Without Prejudice

by Unknown

  ‘Jesus Christ, who did that to you?’

  Duval gave a bitter laugh. ‘Ain’t no “who” involved. I didn’t get this in Stateville, Bobby. I’ve had this since I was twelve years old.’

  ‘The fire,’ said Robert. Why do I feel guilty? he asked himself. Because he thought I was the hero. Duval had been the brave one.

  ‘That’s right. You think this is bad, you ought to see my leg.’ He shook his head. ‘I know it ain’t pretty, Bobby, so that’s why I keep my shirt on. Anna or your little girl was to see it, they’d probably faint.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He returned to the house and went upstairs to the main bedroom. He found an old striped, short-sleeved shirt in his dresser drawer, and took it outside to Duval.

  ‘Put this on,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot cooler.’

  Duval laughed and swapped shirts, placing the sweat-soaked one over the top of the picket fence.

  An hour later, upstairs reading in the house, Robert pushed back his chair and saw Anna wasn’t sitting in her study. When he went to her window, he saw her in the yard, standing near the fence while Duval crouched down, touching up the bottom of a post with his brush. He looked at her desk and saw a thick document labelled ‘Illinois Compiled Statutes’, open at the following page:

  Sec. 116-Motion for forensic testing not available at trial regarding actual innocence.

  (a) A defendant may make a motion before the trial court that entered the judgement of conviction in his or her case for the performance of forensic DNA testing . . . on evidence that was secured in relation to the trial which resulted in his or her conviction, and was not subject to the testing which is now requested at the time of trial . . .

  So: Duval could try and reopen his case because DNA testing had not been available at the time of his trial. But surely it couldn’t be that simple – otherwise, everyone convicted by forensic evidence in a pre-DNA age would be filing motions. Maybe they were. Then he saw, further down the page, another paragraph, highlighted by the yellow marker Anna liked to use:

  (b) The defendant must present a prima facie case that

  (1) Identity was the issue in the trial which resulted in his or her conviction

  That fitted Duval all right. Identification had been at the core of his conviction. So these would be the grounds for reopening the case – DNA analysable evidence if it could be found, based on the fact that Peggy Mohan had identified Duval as her attacker in court. He heard Anna coming into the kitchen below, and he went out into the corridor as she came up the stairs, asking, ‘How’s he getting on?’

  ‘Fine, I think. He was telling me about Vanetta.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Oh, just how she looked after him when he was little. And how he’d met you.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said, but he didn’t believe a word of it. When he’d watched from the window, Anna had been doing all the talking.

  By five o’clock Duval was only two-thirds of the way along the line of fence. ‘I guess he’ll have to come back,’ said Robert, watching him from Anna’s study.

  ‘Not tomorrow – I don’t want to ask him to work on a Sunday.’

  As if Duval had much else to do. ‘I don’t want him here when I’m not around.’

  ‘It’ll have to be next weekend.’

  ‘I thought we’d go to the dunes.’

  ‘Are you forgetting something?’

  She was right; they were having dinner at the president’s house.

  ‘All right. I’ll see if he can come then.’

  And Duval was pleased to be asked back, and more pleased still when Robert handed over $105 in a mixed wad of bills. I could build a new fence for what this is costing me, he thought.

  ‘Same time, same place then?’ asked Duval.

  ‘We’ll be here,’ said Robert, then thanked him and said goodbye. Going back into the house while Duval assembled the paint things, he found the phone ringing in the kitchen. It was the mother of a friend of Sophie’s from school, but when he called to Anna he heard her going out the front door. By the time he got off the phone and went out front, Duval’s car had gone, and Anna was coming in, with a satisfied look on her face.

  ‘Did you forget to tell him something?’

  She looked at him defiantly. ‘Yes. I told him not to bring a sandwich next time. He can eat with us.’

  5

  Emails got ignored, phone calls were not returned – much as Robert didn’t want to beard the coach in his den (actually, the university’s multimillion-dollar sports complex) Robert knew it was harder for people to give bad news face to face. Though after his conversation with Balthazar he held little hope of changing the coach’s mind.

  ‘Virginia Carter.’ The voice was pure rural Indiana; it spoke of dairy cows and silos and barn dances.

  He explained who he was. ‘I wanted to make an appointment to see Coach Carlson.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ He heard her paging through a diary. ‘Hmm. Well, it’s training season now so that’s no good. And then the real season starts, of course. Let’s see – I could try and slide you in for late October.’

  It wasn’t even August yet. ‘That bad, huh?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter that I’m attached to the university?’

  ‘It’s a big university, sir. You should see the ticket requests the coach gets.’

  He scratched one side of his chin, finding a patch he hadn’t shaved. When Sophie had been little she’d come and watch him lather up, then talking with her he would miss the same spot day in and day out.

  ‘Could you tell the coach I’m seeing President Crullowitch later this week?’ Strictly speaking, this was true, since he was having dinner at his house on Saturday. ‘I know he wants me to see the coach before then.’ Not so strictly true.

  There was a momentary silence. ‘Hang on a minute. I’m going to put you on hold.’ He waited, while a symphonic rendition of the football team fight song played three and a half times. Then she was back.

  ‘Coach Carlson asked if you could come for a drink at his house on Thursday evening? Six o’clock.’

  ‘Sure.’

  And she gave him the address, a street of large houses, mansions really, in Kenilworth, a few miles north of his own house. How did a football coach come to live among multimillionaires? Curious, he Googled ‘Carlson+football+coach+salary’. There were many entries, but five minutes later he had discovered the coach’s annual salary was $650,000. That’s why he lived in Kenilworth.

  He’d need to make sure Anna could stay with Sophie when he went, as otherwise he’d have to line up Mrs Peterson. He thought of ringing his wife, but decided it could wait. Lately she seemed to be working very long hours, and was often coming home late. There was an edge to her talk, and he wondered if she was diverting some personal stress into her work.

  But did the extra hours really come from her consulate duties? He couldn’t see how, not in the dog days of July. Or was it Duval? More likely, and though worrying, nonetheless more palatable than the third possibility. Philip.

  There was a tension now between them, one that had been brewing but only spilled over with her determination to have Duval eat with them inside the house.

  He had not felt this strain with her since the very early days of their relationship. When he’d met Anna her flat had been a chaotic mess of dirty dishes, and affidavits on the kitchen table. An unsavoury mix of clients and dodgy suitors had moved in and out of her four-room flat in Kilburn like a pack of undomesticated dogs, sizing up a new place to doss.

  He made her get out of the flat and do things – she’d never seen Hampton Court, so they went there; never been to Waddesdon Manor, so he drove her out for lunch and a walk through the Rothschild parkland. Twice she cancelled at the last minute; he didn’t know if this was due to the exigencies of her clients or her ropy personal life, and he made it clear he didn’t care which – it was unacceptable.

 
For if at first he had plunged into the centre of her life’s counter-centrifugal stew, now he stayed outside the fray, sensing that if he hung around passively waiting for her, he would soon get relegated to the status of these other passers-by, some of whom seemed to have been (he hoped the past tense was accurate) lovers.

  There had been a kid named Spado, for example, half-Moroccan, half-Italian, a mix which meant it was unclear whether he could be deported – or where – under the uneasy state of EU laws at the time. He’d done eighteen months in Pentonville for sleeping with an underage girl, and hovered around Anna unattractively. One night when Spado had been allowed to sleep on the sofa in the front living room, he’d opened Anna’s bedroom door, unaware that Robert was in there, too. One of the reasons Robert wouldn’t stay in her flat any more was that he reckoned fairly soon either he would hurt Spado, or Spado would hurt him.

  Anna complained when she came to his Camden Town flat for supper. ‘Spado says you were being hostile.’

  ‘Spado’s right.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, as if she hadn’t considered such a possibility.

  He did not hide his impatience. ‘Look, if you want to have this circle of creeps floating around you, that’s your business. I’m just not going to make it mine.’

  ‘That’s a harsh way to describe people who’ve had their rights violated.’

  ‘But entirely accurate, don’t you think?’

  It was a critical moment between them. To his everlasting relief she had laughed. Then she caught herself. ‘It’s my job to look after these “creeps”, you know.’

  ‘It’s your job to look after their rights, and that’s all. The rest is a mug’s game. If you can’t see that, then God help you, Anna. Because I won’t.’

  ‘Won’t?’

  ‘Can’t.’

  She thought about this, her face betraying no emotion until suddenly she crumpled. ‘But what should I do?’ she said, looking tearful. She added half-accusingly, ‘I thought you were different.’

  ‘Why? Because I didn’t run off right away? Or stick around and exploit you?’

  She contemplated this and he thought she was about to get cross, but she seemed to decide against it. She wiped an angry hand against her nose, which perversely made her even more attractive. Sniffling slightly, she said, ‘Something like that. And because you were the only one who liked me more after you slept with me.’

  ‘I was just pretending to, so you’d sleep with me again.’

  She laughed and reached out for his hand. He said, ‘Why don’t you stay here from now on? Make your flat your office if you must, but don’t sleep there any more.’

  He imagined the objections forming in her mind. But to his surprise she said, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Last chance,’ she said warily, adding, ‘You may find I get on your nerves.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. But this way, you can only cheat on me under my nose.’

  ‘I haven’t cheated on you at all,’ she said, and looked teary-eyed again. ‘Big nose.’

  So she’d moved in with him, and used her flat as a post collection depot and emergency refuge for her down-and-outs, though the latter usage tailed off once she wasn’t there to minister to them. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to run her life; it was just that he refused to become one more counter on a board game that had too many pieces and too few rules.

  He could see that she was relying on him more than he on her, and did his best not to exploit the advantage, and to accept with gratitude rather than complacency her loyalty to him, which was something he found (though this was his problem, not hers) almost unbelievable. For there remained in him the childhood-bred conviction that it was only a matter of time before she would leave him, a prejudice born in childhood and unshakeable. Women let you down. Men probably did too, but he hadn’t ever loved a man that way.

  In time this reflexive assumption of his would doubtless have started to damage their relationship, possibly even destroy it, as it had destroyed his relationships before – one marriage, several long-term girlfriends. It was a distrust that would have kept him from the essential closeness that allowed relationships, whatever their ups and downs, disagreements, boredoms, their occasional flurry of agitations, to survive. Yet this time, before the inevitable disintegration could occur, something happened. Sophie.

  With Anna pregnant they got married, then sold their respective flats and bought a mortgage-laden house on Ainger Road in Primrose Hill, even then escalating in value with each new rock-star arrival. The smartest investment I ever made, thought Robert now, looking out at the playground from his office window. It had let them come here and make a fresh start, one which Anna seemed to be enjoying even more than him. And now, settled in this brash city, Anna had found her feet and then some.

  Until now, it seemed, when the old gallimaufry life seemed to be reasserting itself, all Anna’s new calmness deserting her.

  He knew he had to talk with Anna about Duval. However much he would prefer to let things lie, Robert was determined to put his foot down: he didn’t want Duval in the house, breaking bread at their table. It was starting to look to Robert as if Duval might well have been innocent, and he shared Anna’s mixture of excitement and anger over twenty-four wasted years. But helping Duval did not entail bringing him into the house, not as far as Robert was concerned. He didn’t want anyone else in his family.

  Tonight, he would wait until Sophie had gone to bed, and then he would raise the matter. Maybe Anna and he could compromise on a picnic on Saturday, sit out in the yard while he barbecued chicken and hamburgers, convene at the picnic table after Duval finished the painting job. But not in the house.

  6

  It was high summer, but already the days were growing shorter. They never seemed that long to begin with; he had grown used to the northern latitude of England, the light fading out as late as ten o’clock. Chicago sat on the eastern edge of its time zone, and it was already dark at eight thirty when Anna came home this evening.

  She had called to say she would be late again, and he had given Sophie supper – her new American favourite of sloppy Joes, some leftover minced beef in a barbecue sauce poured over a hamburger bun. He had been tempted to join her out of pique at Anna’s delay, but was determined not to sulk and made lamb chops for later, keeping them warm on the stove next to a vast pot of water on the boil for some pasta. He heard the front door open as he sat at the kitchen table, reading a local weekly paper, which was still alien even after almost a year. In the back yard he could just make out the pale penumbra of the fence’s new coat of paint.

  ‘I have to go to Washington next Thursday,’ she declared, before she had her coat off. ‘I’ll only be gone a night.’

  ‘That’s sudden,’ he said mildly. Business or pleasure? That was what he really wanted to ask.

  ‘Philip was supposed to go, but something’s come up and he asked if I’d go instead. I don’t have to do much, but all the consulates will be there, and we have to have a presence.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  She seemed to hesitate. ‘I think it’s the Madison Hotel.’

  ‘How swanky. It’s quite a compliment they asked you.’

  She shrugged, and taking the open bottle from the fridge, poured herself a glass of white wine. ‘I don’t know about that. Probably no one else was willing to go. Maggie Trumbull acted like I’d pulled the short straw. Two days in a hot room listening to Foreign Office functionaries boast about how well Atlanta’s doing.’

  ‘You’ve never been to Washington, have you? That will make it interesting.’

  ‘Not much time for fun; I have to have dinner at the embassy the one night I’m there.’

  She seemed determined to paint the trip as a grind, so he wasn’t going to argue for a rosier picture. He took the chops from the top of the oven, drained the spaghetti, noting that he’d made too much, and put helpings on two of their bone-ware plates, along with a bowl of dressed l
ettuce. Placing them all on the table, while Anna riffled through the New York Times, he said, ‘Well, I’m glad it’s not this week anyway.’

  ‘Hmm?’ she said, eyes still on the paper.

  ‘I’m having drinks with the coach at his house on Thursday. Six o’clock. I should be home by eight. Hope that’s okay; it’s important I see him.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ is all she said. She put the paper down and drew her plate towards her. ‘This looks delicious.’

  This time he did sulk at her lack of interest. She didn’t seem to notice his silence, for halfway through her chop she said, ‘I think I found out why Duval did so much time.’

  Here it was – Duval – and before he’d brought it up himself. Still, he was curious. ‘Why?’

  ‘For parole, you need good behaviour and you need remorse. Especially remorse.’

  ‘That was a problem for Duval?’

  ‘Not the behaviour. The remorse. You can’t expect it from someone who says he didn’t do the crime.’ There was no gentleness in her voice.

  ‘Catch-18,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was the original title.’

  She served herself some salad. ‘Spare me the literary allusions, just for once please.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were so many of them.’

  She seemed about to speak, thought better of it, and shook her head wearily. He didn’t see how he could forbid Duval’s presence in the house on Saturday without provoking an explosive row. He thought about Anna’s discovery. Who would protest their innocence if it meant staying in prison for many more years, unless they were innocent?

  ‘So what’s the next step then?’ he asked.

  ‘For Duval?’

  ‘Who else?’ After all, she didn’t want to hear about Coach Carlson.

  ‘I think he needs to talk to professionals. I spoke today with a woman named Donna Kaliski at the Centre for Wrongful Convictions.’