Without Prejudice

Table of Contents

Cover

Copyright

About the Author

By the same author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Without Prejudice

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Other books by this author

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781409067054

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About the Author

Andrew Rosenheim was born in Chicago in 1955 and grew up there and in Michigan. A graduate of Yale University, he came to England in 1977 as a Rhodes Scholar and has lived near Oxford ever since. He is the author of
Stillriver
and
Keeping Secrets
. He is married and has twin daughters.

By the same author

Stillriver

Keeping Secrets

For my brother Dan

(who was there)

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Aviva Futorian, a lawyer in Chicago who is renowned for her work on behalf of Death Row and long-term prisoners. Her knowledge of both the mechanisms and the harshness of the State of Illinois’s justice system was invaluable to me. She understood from the beginning that my priorities were fiction rather than fact, and she has no responsibility for any errors of fact in my entirely imagined story. I want to thank Elizabeth G Lent for introducing me to her.

I’d like to thank my editors at Random House, Kate Elton and Vanessa Neuling, for their tireless efforts to make this a better book and their unwillingness to let me off the hook. My agent Gillon Aitken and his colleague Clare Alexander were consistently supportive and had useful criticisms, and I want to thank Jon and Ann Conibear for their friendship and generosity.

My brother Dan Rosenheim, who was a reporter in Chicago, read my early drafts with an encouraging but incisive eye; he was never reluctant to let his youngest brother know when he’d gone wrong. James Rosenheim as always proved a thoughtful, careful reader.

My wife Clare cajoled and encouraged me throughout the writing of this novel, and supplied the title; I thank her. I also want to thank my daughters Laura and Sabrina, who put up with their father when he was immersed – perhaps not without complaint, but then they were nine years old when I started.

I

1

‘B
OBBY
,
YOU THERE
?’

The week before the phone had twice rung in the middle of the night. Each time a husky drunken voice had asked, ‘Wilma around?’ So now he’d let the answering machine answer.

Yet this voice was familiar. Why? No one had called him Bobby for over thirty years. He scanned a mental list of possibles. Nothing clicked.

‘Bobby, pick up. It’s me.’ The voice was slightly muffled by background noise, as if a party were going on.

What time was it? Outside the street was silent. The windows were open to catch any breeze in the sweet mug air, and from Sheridan Road he thought he heard the hushed slide of passing cars, or was it the lake breaking against the shore? He could not detect the faintest hint of morning light. Lifting his head he saw why: the luminescent clock on the walnut dresser across the room read
12:47
.

Who was it? As he reached for the phone and Anna stirred next to him, he felt an unsuppressible anxiety stick in his chest like a stone. ‘Hello,’ he said, trying to sound calm.

‘Is that you, Bobby?’

‘Who is this?’

‘Can’t you tell?’ It sounded like the voice of a black man, but Robert wasn’t sure; he had been away too long to make the distinction automatically. Whoever it was, the man sounded subdued, almost dismayed that Robert didn’t recognise him.

‘No, I can’t.’

‘You used to be able to,’ the man said, and this time the hurt was undisguised.

‘Who are you?’ Robert asked impatiently.

‘Duval.’

Robert took a deep breath. ‘How did you know where I was?’

‘Lily. She gave me your number.’

Silence hung between them in the sponge-like air. At last Robert said, ‘Do you want me to call you back?’

‘Why do you want to do that?’

‘I thought maybe you weren’t allowed to make calls.’ He looked again at the luminescent numbers across the room. ‘At least not this late.’

‘I guess you don’t know then.’

Know what?

The voice sounded more relaxed now. ‘I’m out, Bobby.’

Robert didn’t say a word.

‘You still there?’

‘I’m here, Duval.’ He paused momentarily. ‘Congratulations.’

Duval said, ‘I know it’s late, but I wanted you to know.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Robert sat up in the bed. ‘Don’t go, Duval.’

‘Somebody’s waiting to use the phone,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch. Don’t worry – you’ll hear from me again.’ And the line went dead.

The tape machine whirred inconsequentially, then stopped. Next to him his wife stirred again. ‘Who was that?’ she asked with a voice full of sleep.

‘Nothing important. Go back to sleep.’

When Anna didn’t reply he realised she had. He lay there, fully awake himself, the sheet drawn down, listening. He heard nothing but Duval’s voice in his head.
I’m out.

He wondered if he would call again, and hoped he wouldn’t. He tried to picture Duval from the last time he’d seen him, over twenty years before, in that cramped courtroom downtown. He’d sat looking dazed, seated at the table next to the public defender. A row behind him Vanetta had sat hunched over, her hands clasped together in a twisted prayer.

But Robert couldn’t visualise the face. All he could see now in his mind’s eye was the little boy he had known so long ago – the high cheekbones and long jaw, the cheap thick-lensed glasses, the shy expression when they had played together.

Suddenly he shivered slightly and pulled the sheet up. But he wasn’t cold – he realised it was a sudden stab of fear he’d felt. Why am I scared? he asked himself. And old as he was, he wished Vanetta were still alive.

2

‘What exactly did he do?’

They were sitting the next morning at the white marble table in the breakfast room that adjoined the kitchen. They had so much space in this house: Anna had taken one look at the kitchen during their first visit with the realtor and laughed out loud. ‘Every housewife’s dream,’ she’d said lightly, and he’d laughed then at the incongruity. Anna’s satisfactions had always been professional ones; it was surprising to see her enjoyment from a household cause for bliss. He supposed it was the equivalent of his own love for baseball.

He himself missed their old kitchen in London, so small that when company sat at its table you couldn’t walk around it. The room there had held a semi-functional Rayburn, a porcelain sink and warped draining board, and a dresser with drawers that stuck. In the corner by the back door there had been one oversized willow basket stuffed with umbrellas and wellingtons and trainers. Here in Evanston, just blocks from the lake, they ate breakfast in front of a bay window that overlooked the back yard – ‘the garden’ as his wife called it, half an acre of lawn with two large beech trees, a mock-orange, two scraggy lilac bushes, and not a single flower bed.

His daughter Sophie had eaten breakfast, and she was out back somewhere, crushing the cat with love before going to school. Spring was almost over, but the sultry sweaty heat of a Chicago summer had yet to arrive.

Robert returned his wife’s enquiring gaze, noticing how her aquamarine eyes were, in this morning’s bright daylight, paler than usual. She was confirming the old saw that bone structure came true in the end – well, not end, since Anna was only rising forty. Her features – striking eyes, a short, sharp nose, and high cheekbones – seemed like the product of carefully considered design, until you took in the mouth, which was generous, slightly full in the lips for an Englishwoman, at odds with the convention of her looks.

He said now, ‘He attacked a nurse at the university hospital. He was working on the security desk there.’

‘He did twenty-four years for that?’

‘She almost died. She was raped too.’

‘And he was guilty?’

‘The judge and jury thought so.’

‘Did you?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘No. At least not at first.’ He shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter what I thought.’

She stood up and took her cup and plate to the sink. She was dressed for work, in a fawn-coloured linen skirt and matching jacket, bought on sale at Saks. Anna liked to tell him that clothes cost only half as much here as in London, and he’d decided not to spoil things by pointing out that this didn’t help much if you bought twice as many.

‘Why did he call so late?’

‘He apologised – he said he didn’t realise the time. I suppose it takes some getting used to.’

‘What does?’ She turned from the sink, and pushed her chestnut hair back against her ears.

‘He’s had over twenty years of a routine he didn’t set. The last thing he wants to do now is watch the clock.’

‘Will you see him?’

‘I don’t know.’ He looked tensely at his watch, a handsome Swiss make with a Roman numeral face and a caramel leather strap. Quite smart for him – Anna had bought it as his wedding present.

‘Is it safe to see him?’ she said, in a cool voice she used to mask emotion.

‘You mean physically safe?’ She nodded and he looked at her face, surprised by her concern. ‘I knew Duval when we were little. When I was nine years old, we were like this.’ He held up two fingers and put them together. ‘He wasn’t a violent kid,’ he added firmly.

‘You’ve never mentioned him.’ She came and picked up her briefcase from a chair.

‘He’s been in prison so many years that I guess I started to think he’d never get out.’

‘Or you forgot about him,’ she said sharply. That was what had always upset her most about her clients back in London – once they’d been convicted, however unjustly, no one wanted to know. ‘What do you think he wants?’

‘Beats me.’ He looked closely at his wife, unable to tell what she was feeling. She didn’t like surprises, which must have made the fact that they had got married almost by accident unsettling.

The back door slammed, feet slapped on the vinyl tiles, and the accident burst in. ‘Hello, spider monkey,’ he said, still allowed to use nicknames at home, though never within a hundred yards of teachers or school friends.

‘Hi, Dad,’ Sophie said. After nine months her voice had gone entirely American. She was wearing khaki shorts with big pockets, a pink T-shirt, and trainers on her feet. Already she was concerned about looking cool, which made him miss the uniform she’d had to wear in London.

He contemplated his daughter with a sense of wonder he did his best to disguise. In summer her hair was strawberry blonde, in winter almost downright red, explicable by a great-grandmother on Robert’s mother’s side. Watching Sophie watching him, he realised yet again that she was stunningly, yet still unknowingly, beautiful. This was not parental fatuousness, but the simple truth: the first time he and Anna had been asked to let their daughter model, Robert had laughed in unanxious amusement; the fifth time they’d been asked he had grown alarmed.

Now she flicked her hair back in a smaller replication of her mother’s tic, and asked sarcastically, ‘What is the Important Man going to read today at the office?’

‘A History of Impertinent Daughters,’ he said, batting it back. She was quick for her age, her tongue precociously sharp. If he’d been half as lippy with his own father he would have paid a price, but even when piqued he was wary of crushing her – he couldn’t bear the prospect of her fearing him. Her emotional development seemed in any case strictly normal for nine years old – a withering remark she made could be followed within seconds by the tantrum and tears of a toddler.

‘We’d better get going,’ Anna said to the girl. Ordinarily they would have all left together, since Anna’s job at the consulate was only a few minutes’ walk from his own office off north Michigan Avenue. But today she was going out near the state line for a meeting with some Wisconsin businessmen, and she would drop off Sophie on her way north.

‘Good luck with the presentation. Will Philip be there?’ His voice was teasing, but held the hint of an edge.

‘Of course. Why?’ She gave him a
don’t start that
look.

‘Just wondered. Anyone else?’

‘Maggie Trumbull.’

Maggie was a lawyer, too, but American-trained. ‘Well, at least you won’t get sued. I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ he added in a gentler voice, since he knew she hated public speaking.

Anna leaned down and kissed Robert goodbye lightly on the lips. ‘Cheese makers don’t sue. Now you take care with this Duval chap.’

‘He may not call.’

‘I bet he will. Why else bother you in the first place? Especially after all these years.’

But Duval didn’t call that day, or the day after. Robert’s new job, which had brought him back to Chicago after years away, was still novel enough to preoccupy him utterly during the day – and, as Anna and Sophie sometimes complained, occasionally at weekends as well. So by the end of the week, thoughts of Duval had receded, if not quite disappeared altogether.

He came out of the Friday staff meeting in a good mood. Dorothy Taylor, his publishing director, who was stroppy and combative and seemed to have trouble accepting him as her new boss, was away on holiday, so it had been relaxed. He found Vicky, his assistant, waiting for him outside his office. ‘Your lunch appointment rang to ask if you could meet him at twelve thirty,’ she said.

‘Anything else?’

She followed him into his office, a high-ceilinged corner room with a view of a small playground, which filled up in the afternoon with mothers, nannies and their upper-middle class charges. Robert liked hearing the children’s shouts and make-believe screams, since the only other external noise audible above the hum of the office air conditioning was an occasional horn blast from a driver on Lake Shore Drive.

‘You’ve got Andy Stephens here at three.’

The accountant from the university, to review the quarterly results. They’d been good so that would be easy enough.

‘And that’s it?’ he asked. He’d learned to check: Vicky was a young graduate from Michigan, an English major who wanted to be an editor and didn’t seem to think the secretarial parts of her job were going to help get her there. She wore the international uniform of publishing youth: black trousers, black top, black sneakers – it was a wonder to Robert that she hadn’t dyed her big mop of golden hair black as well. She had a slight overbite that made her seem even younger to Robert, though men her age seemed to find her very attractive – Hari, the Indian graduate student who doubled as mailroom boy and receptionist, would find any excuse to hover around her desk. Robert shared her with Dorothy Taylor, who had plumped for Vicky’s CV out of the enormous pile of applicants.

‘Oh,’ she said, happy to have remembered, ‘somebody else called. A man.’

‘Did he manage to say who he was?’

She shook her head; obviously it had been too much to ask. ‘He wouldn’t leave a name or a number. Said he’d call back.’

‘What did he sound like?’

She looked at him with mild disbelief. ‘He was just some guy.
Sorry,
’ she added tartly. ‘But he did say he’d call again.’