‘She phoned,’ said Conley, never quite looking Fearby in the face.
‘Did she tell you about the appeal?’ Fearby spoke slowly, separating each word, as if he was talking to a small child.
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘It’s all good news,’ said Fearby. ‘They’ve got the details of the illegal interview.’ Conley’s expression didn’t change. ‘When the police picked you up, they didn’t interview you properly. They didn’t warn you. They didn’t explain things the way they should have done. They didn’t pay attention to your …’ Fearby paused. At the next table a man and a woman were facing each other, not speaking. ‘Your special needs,’ said Fearby. ‘That’s enough on its own to quash the conviction. But added to the details of your alibi that the prosecution suppressed …’
Fearby stopped. He could see from the blank look in Conley’s eyes that he had lost his attention.
‘You don’t need to get bogged down in the details,’ said Fearby. ‘I just wanted to come and say to you that I know what you’ve gone through all these years. All that stuff, all that shit. I don’t know how you did it. But you just need to hang on a bit longer, be strong, and it’ll all come right. You hear what I’m saying?’
‘Coming right,’ said Conley.
‘There’s something else,’ said Fearby. ‘I wanted to say that it’s good, but it’ll be hard as well. When someone gets paroled, they prepare them for months. They take you out on visits, you know, walks in the park, trips to the seaside. Then, when you’re on the outside, you get to stay in a halfway house and they check up on you. You’ve heard that, haven’t you?’ Conley nodded. Fearby couldn’t make out if he was really following what he was saying. ‘But it won’t be like that for you. If the appeal court quashes your conviction, you’ll just walk free that minute, straight out the door. It’ll be difficult. You should be prepared for that.’
Fearby waited for a reaction, but Conley just seemed puzzled. ‘I just came up here today to tell you that I’m your friend. Like I’ve always been. When you’re out, you might want to tell your story. A lot of people would be interested in what you’ve been through. It’s an old-fashioned tragedy-and-triumph story. I know about these things and you’ll want to put your own side of the story because if you don’t people will do it for you. I can help you with that. I’ve been telling your story right from the beginning, when no one else would believe you. I’m your friend, George. If you want help telling your story, I can do that for you.’ Fearby paused, but the reaction still didn’t come. ‘Are you all right for things at the moment? Anything I can get you?’
Conley shrugged. Fearby said goodbye and that he’d be in touch. In the old days he would have driven home however late it was, but since his wife had left him and the children had gone, he usually made a day of it. People joked about the hotels at motorway service stations, but they suited him. He’d got a cheap deal at this one. Thirty-two pounds fifty. Free parking. Coffee and tea in the room. A colour TV. Clean. Except for the paper flap across the toilet bowl, there was no sign that anyone else had ever been in there.
He had the usual luggage. His little suitcase. His laptop. And the bag with the files. The real files were back at home. They filled most of his office. These were the ones he needed for reference: the basic names and numbers and facts, a few photos and statements. As always, his first action was to take the purple pending file from the bag and open it on the little desk next to the colour TV. While the miniature white plastic kettle was starting to heat up, he took a new sheet of lined paper, wrote the date and time of the meeting at the top and noted everything that had been said.
When he had finished, he made himself a cup of instant coffee and removed a biscuit from its plastic wrapping. It was then that he remembered his first visit to Conley at Mortlemere. ‘This is the beginning,’ he’d said, ‘not the end.’ He looked at the file. He thought of the room full of files at home. He thought of his marriage, the squabbles, the silences and then the ending. It had seemed sudden, but it turned out that Sandra had been planning it for months, finding a new flat, talking to a solicitor. ‘What will you do when it ends?’ she had said – referring not to their marriage but to this case, in the days when they still talked of such things. It was more like an accusation than a question. Because there never really were endings. He’d been thinking he could produce a new edition of his book if Conley was released. But it felt wrong now. The book was just negatives: why this hadn’t happened, why that wasn’t true, why this was misleading.
The question now was different and new: if George Conley hadn’t killed Hazel Barton, who had?
ELEVEN
‘Northern countries,’ said Josef. ‘They all drink the same.’
‘What do you mean, drink the same?’
Josef was driving Frieda in his old van. They were on the way to Islington because Olivia had rung in a near-hysterical state to say that the washbasin in the upstairs bathroom had been ripped off the wall during the party and she needed it repaired. Urgently. And she was never, ever going to have teenagers in her house again. Josef had agreed to abandon the bathroom briefly to help Olivia. Frieda felt strangely torn in her emotional reaction. There was Josef taking a break from doing up her bathroom for nothing in order to help her sister-in-law. Not for nothing: Frieda would insist on that, if she had to pay for it herself. At the same time he was constantly in her house, which had stopped being her own. And each time she looked at what once had been her bathroom, its state seemed to be getting worse rather than better.
‘In the south, they drink wine and stay upright. In the north they drink clear liquid and fall down.’
‘You mean they drink to get drunk.’
‘Forget cares, lose sorrow, escape darkness.’
Josef swerved to avoid a man who stepped blithely out into the road, his ears encased in giant yellow headphones.
‘So, at this party, were there lots of people drinking clear liquid and falling down?’
‘They learn too young.’ Josef gave a huge, sentimental sigh. ‘The recovery position.’
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘No. no. This is just life. People fight, people dance, people kiss and hold, people talk about dreams, people break things, people are sick.’
‘All in a few hours.’
‘Chloë, she did not have such a good time.’
‘Really?’
‘She kept trying to clear the mess. No one should clear the mess before the party is over. Except for broken glass.’
Josef drew up outside Olivia’s house and they got out of the van. Olivia opened the door before Frieda rang. She was wearing a man’s dressing-gown and her face was tragic.
‘I just had to go to bed,’ she said. ‘Everything’s such a mess.’
‘It was quite a mess before,’ said Frieda. ‘You said you wouldn’t notice a bit extra.’
‘I was wrong. It’s not only the washbasin. My blue lamp is broken. My wheelbarrow is broken because they tried to see how many people could fit in it and still be moved – that, apparently, was your friend Jack’s idea. How old is he? I thought he was an adult, not a toddler. And my nice coat has disappeared, Kieran’s favourite hat he left before he went away has a cigarette burn in the crown.’ Kieran was her mild and patient boyfriend – or perhaps her ex. ‘The neighbours have complained about all the bottles dumped in their gardens and the noise, and someone has peed into my ornamental orange tree in the hall.’
‘I will fix the washbasin anyway,’ said Josef. ‘And perhaps the wheelbarrow too.’
‘Thank you,’ said Olivia, fervently.
‘Don’t let him take the washbasin away,’ said Frieda.