Ken McClure: Tangled Web

‘Matter?’ exclaimed Gordon, not sure of Davies’ meaning.

‘Which one of them did it,’ explained Davies.

‘But neither of them did it!’ exclaimed Gordon.

Davies shrugged in polite incredulity. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘I find impossible to believe.’

‘The Palmers loved their child,’ insisted Gordon. ‘They couldn’t have murdered her.’

‘Murder is such an emotive word,’ said Davies, leaning back in his chair like a don about to lecture a student. ‘Maybe it’s the wrong one to use in this instance. Mercy killing? Euthanasia? Cruel to be kind? Take your pick. I can even accept that their motives were honourable if misguided but in my book they still killed that child and it will be up to the lawyers to decide what they want to call it. After that, it will be a matter for the courts as to how much sympathy and understanding they care to dispense.’

‘They didn’t do it,’ insisted Gordon.

Davies began to lose patience. ‘Might I just remind you that one of them has already confessed to the damned crime!’ he rasped. ‘And if he didn’t really do it then it’s only because he believes his wife did! You must be the only person in the world who thinks that neither of them had anything to do with it! If you can come up with one single reason why anyone should break into the Palmers’ house, steal their deformed child, kill it and then come back and bury it in their back garden, let me know. In the meantime I’ve got work to do.’

‘Can I see John Palmer?’

‘No.’

Gordon left the police station feeling frustrated and angry, all the more so because he could understand the police point of view. It was the common sense one. It was the one most people were going to go for.

John Palmer was due to appear in court, first thing on Monday morning. Gordon was naïve enough to believe that he could drive up to Caernarfon and attend the preliminary hearing, thinking that he might get the chance to have a word with John and assure him that Lucy had not killed Anne-Marie. He told Julie Rees of his plan and found her less than enthusiastic. ‘Don’t you think you’re taking concern for John Palmer a little far?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure the police and the lawyers are the best people to sort everything out. We really shouldn’t be seen to be taking sides.’

‘They’re friends of mine but it’s not a question of taking sides,’ insisted Gordon. ‘I just want to see justice done and I have the feeling that the police are more interested in securing a quick conviction than in investigating any alternative possibility.’

‘John Palmer confessed to the crime of his own volition,’ exclaimed Julie. ‘You can hardly accuse the police of fitting him up or even of exerting undue pressure on him.’

‘People confess to things for a whole variety of reasons,’ said Gordon. ‘Not all of them connected with guilt.’ It sounded weak and he knew it. He could see that Julie was far from convinced.

‘I still don’t think you should go,’ she said.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ said Gordon.

As it turned out, Gordon couldn’t get near the court when he arrived in Caernarfon. The narrow street leading down the side of the castle to the court building was full of angry people. He made a left turn the other way and parked by the harbour on the far side of the castle. He hurried back up the hill to discover that it was John Palmer they were angry about.

‘Murdering bastard!’ shouted one man to cries of encouragement from a group of women nearby.

‘They should bring back hanging, poor mite!’

Hanging’s too good for the bastard!’

A white police van escorted by two motorcycle outriders edged its way slowly through the throng. Fists pounded at its sides and more obscenities were shouted. Gordon could only look on in horror. Who were these people? Where had they come from? Surely they weren’t local? They looked like a mob borrowed from a film set of the French revolution, a bloodthirsty rabble egging each other on. Their cries even competed with those of the seagulls overhead as they wheeled round the towers of the castle, waiting to swoop down on the litter they knew a crowd must leave.

Gordon, feeling sick in his stomach, turned his back on the awful scene and went in search of a newsagent. He didn’t actually have to buy a paper to discover the fuel that had fired the crowd. An advertising board outside the shop announced: Father slays three month old baby. Police in grisly find. Gordon went in and bought a selection of papers to take back to his car down by the harbour.

The clunk of the car door shut out the distant but still audible noise of the crowd but the scream of the headlines was almost as disturbing. Teacher slays crippled child... Police find baby in shallow grave... Father confesses at child’s graveside.

Gordon had to concede that he had little or no chance of getting into the courtroom so he drove slowly back to Felinbach, still feeling haunted by the faces he’d seen in the crowd, their features distorted by hatred, their mouths bawling obscenities. Why? He wondered. There couldn’t have been a personal element to it so where had all that hatred come from? These people knew nothing of the circumstances of the case, only what they’d read in the morning papers yet that had been enough for them to make a snap judgement and parade their second-hand emotion outside the court room. As he reached the outskirts of the village he concluded that the whys and wherefores must lie in the province of the psychiatrist but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more.

Gordon thought he detected a coolness among several patients attending morning surgery. It couldn’t be construed as rudeness, more a change from friendliness to distant politeness. He mentioned this to Julie when they had coffee together after surgery was over.

‘It’s this Palmer baby thing,’ said Julie.

‘What about it?’

‘I tried to warn you earlier; the villagers have got it into their heads that you are sympathetic to the Palmers. You’re on their side.’

‘I am,’ said Gordon forcibly.

‘Exactly,’ said Julie. ‘Everyone else thinks they’re guilty.’

‘Including you?’

Julie shrugged, aware that the Palmer affair was starting to drive a wedge between them. ‘I suppose I think the evidence and the fact that one of them has confessed, tends to point that way,’ she said, narrowly avoiding a note of sarcasm. ‘I also can’t begin to understand why anyone else would have done it.’

Gordon let out a long sigh and said, ‘I don’t either but that doesn’t mean to say that the Palmers are guilty. It just means that we don’t know who or why at the moment.’

‘But he confessed,’ protested Julie. ‘You seem to keep ignoring that.’

Gordon rubbed his forehead in frustration. ‘I’m not ignoring it,’ he said in a tightly controlled way. ‘But after talking to Lucy and giving the matter a lot of thought, I’m sure John confessed to protect his wife.’

‘You mean she did it?’

‘No, no,’ insisted Gordon, becoming agitated, ‘But he thinks she did. It’s all a misunderstanding. Neither of them did it.’

‘That’s what you think ,’ said Julie. She made it sound like an accusation.

‘It is what I believe, yes,’ agreed Gordon.

Julie looked at him long and hard and said, ‘I think you have to accept that, if one of the Palmers actually thinks that the other one did it, the villagers can be excused for thinking much the same thing. I don’t suppose they care too much which one of them it was but they are convinced it was them.’

‘Well it wasn’t,’ said Gordon. ‘Now they’re being told what to think by the tabloid press. Have you seen this stuff?’ He picked up the papers he’d brought in with him. ‘They were a loving family, for Christ’s sake. John Palmer is one of the kindest, gentlest people I know and this lot are suggesting he’s Dr bloody Mengele!’