by Bella Mackie
I don’t think my confidence in being released is misplaced, by the way. The police, with help from the devious Angelica, really did just decide that it had been a murder and did little to test their supposition. I cannot claim to be the perfect innocent in all areas of my life, but in this I truly am the victim of a huge miscarriage of justice. What a tightrope to walk. George Thorpe saw immediately how badly the case had been handled, and has exposed flaws in practically every part of the process. This might all be enough, and it was certainly enough to ensure an appeal was granted, but it was no silver bullet. That came only a couple of weeks ago, but it’s enough to almost guarantee my conviction is quashed. Thorpe had come to see me for a long-arranged update, and I wasn’t expecting any major news. But I could tell the moment he walked in that something big had happened. His neck was red, and it was rising up towards his face as he strode purposefully towards me in the visiting room, brushing impatiently past other people, his long wool coat flying behind him. It was, he said, the result of two months relentless digging by his team.
‘The night Ms Morton had her unfortunate tumble, the police made enquiries at every other flat in the mansion block.’ He pulled out a list of the other properties in the building. ‘There are five flats on each floor, arranged almost like a pentagon, but only three face the gardens while the other two face the road. Ms Morton’s apartment was the middle of the three garden-facing properties. Her neighbours to the right are a couple in their mid-sixties who have been in the block for thirty years – long before the high-income professionals started buying in Clapham – and they were at home the night of the incident.’ Thorpe never used the word death when a more polite description could be found.
‘They were very used to Ms Morton’s parties and showed a remarkable lack of sympathy about her tragic accident, perhaps as a result. They were very clear about not seeing or hearing a thing because they retired to bed at 10 p.m. armed with ear-plugs.’ Thorpe raised his eyebrows here, but I could well understand how annoying it must have been living next door to that entitled girl. ‘The police attempted to make enquiries at the flat on the left of Ms Morton’s flat – number 22 – but there was no answer that morning or later that day. They did further investigate the flat and its owners, but were told by the building’s management company that the owners lived abroad and were never in the country so the police left it there.’ He used his gold fountain pen to stab at the paper in front of him. ‘That was a HUGE oversight, but sadly typical of our police force. The reason we didn’t look into this earlier is because the write-up suggested that contact had been made with the owners of number 22 and assurances had been given that they were out of the country. We had no reason to doubt that your previous brief had investigated this thoroughly, but a clever chap in my office went through the reports from the evening in question and found that she hadn’t looked any further into the next-door flat.’ I thought again about Victoria Herbert’s vertiginous high heels and fervently hoped she would fall down an escalator in them. Perhaps I would help make that happen when I got out of this place. Thorpe looked at me quizzically and I snapped back to attention. ‘This is where it got interesting. This fellow, one of my team as I say, did a bit of digging and found out that the flat is registered to a company based in the Cayman Islands. Do you know what an offshore company is, Grace?’ I rolled my eyes and followed the action up quickly with a sweet smile as I assured him that I did in fact know what that was. Patronising fool. ‘Well, under current UK law, foreign entities can buy property here without revealing who they are. It’s scandalous of course and a system which allows for all sorts of dodgy dealings – mainly money laundering, of course. The government is planning to force these anonymous owners to reveal themselves but it’s tricky and likely to take a while.’
I cut him off. ‘Right well I think I’ve heard enough about land laws. What did he find, this man of yours?’ He cleared his throat and looked suitably chastened, but that might just be the default expression of posh men so it was hard to tell.
‘Well it’s been hard work, as I say. A tangled web. David, that’s my associate’s name, he’s spent two months on this, trying to make contact with the company, but a phone number in the Cayman Islands which doesn’t work isn’t much to go on. Often these companies don’t even have a real office out there, just hiring a room so they have an address. Eventually, he hired an investigator who deals with this sort of thing to dig out who owns the company and where they are.’
I was getting impatient now, and visiting hour was whizzing by. ‘With respect, George, I hired you to deal with all of this and it sounds like you’re doing a marvellous job, but sometimes you don’t need to know how the sausage was made, and I’ve got spa treatments lined up back to back this afternoon, you understand?’
‘Right, yes, sorry. Well. Well. David finally, after a lot of misdirection and fobbing off, found the owners of the flat. They live in Moscow and are none too keen on replying to emails. So he went out there last week and made contact with them on Thursday. He explained your plight and asked if there was any way they could help – a housekeeper who might have been in the flat for example, or a CCTV camera. It was a long shot, of course, but it was worth trying. And what do you know?’ Thorpe was looking as jolly as a school boy now. ‘They told David that they had CCTV cameras up the wazoo! Said it was standard at all their properties. David could hardly keep up the pretence of calm professionalism when they said they had one on their balcony, concealed by a small bush. And did they keep the tapes, asked David. Why yes, said the Russians. They kept everything on a database of course. It was best, though they didn’t elaborate on exactly why it was best.’ He stopped for breath as I held mine. ‘David has a copy, Grace. He’s watched them and they will be in the office as soon as the footage has been verified by an expert. It doesn’t show the entire balcony, but it shows enough – you’re not in scene when Caro takes her final bow.’
I nearly fell to the floor in relief. A feeling like the sun warming your body on the first day of summer enveloped my body and I grabbed Thorpe’s hand without thinking about what I was doing.
‘Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know what I can say but thank you. And David. And the Russians. Thank you.’ He looked pleased, the blush rushing up his face once more.
‘Well, we’ve done our job and it’s all very good news. I can’t get you out today sadly, but you’ve only got a few more weeks in here and there can be no doubt that this footage will exonerate you completely.’ A bell buzzed and he looked at his watch and gathered up his papers. ‘I’ll be in touch the moment we have news. In the meantime, hold tight. And keep this all quiet until it’s official.’ I thanked him again and shook his hand. As he turned to go, George Thorpe looked round at me and said, with some embarrassment, ‘Do they really have a spa in here?’
* * *
And that, as they say, was that. I walked back to my cell, fists clenched in excitement, barely able to focus on where I was going or what I was doing. Kelly was sitting on the lower bunk, using a piece of string to thread her eyebrows and singing Beyoncé songs in a key I’m not sure the lady herself has ever been acquainted with.
‘You look white as a ghost, mate,’ she said, as she looked up at me. ‘Bad news from the brief?’
I told her what Thorpe had revealed. I was too excited not to, all my usual front was gone. Stupid to tell Kelly anything, really, but what harm could it do now? She was genuinely sweet about it, grabbing my hand and offering to hook me up with a friend of hers in the Angel who rented rooms with no need for references. I’d managed to keep my flat on while I’d been in this place, it was a stretch but it was important for me to know that there was something waiting for me when I got out. Even though I knew it wouldn’t be my home for much longer. Once the money came through, I’d be looking to upgrade as fast as possible. And even if I wasn’t, there was no way I’d be renting a room off some dodgy mate of Kelly’s. Nothing in life was that desperate. She pulled out her secret pho
ne and started typing, presumably looking to alert her slum landlord friend to a possible new tenant before I talked her down. I hoped the offer didn’t mean she thought we’d be continuing our relationship in the outside world. Kelly was a limpet I found it hard enough to detach in here, if she had the freedom to travel and the use of a mobile I’d be completely at her mercy. Visions of her turning up at my house with facemasks and a cheap bottle of wine loomed ominously in my mind. Not quite the new life I had envisaged.
Oh, I should go back a little bit. Time is strange in jail. It goes so slowly that I really thought I would go mad at the beginning, and then the appeal gained traction and suddenly I’m whizzing over things in my haste to finish this story off and start living a new life, one not dominated by nasty but necessary things like murder.
The moment my conviction was quashed, Jimmy got in touch. Well actually, the CPS had been in touch with him a week before the final decision to inform him of the new evidence. He’d written a letter for Thorpe to give to me almost immediately. I won’t relay the entire thing, going on as it did for three full pages. Jimmy is not a natural writer. His continued, and I think wilful, misuse of grammar has always made it hard for me to read his emails and texts. I guess the Guardian is more relaxed about grammatical errors than some publications. A deluge of small mistakes littered a letter that otherwise might have been quite moving. As it was, I winced at every line. Suffice to say, he was full of remorse. He had let me down in the most monumental of ways, which was true, and he had barely slept since I was convicted, which I knew was bollocks. The man has a special gift for falling asleep in the most trying of times, but I appreciated the sentiment. After endless apologies, he told me that he had moved back in with the Latimers and had taken two months off work to grieve Caro. There was no mention of Angelica, who I assume had been cast off when it became obvious that she was a grifting snake trying to get into his pants. I assume she did, in fact, make it into that particular area before being unmasked, but then they do say that grief does funny things to people. And besides, Jim was channelling his sadness in a different direction. An upholstery course, as unlikely as it sounded. I suspect that means that we’ll all be getting slightly wonky armchairs for Christmas. Caro’s death wasn’t for nothing then. Even without the free furniture, her death wasn’t for nothing. It meant no Caro. That was a blessing in itself.
He ended the letter with a clichéd passage about how he didn’t expect me to forgive him (why do people say this when just the mere fact that they’ve got in touch with you to say it means they clearly expect forgiveness?), but he would spend the rest of his life trying to make it up to me and would be at the prison come the day of my release. Love you, Gray, I’ll help you sleep again soon, he signed off. I wondered if Sophie would insist on coming along, desperate to make my story her own for currency, just as she did when I was younger. Perhaps we’d all go to the local bakery for a celebratory breakfast. Jimmy would inevitably forget his wallet and Sophie would pay for us, shaking her head in exasperation and telling the long-suffering café owner that her kids were, to use her favourite phrase ‘total rotters’. I’d been in jail too long, because even as I thought about it, I felt a tiny zap of warmth. It was a facsimile of a family, but it was what I had.
Since the letter, we have slotted back into our old relationship with a strange ease. I phoned him two days after I read it, letting him panic a little bit. We have talked at every opportunity since. I have been magnanimous. He has been wracked with guilt, and had come up with a plan to move me into his flat and nurse me back to life, as though I had been marooned on a leper colony for months and not in jail because he accused me of murdering his ghastly fiancée. I firmly shut that down. I wanted to be in my familiar place as I planned for my next move, and having Jimmy bringing me cups of tea would hamper that somewhat. There would be time for cohabitation later, when we could live in a house big enough to spend a pleasurable amount of time away from each other.
Thorpe was also fielding calls from the media, especially from the tabloids, who had done a 180-degree turn on my case with such speed that reporters must have sprained muscles. The narrative of ‘The Morton murderer’ was about to be replaced by something equally terrible, at least in my mind. I idly speculated about my new moniker. If I’d had access to a betting shop I’d have put money on ‘Full of Grace’ being at least one headline used upon my release, complete with an image of me reading out a statement. Composed, long-suffering, dignified. The playbook was too easy. I wouldn’t speak to any of them immediately, of course. I wasn’t some desperate novice who didn’t understand how this stuff worked and took the first cheque she could. My narrative would be my own. Besides, press attention would wait until I revealed myself to be not only an innocent victim, but also a grieving daughter. That’s high-class human interest, the kind that guarantees your name will be known for decades to come.
Once the dust has settled a little, I’ll make some initial overtures to Thorpe regarding my father and his estate. Of course, I won’t put it as bluntly as that. I’ll just say that this experience has made me reassess my life and explain that I want to explore the connection with that side of the family. It’s too late to know my father, I’ll say as I dab my eyes with a tissue, but I want to know where I come from and who he was. There is nobody else left in that family, except Lara. And Lara isn’t even a blood relative. She’s an estranged wife, and one that I graciously spared at that. I knew from the moment I decided not to kill her that she would be my gateway. I will approach her with such charm and grace (ha!) that she will be on my side from the start. Two women wronged by Artemis men, both of us trying to lead lives away from their heavy presence. Women supporting women, that’s what we like to see. Perhaps we’ll even become friends, though a connection solely made because we were both damaged by brothers seems like an unhealthy foundation for lifelong kinship. But then again, forging a connection over hatred can be stronger than anything else. Stronger than bonding over a love of ceramics or a passion for avant garde opera. We would have a much tougher bond. The money is important, but the goal was always the annihilation of the family. But that didn’t mean I would be content with nothing. And if she wouldn’t play ball, there were other options. She’d been spared, but that was always negotiable. And now you’re up to date. I’ve spent a further eight days in Limehouse and I have one more to go. Today I was told by a bored-looking guard I’d not seen before (the turnover of staff is high, probably because who in their right mind wants to wrangle a bunch of angry women for twelve hours a day for minimum wage when you could work in a Starbucks and wrangle slightly less angry women but also get free lattes?) that I should expect to be released at 3 p.m. tomorrow on the dot. Since the guard had no care for my privacy, she told me this in front of Kelly, who has now insisted on having a party of sorts for me tonight, in the games room. As part of the preparation, she made me go to her friend Dionne’s cell to have my makeup done, something I hotly protested but was bounced into anyway.
I finish this from my cell, unable to sleep. I faintly remember this excitement from childhood, when Marie would creep across the room on Christmas Eve with a stocking for me. Like all children, I would try to stay awake, waiting for Santa to bring me my loot. Unlike most children, I succeeded and realised the con early on. It didn’t faze me much. I still got the presents, despite the subterfuge. Tomorrow I will spend the morning readying myself – staying calm and conserving my energy. But tonight I am all over the place, thoughts running wild, adrenaline surging. As I thought, my makeover was an experience I won’t be repeating. I emerged from Dionne’s cell after an intense twenty minutes with a face that vaguely resembled a blow-up sex doll and hair that had been backcombed within an inch of its life. The only excuse I have for allowing it is that I was high on the fumes of my freedom and knew that there could be no photographs of the night in question. Despite my complete success in making precisely no friends during my stay, a fair few women turned up to the party, lured by the dis
traction and the promise of soft drinks and cake. There was no cake as it turned out, but it limped on for forty-five minutes anyway, as Kelly told everyone how much she’d miss me and I took care not to return the compliment. I doubt it drove the message home, Kelly has the hide of a knock-off Birkin bag. When I retreated back to my cell, I got into bed, pretending to be asleep by 8.30 p.m. I’m writing this under the covers. Even with mere hours to go until I leave, I can’t risk encouraging Kelly to attempt one last deep and meaningful. Tomorrow morning I shall pack up my meagre possessions and get ready to re-enter the world. A world which will be very different for me from now on.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I dreamt about my mother last night. It wasn’t a nice dream; I don’t often have nice dreams. I never have horrific nightmares either, normally I just get transported back to difficult or sad moments in my life and relive them until I wake up. I suppose I don’t possess a huge amount of imagination, but I respect my practical brain for not diverting me with night-time adventures. I won’t bore you with the memory my sleeping mind dredged up, but I woke missing Marie more intensely than I had in years and feeling further away from her than usual. Every plan and every murder kept me feeling connected to her, as though she were right beside me powering me on. But she’s not in here with me. Not that I blame her. This is not a place for lingering souls. A ghost would take one look at Limehouse and apparate through a wall immediately. If Marie is hovering around, stuck between this world and another, I hope she’s haunting Fortnum & Mason or flitting around Harvey Nichols rearranging the mannequins.
I don’t believe all that nonsense, by the way. There are no ghosts stalking these corridors and my mother was not whispering in the wind while I avenged her. But her memory was fresh while my rage was stoked, and now that it’s all over, I find myself thinking of her less. Her face is blurring and fading. Perhaps a therapist would call that closure. I suppose killing people and getting away with it is a kind of closure. But possibly not one that a medical professional can recommend in good conscience.