‘Rachel...’
Liam’s haggard face hovered centimetres from mine. Tom’s haunted countenance wasn’t far away.
‘I don’t want to know,’ I said. Although I already knew.
‘I’ll call the doctor. She needs something to calm her down.’ I heard the policewoman whisper.
I closed my eyes. They thought I couldn’t cope with the news, and I could not. Only the thought of a far-off retribution stopped me from trying to join my son and take care of him at his last destination. Be with him through the end.
Tom Gillespie told me about my beautiful Joe, how he died. I didn’t want to hear, but I had to know. And I listened.
13th March 2000
What could I have done to change Joe’s destiny? My eyes were closed, but that did nothing to shut off the voices that rattled ceaselessly inside my head. What if Liam and I had told Tom immediately about our violent arguments and their effects on our son? This was my driving thought, but then other variables came to mind – like the very real and disturbed history of my cousin, Michael Hemmings. I’d done everything possible to ensure Joe had little contact with him.
When Michael Hemmings moved away to Chester, I’d been relieved. The only time I’d set eyes on him since then was more than three years ago, on a visit to see my uncle Sam and aunt Bridget. If I’d known Hemmings would be there I’d have stayed away. In the end Joe and I stayed less than an hour.
My mind made its way down the narrow and convoluted lanes of memory, trying to work out if anything had happened that I might have missed during that visit. Nothing came to mind. Hemmings had practically ignored Joe.
I heard the shower start upstairs and then heavy footsteps as Liam moved around the bathroom. I don’t think he had slept either, but I wasn’t sure as I’d given up pretending to sleep and made my prison on the sofa.
Tom was picking us up at eight-thirty. I looked at Joe’s suns. He should be sitting here with me, discussing his favourite ride. Gently, I took the painting down and began rolling it up.
‘That’s quick.’
I hadn’t heard Liam. His deep voice held a new edge.
‘For now, Liam. I have to.’
He nodded and pulled the towel tighter across his hips.
‘You don’t have to come. Why don’t you let me go ... alone?’ He moved closer and took the rolled-up painting from hands that would not stop shaking. ‘It would be better.’
‘I have to go.’
He stared at me. ‘I know.’
So, instead of sitting at the kitchen table and talking to Joe about our trip to the theme park, at nine-fifteen, surrounded by too many policemen, I stood outside the room that held Joe.
I still didn’t believe it. The body lying inside couldn’t be Joe’s. But I was lying to myself. I knew, and this knowledge took away my breath, seemed to take away my senses. I didn’t feel the coolness of the wind, I didn’t smell the antiseptic aroma that lurked outside the building; I didn’t register the pitying expressions of those around me. I took my hand from my pocket and wasn’t surprised at the blood on my palm, smearing onto the lining of my coat. My nails were pressing so hard into numb skin.
How many times in the faraway past had I stood in this same spot with a distraught and desolate parent? Dreading their reactions, watching their faces as they entered the disinfectant-smelling room to identify the body of their loved one, sometimes a child; the reality hit so hard they would freeze, unable to utter a word. I was the officer who accompanied those relatives and my empathy, I’d thought, was real and strong. I’d told myself that I understood their pain; the corkscrew of grief as it burrowed deep beneath their skin, unasked for and unwanted.
I realised now that I had not. And if I had, the job I’d once done would have been impossible.
As Liam and I waited for the mortuary assistant to pull away the plastic, I realised how worthless the empathy I’d tried to show had been. The assistant revealed Joe’s face. His skin was pale and white like Pentelic marble. As I looked at my son, Joe, my angel, my beautiful boy, I acknowledged of all those past parents: I had understood nothing.
What had they done to make Joe look so peaceful?
Then again, I didn’t know what the rest of Joe’s body looked like.
As I kissed my dead son my own torment was raw, yet outside the morgue I could feel the grief of all those other parents. It multiplied and overtook me. I felt my insides contracting, as if my gut were desiccating.
I was engulfed in grief, inhabiting my own personal purgatory.
CHAPTER FOUR
The trial began at the beginning of December. There was no question that Michael Hemmings would be put away.
After locating Joe’s body, the police had received a call from Hemmings. Tom and his team found Michael, in a pool of blood, in the squat he’d been staying in since returning to Sutton Coldfield. He had a mobile next to him. Hemmings had made a half-hearted cut to his right femoral artery. Later, in hospital, he’d admitted to Joe’s murder.
He wanted to be found, didn’t want to die; I knew that, but the defending barrister managed to twist the facts and walk all over Tom. I’d never seen my old boss get truly angry, but he did the day Hemmings’ barrister questioned him.
Afterwards, Tom’s chewed thumb bled and I saw that his heart was breaking in sympathy with my own. I knew, as did Tom, that Hemmings’ attempted suicide was all part of a plan: to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. His barrister was aiming for ‘diminished responsibility’, and a diagnosis that the disorder was treatable, hoping for a conviction of manslaughter. And, if Michael Hemmings was deemed treatable, he would be admitted into a secure psychiatric hospital.
That was my worst-case scenario. And Hemmings’ best. The prosecution fought hard on a charge of premeditated murder, to see him sent to a Category-A prison, arguing that Hemmings had known exactly what he was doing when he abducted and then killed my son with a frenzied knife wound across Joe’s throat.
I thought of the scarf and Joe’s terror of having things wrapped around his neck, and tried to stop myself from crying in front of Hemmings. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. Although I did cry, silently, inside.
I’d always known what sort of person my cousin was. What I hadn’t known was that two years previously he’d been admitted to a mental health ward in Chester. It came out in court that a leading psychiatrist in Chester had recommended that Michael Hemmings be detained for longer for further assessment. However, this psychiatrist was taken ill, his recommendation lost or ignored, and Michael Hemmings was allowed to leave.
The judge adjourned the court soon after this revelation, at the request of Hemmings’ barrister. Later our barrister would argue that when Hemmings’ mental state was questioned two years previously he had fought against being sectioned, so it was curious to find him now embracing detention within a psychiatric institution. Our barrister argued that the defendant was entirely aware of the advantage of being sent to a psychiatric institution now that he was on trial for murder.
Hemmings’ barrister argued against us effectively and, to her credit, she was good.
We were into day ten of the trial. Liam and I were sitting in the small room we’d managed to find, away from the prying eyes of the public, surrounded by much of the cleaning stuff for the courtroom. A stale smell of cigarettes hung in the air. We’d been in there a few times and I felt oddly safe inside its dirty walls. It seemed like a place that shouldn’t exist within the court building. That was why I liked it. We perched on the two available chairs and drank watery coffee; the silence between us like white noise. That’s how it had been for months, in between the arguments.
‘I have to go to the Ladies,’ I said.
Liam nodded, sipped his coffee, put the Styrofoam cup on the grubby floor, and then placed his head between his knees.
‘Won’t be long,’ I said. He didn’t reply.
My uncle, Sam Hemmings, was sitting on the bench outside the courtroom, in exactly
the same position in which I’d left Liam. I hovered and he looked up. I wasn’t sure if his face registered surprise or relief that I had stopped in front of him. We hadn’t spoken since the beginning of the trial.
‘Hi Sam,’ I said.
‘Hullo, Rachel.’ He straightened up on the uncomfortable-looking bench. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault ... what your son is.’
‘It is though, isn’t it? Mine and Bridget’s.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I repeated.
‘She won’t come.’
I bent forwards; I could hardly hear him.
‘Bridget, she won’t come to court, says it’s too much for her.’ He wiped a droplet of sweat from his temple. ‘Too much...’
I wanted to reach out to him, but I couldn’t. There was nothing left inside. I went to touch his shoulder but stopped short. Sam held out an arthritic hand that had kneaded too much dough in the bakery he owned. Automatically, I flinched.
He looked up at me. ‘So sorry.’
Any reply lodged resolutely in my throat and I made my way to the Ladies.
—
As I returned, the court usher called us back in. Liam had emerged from our room and was talking to Sam. Holding back for a few seconds, I leaned against the wall. What were my thoughts about Sam and Bridget? They’d abandoned their son long ago: Bridget, because he was too much hard work, Sam, because he was so bitterly disappointed in him. They had given up trying to make a difference and I doubted that either of them knew very much about him.
Sam had been sitting in the public gallery most days, while Bridget’s only appearance at the court was in the witness box where she gave her version of events in the weeks prior to Joe’s disappearance, as had Sam. Neither had any idea that their son had left Chester and was staying in a squat in Sutton Coldfield. They had not laid eyes on him for eighteen months. The old detective in me thought Bridget didn’t tell the complete truth under oath.
Now, I watched Sam with Liam and I tried to feel something for my uncle. I really did try, but could not. My compassion had been sucked away. I was quietly disappearing into my own world.
Then I saw my dad. He was doing one day on, one day off, and avoided sitting anywhere near Sam. They were brothers, but I didn’t think their relationship would ever recover. My mother had stayed at home, which was, at least, something I could be pleased about.
Most of the time in the courtroom I felt as if I wasn’t really there. Occasionally, when it was quiet, in between witnesses, or sometimes when the gruff-faced judge allowed the jury to contemplate a new piece of evidence, a new fact, I smelt toffee popcorn. There was a small mezzanine gallery at the back of the courtroom that remained empty for the entire trial. Liam told me it was because it was having work done, had been deemed unsafe. I would look up towards it and see a haze of petrol blue. I had to take off my reading glasses to peer up into the gallery. I couldn’t see Joe’s face, and wondered why I could smell the popcorn when he was so far away.
Liam had noticed me looking upwards.
‘Can’t you see him?’ I’d asked.
‘Who?’ he replied.
‘Joe. He’s watching.’
Liam had rubbed my leg awkwardly, and looked up, and as soon as he did Joe disappeared, if he’d ever been there. Apprehensively, Liam looked at our barrister.
I didn’t mention seeing Joe again. As the emptiness of our lives swelled through me I was moving away from Liam.
—
We all returned to the courtroom. I glanced at Hemmings, who stood tall and erect. The last time I’d seen him at Bridget and Sam’s a few years before he’d worn a wig, but today he did not.
Often Hemmings looked bemused, acting towards the judge as though he wasn’t all there. But I could see the rationality behind his features, and saw it more when he looked downwards towards me, which he was doing now.
Determined not to shy away from his stare, I stared back. I placed my hand on Liam’s knee as if already saying goodbye, and shifted my chair backwards a little so I could slump forwards. Finally taking my eyes away from those of Michael Hemmings, I thought about Joe and Christmas, in happier times, and a long time before I’d ever smelt someone else’s sweat on my husband’s underwear.
—
Liam had decided to buy two-year-old Joe a swing. Not a plastic primary-coloured one, but a proper timber-framed construction, complete with tyre, bucket seat, and a slide attached at the side. The company supplying it had delivered late, not giving Liam enough time to put it up on Christmas Eve. So we placed all the timber, the tyre and the bucket seat in a big, neat pile. We commandeered thick blue ribbon from our friendly car dealer (apparently they used it when people bought their partner a car as a present) and painstakingly wrapped the skeleton of the swing in the azure-blue braid. Liam attached blue string to a picture of the finished product and placed it under the Christmas tree. The string wound through the house, under the patio door in the kitchen, down the garden, ending spectacularly at Santa’s present. Liam was drunk as he pulled the string down the garden. I sprinkled glitter. I’d been wobbly too, but ensured Rudolph’s footprints were obvious on the hard December grass. Liam promised to construct it all on Boxing Day. We always stayed home Boxing Day. Remnants of memory from another day after Christmas long ago had made me superstitious.
—
The worst part of the trial, for me, was my time in the witness box. I could feel Hemmings’ eyes all over me, and although I tried avoiding his stare, sometimes it was impossible. Liam handled it better; or seemed to. He managed to distance himself. And making that day worse was the evidence that came later in the afternoon – the photos of Joe’s body. I was spared having to look but I watched the reactions of the jury as they were shown them.
Our barrister placed one image, carefully and deliberately, in front of each juror; their faces, all twelve of them, told me everything. But the barrister’s gamble didn’t pay off. Yes, the jury were sickened, as was the judge, but it reinforced (to all but me) that Hemmings did have a psychiatric disorder. Of course, it wasn’t only the photos; there was more evidence that pointed towards Hemmings’ madness: the testimonies from old girlfriends and boyfriends, including Gareth Summers, the man from the field.
On the final day of the trial, in the second week of January 2001, before Hemmings could sabotage the first glance, I studied him. There should have been some courtroom etiquette disallowing him from wearing his wig in court. Fraudulent blond locks cascaded down his back. They looked quite real, but the hair was as fake as his insanity. I glanced across at the defending QC. She was about my age and, I’d heard, had four children and a househusband. She was one of the most successful defence barristers in the country. I wondered how she could live with herself.
Only minutes before the judge began his closing speech, my mother shuffled quietly into the courtroom with Dad, who was probably thinking he was doing the right thing. The usher sat them as near to Liam and I as was possible. I smelt the waft of lavender as Margaret sat down and I glanced at her quickly. The white blouse was buttoned high. She hung on to Dad’s arm as if she were an invalid, which she wasn’t.
Hemmings was gazing at my mother; it was the first time during the trial that he lost his nonchalant look. He never took his eyes away from her, even when the judge began his low baritone monologue. I thought of a black and purple room, of Michael and my mother.
The judge read out quotes from psychiatric reports, details of when Tom and his team had found Joe’s body, and details of Hemmings’ confession.
The defence had not disputed the factual evidence. The substantial evidence against Hemmings came from the prosecution psychiatrists, who argued there was no proof of a mental disorder severe enough to reduce the defendant’s responsibility for his actions. The defence argued that there was.
The judge talked about what Hemmings had done to my son’s body; the only thankful thing was that he had done it after Joe had died. As the judge s
poke clearly, but now with emotion, every one of the jurors nodded their head in sadness and in relief that their own children were safe at home.
I felt myself subside; I heard a moan from afar and realised it came from my mouth. Liam’s hand was clamped on my knee; I felt its sweatiness through the thick wool of my tights. I thought my eyes were open yet I saw nothing, only ebony blackness. The courtroom and everyone in it disappeared. I flailed around as if in a deep ocean where there is no up, no down, just a void of empty, meaningless, cold black space. Into the chasm walked Joe. I reached out towards him. He was inside the courtroom; he wasn’t dead. This had all been a terrible misunderstanding. I inhaled his toffee popcorn aroma; I held him.
When I opened my eyes I stared at oak panelling. Liam and Sean, our barrister from the Crown Prosecution Service, , were leaning over me.
‘She’s passed out, m’lord,’ I heard the barrister say.
‘Take an hour for Mrs Dune to recover, we will reconvene at three and complete the summing up of this case.’
It only took the jury a morning to come to a decision.
The judge addressed the foreman of the jury, ‘Are you agreed upon your verdict?’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
Clerk: ‘Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty of murder?’
The foreman’s reply seemed to take forever. Liam squeezed my hand. Our barrister fidgeted in his chair.
Foreman: ‘Not guilty.’
I felt a feral yelp inside my throat but no noise came. Liam let go of my hand that burned like fire.
Clerk: ‘Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility?’
Foreman: ‘Guilty.’
Judge: ‘My thanks to all the jury members. This has been a difficult case.’ He addressed the defence team. ‘A hospital order is made under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983, together with an order under Section 41, restricting Michael Hemmings’ discharge without limit of time to a maximum security hospital.’
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