Book Read Free

House of Correction : A Novel (2020)

Page 9

by French, Nicci


  ‘Perhaps I am mad – that’s what you think, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you defend yourself in court you will lose everything.’

  ‘At least I’ll try.’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘Try to find out what happened.’

  Mora Piozzi wrinkled her nose. ‘Is that what you’re intending? To conduct your own investigation from inside your prison cell. Is that your line of defence?’

  ‘You make it sound absurd.’

  ‘Because it is absurd. Worse, it’s self-destructive.’

  Tabitha nodded.

  ‘Tabitha, I’m not here to get you to reinstate me. I’ll recommend another lawyer to you. Just as long as you don’t do this.’

  Tabitha looked down at her hands on the table. She had bitten all her fingernails back and the skin was dry and cracked.

  ‘You believe my only course is to admit I did it. I can’t do that.’ It took a great effort to say the words. Her impulse was to give up, give in, accept the solicitor’s help. ‘So thanks, but no thanks.’

  ‘That’s your last word?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is. But the thing is, the thing that I don’t know,’ said Tabitha, ‘is what to do now. I have literally no idea what to do.’

  Mora Piozzi was bending down to the stout leather briefcase on the floor. She opened it up and lifted out a thick bundle of papers.

  ‘I thought you might say that. I’ve printed out all the evidence the prosecution has sent. This is where you should start, by reviewing their evidence, seeing what their case is – though I think you know their case already.’

  ‘You’re being kind,’ said Tabitha. Her voice croaked.

  ‘The prosecution have up to fifty days to get everything to you, including who they intend to call as witnesses, but there’s a lot here already. Everything the police got leading up to your charge. All the witness statements, the copies of documents, most of the forensics, the nine-nine-nine recording. You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The transcript of your interviews. Your medical assessment, things like that.’ She glanced up. ‘Some of the photos you might find upsetting.’

  ‘Of him?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway.’ She pushed the bundle across the table. ‘This is yours. They’ve been through it so now you can just take it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘After they’ve served you their evidence, you’ll have twenty-eight days to give your defence statement.’

  Tabitha looked away. She thought if she met the solicitor’s gaze she might start wretchedly giggling.

  ‘Right. My defence statement.’

  ‘At which point they are legally obliged to serve you with any material that might help you or undermine their case. You should bear in mind that sometimes they don’t give you everything they should.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why indeed? You can request evidence that’s not included.’

  ‘How will I know what that is?’

  ‘That’s a good question. The answer is, you should have legal representation.’

  ‘Are you very angry with me?’

  The solicitor tipped her head to one side. ‘I’m aghast. I feel like I’m watching an accident that’s about to happen and I can’t stop it.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘My card is in that bundle. If you want to be in touch.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  * * *

  Tabitha watched her leave. Then she stood up and lifted the bundle of paper. The top page simply had her name on it and her prison number. She carried it back to the library and put it on the table next to her brown notebook. She took the cap off her pen, then replaced it. She couldn’t even think where to begin. There was so much.

  So she began to leaf through the pile to try to get a sense of it all. There was a sheaf of images from the CCTV looking outwards from the post office. There was nothing obviously dramatic about any of them. They showed a car or a person walking past. She turned one of them round. There was no explanatory caption, just a reference number. But on the images themselves there was a time code. As she flicked through them she was stopped by a familiar image: herself, blurry but unmistakeable, hands pushed into the pockets of her jacket. The accused. She even looked like the accused, hunched over, like she was trying to hide even from herself.

  She lifted up the photo and peered at it more closely, then caught sight of what lay underneath it. An A4 image, beautifully in focus, of the body. Stuart’s body, overweight, balding and dead. She recoiled, squeezing her eyes shut, and sat for a few seconds trying to catch her breath. Then, cautiously, she opened her eyes and allowed the photo to slide back into focus. His limbs at unnatural angles, his eyes open, his bearded jaw slack. She lifted up the photo to see the one beneath: Stuart from above. Then from one side, then the other. Then of wounds, multiple wounds. This was easier to look at for they were just marks on a surface that didn’t need to be skin or belong to a body, to a man she had once known. Had once, she made herself acknowledge, been involved with or abused by, or whatever the word was for a relationship between a teacher and his fifteen-year-old student. Touched. Fondled. Fucked. She stared, her eyes burning. She felt sick with self-loathing.

  Tabitha made herself look at each picture, turning them face down afterwards. Then she looked briefly at the transcript of her own interview. She couldn’t bear to read the whole thing, word by word. Mostly it looked like gibberish; she had said things like, ‘No, no’ and ‘please’ and ‘I don’t know’ and ‘blood’ and ‘I want this to be over’. But certain moments stood out. She was asked if she had any bad feelings towards Stuart Rees and she said no. But what was she meant to say? Actually we slept together when I was fifteen but that has nothing to do with anything. Were you meant to spontaneously put forward information that would damage your own case? Tabitha didn’t know but she did know that it could be made to look bad.

  She flicked through the other statements under hers, again without reading them. What could these people have to say about her? They barely knew her. Nobody apart from her and Stuart even knew about the sexual involvement. Tabitha stopped herself. That wasn’t true. At least one person knew. They not only knew but they had written to the police to tell them about it. Who? The obvious person was Laura Rees, the grieving widow. But why would she write an anonymous letter? Why not just tell the police directly?

  The other statements were from Andy, who had found the body with her. There was Dr Mallon, the local GP. What did he have to say? He wasn’t even her doctor. There was the vicar, Melanie Coglan. At the top of one of the forms, she saw the name Pauline Leavitt and she had to pause for a moment as she made herself remember who that was. Yes, she said to herself finally, she was an old woman who walked around the village with her fat Jack Russell and a stick she would wave at cars if she thought they were driving too fast. They used to nod at each other vaguely. But did she even know who Tabitha was?

  She was so curious that she actually read that statement. The language was strange. It sounded like it had been filtered through the police officer she had talked to:

  Sometime in the days before 21 December I saw Tabitha Hardy talking to Stuart Rees while I was out walking with my dog. They both seemed agitated. She was saying something like: ‘I’ll get you. I promise that I’ll get you.’

  Tabitha put the paper down and thought for a moment. Her first impulse was almost to laugh at the absurdity of this. She couldn’t possibly have said anything of the kind. If she was going to kill Stuart, just for the sake of argument, would she threaten him in the middle of the village with an old woman and her dog walking by? It was ridiculous.

  But it didn’t matter what Tabitha thought was ridiculous. The police hadn’t thought it was ridiculous. They had taken it down as a statement and offered it as part of their prosecution. What would a jury think? Tabitha tried to concentrate hard. Had Pauline Leavitt really seen and heard anything like that? In a way it didn’t matter what Pauline Leavitt ha
d ‘really’ seen. She had given a statement that she had seen Tabitha and Stuart and that Tabitha had said those incriminating words. Presumably she was willing to go into the witness box and repeat the accusation under oath. Was there any way Tabitha could prove that it hadn’t happened? What would proof of that even look like?

  Tabitha read over the words again. Perhaps she could claim that they referred to something else, that they had been taken out of context. It didn’t look good, though.

  She wrote her first note: ‘Pauline Leavitt: threat?’

  Right at the bottom of the pile was a single sheet of paper. At the top, underlined, it read: ‘Tabitha Hardy. Prosecution Case: Initial Details.’

  And there, below it, in a few paragraphs, stark and surprisingly short and matter of fact, was the case against her:

  Charge:

  That on 21 December 2018, between 10.40am and approximately 3.30pm, Tabitha Hardy unlawfully killed Stuart Robert Rees.

  The body was found in the outer shed of Miss Hardy’s house, Aston Cottage, Okeham, Devon, by Andrew Kane, a local builder.

  The body was found shortly after 4.30pm. Death was placed at sometime between 10.30am and 3.30pm.

  A number of witnesses have placed Miss Hardy at or close to the murder scene during the relevant period.

  Motive:

  Under questioning from detectives, Miss Hardy had denied any past problems with the murder victim. It later emerged that she had had a clandestine sexual relationship with the victim while she was at school. This has been confirmed by the victim’s widow, Mrs Laura Rees. There is credible evidence that Miss Hardy had threatened to publicly accuse the victim. There are further credible testimonies from friends and neighbours as to the state of mind of the accused. Medical evidence showed that she had recently been under treatment for mental health issues. Miss Hardy made no mention of this when questioned by police about her state of health.

  Forensic evidence:

  Forensic examination suggested that the murder occurred where the body was found. Forensic examination also found numerous traces of blood on the accused’s clothing, hands, under fingernails.

  The contention of the police is that as a result of her sense of victimhood, Miss Hardy returned to Okeham with the intention of revenging herself on Stuart Rees. As witnesses will show, she approached him on numerous occasions, threatened him, lured him to her house and murdered him. Her plan to dispose of the body was only thwarted when Mr Andrew Kane discovered the body.

  Miss Hardy’s guilt is suggested by forensic evidence, her own statements in the presence of witnesses and clear motive, which she has lied about and obscured.

  Tabitha read this statement over and over again. She wrote in her notebook ‘between 10.40am and about 3.30pm’ but her hand was trembling so much that the figures were barely legible.

  She read the page once again. It all looked bad, so bad that she couldn’t even think of what to write a note about. There was so much. She decided to start with a list of all the bad things.

  Motive

  She had a motive to kill Rees, she had apparently lied to cover it up and nobody else seemed to have any motive at all.

  Location

  The body had been found in her property. Who else would or could have killed the body in her house? It might have looked a bit better if she had found it and reported it to the police. But Andy had found it. So it looked as if she had been interrupted before she could get rid of the body.

  Witnesses

  Tabitha had felt that one of the good parts of her life in Okeham was that she was basically invisible. It was as if there was a silent agreement that if she didn’t bother anyone else, then they wouldn’t bother her. It was a simple life. Working, swimming, walking. Once a day she would go to the shop and get a newspaper. It was another of the weird things she did. Who spends money on a newspaper? But she liked it. She liked the feel of it. She liked to do the crossword, or fail to do it. She nodded at people, sometimes even exchanged a muttered word. But there were witnesses who were giving evidence that she had actually threatened Stuart.

  Forensics

  That felt like the most obviously bad. She had his blood on her. She had his blood under her fingernails and God knows where else.

  It was the most obviously bad but it was the easiest to explain away, wasn’t it? She had followed Andy and the two of them had struggled with the body. Andy had got Stuart’s blood on him as well. That was where the blood on her clothes came from. Or plausibly could have come from.

  But the problem wasn’t any individual detail. It was the whole story. Everything fitted together and the only plausible explanation was that Tabitha had killed Stuart Rees. There were two ways of looking at it and both were terrible: everything pointed to her and nothing pointed to anyone else.

  She sucked on the end of the pen and realised she was sucking on the wrong end. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at it. It was blue. Her mouth must be blue as well.

  What she needed to do now was to go through everything. All the photographs; all the statements. She needed to construct a timeline. She needed to know who the witnesses were, what they’d said about her.

  But it would take time. She needed time and quiet. Just then, as she turned to the first sheet of the pile and started reading, she heard the librarian say that it was time to go and then she heard a voice shouting and realised that the voice was hers.

  * * *

  The expression on Deborah Cole’s face when she saw Tabitha was not so much anger – although there was anger as well – as weariness.

  ‘I need a room,’ said Tabitha.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I’m going to be working on my case, I’m going to need a quiet, secure space, some kind of office where I can read and not be interrupted and chucked out and where I can have access to documents.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Cole. ‘Stop right now. You don’t seem to understand the situation. This is not some kind of negotiation. You were brought here for causing a disturbance. Again. Access to the library is a privilege. If you can’t behave appropriately, then you will lose that privilege. I don’t know what this talk of an office is.’ She held up her right hand with her thumb and forefinger almost touching. ‘I am this close to giving you a week in solitary confinement. With no books and no papers. That might give you time to reflect on your behaviour.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Tabitha.

  There was a pause. Cole looked at the warders standing on either side of Tabitha. She wore an expression of disbelief.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m looking at my case. In a few months I’m going to be on trial for murder. If I can’t look through the evidence properly, then the case will be halted. I don’t know what happens when a big trial can’t go ahead, but I guess that people will get angry.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Is that some kind of a plan?’ said Cole.

  ‘What kind of plan?’

  ‘You think you can get away with this by delaying things?’

  ‘You’ve got this the wrong way round,’ said Tabitha. ‘I don’t want to delay things. I want somewhere to read my files, to work on my case.’

  ‘I’ve seen people like you before,’ said Cole.

  ‘No, you haven’t.’

  ‘They think they’re better than other people. They think the rules don’t apply to them. They’re the ones after five years, ten years, fifteen years, you see in the corner, talking to themselves.’

  Tabitha stared straight at the governor. She felt like a firework that was about to go off.

  ‘I just need a space,’ she said.

  ‘I decide what space you get,’ said Cole, slowly and evenly.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When Tabitha got back to her cell, Michaela was methodically putting her things into a black bin bag.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Tabitha.

  Michaela looked round but she didn’t stop filling the
bag. There wasn’t much: clothes, toiletries, books, magazines, pens. She didn’t speak until she was finished.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ she said.

  ‘Are you being transferred?’

  ‘My release came through.’

  ‘Your release? From prison?’

  ‘They just told me. Five minutes ago.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’ As soon as she had spoken the words, she felt foolish. ‘I know. Why should you tell me? But I thought there was lots of preparation.’

  ‘Some papers went missing and then they found them and then they came and told me.’

  Tabitha and Michaela looked at each other. Tabitha didn’t quite know what to say, or even what to feel. She had only known Michaela for a few weeks and it wasn’t like they’d become particular friends. But somehow they had become used to each other. Michaela was silent, and then she seemed to come to a decision. She rummaged through her bag and produced a piece of paper. She put it down on the table and wrote on it, then handed it to Tabitha.

  ‘That’s my phone number. If you need something.’

  Tabitha looked down at the paper. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said.

  Michaela hoisted up the bag. ‘Maybe I’ll come and visit. It might be a bit weird though, coming back to a prison I’ve just left.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’ said Tabitha.

  ‘You have to stand by your mates.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And we’re mates now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tabitha. It didn’t sound enthusiastic enough. ‘Yes, we are,’ she added. She was touched and confused. She and Michaela had shared a cell; they’d lain in bed night after night listening to the sound the other was making; they’d used the same toilet and eaten meals side by side. Yet they’d never had a proper conversation or shared secrets. Maybe there are lots of ways of being friends, she thought, and they don’t have to involve words. The thought cheered her.

  ‘You know,’ said Michaela. ‘Nobody has come to see me the whole time I’ve been here.’

  ‘If you came, it would be a great help to me.’

 

‹ Prev