Death By Dangerous (21 page)

Adey dropped a file onto Hussain's desk. ‘Con at four in Peter Hawkins. Crim damage.'

Hussain pushed it to the side and carried on daydreaming. Nothing had been the same since
R v Anderson
. Neither of them could focus on other cases. Even the possibility that the firm might go under couldn't shake them into action.

Only Adey had seen Anderson since the verdict – ten minutes afterwards in the court cells before he was transported to HMP Armley. Hussain hadn't been able to face him.

Anderson had made it quite clear he was to be left alone and had refused all visits since. As with any recently convicted prisoner, hope was hard to endure. Rather than discuss frivolous appeals with his legal team, Anderson wanted to get his head down and serve the sentence. As a criminal lawyer, Anderson would know there were no grounds of appeal. No misdirections on law by the judge. No irregularities in the trial process.

Adey couldn't stop worrying about him. How would he cope with the shock of jail in his already fragile mental state?

Hussain had the same concerns, coupled with an overriding sense of guilt. He'd persuaded Anderson to plead not guilty, and then lost the case. Adey had told him a thousand times it wasn't his fault, but he wouldn't be persuaded. Four weeks on and the memories of the trial – of Anderson – hung in the air, haunting every aspect of their days.

‘Peter Hawkins, not that toerag. Can't you see him?' Hussain protested.

‘Sorry, I'm seeing my brother.'

Any further disagreement was cut short by the arrival of a visitor.

Sam Connor shut the door behind him, shook the rain off his umbrella and stood sheepishly before them. ‘I've been a bloody idiot.'

Adey made towards him. ‘You sent a man to jail. A man I believe to be innocent.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm sorry,' mimicked Adey. ‘Is that all you can say?'

Hussain raised a hand to stop her. ‘What do you want, Mr Connor?'

‘To help. I want to help.'

‘Why?'

Before Connor had a chance to answer, Adey started again: ‘It's a wind-up.'

‘It's not, I swear to you. I want to make another statement, saying that I got it wrong about Anderson being tired.'

‘Got it wrong?' scoffed Adey. ‘Lied, more like.'

‘It's difficult to explain. I thought I was doing the right thing. I kind of convinced myself he was tired. I can't believe it now.'

Hussain was more curious than angry. ‘The right thing?'

‘Yes. I know it sounds stupid but Orlando West kept telling me I had a duty to say it.'

‘West?' Hussain shot Adey a sideways glance. ‘Go on.'

‘He kept saying we couldn't be seen to be covering up. Had a duty to the court and the criminal justice system. I was weak. West gave me an excuse to bury Anderson, so I could have his practice.' With eyes cast down: ‘And I took it with both hands.'

Hussain was sceptical. But why make the effort of coming to Rusholme to say all this? ‘Why would West want to stick the knife in?'

‘I don't know. It's all about back-stabbing and chambers politics with him. You know, divide and rule. He created a culture of ruthless ambition in chambers; I lived by it for years.' Connor shook his head. ‘I've been doing a lot of thinking since the trial.'

Adey had no sympathy. ‘Too late.'

‘Why now?' asked Hussain.

‘I can't live with myself. He saved me from a charge of perjury, after what I'd done to him. If I make a new statement maybe we can get leave to appeal on the grounds of fresh evidence?'

Adey was still fuming. She could hardly bear the sight of him. Hussain, more measured, was thinking it through. ‘It's very weak on its own. What about Tilly?'

‘Not a chance. Chambers refused to give her a tenancy – because of all this.'

‘But your seniority saved you, I suppose?'

Connor turned crimson.

‘Anyway, Anderson would never let you risk your career. You'd have to convince him first.'

‘He refused my visit.'

Hussain exhaled deeply. ‘Not just yours.'

‘Worst of it is,' said Connor, ‘he asked me to defend him, and I said no. Should've been flattered.'

No one offered words of comfort.

Connor lingered despite the uncomfortable silence. He had something else to say. ‘Then let me help with an appeal. Let me read the papers. A fresh take on things.'

Adey burst out laughing. ‘You must be joking!'

‘Hang on, Adey,' said Hussain. ‘Anderson's in jail and we've got no grounds of appeal. How could things get any worse?'

‘But why should we let him read them?'

‘Because pride is not a reason to say no.' Hussain picked up the file and handed it to Connor.

‘All right, but the brief stays here,' said Adey. She led him into the boardroom and made a point of leaving the door wide open so that she could keep an eye on him. ‘No documents leave this room. Oh, and I'll take that witness statement first, just in case you change your mind.'

Connor put pen to paper in a carefully worded document, not quite accepting that he lied in the box, but that he might have been a little overzealous in his description of Anderson's tiredness, out of a desire to be impartial. The Court of Appeal would be hard pushed to accept the statement as fresh evidence, but from Connor's point of view, at least he could save his own skin, and that had to be his first priority.

Hussain got nothing done that afternoon, aware of Adey's eyes boring into him. Each time he dared to look up he was met with a disapproving glare. He was beginning to regret letting Connor see the papers. But what if they'd missed something?

‘The deceased!' exclaimed Connor, running out of the boardroom waving a post-mortem photograph of Heena Butt. ‘I've seen her before!'

Both Adey and Hussain stopped what they were doing and replied in unison: ‘Where?'

Shaking his hands in the air, Connor replied full of frustration: ‘I can't bloody remember.'

‘Then try harder,' demanded Adey.

The hatch opened.

Anderson raised an arm: ‘I'm fine.' Better to announce it than make the officer come into the cell and see for himself. On suicide watch since arriving at HMP Armley, these hourly checks served only to remind Anderson of the fragility of his state of mind. He wondered whether he would have the same thoughts that came to him on the platform at Wilmslow station.

Nights were worse. The sounds on the wing created a permanent state of panic. Strange howling noises, shrieking and banging. A constant reminder of the madness and badness that inhabited Armley prison.

Anderson had the luxury of a single cell as his former profession was likely to engender negative feelings in any potential pad-mate. Although a great relief to Anderson at the beginning, the loneliness had become unbearable. Repetitive days of doing nothing. Paradoxically, although he craved company of any sort, during association he cowered in the cell, eyes fixed on the door, too afraid to even go out on the landing. What if they recognised him or didn't like him? Paralysed with fear, he suffered further dramatic weight loss and nervous exhaustion. At least he wasn't in Strangeways where half the prison knew him, and where one man in particular was waiting for him.

He'd stopped counting the days until his release. What was the point? Nothing to come out to, only disgrace. His night with Adey felt like a dream. Had it really happened? What could she possibly have seen in him?

Hours spent staring at the same whitewashed walls, Anderson was retreating further into himself, shutting down. A dangerous method of blocking out the realities of the world around him.

He curled up in a ball on his bed, knees tight to his chest, haunted by jagged memories of what he'd lost.

Numb.

Adey had been to Strangeways hundreds of times, not just to see her brother, but also clients. It never got any easier. She hated the place. The sounds, the smells, everything about it, even the name. Renamed HMP Manchester for political reasons after the infamous riots of 1990, all Mancunians still knew it as Strangeways.

Sitting, waiting for Bahdoon, she thought of Anderson, of how he might be coping in Armley. If only he'd call or send a letter, just to say he was all right. It was different for Bahdoon; he'd spent his teenage years in and out of institutions. All his friends were in jail. Bahdoon's problem had always been fitting in on the outside. Too scarred by all the violence he had witnessed in Mogadishu, with only a sporadic education and no job prospects, he drifted into crime and found the support for which he yearned in a local gang, The Rusholme Cripz. There was a certain irony in that his name, Bahdoon, meant ‘the one who looks for his clan'. At seventeen, he carried a firearm and played his part in the neighbourhood turf wars with rival gang, Dem Crazy Somalis.

As a result of the lengthy terms of imprisonment handed out to twelve members of the notorious Gooch Gang in 2009, the fight over the void which had opened up was bloodier than anything that had gone before. Bahdoon was caught on CCTV carrying out a drive-by shooting which left a young man dead. In 2011, he started a life sentence with a minimum term of eighteen years.

Adey blamed herself for her inability to keep Bahdoon on the straight and narrow. Truth was, once he'd discovered crack cocaine, all her efforts had been futile.

‘Hello, sis.' Every inch of Bahdoon was rippling muscle. Not the scrawny young man of a few years ago. Working out passed the time.

‘Been in the gym, I see? How are you?' she asked with a beaming smile. Adey always tried to appear happy on visits. No point turning up with the weight of the world on her shoulders. That wouldn't help him. But it made the relationship with Bahdoon feel artificial; neither wanted to worry the other, so prickly small talk was inevitably the order of the day, leaving them both feeling cheated by the end of each painful visit.

‘Girl, you got yourself a man yet?'

Always the same opening line − Adey ignored it. Why did he have to tease her?

‘Then maybe you stop wasting your time coming?'

‘You know I'd always come. Why do you say these things?'

Bahdoon clicked his tongue and sat back, arms folded. Sometimes he acted like a child. He'd never had the chance to grow up, find himself. Thought he was man enough to shoot someone, in fact he'd been too immature to think through the consequences.

‘So how've you been?' Adey wasn't going to give up that easily. There was a tension in all their contact, a side effect of so much going unsaid.

‘Got moved to E wing. I'm in seg. Me likes da quiet. I'm chillin'.'

‘Segregation? Why?'

‘Screws heard some bruvas wanted to wet me up, so they moved me.' Bahdoon chuckled, seemingly unperturbed by the danger.

‘At least they told you.'

‘They 'ad to. It's da law. Got a duty, innit.' Bahdoon clicked his tongue again. ‘Me thought you was da lawyer. You not know dat shit?'

Adey refused to rise to it, changing the subject. ‘I need a favour.'

Bahdoon was taken aback. Adey never asked for anything.

She took a piece of paper out of her pocket – Anderson's list of the people he prosecuted that went to prison. ‘I need to know if these people are in Strangeways and on what wing.'

Bahdoon clicked his tongue. ‘A bruva can get in a lotta shit for asking them kind o' questions.'

‘Do you think I'd ask if I wasn't desperate?' Adey was fired up too. ‘I've never asked you for anything. There are people in here you'd kill for and you can't even do this for your own sister?'

Bahdoon glanced off, registering the irony. ‘Why d'ya want to know?'

Adey didn't answer.

After a long silence: ‘All right, sista. Me see what I can do.'

‘Thank you.' She hated putting Bahdoon in danger but with Connor unable to remember where he'd seen Heena Butt, the anonymous caller was their only lead. Adey slid the paper across the table.

Bahdoon shook his head. ‘You know I can't just take that? There's rules, girl.'

Having failed to notice in her desperation to help Anderson, Adey was suddenly aware of the prison officers monitoring everything.

Bahdoon gave an imperceptible nod to an inmate on the other side of the room, who moments later was on his feet gesticulating and swearing at his girlfriend. As the officers rushed over, Bahdoon put the paper in his pocket.

Seconds later all the visits were terminated.

Anderson paced up and down the tiny space. Four steps each way. Becoming more frustrated by the minute, he couldn't take his eyes off the envelope. A letter from Mia, he recognised the handwriting. Pride of place on his pillow, unopened. He was afraid. Afraid of himself. He might not cope with what was inside. A reminder of the world outside. He snatched at it and threw it in the bin, then minutes later took it out and placed it above the sink. Torture. This process had been going on for hours. He thought of tearing it into minute pieces, but knew he'd spend days trying to put it back together.

He could bear it no longer. After several deep breaths, he opened it. Disappointment. No letter from Mia, just a document – a photocopy of her application for a decree nisi. How cold and clinical, he thought. Another envelope fell out. It read: ‘Dad'. Already affected, he opened it. Two pieces of paper, the first a drawing by Angus, his youngest. Immediately, he could discern himself holding Angus's hand. Both standing by a red sports car, probably a Ferrari. He held the picture, his face alternating between smiles and sobs. Placing it gently on his pillow he read the letter, in Will's handwriting:

Anderson's tears fell onto the paper. His whole body began to shudder. Then he let out a roar from somewhere deep within, joining the chorus on the landing. Shouting and screaming he hurled things around the cell, banging on the wall until he had nothing left. Exhausted, he collapsed on the bed and closed his eyes.

Once the rage had subsided, the only emotion that remained was disgust. Disgust at his self-pity. At blocking out what his boys were going through.

John Anderson clenched his fists tight and stood up, then hammered on the cell door.

Eventually, a prison officer came and opened the hatch. ‘All right, all right, what is it?'

‘I want a transfer − to Strangeways.'