The Hanging Tree

by Geraldine Evans

  'How should I know? Apart from Frank Massey, I haven't seen any of them for ten years.'

  'Ah, yes, Massey.' Rafferty paused. 'I understand you stood as a character witness at his trial?'

  Stubbs bristled. 'What of it? Least I could do for him. He wasn't a violent man. I was surprised he had it in him to attack Smith; he was an academic, a man who worked with his mind rather than his body.' Stubbs's face, inclined to broadness, now took on an aspect like a pugnacious bulldog. 'Of course it wasn't surprising that the court ruling at Smith's trial changed all that. It ruined his previous rather naive belief in British justice. He seemed bewildered at first, then that bewilderment turned to rage. For the first time in his life he used his fists instead of his head and look where it got him. If you think he's likely to have had another go at Smith I should forget it. He had a terrible time in prison. He's not likely to want to repeat the experience.'

  'Not likely, I grant you,' Rafferty agreed. 'But he may still have decided to risk it. After all, he had two wrongs to right not just one. And, as you say, no one could claim he got justice from the courts.'

  '"Revenge is a kind of wild justice,"' Llewellyn quoted softly, adding, 'at least, according to Francis Bacon. Perhaps Mr Massey still feels wild justice is the only kind available to him.'

  Stubbs stared at him for a moment and then retorted, 'That's as maybe, but he'd had his try for revenge once. You're barking up the wrong tree if you think he could gird himself up a second time. He's not the same man at all. He wouldn't have it in him.'

  'You thought that once before,' Rafferty reminded him, but he didn't pursue the point. For the moment, he was prepared to accept what Stubbs told them. 'Tell me — did you believe Smith was guilty?'

  'Damn right I did. He was guilty as hell. Although I was beginning to have doubts we'd get a conviction as proof rested on the evidence of the victims and Smith's confession, I had no doubt at all that he raped those young girls. He even admitted to Thommo and me when we went to see him after the judge acquitted him, that he'd raped another young girl; an attack we knew nothing about and which had never even been reported.

  'Oh, I know we shouldn't have gone,' he burst out, as he caught Rafferty's surprised glance. 'Been warned off, hadn't we? But we went just the same. Smith said he'd picked this other young girl up in broad daylight. Wanted us to find her so he could apologise for smashing her violin!'

  He shrugged. 'I suppose the parents must have thought she would get over it more quickly without the trauma of a court case. Turns out they were right, doesn't it? Can't blame 'em, I suppose. Smith's other victims were all very young, none older than ten, and Alice Massey was only eight. Smith said this other girl was no older. That was the way he liked them, young and gullible.'

  Stubbs rubbed the flat of his hands on the rough material of his trousers as if he felt he could rub away the stain of his own guilt over the case. Rafferty got the impression Stubbs found it as hard to forgive himself for his failure as he found it to forgive Smith for his perversion.

  'Even though, in his chambers, the judge accepted Smith's confession as true, he rejected it as evidence because he thought the prosecution would have a hard time proving it hadn't been obtained by oppression. Said something about me and Thommo not saying 'please' and 'thank you' often enough, a la the decrees of PACE. So, that was that.'

  Rafferty understood Stubbs' bitterness only too well. How often had he himself experienced that hollow feeling of despair nowadays all too familiar to crime-wearied policemen? It wasn't that he didn't agree with aspects of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act - he did, many of them were needed, certainly for first-time offenders. But it was a different matter altogether for practised criminals. In their case, it made the pursuit of justice more of a lottery than it should ever be. Naturally, the practised criminals and their lawyers took such advantage of a legal system so weighed in their favour that, to the law-abiding public, it seemed the very service set up to prosecute offenders more often acted as their accomplices.

  The trouble, as Rafferty had frequently pointed out when an excess of Jameson's had made him unwisely vocal on the subject, was that so much of the legal process and its administration was in the hands of icy-veined intellectuals, who seemed to think the law was more about arguing legal points that securing justice.

  They were so far removed from the mass of the population in their thoughts on the subject that they might as well have been visiting Martians for all the confidence they inspired. And when they were paired with the bleeding heart social workers who thought Johnny could do no wrong, who would never accept that Johnny might just naturally be a nasty, evil little bastard, who liked hurting those weaker than himself, such despair was unsurprising. It's his lack of education, it's his background, he's from a one-parent family, it's because he can't get a job, they cried.

  Rafferty, with a pretty basic secondary-modern education, and from a one-parent family himself, knew damn well that often Johnny didn't want a job. Why should he, he reasoned? He got far more rewards from mugging old ladies or selling drugs than he'd ever get filling shelves in the local Sainsbury or working in a Homebase storeroom, which was all his limited education had equipped him for.

  It was no wonder ordinary people, coppers included, raged, then despaired. No wonder, either, if some of them took to dispensing their own justice.

  Rafferty, suddenly aware that his heart was hammering wildly, took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Llewellyn was right, he realised; thinking along those lines just led to frustration, indigestion and coronaries. Worse, it clouded his brain with negative emotions and ruined his judgement.

  He forced his mind back to the current problem. 'As you said, the Smith case was thrown out because the judge ruled that his confession was inadmissible. But why did it ever get as far as the Crown Court?'

  Stubbs sighed heavily. 'I suppose good old human error was at the root of it. But, in mitigation, you must remember the Smith case was brought at a very difficult time. It was 1986; at the beginning of the year PACE was implemented throughout England and Wales, and by October of the same year the bloody Crown Prosecution Service or as I call it, the Criminals' Pals Society, took over the prosecution of offenders from the police.

  'It was change, disruption, difficulties at every turn. As I said, the whole legal process was in a state of flux; endless new rules to remember and bumptious young prosecution briefs getting up everyone's noses. There was no DNA evidence to help us then; it was another year till the courts started to accept such evidence. Not that we had a blood sample. We didn't even have a semen sample. Crafty sod had used rubbers; all we had was Smith's confession and the testimony of the girls.'

  Stubbs scowled again as, probably for the thousandth time, he relived his bitter memories. 'I'd worked long and hard on the Smith case — we all had. Most of the team had daughters round that age or younger. And by the time we caught him, we were all exhausted. I,' he paused, then went on, 'I just about cracked up.'

  From his rigid posture, Rafferty could see how much it cost him to admit this. He already knew of course. Stubbs's old colleagues had said as much and more.

  'But we got the confession out of him before my GP had me hospitalised. As I said, the whole team were exhausted by the time we finally nailed him, and although I had my doubts as to whether his confession might contravene the new PACE rules, the Prosecutor appointed was so young and eager to get her teeth into a rape case that she just charged ahead with it. Got through the Committal Proceedings with no trouble, but then we both know magistrates are often glad to pass the buck upwards to the Crown Courts when it comes to ruling on a point of law, such as admissibility.

  'Anyway, I'll tell you plain, we were both humiliated when it got to the Crown Court. Especially Ms Osbourne, the prosecuting counsel. Not too keen on women, old Judge Jordan; hated having them in his court and always gave them a hard time. He called Ms Osbourne into his chambers and told her she wasn't fit to iron his robes.' Stubbs ga
ve a sour grin. 'I only learned about it later. Like most coppers, I'd never been keen on the introduction of the CPS and Ms Osbourne had me convinced I was right. As I said, she was arrogant and flaunted her college education as if she thought we were a bunch of dinosaurs and that experience counted for nothing. It was the only bit of satisfaction I got when I heard that old Jordan had wiped the floor with her.'

  The light faded from his eye. 'Still, it was a difficult time to be a policeman.' Rafferty nodded. 'I tell you, if I could have ended my career any other way, I'd have been glad to retire then.'

  'But surely, sir,' Llewellyn spoke up, 'the Chief Prosecutor would have overseen—'

  'Old Stimpson? Don't make me laugh. He was near retirement himself. He only took the job as a favour to the new Regional Director, he didn't intend to work too hard, I can tell you and he gave a pretty free rein to the young bloods in his traces. Spent as much time on the golf course as he did in his office. Besides, although it was never admitted officially, it was accepted that there would be a fair few balls-ups during the changeover period. And there were.'

  Rafferty nodded again. He remembered some of them.

  'Not, from my understanding that things are any better today; the CPS is still largely staffed by inexperienced, not so bright graduates. The clever ones mostly go into private Chambers. Can't blame them, I suppose, it's much better paid.

  'The CPS still tends to get either the idealistic ones like Ms Osbourne, or the ones who couldn't get accepted in Chambers. Admittedly, this was a completely new service with many jobs to fill, and they perhaps couldn't afford to be too particular if they wanted to get the show on the road.' He directed a sour grin at Rafferty. 'Much like the police force in the seventies, when they accepted anyone who could walk and talk.'

  Rafferty flushed. He had joined in the seventies and he wondered whether Stubbs was having a dig at him. However, as Stubbs showed no inclination to dwell on the subject, he decided he wasn't.

  'Anyway, they managed to make me the fall guy. I'd made too many waves over too many years, made it obvious too often how I felt about my superiors. I was five years off retirement, I was expendable. Not Ms Osbourne, though. She's gone from strength to strength. I often wondered if she'd been warming old Stimpson's arthritic bones. She's Chief Crown Prosecutor on your manor, now,' he told Rafferty. 'Who'd have thought she'd rise so high from such beginnings?'

  Rafferty stared. 'You mean your Ms Osbourne and Elizabeth Probyn are one and the same?' My God, he thought, just managing to bite back the sardonic grin, she must have put her back into the job of keeping that quiet.

  Stubbs nodded. 'I've kept tabs on her. Masochistic, I know, but..'

  Rafferty said nothing, but he found himself wondering again who else Stubbs had kept tabs on from that time? The name of Maurice Smith came to mind.

  'Changed her name when she got married, though she stuck to the Ms bit.' Stubbs gave them another sour grin. 'You ask her about the Smith case and watch her squirm.'

  Stubbs stood at his doorway and watched them walk away as though he wanted to be sure they left. Rafferty glanced at Llewellyn as they turned the corner to where they had parked the car. 'You realise we'll have to check his movements, ex-copper or no ex-copper?'

  Llewellyn nodded.

  'God knows he had motive enough. He had the means to find out Smith's address. If we discover he also had the opportunity...' Rafferty didn't finished the sentence. Llewellyn knew as well as he how difficult it would be to get evidence against an experienced ex-copper. If Stubbs had killed Smith he'd have been well able to cover his tracks. He'd made no attempt to hide his bitterness. He'd seemed almost to flaunt it, challenging them to make a case against him.

  'What about the other officers on the case? Thompson, for instance?'

  'They'll have to be checked out, too.'

  The prospect of investigating fellow officers was a depressing one for both of them and silence fell until they had reached the Elmhurst road and Rafferty stopped at a red light.

  'Let's disregard the police suspects for the moment,' he said. 'What if Smith was killed by one of the victims or their parents? It might have taken them this long to track him down, especially as he not only changed his name but also moved twice since he left Burleigh. Hiring an investigator costs money, and, for an ordinary person finding Smith would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.' But not for a policeman, he thought again.

  'True,' said Llewellyn. 'But I feel even his victims and their families would surely need some other spur to act after all this time. Heightened emotions don't stay heightened indefinitely; like the passions of love, the passions of hate have a course to run. The first flickers, the growing heat, the all-engulfing flames, the dying embers, and finally cold ashes.'

  Astonished by his sergeant's sudden and poetical verbosity, Rafferty felt compelled to remark, 'I'm not sure Stubbs, for one, would agree with you. And even if his emotions had reached the cold ashes stage, he's got all the time in the world to rake them over. And as for the victims and their families, who knows if some new tragedy affected one of them? Something related to the original crime, something they might consider directly attributable to Smith; then the flames of passion might rise from the ashes. Events like rape do tend to bring on other tragedies in a family - sometimes years after the event - look at Frank Massey, for one.'

  Tragedies like nervous collapse, and divorce - broken families and broken lives. Rape often cast a long, lingering painful shadow among the victims and their families, as Rafferty knew. Particularly when the victim was a child. Particularly when, as in the Smith case, the physical rape had been followed by judicial rape.

  Rafferty squinted at his watch as the car passed under a street lamp. It was after six. No wonder he was hungry; he hadn't eaten since breakfast.

  'Get onto the station, will you, Dafyd? Get Beard to make an appointment for tomorrow for us to see Mrs Nye of the Rape Support Group. He's likely to find her at that refuge she founded in St Boniface Road. If any of her group sent that 'outing' letter, she might be willing to drop a hint as to which of her group could be responsible.'

  Although the names of the more militant feminists in the Rape Support Group and similar organisations were well known to the police, Rafferty felt he had to tread cautiously, wary of accusations of police harassment. He had no proof that any members of the local RSP were responsible for the 'outing' threats that had occurred recently in the town. But he'd always found Mrs Nye a reasonable woman. He didn't believe she would condone 'outing'. If she harboured any suspicions against her more hot-headed colleagues, he felt he would be able to persuade her to reveal them.

  He broke into Llewellyn's transmission. 'Get Beard to make an appointment with Elizabeth Probyn while he's at it. I'd be interested to see what she remembers of the case. Tomorrow's Saturday, so she won't be able to fob us off with excuses about being in court. Oh, and ask him to get me a couple of rolls from the canteen before the lovely Opal goes home.' Llewellyn gave the message and replaced the microphone.

  Rafferty had no doubt that fobbing them off would be Elizabeth Probyn's first instinct. She wouldn't enjoy discussing her early, spectacular failure; particularly with him. She was one of those coolly distant prosecutors with whom he could find no common ground. He had little doubt she would find the interview humiliating.

  And you, Rafferty? his conscience prodded. What will you find it? Enjoyable? Maybe you'll crow a little? Rub her nose in it, will you?

  Rafferty denied it. Unfortunately, his lapsed Catholic conscience, privy to his every thought, word and deed, was well aware that Elizabeth Probyn was not his favourite person. She had subjected him to several humiliations over the years. She must have learned quickly from that early failure, he now surmised, because he'd never had cause to reign her back in a case. On the contrary, unlike Stubbs's experience of her, with him, she seemed to delight in refusing to take on the prosecution of cases for which she felt the police had provided insufficient evidence.
Going to take the opportunity to get your own back? his conscience probed again.

  'Oh, shut up!' Rafferty growled.

  'Sir?' Llewellyn's head jerked towards him, bewilderment evident. Hardly surprising, of course, as the Welshman had been innocently gazing out the window when Rafferty made his outburst.

  'Nothing,' Rafferty mumbled. 'I'm just having an internal argument. Take no notice.'

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rafferty found Mrs ffinch-Robinson waiting for him when he got back to the station. She wore an air of vindicated self-righteousness — everything she had said having proved true — and seemed to have taken up occupation of his visitor's chair as though she intended a lengthy stay.

  Rafferty, hungry and looking forward to breaking his post mortem fast, gave a long-suffering sigh. Unfortunately, she was just the sort of person he found it most difficult to deal with; not only serious-minded and unlikely to appreciate his jokes, but also self-assured, strong-willed and convinced she knew best. But as his conscience didn't fail to remind him that he had a lot to thank her for, he did his best to look pleased to see her.

  As soon as he sat down, she began to criticize, the cut-glass tones and authoritative magistrate's manner combining to make him feel as though he was some ne'er-do-well she was lecturing from the Bench. As, in his youth, he hadn't exactly been the best-behaved boy on the block, the analogy didn't make him feel any easier.

  'I hope, Inspector, that you've reprimanded that young officer as I suggested.'

  To Rafferty, her suggestion had sounded more like a command, but, as she didn't pause long enough to give him a chance to confirm he'd obeyed her, he was saved the indignity of a reply.

  'It's officers of his type who create a barrier between police and public. I've often said that. I well recall another occasion when—'

  With difficulty, Rafferty tuned her out. He remembered how her lips had thinned when she had entered his office the previous evening and taken in his unruly auburn hair, his limp brown suit and his inadequately cleaned black shoes and knew that any attempt to defend Lilley would be a waste of breath. He doubted she had any interest in excuses, be they his own or anyone else's.