by Russell Hill
“But Maggie admits it is, Jack. Chatted her up this morning, I did. What was it, Jack? You and her decided to get rid of her husband? And what did an attractive piece like her see in an old duck like you? Are you rich, Jack? Were you working at Precious Care just to keep an eye on Robbie Barlow? Slip him something to hasten his demise, did you?”
“I made it up! I fucking made the story up! That’s what writers do, Hoad!”
“But you made up a story that turned out to be true, did you? Made up a story about a bloke who fucks the brains out of some poor farmer’s wife and then drives down from London and parks his car behind a hedgerow and walks across a field where the farmer is shearing sheep and he searches in the dark for a piece of timber. What’s he going to do with that piece of timber, Jack? Build a house? And then, lo and behold, that farmer gets his head stove in and falls in a puddle and gets his brain fried and guess what? Two pages earlier your character was thinking to himself about English electricity and how it’s not like electricity in the States at all. Made all that up, Jack? Got a crystal ball, have you? Here.”
He held out his hand, palm up.
“Read my fortune, Jack. I’ll bet you can tell me what I’ll be having for tea a year from now.”
“I made it up. I never hurt Robbie Barlow. I never, as you so nicely put it, shagged his wife.”
“None of this is true, Jack?” He held the disk up with one hand, pushed the laptop to the center of the table so that the glowing screen faced me.
“It’s all coincidence, is it? Maggie Barlow’s lying to me?”
“There’s only one thing worse than being caught in a lie, Hoad.”
“And what’s that, Jack?” He leaned forward, reaching out to put his hand on my arm as if he were a friend reassuring me of his interest in my well-being.
“The only thing worse than being caught in a lie, Hoad, is to tell the truth and have no one believe you.”
“You may be right about that, Jack. I’ve taken cases into court where the truth was so obvious it could have been dressed in a clown suit.” He took his hand away from my arm, sat back in his chair. “But the jury, twelve people with their wits about them, didn’t believe me.”
Hoad pushed back his chair, stood, picked up the disk and held it out between us.
“I don’t believe you, Jack. And this time no one is going to miss the clown suit.”
49.
The room was silent and then Hoad bent down and spoke for the tape recorder: “Mr. Jack Stone, I am formally charging you with the crime of actual bodily harm against the person of Mr. Robbie Barlow. You have a right to have someone informed of your arrest. You have a right to consult privately with a solicitor and you should be aware that independent legal advice is available free of charge. You have the right to communicate with the American embassy or consulate. You have the right to consult the Codes of Practice for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. It is August fifteenth, 2001, the time is fifteen hundred hours exactly and this interview with Mr. Jack Stone is concluded.”
He switched off the tape recorder. “You’ve been charged, Jack. You might want to learn the rules for cricket.”
I was taken back to my cell and later that day I called Nigel in London, told him where I was and what had happened. There was a long silence and then he said he would call Richard, and they would arrange for a solicitor.
Graham, the solicitor, arrived the next afternoon, a man in his forties wearing a rumpled suit and no tie, looking harried. He told me he had reviewed the evidence and although the statements that DC Hoad had taken weren’t yet available, he’d asked enough questions to feel that the case wasn’t as strong as Hoad had claimed. They had no actual forensic evidence to connect me with Robbie’s injury, their witnesses were the kind of people who were suspect in England, sorry about that, he wasn’t trying to be prejudiced, but it was a fact, and it would help. My incomplete script was damaging, but I was an established writer of fiction. They would, of course, call Maggie to testify and her admission of the affair in the witness box would be damaging. On the other hand, they could have charged me with murder, since my intent had been to make Robbie disappear and the only logical conclusion would be that I wanted him dead. That could still happen, he said.
I told him that I hadn’t meant to harm Robbie, I only wanted him out of the way.
“Did you do it?” he asked.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said.
“Look, I’m your solicitor. Whatever you say to me is held in confidence. Don’t lie to me. It won’t help.”
“I wrote about it. I put it down on paper. I’ve thought about it many times since.”
“Since what? Since doing it?”
“Robbie and I talked about it. I apologized over and over. I think he came to terms with that.”
“It’s my understanding that Barlow was a fucking vegetable and couldn’t tell anyone anything.” He was getting impatient with me.
“Look,” I said, “I just wanted him to disappear. And he’s gone. Finished.” I could imagine driving through the gate at Sheepheaven Farm, sheep dotting the slopes beyond the house.
“Pay attention, Jack. If they charge you with murder and make it stick, it’s automatic life. They’ll put you in some place like Dartmoor and you’ll be gone. Finished. If they stay with ABH, you’ll get seven years. It doesn’t help that you’re an American who was fucking an Englishman’s wife, either. And she won’t get a lot of sympathy. She’s lucky they haven’t charged her as an accomplice.”
“I don’t want Maggie to have to testify. Can’t we keep her out of this?”
“She’s the Crown’s witness, Jack. The only way for you to keep her out of the box would be to plead guilty, throw yourself at the Crown, and hope you win the lottery. Not a smart move, I’d say.”
But it turned out that it was a smart move. I was arraigned a week later in the Magistrate’s Court in Bournemouth in front of three men in business suits who accepted the Crown Prosecutor’s evidence and was sent for trial to the Dorchester Crown Court. I ended up in the remand section of the Dorchester Prison and it took nearly three months before I came to trial. In the interim I was visited twice by Nigel, passing along reassurance from Richard, who was paying for my solicitor.
Several times London tabloid reporters tried to talk to me but Graham kept them at bay. The less I said, the better it would be. It didn’t matter. After I was remanded to the Dorchester there were headlines: DORSET LOVE TRIANGLE TURNS UGLY, YANK SHOCKS LOVER’S HUBBY, and grainy photos of all of us.
Graham was right, though. I raised my hand to a guilty plea, the Crown stayed with the Bodily Harm charge, Maggie never was called to testify and I was given the maximum, seven years.
After that, things died down, the tabloids went on to other banners and Nigel stopped coming. The laptop and disk remained in the evidence lock-up in Bournemouth where, according to Graham, they would remain. It didn’t matter. I could retrieve them in seven years if I wanted.
I didn’t go to Dartmoor. I stayed at the Dorchester Prison. I remembered passing the building that first time I had driven down to White Church Farm. There was constant noise in the prison, men shouting, the clanging of steel on steel, snatches of song, the squeal of automated doors sliding. Klaxon horns announced the change of shift for the guards. I learned to sleep in the absence of darkness. Occasional nightmarish screams were followed by shouted obscenities. The cacophony died in the hours when, if I were outside, I would have sensed the beginning of the false dawn. During that time I sometimes imagined myself scrambling up the hill above Sheepheaven farm, falling to my hands and knees, the rain knifing at me, the muddy clods lit by periodic green flashes.
I would be sixty-seven years old when I left this place.
I was still in love with Robbie’ wife.
50.
“Stone! You have a visitor.”
I half expected Nigel. Or another reporter from a tabloid. But I had not had a visitor for the three months I had b
een in prison, and I did not expect one. I came into the long room with the numbered tables and followed the guard who motioned to an empty chair. As I sat down I saw that it was Graham on the other side of the table, his suit rumpled as usual, tieless, hair askew. He leaned forward as I pulled the chair toward the table.
“You don’t look any different, old boy.”
“Why should I? Nothing changes in here.”
“Settled in, are you? No problems?”
“Is that why you’re here?”
He smiled, leaned closer on his elbows.
“No, Jack. I was in the neighborhood and I dropped by to see if you were in.”
“Ho, ho, ho.”
“Not funny, am I? Christ, Jack, what’s it take to get a laugh out of you?”
“I didn’t expect to see you, Graham. Ever again.”
“Well, Jack, you were probably right in that assumption. No point in my coming around, is there?”
“So, why are you here?”
“A bit of news, Jack.”
“What kind of news?”
“About your Maggie.”
“Something’s happened to her?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“It has to do with me?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Come on, Graham, quit fucking around.”
“How many times did you shag her, Jack?”
“What the hell kind of a question is that?” He was still leaning on his elbows, as if he were having a conversation in a bar with a friend. All he needed was a pint in one hand.
“Come on, Jack, remind me. How many times? Ten? Twenty?”
I thought back to Sheepheaven Farm, remembering Maggie slipping into bed on a dark morning, whispering ‘fuck me, Jack Stone.’
“It’s none of your goddamn business, Graham.”
“Come on, Jack,” he wheedled. “Tell me you shagged her fifty times. It gives my news a bit of a lift.”
“What news are you talking about?”
“How many times, Jack? I know you told me, but remind me, will you? A rough estimate.”
He leaned back in his chair, smiling, as if enjoying a private joke. I held up two fingers.
“Are you giving me the finger, Jack? Or are you telling me it was only two times?”
Two times. I mouthed the words silently.
“Twice? Only twice? Holy shit, Jack, that makes her the most expensive fuck since Cleopatra got laid.”
“You mean it’s three and half years for each time, is that it, you ambulance chaser?”
“No, it comes out to more than a hundred thousand pounds for each trick, Jack.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Graham?”
“It seems your sweet little Dorset farm wife took out an insurance policy on her husband.”
“So?”
“It was an unusual policy, Jack. One of those polices that doesn’t cost very much because the likelihood of the payoff is so rare. A bit like insuring your granny against getting pregnant.”
“What sort of a policy?”
“It was an accidental death policy, the usual kind. If Robbie died in an ordinary sort of accident, run over by a lorry, fell off the shed roof, it only paid a few hundred pounds. But if he were to be the victim of a violent crime, then the ante went up. Get mugged in Poole, lose an eye, five thousand pounds. Both eyes, ten. Legs, arms, that sort of thing. But it has to be part of a criminal act, and the chances of a sheep farmer in Dorset getting done in by a mugger are about the same as winning the lottery, Jack. Which is why the premium isn’t dear. Now here’s the punchline: if he gets killed, mind you the killer has to be convicted for the criminal act of doing him in, or at least doing the act that led to his death, then it goes up to two hundred thousand. There has to be a conviction in order to get a payoff. And, if it happens to him right there on his own property, they tack on another fifty. Know what that means, Jack?”
I shook my head.
“Your Dorset farm wife is a quarter of a million quid richer than she was when you showed up. She won the lottery, Jack. And it looks like you bought the ticket.”
“But Maggie had no way of knowing what would happen to Robbie!”
“Of course not, Jack. Rather gives you a bit of a start, though, doesn’t it? She takes out the policy and not a month later here you come, and suddenly she’s got her knickers down and you’re all hot and bothered. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Graham, when I said to her, ‘What if there were no Robbie,’ she said it was a stupid question. She dismissed it outright! It wasn’t an option as far as she was concerned!”
“I suppose not. Still, things worked out for her, didn’t they? The insurance company had to pay since you raised your hand to the deed. She never even appeared in court, did she Jack? You made sure of that. So, in the end, she collected.”
“But Maggie said she didn’t want anyone to get hurt. She told me that in no uncertain terms, Graham.”
“And you believed her?”
“Of course I did.”
And I could hear Maggie’s voice saying, “If I asked you to swim the river for me tonight, you would, wouldn’t you?” Her voice came to me, whole, as if she were there in the long room with the tables and the buzz of talk and the hum of the overhead lights, but I could hear her and I could hear myself saying, “Yes.”
“What was it Hoad told you on that tape of your last interview? ‘It only matters if they believe you.’ Something like that, was it?”
I could see Maggie in her kitchen, hugging her arms to her chest, facing me.
“And you believed her, Jack, did you?”
I nodded.
“She’s not only a good fuck, she’s a clever lass, too.”
He bent over and began to search in a briefcase propped against his chair. I watched him fish out a computer disk in a plastic envelope. He laid it on the table.
“It’s not the original, Jack. That’s still in the lockup. But this is courtesy of DC Hoad. I told him there might be an appeal. I like him. He’s not your usual copper. He asked me to tell you to be on the lookout for a woman in a clown suit.”
He pinned the plastic envelope to the surface of the table with his thumb and using his forefinger, traced the outline of the disk. “As long as your screenplay is a work of fiction, Jack, there’s nothing in English law to prevent you from finishing it.” He picked up the envelope, held it in front of me.
“I can get a hard copy made and you can have it. It’s a legal document and you’re entitled to it. And you can write whatever you want. It’s up to you. My guess is that you only need to figure out the ending.”
He dropped the plastic envelope back into his briefcase. An officer was behind him and the visiting hour was up. A woman who vaguely resembled Maggie passed behind him and I realized that I could not conjure up a clear picture of Maggie’s face. It was as if she had drifted out of focus and I could not bring her back. And then I could see her, standing in the darkness of the stone cottage next to the river, and she was saying, “Things don’t just happen by themselves. We make them happen.”
There was a rising murmur of voices in the room, chairs scraping on the floor and I was conscious of Graham speaking to me.
“Jack? You OK?”
I nodded.
“What’s this clown suit that Hoad wants you to look for?”