Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

“Maybe; maybe not,” said Swift, sounding unconvinced. “He’s the obvious candidate, I agree. But part of me doesn’t buy it. He just didn’t feel guilty for some reason when I was cross-examining him. Scared and defiant, yes-but not guilty.”

“Well, he felt guilty to me,” said Trave, having none of it. “And his alibi’s rubbish. I know that much.”

“But that doesn’t mean he killed his father. The jurors sure as hell didn’t think he did or they’d have acquitted Stephen.”

Trave didn’t respond, and they were both silent, each turning over the evidence in their minds.

“What about the home secretary? Can’t you get him to grant a reprieve?” asked Trave, changing the subject.

“I’ll try. Of course I’ll try. But don’t count on it. We’re in the court of public opinion now and hanging Stephen’ll be a lot more popular with Joe Public than showing him mercy. You can be sure of that. Stephen’s not one of them, remember. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Much good that it did him.”

“Mercy! These bastards don’t know the meaning of the word,” said Trave bitterly, suddenly overwhelmed by disgust at the whole situation.

And yet as he spoke, he knew that it wasn’t disgust that was tearing him up inside. It was powerlessness. It reminded him of how he’d felt when his son died.

Trave’s depression lasted through the weekend, and Sunday evening found him out on the golf course, walking alone in the twilight. His head sunk in thought, he cut across the seventh fairway, making for the gate in the hedge. He had been thinking more often recently about getting a dog, a companion for his lonely evening walks across the deserted course. But he feared the attachment even more than he desired it, and he could always think of reasons to hold back from making the commitment. The dog would get bored sitting at home in the empty house, waiting for his master to return. He would bark at the neighbours and cause a nuisance, or he might wander out in the road and get run over. And Trave would be left alone all over again. Being alone was one thing; being left was quite another. Lifting the latch on the gate, Trave thought that he had had quite enough of being left behind for one lifetime.

The evening was cold and windy, and Trave had only come out because he felt so restless indoors. Sundays were always hard, but this one was worse. He’d gone out in the garden after he got back from church, but then the rain had driven him back inside. It was the Lord’s day, but he’d given into the need for alcohol by mid afternoon and taken a bottle of whisky into the front room and sat in the threadbare armchair, looking up at the framed photographs of Joe and Vanessa on the mantelpiece. What was she doing now? Making a new life with a man called Osman over on the other side of Oxford. It was all that Trave could do to resist the impulse to throw his glass at the wall. And so he’d got up and gone out, walking the golf course without dog or clubs, trying not to think about his wife or his son or Stephen Cade, sitting in his prison cell up in London, waiting for the executioner to come.

Now that Stephen’s appeal had been dismissed, Stephen would be moved into the Wandsworth death house, a two-storey red-brick building over by the perimeter wall. He had ten days left to live unless the home secretary granted a reprieve, which Trave agreed with Swift seemed unlikely with the government wanting to stay popular and law and order such a prominent issue. People needed to be protected from guns, and what crime could be worse than killing your father in his own home? It was a cold, premeditated act, and the murderer had shown no remorse.

Starting from tomorrow, the hangman would be visiting the gaol every other day, watching his subject through the eyehole in the cell door, measuring weight and drop with a trained scientific eye. The whole assembly line of death was now in motion. Its wheels were turning in nondescript offices all over London. Warrants and orders were passing backward and forward between the Court of Appeal and the Home Office and the prison at Wandsworth. All stamped with the right stamp and signed by the right person. Everything that needed to happen before a modern British hanging could go ahead.

Trave had always hated the death penalty and its attendant machinery. He didn’t bring murderers to justice to see them murdered. His church said it was wrong to take life, and that at least was something he had no trouble believing. And yet he realised now that he had never really confronted the implications of his own role in the process. Death sentences were not as common now as they used to be, and he had not doubted the guilt of those men whom he had brought to justice, those who had gone on to pay the ultimate penalty. But Stephen Cade was different. And not just because he was young and reminded Trave so forcibly of his own lost son. In his heart, Trave was sure Stephen was innocent, and yet there seemed to be nothing he could do to save him. The trial was over, and Trave had no authority to ask the witnesses any more questions. He had saved Silas from Ritter when he should have saved Ritter’s wife, and now Silas was sending Stephen to his death when Silas should be going there himself. Silas. It had to be Silas, whatever Swift said. He was the one who had the motive, and Jeanne Ritter had seen him in the courtyard. And his alibi was a lie. The jurors were fools to have been taken in by it.

Trave turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks. The man he was thinking about was standing on the pavement just outside his house, illuminated by the light from a streetlamp overhead. Silas was off the crutches but seemed to be leaning heavily on a tall walking stick for support.

“What are you doing here?” Trave asked furiously as soon as he had got level with Silas. The anger that had been boiling up inside him as he walked home overflowed in this sudden unexpected encounter with the man he held responsible for everything that had happened.

But Silas didn’t seem to notice the animosity in the policeman’s voice. He was too preoccupied with the reason for his visit.

“I found your name in the book,” he said breathlessly. “And I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. I don’t know why. I needed to know what you think.” Silas blurted his words out in such a rush that Trave found it quite difficult to understand what he was saying.

“Think about what?” he asked, his anger half giving way to curiosity.

“About what I’ve found. Photographs. I need to show them to you.”

Silas held up an old briefcase that he had been holding in his left hand, which Trave had not noticed until then.

“You better come in,” he said grudgingly. Trave didn’t like visitors. His house was where he kept his grief, and he didn’t want to share it with anyone, least of all sneaky Silas Cade. But he felt he didn’t have any option. It was beginning to rain again, and they could hardly examine photographs under a streetlight in the wet, with Silas wobbling unsteadily on his walking stick.

In the living room, Silas sat down awkwardly on the edge of the chair where Trave had been drowning his sorrows in drink less than an hour earlier. Trave remained standing on the other side of the empty fireplace, refusing to provide his visitor with any kind of welcome.

“Is that your boy?” Silas asked, pointing at a photograph of Joe aged thirteen on the mantelpiece. It was Vanessa’s favourite, but Trave had insisted on keeping it when she left.

“He’s not here,” said Trave shortly. “Perhaps you better show me whatever you came here to show me, Mr. Cade. Sunday’s my day off, and I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

This time the hostility got through to Silas.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he said. “I know what you think of me. You’re like Stephen. You think I killed my father.”