T
1 he telephone bell cleaves my cranium like an axe. I fumble for the receiver and croak into it.
It is Quincy Joy, Jasmine’s solicitor. ‘What day is it?’ I say blearily. Through the window, grey clouds slosh across the January sky. In the web of tree branches, wisps of morning mist are snared here and there like hair.
‘Monday. Jasmine’s bail hearing’s been scheduled for this afternoon.’
Bloody hell. Realize I’ve been scribbling this account on and off for a week. ‘It’s all written up for you.’ Yawning, I gather the scattered pages from the floor beside the bed. ‘The way I remember it.’
‘Meet me at Holloway. I’ll have to sign you in as my clerk. Bring your passport for ID.’
Now that I’m Acting Head, I make an implausible excuse to
myself about why I won’t be going into school today, totally believe it, and hurry to the prison.
When Quincy strides into the Stalinesque prison waiting rooms (actually, even Stalin would have found this architecture too brutal), I ask her right away how Jazz’s case is looking. Her muddy eyes, deeply set in her serious face, darken. ‘Not that good. The Prosecution have evidence from one Billy Boston that she attempted to hire him as a hitman to bump off her husband.’ She stubs out her cigarette with a grind of her boot heel to comply with the No Smoking rule. ‘He’s on bail for welfare fraud, so the creep is no doubt offering a plea-bargain.’ She swigs at a Starbucks double espresso.
‘Reliable? Boston? First off, he’s a convicted murderer and second, he’s a playwright. Playwrights make a living out of lying!’
Quincy shrugs. ‘What’s a girl to do when there’s someone in her life she would really rather were out of it? She chooses what might seem the most sensible route for any respectable middle- class woman: she pays a man to do it.’ She pauses to cough up half a lung while moaning how badly she needs another cigarette. ‘Most murderers are traced through a direct grievance, so a killing by someone unknown to the victim is more difficult to solve. A lover fits the bill nicely. This is the picture the Prosecution will paint. And they will not want her out on bail, interfering with their witness. Can you stump up twenty thousand pounds, in the slim chance that she does get bail? It’s a guarantee that Jasmine turns up for trial.’
‘Christ! I can’t. I’m a single mother. My self-esteem may be bouncing back, but, hey, so are my cheques. Still, I know someone who can . . .’
★
When we’re admitted into the Holloway jail interview room to see Jazz, her voice is plaintive with defeat. They’re gonna nail me, aren’t they? I’m going down.’
It hasn’t taken her long to pick up the criminal vernacular. The look in her eyes is reminiscent of the glassy orbs of the taxidermied creatures I’ve seen with Hannah on sale at Christies. The frightened sound in her voice doesn’t match the media’s soubriquet for her as The Merry Widow’. The papers are now running reports about how the wife of David Studlands, past President of the Royal College of Surgeons and distinguished World Health Organisation expert, has been arrested in London and charged with his murder.
The prosecutor served me with his notice of additional evidence and he’s building up quite a case against you. Jasmine,’ Quincy elaborates, sitting side-saddle on the chair. ‘So don’t get your hopes up too high.’
‘Case? What case? There is no case.’
‘Apparently you told your hairdresser that there is an afterlife — after your husband dies. And did you or did you not often say that there are only two days when a husband is great fun to be around? The day you marry him. . .and the day you bury him?”
‘Well, that’s right. And “where there’s a will, I want to be in it”. Yes, yes, it’s called wifely humour. I was being facetious. Who are all these witnesses knifing me in the front?’
‘Oh, don’t worry. There’s evidence about that too. Apparently your husband complained to friends that you attacked him with a carving knife.’
‘Listen, I’m a chef,’ Jazz responds. ‘If I had wanted to kill David I would have administered drugs by stages and disguised the bitter taste in spicy foods, such as curry.’
Jazz’s solicitor gags and her espresso snorts out of her nostrils.
‘Well just keep that little gem to ourselves, shall we^ And did you or did you not tell Billy Boston that the good thing about having an ex-con as a lover was his advance weapons training?’
Jazz goes pale. ‘Yes, but. .
‘Boston maintains that you plotted with him to have your husband murdered, in order to cash in on his life insurance as your savings had dwindled, partly because of your profligate spending on toy boys.’
‘No! Because David mortgaged our house without my knowing!’
‘To do his good works in Africa. I don’t think there’ll be much of a sympathy vote there. Jasmine, somehow.’
‘Sympathy? And will there be no sympathy for me, for trying to save my bloody marriage after everything he’d done to me? Good God! Do you have any idea what courage that took? Just before Christmas, David said that he wanted to put all his infidelities and betrayals behind us and get on with our life together. At first I didn’t think I could work through the cycle of grief and anger. But eventually, I had to admit that there must have been reasons David had the affairs. Right? I mean obviously, the marriage wasn’t giving him something he needed. I realised that how a couple resolves the trauma of infidelity depends on how much you loved each other in the beginning and how much you both value your shared past. David is the only man I have ever truly loved. He’s the father of my only child, for God’s sake. We needed to get Josh out of an unhealthy relationship he was having . . .’ (she doesn’t use Hannah’s name, I note) ‘. . .so we planned a family holiday to Australia. And what I found was that my new emotional realism actually benefited our relationship. It really did. It helped restore my dignity and peace of mind. And David was genuinely contrite. He’d been under so much pressure. A business venture he was bank rolling in Africa was
going wrong. I was resentful. Oh, all the terrible things we said to each other,’ she shuddered. ‘Well, we put it all behind us. We were so looking forward to a reinvigorated next thirty years. And now, if he’s gone . . .’ Her voice catches in her throat. ‘How will I ever find a sense of purpose if David is dead? But I have to be strong to help Josh through this. My feelings are so raw. The pain will never go away. How can it? Every day it just gets harder, but we have to live in hope that David will walk through the door. Iff fear the worst, then there’s no hope left. And I do have this hope, in a tiny corner of my heart, that he’s going to call and I’ll hear him saying “Hi, darling. I’m in Darfur,” on some medical mission he forgot to tell me about, or . . .’ She drops her head into her hands.
Jasmine’s solicitor puts a consoling arm around her client’s shoulder. ‘Look, you’re not on trial yet. We just have to convince the judge that you won’t flee the country, commit a similar offence or interfere with a witness.’
As Quincy prepares to leave. Jazz cadges a cigarette.
‘The chaplain here suggested I give thanks for what I’ve got in life.’ Despite the No Smoking rule, the match flares and Jazz puffs manically. ‘But what have I got, Cassie? Imprisonment for something I didn’t do, debts up the wazoo, a lesbian cellmate . . .’ Quincy is sucking the liquid centre from a sweet with a wet slurping sound which makes Jasmine shudder. ‘The whole country thinks of me as a murderess and I’m supposed to be burying my husband, a feat made more difficult by the fact that he may still be alive somewhere. Oh yes. I’m feeling fantastically fucking thankful at this point.’
In the hours I have left before the bail hearing this afternoon, I vow to do my best to help my oldest friend. And there is only one person I can think of to turn to . . .
'k
The anticipation and dread I feel at seeing his indolent smile makes my heart race. We agree to meet in the Boom Boom bar. Walking from the tube cold gusts of air sweep like a searchlight back and forth across my face, and I interrogate myself about my real motive for being here.
When I tell Trueheart of Jasmine’s plight, he erupts into an insolent laugh. ‘So, lemme get this straight. You want me to testify that Billy Boston’s lyin’? Grassing up a mate is a serious crime in my world, babe. So,’ there’s a halfsmile on his face, ‘what exactly would be in it for me?’
As he unscrews the cap on his Coke bottle the muscles of his forearm twitch and fan out across his skin in a most unsettling way.
‘You don’t seem to be taking this conversation seriously,’ I reprimand him. ‘Her bail appeal hearing is this afternoon.’
‘Oh, but I am,’ he replies flippantly, before leaning over and, with cocky insouciance, unbuttoning the top of my blouse. Breezy and off-hand, he is full of overmedicated mischief ‘Real serious like.’
‘Actually, I’m hopeless at sin. I’m much better at syntax. Maybe I could just tweak your dangling participle or something?’
‘Think about it, babe,’ he suggests as I leave for court.
And I do think about it, striding past St Paul’s, towards the Old Bailey, heart galloping. What is holding me back? I am a single woman now. And Trueheart could audition for Denzel Washington’s body double. Perhaps getting him into my bed would get Rory out of my head, and me into an orgasmic spasm?
In the area around Fleet Street and St Paul’s Cathedral, the streets are full of mottled buildings of diseased appearance. The Old Bailey, with its clean, cold stone and imperious fluted columns is the ominous exception. Sleek sharks, otherwise known as reporters, circle outside, skittish, lunging, irascible.
Solicitors and lawyers deal out business cards like a hand of poker. As a high-profile prisoner approaches under police escort, a fusillade of paparazzi shots explode.
Sick with nerves I wait in the crowded Old Bailey canteen and watch the older women, moulting magnificently from coats and craniums like ailing eagles. Slurping scalding tea and reapplying lipstick, I imagine they are the matriarchs of East End crime families. Then there are their younger counterparts — interchangeable blondes, their short, flimsy frocks held together by face cream. They swear loudly and whine about not being able to smoke, their bare legs impervious to the cold.
Quincy taps me on the shoulder and I trudge, heart in mouth, into the ornate courtroom with its great blaze of chandeliers and lights and sit with her legal team, just as the charges are being read out.
‘. . . The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act gives jurisdiction to the courts of this country to try an English subject for the murder abroad of another English subject. We have other evidence obtained from the police of South Australia, my lord.’
The widow, her buttery hair swept up into a bun, looks frail and frightened in the dock. Although trying to remain dignified. Jazz’s nerves betray her, and she licks her lips with her tongue like a cat. Jazz’s solicitor has briefed a QC who asks eloquently for bail, the defendant meeting the criteria of having a place to reside plus the £20,000 surety.
The Prosecutor for the Crown objects forcibly. This woman intended to profit from her husband’s death, my lord. She is not a woman who would mourn from his passing. On the contrary, she intended to celebrate it.’ The prosecutor, rendered egg-bald by worry, is also no doubt bitter with the world about his acne scars, which give him a complexion like cottage cheese clawed with a
fork; an obvious hindrance to any romantic aspirations. This can be the only explanation as to why he now goes on to paint a picture of Jazz as a gold-digger, caught up in the web of the criminal underworld.
There is no doubt that a crime has been committed. The happy family holiday was a sham. For months Jasmine Jardine had been in the throes of an acrimonious separation from her husband, battling over assets and custody of their son.’ He then accuses her of setting up the contract murder of her husband, to get the £2 million insurance payout, by luring her lover, Billy Boston, who was also in Australia at the time as the guest of a literary festival, into murdering her husband and throwing his body into the sea. ‘When Billy Boston declined, she obviously sought other means. This highly manipulative woman had two reasons for wanting David Studlands dead — money and sexual freedom.’
Uh-oh, I think, gnawing my nails. And sure enough the loquacious prosecutor now reveals that Jazz has cheated on her husband with over a dozen men in the past year. ‘Shady men; men who could no doubt offer her ample escape routes out of the country. Boasting that she would soon be a rich widow, she embarked on a series of affairs, while her husband was working for the poor of Africa.’
The judge throws in a disparaging harrumph at this point and glares over his spectacles at the Scarlet Woman. 1 want to call out that it’s actually Jazz who nearly died of an overdose of wedlock and that her husband had been exploiting the poor, but as I’m not even supposed to be here, bite my tongue.
‘My lord.’ Jazz’s lawyer stands and adopts the obsequious pose of a royal footman. ‘This is a missing person’s case. Police in Australia have launched an enquiry to try to find Doctor
Studlands. Cnmestoppers are now offering a substantial reward. There is no evidence of any crime, only the word of a convicted felon.’
Jazz whimpers and mops at her eyes with a hanky.
The prosecutor, oozing sarcasm, reminds the judge that no one is ever more apparently grief-stricken than the widow. ‘So grief stricken that within hours of his disappearance she was asking about his two million pound life insurance policy and pension death-benefits payouts.’
‘May I speak?’ Jazz asks, though she doesn’t wait for a reply from the Bench. ‘The grief that my husband might have drowned had to be faced so that I could help my son. Josh has to get on with the rest of his life—’
‘Can I remind you of the need to put your defence at the right time?’ The judge tries to silence her, his heavy, rounded vowels raining down on her like blows. ‘And through your counsel,’ he reprimands. But Jazz ignores him. This is a woman who has the courage of her convictions, i.e. that she doesn’t want one.
‘Although I have to learn to accept the unacceptable — the possible death of my soulmate — I will not allow grief to blight the life of my boy. If you keep me in jail, I can’t comfort my child.’
‘Please be quiet! ‘ The judge makes a noise like a sea lion in labour and I start to seriously worry about how Jazz will cope with stamping due dates in the prison library for the rest of her natural life. She’d thrown herself on the mercy of the court and gone Splat.
‘There is a real concern that the defendant will interfere with the witness, who is out on bail,’ the prosecutor continues. ‘We have evidence that she once tried to kill her husband by substituting the wrong malaria tablets, thus exposing him to the parasite plasmodium falciparum. She also once mis-sized his bulletproof vest. More evidence of her ruthlessness.’
Once again, my fine legal brain goes ‘Whoops.’
A sob chokes Jazz’s throat. But the only thing that would move this judge are his bowels. He is peering over at Jazz in a cold way, as though she’s nothing more than a specimen beneath a microscope. Fright shivers through me. I have now used up my nails, and am chewing down to my elbows. But just when it seems that her future is teetering, like a tightrope walker, a court usher bustles up to the prosecutor with a faxed page on official notepaper. Speed-reading, his face elongates with amazement and his cottage-cream complexion curdles.
‘My lord, word has just come from the South Australian police that the torso of David Studlands has been discovered in the belly of a Great White Shark. It says here that the Fisheries Office have been hunting Great Whites because of an upsurge in attacks,’ he reads aloud. ‘The man-eater containing the torso which has now been identified as Doctor David Studlands, was as wide as a car and twenty-three feet long. It is impossible to say what triggered the attack as it was not whale migration season. The victim was in the water at dusk, the most dangerous time. Sharks can also detect the most minute amount of blood and a used tampon has been found in the back pocket of the victim’s swimming shorts.’
There is a cry, and I look across to see Jasmine fall down in a dead faint.
There are many good things about being female. One is that you are escorted off sinking ships first. Another is that you don’t have to readjust your genitalia in public. And the third is that you can scare male bosses, policemen or aged judges with mysterious, gynaecological disorders or the mere mention of the word ‘tampon’.
The judge’s curiosity overrides his embarrassment and he breaks with protocol to ask Jazz, who is crying quietly in the dock after a half-hour recess to cope with the shock of the news of her
husband’s death, for an explanation regarding the ‘feminine hygiene product’.
‘It’s proof, that’s what it is. Proof of just how well David and I had been getting on,’ Jazz whimpers. ‘We were frolicking around in the shallow water by the rocks. David wanted to have sex. I had my period. And, well, I didn’t want to leave the tampon in the ocean. I mean, it could have been picked up by a wave and hit some poor swimmer in the face. So David gallantly offered to put it in the back pocket of his shorts. That’s how intimate and loving we were, my lord. Afterwards, I was tired and wanted to swim back. David said he’d join me later for a sunset cocktail, but while I was showering, I suspect he snorkelled out beyond the headland where we’d been warned not to venture. He was like that — so fearless. A true hero. And well. . . you know the rest.’
The entire courtroom is staring at her now. I can’t believe that Extreme sports enthusiasts, otherwise known as ‘organ donors’, haven’t taken up ‘Used Tampon In Pocket Whilst Swimming in Shark Infested Waters’ as the ultimate risk-taking thrill.
‘We’re English,’ Jazz suddenly cries out. ‘We didn’t know that sharks feed at dusk. We also didn’t know that they can detect the most minute amount of blood.’
She breaks down again. Tissues are produced and a glass of water fetched.
I glance anxiously at Jazz’s lawyer. I am not sure if this latest revelation has helped her case or not. Jazz has only been arrested for attempted murder, thanks to the evidence of Billy Boston. Now there’s a body, has this increased or decreased her chances of freedom?
The kerfuffle behind me is Quincy Joy, striding back through the courtroom door. I watch her whisper into Jazz’s barrister s ear. He rises magisterially.
‘My lord, Ms Jardine’s solicitor has been approached by the witness who wants to withdraw and has been advised to go to the police to verify this. As the Crown’s reliable witness has proved unreliable and withdrawn his statement and the remaining evidence being hearsay and speculation, I’m sure you will agree that the Crown Prosecution must drop all charges.’
Jazz looks in my direction. I gaze back. All I can think is that Trueheart must have decided that he does need his dangling participle tweaked after all.
An hour passes as I wait by the old cell door for the police and the prison to confirm that Jazz is not in custody on any other charges. When her release forms are finally signed, she appears. I wonder how many times a prison officer has flung open this door for two women to collapse into each other’s arms, laughing and crying simultaneously. We are both awash with relief
‘Thanks for offering to put up the bail money, Cassie,’ Jazz snivels. ‘You truly are a great friend.’
‘Actually, it wasn’t me. I’m skint as usual... It was Hannah.’
Jazz looks dumbfounded for a moment, before slipping back into her usual abrasive banter. ‘Actually if I’d known that I would have preferred to stay in prison. I mean, look at me, sweetie. I’ve lost a stone in weight. I’ve detoxed from alcohol and taken up reading again. A short stay in a low security prison could be the new ashram.’
On the way out of the Old Bailey to a bar on Fleet Street for a celebratory drink, Quincy takes my arm. ‘I believe you owe your old man a kind word.’
‘Who — RoryF
‘Yes. I accidentally let him know Billy Boston’s bail address. And apparently he paid him a little visit — along with a Rottweiler, a
How To Kill Your Husband
Doberman, a Great Dane, a jar of venomous spiders and a bag full of pythons.’
‘Rory did thatT
I am flummoxed. During this adventure in the Old Bailey, a place of notorious corruption and vice, I have met two police officers who were courteous, and Jazz has told me her barrister had said menacingly that he was called Graham and how anxious he was to keep down her legal costs. So, perhaps my preconceptions were wrong about other things too — like whether or not a low-down rotten mongrel husband could tranform into a Knight in Shining Armani?
But there’s no time to dwell on this conundrum. After a few celebratory glasses of champagne, it is suddenly 8 p.m. I have to let the babysitter go, clean up the kitchen, defrost tomorrow’s meal, check homework, get the kids to bed, pay bills, do various household DIY and — oh God! Try to find a plumber. It would be easier to find my orgasm again than to find a plumber on a freezing January evening. My central heating is one of those models that has been pre-programmed by the factory to break down the minute the temperature reaches winter levels. And apparently, the repairman I booked couldn’t find my house — even though he must have scoured the street for literally a nanosecond before zooming off home in his heated white van to his roaring fire after leaving me a note that he could make it back to me by, oh, say January next year.
Rory has always taken care of the plumbing before. Oh well, at least in the last year he’s brought religion into my life. I now really do know what it’s like to be in hell.