A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

‘New mail icon just flashed up again. I clicked on it . . .’

  ‘You mean you leaned on the mouse by mistake. And?’

  ‘Look at this photo.’

  ‘Is that . . .?’

  ‘It’s Helen Yardley’s hand. Those are her wedding and engagement rings.’

  ‘Holding a card with the sixteen numbers on, and . . . what’s behind the card? A book?’

  I can feel my heartbeat throbbing in my ears and throat. I’m glad they found it, not me. I hope they delete it, so that I don’t have to see it.

  ‘Nothing But Love,’ says Sellers. ‘Her own book. Seen the sender’s address? hilairious@yahoo.co.uk. He’s spelled “hilarious” wrong.’

  ‘Forward it to your own email and close it.’

  ‘Think it’s him, Sarge?’

  ‘I do,’ the quieter one says. ‘That picture was taken in Helen Yardley’s living room – see the wallpaper in the background? I think he took it on Monday, before he shot her. Whoever he is, he wants Fliss Benson to know what he did. It’s as if he’s . . . I don’t know, boasting or something.’

  I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disgusted. The idea that a killer has me on his mind and has contacted me four times makes me want to climb into a boiling hot shower and stay there for a long time. But if he’s boasting to me, if I’m his audience, perhaps he’s less likely to harm me. I desperately want to believe this.

  I hear papers being shuffled. My files.

  ‘Sarge, these are full of stuff about Yardley, Jaggard and Hines. We need to take all this away, and Benson’s computer. And Nattrass’s, even if we have to break into his house to get it.’

  ‘You read my mind. I’ll speak to Proust.’

  I assume they’re not talking about the dead French novelist.

  ‘We need warrants, soon as possible. I don’t see how any judge could knock us back. Helen Yardley’s dead, Sarah Jaggard’s been attacked, and Ray Hines is missing – presumed at risk until we track her down. The main thing linking the three women is the documentary.’

  ‘Do we know where Benson was on Monday?’

  Monday? A chill sweeps through me that has nothing to do with the weather as I realise what they must mean. Helen Yardley was murdered on Monday. It’s all I can do to stop myself from leaping up and yelling, ‘I was here, in the office. I was here all day.’

  ‘Leave those files as you found them,’ says the quiet sergeant. ‘I’ll tell Maya Jacques to keep the office locked and make sure no one touches anything in here.’

  Finally, they go. A few minutes later, I hear the thock-thock of Maya’s heels and the sound of the key turning in the door. That’s it. Everyone has finished with my office for the time being – everyone but me. I stay where I am and force myself to count to a hundred before moving. Then I climb back inside and close the window behind me. That’s as close as I ever hope to get to a camping holiday, I think to myself as I brush the crumbs of dirt and dust off my clothes.

  My hand shaking, I delete the email from ‘hilairious’ without opening it; the police have taken ownership of it, which is fine by me. I print out Angus Hines’ email and put it in my bag, along with Laurie’s revised article. Stupidly, forgetting the key sound I heard, I try to open the office door and find I can’t. How ironic: I’ve been locked in. Isn’t there something called locked-in syndrome? That’s what I’m suffering from, me and Angus Hines. I guess all those irritating people who say ‘What goes around comes around’ must be right.

  I unlock the door, then close and lock it behind me. I take the scenic route out of the office, the one that doesn’t involve going anywhere near Maya, and hail another taxi. I give the driver my home address. If I see a strange car camped outside that might belong to the police, I’ll tell the cab to drive past, but if I don’t, I’d quite like to check my flat’s still in one piece – no broken windows or piles of glass on the carpet, no scratch marks on the walls. No irate Tamsin sitting on the sofa, waiting to deliver a stern lecture.

  Tomorrow I’ll have to go back to the office and make copies of everything in those box files before the police take them away. Maya won’t be in – Sunday’s her manicure and pedicure day. Raffi might be around on the Lord’s Day of Rest, as he called it, but the chances of him taking an interest in my activities are slim. If I’m efficient, I should be able to photocopy the lot in five or six hours. The thought makes me feel weak with exhaustion.

  And once you’ve copied it all, where are you going to take it? Where are you going to hide? Tamsin and Joe’s flat? Mine? Both are places the police are bound to come back to, if they’re as keen to find me as they seem to be.

  I think I probably made the decision a while ago, but it’s only now that I allow myself to acknowledge it. Marchington House. That’s where I’ll go. Ray won’t mind. I’ve known her less than a week, but I know she won’t mind. There must be spare rooms there, plenty of space for me and the contents of several large box files. Plenty of time for me to plough through all the paperwork Laurie and Tamsin generated, looking for . . . what? Something Laurie missed because he couldn’t see the trees for the wood?

  I feel utterly drained, but I’m too wired to sleep, or even to stare out of the window. I need to do something productive. I pull Laurie’s article out of my bag and start to read it. I stop when I get to a sentence that doesn’t sound right:

  Despite never having murdered anybody, Dr Duffy was responsible for ruining the lives of dozens of innocent women whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a child or children died: Helen Yardley, Sarah Jaggard, Dorne Llewellyn . . . the list goes on and on.

  Three names isn’t a long list. Why didn’t Laurie include more, to prove his point? There were more in the original draft, I’m sure of it. I turn to the last page. Laurie has also, wisely – or perhaps because the journal editors gave him no choice – deleted his insinuation that Rhiannon Evans must have murdered her son Benjamin because she’s a working-class prostitute and that’s the sort of thing they do. It makes sense to cut that out, but why strike names off the list of Judith Duffy’s victims – a list that’s supposed to go on and on?

  I rummage in my bag for the original article, but it’s not there. I must have left it at home. I have another idea: Angus Hines’ email. I pull it out and start to skim through the names. Two leap out at me: Lorna Keast and Joanne Bew. There’s no other way I could know those names. They mean nothing to me. The first time I saw them was in Laurie’s article, alongside the names Helen Yardley and Sarah Jaggard. I did see them; I’m not imagining it.

  In the first draft, Lorna Keast and Joanne Bew were part of that list. So why aren’t they now?

  From Nothing But Love

  by Helen Yardley with Gaynor Mundy

  5 November 1996

  I didn’t enjoy any of the days of my trial, but the worst was 5 November. That was when I came face to face with Dr Judith Duffy for the first time, when she gave her evidence in chief, which means in response to prosecuting counsel’s questions. Unbelievably, I had never met or seen her before, even though she claimed to know so much about me and my family. But I knew what sort of person she was. Ned and Gillian had warned me. She’s the sort of woman who is happy to say that a grief-stricken mother committed two murders without even bothering to speak to her or get to know her first. In contrast, Dr Russell Meredew, one of the many heroes of this story and the main expert witness for the defence, had spent days with Paul and me, interviewed us both at length, and painstakingly compiled what he called his ‘dossier’. We joked that by the time he’d finished it was as thick as an encyclopaedia! Incidentally, Dr Meredew tried to present the dossier to Justice Wilson in court, and Wilson’s shocking response was, ‘You don’t expect me to read all that, do you?’

  I watched Dr Duffy closely as she took the stand and felt real, heart-shaking terror for the first time since the trial had begun. There was something about her that chilled me. Until that moment, I had assumed I would be going home with Paul at th
e end of this ridiculous charade. We would get Paige back and live happily ever after. I had no doubts about this because I was innocent. I knew it, Paul knew it, and the jury would know it too. Ned had assured me that once Russell Meredew had explained to them, in his gentle but authoritative way, that it was entirely possible both Morgan and Rowan died of natural causes, there was no way in the world I would be convicted of murder.

  But when Judith Duffy’s eyes met mine for the first time, I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I saw no compassion whatsoever. Her bearing was haughty and arrogant. She looked exactly like the sort of person who would try to send me to prison for the rest of my life simply because she could, to prove that she was right. I didn’t know at the time, but I found out later that Paul had felt exactly the same way about her, and so had Ned and Gillian.

  I honestly felt as if I was being tortured as I sat there, helpless, listening to her describe what I must have done to my precious Morgan and Rowan in order to cause the injuries she claimed they’d sustained. I heard her tell the jury, many of whom were in tears, that I had poisoned my children using salt, that I had smothered them repeatedly, with the aim of taking them to the hospital and getting lots of attention for myself. I’d never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. If I’d wanted attention, I thought, I’d have walked down the street in a Minnie Mouse costume, done the cancan naked in my front garden – something funny and harmless. I would never, never have murdered my babies.

  When I heard Dr Duffy say that Rowan’s skull had been fractured, I wanted to scream, ‘You’re lying! I never hurt my babies! I adored them, I had nothing but love for them!’

  I will never forget the way Dr Duffy’s examination-in-chief ended. It’s painfully etched on my mind for ever. When I checked the trial transcript, it corresponded almost word for word with what I remembered:

  Rudgard:

  Mrs Yardley believes both Morgan and Rowan were victims of cot death, or SIDS. What do you say to that?

  Duffy:

  Leaving aside the fact that it’s highly unusual for there to be two instances of SIDS in one household—

  Rudgard:

  Forgive me for interrupting, Doctor – I wish to concentrate on the Yardley family, not other families you’ve encountered in your professional life. Let’s not get into the statistics game. We all know how notoriously unreliable statistics are when applied to a specific case – they’re meaningless. Is it possible, in your view, that Morgan and Rowan were both victims of cot death?

  Duffy:

  I’d say that’s so unlikely, it borders on impossible. What’s overwhelmingly likely is that there was a common underlying cause of both deaths, and that the cause was forensic, not medical.

  Rudgard:

  Then, in your opinion, both Morgan and Rowan Yardley were murdered?

  Duffy:

  My opinion is that both babies died of non-accidental injuries, yes.

  I dissolved in tears as Judith Duffy calmly told these lies about me, but, although I was distraught, neither Paul nor I had any idea how much damage had been done by her use of the phrase ‘so unlikely, it borders on impossible’. Ned, however, with all his years of trial expertise, knew exactly how dangerous it was for the jury to hear those words. It didn’t matter that a few seconds earlier, they’d heard the great Ivor Rudgard QC say that statistics can’t be relied upon in cases like mine – that wasn’t the part that would stick in their minds. It wasn’t as memorable or impressive as Dr Duffy’s magic formula for finding guilt where there is none: ‘so unlikely, it borders on impossible’.

  When Reuben Merrills rose to cross-examine Dr Duffy, Ned flashed one of his brilliant ray-of-hope smiles at me: Don’t worry, Merrills is the best defence barrister in the land – he’ll demolish her. He certainly did his best:

  Merrills:

  Let’s be clear: is your contention that it’s not possible for more than one baby born to the same two parents and into the same household to die of natural causes?

  Duffy:

  I didn’t say—

  Merrills:

  Because I could cite to you several cases of families that have suffered more than one cot death, with no hint of induced injury.

  Duffy:

  Your terminology’s confused. Natural causes and cot death aren’t synonymous with one another. In a family that contains the haemophilia gene, it’s obviously quite probable that more than one member will die a haemophilia-related death – that’s natural causes. Cot death is what we call it when no explanation for death can be found.

  Merrills:

  Very well, then, say cot death. Is it possible, in your view, for there to be more than one cot death in one family?

  Duffy:

  Of course it is.

  Merrills:

  To clarify: you’re saying that of course it’s possible for more than one child in the same family to be a victim of SIDS.

  Duffy:

  It’s possible, yes.

  Merrills:

  Yet a short while ago, you said the opposite, didn’t you?

  Duffy:

  No, I didn’t. I said that—

  Merrills:

  You said that for Morgan and Rowan Yardley both to have suffered cot deaths was ‘so unlikely, it borders on impossible’.

  Duffy:

  I meant that—

  Merrills:

  You said, and the jury remembers you saying, that for there to have been two SIDS deaths in the Yardley family was ‘so unlikely it borders on impossible.’

  Duffy:

  No, I did not say that.

  Merrills:

  Well, Dr Duffy, I’m sure the jury are as baffled as I am, because we all heard you say it. No further questions.

  My heart was pounding like the hooves of an excited horse as I listened to this. Thank goodness, I thought. Now the jury will understand what a monstrous liar Judith Duffy is. How could anyone take her opinion seriously now that Reuben Merrills had caught her out in such a blatant lie? But my spirits clouded over when I looked at Paul and Ned and saw that they were both frowning. I found out later that they were seriously worried about the effect of repetition on the jury. Even though Merrills had made short work of proving that Duffy was a flat-out liar, he had twice repeated her original assertion that for Morgan and Rowan both to have died of SIDS was so unlikely it bordered on impossible. Ned told me later that repeating something over and over again is a highly effective way of getting people to believe it. ‘The context of the repetition matters less than the repetition itself,’ he said. He’s right. I was being naïve. Time after time during my trial, the jury heard that phrase: ‘so unlikely, it borders on impossible.’ I didn’t know it on 5 November, but I was going to spend nine years of my life in prison as a result of those six words uttered by Dr Duffy, a woman who had never heard me say so much as a single word.

  24 October 2004

  On 24 October, a journalist from the Daily Telegraph came to interview me in prison. Paul joked that I could barely fit in his visits now that I was a celebrity. That’s what the prison staff called me too: ‘our resident celebrity’. Everybody at Geddham Hall was wonderfully supportive. They all knew I was innocent, which was a welcome change from Durham, where I was hated and attacked. I knew I had Laurie to thank for people’s change of attitude. He’d mounted such a wonderful campaign on my behalf, and even my lovely cautious Ned had been heard to mutter that my appeal next February might just succeed. Laurie had been doing wonders out there in the outside world, and JIPAC was going from strength to strength.

  I felt so frustrated, because there was only so much I could do from inside, but Laurie was heroically reassuring, and kept telling me that everyone knew JIPAC was my baby as much as his. I couldn’t wait to get out and do more to help women in terrible situations like mine, women the justice system had betrayed and abandoned. There were so many of them and I felt so much love and pity for all of them. I’d heard that Rachel Hines was coming to Geddham soon. Her case was
almost identical to mine: an innocent mother wrongly convicted of killing her two children. She’d recently been denied leave to appeal, and my heart broke for her.

  One thing I could do in prison was write, and I found I loved it. At first I agreed to keep a diary only because Laurie asked me to, but once I started, I couldn’t have managed without it. I told the journalist from the Telegraph that one day I hoped to publish a book about my life and everything I’d been through. She nodded, as if this was a perfectly natural thing to want, and only to be expected. I wasn’t sure she understood how much it meant to me. She must have had to write all the time for her job, but I hadn’t written anything since leaving school. She seemed nice, so I let her have a look at my work in progress. ‘I bet my writing style’s terrible, isn’t it?’ I joked.

  ‘This poem’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘Really, really good.’ I had to laugh. She might as well have said, ‘Yes, Helen, your writing style is terrible.’ The poem, the only part of what I’d written that she’d praised, was the only thing in the notebook that wasn’t by me! It was a poem I found in an anthology in Geddham’s library, and I thought it was beautiful, so I wrote it down at the front of my notebook, to inspire me. It’s by a woman called Fiona Sampson, and it’s called Anchorage:

  Those fasting women in their cells

  drained a honeycomb brain

  of every sugar drop of sense;

  they made the skull a silvered shell

  where love could live, cuckoo-like –

  Would any question what she did

  to distance her from how we live,

  outside such dedication? – Shedding

  the various world, so as to fit

  in ways a jealous lover likes?