Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“I heard about the murders on the telly. At first, I couldn’t believe it was the same woman. But when I saw her picture in the papers… I knew. And I knew the best thing I could say was nothing. I mean, I had to be in the frame, didn’t I? They said she’d been raped. And I knew they could tie me to that. Probably to the cottage as well. So I laid low. Didn’t go down the Greyhound. Let alone say anything to Vince Cassidy. What he says I said… It isn’t true. Any of it. She was alive when I left the cottage. And the painter wasn’t there. I don’t know who murdered them. Or why. But it wasn’t me.”

“At times he was almost plausible,” said Sir Keith over a drink in the bar of the Midland Hotel at the end of the afternoon session. “I mean, if you didn’t know Louise, that is.”

“He didn’t seem plausible to me. A slick liar, yes. But nobody was taken in.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t want Louise’s memory sullied by any of the things he said about her.”

“It won’t be. He can’t achieve anything this way-except a longer sentence.”

“I’d give him a short sentence if I could. The shortest one of all.”

“Yes,” I said, lowering my voice. “I rather think I would too.”

“The evil-minded bastard,” Sir Keith muttered, massaging his brow. “God, I’m glad the girls didn’t hear any of that.”

“They’ll read it though, won’t they?”

“Yes. They’re bound to. But at least they won’t have to watch his weaselly eyes while they’re about it. Or listen to his Jack-the-lad voice reeling off lies like grubby fivers from a wad in his back pocket. I expected to hate him, of course. To despise him. To want him dead. But I didn’t know he was going to make my flesh creep. Well, tomorrow he’ll be cross-examined. I hope the prosecuting counsel puts him through hell. Because that’s what he deserves.” He broke off and shook his head, bemused, it seemed, by the force of his response. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

“Don’t apologize. I agree with you. One hundred per cent.”

Sir Keith and I drank too much and stayed too long in the hotel bar that night. Sickened by the way Naylor had sought to portray his wife as some kind of ageing nymphomaniac, his anger gave way in the end to grief. I sat and listened to his increasingly tearful reminiscences of their life together. How they’d met when Louise had been working as a hospital receptionist during a university vacation. How he’d fought off the younger rivals for her affections. How they’d married despite her parents’ opposition.

“Both dead now, thank God. I wouldn’t have wanted them to go through this. Even though they never liked me. Well, I was fifteen years older than Louise, with a divorce behind me. I wasn’t what they had in mind for their daughter at all. She was an only child and naturally they wanted the best for her. And they thought she could do a great deal better than me. Maybe they were right. I didn’t have the knighthood then, of course. I didn’t have the lifestyle I have now. But that didn’t deter Louise. She was never a gold-digger. She accepted me for what I was. And for what I might become.”

In the event, Sir Keith had given his wife wealth and status as well as love. They’d been married for twenty-three years and he’d never once regretted it. A beautiful wife and two lovely daughters to adorn his middle age. He’d known he was lucky, blessed with more than his fair share of good fortune. But he’d never supposed there’d come such a savage reckoning. He’d never imagined he might have to pay so dearly for the joy and fulfilment Louise had brought into his life.

“And now it’s so empty, Robin. Like a husk. I’ve felt so old since Louise died. So tired. So decrepit. And I’m not very good at being alone. I suppose that’s why… well, why Bella… She’s been good for me. Good for all of us. She can never replace Louise. Nobody can. But… it helps… to have somebody… It helps her as well, I think. She loved Hugh very much, didn’t she?”

I probably said yes. I certainly didn’t disabuse him of the notion. What would have been the point? I felt sorry for him. I even felt I understood. That night, indeed, I began to imagine I understood more about Louise Paxton than Sir Keith ever had. The lonely childhood and the disapproving parents were two more pieces of the jigsaw. Somewhere still, out there, she was waiting to surprise me. I dreamt of her sitting beside me outside the Harp Inn, as Naylor had claimed she’d sat beside him. The setting sun was behind her. I couldn’t see her face clearly. Her hand brushed my knee. And she laughed. “Follow me,” she said. “You can’t imagine what I have in mind.”

The prosecuting counsel spared no effort in his cross-examination of Naylor. Yet for all his remorseless probing, Naylor’s story remained intact. He didn’t make the mistake of taking up counsel’s invitation to explain the improbabilities and inconsistencies in his account. Why should a respectable married woman like Lady Paxton seek sex with a man like him? He didn’t know. Why should she take him to the house of somebody she knew only slightly? Again, he didn’t know. Why should anybody but him want to murder her? Yet again, he didn’t know. Didn’t he have any remorse for inflicting such a distasteful lie on Lady Paxton’s family? No, because it wasn’t a lie. Why, then, had he initially denied all connection with the case? Because he’d panicked. Simple as that. It had been an act of stupidity, not guilt. Did he seriously expect anyone to accept that? Yes. Because it was the truth. “And truth’s stranger than fiction, don’t they say?” He was still confident, still giving as good as he got. “I’m putting my hand up to four burglaries. I’m admitting the kind of man I am. I’m not trying to pretend anything. I’m just saying this. I’ve never murdered anyone. I’ve never raped anyone. I’m not guilty.” Sometimes, just sometimes, you could think he believed it. But, glancing round the court, you could sense what he must have sensed as well. If he really did believe it, he was the only one.

I went back to Petersfield that night. Sir Keith, who meant to see the trial through to its end, saw me off at New Street station. “It’ll be over by early next week, I reckon,” he said as I leant out of the train window for a parting word. “And I want to be here to see how he takes the verdict-and the sentence. Will you be coming up again?”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to. Pressure of work, you know.”

“Of course, of course. I won’t forget the support you’ve given us, Robin. Helping Rowena. Sarah too. And listening to me ramble on last night. Other people’s lives. Other people’s problems. They can be hard to take, I know. And it’s not as if you even knew Louise, is it? Not really.”

“No. I never did.”

Not his Louise, anyway. Another one maybe. A version of her as far removed from the person he’d lived with for twenty-three years as Naylor’s version of events was from the truth as I thought I knew it. The light faded as the train rushed south towards London. And the darkness grew. Who could be sure, absolutely sure, of anything? Where she’d gone that night after leaving Hergest Ridge. What she’d done and why. What she would have done if I’d gone with her. And where we’d all be now if I had.

The defence called four more witnesses after Naylor himself. The friend he’d stayed with in Cardiff, Gary Newsom, who spoke up for him as a bit of a rogue but no murderer, who’d returned to Newsom’s home in Cardiff on 18 July 1990 “relaxed and a bit pleased with himself, but looking forward to going back to London.” A customer at the Harp Inn the night before who recognized Naylor as “a man I saw sitting outside with a good-looking woman; it was definitely him and the woman could have been Lady Paxton, but I can’t be certain.” A barmaid at the Black Horse, Leominster, who remembered serving Naylor just before closing time that night. “He bought me a drink and chatted me up a bit. He seemed nice enough. I quite took to him, as a matter of fact.” And lastly Naylor’s wife, Carol. “It’s true about the row. A real up-and-downer. And about the holiday. He was full of it when he came back. I knew how he’d got the cash. The stuff he stole was in his van. Like he says, thieving’s in his blood. Always has been. But murder ain’t. Nor’s rape. My Shaun would never go in for that sort of thing.”