Robbie's Wife (26 page)

“You’re confused about where you are, Mr. Stone. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in this country I can detain you without charging you with anything. We can arrest you on suspicion of doing actual bodily harm to Mr. Barlow and we don’t have to actually charge you with a crime for another twenty-four hours. And if it turns out Mr. Monaco has, indeed, lied, then you’ll be free to go.” He smiled. “Think of us a free bed-and-breakfast, Mr. Stone. Fish and chips for supper. Breakfast as well.”

“What’s there to sort out?”

“A bit of a chat with Mrs. Barlow. Perhaps you had a falling out with Mr. Barlow. A few more questions for Mr. Monaco. A quick check with the car hire.”

He would talk with Maggie. He would tell her that I had been in the field at Sheepheaven that night. But surely she wouldn’t connect me with the attack on Robbie. All she could tell him was that Robbie and I were friendly. Hadn’t I walked to Stryker’s farm with him? Gone to the pub with Robbie and Maggie? Traded quotes from Shakespeare? He would find no reason to believe the traveler, I was sure of that. The car hire agency would confirm that the car had been broken into.

“Have your chat, detective,” I said. He reached toward the tape recorder, saying, “This concludes the interview with Jack Stone. The time is twelve thirty-three hours,” and he snapped the recorder off. He took the tape out, slipped it in a plastic bag and put a seal on the flap. “Goes into security, Mr. Stone. That way there’s no question in anybody’s mind that you got treated good and proper.”

Oliver took me to the custody officer where I was booked. It was the first time in my life I had been jailed. I would be placed in a custody suite, I was told. They took my belt, shoelaces, watch, wallet, placed everything in a bag and had me sign for it. The custody suite turned out to be a small cell in a corridor walled with great stones, and I thought, holy shit, I’m in the mythical dungeon, only this one has uniformed constables and barred doors on rails that slide open with the ominous noise of steel on steel. I spent the afternoon on the thin mattress listening to the constant noise, men yelling, doors opening and closing, and in the late afternoon another constable came around and asked me, “Haddock or cod, mate?”

I must have looked puzzled because he said, “Fish and chips. Come on, mate, make up your mind. Haddock or cod? Or sausage and chips?”

“Haddock,” I said.

An hour later he returned with a bag, called out something and the door opened. I sat on my cot and ate my supper and wondered if I should have asked detective Hoad to call a solicitor.

That night I turned each scene over in my mind, trying to hear Hoad question Maggie, imagining her answers, trying to get inside her head when she heard I had been in the field the night Robbie had been clubbed. Could she imagine me rising out of the dark to attack him, or would she shut her mind to that possibility? I lay on the narrow bed and listened to the sounds of the jail, occasional shouts, the doors opening and closing, someone vomiting and a constable swearing and then, as the hours grew late the shouts became fewer and finally I fell asleep.

I awoke early, feeling washed out and when a constable brought tea and a biscuit I gulped the tea quickly, asking for another cup.

It was late morning when I was taken back to the interrogation room. Detective Hoad was already seated and another uniformed constable had taken Oliver’s place.

My duffel bag was on the floor next to Hoad’s chair and my laptop was on the table.

“Where did you get those?” I asked.

Hoad ignored me, unwrapping a new tape for the recorder. He turned it on and spoke.

“August fifteenth, 2001, fourteen thirty-one hours. Present are Detective Constable Barry Hoad, Police Constable Christopher Hanford, and Mr. Jack Stone, an American citizen of no fixed address.” He straightened up and looked at me, then at the duffel bag on the floor.

“Where did you get those?” I repeated.

“P.C. Damory collected your things from your former place of employment last evening.”

Hoad slid his hand across the table, lifting it to reveal a floppy disk in a plastic envelope.

“You recognize this, Jack?”

It was the first time he had used my given name.

“It looks like a disk for a computer.”

“It’s yours, isn’t it Jack?”

“I have no idea.”

“It appears to be a film script, Jack. And the main characters are named Jack and Maggie.”

“Where did you find this, Hoad?” I couldn’t remember his given name and I was tired of using his title, angry at myself for not destroying the disk.

“In your bag, Jack.”

“I don’t recall giving you permission to get my things. And I sure as hell didn’t give you permission to search my bag.”

“There you go again, Jack, confused about where you are. You’re not in America, Jack. Rules are a bit different here. Cricket and baseball both have batsmen but it’s not the same game, now, is it?” His hand went to the laptop and he undid the latch, raising the lid. The screen was on, glowing a pale blue. Apparently it had been fixed.

“So, Jack, you were shagging Robbie Barlow’s wife?”

“It’s a work of fiction, Hoad. None of that happened. You think every film you see is the truth?”

“The truth is an elusive thing, Jack. You didn’t answer my question. You were getting a leg over Mrs. Maggie, were you?”

His voice had lost its professional tone and he was edging closer to a Dorset accent, the R’s becoming broader, a playful rise in his voice at the end of his questions.

“I answered it. It’s a work of fiction. Fiction means not true, Hoad.”

“But Maggie admits it is, Jack. Chatted her up this morning, I did. What was it, Jack? You and her decided to get rid of her husband? And what did an attractive piece like her see in an old duck like you? Are you rich, Jack? Were you working at Precious Care just to keep an eye on Robbie Barlow? Slip him something to hasten his demise, did you?”

“I made it up! I fucking made the story up! That’s what writers do, Hoad!”

“But you made up a story that turned out to be true, did you? Made up a story about a bloke who fucks the brains out of some poor farmer’s wife and then drives down from London and parks his car behind a hedgerow and walks across a field where the farmer is shearing sheep and he searches in the dark for a piece of timber. What’s he going to do with that piece of timber, Jack? Build a house? And then, lo and behold, that farmer gets his head stove in and falls in a puddle and gets his brain fried and guess what? Two pages earlier your character was thinking to himself about English electricity and how it’s not like electricity in the States at all. Made all that up, Jack? Got a crystal ball, have you? Here.”

He held out his hand, palm up.

“Read my fortune, Jack. I’ll bet you can tell me what I’ll be having for tea a year from now.”

“I made it up. I never hurt Robbie Barlow. I never, as you so nicely put it, shagged his wife.”

“None of this is true, Jack?” He held the disk up with one hand, pushed the laptop to the center of the table so that the glowing screen faced me.

“It’s all coincidence, is it? Maggie Barlow’s lying to me?”

“There’s only one thing worse than being caught in a lie, Hoad.”

“And what’s that, Jack?” He leaned forward, reaching out to put his hand on my arm as if he were a friend reassuring me of his interest in my well-being.

“The only thing worse than being caught in a lie, Hoad, is to tell the truth and have no one believe you.”

“You may be right about that, Jack. I’ve taken cases into court where the truth was so obvious it could have been dressed in a clown suit.” He took his hand away from my arm, sat back in his chair. “But the jury, twelve people with their wits about them, didn’t believe me.”

Hoad pushed back his chair, stood, picked up the disk and held it out between us.

“I don’t believe you, Jack. And this time no one is going to miss the clown suit.”

The room was silent and then Hoad bent down and spoke for the tape recorder: “Mr. Jack Stone, I am formally charging you with the crime of actual bodily harm against the person of Mr. Robbie Barlow. You have a right to have someone informed of your arrest. You have a right to consult privately with a solicitor and you should be aware that independent legal advice is available free of charge. You have the right to communicate with the American embassy or consulate. You have the right to consult the Codes of Practice for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. It is August fifteenth, 2001, the time is fifteen hundred hours exactly and this interview with Mr. Jack Stone is concluded.”

He switched off the tape recorder. “You’ve been charged, Jack. You might want to learn the rules for cricket.”

I was taken back to my cell and later that day I called Nigel in London, told him where I was and what had happened. There was a long silence and then he said he would call Richard, and they would arrange for a solicitor.

Graham, the solicitor, arrived the next afternoon, a man in his forties wearing a rumpled suit and no tie, looking harried. He told me he had reviewed the evidence and although the statements that DC Hoad had taken weren’t yet available, he’d asked enough questions to feel that the case wasn’t as strong as Hoad had claimed. They had no actual forensic evidence to connect me with Robbie’s injury, their witnesses were the kind of people who were suspect in England, sorry about that, he wasn’t trying to be prejudiced, but it was a fact, and it would help. My incomplete script was damaging, but I was an established writer of fiction. They would, of course, call Maggie to testify and her admission of the affair in the witness box would be damaging. On the other hand, they could have charged me with murder, since my intent had been to make Robbie disappear and the only logical conclusion would be that I wanted him dead. That could still happen, he said.

I told him that I hadn’t meant to harm Robbie, I only wanted him out of the way.

“Did you do it?” he asked.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“Look, I’m your solicitor. Whatever you say to me is held in confidence. Don’t lie to me. It won’t help.”

“I wrote about it. I put it down on paper. I’ve thought about it many times since.”

“Since what? Since doing it?”

“Robbie and I talked about it. I apologized over and over. I think he came to terms with that.”

“It’s my understanding that Barlow was a fucking vegetable and couldn’t tell anyone anything.” He was getting impatient with me.

“Look,” I said, “I just wanted him to disappear. And he’s gone. Finished.” I could imagine driving through the gate at Sheepheaven Farm, sheep dotting the slopes beyond the house.

“Pay attention, Jack. If they charge you with murder and make it stick, it’s automatic life. They’ll put you in some place like Dartmoor and you’ll be gone. Finished. If they stay with ABH, you’ll get seven years. It doesn’t help that you’re an American who was fucking an Englishman’s wife, either. And she won’t get a lot of sympathy. She’s lucky they haven’t charged her as an accomplice.”

“I don’t want Maggie to have to testify. Can’t we keep her out of this?”

“She’s the Crown’s witness, Jack. The only way for you to keep her out of the box would be to plead guilty, throw yourself at the Crown, and hope you win the lottery. Not a smart move, I’d say.”

But it turned out that it was a smart move. I was arraigned a week later in the Magistrate’s Court in Bournemouth in front of three men in business suits who accepted the Crown Prosecutor’s evidence and was sent for trial to the Dorchester Crown Court. I ended up in the remand section of the Dorchester Prison and it took nearly three months before I came to trial. In the interim I was visited twice by Nigel, passing along reassurance from Richard, who was paying for my solicitor.

Several times London tabloid reporters tried to talk to me but Graham kept them at bay. The less I said, the better it would be. It didn’t matter. After I was remanded to the Dorchester there were headlines:
DORSET LOVE TRIANGLE TURNS UGLY, YANK SHOCKS LOVER’S HUBBY,
and grainy photos of all of us.

Graham was right, though. I raised my hand to a guilty plea, the Crown stayed with the Bodily Harm charge, Maggie never was called to testify and I was given the maximum, seven years.

After that, things died down, the tabloids went on to other banners and Nigel stopped coming. The laptop and disk remained in the evidence lock-up in Bournemouth where, according to Graham, they would remain. It didn’t matter. I could retrieve them in seven years if I wanted.

I didn’t go to Dartmoor. I stayed at the Dorchester Prison. I remembered passing the building that first time I had driven down to White Church Farm. There was constant noise in the prison, men shouting, the clanging of steel on steel, snatches of song, the squeal of automated doors sliding. Klaxon horns announced the change of shift for the guards. I learned to sleep in the absence of darkness. Occasional nightmarish screams were followed by shouted obscenities. The cacophony died in the hours when, if I were outside, I would have sensed the beginning of the false dawn. During that time I sometimes imagined myself scrambling up the hill above Sheepheaven farm, falling to my hands and knees, the rain knifing at me, the muddy clods lit by periodic green flashes.

I would be sixty-seven years old when I left this place.

I was still in love with Robbie’ wife.

“Stone! You have a visitor.”

I half expected Nigel. Or another reporter from a tabloid. But I had not had a visitor for the three months I had been in prison, and I did not expect one. I came into the long room with the numbered tables and followed the guard who motioned to an empty chair. As I sat down I saw that it was Graham on the other side of the table, his suit rumpled as usual, tieless, hair askew. He leaned forward as I pulled the chair toward the table.

“You don’t look any different, old boy.”

“Why should I? Nothing changes in here.”

“Settled in, are you? No problems?”

“Is that why you’re here?”

He smiled, leaned closer on his elbows.