Murder Most Fab (42 page)

As I was led away, I could
hear the crowds baying for my blood outside the courtroom. Hanging was too good
for me, apparently. No one seemed to understand my point of view. The press
were sharpening their pens, ready to have a field day. I was a fallen angel, a
rotten apple, the devil incarnate. I had fooled everyone and now I would pay.

I was
driven from the Old Bailey in a prison van, hollered at and battered on the
outside by the general public until I was delivered to Pentonville Prison.

I was
processed by the screws, given a rectal examination (during which I made a joke
about not losing your wristwatch, but no one laughed), showered, then given
some clothes and a number.

‘Follow
me,’ said a tubby screw in black, who looked like an extra from
Emmerdale.

I was
dazed and exhausted, still to come to terms with the prospect of life in
prison. I followed him for what seemed like hours, through sundry locked doors,
along corridors and past cells where inmates screeched and cackled obscenities
at me, promising they would see me soon and I would be sorry.

Abruptly
the screw stopped, turned to his left and sorted through his keys. ‘In here,’
he said unceremoniously, and opened the battered steel door.

As I
walked through into my cell, he guided me with his hand on my shoulder. I was,
it seemed, at the end of my spectacular journey. I had travelled from nothing
to the dizzy heights of fame and fortune and now here I was, the lowest I could
possibly be.

Then he
came up close and put his lips to my ear.

‘Catherine
says, “Hello,”’ he murmured, and left. The door clanged shut behind him. I was
alone.

I’d thought that Catherine
had abandoned me but I was wrong. Everywhere I went, people whispered her name
to me. In the dining hall I received extra helpings, with a muttered ‘From
Catherine.‘ When I was alone in my cell at night, there would be a tap and the
door would open. A covered dish, containing delicious smoked salmon and
quails’ eggs, with a warm hollandaise sauce, would be passed to me: ‘From the
kitchens at the Mirabelle, with Catherine’s compliments.’

On
Christmas morning I even found half a gram of cocaine under my pillow, wrapped
in a crisp fifty-pound note.

Screws
would breathe her name in my ear as they pressed books, poems, CDs and other
little luxuries into my hands. One day I went into my cell to discover a comfy
new mattress with a nine-tog duck-down duvet and pillows encased in fine,
antique linen.

It
seemed that while Catherine had condemned me to a life in prison, she was
determined to make that life as comfortable as possible and was constantly
delivering goods she thought I might need or enjoy via her corrupted prison
staff. The governor himself came to admire my stereo and spent fifteen minutes
cooing to the pair of rare lovebirds I kept in a decorative bamboo cage.
(These, I assumed, she had sent in the spirit of irony.) But from Catherine
herself I heard nothing.

My mother was the only
person who ever applied for a visitor’s permit. One month she turned up wearing
a maroon beret with a sprig of chamomile flowers behind her right ear.

‘I’ve
been meaning to bring you this for ages,’ she said, after we’d exchanged the
usual hellos and caught up on the state of her garden. She held up a slightly
battered white envelope. ‘It’s a birthday card!’ she cried.

‘It’s
not my birthday,’ I said, surprised.

‘I
know. Just look at it.’

I took
the envelope and opened it. It was a drawing of a happy-looking boy fishing by
a river, holding what might or might not be a glass of beer in his hand.
Now
you are a man!
it proclaimed on the front.
Happy thirteenth birthday.

‘Oh! Is
this …?‘

My
mother nodded. ‘It’s the card your grandmother refused to give you all those years
ago. I wrote something in it that I felt you ought to know. Later she persuaded
me that I shouldn’t tell. In light of what’s happened, I don’t know whether
that was right or not. I was going to take the secret to my grave. But Grandma
particularly wanted you to have this card after she’d gone, and she’s always
known best. She went on about it, rather, before she died, and I’ve made my
mind up. So here it is.’

Inside,
underneath,
Happy birthday, angel-cake!
was written
and your daddy is
…
Peter St John McDonald. Many happy returns, love from Mummy.

‘Who?’
There was a distinct sense of anti-climax. Was that it, after all these years?
The name meant nothing to me. I wished she hadn’t told me.

‘You’ll
find out,’ she said mysteriously. ‘I met him at a folk festival.’ My mother had
that faraway kook in her eyes, but for once I sensed she was telling me the
truth. ‘He was a beautiful, kind mandolin player, come to welcome in the summer
solstice. It was love at first sight for both of us. We smoked opium and went
swimming in a lake at midnight. He told me all about his family, particularly
his sister, who he loved, but who had married unhappily. He wanted to marry me,
truth be told, and I wouldn’t have said no, though I was very against the whole
institution at the time. But his family utterly forbade it, egged on by his
sister, the one he loved so much. It seems she didn’t want his happiness as
much as he wanted hers. He never knew about you, my darling. He left me before
you were much more than the size of a thumbnail, and went to travel the world.
I never heard from him again.

‘It was
only coincidence that led me to live in the same village as his sister. I never
laid eyes on the horrible woman but it gave me a distinct thrill when I
realized our two sons had fallen in love …’

I
gasped. ‘You mean …’

‘Yes.
You’re Tim’s cousin. His uncle was your father.’

‘Bloody
hell.’ I tried to think through the implications of this.

‘Don’t
worry,’ soothed my mother. ‘It’s not close enough to be incest. Not really.
Cousins can get married, you know — though, obviously, not you two. What a
shock it gave me when Tim turned up at our cottage! He looked nothing like your
father, who was shorter, like you, and dark with your dreamy brown eyes and
olive complexion. Nevertheless, he was a connection.’

I felt
as though my whole life story had been twisted up with the Thornchurches, in
all sorts of strange and quite gruesome ways. From my own father, through his
sister, Hilary, Tim and Lord Thornchurch himself, to Sammy, who had brought me
down to punish me and protect his true beloved.

‘Thank
you for telling me at last,’ I said quietly. ‘Everything seems to make sense
now.’

‘Does
it? Oh, I am pleased. I should have told you ages ago, probably. But you were
always so busy. Still you’ve got plenty of time on your hands now, haven’t you?
How are you, by the way?’

‘Oh,
very comfortable.’ I didn’t want to go into detail but it wasn’t at all bad in
my cosy, well-equipped cell. The latest little present to come through my door
had been a Gaggia coffee machine and I had lots of fun frothing organic milk —
sent in from a farm in Dorset — to make my own cappuccinos. I had a tidy business
selling them to other inmates, too.

‘And
you’ll be out in twenty-five years, I expect. Just when you’re entering your
prime. Must be on my way now, my little Scotch egg! I’m going to pop into
Tiffany’s to see if they can make me a platinum bird-feeder. My tits are
ravenous this year, and it’s no more than they deserve. I’ve got to get shot of
Grandma’s money somehow, after all. Cheery-bye!’

I went
back to my cell and relaxed into my new Parker Knoll recliner. The final piece
of the puzzle had fallen into place . I was at peace. I felt resigned to my
life in prison — after all, I had killed three men, so I couldn’t really
complain — and determined to make the best of it. Now that I’d discovered the
secret of my identity and accepted that I would be spending some years behind
bars, everything was a great deal easier. I felt happier, far happier, than I
had in years, in fact. I even had the occasional fling, just to keep my hand
in. (One with a rookie prison officer who looked just like Brian Harvey, with
the lights out.)

I
occasionally heard of Tim through the social pages of the broadsheets — I saw
over the years the birth announcements of three children, two boys and a girl.
I just hoped, for their sakes, they were all heterosexual and conservatively
minded. I guessed that his law career had flourished but he must have given it
up eventually for I saw his father’s death notice in the paper, then references
to the young Lord Thornchurch began to appear. He was becoming a little more
radical now that his father had died, and there was talk of his fronting
protests against GM crops, then turning his entire estate organic and carbon
neutral — all those modern obsessions .

I
wished him well. I loved him still, even if he never gave me a thought.

As for Catherine, I was no
longer angry with her. My feelings of forgiveness took me by surprise — after
all, she had been double-crossing me from the start. But she knew I would get
the joke. Cruelty could be hilarious if you saw things through Catherine’s eyes
and her complete destruction of my existence was all the funnier for its scale
and grandeur. Besides, somehow I’d always known that my deeds would catch up
with me eventually. So I cheered her on her way. At least one of us was free
and rich. ‘Go, girl,’ I whispered each night, when I heard them lock my cell
door.

A year
into my sentence, I received a postcard from Dubai. The picture was of a
beautiful, sandy, sun-baked beach. On the back Catherine had written, in wobbly
pink fibre-tip:

Hi, Cowboy,

This might be a holiday hotspot for some, but it’s a way of life for
me. I knew you were on the way out and I had to look after myself I’m sure you
understand. It’ll all be waiting for you when you get out. Miss you.

Hope you’re getting as much cock as I am.

From Catherine xxx

PS.

‘Thus, though we cannot make our Sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.’

As you read this, I am
still in prison, albeit a pleasant enough open one. Ironically, I’m working as
a gardener once more. Otherwise I have filled my time with writing and this is
my attempt to explain my story on my own terms, away from the media, the
courts, the prison-gossip grapevine, and their warped interpretation of events.
I want everyone to know the truth, because only those in possession of all the
facts could begin to understand.

The
person I most want to read it is Tim. Maybe once he has, he will think kindly
of me in the knowledge of how it all came to pass.

I feel
at one with the world now. I’d go so far as to say I feel cleansed. I no longer
expect to live happily ever after with Tim. I know that will not happen. But I
know what did happen. That he loved me once is enough. Life may disappoint, but
its brilliance is that it teaches you the value of such meagre offerings. It is
all we have.