The most recently received letter had been written soon after Robert’s conviction. He had been returned to Exeter, a local prison which took male prisoners on remand from all over Devon and Cornwall, but was now awaiting transfer. He might even be sent to Dartmoor, he said, if he was considered low risk enough for a category C establishment. The irony of him possibly being locked up in the middle of the moor he’d so loved to roam, often with our poor dead son, was not lost on me.
Predictably the bulk of the letter was another outpouring of self-pity, full of his despair at the prospect of spending fifteen years in prison: ‘without you being there for me. Locked up in some dreadful place and I now know that my life is over, and that is made all the worse by the knowledge that I brought this all about myself.’
Yes, I thought, and our son’s life is over because of you too.
He still maintained, however, that he was innocent of the murder of his wife Brenda. That he had been wrongly convicted. He wrote:
The car crash must have been an accident — it’s the only explanation. That accelerator cable must have split because of wear and tear, because of a mechanical fault, and all those so-called experts have got it wrong. I didn’t touch it, I swear to you, Marion. And I have instructed my solicitor to see what can be done to obtain proof of that. Then we can appeal. That is my only hope...
I skimmed over most of the rest of it. Just more of the same. Yet again he begged me to visit: ‘It would mean everything to me. I don’t expect you to love me any more, but just to know that you didn’t totally hate me would give me some will to live, and to fight on to prove my innocence.’
I bundled up all the letters again and put them back in the cupboard.
Then I considered what to do next. I found that I rather wanted to speak to Pam Cotton. She hadn’t been at all what I had expected in a barrister, not out of court anyway. After Robert’s conviction she and my solicitor Marti Smith had insisted on taking me for a drink in a pub near the court. For them I think it had been something of a celebration at getting the right result. For me it had been more of wake really. Pam had been kind to me, her star witness as she referred to me. Albeit after quite a few drinks had been consumed, she had even given me her mobile number and told me not to be afraid to call if there was ever anything she could help me with. I called. And she answered straight away.
I cut to the chase.
‘I–I just wanted to ask you... Robert has never admitted that he killed Brenda; do you believe there is any chance at all that he might be innocent?’
‘No chance at all,’ replied the barrister at once. ‘Guilty as hell. And rightly found to be so by twelve people of average ignorance.’
‘What?’
‘Herbert Spencer’s definition of a jury,’ she said. And she chuckled.
I didn’t. I wasn’t in the mood for any sort of attempt at humour.
‘But wouldn’t you have expected him to confess, to confess in court?’ I continued. ‘I mean after breaking down the way he did and revealing all that stuff that Brenda had told him?’
I could hear a sort of harrumphing sound down the phone. ‘No chance of that, either,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at the bar for almost twelve years and I’ve never yet experienced a Perry Mason moment. They never confess. The evidence Robert gave about Brenda is about as good as it gets. But all he told the court was what she’d said she had done. Even though he seemed to more or less break down he still wouldn’t admit what he had done. And that’s par for the course.’
‘I see,’ I said, but I still felt, and I suppose sounded, uncomfortable.
‘What’s brought this on, Marion?’ Pam asked. ‘You’re not still carrying a torch for the man, are you?’
In spite of myself I managed a hollow laugh. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I certainly am not. It’s just that, well, he’s been sending me letters I’ve not opened. Until now. And even in the last one, which only arrived yesterday, he’s still protesting his innocence. I mean, is that normal?’
‘I should say,’ responded Pam. ‘You must know the old adage. There’s not a guilty prisoner in any jail in all the land.’
I ended the call and thanked her. I certainly wasn’t going to share with her what I intended to do next. I called Marti Smith, my solicitor, and asked if she could advise me on the technicalities of arranging to visit Robert. I knew that as he was no longer on remand I would need a visiting order which had to be approved by him, not that, from the tone of his letters, I thought there would be a problem with that.
‘And there’s something else I need you to do for me first, some paperwork I need you to deal with,’ I told Marti.
Less than two weeks later I found myself on my way to Exeter Prison, the imposing Victorian-built penitentiary situated quite centrally in the lovely old county town. I was not looking forward to seeing Robert again, and in such a place, but it had to be done.
I passed through security, enduring the indignity of a body search, which brought back unwelcome memories of my own brush with the law. The prison officer who searched my bag removed the sheaf of paperwork I had with me and glanced at me curiously.
I explained that these were legal papers I needed Robert to sign.
‘Did you know you could have arranged a legal visit in a private room with your solicitor present?’ he enquired.
I nodded. ‘I didn’t want to make it too formal,’ I said.
The officer removed my pen from my bag and then replaced it.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But if your husband agrees to sign, then I’d like you to indicate that to us before handing him a pen. For your own safety and his.’
I agreed, wondering at this new world where even a pen could be regarded as some kind of weapon. Although maybe the officer was watching his back as much as anything else, because Robert had presumably already had plenty of access to a pen in order to write to me, before and after his conviction.
He was waiting at a small table in a big room, along with a number of other prisoners already with visitors. He looked as if he may have put on even more weight. His complexion was now quite unhealthily pallid, and he seemed to be sweating. His hair was still short and, I thought, perhaps just beginning at last to turn grey at the temples. He stood up and half smiled as I walked towards him and for one awful moment I was afraid he was going to lean across the table and attempt to kiss me. But I think he saw the expression on my face. Anyway, he sat down again smartly. I sat down opposite him.
He spoke first.
‘I can’t tell you what it means to me that you’ve come here,’ he said. ‘When I was told that you’d applied for a visiting order it was the first good news I’d had in months—’
I interrupted him then. There was no point in stringing him along.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Robert,’ I told him coldly. ‘I have come to see you for one reason and one reason only. I need your cooperation. It appears we have run out of funds and I no longer have any income at all. I have to sell Highrise and I can’t do it without you. Not easily anyway.’
I slammed the necessary paperwork down on the table.
There had definitely been hope in his eyes when I’d walked into that room. I saw it fade as I spoke.
‘Not Highrise?’ It was a question rather than a statement.
I nodded. ‘I have no choice. We have no choice.’
With resignation, and without saying anything else, he looked down and began to read the papers before him.
‘You maintain ownership of one half of the property,’ I told him. ‘This document just gives me the right to dispose of the place and its contents as I see fit. Your share will be put in trust for you until your release.’