same report. Undecided on her mental state. Refuses to discuss the night in question. Refuses to acknowledge what she did was wrong. Same words each time. Just reiterates that it was time for her husband to die.
In the end the judge had given her a life sentence for murder, saying that he had no option as Mrs Dalston refused to tell anyone what had happened that night and still refused to acknowledge her part in it in any way other than as his killer. The police statement she signed had her admitting she would do it again if she ‘had the chance’. The police had clapped themselves on the back, the tabloids had had a field day and Susan had disappeared into prison and away from everyone’s attention and consequently their minds.
But her four children adored her and it was evident she loved them.
In short Susan had done everything possible to be put into prison. It was as if she’d wanted to be separated from her kids. Wanted to be classed a murderess. She refused to use intimidation or threats from her dead husband as an excuse. She came across as a woman determined to kill, and therefore the judge had to sentence her accordingly.
But Colin’s boss was determined to get her out and had campaigned for an appeal. Now they had just a few months to put forward a new case. Everyone had thought she might finally tell the truth about that night. It seemed they were wrong.
‘Listen, Susan, if you’d only see sense we could maybe get you out. Back home to your children, back to your life.’
She stared at him blankly.
‘We know what he did to you, we’ve looked through your medical records, everything. It’s no shame to have been badly hurt and to retaliate. We’re all capable of it.’
She didn’t answer him for a minute. Finally she spoke as if to a child.
‘But I didn’t retaliate, did I? You forget that. It was five days after he’d last hit me that I killed him. He was unconscious and drunk at the time. A sitting duck. But I tell you something, Colin, and you can write this in your little notebook - when I brought that hammer down on his skull it was the best feeling in the world. I just kept repeating the action. It was better than drink, drugs or sex. I’m locked up here but at least I released my kids from him and what he was. I ain’t making excuses for what I did because I’m glad I did it and two years on I would do it again if I had the chance. Unlike Barry, I’ll pay for my past deeds. Though he paid too in the end.’ She grinned. ‘Oh, he paid all right. I made fucking sure of that.’
Colin stared at her then. He was shocked by what she’d said though inside himself he knew she was in the right. Susan was an eye for an eye person. He understood that and after reading her medical files also understood how someone could reach the point where they would take no more.
If only she could see that they could get a case together for her, get her out on time served. But it was almost as if she relished being locked up, relished her punishment.
When the judge had passed sentence on her, Susan Dalston had laughed. It was the only time she had shown any emotion throughout the whole proceedings. She had refused her counsel’s advice to introduce her previous medical history in evidence. She had refused to do anything, in fact, that would help her case.
In short, she had locked herself up and thrown away the key.
‘What’s happening with me kids?’ she asked Colin.
He smiled.
‘They’re doing well. In fact they’re coming in this week as you know. But all of them are doing fine. Rosie, is it, the youngest? She’s settled well with her foster parents and they adore her. Is there no one you know who could take the others on, though? The eldest, I believe, lives part of the time with a friend of yours, Roselle Digby? Could she not maybe take the others too?’
Susan shook her head. ‘Nah, she can’t. I wish they’d let me mate Doreen take them. She was up for it.’
Colin nodded. ‘I’m afraid social services wouldn’t allow her to take them at any cost.’
Susan grinned.
‘She might be a bleached blonde slapper with five kids by different fathers but I tell you something, mate, she’s a wonderful mother and a wonderful person. It’s all relative, ain’t it?
‘What will be the upshot with the kids anyway? No one seems to tell me anything really.’
Colin couldn’t answer her as he didn’t know himself. He had a meeting with the children’s social workers later in the week.
‘I’ll know more after I’ve spoken to Miss Beacham, the social worker.’
Susan nodded again and lit another cigarette.
‘So what are you going to do then?’
Colin shrugged.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s a lot I can do, does there?’
‘I’ll just do me time quietly then. I’ll be out in four, maybe a bit earlier. I don’t know why you’re still bothering with me anyway. I’ve nothing to add to what I said before.’
‘I don’t either to be honest. I’d like to ask you one thing, though, Sue. Think about your four children and what it must be like for them growing up without their mother. They love you very much and as a mother you received nothing but praise. Though where you ever learned to be one, I don’t know.’
Susan did laugh now.
‘You’ve met with me own mother then? Old bitch. She sold her story to the papers and made a pile.’ She shrugged. ‘Good luck to her really, I expected no less. But to answer your question, I did the opposite to her with mine, I made sure of that.’
‘Well, I can’t see any of your children murdering anyone.’
Susan’s face blanched and she shook her head.
‘No, Colin, neither can I.’
Standing up, she terminated the interview.
‘Look at her, she really t
hinks she’s something special.’
Susan didn’t answer, but seeing Matty hold one of her surgeries was an eye opener. She watched as Rhianna took money or goods for Matty from each of the women who had come seeking the professional advice of a convicted murderess.
Susan saw the hope on the women’s faces as they consulted her, saw their worries partially lifted after they had spoken to her, and decided that if Matty wasn’t having anyone over then good luck to her.
Susan moved nearer the table so she could listen properly.
What Matty was saying to a young black prostitute was actually making sense and she went up in Susan’s estimation then. As long as she wasn’t trying to rip anyone off Susan was all for free enterprise, and the prison system and that seemed to go hand in hand. It was amazing what some people would do for a filter cigarette or a Mars bar.
Suddenly Lionel Richie was blaring out of the radio as one of the girls, hearing a favourite song, turned it up full volume. She was dancing around, singing, ‘Hello, Is it me you’re looking for?’ when the PO turned it down and one of the more rampant lesbians shouted out, ‘No, it fucking ain’t, you ugly whore!’
Everyone laughed and the girl carried on singing to herself.
Susan, still grinning, listened to Matty giving advice.
‘You’re in for affray and threatening behaviour, right?’
The girl nodded. ‘And GBH.’
‘Well, then, tell your brief to do a deal. Say you’ll hold your hand up to the GBH but to drop the other charges and you’ll plead guilty with mitigating circumstances. You was on drugs and not in complete control. Ergo you will have the twelve steps on the unit and be out in no time. I mean, you’re up for a wedge on your previous anyway. This way you can get a reduced as well as a cushy time on the wrap programme.’
The girl smiled, full of hope now.
‘Thanks, Matty. I’ll do that.’
Susan watched her skip away happily. She knew that for many the worst part of prison was finding out what was going to happen to them so they could get their head around it. When they knew the score they could cope.
Susan was enjoying being on the remand wing while her so-called appeal was going on, though she had only agreed to it in the first place so as to get nearer the kids for a while. What she really wanted was to be placed nearer London if possible. It was hard only seeing them now and again, when the social services could find time to bring them up. It was such a journey for the kids as well, Durham not being the most accessible prison in the country. Nor the most comfortable either.
What she really wanted was Cookham Wood or somewhere with a secure unit and not too much travelling. Somewhere the kids could run about a bit, have a bit of a laugh.
She watched all afternoon as women came to Matty and she gave them advice. Susan listened and found most of it pretty sound. Then a young girl with long blonde hair and wide-set eyes approached and Rhianna stepped in front of her.
The girl held up two cigarettes. Matty shook her head and pulled a face.
‘Fuck off, bitch, we ain’t got nothing for you here.’
Rhianna’s voice was hard. One of the women round the table stood up menacingly and the POs moved nearer, fearing a tear up as a fight was called in prison.
‘Write to your boyfriend and ask his advice, you little bitch. He helped you kill the kid, didn’t he?’
The girl dropped her head on to her chest.
‘She still writes to him. He stabbed her little boy, burned him and tortured him, but you still write him love letters, don’t you, darlin’?’
The women were getting annoyed, reminded of their own children in the care of relatives or the state. Children who were loved and wanted though their mothers were banged up in prison. In fact a lot of the time women were there because of their kids. Prostitutes, shoplifters, fraudsters were often trying the only way they knew how to feed and clothe their kids, as everyone expected them to. They had men who did nothing other than impregnate them and then walk away, on to the next woman and the next kid, and the next.
When someone like Caroline Hart came along they hated her with a vengeance because she had let someone destroy what was to others the most precious thing in their lives. They might kick each other’s heads in, fight and argue, but none of them would harm their kids. It was the unwritten law.
The PO escorted the girl from the rec room. They were trying to defuse the situation before it got out of hand. In fact she should be in isolation but it wasn’t happening for some reason and so they had to be extra-vigilant in case one of the women decided to take the law into her own hands. Something that frequently happened in prison.
The tension left the room with Caroline and Matty started to pack up her stuff. Rhianna would give her the ‘split’ later in the day, and Matty, who didn’t smoke anything except the occasional joint, would sell it on to the other women. Rhianna was also taking bets, and running a protection racket.
Susan watched it all. She knew Rhianna was watching her as hard as she was watching Rhianna; the other woman was probably worried Susan was going to try and take over from her. But she wasn’t. She would have to talk to her about that at some point and put the record straight.
Until then she had to look hard, well able to take care of herself, and like she wasn’t in the least bit bothered that a big black violent lunatic wanted to fight her at some point in the near future.
As she rolled another cigarette Susan wondered what her kids were up to and longed to see their little faces, bright with glee and happy because they were near her. She shook off the depressing thought that she could only see them at someone else’s whim and made herself accept the fact once more.
One day, she promised herself, all this would be over. Really over. She would have done her bit, paid the price for being stupid enough to let Barry Dalston into her life.
Wendy poured coffee for herself and Roselle from the percolator. Roselle watched her, touched by the girl’s obvious happiness at going to see her mother. In the last two years she had changed so much.
On the night Roselle had picked her up after the murder, the girl had been in a terrible state, shaking and stuttering with fear. Like a young gazelle caught in the hunter’s trap. Roselle had introduced herself as a friend of her mother’s and explained that Susan had asked her to take Wendy for a while until everything settled.
What was so shocking to Roselle, and so sad, was the fact that she knew without being told exactly why Susan had killed her husband. It was obvious what had happened to the girl. Roselle wondered then how she had ever seen anything in Barry. How she could have deluded herself that with her he was okay. Wendy was his own flesh and blood and he had taken her as if she was a nothing, lower than a paid whore. Roselle saw it in the way the girl walked, in the bruises all over her body and in the blood she was losing for a week after the event.
Hatred for Barry had entered her heart that night. She only wished she could have seen what Susan had done to him, been there with another hammer so she could have struck a few blows for righteousness herself.
She also understood Susan’s reluctance to let on what had happened in her home that night and throughout her married life. She was protecting her daughter and herself. Why should people know that a man diagnosed with a venereal disease only a short while previously had taken his young daughter and raped her? The girl would have to live with everyone knowing that for the rest of her life. She did not deserve that, she was the innocent in it all.
Part of Roselle also felt responsible for what happened. If only she had not dumped him like she had . . . he must have suffered. But how could he bring himself to make his own child suffer so terribly?
She took her coffee from the girl and they smiled at one another. They had never discussed exactly what had happened and Roselle would never force things. Her home had become a haven for the girl from everyone who knew what her mother had done. Who looked at her as the daughter of a woman who had slaughtered her husband in cold
blood, without a thought for the four children she was leaving both fatherless and motherless. The woman made out in the tabloids to be a ruthless sort who happily lived off her husband’s immoral earnings and embraced his way of life.
Barry had somehow been painted as a loveable cockney rogue who had become dependent on drink and drugs and therefore was not wholly responsible for his own actions.
As usual excuses were being made for him because he was a man. Men could be violent, it was in their nature, why wars came about. But not women. When a woman was violent it was deemed morally wrong. It was Susan who was the bad person because all she ever said at her trial was that she would kill him again if she had the chance.
The papers had jumped on that statement. Deprived of a Myra Hindley figure for so long, they’d turned her into a monster.
It was ludicrously unfair and something Roselle did not fully understand. Why didn’t Susan let on what her life had really been like? That she wasn’t some kind of gangster’s moll who, after a night in the pub where her sister had had a fight with another woman and Susan herself had been drunk, had come home and decided to kill her husband.
By rights she should be out now and looking after her kids, the only thing in life she had ever wanted to do.
Wendy cut them both a small slice of cherry cake. Putting one carefully on a plate, she passed it to Roselle with a small linen napkin. Roselle took it, trying to hide her smile. She realised poor Wendy thought she was quite genteel. If only she knew!
‘Are you going in to see Mum now she’s nearer home?’ the girl asked.
Roselle shook her head.
‘I can’t go. I can’t bear her to be in there, to be honest.’
Wendy nodded in understanding and her face was so painfully beautiful, and so like her mother’s, that Roselle felt an overwhelming urge to cry.
Wendy had embraced the new eighties fashions whole-heartedly and Roselle had indulged her. Although she helped out financially with the other children, she didn’t see that much of them. Only now and again when she did a check on Sue’s behalf to see how they were really faring.