Unsafe Convictions Read Free

reading. She writes with a clever mix of sensationalism and pseudo-intellectualism.’
    ‘ And poisonous innuendo,’ Jack observed. ‘She’s thoroughly tainted your integrity with that rubbish about your ancestors. Not to mention what people will read into your delayed promotion and mystery absences from duty.’
    ‘ What she wrote about my ancestors is perfectly true, as you well know. How you read it depends on your own frames of reference, which was precisely her intention; and my integrity, as well as yours, is already compromised simply by our being here. Everyone we speak to will be hostile and evasive, if not downright dishonest, and the outcome will displease, disappoint, or anger someone. As Holbrook so clearly points out, we stand to get our hands very dirty.’ Pausing to draw breath, McKenna went on: ‘The police see us as their worst nightmare, the public see us as a corrupt arm of a corrupted body, and for the media we’re simply page fodder until something juicier comes along. We’ll get a warning shot fired across her bows, but it won’t have much of an effect. She’s on a roll, as the saying goes, and I expect she’ll cross our path sooner rather than later. She’s probably holed up somewhere where she can keep her eye on the tragedy queen, if, that is, she’s not actually camping out on his doorstep.’ Catching the expression on Jack’s face, he scowled. ‘And I don’t want a lecture about my attitudes! In more honest times, Smith would be judged for the vicious pervert he undoubtedly is, instead of attracting maudlin sympathy from people who should know better.’
    ‘ Not a few psychologists believe some degree of violence is inevitable in marriage and other close relationships.’
    ‘ And comments like that simply encourage the outrages that Smith and his ilk choose to indulge.’ McKenna’s eyes sparked with anger. ‘You see them on television, you read about them in the papers, and you find them in the dock, displaying their suppurating emotional wounds, and laying claim to debts society doesn’t owe. It’s a lifelong revenge trip against the world at large.’
    ‘You can’t jump to conclusions about Smith being a pervert because of what Linda Newton said at the trial,’ Jack added mildly. ‘And even if he is, it’s not necessarily his fault. Research points clearly to a genetic or pre-natal predisposition towards homosexuality.’
    ‘ What he chose to do about it is his fault,’ McKenna insisted. ‘He married under false pretences, abused his wife, stole some of the best years of her life, and tried to pretend all the misery he caused wasn’t his doing. Nobody held a gun to his head while he deceived and battered Trisha, and nobody twisted his arm to marry again. He’s indulging a monumental and parasitic self-centredness, and I shudder to think what might befall Beryl when her gullibility and bank accounts dry up.’ He paused, searching to express feelings which he believed were based on moral truth, but which, when voiced, seemed to be founded in bigotry. ‘I’m not condemning homosexuality, Jack, but I abhor the hidden misery people like Smith cause. They demand every available social and material benefit on the grounds that their alleged affliction bestows greater rights than the rest of the world enjoys. Their orientation might be beyond their control, but how they deal with it most certainly is not .’. Again, he stopped speaking, then said: ‘Still, my feelings don’t matter. He’s laughing, all the way from the open prison door to the bank where he’ll deposit his obese compensation cheque.’
    The sudden roar of a vacuum cleaner overhead drowned the last of his words as Rene set about her chores, her footsteps thumping around the upstairs rooms. Each roar from the vacuum cleaner was preceded by a squeak from its wheels, then, as the church clock began to strike nine, chimes echoed weakly from an old-fashioned mantel clock above the gas fire.
    ‘That