Game of Stones

by David Maughan Brown

  ‘You assert very strongly that you wouldn’t ever rape anyone,’ Sinclair commented, ‘which makes it interesting that you haven’t stated with equal vigour that you would never ever murder someone.’

  Cameron sat silently, remembering how the bloodshot eyes had popped out. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind he knew that that hadn’t actually happened, but the vividness of the recurring dream had overtaken the reality. He could feel himself starting to shiver, although he knew he was sweating again. He looked at Harriet beside him and saw that she was watching him with a worried expression. Was she worried about the state he was in, or worried that he might have killed Mutoni? He needed her to believe in him.

  ‘Has anyone listened to the two Crime Stoppers tip-offs to compare the two voices?’ Harriet asked. ‘It is difficult to conceive how anyone other than the person who buried the gun could have known where it was buried. So you need to establish in the first instance whether or not it was Dr Beaumont himself who phoned the Crime Stoppers number – wildly improbable as that might sound. If, in spite of all the other wild improbabilities he has drawn attention to, Dr Beaumont had murdered Mrs Sehene and buried the gun on his own allotment, he would have made sure nobody was around to see him when he did so. If it was the same voice on both tapes….’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Evans interrupted. ‘We weren’t born yesterday and don’t need to be told how to do our job. We have had time to check – the calls were recent and not far apart, so it didn’t take long. It was two very different voices. Neither was Dr Beaumont’s voice. One had a strong Australian accent.’

  ‘Do you have anything more to say for yourself, Dr Beaumont?’ Sinclair asked. ‘If not, you will be taken back to your cell while we await the full forensic report on which we will base the formal charges.’

  There was no point in saying anything more. Cameron couldn’t prove, or disprove, the negative. He hadn’t murdered Mutoni, but he was unquestionably a murderer. If this was the slow coming round of some cosmic wheel of justice that had taken twenty-three years to rotate, he would just have to accept it. He should be thankful about the change in time and place the twenty-three years had brought. Now, if they found him guilty – as they surely would – he wouldn’t be hanged by the neck until he was dead. He would just rot in an overcrowded, drug-ridden prison for the rest of his life. Somehow that didn’t sound like much of an improvement. But, now that the wheel had turned full circle, he supposed that he should, finally, feel pleased that he no longer had a son and daughter to bear the ignominy of being the children of a convicted murderer.

  Chapter 14

  “COP-KILLER GETS COME-UPPANCE”.

  Upside down as it was, Cameron could read The Sun’s headline screaming at him as Harriet was ushered in through the cell door carrying a bundle of newspapers. They really hadn’t liked what he had written about their coverage of Hillsborough. The compound words beginning with ‘C’ on either side of the ‘gets’ would constitute the only semblance of balance to be found in the article.

  ‘Someone has been doing some investigative journalism,’ Cameron commented as Harriet sat down beside him on the assertively blue faux-leather cushion that served as his mattress. He’d made a ritual appearance in the magistrate’s court a couple of days earlier when it had taken all of three minutes for him to be remanded for trial in the Crown court. But Wakefield and Doncaster prisons had both been too full to take him, so he had been returned to his cell at the police station. Familiar as it was, it still didn’t feel quite like home – the addition of a table and chair notwithstanding. But it did have the advantage of being convenient for Harriet.

  ‘They certainly have,’ Harriet replied. ‘You’ve obviously got up their collective editorial nose very successfully. I had hoped that your appearance in the magistrate’s court might have been fleeting enough for them not to have noticed, but no such luck. The tabloids are hunting in a pack, but The Sun seems to have appointed itself leader of the pack. You would be better not to read them, but I’ve brought the main culprits along in case you are feeling masochistic.’

  ‘Suicidal, more likely,’ Cameron said. Lying sleepless on the cushion in the early hours, he had decided that if he could find a convenient dam he really would just walk into it, with or without waders, and go on walking until the water closed over him.

  ‘I don’t have the energy to read them,’ Cameron said, ‘just give me the gist.’

  ‘If The Sun is anything to go by, the man you murdered is a candidate for beatification,’ Harriet said. ‘A kind and loving family man who was the doting support of the childhood sweetheart he had married. She had been crippled by a stroke, so they sent someone to interview her who could tell the heart-rending tale of her lonely wait for her husband to come home to cook her dinner. Imagine her anguish when she learnt that the fanatical communist he had been keeping under surveillance had murdered him in cold blood. Whoever wrote it ransacked the Oxford Dictionary of Clichés in the process.’

  ‘Never mind all the family men our endearing family-man had systematically tortured,‘ Cameron commented. ‘Or, for that matter, the families he had torn apart by murdering and disappearing their loved ones. The man was a sadistic killer.’

  ‘I know that,’ Harriet said, ‘but The Sun’s readers won’t.’

  ‘Any more than they know that the police’s account of Hillsborough was a pack of lies,’ Cameron said. ‘Are all the other newspapers pushing the same line? Shouldn’t they be worried about being seen to influence the outcome of my trial?’

  ‘Yes, they certainly should be, and the others that cover it aren’t quite as sensationalist,’ Harriet answered. ‘But then none of the others has gone to the trouble of sending someone to interview the wife. The Sun seems to have been so intent on nailing you that it looks as if they sacrificed the opportunity of an exclusive and shared some of what their investigation had uncovered. The others do mention in passing that the victim was an agent of the apartheid state, and the broadsheets – even The Telegraph – add that he had an unsavory reputation.’

  ‘Regardless of the clichés, killing a cop is still killing a cop,’ Cameron said. ‘It’s a case of chickens coming home to roost. Jules said I didn’t have to do it. But I couldn’t just stand there and watch him hurt her.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ Harriet said. ‘I expected you to be angrier about this than you seem to be.’

  ‘What is the point?’ Cameron said. ‘There’s nothing I can do to stop them saying what they like. They will already have found me guilty of murdering Mutoni, and the jury will follow suit and condemn me to spend the rest of my life in a cell like this – probably a lot worse than this. There isn’t going to be a lot to live for.’

  Cameron saw Harriet dart a quick glance at him before changing the subject.

  ‘They door-stepped me this morning – six of them clicking away as soon as I opened my front door,’ she said. ‘I suppose that is the penalty for defending a cop-killer in court.’

  ‘Not just any cop-killer,’ Cameron said, ‘a cop-killer who is critical of the tabloid press. It will get worse. It isn’t possible for you be defending me just because I needed a lawyer and that is what lawyers do. It must be because we have been having a steamy affair, probably involving kinky sex, and you are desperate to keep me out of prison so that we can carry on living our perverted lives.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be stupid enough to try that with a lawyer,’ Harriet said. ‘They will know that I would sue them for every penny they possess.’

  ‘They will also know,’ Cameron responded, ‘that punitive damages can’t be awarded here, so you wouldn’t get anywhere near every penny they possess. They should have been closed down long ago. When I was in South Africa I was one hundred and ten percent in favour of freedom of the press. But that was before I came here, discovered who owns them, and saw the extent to which many of the tabloids lie, defame, libel and manipulate – s
hrieking about press freedom every time anyone tries to intervene.’

  ‘It’s good to see that it is still possible to press your buttons,’ Harriet said smiling. ‘I was beginning to get worried that you had run out of the energy even to get angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ Cameron replied. ‘It was just the autopilot button you pressed. I really don’t have the energy. But I’m sorry that defending me has meant your having to run the gauntlet of the cameras. If it is any consolation, defending me isn’t going to end with them jumping onto their motorbikes and chasing your car into an underpass in Paris.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ve never had any aspirations towards being a princess and, in any case, this won’t be much more than a two-day wonder – the day of your first appearance in court and the day of the trial itself, which I’m afraid, as things stand at present, won’t last very long. The circumstantial evidence looks very strong, and you don’t have an alibi. The Sun will almost certainly try to keep the story going a bit longer, but the others will move on very quickly.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be part of your “let’s cheer Cameron up” campaign?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘I was just trying to console you by pointing out that, even if you are the flavour of the day today, you aren’t going to be the flavour of the month, ‘ Harriet said. ‘They have very short attention spans – like three-year olds. You won’t be the subject of newspaper headlines for long. I was trying to cheer myself up in the process by telling myself that they probably won’t bother to doorstep me again until the trial.’

  ‘Which, as you pointed out so consolingly, won’t last long,’ Cameron said. ‘I suppose the only hope is that the police might find the people who really did kill Mutoni in the meantime. But why would they bother to carry on looking if they are convinced I did it?’

  ‘Why indeed? They won’t,’ Harriet said. ‘Mutoni’s body was found in thick undergrowth twenty yards or so above the road below your allotments. If she was killed somewhere else and her body was dumped there, which seems certain, it would have taken two people to get her out of the car, up the dry stone wall, and then on up the bank into the undergrowth. One person couldn’t have done it – she wasn’t overweight but she would still have been heavy to lift and carry – and whoever did it must have left traces. But if there is a ready-made fall-guy like you, who has already succeeded in antagonizing them pretty thoroughly, why would they bother to look too carefully?’

  ‘Couldn’t you try to get a private investigator to look into it?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Yes, I probably could,’ Harriet replied. ‘But it has been raining off and on ever since, so I very much doubt that there could still be much evidence left of how Mutoni’s body got to be dumped there.’

  ‘Actually, on second thoughts, don’t bother,’ Cameron said. ‘Nothing is going to make any difference. They can’t do anything about the murder I did commit, but if they want to have me convicted for the one I didn’t commit they will be sure to find a way.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure. I know this all looks very bleak,’ Harriet said, glancing around the cell, ‘but try not to get too depressed. I know that is easier said than done, but there is no such thing as the perfect murder. Whoever killed Mutoni will have slipped up somewhere along the line – they always do. Someone will have seen something suspicious and will come forward, I’m sure. And, even if they don’t, it shouldn’t be difficult to get a judge and jury to ask themselves the obvious question that the police clearly don’t want to ask: isn’t it a bit too convenient that someone who wasn’t prepared to disclose their identity just happened to be around to spot you burying the gun on your allotment? Whoever phoned the Crime Stoppers line to tell them about the gun must have been party to the murder, and it will be easy enough to compare your voice to the one on the tape and demonstrate that that person wasn’t you.’

  ‘But that won’t prove I didn’t kill her,’ Cameron said. ‘You can’t prove a negative.’

  ‘No,’ Harriet agreed, ‘but I’m sure something will turn up that will prove someone else was responsible. The pity is that we can’t rely on the police, whose job it is, to turn it up. Now I’m afraid I need to go, I’ll try to come in again for a few minutes tomorrow.’

  Before she stood up to go, Harriet cupped her hand over the back of Cameron’s hand on the edge of the cushion between them and gave it a squeeze. The warmth of her touch made Cameron intensely aware that he would have no human contact of any sort until he saw her again. Brian was still away on holiday. The solitude of the cell would close like water around him and drown him. Cameron reached out and grasped her hand as she withdrew it, squeezing it tightly. Harriet looked momentarily surprised before smiling at him and gently withdrawing her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ Cameron started to say.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ Harriet said, ‘I’ll come and see you as early as I can tomorrow.’

  Feeling thoroughly foolish, Cameron watched Harriet leave the cell and heard the muffled click of her heels recede in time with the heavier footfalls of her police escourt before he heard the gate at the end of the corridor clang shut. The last thing he needed was to alienate Harriet in any way. He didn’t think he had been misinterpreted this time, but he mustn’t start looking to her for anything more than legal and moral support.

  They had allowed Cameron to keep his watch, but watching the hands creep round the dial didn’t make the time pass any faster. The cells were reasonably soundproof, but from time to time he could faintly hear the sounds of tramping feet in the corridor, the jingle of keys, the clanging of the gate and voices raised in what sounded like anger. Harriet had left the newspapers on the bench, but he couldn’t summon up the energy to look through them. Whatever lies they were choosing to tell about him might interest their readers, but couldn’t differ much from what the South African newspapers had said about him all those years ago. Mark had shown the choice bits to him when the good ship S.S. Enlightenment called in at Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban on its sanctions-busting voyage of enlightenment around the coast.

  The cell felt airless, and what air there was carried a pervasive smell of disinfectant from the toilet. That was better, Cameron supposed, than the range of possible alternative smells that he might have been subjected to from that source, but it took some time to get used to. In spite of the heavy-handed use of the disinfectant, a big green bluebottle had been attracted into the cell from somewhere better left uninvestigated and was buzzing noisily as it bumped against the glass blocks that let the light in. As Cameron listlessly watched its futile head-banging, and listened to the varied tones of its buzzing, he wondered whether trying to keep bluebottles as pets might be one way of helping the prison years that stretched before him pass more quickly.

  At precisely four o’clock, the cell door opened and Cameron was surprised to see Constable Hudson coming in with two mugs of tea. He handed one of the mugs to Cameron and lowered himself carefully onto the other end of the bench, leaning over to put his mug down on the floor in front of him.

  ‘They told me that you don’t take sugar in your tea,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to ask if I can join you this time – you don’t really have much option.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you I’m sure it wasn’t you who killed the woman from Rwanda,’ Hudson said. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten her name again.’

  ‘Mutoni,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Yes – Mutoni,’ Hudson went on. ‘I got myself appointed tea-boy for the afternoon so that I could talk to you – I expect the fuckers at the top of the pile think that’s all I’m fit for anyway.’

  ‘Isn’t this cell bugged?’ Cameron asked, looking around. ‘It certainly would have been in South Africa. Don’t you need to be careful what you say?’

  Probably not as careful as I might need to be, Cameron thought. A cop arri
ving with a mug of tea in a cell in South Africa would have been playing the ‘good cop’ role, trying to save torture time by eliciting a slip of the tongue in an unguarded moment. Now it wouldn’t matter – he had nothing to hide.

  ‘I’m not about to give away any state secrets,’ Hudson replied, ‘and if they could fire me just for referring to them as fuckers I would have been fired years ago.’

  That didn’t constitute a denial that the cell was bugged.

  ‘So what did you want to talk to me about?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘When we spoke the other evening,’ Hudson said, ‘you told me about the grief you had been having from the Special Police…’

  ‘Special Branch or Security Police, not Special Police,’ Cameron interrupted him.

  ‘Special Branch then,’ Hudson said. ‘You told me what they did to you but you didn’t tell me that you had murdered one of them.’

  ‘Why would I?’ Cameron asked. ‘Maybe I thought that, as a policeman yourself, you might think that murdering policemen was a rather bad habit. Anyway I only told my best friend very recently. Before I told Brian, the only person in Sheffield who knew about it was my therapist who is a clinical psychologist bound by rules of confidentiality. Now everyone in the whole bloody country knows.’

  ‘But wasn’t that a rather extreme response to being followed, and having your mail opened, and your house raided?’ Hudson asked. ‘It seems a bit of an overreaction even to death threats, as long as they were just threats and nobody was trying to follow them up.’

  ‘That’s ironic,’ Cameron said.

  ‘What’s ironic about it?’ Hudson asked.

  ‘I’m in the process of writing a book about overreaction,’ Cameron said. ‘Or I was before this all kicked off. A significant chunk of it is about police overreaction, and here I am being accused by a policeman of overreaction myself.’

  ‘OK, then. So why was it not an overreaction?’