A Death Left Hanging (3 page)

He had reached an important conclusion while he had been standing there in the rain outside Strangeways. If hanging was to continue, he had decided – and there was no indication that it wouldn't – then it was vital that those in charge of murder investigations should catch the right man or woman. For while it might be morally wrong to hang a guilty person, it would be nothing short of a human tragedy to hang an innocent one.

Yes, what the English police forces needed, he thought, was to recruit men who were decent and honest, hardworking and imaginative. And, catching a glimpse of his own reflection in a shop window, he was fairly confident that he was looking at one such man.

A
s she walked briskly along the platform towards the waiting train, Jane Hartley was well aware that several pairs of men's eyes were following her movements, and that most of those eyes were fixed on the swaying of her rump. She knew that most women of forty would have welcomed such attention – that, indeed, the knowledge would have resulted in an extra spring in their step – but as her colleagues and associates had long since learned, she was
not
most women. True, she had long since ceased whirling round and confronting her watchers – long since stopped taking pleasure in reducing them, through her carefully chosen words, to embarrassed, bumbling wrecks – but that had been due more to expedience than to inclination.

It was nearly twenty years since she had been to the North, and had it not been for this one compelling reason, she would not have been there now. She was eager for the train to take her away from Manchester – far too many unhappy memories still lurked there – yet at the same time she dreaded it delivering her to Whitebridge. But there was no help for it – not if she were to achieve the goal she had set herself. And she
always
achieved her goals.

She drew level with the first-class carriages and slowed down so that she could examine each one in turn. Ideally she hoped to find an empty carriage, but, failing that, she would settle for one occupied exclusively by women. If that proved not to be available, she would seek out a carriage containing both men and women. Her final fallback position would be to share a carriage with several men. If the only choices before her were either to sit opposite a lone man or stand in the corridor, then she would prefer the corridor.

She was in luck and found a carriage that was completely – perfectly – empty. With eight seats all to herself, she could spread out her papers and get some work done on the hour-long journey.

Once she had made herself comfortable in the carriage, she opened the expensive leather briefcase – a gift from the members of her chambers to mark her last, spectacular, victory in the Old Bailey. She ran her slim fingers over the brief that her clerk had handed to her just as she was leaving the office. It was an important case – a case which would benefit both her bank balance and her already considerable reputation – and she'd been hoping the instructing solicitor would pass it her way. Yet now she actually had it in her hands, she found she could not summon up her customary enthusiasm.

She reached into the briefcase again and took out the copy of the
Manchester Guardian
that she had bought from the newsagent's on the station.

Much of the paper was devoted to the Profumo Affair, which was only to be expected, given that it was the biggest scandal to hit the English political establishment since the war. She had met John Profumo socially on several occasions and had been quite impressed with him at the time. Now, however, as more of the scandal leaked out every day, she was beginning to see what a bloody fool the ex-minister really was.

He'd had everything a man could want – wealth, a beautiful wife, the important position of Secretary of War in the government. There had even been talk of him being the next Prime Minister. And he had destroyed it all by embarking on a torrid relationship with Christine Keeler, a young woman who even the most charitable of newspapers had called ‘a showgirl'.

Had he bothered to check who else she was sleeping with, he would have discovered that another of her ‘friends' was the Russian Naval Attache´. But he'd taken
no
such precautions. Instead, like most men, he had kept his brain firmly in his underwear.

Even so, he might have survived the scandal if he had not lied to the House of Commons – had not told all the members of parliament gathered there that he did not even know Miss Keeler. Yet the lie had been told, and there was no going back on it. And now the government, which had been in power for twelve long years, looked to be in imminent danger of collapse.

Jane Hartley quickly and impatiently scanned the paper. She had very little interest in the doings of John Profumo, but there was one name, connected only peripherally with the minister, that she
was
hoping to see.

There it was – not in the lead story but in one of the articles related to it! Jane Hartley lit a cigarette, and began to read.

The picture that accompanied the article had the same grainy quality as most newspaper photographs, but it was still clear enough to give a fairly accurate impression of Sharpe. The noble lord was staring directly into the camera, as if to demonstrate that whatever others might wish to hide,
he
certainly had nothing to fear. He wore his years well, and his white hair (which he had allowed to grow unfashionably long) gave him the air of a patrician.

‘You fake!' Jane Hartley said. ‘You complete bloody fake!'

She drew heavily on her cigarette, and then, with almost surgical precision, placed the glowing tip of it against the photograph. The cigarette end all but obscured Sharpe's face from her, but she still had the satisfaction of seeing the edge of the paper around it turn brown and then begin to glow red.

She pressed harder, and the slim cigarette buckled. She could feel the heat beginning to scorch her fingertips, and could smell the acrid smoke as it snaked unpleasantly up her nostrils. She knew she should stop what she was doing, but she didn't want to.

She didn't want to!

There was the sound of the carriage door being opened, and then the paper was snatched violently out of her hands.

She looked up. The man who had grabbed the newspaper from her was wearing a ticket collector's uniform. He flung the paper to the floor and stamped on it several times.

‘What the hell do you think you were doing?' he demanded.

‘I'm . . . I'm not sure,' she said. ‘I think I must have fallen asleep.'

‘You didn't look
to me
as if you'd fallen asleep,' the ticket collector said aggressively. ‘You looked
to me
as if you were deliberately setting fire to that newspaper.'

‘Now why should I have wanted to do that?' Jane Hartley asked, regaining just enough control of herself to slip into her courtroom manner. ‘Do I look like a pyromaniac?'

‘A what?'

‘Would you mind opening the window a little?' she asked, the tone of her voice making clear that it was not a request.

‘I . . .'

‘The window!'

Almost as if he were surprised to find himself doing it, the guard stepped past her and opened the window.

‘That's far enough!' she said, when he'd slid it about halfway down. ‘And now I expect you would like to see my ticket.'

‘I still want to know––'

‘Here it is,' she said, holding the ticket out.

The collector took the ticket off her, but barely gave it a glance. ‘I mean, from what I saw out in the corridor––'

‘Is it in order?' she asked firmly.

‘What?'

‘My ticket! Is it in order?'

Reluctantly, the collector looked down at it again. ‘Yes, it seems all right,' he admitted.

Jane Hartley held out her hand. ‘In that case, you can give it back to me, can't you?'

The collector handed her ticket. ‘By rights, you know, I should make a repor––' he began.

‘Thank you. You may go now,' Jane Hartley interrupted him.

‘Look, missus . . .' the ticket collector blustered.

‘Miss!' she corrected him. ‘
Miss
Jane Hartley,
Queen's Counsel
.'

The words gave him pause for thought. ‘You're a lawyer, are you?' he said.

She smiled suddenly – a courtroom trick she knew would throw him further off balance. ‘Yes, I'm a lawyer,' she said. ‘Quite a famous one, as a matter of fact. But I like to keep quiet about that when I'm travelling.' She paused for the two beats necessary for her words to have their required effect. ‘Now, if you wouldn't mind, I would appreciate a little privacy.'

‘Uh . . . of course,' the ticket collector said, leaving the carriage in the same dazed way that she had observed so many witnesses step down from the witness box.

The smile stayed on her lips until she was sure he had gone, then quickly slipped away. It was a good thing that he had come in when he did, she thought, because she had almost certainly lost control. And she must not do that. If she were to succeed in her mission, she must learn to keep the same tight grip on herself in Whitebridge as she always achieved in the courtroom.

She bent down, picked up the newspaper, and smoothed it out. The photograph of Eric Sharpe was now framed by the imprint of the ticket collector's boot, but the only real damage had been done by her cigarette. She gazed down in satisfaction at the burn mark, which had once been his head. By the time she had finished with Lord Eric Sharpe, she promised herself, he would feel worse than he looked.

They had left Manchester far behind, and she turned towards the window in order to watch the once-familiar countryside sweep past. The first time she had gone after Sharpe, it had been with all the haste and inexperience of a young barrister whose mind was already fully occupied with her work and her forthcoming marriage. This time, she had planned it all out carefully in advance – marshalling all her evidence, working out all the possible directions that her enemy's counterattack might come from. This time, she would
not
fail.

The moorland had disappeared, and she was once more gazing at the backs of terraced houses. The train was starting to slow, and she knew that it must already be approaching Whitebridge Station. Despite her previous resolve, she felt a sudden urge to sink down into her seat and not to move so much as an inch until the train had pulled out of Whitebridge again and was heading for Preston.

And why not? she asked herself. Why put yourself through all that suffering again? It can't change anything, you know. The past is dead and buried.

But she knew that was not true – knew that the past that she held in her head was as real and vivid as it had ever been. Even if that were not so – even if she could find a way to numb the pain that had been eating away at her for nearly thirty years – there were other factors to be taken into consideration.

Debts had to be paid, whatever it cost her. She owed a debt to the even-handed justice that she had sworn to uphold when she had been admitted to the bar. And she owed a debt to her mother – a debt that, however successful she was, she could only
begin
to repay.

The train juddered to a halt. Through the window she could see the chipped enamel sign which announced that she had arrived at Whitebridge. Other passengers had already started to disembark and were signalling for porters. The guard, walking up and down the platform, would soon be waving his flag and blowing his whistle. She had only to sit there for a little while longer and the matter would be taken out of her hands.

She climbed to her feet and reached shakily for the door handle.

T
he room he was sitting in reminded Charlie Woodend of the one in
Great Expectations
where Pip first meets Miss Haversham. It wasn't an analogy that would have occurred to most people, he supposed. For a start, there was no crumbling three-tiered cake and no decayed wedding breakfast laid out for guests who had never arrived. Nor was there any evidence of a mad old bat parading around in a tattered lace dress. In fact, with its conference table and desk lamps, the place did not look the least Dickensian. But it
felt
it – at least to Woodend.

He glanced quickly around the table at the other five members of the committee he had been unwillingly co-opted on to. Like Miss Haversham, they had all refused to accept that time had moved on. Like her, they blamed their present misery on the past misdemeanours of others. He heard them complaining constantly during the committee's numerous tea breaks:

‘If Shithouse Radcliffe hadn't blocked my promotion that time, I could have been Chief Constable by now . . .'

‘If I'd have got the credit for the Simpson Murder Case that I really deserved . . .'

No modern bobby was as tough as they'd been. There wasn't an inspector in Mid Lancashire who showed half the initiative they'd displayed when they'd held that rank. If they were only twenty years younger, they'd show the lot of them.

‘Any comment to make on that, Charlie?' asked the chief superintendent who was serving as chairman of the committee.