A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

  Laurie turns away.

  ‘One problem. In this latest draft’ – I bend to retrieve the pages – ‘the list doesn’t go on and on. In this draft, the list is only three names long: Helen Yardley, Sarah Jaggard, Dorne Llewellyn. I’m no editor, but I think the original version’s better. If you want to invoke the dozens of innocent women whose lives were ruined by Duffy, five names works better than three. So what happened? Was it a word-limit thing?’

  Laurie is walking away, heading towards the boating lake. ‘Why ask if you already know?’ The wind brings his words back to me.

  I run to catch him up. ‘You deleted Lorna Keast and Joanne Bew. Keast was a single mother from Carlisle with a borderline personality. She smothered her son Thomas in 1997, and her son George in 1999. Judith Duffy testified against her, and she was found guilty in 2001. By the time Helen Yardley’s convictions were quashed, you’d managed to kick up such a stink about Duffy that the CCRC was forced to act: it started to re-examine similar cases. In March this year – I’m guessing just after you wrote the first draft of your ‘Doctor Who Lied’ article – Lorna Keast was granted leave to appeal, which had previously been denied. Obviously the honest side of her personality was to the fore that day – she was devastated when her lawyers told her she might be in with a chance of getting out. She’d always protested her innocence up until that point, but when she heard she might soon be freed, she confessed to having smothered both her sons. She said she wanted to stay in prison, wanted to be punished for what she’d done. She wouldn’t hear of having the charge changed to infanticide, which was a possibility once she’d confessed, and would have carried a lighter sentence – she wanted to be punished as a murderer.’

  ‘What your Google searches won’t have told you is that, as well as being barking mad, Lorna Keast is one of the thickest women ever to drag her knuckles along the surface of this planet,’ says Laurie. ‘Even if she was innocent, being found guilty and sent to prison might have been enough to convince her she was a murderer and deserved to be behind bars.’ He flashes a contemptuous look in my direction. ‘Or maybe she preferred the safety of prison life to having to fend for her brainless self on the out.’

  ‘Or maybe she was guilty,’ I say.

  ‘So what if she was? Does that make Judith Duffy any less dangerous? Of course I knocked Keast’s name off the list – I don’t want people reading the article and thinking that if Duffy was right about her then she might have been right about all the others. She wasn’t right about Helen, Sarah Jaggard, Ray Hines, Dorne Llewellyn . . .’ Laurie grabs my arm and swings me round to face him. ‘Someone had to stop her, Fliss.’

  I shake off his hand. ‘What about Joanne Bew?’

  ‘Bew was granted leave to appeal.’

  ‘Whoa, let’s rewind a bit. What was she in prison for?’

  Laurie’s mouth flattens into a thin line.

  ‘Why don’t I tell us the story? Joanne Bew murdered her son Brandon . . .’

  ‘Let’s fast-forward a bit,’ Laurie parodies me. ‘There was a retrial and she was acquitted.’

  ‘Then why delete her name from the article? Surely she’s your best illustration of the harm irresponsible experts can do: first she’s convicted, all because of a doctor’s flawed testimony against her, then she’s retried and acquitted once that same doctor’s been exposed by the wonderful Laurie Nattrass. Come on, she’s JIPAC’s perfect poster girl, isn’t she? No? Why not, Laurie?’

  He’s staring at the boating lake as if it’s the most fascinating expanse of water in the world.

  ‘Joanne Bew, former landlady of what’s now the Retreat pub in Bethnal Green, murdered her son Brandon in January 2000,’ I say. ‘She was blind drunk and at a party when she did it. There was a witness: Carl Chappell, also very drunk. Chappell was on his way to the loo, and he passed the door of the bedroom where Joanne had put six-week-old Brandon down to sleep. He happened to look into the room, and he saw Joanne kneeling on the bed with a cigarette in one hand and her other hand pressed over Brandon’s nose and mouth. He saw her hold her hand there for a good five minutes. He saw her press down.’

  ‘As you say, he was smashed. Had form too: GBH, ABH . . .’

  ‘At Joanne’s first trial in April 2001, Judith Duffy gave evidence for the prosecution. She said there were clear signs of smothering.’

  ‘Which is the only reason the jury believed Chappell,’ says Laurie. ‘His eye-witness account tallied with a respected doctor’s expert opinion.’

  ‘Lots of other people also testified against Joanne. Friends and acquaintances said she never referred to Brandon by his name – she called him ‘The Mistake’. Warren Gruff, Joanne’s boyfriend and Brandon’s father, said she mistreated the baby from day one – sometimes when he was screaming with hunger, she’d refuse to give him milk and try to feed him chips or chicken nuggets instead.’

  ‘She was a bad mother.’ Laurie shrugs and starts to walk. ‘Doesn’t make her a murderer.’

  ‘True.’ I catch him up, keep pace with him. I imagine myself linking my arm through his and nearly laugh. He’d regard that as such an affront; I’d love to see his reaction. I’m tempted to do it, just to prove to myself I have the nerve. ‘Bew was already a convicted killer, though, wasn’t she?’ I say instead. There’s no surprise on Laurie’s face. He knew I knew, and he thinks that’s it, that’s my trump card. That’s why he’s not worried. ‘She and Warren Gruff had both served time for the manslaughter of Bew’s sister, Zena. They punched and kicked her to death in the kitchen of Gruff’s flat after a family row, and each blamed the other. At Bew’s first trial in 2001, Zena’s death wasn’t mentioned – someone must have thought it might prejudice the jury. I can’t think why, can you? I mean, just because a woman punches and kicks her sister to death, and is a bad mother – as you say, it doesn’t mean she must have murdered her baby. Though, as it happened, and even without the inconvenient Zena anecdote, all twelve jurors did believe Joanne Bew was a murderer.’

  ‘You ever watched a criminal trial?’ says Laurie scornfully.

  ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘You should try it some time. Watch the jurors being sworn in. Most of them can’t read the oath without stumbling over the words. Some can’t read it at all.’

  ‘What about the jury that acquitted Joanne Bew second time round, in May 2006? How stupid were they? They were told that Bew had served time for the manslaughter of her sister. What they didn’t know was that she’d previously been convicted of murdering Brandon. They didn’t know it was a retrial.’

  ‘That’s—’

  ‘Standard. I know.’ I walk as close to Laurie’s side as I can without touching him. He moves away, widening the gap between us. ‘Judith Duffy didn’t testify against Bew the second time,’ I continue with my story. ‘By May 2006, you’d made sure no prosecutor in need of an expert would touch her with a bargepole. I wonder if the jury would have believed Carl Chappell, though, if he’d testified again that he watched Bew smother Brandon?’

  ‘They didn’t get a chance to believe or disbelieve him,’ says Laurie. ‘Chappell updated his statement to the effect that he was so drunk that night, he wouldn’t have known his own name, let alone what he did or didn’t see.’

  ‘You can tell he’s a drinker, can’t you?’ I’m nearly there, nearly at the end of this protracted worst moment of my life. ‘The bulbous nose and the broken veins. He’s a prime candidate for one of those makeover shows, don’t you think? 10 Years Younger.’

  Laurie stops walking.

  I carry on, talking to myself. I don’t care if he can hear me or not. ‘I can’t watch that programme now Nicky Hambleton-Jones doesn’t present it any more, can you? It’s not the same without her.’

  ‘You’ve met Chappell?’ Laurie’s by my side again. ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. I’d found an article on the internet that suggested he used to be a regular at the Retreat, or the Dog and Partridge as was, so I paid a visit there and asked if
anyone knew him. Quite a few people did, and one told me which betting shop he’d be in first thing this morning. That was where I found him. Is that how you found him too, when you needed to track him down and offer him two thousand pounds in exchange for a revised statement, a statement full of lies that would secure a not-guilty verdict for Joanne Bew and another point to you in the battle against Judith Duffy?’

  ‘Look, whatever—’

  ‘Chappell wasn’t there when you popped in, so you left a note for him with someone who said they’d pass it on. And they did.’

  ‘You can’t prove any of this,’ Laurie says. ‘You think Carl Chappell keeps notes from years back, just in case the British Library wants to acquire his archive one day?’ He laughs, pleased with his own joke. I remember Tamsin telling me a few months ago that the British Library had paid some obscene amount of money for Laurie’s papers. I wonder how much they’d pay for a long letter to him from me, detailing exactly what I think of him. Maybe I should get in touch with them and ask.

  ‘Chappell didn’t keep the note,’ I say, ‘but he remembers what happened, and he remembers where you told him to meet you. If only you’d picked Madame Tussauds, or the National Portrait Gallery, or here in Regent’s Park, by the boating lake.’

  Laurie must think I’m enjoying this. I’m hating every second of it.

  ‘What message did you leave for him, exactly? Was it a bit like the one you sent me?’ I pull my phone out of my bag and hold it up in front of his face. ‘Was it “Planetarium 2 p.m., LN.”? “Dear Mr Chappell, Meet me outside the Planetarium – there’s two thousand quid in it for you”?’

  ‘You think I gave him the two grand to lie? You really think I’d do that – pay a man to pretend he didn’t witness a murder when he did?’

  ‘I really think you’d do that,’ I tell him. ‘I think you did what you had to, to make it look as if Joanne Bew was yet another innocent woman in prison thanks to Judith Duffy.’

  ‘Cheers for the vote of confidence,’ says Laurie. ‘The truth, if you’re interested, is that Carl Chappell witnessed nothing whatsoever the night Brandon died. He was a mate of Warren Gruff’s, Brandon’s dad. Gruff put him up to lying at Joanne Bew’s first trial. He’d made it clear he expected Chappell to lie again at the retrial, which was what Chappell, who can’t think for himself, was planning to do. I paid him to tell the truth.’

  I try to remember what exactly Carl Chappell told me. He gave me two big ones to say I hadn’t seen nothing. Have I misjudged Laurie? Have I just done to him what I’m accusing him of doing to Judith Duffy: invented whatever story I needed to in order to condemn him?

  ‘The two grand took care of Chappell’s gambling needs, but it did nothing to alleviate his fear of Gruff, who’s a thug,’ says Laurie. ‘You ought to track him down, ask him how much I paid him, out of my own pocket, for a promise not to beat Chappell to death if he gave a new statement.’

  ‘How much?’ I ask.

  Laurie beckons me to come closer. I take a step towards him. He reaches for my hand, closes his fingers around my phone. I try to hang on to it. I fail.

  ‘What good’s that going to do you?’ I ask. He can delete the text he sent me, but not my memory of it. I can tell anyone I want to that Laurie told me to meet him at the Planetarium, just as he told Carl Chappell, and probably Warren Gruff too.

  ‘No good,’ he says. ‘No good at all.’ Running towards the lake like a fast-bowler, he bowls my phone into the water.

  18

  12/10/09

  ‘Olivia was holding the book up, spread open.’ Charlie demonstrated for Proust’s benefit. Simon and Sam watched too, though they’d already heard the quicker version of the story. ‘I was sitting across the table from her – my eyes must have been on the back cover. I wasn’t aware of looking at it – one minute I was daydreaming, the next I was thinking, “Hang on a minute, those look familiar.” ’

  ‘Every published book has a thirteen-digit ISBN number printed on its back cover and title page,’ Simon took over. ‘The ISBN for Helen Yardley’s Nothing But Love is 9780340980620, the last thirteen numbers of our number square. As well as a card, the book was in the photograph emailed to Fliss Benson, to help her make the connection.’

  ‘The first three numbers on the cards – 2, 1 and 4 – we think that’s a page number,’ Sam told Proust.

  ‘It has to be,’ Charlie agreed. ‘What else can it mean?’ She placed Nothing But Love on the desk, open at page 214.

  The Snowman jerked his head back, as if someone had put a plate of slugs in front of him. ‘It’s a poem,’ he said.

  ‘Read it,’ said Simon. ‘And the paragraphs above and below it. Read the whole page.’ How much time did they waste, on each case, getting Proust up to speed? His rigidity was the problem: he liked to be told things in a certain way – formally and in stages, with each logical progression clearly highlighted. No wonder Charlie hadn’t wanted to be part of the delivery committee on this one. ‘Can’t you tell him?’ she’d groaned. ‘Whenever I try to explain something to him, I feel like I’m auditioning to present Jackanory.’

  Simon watched the Snowman as he read: a study of forehead compression in slow motion, with the frown lines becoming more and more pronounced. Within seconds, the inspector’s face had lost several centimetres in length. ‘ “What flutters still is a bird: blown in/by accident, or wild design/of grace, a taste of something sweet – The emptied self a room swept white.” Would someone like to tell me what it means?’

  ‘I’m not sure the meaning matters, from our point of view,’ said Charlie. ‘On the same page, there’s a reference to a journalist from the Daily Telegraph who went to Geddham Hall to interview Helen Yardley. We think that’s the significant—’

  ‘Track him or her down,’ said Proust.

  ‘We already have, sir,’ said Sam. ‘Geddham Hall keep a record of—’

  ‘You have? Then why not tell me so, Sergeant? What’s the point of a perishing update if you fail to update me?’

  ‘The journalist was a Rahila Yunis, sir. She still works for the Telegraph. I spoke to her on the phone, read her page 214 of Nothing But Love. At first she was very reluctant to comment. When I pressed her, she said Helen Yardley’s recollection of their interview at Geddham Hall wasn’t correct. Helen did have a favourite poem written in her notebook, or journal, or whatever it was, but Rahila Yunis said it wasn’t that “room swept white” poem. She’s going to check her old files, but she thinks the poem Helen Yardley copied into her notebook and claimed to be fond of was called “The Microbe”.’

  ‘We could only find one poem with that title,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s by Hilaire Belloc.’

  ‘Hilaire spelled h-i-l-a-i-r-e,’ said Simon. ‘As in hilairious@yahoo.co.uk.’

  ‘Are you going to make me read another poem?’ Proust asked.

  ‘I’ll read it to you,’ said Charlie.

  ‘“The Microbe is so very small

  You cannot make him out at all,

  But many sanguine people hope

  To see him through a microscope.

  His jointed tongue that lies beneath

  A hundred curious rows of teeth;

  His seven tufted tails with lots

  Of lovely pink and purple spots,

  On each of which a pattern stands,

  Composed of forty separate bands;

  His eyebrows of a tender green;

  All these have never yet been seen –

  But scientists, who ought to know,

  Assure us that they must be so . . .

  Oh! Let us never, never doubt

  What nobody is sure about!” ’

  Simon was trying hard not to laugh. Charlie had read the poem as one might to a five-year-old. The Snowman looked startled. ‘Give me that,’ he said.

  Charlie handed him the sheet of paper. As he stared at it, his lips silently formed the words, ‘never, never doubt’. Eventually he said, ‘I like it.’ He sounded surprised.

  �
�So did Helen Yardley, according to Rahila Yunis,’ said Sam. ‘It’s not hard to see why. For “scientists”, read “doctors”. She must have had Judith Duffy in mind. Duffy can’t have been sure Morgan and Rowan were murdered, because they weren’t. And yet she never, never doubted.’

  ‘I like it.’ Proust nodded and handed the poem back to Charlie. ‘It’s a proper poem. The other one isn’t.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Simon. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is, why was Rahila Yunis so unwilling to talk at first? Why not say, as soon as Sam had read her the extract, that Helen Yardley had lied? And why did Yardley lie, in the book? Why did she pretend that it was “Anchorage” by Fiona Sampson that meant so much to her, and that she’d talked to Rahila Yunis about, when it was Hilaire Belloc’s “The Microbe”?’

  No reply from Proust. He was mouthing silently again: never, never doubt.

  ‘Why aren’t we in there?’ Colin Sellers had been trying to lip-read what Simon, Sam, Charlie and Proust were saying.

  ‘Because we’re out here,’ said Chris Gibbs.

  ‘Only Waterhouse’d get away with bringing his girlfriend.’

  Gibbs snorted. ‘Why, do you want to take all your girlfriends to visit the Snowman? His office isn’t big enough to squeeze them all in.’

  ‘How’s it going on the name-that-Baldy front?’ Sellers asked, not expecting to get away with changing the subject quite so soon.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Gibbs. ‘Of all the names that have come in so far, only two have come up more than twenty times each.’ He stood up. ‘I’m off to 131 Valingers Road in Bethnal Green to interview one of them: Warren Gruff, ex-army. I said all along, didn’t I? British military.’

  ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘Other one?’

  ‘The other name that’s come up more than twenty times,’ said Sellers impatiently.

  ‘Oh, that one.’ Gibbs grinned. ‘Matter of fact, the second one’s come up more often than Warren Gruff’s – thirty-six mentions, next to Gruff’s twenty-three.’