I was lying on the bed in my cell, reading a book, when the sound of the cell door opening made me jump. I looked at the door, wondering if my unexpected guests from the previous day had come back to see me, but it wasn’t them. I’d spent most of yesterday afternoon in the prison infirmary with a tampon in each nostril, but apart from a splitting headache and faint bruising underneath each of my eyes, there was no permanent damage, according to the duty doctor at least. A succession of prison officers had interviewed me in the infirmary, but I’d not deviated from the ‘walked into a door’ story. None of them believed it, but, no-one pressed me too hard for the truth. I folded the corner of the page I was reading to mark my place and got to my feet just as Mr McLoughlin walked into my cell.
“Your legal team is here to see you, Mr Dawson,” he said.
“Are they? I wasn’t expecting them today.”
“Well, they’re here,” Mr McLoughlin replied, looking irritated. “Are you coming or not?” He walked out of my cell and I followed him onto the walkway. We walked in silence to the door at the end of the block. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but he didn’t seem in the mood for idle chit-chat. Of all the prison officers, he was the one who I got on the best with. I guess our relationship was about as close to a friendship as it was possible for a convicted murderer and a prison officer to have. He seemed deep in thought as we walked through the corridors to the lawyer’s room. Was he pissed off that I’d not told them who had attacked me in my cell? While we stood waiting for the door to be opened from the control room, I decided to break the silence.
“Are you okay, Mr McLoughlin?” I asked. His solemn expression changed to one of surprise, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake.
“I’m fine,” he said sharply. His face then softened. “But thank you for asking.” We stood in silence for a few seconds. “You’re not though, are you?”
I sighed. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have.
“I told your colleagues, Mr McLoughlin. I walked into a—” He cut me off with a sharp laugh.
“Of course you did. And I’m playing up front for Norwich City this weekend.” He held up a hand at the prison officer who was about to open the door from the control room. “Look, I know you can’t tell me what happened. Or at least, you can’t be seen to tell me what happened. But at the end of the day, you were attacked on my wing when I wasn’t on duty. And that pisses me off.” He paused, looking at me with a hard stare. “But I will find out what happened.” There was another uncomfortable silence before he nodded at the control room window. With a metallic thump, the door to the lawyer’s room swung open and he pointed inside the room. I walked into the room, and the door swung shut behind me.
Paul and Laura both got to their feet as I entered the room.
“Gareth, my dear boy,” Paul said. “How are things?” he asked as he shook my hand. “My God, whatever’s happened to your face?”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” I replied.
“That doesn’t look like nothing, Gareth. Are you in trouble?” I could see him examining my swollen nose and black eyes.
“Not too bad,” I replied. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Paul shot a dark look at Laura, who was staring at my ruined face with her mouth open.
“Yes, sorry,” she mumbled. I felt bad as I hadn’t wanted to get Laura in trouble. Maybe she had should have organised the visit, but hadn’t?
“Laura, good to see you.” I extended a hand to Laura, which she looked at for a few seconds before shaking it. I flashed her a quick smile, hoping that she would return it and I would get a glimpse of her dimples.
“Gareth,” she replied in a muted voice. No smile for me today.
“I’m just glad my secretary arranged my meetings so that there was a free slot in my diary for you both,” I said, attempting to lighten the atmosphere. I looked at Laura as I said this and saw a brief smile appear on her face. Not broad enough to show her dimples, but it was something.
We all sat down, and Laura pulled a notepad and manila folder from her briefcase. She was wearing the same business suit I’d seen her in before, but this time with a satin green blouse that threw me completely. I was taken back to a day with Jennifer in the large Marks & Spencer in the middle of Norwich. She was trying to find something to wear for a job interview and had found a green blouse just like the one Laura was wearing. It must’ve been the fifth or sixth blouse that Jennifer had tried on that day, and by that time I was happy to say anything she tried on looked amazing.
“Gareth?” Paul’s voice snapped me out of my daydream. I realised that I’d been staring at Laura’s blouse, and that she had pulled her jacket across her chest.
“Sorry,” I said, looking at Laura’s face and realising she was blushing. “I’m so sorry. Jennifer used to have a blouse just like yours, and I was just remembering the time she bought it.” Laura tilted her head, not unlike the way Jennifer used to, and looked at me with a shy smile creeping across her face. I could just see the faintest outline of her dimples through it, but they didn’t last for long. The minute Paul started talking again, her smile disappeared completely and Laura was straight back to being business-like.
“I’m going to speak to the guards about this. You’ve been attacked.”
“Paul, please. Don’t do anything,” I pleaded with him. “It’s nothing, honestly. Nothing I can’t deal with.” I looked between him and Laura. “Please don’t.” Paul stared at me for what seemed like ages before taking a deep breath in through his nostrils.
“Right, if you say so,” he said. I could tell from the look on his face he wasn’t happy at all, but for the time being at least, would let it go. I gave Laura a wan smile but got nothing in response. “So, Gareth,” Paul said, getting back to business. “There are two reasons for us visiting today. I want to bring you up to date on the progress towards your appeal, and then Laura here will walk us through the lead up to the attack on Mr Wainwright.” The preliminaries were over, and Paul was straight down to it. I leaned forward and crossed my arms on the table, mirroring Paul’s body language.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Now then, it’s been two weeks, or is it three, since we last spoke?” Paul said. It had been four weeks and two days, not that I was counting the days or anything like that. Paul leant back in his chair as he continued. “Now obviously we missed the first twenty eight day window for an appeal. Or at least, your previous legal team did. I know they looked into it, but decided against lodging one.” I remembered Toby and I arguing about this at the time. He had said lodging an appeal without enough evidence could be prejudicial. I couldn’t see how that could be the case. If I’d understood it correctly, if we’d lodged an appeal anyway the worst thing that could have happened would be that my sentence could have been extended by a few weeks. Believe me, when you’re staring at a life sentence, a few weeks is nothing.
“Effectively, we need to launch an appeal from scratch,” Paul continued. “And the only way we can do that is with new evidence or new witnesses.” I nodded, the poster now making a lot more sense.
“Did you have any responses to the poster?” I directed the question at Laura, who looked up and to my surprise, laughed. She looked across at Paul, who was also smiling, before replying.
“Yes, you could say that,” she said. She was about to say something else when Paul interrupted.
“I’d like to come back to that in a little while, if I may?” From the look on Laura’s face, this wasn’t a question. Her laughter hadn’t lasted long, which was a shame.
“Now, where was I? Witnesses and evidence,” Paul said, looking at the ceiling of the room. “We need either new witnesses — or new evidence — to take to the judiciary. They’ll then decide if an appeal is what is called ‘safe’ before it gets sent to the Court of Appeal.” From what I’d read, this was a court in London, not Norwich. “Now, you’ve heard about the posters obviously. I’ve also hired a superb investigator to help us out. Ex-policeman, in fact, which I think will be useful. Still well connected, although he left under, shall we say, a cloud.” I saw Laura suppress a smile as Paul said this. I wondered what their investigator had done. “He’s still bitter about it, which helps us,” Paul concluded, which left me even more curious.
“As soon as we have new evidence, or new witnesses, or — even better — both, I’ll lodge the appeal at Norwich with Judge Watling. He’ll then sign it off. At least, that’s the plan. I know James well, so have got a good idea of how to put it to him.” It was no surprise to me that Paul knew the judge.
“What sort of timeframe are we looking at?” I asked them. They looked at each other briefly before Paul replied.
“Well, witnesses and evidence will take time to collect and prepare. But I’m very optimistic that we’ll get there. It will just take a while to do it properly. I can’t really put a timeframe on that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It could be weeks, but more likely it will be months.” Although what Paul said made perfect sense, I couldn’t help but be gutted, especially after what had happened yesterday. From the sympathetic look that Laura gave me, I knew my disappointment was obvious. She slid her hand across the table and wound it around mine. I almost jumped at her touch. She was the only woman I had touched since Jennifer had died. Even though it was only a brief touch of her hand, it still sent a shock wave through me. I looked down at her hand, her cool fingers touching the back of my hand. No rings, no nail polish.
“So, Gareth. Once we have the witnesses and evidence prepared, and the judge has signed the appeal paperwork, it’ll be quick from there,” Laura said, giving my hand a quick squeeze before letting go of it. I resisted the temptation to grab it back and realised that I was probably reading far too much into what was an innocent touch. “Once the papers are lodged with the Court of Appeal, the waiting time should only be a week or so,” Laura said, breaking my concentration which was probably just as well.
“Yes,” Paul said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. “Nothing to do with justice, but everything to do with compensation.” I frowned, not understanding his point.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“The compensation clock ticks from the day the appeal is launched. Quite reprehensible in my opinion, but what would I know?” Paul explained. I had not even thought about compensation. Thinking about it, I realised that I couldn’t care less about it, anyway.
“So, that’s where we are with the appeals process,” Paul said. Although I didn’t really know anything now that I hadn’t known already, I was grateful to them both anyway. “So, moving on to the appeal itself, there’s not much to tell you really. We might have found another witness, though.” My eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Really?” I said. I was sure that there were no other witnesses, apart from the dog walker and he was miles away from me. Mind you, I’d been sure there were no CCTV cameras either, and I’d got that very wrong. Paul turned to Laura.
“Why don’t you tell Gareth about the response to the posters?” The smile returned to her face.
“Okay,” she said. “There was, how can I put it, quite an enthusiastic response to them.” Laura laughed. “I never realised Norwich had so many nutcases.” I smiled at her, hoping she would continue. She flipped open her notebook. “Right, there were three people who say they saw you even though they weren’t even in Norwich on the night in question. There was another witness who is convinced that you’re her long lost son, and finally, the star witness and front runner for the reward.” She looked at me, her eyes sparkling, but said nothing.
“What? Tell me?” I asked.
“Well, according to this witness, you were in fact dropped off at the recreation ground just prior to the murder.” Her eyes sparkled even more. “In a spaceship.”
A few seconds later, Mr McLoughlin’s face appeared at the door to see what we were all laughing so hard about.