House of Correction

by French, Nicci

  Simon Brockbank sprang to his feet.

  ‘I think Ms Hardy should confine herself to asking questions.’

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Tabitha said angrily.

  ‘Stop that,’ said Judge Munday in a stern voice. ‘Both of you. Ask questions, please, Ms Hardy.’ She turned to Simon Brockbank. ‘However, I have noted Ms Hardy’s point.’

  Brockbank went very red and sat down.

  ‘Any more questions?’ Judge Munday asked.

  ‘One second,’ said Tabitha.

  She leaned down and whispered urgently to Michaela. ‘Can you think of anything?’

  ‘Fucking grass,’ Michaela hissed.

  ‘I can’t say that,’ said Tabitha, glancing round to see if anyone had overheard.

  ‘Please, Ms Hardy,’ said Judge Munday. ‘The court is waiting.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Tabitha.

  ‘Ask her about her crime,’ said Michaela.

  ‘What do you mean? She told me she got tangled up in her work’s financial difficulties and was made a scapegoat.’

  ‘Just ask her.’

  Tabitha straightened up and swallowed nervously and felt her heart beating. She didn’t know where this was going. She cleared her throat.

  ‘You told me that your crime was taking money from your work? Is that right?’

  Ingrid looked at the judge. ‘I’ve served my time. I’ve got parole. I shouldn’t have to talk about this.’

  ‘You have to answer the question,’ said Judge Munday.

  ‘I had a cash flow problem,’ Ingrid said. ‘I borrowed some money. I intended to pay it back as soon as I could. But it was wrong and I paid the penalty. Rightly. I’m truly sorry.’

  Tabitha couldn’t think of anything more to say. She felt Michaela nudging her.

  ‘Go on,’ she mouthed.

  ‘Erm,’ Tabitha began helplessly. ‘Could you maybe say something more about it?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘What was your work?’

  ‘I worked for an organisation.’

  ‘Just tell us what it was.’

  Ingrid took a breath. ‘A charity making logistical arrangements for migrants.’

  ‘Logistical arrangements?’ said Tabitha. ‘What does that mean? Finding them somewhere to live? Giving them money for food?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It sounds like a good thing. How much did you steal?’

  ‘I didn’t keep an exact count.’

  ‘Some figure must have been mentioned in court.’

  Ingrid started to say something in a mumble that was barely intelligible.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tabitha. ‘Could you speak so we can hear you?’

  ‘They said three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, but I think it was an exaggeration.’

  ‘Three hundred and seventy thousand pounds?’ said Tabitha in a startled tone that was entirely genuine. ‘Did you have to pay it all back?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘You did pay it back?’ said Tabitha.

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You mean you’d spent it all? Three hundred and seventy thousand pounds?’

  ‘It was complicated.’

  ‘So, stealing this money from a charity for refugees, you probably had to lie a lot, fake documents, that sort of thing, is that fair?’

  ‘It was a difficult time.’

  ‘Well, I’m having a difficult time at the moment,’ Tabitha said. ‘That’s all.’

  She sat down. As Ingrid was led back across the courtroom, Tabitha avoided meeting her eye. Instead she leaned across to Michaela and whispered in her ear:

  ‘You should be a fucking lawyer.’

  SIXTY-TWO

  There followed three days of expert witnesses. They gave evidence on blood type and tyre tread and fibres and much else, which Tabitha sat through without asking a single question.

  Then came the psychiatrist, Dr David Hartson. Tabitha heard her medical history being read out once again, and couldn’t object because it was all true. And she couldn’t object when he said that she had a problem with authority figures, because she reckoned that she’d shown that to be true as well, during these past weeks in court.

  There was also a man with a long thin nose and high forehead who tapped on a computer in front of him, while large-scale maps and close-up photos of Okeham appeared on the screen. He was there to establish that nobody could have got to Stuart’s house or Tabitha’s without passing in front of the CCTV camera outside the village shop.

  Tabitha kept glancing at the jury. They all seemed staid and unremarkable, but she knew it went to the heart of the case, because when all was said and done, all the ugliness and rumour over with, the insinuations, bad feelings, suspicions and lies, it was still a fact that she had been in the right place on the day and she couldn’t see how anyone else could have been. The jury looked untroubled. The young man in the hoodie was obviously doodling on his pad, the smart woman had had her hair cut and highlighted. Her nails were painted orange. Tabitha opened her notebook and stared at her annotated, scribbled over and amended timeline until her brain hurt. What was she missing? Something. Surely there was something.

  * * *

  On Friday, at the end of the third week of the trial, it was the vicar’s turn to take the stand. Tabitha, glancing up at the public gallery, was startled to see familiar faces in the front row. Terry from the village shop had come. Tabitha wondered who was covering for her. And Laura was there too, right at the edge and accompanied by Dr Mallon. She sat very straight and her face was pale and stern. Tabitha felt her throat constrict so that she could barely swallow. Little beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. She had almost become used to being in court, but now the terror she had felt during the first days of the trial surged back. She could feel the stuttering gallop of her heart, and her thoughts became a loose muddle of panic. She took a mouthful of water, holding the tumbler in both hands to hide her trembling, and tried to focus.

  Mel took her oath on the Bible with heartfelt sincerity. Her voice was strong and clear. She was wearing a blue blouse with a pattern of swallows on it, and of course, her dog collar. Her hair, tied back as always in a simple ponytail, was lighter, bleached by the June sunshine, and her freckles, which had been pale in winter, were coppery blotches. Tabitha thought of her striding round the village in her stout shoes, her dog beside her. A woman of country lanes and village churches, cottages and fields.

  Yes, she said, her name was Melanie Coglan. Mel, she added. Yes, she was the vicar in Okeham and also in surrounding parishes: she had several churches on her patch. Most people, she explained, didn’t understand how hard a vicar had to work these days and how much ground they had to cover. No, she hadn’t always been a vicar. Before she was called, she had been in sales for a pharmaceutical company in the south-east of England. She had earned much more, she said, but soon she had realised that her life had little meaning. Her expression as she answered Simon Brockbank’s questions was friendly. She looked at the jury and smiled and her teeth were square and white. She had been a vicar for a decade now and had been in Okeham for seven years. She lived in the vicarage that was next to the church and very near the village shop – bang in the centre, she said, and gave a warm laugh though Tabitha didn’t see why it was funny.

  And yes, she had been there all through the day of Friday 21 December when Stuart Rees had been murdered. She confirmed that she had seen the accused during that day. Her benevolent gaze rested on Tabitha as she spoke, and Tabitha stared fixedly back until she felt Michaela prodding her.

  ‘What?’ she whispered.

  ‘You look really scary. Stop it!’

  They were coming to the crucial bit. The barrister leaned forward slightly. He spoke slowly.

  ‘Can you tell me when you saw the accused?’

  ‘I can’t say the exact time, obviously. The first would have been mid-morning, I think, after I’d been to the shop.’

  Simon Brock
bank glanced at his notes. ‘The CCTV shows you there at ten-twenty-two. Would it have been then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you talk?’

  ‘Not really. I would have greeted her, of course. I always make a point of greeting everyone.’ Again, she smiled her wide, trusty smile.

  ‘Did you observe her demeanour?’

  ‘Fucking demeanour,’ hissed Tabitha to Michaela. ‘Always my fucking demeanour.’

  ‘Shh,’ whispered Michaela. ‘Why are you letting this woman get to you?’

  ‘I did,’ said Mel. ‘She was obviously in a bad way. She was walking fast and hugging herself and I think she was talking to herself as well.’ She lifted her eyes to the jury. ‘I should have stopped her. I should have asked her if I could help her. I’ll always regret that I didn’t.’

  Tabitha was about to hiss something again, but then she stopped. Mel looked genuinely troubled: what if she was simply being sincere? What if she actually was a good woman who wanted to help people? Tabitha clenched her hands together, seeing herself from Mel’s point of view – a furious, damaged, lonely young woman in the grip of her own demons.

  ‘The next time,’ Mel was saying, ‘was in the early afternoon.’

  ‘That would be at two-thirty,’ interposed Simon Brockbank, consulting his notes.

  ‘That sounds right. This time we did talk.’

  ‘And can you tell me what you talked about?’

  ‘Yes. I stopped her, because she still looked really wretched and in a bad way, and I wanted to help her however I could. I tried to make conversation, draw her out of herself. So I pointed to this story in the papers about the reported drone at Gatwick Airport that had stopped all flights arriving or departing. She didn’t really say anything. I asked her if she didn’t think it was awful to do that kind of thing as a prank, something like that.’

  ‘Did she reply?’

  ‘Not really, not in the way I expected. She had a strange look about her.’

  ‘Strange in what way?’

  ‘Blank. Fixed. It was like she wasn’t really seeing me. Then she said, well, she said, excuse me.’ She looked directly at the jury again. ‘She said, “I’ve f-ing ruined my life and you expect me to care about f-ing drones?” ’

  ‘I see,’ said Simon Brockbank solemnly. ‘I see. And was that the end of your conversation?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I asked her what she meant, and she said something like, “You’re a vicar, you’ve got God on your side, but I don’t believe in God and anyway, if there was a God he would hate me.” ’

  ‘She said God would hate her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you make of that?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to make of it. I felt deeply concerned for her. I told her it was never too late to turn to God and open her heart to him, and that God was about love not hate. I was actually scared of her. She said I didn’t know anything and it was too late for her now. She said she had wrecked everything and her life was over.’

  ‘Too late,’ repeated Simon Brockbank. ‘She had wrecked everything and her life was over. Hmm. Can you tell the jury how you interpreted those words?’

  ‘At the time, I thought she was a soul in despair. I felt extremely sorry for her.’ Mel’s eyes settled once more on Tabitha, who felt she would jump up, scream and hurl something just to stop the pity she saw in them. ‘Now, I think she was making a confession.’

  ‘And what do you think she wanted to confess?’

  ‘She wanted to confess to the murder of Stuart Rees,’ said Mel softly.

  The court was completely quiet. To be outside, Tabitha thought. To be somewhere else. She thought of the great waves rolling in towards the shore; their shining smooth darkness rising and gathering power. She could walk into that water and be carried far away.

  ‘And you are sure that what you have remembered is accurate?’

  ‘I may have got one or two words slightly wrong,’ said Mel. ‘But I have sworn an oath to tell the truth. I feel certain now that she was in a state of guilt and despair and self-horror, and that she was confessing to me. That is the truth.’

  SIXTY-THREE

  ‘What are you going to say?’ asked Michaela.

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘You have to say something.’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘And you need to eat as well. I got a sandwich for you.’

  ‘I can’t eat anything. I’ll be sick.’

  ‘You need to keep your strength up.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have to say it isn’t true. You wouldn’t have said all that to her.’

  ‘Maybe it is true.’

  ‘Stop it! You’ve been doing so well. Don’t go all gloomy and self-harming on me. Tabitha?’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Cheese and onion marmalade. Here, have a bite at least. You can ask about how she and Stuart fell out. That’s what you were going to do, isn’t it? That letter he wrote about her. Make her look suspicious.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  * * *

  The buzz of a fly on the wall high above her. Tabitha rose and looked at Mel where she stood in the witness box. She cleared her throat unnecessarily.

  ‘It wasn’t half past two that we talked,’ she said. She heard her own voice, loud and harsh.

  ‘That’s not a question,’ said the judge.

  ‘It wasn’t half past two that we talked, was it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mel looked bewildered.

  ‘You say we talked about that story about drones in the paper, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you bought the paper in the morning, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I have. You did. You are on CCTV at ten-twenty-two going into the shop and a few minutes later you come out carrying it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Mel in a conciliatory tone. ‘Maybe I bought the paper in the morning.’

  ‘And at two-thirty-one you’re seen again on CCTV not carrying a paper. That’s when you say you talked to me, but I think we had that conversation, or whatever you want to call it, in the morning. And if it was in the morning I couldn’t have been confessing because Stuart was still alive. That’s a question, I guess.’

  Mel nodded and looked thoughtful but not flustered. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You might be right, of course, and you were talking about something you were going to do, rather than something you had done. But I tend to think it was in the afternoon. Maybe I still had the paper with me.’

  ‘You didn’t. We can look at the CCTV if that helps.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you’re right,’ said Mel. ‘But I don’t see why that means I wouldn’t have mentioned the drone at Gatwick Airport anyway. I didn’t need to be holding the paper, did I?’

  ‘But you said you pointed at the story.’

  ‘Maybe I just mentioned it because I remembered it.’

  ‘So what you said wasn’t true?’

  ‘Everything I’ve said I believe to be true. But it could be that I wasn’t actually carrying the newspaper and I didn’t actually point at it. I’m not sure that’s a very grave error.’ She looked at Tabitha with her cheerful kindness. ‘I was just trying to connect with you, in your distress. That’s all.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tabitha through gritted teeth. ‘So let’s talk about that conversation. The one where I’m apparently confessing. At the time, you didn’t think I was confessing, did you?’

  ‘But I did, though.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why didn’t you call the police at once?’

  Mel gave a small clucking laugh. ‘I didn’t think you were confessing to murder, obviously. I thought you were confessing to a sense of self-loathing and despair.’

  ‘But that’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Mel cautiously. She was about to add something but Tabitha cut in.

  ‘You only thought I was con
fessing to an actual crime once you knew about the murder, right?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘So I’m someone who suffers from depression and I say I’ve wrecked my life. As a vicar, you must have heard countless people saying things like that.’ She waited a beat. ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘People bring all manner of sorrows to me,’ said Mel earnestly. ‘Things they cannot carry on their own.’

  ‘Good. And they’re not criminals either?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So the only thing that makes what I said to you that day suspicious is the fact that someone was found dead later in the day, is that it?’

  ‘It’s for other people to judge what that means.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tabitha.

  She looked at the jury and they looked at her. She didn’t think she was convincing them. She glanced up at the public gallery and met Laura’s gaze. For a moment, she considered just sitting down and putting her head in her hands and saying she was done. They would lead her away and put her in a cell and she would hear the lock turning and the struggle would be over.

  She felt a hand on the small of her back.

  ‘Ask about the feud,’ Michaela murmured. ‘Go on.’

  Tabitha turned back to Mel. ‘Can you tell me about your relationship with Stuart Rees?’

  Mel looked puzzled by the question. ‘I don’t know what you mean by relationship. He came to church on Sunday, helped out at the church fete, and we met at the parish council and in the village sometimes.’ For the first time, she seemed cautious.

  ‘Was he a regular churchgoer?’

  ‘Regular as clockwork,’ she said, and there was a hint of acerbity in her voice.

  ‘Were you on friendly terms?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really? I’ve heard that the two of you didn’t see eye to eye.’ Before the judge could intervene, she added: ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘No. I mean, it is true that Mr Rees disagreed with me about some doctrinal issues.’ She smiled. ‘But goodness me, if I fell out with everyone who disagreed with me on such things, there would be no one left in my church.’

  ‘But isn’t it true that Stuart Rees thought you didn’t even believe in God?’