Pauline Rowson: In for the Kill

FORMER POLICE OFFICER FOUND

DEAD ON WIGHT LINK FERRY

The ten o’clock Wight Link ferry, St Catherine , was delayed for forty minutes yesterday when a man was discovered slumped over the wheel of his car on the lower car deck.

The captain of the vessel radioed the police and a doctor pronounced the man dead before cars were allowed to disembark. The dead man is believed to have suffered a heart attack and has been named as Michael Clipton, a retired police superintendent of the Hampshire Constabulary. He was fifty-eight, widowed with a daughter.

Why had Clipton been coming to the Isle of Wight? A holiday, perhaps? It could hardly have been to congratulate me on my freedom.

I couldn’t say that I was sorry he was dead; rather I was annoyed and disappointed. I had wanted to find the truth and shove it in Clipton’s face. I had dreamt of hearing his grovelling apology and seeing the discomfort in his eyes when he discovered he had robbed me of so much. I felt cheated.

I telephoned the newspaper to find out where the inquest was being held and at what time and then I called Miles.

‘Clipton’s dead. He was on the ten o’clock Wight Link ferry on Thursday.’

‘Christ! The sailing before mine. They said there was a delay. It’s why I was late meeting you.

How did he die?’

‘The newspaper says heart attack. I’m going to the inquest. It’s on Tuesday.’

‘You think there’s something suspicious about his death?’

I heard the surprise in Miles’s voice. ‘I don’t know.’

I rang off with the promise that I would keep Miles informed. Three days seemed a long time to wait, especially when I was itching to get to the truth, and someone had made it clear they didn’t want me to.

I collected my yacht from Ted’s boatyard, where it had spent the last few years on blocks, and motored it round to moor at the end of my houseboat. I was grateful to Ted for his complete lack of curiosity about my prison life. He greeted me like an old friend and not a pariah. A ray of hope flickered inside me that others might be as forgiving as Ted. Heartened by his attitude I plucked up the courage to call Vanessa, my ex wife. There was no answer. My initial relief quickly turned to irritation, and then bitterness when there was still no answer on Saturday and Sunday. I guessed that knowing I was being released she had taken the boys away for the weekend. She probably feared that one of the first things I would do would be to attempt to see them, despite the court order banning me from having contact with them. Well, that wasn’t going to stop me.

In between calls I went sailing. It was heavenly.

It almost made me want to forget about Andover, Clipton and my vendetta, but not quite. Each time I returned to shore Andover was still there on my shoulder like an albatross and joining him was Clipton.

On Monday morning I collected what was left of my mother’s personal belongings from her solicitor in Bembridge. William Kerry wasn’t as welcoming as Ted. I got the feeling that he blamed me for my mother’s death. I didn’t linger long in his office. I had let Vanessa sort through my mother’s possessions and decide what should be stored and kept for me on my release, and what should be discarded. I’d no option. It must have been painful for her, but not half as painful as it was for me locked in a cell unable to mourn openly, and feeling as guilty as hell over my mother’s death.

I struggled out of Kerry’s office with a large box and bumped right into Percy Trentham, one of my mother’s oldest friends and the village gossip.

‘It’s Alex, isn’t it?’ He peered at me from underneath the peak of a grubby white baseball cap. He was pushing a lady’s bicycle, complete with shopping basket, which he engineered so that it blocked my path.

I stifled a groan. ‘Hello, Percy.’

‘I hardly recognised you. Your hair is as white as mine. I suppose prison did that to you.’

Say it louder, why don’t you? They didn’t quite hear you on the mainland.

‘Heard you were out.’ He pulled at his right ear and sniffed. ‘Steven told me.’

How the hell did he know? Steven was Percy’s son and had been my childhood friend before my mother had sent me away to a private boarding school on the mainland for which Steven had never forgiven me. I’d lost touch with him for years.

I guessed now that everyone would know about my release. I would have to steel myself to meet a certain amount of hostility. If I had wanted anonymity I shouldn’t have returned here, but the houseboat and my yacht was all I had left.

Percy said, ‘It can’t have been easy inside for a man like you, used to the good life.’ A passing couple eyed us curiously. ‘Fair broke your mother’s heart. I can remember her saying just before she died –’

‘I can’t stop.’

I hurried home with a pounding heart, cursing Percy for his thoughtless words. If this was the taste of things to come then perhaps I had better move away I thought with bitterness.

I stepped onto my houseboat and caught sight of my neighbour hanging out her washing on the deck of her houseboat. I guessed she was in her late thirties, although I could be wrong, as her clothes defied current trends, but seemed to be a mix of fashion through the decades, starting with the 1960s. Her long, multicoloured hair was blowing unchecked across her face. I certainly didn’t recall her living there before I had gone to prison.

She looked up. Her gaze was unwavering. I smiled. She blanked me, picked up her washing basket and, turning her back on me, disappeared into her houseboat.

‘Well sod you,’ I muttered. I felt even more determined to prove to them all that I was innocent.

I steeled myself to look through what remained of my mother’s possessions. She had died in the December before last, from a fall down the stairs.

They had let me out for her funeral. I remembered it was a bitterly cold and grey January day. Vanessa had chosen the occasion to tell me she wanted a divorce. It still made my stomach clench every time I recalled it.

I found the official documents of the sale of Bembridge House, the deeds of the houseboat and other papers like insurances, a selection of my mother’s diaries – thankfully nothing spanning the months of my arrest, trial and conviction. I didn’t think I could bear to read that. There were a couple of photograph albums, and a sealed plastic bag containing some of her jewellery. It wasn’t much to show for a lifetime.

When Vanessa had cleared my mother’s house I was beyond caring about personal possessions. I would have sold my soul for a chance of freedom.

A photograph caught my eye. It was of my mother crouching beside me, then a fair curly-haired little boy in dungarees; I was holding a small telescope to my right eye. Behind us was grandad’s folly in the garden of Bembridge House. My mother was pointing at the photographer, my father, I guessed. On the back of the photograph she had written: ‘Alex in the garden with his birthday present 1969.’ I was four and it was March. I threw it back in the box. It reminded me too much of everything I had lost, and of my sons, David and Philip.

On Tuesday I slipped in at the back of court number four in Quay Road, Newport just as the inquest on Michael Clipton opened. There weren’t many people there. A woman who I assumed to be the daughter was sitting in the front, with either her boyfriend or husband. I couldn’t see her face. She was dressed in black.

Behind them were a couple of men that I knew instantly to be policemen despite their not wearing uniform. On the other side of the aisle was a journalist with her notepad and beside her, in uniform, was presumably the captain of the ferry and a couple of crewmembers from the St Catherine . The doctor was on the stand.