Disordered Minds Page 5

  You mention the "collective sigh of relief" when Howard Stamp was arrested and charged, but it wasn't until the evidence was heard at trial that local people felt able to relax. My neighbor said they all thought the police had arrested the wrong person. She described Stamp as "someone who wouldn't say boo to a goose let alone murder anyone." In fact it was widely believed that the police had frightened him into making his confession, especially as none of the witnesses who saw him running away remembered seeing any blood on his clothes. There was a continuing fear that the real murderer was still at large.

  As you make clear in your book, it was the forensic evidence that not only swung the jury against Stamp but also persuaded local people that he must be guilty. One detail you omitted was that Dr. James Studeley for the prosecution had trained under Sir Bernard Spilsbury-the "father" of forensic medicine-in the 1930s. Much was made of this by the prosecution during their cross-examination of Dr. Foyle, whose qualifications were "pedestrian by comparison," since he had trained in Australia under an "unknown." At one point, Robert Tring, Queen's Counsel, asked him to name a pathologist with whom he'd worked that a member of the jury might have heard of. He was unable to do so, and could only claim to have read their work. As this came after a similar question to Studeley, who cited not just Spilsbury but also Sir Sydney Smith, Professor Keith Simpson, Dr. Francis Camps and Dr. Donald Teare, who between them had founded the "Association of Forensic Medicine" in the late 1940s, Foyle appeared to be a lightweight.

  In particular, his quoting of Keith Simpson's comments on "identical hairs" lost credibility when Studeley was able to counter with remarks made by Simpson at another trial. "The supporting evidence of identical hair is useful when everything else is pointing in the same direction." In Stamp's case, of course, the "everything else" was his confession.

  I applaud your efforts to bring Stamp's case to public attention, although I gather from your Radio 4 interview that you've had little success to date. From my own research I support your view that he was convicted on a coerced confession and unreliable evidence. However, in the absence of another suspect, it will be hard to prove. Sadly, my only neighbor who was here in 1970 died five years ago and, while I believe Wynne Stamp is still alive, I have never been able to find out where she went. Rumor had it she changed her name to escape publicity, but I have no firm evidence of that.

  If I can be of any further assistance, please feel free to write.

  Yours sincerely,

  George Gardener

  George Gardener

  Replied 1/5/03. During subsequent correspondence arranged a meeting for 2/13/03 at the Crown and Feathers pub in Highdown.

  *2*

  HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2003, 11:00 P.M.

  The news that evening was bleak. The government had ordered a ring of steel around Heathrow Airport. Scimitar lightweight reconnaissance tanks were parked menacingly along the perimeter walls, soldiers and armed policemen patrolled the terminals. London felt ominous. Even leaderless. The threat of looming war with Iraq-an unstoppable war if the BBC and the broadsheets were to be believed-depressed and worried its inhabitants. For many, the argument for a preemptive strike against a crippled country and a broken-backed dictator hadn't been made, and few understood why it was necessary to rattle sabers at Saddam Hussein when for fifteen months the enemy had been Al Qaeda.

  There were rumors of splits in the Cabinet, and the Prime Minister's popularity had reached an all-time low. The Government had looked weak since a negotiating shambles had persuaded the firefighters to go on national strike, sucking soldiers away from the front line in order to man the pumps at home. People talked gloomily of a return to the "British disease" of the 1970s, when strikes had been commonplace. Patriotism was quoted as a reason why firefighters should remain at their stations. The air was thick with recrimination as the country took sides...

  It was felt by every returning traveler to Heathrow that evening. They were warned to expect tanks and troops, but the reality of hard-faced soldiers and armed policemen in and around the terminals was shocking. It smacked of the military dictatorships they were being urged to mobilize against, and the more skeptical among them questioned the political convenience of unspecified terrorist threats so close to war. It was clever propaganda if it meant a reluctant population was frightened into accepting the necessity of preemptive strikes.

  This was certainly Dr. Jonathan Hughes's position as he emerged, tired and angry, from Terminal 4 at eleven o'clock that night and lit a much-needed cigarette outside the exit doors. He was a tall, good-looking man with close-cropped dark hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, but that night he looked ill and drawn. He'd had trouble at both ends of the journey: four hours of checking in at JFK airport and a tailback of queues at Heathrow's passport control. Depression swamped him as he looked at the tanks and thought how easy it was for demagogues to whip up religious and racist hatred.

  New York had been bad, but this was worse. He watched a woman wearing hijab cross the pavement toward him with lowered head, her tight shoulders betraying her fear. Airports were uneasy places since 9/11, and it wasn't just police and immigration officers who looked with suspicion at anyone with Arab features or Islamic dress.

  Perhaps the Muslim woman felt Jonathan's gaze because she glanced up as she approached. The hijab, a pale green scarf wrapped like a nun's wimple round her forehead, cheeks and neck, performed its intended job of stripping her of her allure, and not for the first time Jonathan wondered why so many women were prepared to cover themselves rather than put the onus on men to behave with decency. At times like these the hijab bore such obvious witness to a woman's faith that it was dangerous. He felt his usual contempt for Muslim men. Not only did they want their wives to take responsibility for their own chastity-"a woman should be concealed, for when she goes out the devil looks at her"-they were too cowardly to advertise their own belief. Where was the male equivalent of the veil?

  The woman scurried by, dropping her eyes the minute she met his angry ones. If she expected sympathy, she was out of luck. Jonathan studied comparative religions, but only for academic reasons. He didn't admire or approve of any of them. For him, the world was a godless desert where belief systems clashed because man's aggression was untameabie. God was just an excuse for conflict, like capitalism or communism, and he found it laughable when leaders quoted morality as justification for their actions. There was no morality in killing people-a peasant's genes were as valuable to the species as a president's-merely expediency.

  He dropped his cigarette and crushed it underfoot, the expression on his face showing his irritation as he stared after the woman. He deeply resented the implication behind the hijab, that every man was a potential rapist. Jet-lagged and cynical from a week in New York where reasoned discussion on a Palestinian state and the problems of Islamic fundamentalism had been impossible, Jonathan found his homecoming deeply dispiriting. It might have been Hiram Johnson who said the first casualty of war was truth, but to Jonathan's jaundiced eyes the first casualty was tolerance. As far as he was concerned, the world had gone mad since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

  *3*

  HIGHDOWN, BOURNEMOUTH

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2003

  He was in no better frame of mind by the morning. If anything, another sleepless night had made his depression worse. He should be using the day to recover instead of flogging himself to death to meet George Gardener. His interest in Howard Stamp was intellectual-a careless judicial system was indicative of a tired democracy-but he had no real desire to launch a crusade to clear one individual's name. He was a man of letters, not a man of action. He stared impassively out of the train window and wondered why he'd left it too late to cancel.

  Sleet driving in on an icy east wind rattled the panes every time the train slowed. The other passengers, wary of meeting Jonathan's eyes, pointedly read their newspapers. He was an unsmiling man whose spectacles mad
e him look older than his thirty-four years. The spectacles were cosmetic, his eyesight was perfect, but he wore them because he disliked not being taken seriously as an academic. He was dismissive of poor teaching and lazy thinking and had a reputation for departmental infighting. It won him few friends but it meant his intellectual authority was recognized. Certainly his fellow travelers found the brooding, introspective stare intimidating.

  "For God's sake, Jon, everyone takes you seriously ... they wouldn't dare do anything else..."

  In the gardens and parks on the outskirts of town, thick layers of ice had formed on lakes and fish ponds, but when Jonathan finally disembarked at Branksome Station, after a cold wait at Bournemouth Central for a local train, the sleet was turning to water on the pavements. Shopkeepers, already suffering the knock-on effects of war jitters and plunging stockmarkets, stared despondently out of their windows as the wind-chill factor persuaded customers to stay at home. The weather would make the headlines on the local news that evening when Age Concern made a plea for help with pensioners' heating bills. Zero temperatures were a rarity in Dorset, which was why so many elderly chose to live there.

  "Blair orders in tanks" read a stand outside a newsagent halfway up Highdown Road. It was a solitary shop, a tiny trading post in a run of shabby terraced housing. Jonathan glanced at the front pages of the newspapers on the racks inside the door. It was old news about the tanks at Heathrow. The war was still phoney. He crossed a side road and sheltered in the lee of a house to consult his map, cursing himself for coming. A jet-lagged body was unequal to the task of providing warmth, and his lightweight raincoat was about as waterproof as a piece of gauze. Worse, he had stomach cramps because he hadn't eaten since eight o'clock last night.

  He screwed his eyes against the wind and sleet to read the street sign and wished he'd had the sense to look at a weather forecast. Irritation bubbled briefly against George Gardener. The councillor's last letter had said the Crown and Feathers was within easy walking distance of Branksome Station, but the man probably belonged to the Ramblers' Association and hiked twenty miles for pleasure every weekend. Easy walking distance to Jonathan was a couple of blocks, not a trek through a snowstorm. His fingers were numb, his shoes were leaking and he didn't believe this wild goose chase would lead to anything. His depression rode him like a black dog.

  He took out a cigarette and cupped his hand round the flame of his lighter. The wind blew it out immediately. It was symptomatic of the day. Walking in Howard Stamp's footsteps thirty years after his death in order to talk to someone who'd never met him was pointless. He flicked the lighter again with the same result and blamed himself for ever allowing Andrew Spicer to include a contact address in the book. "If you believe what you write, then do something about it," Andrew had said. "If you don't then stop lecturing the rest of us on injustice." Jonathan tossed the cigarette into the gutter and clamped down on his simmering anger.

  What did Andrew know about injustice? Jonathan should have taken him to New York and introduced him to some of his black and Islamic friends who were too frightened to go out. Hate crimes were increasing as troops were dispatched to the Gulf. If the whites weren't worried about war, they were worried about their investments. It was not a good time to be an American Arab or American Muslim. Even Jews were being targeted because of Israel's perceived intransigence toward a Palestinian state. At the bottom of the heap were north Africans on educational scholarships. As Jonathan knew well. He'd flown out to attend the funeral of Jean-Baptiste Kamil, a twenty-three-year-old student of his, who'd asked directions of the wrong man.

  Divorced old Etonian Andrew Spicer, whose mouth had been stuffed with shiny white silver on the day he was born, was never going to suffer that kind of discrimination. Instead, he needled Jonathan. "It's time you left your ivory tower and got your hands dirty," he told him after reading Gardener's letter. "It'll make a good follow-up if you can prove your theory, and I won't have trouble getting an advance either."

  Jonathan was reluctant. "It'll be time-consuming."

  "You need the money."

  It was true... "Not that badly." Certainly not badly enough to have another book "spiced up" by Andrew's editing. It had turned a thoughtful study on injustice into an unashamedly commercial book. "You ruined the last one."

  "It wouldn't have sold if you'd done it your way. As it is, you made a nice little profit. You'll stand to make a bigger one if you mount a campaign for Howard. Look at Ludovic Kennedy's 10 Rillington Place. It was made into a film." Andrew folded his fat little hands on his desk. "You need the money, Jon. You can't buy Paul Smith suits and go to the opera every night on an academic's salary."

  Money. With it, a man could lock his resentments in a box and be the person he wanted to be. Without it, he was nobody. Jonathan checked his map, saw with relief that Friar Road was the next on the left and battled on, head down. He didn't notice the BMW that drew quietly into the curb behind him.

  The Crown and Feathers was on the corner, a dark Victorian building with pebble-dashed walls and signs in the windows advertising live music on Saturdays and discounted meals for senior citizens on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Jonathan's misery deepened. He loathed cheap and cheerful. No doubt the pub was a pit stop for coachloads of old-age pensioners on day trips to the coast. Or, worse, a drop-in center for the ones who lived there. There would be piped Vera Lynn singing The White Cliffs of Dover" and "We'll Meet Again," the food would be inedible and the wine, if it was offered at all, would be vinegar. He should have stuck to his guns and insisted on a restaurant in town, but he might have had to foot the bill. With a sigh he shouldered open the door to the lounge bar and was surprised to find it almost deserted.

  An elderly man sat on a bar stool, sipping beer and staring into space. A middle-aged couple were tucked away in a corner, heads together, sharing secrets. All three looked in Jonathan's direction when he entered, but the lack of response told him neither of the men was George Gardener. There was no one serving. He peered through a doorway marked "saloon," but it was empty except for a snooker table. The only food on offer appeared to be a list of sandwiches tacked to a wooden post; the only wine a couple of bottles beside the till with their corks pushed in. It was a place of cheap ale and no frills, and he wondered what sort of man would choose it for a meeting. Old Labor, Jonathan decided gloomily, and still fighting the class war.

  Cold and wet, he shrugged off his raincoat and parked himself beside the bar. As an afterthought he took off his spectacles and tucked them into his breast pocket. Looking like an academic was the least of his problems. It was sporting the designer suit and shirt that was the mistake. He looked like a peacock in a chicken run, as out of place in the Crown and Feathers as the ancient beer drinker beside him would have been at Covent Garden. He felt the old man slide off his stool to move closer and studiously avoided his gaze. He was never in the mood for small talk-it was a talent he didn't possess-and especially not with a stranger who looked as if beer was his staple diet. The marbled hands were shaking so much that the decrepit Methuselah needed both of them to lift his glass.

  "Don't get many of your sort in here."

  Jonathan ignored him. It didn't take any deep intellect to guess what he meant by "your sort" and he wondered why it was always the elderly who came out with such statements.

  A bony finger poked his arm. "I'm talking to you."

  Jonathan lowered his leather briefcase to the floor and retrieved his cigarette pack from his raincoat pocket. "What sort is that?" he asked, ducking his head to the lighter. "Men who wear suits?" He shifted his glance to stare pointedly at the jabbing finger. "Or men on very short fuses?" He made a fist of his right hand and rested it on the bar.

  The old man, perhaps mistaking the signet ring for a knuckle-duster, put some space between them. "Landlord's out back," he said. "Keep telling him he's losing customers, but he don't pay no heed. There's been a couple come and gone before you walked in."

  "Mm."

&nb
sp; "You should help yourself. Roy won't mind ... long as you pay, of course."

  "Mm."

  "Maybe you don't go for ale? Not used to it, eh?"

  "Mm."

  "Don't say much, do you? Cat got your tongue?"

  Jonathan made an effort. It wasn't the old man's fault he was overdressed for the occasion. He should have built in time to go home and change before a night with Verdi at the Royal Opera. "I'm in no hurry. I'm meeting a man called George Gardener. Do you know him? He's a local councillor."

  The rheumy eyes gave a flicker of amusement, presumably anticipating that an Old Labor dinosaur and a peacock would make uneasy bedfellows. "Maybe."

  "Is he a regular?"

  "Comes in a couple of times a week. Sits over there to listen to the moaners." He nodded toward a window table. "Calls it a surgery or some such nonsense. Bloody waste of time I call it. How's a councillor going to increase benefits, eh? That's the government's job." Jonathan gave a noncommittal nod. "They should get off their arses and look for work," the old man grumbled. "No sense bellyaching to someone who can't do nothing."

  "No."

  "What you want with George, then? Looking for somewhere to live?"

  "No."

  "Good thing, too. Them as can afford it buy off the council ... them like me what ain't got two farthings to rub together get down on bended knee and pray we don't get turned out." He stared into his beer. "It isn't right."

  "No."

  Belligerence sparked abruptly as if the repeated monosyllables annoyed him. Or perhaps it was the chill in the air-there didn't appear to be any heating in the room. "What would you know about it?" he snapped. "Where you from?"

  "London."

  The old man gave a derisive snort. "Timbuktu, more like."