“Yes. That put me on a high, made me think I could do things again, even made me think I could start my career again. Now I don’t think I could start a rumour.”
“It’ll come back, the confidence.”
“Will it, Jude? I wonder. I just see myself getting older and older, and less and less attractive, and more and more out of touch with the world of work…” Her voice spiralled down into despair.
Gita was again flat out on the sitting-room sofa. She was back to T-shirt, jogging bottoms and not a dab of make-up. Jude felt the weariness of responsibility. Inviting Gita into her home had been a voluntary act, and not one she regretted, but she wished she could do more to make her friend feel better. She had contemplated suggesting alternative treatments for depression, but felt that might be taking advantage of her privileged position as the patient’s hostess. Jude knew of cases where acupuncture had worked, reflexology, even some of her own healing techniques. But she felt that, while Gita was under the hospital’s regime of medication, she shouldn’t interfere. Though Jude’s own belief was that traditional and alternative medicines could work in a complementary way, she didn’t want to impose her views. Gita was sufficiently traumatized already by the suddenness of her depression; she didn’t need further confusion.
Still, there was one therapy which had been proved to work, if only for a short time. More of the same was at least worth trying. “You know, I have a theory about murder cases…” Jude announced.
“Oh? Really?” Gita was bewildered by the abrupt change of subject. “What are you talking about? Michael Brewer?”
“I’m talking in general terms, but it applies to him too.”
“All right. What is your theory?”
“It’s not a very revolutionary one. Just that what happens before the murder is at least as relevant as what happens after it.”
“How do you mean?” Already Gita’s back was straighter. She was more alert. Jude had hooked her attention.
“Well, a murder is a shock to a community…”
“I’ll say.”
“Probably the ultimate shock, really. And in a lot of cases, the murder is the culmination of a lot of things that have been going wrong, tensions that have been building up. So to understand the crime, you have to understand the circumstances which led to that crime. In other words, a good murder investigation not only fingers the perpetrator, it also gives an understanding of the society in which it took place.”
“I’d go along with that, Jude. So, if you apply this to the Michael Brewer case?”
“I’m saying that to understand his crime, we need to know the world in which it happened.”
“Find out what his life was like before the murder?”
“Exactly.” It was disingenuous, but in the cause of Gita’s recovery, Jude asked, “Any thoughts how we might set about doing that?”
A large smile crept across Gita Millington’s unpainted lips. “Do you know – I think I might have.”
? The Witness at the Wedding ?
Twenty-Four
Jude had her own research methods too. As part of her varied work portfolio, she still did occasional discussion sessions at Austen Open Prison, which was a little way along the coast from Fethering. They were called ‘New Approaches’, discussion groups involving a shifting repertoire of prisoners, with subjects ranging from alternative therapy through guilt and morality to life skills and philosophy. Many of the attendants were lifers – which meant murderers – spending the last few years of their long sentences in an environment which was supposed to be more like the outside world than a high-security prison. These sessions had been organized by Austen’s Education Officer, Sandy Fairbarns, someone who, though they’d never met outside work, Jude regarded as a friend.
Her next ‘
“I have found someone,” Sandy announced immediately Jude arrived at the Austen main entrance prior to her session. “Name’s Jimmy Troop. He came across Michael Brewer in Parkhurst, and he’s prepared to talk to you.”
“Does that mean I’ll need one of those – what are they called? V something?”
“VO. Visiting Order. Yes, you’d have to get that if you did it in normal visiting times. But there’s another way.”
“Really?” They were walking towards the education building, between the pale yellow one-storey blocks that housed Austen’s inmates. The borders that fringed the path were beautifully kept, a regimented profusion of marigolds, alyssum, blue and red salvias and lobelias, which bore testimony to the painstaking horticultural skills of the prisoners.
Sandy grinned. “I’ve checked it out with the guard who’s on the education block this afternoon. You can have a quarter of an hour with Jimmy after your session.”
“Brilliant. And he’s agreeable?”
“Jimmy is extremely agreeable. Very cultured and amiable man, Jimmy. One of nature’s gentlemen.”
“Ye-es. Except presumably at some point in his life, he did murder someone.”
Sandy Fairbarns gave her a look of mock-reproach. “Really, Jude. You mustn’t let yourself be prejudiced by things like that.”
The session Jude conducted that afternoon followed the pattern of her previous ones. About a dozen prisoners attended. Some were there for the first time, some were regulars. And some regulars whom she’d been expecting weren’t there. They might have been released, they might have got bored, they might have found a game of football a more attractive option; inside a prison you could never know. Jude no longer went into the education block with any expectations of who might be there; she worked with the attendance she had.
Perhaps influenced by her recent conversations with Gita Millington, Jude started that afternoon with the issue of self-esteem, the roots of confidence and the threats to it. As ever, the topic mutated into something else, this time the issue of aggression, in both its internal and external manifestations. And as ever, after a jerky start, the dialogue developed, the inarticulate became more fluent, and the shy encountered subjects on which they could not keep silent.
Even before he gave his name, Jude would have recognized Jimmy Troop from Sandy’s description. He was in his early sixties, a tall thin man whose thick brown hair was white at the temples. Even though dressed in prison denims and trainers, he carried the air of a man in tailor-made suit, highly polished brogues and Garrick Club tie. What crime had brought him to his current circumstances, and how someone of his background had survived the considerably tougher circumstances of other prisons, though intriguing questions, were ones to which Jude never expected to find the answers.
In that afternoon’s debate Jimmy Troop was extremely articulate, but did not allow his superior education to upstage the contributions of his rougher colleagues. Jude was interested to observe the respectand positive affection with which he was treated by his fellow inmates.
The two hours of ‘New Approaches’ flashed by, and, on a nod from the guard who sat in the corridor outside their classroom, Jimmy Troop lingered as the other prisoners filed out. This was always a moment of transition. The articulacy – and even intimacy – of the recent discussion suddenly dissipated as the reality of prison life reasserted itself. The men became awkward, their farewells to Jude clumsy or often nonexistent.
“Well, I’m very honoured,” said Jimmy Troop, when they were alone in the room. Whatever else prison might have done to him, it hadn’t diminished his patrician charm. He still remembered how to treat a lady.
Jude went to close the door.
“No, I wouldn’t do that.” She stopped at Jimmy’s words. The guard sitting on the landing didn’t look as if he cared much whether the door was open or closed. “Kind of thing that gets misinterpreted in a place like this,” the prisoner explained. Jude moved away from the open door and sat down, facing him. “Not of course that you wouldn’t be safe with me – I know what befits a gentleman – but there’s always the risk of making the other
