Nine Lives

by Bernice Rubens

  ‘You’re early,’ he heard Mary call from the kitchen. ‘Do you want some lunch?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Just popped in for some papers. Another murder, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Shrink?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘But close. An alternative therapist. Unqualified. But obviously qualified enough for his purpose. It could go on for ever.’

  She knew better than to ask if there were any clues. Mary had lived with the killer alongside her husband. She knew every detail of the man’s activities. She had shared her husband’s hopes and disappointments, to the extent that she almost shared his responsibility. There was nothing she could offer him. Except lunch.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘A salad, a piece of strong cheddar, and a glass of red wine. It won’t do you any harm.’

  He was tempted. But lunch at home would be a rehearsal for retirement, and he knew that he would miss the station canteen. He would miss its gossip, its speculation, its camaraderie. He had to face yet another failure, and take the consequences, whatever they might be. To be taken off the shrink case would certainly afford a measure of relief, but at the same time, he would fight his lone corner to persevere.

  He went to Miss Brown’s funeral. And looked for the stranger. Of all the shrink funerals he had attended, this was the most crowded. And the most unconventional. Miss Brown lay in a cardboard coffin, which was painted with red and yellow chrysanthemums. The chapel was lined with scented candles, and a live rock band sat on the platform. Friend after friend spoke of Miss Brown as a healer, enabler and, above all, as a loyal friend. She had enriched many lives and would be truly missed. The band played and they sang her favourite songs. It was more of a concert than a funeral, an almost happy celebration. Yet its aftermath was the saddest of all. Wilkins stayed in the chapel long after the mourners had gone and once again he resolved never to leave his post until he could hold that monstrous killer and put him clean away.

  Me again …

  Me again. I keep thinking of poor Mrs Cox. I see her banging at the gates of the prison, holding on to them for fear of falling in a drunken stupor. I see her turning away, down the path that leads to the road. And then I lose her. I wonder how she got back to the ferry or whether she even made it at all. I have to wait another week before my next visit, and half of its purpose will be to see Mrs Cox. I am drawn towards her without quite knowing why. We have nothing in common except for husbands in stir. But that’s all I need to have in common with anybody. There is nothing else in my life that so preoccupies me. Because I think about it all the time. Like Mrs Cox, I wonder why I visit him, and like her I am confused. Our cases are not that different. Both our husbands were found guilty and both proclaimed their innocence. But there the likeness ends. Mr Cox was found with a bloodied axe in his hand and with his headless mother-in-law at his feet. Hardly a picture of innocence. Whereas my Donald was found clean and at home, minding his own business. And weaponless. In my mind I have no doubt about Mr Cox’s guilt, and he says he’s innocent because he has to join the common chorus of Parkhurst. But is my Donald singing too? And for the same reason? I think of the trial and how he admitted his guilt to every murder, but claimed in the same breath that he was innocent.

  I wasn’t at home when he was arrested, I’d gone out for the evening with the boys. We’d been to the cinema and, for the life of me, I can’t remember the film. Donald doesn’t like the cinema so he stayed at home. He said he had work to do. We came back late, and Donald wasn’t in the house. It didn’t bother me. He often went out for a late-night walk. To clear his head, he used to say. It was about eleven o’clock when the phone rang. It was Donald, ringing from the police station. ‘I’m innocent,’ were his first words.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’ve been arrested,’ he said. ‘I’m at the station. Will you come? I need overnight things. And don’t tell the boys.’

  ‘Why have they arrested you?’ I had to ask.

  ‘I’m innocent,’ he said again.

  Then he put the phone down.

  ‘Who was that?’ Matthew asked. ‘What’s happened?’ He could see from my trembling that all was not well.

  So I told them. I had to. I could think of no excuse for running out at that time of night with pyjamas in my hand. They were stunned. Unbelieving.

  ‘Shall we come with you?’ they asked. I told them no, but that they should wait up until I returned. I packed an overnight bag with Donald’s things and took a taxi to the station.

  I was not allowed to see him alone. He was in a cell and a policeman stood in the corner. We whispered to each other, but we were still overheard.

  ‘What’s the charge?’ I asked him. ‘What are you supposed to have done?’ My use of ‘supposed’ declared me on his innocent side.

  ‘Murder,’ he said. ‘Ten murders. They’ll try me for one. The last one, but I shall ask for the others to be taken into consideration.’

  I thought ‘consideration’ was an odd word. Did it make him more or less innocent? I started to cry. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘I’m in court tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll get bail. I’ll be on remand until the trial.’ He seemed so matter-of-fact about it all, as if he himself had organised its production. ‘I’ll see a solicitor before the hearing,’ he added, ‘and then we’ll take it from there.’

  ‘Take what?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe a word of what he was saying.

  ‘My innocence,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Then another officer came to the cell and told me I had to leave. I held Donald in my arms. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s all a terrible mistake. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  I was glad to leave and find some place to sift through my thoughts, to pinch myself awake from what I considered to be a bad dream. But I was not in bed. I was sitting on a bench outside the police station, wide awake. And thunderstruck. I asked myself when he could have committed those crimes. I knew where he was most of the time. He was in his office or he was at home. He simply didn’t have time to do anything else. And surely I would have noticed some change in him. He was sometimes depressed, sometimes elated, but that was the norm with him. I was convinced that somebody somewhere had made a terrible mistake.

  The boys were waiting up for me. I couldn’t fob them off with excuses. Tomorrow, after the hearing, they would find out anyway. So I told them all I knew. ‘He keeps saying he’s innocent,’ I told them.

  ‘Of course he is,’ they said. ‘They’ve just got the wrong man.’

  I was glad of their support, shortlived as it turned out to be. None of us slept that night. We kept meeting each other in the kitchen, making tea. We could hardly wait for the morning and the hearing that would prove a monumental error.

  People were queuing outside the court, baying for blood. I wanted to kill them all. I pushed my way into the courtroom, with my boys in tow. Donald was already seated in the dock, flanked by two policemen. He was talking to a man who stood below him. I presumed that the man was his lawyer. When they had finished speaking, Donald looked around the court, and I raised my hand hoping he would spot me. But he clearly could not decipher me among the crowd. The hearing lasted only fifteen minutes. Donald was asked to state his name and his address, and then the charges were read out. ‘Rubbish,’ I heard the boys mutter, and an indignant ‘shush’ came from those who sat near us. ‘That’s his wife,’ I heard one of them say. ‘Two of a kind, I reckon,’ her companion said. I felt no need to defend myself. We were two of a kind, Donald and I. And both innocent. The magistrate then asked Donald how he pleaded. ‘Not guilty,’ he said. Bail was not even asked for. Such a request on such a charge would have been laughed out of court. He was committed for trial at the Old Bailey in two months’ time.

  As we left the court, the boys and I, we were ambushed by photographers. I don’t know how they knew who we wer
e, why we were any different from the other spectators, but word must have gone around that we were kin. I was furious, mainly for the boys’ sake. They were embarrassed and tried to hide their faces. I suggested they should go away. They could stay with my cousin Frieda in Scotland. They could lie low there until the trial began, and their father’s innocence could be proved.

  They agreed to go, but reluctantly, wishing to stay for my support. But at the time, I needed to be alone, for it was then, after the hearing, that my doubts began to surface, together with my certainty of his innocence and I needed to be alone in my confusion.

  I went to see him, of course, while he was on remand. He seemed strangely cheerful. He had no complaints, he said. He was being treated well. Then he began to laugh. I asked him what was so funny and he said that a psychiatrist had been sent to examine him. ‘I gave him pretty short shrift,’ he said. ‘I told him to find himself a more honest and less damaging career. I told him to stuff it and, knowing my history, I think he was mightily relieved to get away.’

  Because Donald seemed so unworried, I pretended to share his optimism. He kept insisting on his innocence.

  The second time I visited him on remand it was to learn that he had dispensed with the services of his lawyer. He told me he was going to defend himself. It didn’t seem like a very good idea to me. If he were innocent, as he kept claiming, he would need the support of professional skill to prove it. ‘Why have you sent him away?’ I asked.

  ‘He doesn’t believe what I tell him. I tell him that I certainly have killed, but that I am innocent. He just refuses to understand it.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand it myself,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand it,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect anybody to understand it. I just want people to believe me. I am guilty of murder, but I am innocent, and I don’t have to explain why.’

  It struck me that a judge and jury would not be entirely satisfied with such a confession. But I said nothing.

  ‘You just have to believe me,’ Donald kept saying. I was angry with him and I wanted to demand reasons why I should believe him, but I looked at him sitting there, confined, and I knew he didn’t need my anger. And it was then that pity sprouted, and that, together with my doubts, apt companions, have dogged my days and nights since the verdict.

  We went to the trial every day, me and my boys, but I have to confess, I remember very little about it. And understood even less. Donald spoke for himself and made no attempt to clarify his plea. He said he had indeed killed Miss Robinson but that he was innocent. He asked for nine other murders to be taken into consideration, and he admitted with total honesty that he had killed them all. Yet I am innocent, he kept protesting. When asked if he could explain his innocence, and give some reason for the killings, he simply said, ‘I was protesting against a profession that is corrupt, that in the name of healing cripples, damages and threatens life itself. That is my protest, a protest for which I make no apology. You have to believe me.’ His answers would have tried the patience of Job.

  I knew that the trial would not last for very long. People were getting tired of Donald’s refusal to explain. His protest was not acceptable. The verdict could only go against him even if only on the basis of the jury’s irritation. It was not surprising when it came. Guilty. And a life sentence.

  Almost a week later, after making their arrangements, my boys left home. It took me some weeks to accept that I was a grass widow and very long grass at that. Since then, I serve my sentence along with Donald, which is why I think constantly of Mrs Cox who is doing exactly the same. And though either of us could be liberated at any time, neither of us can deal with such pity-laden freedom. Drunk or sober, Mrs Cox will be on the train, the ferry and the bus and I shall be by her side, because we cannot help ourselves.

  The Diary

  Eight Down. One to Go.

  I think of those weary, sturdy, determined mountaineers who climb Everest. There must come a moment when the summit is in their sights. Do they sit for a while and wonder? That spot where they will hoist their triumphant flag is more than visible. It beckons. Yet still they sit and wonder. They wonder about the aftermath. They wonder about the anticlimax. They are rooted to their penultimate station, because they are afraid. I wonder what gives them the courage to risk arrival. Or rather the courage to acknowledge that they have no choice. I sit here and I wonder. I waver and I falter. I am infirm of purpose and I know that the last sortie needs must be. And, in truth, I am terrified.

  Those mountaineers, they climb, and no doubt with each step they are beset, like myself, by doubts and uncertainties. But there the likeness ends. For I have scruples, and they have none. But I think to myself that I have had scruples before, that my conscience has pricked at almost every station. Yet I have endured. Yet I have proceeded. But now, in sight of my goal, that same conscience paralyses me.

  I am tempted to recap on my run of luck, itemising each attack, but that would only serve to further a delay, perhaps a total withdrawal, even though there is only one strike to travel. So I image again: that attic, that rope, that overturned stool and that shattered guitar, and I think that if ever I were to complete my mission, and in spite of it, those pictures would never fade. So I sit here, writing in my diary, postponing, delaying, stalling, while my hand sweats with fear.

  I wonder how I must pass the time, but then I know that time is too precious to pass. I think I might write down an account of my climax. How I shall dress for the visit, what route I shall take to the house, how I shall enter, and what I shall say. It will not be a quickie. Not this one. It will take time, for I have much to explain. There will be little dialogue. I myself shall hold the floor. But then I think that should I write it all down the very writing would excuse me from doing it. That putting it all down would be enough. I would have said it and my words would be as good as the action. They would do. It is tempting. But it is a coward’s way. I must steel myself. My crusade, every step of which has been so meticulously planned, oh so righteously deserved, that crusade must not, at its last port of call, be abandoned. But now at least, I have acknowledged that I have no choice. In my mind I have acknowledged it. But the distance between the mind and the heart is immeasurable. I pray sometimes, but I don’t know to whom and even less do I know why. All I know is that in that attic, all those years ago, God’s back was turned.

  EIGHT DOWN. ONE TO GO.

  The death of …

  The death of Penny Brown had shaken the police department. Rank and file. For all could deduce its horrendous implications. The killer was choosy no more. Almost anybody was fair game. No one was more aware of this than Wilkins himself. He sat at his desk in utter helplessness, not knowing where to turn. All he could do was to wait for the call from his superior.

  When it came, he was almost relieved. He was weary of blind alleys, of absent witnesses, of evaporated prints. He was beaten, and all the evidence, or lack of it, pointed to his defeat. Yet he didn’t consider that anybody else on the station could have done any better and this thought heartened him a little as he made his way to the Chief Superintendent’s office.

  Chief Superintendent Billings was welcoming. He offered him coffee, insisted on it almost, as if to delay the matter of their meeting. As he poured, he asked after Mrs Wilkins and the children. Then he asked if he had a holiday in mind.

  ‘You’ve been working overtime, Wilkins,’ he said. He was homing in on his target, sideways as it were. ‘Do you have any hobbies?’ he asked. It was as if he were preparing an obituary before his subject was dead.

  Wilkins put down his coffee cup. ‘Get to the point sir,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’ll give it to you straight,’ Billings said. ‘You’ve worked well. You’ve done your very best. But I think we need a new approach. So I’m promoting you to Chief Inspector. You’re a good officer, Wilkins, and you’ve done great service. I want you as my assistant. More pay, of course, and more generous leave. How do you feel about that?
’

  A desk job, was all that Wilkins could feel. The saving on shoe leather seemed its only advantage.

  ‘Who will replace me?’ he asked.

  ‘Evans, your deputy,’ Billings said.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ Wilkins said. ‘And loyal. But he’ll need a stroke of luck. He’ll have to wait for the killer’s mistake. As I have done. Tell me, Chief,’ he asked, ‘could I have done anything different?’

  ‘You did everything you could,’ Billings said. ‘I don’t expect any quick results under Evans. It’s simply a question of shifting the burden on to another’s shoulders. I would have imagined, Wilkins, that you would be almost relieved.’

  ‘Of course, there is a measure of relief,’ Wilkins said. ‘But I’ll miss the chase. It’s become almost an obsession.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ Billings said. ‘Obsessions can be dangerous. They can cloud the issue. Not that they have done in your case, since you’ve been given very little issue to cloud. The shrink killer is an almost invisible man. It may take years to track him down. I’m doing you a favour,’ Billings said.

  Gratitude was in order. But how could he be grateful to be given the chance of sitting on his backside for the rest of his service days?

  ‘When do I start?’ Wilkins asked wearily.

  ‘Take a few days off,’ Billings said. ‘Then come in on Monday of next week. I’ll have a comfortable office waiting for you. Can we have a drink on it?’ he asked. He was already uncorking a bottle from his cabinet. ‘Let’s drink to a long and happy partnership.’ He poured two glasses which both men raised to the toast. Wilkins drank, but more to swallow the lump in his throat than to celebrate his so-called promotion.