Cath Staincliffe - Crying Out Loud

‘Either you or Alex were at the cottage earlier,’ I carried on, ‘and you constructed an alibi, making it look like Charlie was still alive much later in the day and exonerating yourselves. Damien Beswick was convicted on the strength of his false confession. He died in prison. He couldn’t face another night, another day. He hung himself rather than go on. You knew he was innocent.’

‘I loved Charlie,’ she said, still denying any blame.

‘And you were losing him,’ I pointed out.

Her face flooded with colour and she turned her head away. A light breeze toyed with the curls on her head.

Another cab drove off. The photographer walked along to the bronze of Gladstone.

‘What are you here for, Heather? What did you expect?’

‘It’s not all cut and dried,’ she said. ‘You talk as if you know everything and you don’t. We had nothing to do with it.’

‘I know enough to talk to the police,’ I said.

‘The police already investigated,’ she said sharply. ‘There are no grounds to do so again. You’re just going to make a complete fool of yourself.’

‘There’s new evidence: evidence from Damien Beswick. It’s all in my report. I think it’s compelling.’ At that stage I didn’t even know whether Damien’s evidence would be allowable, given he wasn’t around to be tested on it. But I was banking on the fact that she wouldn’t, either.

‘What evidence?’ She sounded perplexed.

I wasn’t going to disclose any details. I didn’t want to give her the ammunition. ‘You’re going to need a lawyer,’ I said.

‘I didn’t do it,’ she said simply.

I sighed, growing tired of her protestations. Her silence stretched out, then the bell in the town hall clock tower rang out once for quarter to three: a mournful toll. The pigeons wheeled and landed by the benches, scouring the cobbles for crumbs. They were a scrappy bunch: two had deformed feet and another had dull, bedraggled feathers.

I waited, counting silently to ten, preparing to leave her.

‘It was an accident,’ she whispered, ‘a silly accident.’

‘No reason for a cover-up, then,’ I came back.

‘He didn’t mean it,’ her voice trembled, ‘it was self-defence.’

‘Who?’

‘Alex.’ The word choked her.

I felt prickling as the hairs on my forearms rose.

‘Charlie lost his temper. He flared up sometimes, it was frightening. He could be very violent. He went to hit Alex and Alex grabbed the knife. He was just trying to protect himself but Charlie tried to get it, he tripped. He fell.’ She gave a shaky breath.

I tried to imagine the situation. Charlie yelling, Alex panicking, fearful, grabbing what was to hand. Charlie lunging and the sudden, irreversible horror as he fell. The blood. Alex rigid with shock, his father dying before his eyes. The terror at what he had done consuming everything else.

A car cut in front of another, swinging round the corner into the square. The blare of horns startled me.

‘Where were you?’ I asked.

‘I wasn’t there,’ she said simply. ‘Alex rang me: he was hysterical, terrified.’

‘He didn’t call an ambulance? Get help?’

‘It was too late.’ She shuddered beside me. Her face was etched with anxiety. ‘Alex was petrified; he knew he’d be arrested, locked up. That’s why he needed the alibi. If it had been me then no question… but my son.’ Her voice quavered.

‘His age,’ I objected. ‘The circumstances – they’d have been taken into account. If it was an accident or even self-defence he wouldn’t be blamed.’

‘What if they didn’t believe him? He wouldn’t hear of it and I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t lose him as well.’ She sniffed.

I watched a man, clutching a can, walk unsteadily to the Albert Memorial, settle down on the bottom step and lay a cap on the floor by his feet.

‘What good would it do now?’ she asked.

‘You sacrificed another boy’s life for Alex’s,’ I said.

She had no answer for me, her mouth worked with emotion. ‘I came here to beg,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I was foolish-’

‘Callous.’ I couldn’t keep quiet. Seeing Damien again, twisting in his chair, that sudden fleeting smile, the last glimpse I had of him as he lay his head on his arms. Defeated. I was determined to make her acknowledge the extent of the damage she’d done.

‘But I had to protect Alex. He was all that I had left. He was so frightened. He’s never been strong. He was terrified of Charlie.’

‘Why was Alex there, at the cottage?’ After all, I thought, Libby was due to turn up later. He might run into her. The three adults had tried to keep the state of play from Alex, not wanting to upset him before his exams. So why would Charlie have taken him there?

‘Driving practice.’ She stared at her nails. I saw the wedding ring on her finger. That she wore it still seemed monstrous. ‘Alex was taking lessons. Charlie said Alex could drive out there; he was laying carpet and Alex was going to help him fit it.’ She cleared her throat.

The flock of tourists disappeared up the steps into the main entrance of the town hall.

‘So the phoney conference at the NEC – you invented that for the alibi?’

‘No, that was true. Charlie had told us he was going on down there later that afternoon.’

‘And how would Alex get home?’

‘Charlie would drive him back to the main road on his way to the M6. There’s a bus from there.’

How had they held it together? I wondered. Blood on their hands. Where had they found the resolve to enact the pantomime for Valerie Mayhew? To fake their reactions when the police came with tragic news? How on earth had a seventeen-year-old boy not betrayed the terror in his soul as he sat beside his mother and answered those mundane questions about the day?

And in the weeks that followed when they were informed of the arrest of a suspect, when they buried Charlie, when they went to court to hear Damien plea, how had they borne that secret?

‘He nearly went mad.’ Heather spoke as if she could hear my thoughts. ‘He still has nightmares. He can’t go to college. He couldn’t survive in prison.’ Anguish tore at her words.

‘Nor could Damien.’

She looked away again. I was aware that she had ventured no apology for any of it: not a sorry for lying, for the miscarriage of justice, not a word of regret for Damien’s suicide.

‘Perhaps that would have happened anyway,’ she said. ‘By all accounts-’

‘Don’t you dare.’ I felt anger sluice through me, my skin grow hot, my chest burn. I stood up. The taxi drivers were clustered outside their cabs, exchanging gossip, smoking, laughing on this fine autumn day.

‘You’ll destroy him,’ she pleaded. ‘For what? Have you no compassion?’

I walked away, across the setts, past the Albert Memorial, up along Princess Street where the wind was funnelled along the road, and the traffic swept past, unending, relentless.

The bus cruised down Oxford Road, past the BBC and the universities, on through Rusholme and Fallowfield. I was dimly aware of the people paying, showing their passes, of those getting off, murmuring their thanks to the driver, of the mix of old and new buildings along the route. The weather was changing again, the sky darkening and there were the first fat drops of rain. But I was rerunning Heather’s story, thinking that if I went over it often enough it might become comprehensible. I didn’t dispute the facts of what she’d told me and they fitted with Damien’s account, but the sheer scale of collusion, the amorality and audacity, the stone cold nerve that both of them had demonstrated was hard to swallow.

Not quite ready to face home and hearth, I went to the park when I got off the bus. In the little copse by the stream, where the path meanders and old frayed rope swings hang from the sturdier branches, I watched the sun slice beams through the crown of the trees and midges dance in their shadows. The air was rich here, redolent of sap and must and the heavy clay soil.