Reginald Hill - The Woodcutter

You are wrong there, of course. A hell of a lot of things have changed.

You feel mad but you’re not in a position to lose your rag, so you say, ‘Messages?’

He shrugs and says, ‘Sorry, none.’

That’s enough excitement for one day. Or one week. Or whatever period of time it is that elapses before you feel strong enough to make a decision.

You get Nurse Duggan to summon DC McLucky again.

You say, ‘I’d like to make a phone call. Several phone calls.’

He purses his lips doubtfully, an expression his friends must find very irritating. You want to respond with some kind of legalistic threat, but a man not yet able to wipe his own arse is not in a position to be threatening. The best you can manage is, ‘Go ask DI Medler if you must. That will give him time to make sure all his bugs are working.’

He says laconically, ‘Medler? No use asking him. Early retirement back in January. Bad health.’

That confirms what you suspected. You were hallucinating. Funny thing, the subconscious. Can’t have been much of an effort for it to have conjured up Imo in all her naked glory, but instead it opted for that little shit.

You squint up at McLucky, difficult as that is with one eye. He still looks real.

You say, ‘Please,’ resenting sounding so childish. But it does the trick.

McLucky leaves the room. You hear his voice distantly. You presume he is ringing for instructions.

Then a silence so long that you slip back into no-man’s land. As you come out of it again, you wouldn’t be surprised to find you’d imagined DC McLucky too.

But there he is, sitting at the bedside. Has he been there for a minute or for an hour? Seeing your eye open, he picks up a phone from the floor and places it on the bed.

‘Can you manage?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ you say. It might be a lie.

He goes out of the room.

You pick up the phone with difficulty, then realize you can’t recall a single number. Except, thank God, Directory Enquiries. Asking for your own home number seems a sad admission of failure, so you say, ‘Estover, Mast and Turbery. Solicitors in Holborn.’

They get the number and put you through. You give your name and ask for Toby. After a delay a woman’s voice says, ‘Hello, Sir Wilfred. It’s Leila. How can I help you?’

Leila. The name conjures up a picture of a big blonde girl with a lovely bum. Rumour has it that when Toby enters his office in the morning, his mail and Leila are both lying open on his desk. You’ve always got on well with Leila.

‘Hi, Leila,’ you say. ‘Could you put me through to Toby.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir Wilfred, but I can’t do that,’ she says.

‘Why not, for God’s sake? Isn’t he there?’ you say.

‘I mean I’ve consulted Mr Estover and he does not think it would be appropriate to talk with you,’ she says, sounding very formal, as if she’s quoting verbatim.

‘Not appropriate?’ You can’t raise a bellow yet, but you manage a menacing croak. ‘So when did sodding lawyers start thinking it wasn’t appropriate to talk to their clients?’

She says, still formal, ‘I’m sorry, Sir Wilfred, I assumed it had been made clear to you that you are no longer Mr Estover’s client.’

Then her voice changes and she reverts to her usual chatty tone, this time tinged with a certain worrying sympathy.

‘In the circumstances, it wouldn’t really be appropriate, you must see that.’

You get very close to a bellow now.

‘What circumstances, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Oh hell. Look, I’m sorry,’ she says, now sounding really concerned. ‘I just assumed you’d know. It shouldn’t be me who’s telling you this, but the thing is, Toby’s acting for your wife in the divorce.’

Now this really was interesting, thought Alva Ozigbo.

He’d moved from the first person past to the second person present.

Did this bring him closer or move him further away?

Closer in a sense. The first instalment had been a pretty straightforward piece of storytelling. The detail he recalled, the emotional colouring he injected, all suggested this was a version of that distant morning frequently rehearsed in his mind. In fact, rehearsed was the mot juste. Like a dedicated actor, he had immersed himself so deeply in his role of innocent victim that he was actually living the part.

She’d done some serious research since she took over Hadda’s case. In fact, when she looked at her records, she was surprised to see just how much research she’d done. She’d turned her eye inwards to seek out the reason for this special interest. Like her analysis of Hadda, that too was still work in progress.

She recalled Simon Homewood’s advice when she had started here on that dark January day in 2015. It had surprised her.

‘Many of them will tell you they are innocent. Believe them. Carry on believing them as you study their cases. Examine all the evidence against them with an open, even a sceptical mind. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes, but I don’t understand why you’re saying it,’ she’d said.

He smiled and said, ‘Because that’s what I do with every prisoner who comes into my care at Parkleigh. Until I’m absolutely convinced of their guilt, I cannot help them. I want it to be the same for you.’

‘And how often have you not been convinced?’ she’d asked boldly.

‘Twice,’ he said. ‘One was freed on appeal. The other killed himself before anything could be done. I am determined that will never happen again.’

So she’d gone over the evidence against Hadda in the paedophile case with a fine-tooth comb. And she’d persuaded Giles Nevinson of the prosecutor’s office to do the same. ‘Tight as a duck’s arse,’ he’d declared cheerfully. ‘And that’s water-tight. Why so interested in this fellow?’

‘Because he’s…interesting,’ was all she could reply. ‘Psychologically, I mean.’

Why did she need to add that? How else could she be interested in a man like this, a convicted sexual predator and fraudster with a penchant for violence? It was on record that in his early days at Parkleigh he’d come close enough to ‘normal’ prisoners for them to attempt physical assault. His crippling leg injury limited his speed of movement, but he retained tremendous upper body strength and he had hospitalized one assailant. Transfer to the Special Wing had put him out of reach of physical attack, and verbal abuse he treated with the same massive indifference as he displayed to all other attempts to make contact with him. In the end a kind of contract was established with the prison management. He made no trouble, he got no trouble.

He also got no treatment. While he wasn’t one of those prisoners who staged roof-top demonstrations to protest their innocence or had outside support groups mounting appeals, he never took the smallest step towards acknowledging his guilt. Perhaps it was this sheer intractability that caught her attention.

With the Director’s permission, she had visited Hadda’s cell at a time he and all the other prisoners were in the dining hall. Even by prison standards it was bare. A reasonable amount of personalization was allowed, but all that Hadda seemed to have done to mark his occupancy was to Blu-Tack to the wall a copy of a painting that looked as if it had been torn out of a colour supplement. It showed a tall upright figure, his right hand resting on a lumberjack’s axe, standing under a turbulent sky, looking out over a wide landscape of mountains and lakes. Alva studied it for several minutes.

‘Like paintings, do you, miss?’ enquired Chief Officer Proctor, who’d escorted her into the cell.

‘I like what they tell me about the people who like them,’ said Alva. ‘And of course the people who paint them.’