‘I’m so sorry,’ I told her, ‘it’s a terrible thing.’
She nodded, biting her lip, and then sniffed hard. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, her mouth working. ‘The stupid-’ She hit at her forehead with the heel of her hand. I put a hand out and caught her wrist. Felt the heat there.
‘How was he?’ she asked me. ‘You saw him.’
I recalled Damien’s fingers dancing on the table, his mercurial shifts of attitude. ‘Restless. He told me more than he had done before, remembered more.’
‘Did he say anything?’
I knew what she was asking. I cleared my throat; my mouth felt dry. ‘He said he couldn’t get it out of his head. And that he couldn’t do time. But he’d booked to see a doctor.’ That last image of him: his head on the table, drained. You don’t believe me, he’d shouted. I hurried on. ‘Chloe, if I’d had any idea.’
She raised her hand to stop me. ‘He was only twenty-two,’ she said. ‘Barely a man. His whole life-’
Someone behind me murmured agreement.
‘I still want to clear his name.’ Chloe stared at me. ‘Did he tell you anything new? Stuff we can use?’
I hesitated. ‘Bits and bobs. I’m not sure.’
A change came over her face and she drew back a fraction, her eyes hardening. ‘You don’t believe him,’ she accused. The atmosphere in the room bristled and people stilled. I could hear people talking outside and someone coughing.
‘You can deal with all this later, Chloe,’ an older woman spoke gently. ‘You’ve enough on.’
Chloe ignored her. ‘Well?’ she asked me.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I do.’ She was shaking. She took a breath. ‘He left a note, right. A note saying he didn’t do it. That he was innocent and he just couldn’t stand it any more.’ She blinked and tears splashed from beneath her lashes. She wiped them away with both hands and blew her nose on a tissue. ‘That’s proof,’ she said hoarsely. ‘You’re not going to lie about something like that if you’re going to end it all, innit.’
‘It counts for a lot,’ I agreed. Deathbed confessions do carry weight. People don’t want to depart the world wreathed in lies.
‘Will you see his lawyer; tell her what he told you?’
‘Yes.’
That satisfied her. Someone put a mug of coffee in front of her and a pack of tablets. ‘There’ll be an inquest, sometime,’ she said. ‘They’ll want to talk to you.’
‘Yes.’
I thought of all she had to deal with: registering the death, the funeral arrangements, collecting his possessions from the prison. And Damien’s mother – would she know about her son’s death? Was she still alive herself?
There was knocking at the front door, then voices, businesslike. A man came through from the living room. ‘Chloe? It’s the BBC, local news. Want to know if they can talk to you.’
Chloe thought for a second and made her decision. ‘Yeah, bring ’em in.’
Should I have been able to tell how fragile Damien’s state of mind was? Wouldn’t the prison officers, his fellow inmates, be better placed? They’d seen him every day; I’d visited twice. I didn’t want to blame myself. But no matter how determined I was not to get into any guilt trips there was some fickle part of my soul that was whispering in the wind: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. You’re trying to trick me, he’d yelled. I can’t do time. The weal on his arm. You don’t believe me.
Would it have made any shred of difference if he’d left that room thinking I did?
Libby was still my client and I needed to let her know what was happening, to talk to her before she came across it on the news. She was doing a site visit at Tatton Park, a large estate with a stately home, a deer park and an impressive lake fifteen miles to the south of the city. She’d be there for the next hour and a half but after that had a family lunch to get to. It made sense for me to drive down and meet up with her there.
We rendezvoused in one of the car parks inside the park. The rolling heath land was planted with stands of Scots pine and broadleaf trees, shrouded in mist. The air was cool and moist and smelt of damp wool. I got out of my car and Libby waved me over to hers. A few hundred yards away three large marquees were being erected. Trucks stood by with more scaffolding and planking which would be used for the floors.
Libby suggested we sit in her car; she had Rowena in the back. ‘I don’t often bring her out but she sleeps mornings regular as clockwork. Don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that.’ She smiled.
The baby was a similar age to Jamie but physically very different: solid and chubby, with a bald head. There wasn’t space in my head to think about Jamie, about the situation at home. It lurked there, a tight ball in my guts, a pressure at the back of my skull.
‘Takes after Charlie.’ Libby smiled again. ‘Rugby player.’
‘Did he play?’
‘Nah. Just built like one. Liked to watch. That and motor racing. Liked to put his foot down. He always said he had enough exercise lugging stuff about at work. You said you had some news?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid it’s bad news, about Damien Beswick. Sad, too. Damien committed suicide last night.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Her hand flew to her face.
‘I saw him yesterday,’ I said. ‘We went over his new version of events. He was reasonably cooperative. He maintained he didn’t attack Charlie. And he left a note, last night, saying the same.’
‘What does this… I don’t know what this means,’ she said quickly, thumping the steering wheel with one fist. ‘Are you saying he didn’t do it?’ Her face was mobile with confusion.
‘It’s more likely that he’s innocent than it was before,’ I said. A plane flew overhead, coming in to land at the airport close by.
She glared at me. ‘Did they know he might do this? Had he tried anything before?’
‘He was unsettled. He’d self-harmed. He was on some medication to calm him down. But his sister implied he had access to illegal stuff, too. She says the drugs made him worse but he found it hard to cope without them. But he wasn’t considered to be a suicide risk, no. I saw him yesterday and it never crossed my mind that he’d do something like this.’
There was movement in a copse to our right and a pair of red deer, large with huge antlers, walked into view. They seemed like creatures from another age.
‘And his version: did it add up?’
‘Possibly. At the very least there were some inconsistencies that I’d like to look at again and talk to the police about. I did go to see Geoff Sinclair but that was before this.’ What would he make of Damien Beswick’s sudden death? ‘Even if you don’t want me to carry on,’ I said to Libby, ‘I’ll be passing on what I know to the authorities.’
‘Well, I can’t just leave it like this,’ Libby said. ‘Not knowing. If he was innocent then that’s two lives lost, not just Charlie. And if they got it wrong, if it wasn’t him, then who was it?’
‘I don’t know. Look, Nick Dryden, did the police ever talk to him?’
She stared at me. ‘I’ve no idea. You think he might have done it?’
I watched the deer move off, silhouetted against the sky as they crested a slope. ‘He’s the only enemy that’s ever been mentioned. He should be ruled out.’
‘Can you find out?’
‘I can see what Geoff Sinclair knows.’
She sat back, resting her head on the head brace, her face tilted up. ‘Can they reopen the case with Damien dead?’
‘I imagine it will be harder but not impossible. It’ll be easier if there are enough grounds to try someone else.’
‘What a mess.’ She shook her head. ‘How did he…?’
‘He hung himself.’
She shuddered and shifted in her seat. ‘Do what you can.’
I opened the door and got out of the car. Then bent down as another thought occurred to me. ‘The press might be back.’