Samuel Beswick would die alone inside these prison walls. In the end, he’d achieved nothing more than tragedy for everyone involved, himself included. Nobody was a winner here.
I passed through the metal detector and submitted to a further pat down before a prison officer escorted me down a wide corridor to a beige-coloured door marked with the number thirty-two. The prison officer unlocked it and gestured me inside.
‘Samuel Beswick will be here shortly,’ he said. ‘He’ll arrive via the opposite door. Although you will be able to see each other, you will be separated by the screen at all times.’ He spoke as though he were reciting a well-worn set of rules. ‘You are advised to remain in your chair throughout the meeting. I will be outside. When you are finished, knock on the door and I will escort you out. We will not be listening but, for your information, there is a camera in the corner of the room which will be recording proceedings.’
I nodded, distracted. Unlike the warm tones of the entrance area, this room felt cold. It was painted in the same nondescript beige as the steel door. There was, I decided, no colour more depressing than beige.
The prison officer waited until I sat down on the uncomfortable metal chair that was firmly bolted to the floor. In front of me, stretching from wall to wall, was the aforementioned screen. The lower half was made out of steel but the top half was glass with a small vent through which conversation could travel. It was designed to prevent any physical contact between visitor and prisoner and it looked sturdy enough. Although I wasn’t afraid of Beswick, the screen was oddly reassuring. Beyond it was another chair and another door - the door through which my parents’ killer would emerge.
‘He’ll only be a minute or two,’ the officer said and left me alone.
I crossed my legs then I uncrossed them. I put my hands in my lap, one loose on top of the other. A moment later, I changed my mind and intertwined my fingers. Relax, Emma. Breathe. He was only a man. The waiting and the anticipation would be far worse than the event itself. Probably.
When the opposite door opened, I jumped. As I cursed myself for doing so, Samuel Beswick shuffled in and sat on the chair opposite.
Illogically, I’d expected to be confronted by the same man who’d been photographed as he was bundled away from the Old Bailey after sentencing. But that had happened twenty-five years ago. I was no longer the small child he’d left in a pool of my parents’ blood – and he was no longer a young man with a bushy moustache and head of dark hair. For one thing he’d gone grey. Not the distinguished silver fox sort of grey you saw on the well-to-do streets where I lived, but the dank, stringy sort of grey that would be filed immediately under images of vagrancy if the internet had its way. His skin was pale after spending decades in the prison system, while his jowls sagged and his shoulders drooped. His blue eyes, however, remained sharp.
I knew that he’d busied himself over the years. He’d taught himself Arabic and a smattering of Chinese. He’d taken A-levels in history and psychology and economics, and studied for a law degree with the Open University. Samuel Beswick might be a murderer but he wasn’t an idiot. I would do well to remember that.
I wanted to lean across the table, smash through the screen, grab him by the shoulders and demand to know why he’d killed my parents. Instead I smiled pleasantly and kept my voice low. ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’
‘You have no idea, Miss Bellamy, how desirable any sort of break in routine can be to an old jailbird like me.’ His voice was croaky, as though he didn’t use it very often. I dropped my eyes to his hands and the yellowed stains around his fingers indicating his nicotine habit. Then I looked up again. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘it’s Detective Constable Bellamy.’
Something passed across Beswick’s expression, an emotion too fleeting and nebulous for me to grasp. It wasn’t distaste or dislike; if I’d had to guess, I’d have said it was understanding. ‘My apologies, DC Bellamy. Should I infer that you’re here in a professional rather than a personal capacity, then?’
I met his gaze without blinking. ‘I’m here about my parents.’ Such an admission would hardly be news to Samuel Beswick. He knew who I was. An odd light crossed his eyes. I watched him carefully and continued. ‘You’ve never admitted what you did to them, but I’m hoping that you will to me. After all, you’ve been here for twenty-five years because of your actions. You were found guilty in a court of law. Between the witness statements placing you in the area at the time and the traces of blood found on your clothes when they were examined, there’s no doubt that you murdered them in cold blood.’
Beswick gazed at me then shifted his weight slightly. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I did.’
They were only three words, three simple words, but given how long he’d denied what he’d done, I hadn’t expected to hear them from his thin lips. I certainly hadn’t expected the surge of relief I would feel at his sudden admission.
‘You want to know all the details.’ He didn’t sound eager to tell me or that he was going to revel in the tale. To be honest, Samuel Beswick merely sounded tired. ‘Right?’
I swallowed. ‘I want
