The Sentence Is Death

Appendix A Letter from Gregory Taylor

26 October 2013

Dear Susan,

I’m writing this in a café on Hampstead Heath. I’ve just seen Richard and we’ve had our words and I’ve made my decisions and I want you to know right from the top that I don’t feel too bad. I love you so much. I love our two little treasures, June and Maisie. I wish things could have turned out another way but they haven’t and I’m not going to sit here and complain. I’ve bought myself a cup of tea and a giant Bakewell tart. It’s not as good as yours. It was raining a bit this morning but now it’s cleared up and there are kids out playing and dogs walking and all in all the world doesn’t look so bad a place.

If you’re reading this, it means I’m dead. That’s not something I ever thought I’d find myself writing, but it’s the truth and we both have to face up to it. I wish I could send this to you right away. I wish I could be with you to comfort you. But that’s not possible for reasons you’ll understand. It’ll be six months before you get this. I’m hoping everything goes as planned. I’m sending the letter to my sister Gwendolyn with instructions not to open it but to send it on to you next April. I hope that doesn’t creep you out! But I know you’ll understand why I have to do it this way.

It’s the insurance. You get a quarter of a million quid when I’m gone. That’s a big amount of money. Enough to look after you and the girls for the rest of your lives. Enough for you to move out of Ribblehead if that’s what you want. Maybe you’ll go back to Leeds. It was me who dragged you into the Dales in the first place and I often think that was selfish of me and no good came of it in the end. But with the money you can make the decisions. I hope you’ll be happy. That’s my only thought sitting here. You and the girls.

But you have to be very careful with this letter. You should destroy it after you finish reading it. Don’t show it to anyone. Don’t tell anyone . . . not even Dave. I haven’t looked at the policy but these insurance companies are full of weasels and they’ll find any excuse not to pay up. They’ve got to think I died in an accident. I’ll come to that in a minute. This isn’t easy for me. It’s not easy for you. But it’s the way it has to be.

I hope you will forgive me. You always were my one true love.

I have to take you back to April 2007. Yes, it all goes back to Long Way Hole. I have to tell you the truth. Don’t be angry with me, Sue. I didn’t tell you the truth then and I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Part of the reason was that whichever way I tried to swing it, it was my fault. I was in charge. I planned the excursion. And I was the one who said it was all right to go ahead. When I look back, I think that the only reason I did those trips was to hang on to something that had already gone. Richard and Charlie and me. We’d been close mates at Oxford and we’d had some wild times together and every year when we met we’d try to relive what we’d had, but we all knew that as we got older it was slipping away and each year there was a bit less of it and we all had to pretend a bit more. By the end, Richard was a big-shot lawyer. Charlie was doing all right for himself in marketing. But I’d ended up in the finance department of a little company nobody had ever heard of in the back of beyond. I never really felt comfortable when I was with them and it didn’t change no matter how much beer we drank.

I knew we shouldn’t have gone down Long Way Hole. That’s the truth of it. Looking at those clouds, cumulonimbus, I knew in my gut that we could be in trouble. The air was unstable. I had no doubt there was going to be a storm but I persuaded myself it was in the distance, that it wasn’t going to come our way. Maybe it was the fact that it was the one time I was in charge. Richard and Charlie both trusted me. There was an 18-metre pitch next to the waterfall. We set up the rig and went down.

We only had two miles to cover to the exit at Drear Hill, but you know Long Way. That first pitch to start off with and we had to set up a pull-down system as it was a through trip and we were coming out the bottom end. Then there’s a 35-metre waterfall pitch and a couple of awkward climbs and all that before you even reach Drake’s Passage and Spaghetti Junction. Not for the faint-hearted. But we were all OK as we set off. Lots of laughing and joking. Just like old times and all that.

I’m not going to go into all the details. You’re sick to death of it and I’ve only got so much time to finish this. But here’s the bottom line. I lied to you. I lied to the inquest. Charlie Richardson never got lost and he didn’t die the way we said.

What happened was that the storm hit us when we were about two-thirds of the way through. I was first, then Richard, then Charlie. We knew at once that we were in trouble. In all my years caving, I’d never experienced anything like it. First off, there was a change in air pressure. Our voices didn’t come out the same any more. And we could feel this sort of throbbing inside our ears and even in our bones. All the walls were glistening and water was dripping down, making its way through. That was just the start of it. There was this echoing sound, a rumbling that seemed to come out of the bowels of the earth, and all the time it was getting louder and louder until we had to shout to make ourselves heard. You’ve got to remember that we were 85 metres underground, on our own, and it was like the whole world was ganging up on us. We had to make a decision and we had to do it fast.

We had two choices. We could climb up into Spaghetti Junction and that’s what I would have done. We’d be on higher ground there and hopefully the floodwater would pass underneath. But the other two weren’t having it. Going in there, we knew we’d get lost. We’d have to sit there in the dark waiting for cave rescue and if the whole system flooded, who knew how long that would take? And we couldn’t be sure we’d be safe, even in Spaghetti Junction. If the water rose high enough, we could get trapped there. We’d have backed ourselves into a corner. We’d drown.

We only had minutes to make the decision. We knew the flood pulse was on its way. Do you have any idea of the power of the water coming through those tunnels? We could already feel it punching at us. The cave, the very air, was vibrating. Bits of stone were coming loose and raining down on us. It was terrifying.

You know what we decided. We decided to press on. If we could just get through Drake’s Passage, we figured we’d be all right. If we could get to the vertical crack, we could chimney ourselves up and let the water pass underneath. We might be stuck there a while but it still seemed the better option. The main thing was, it took us nearer the exit. That was what we all wanted. All three of us.

I went first. Then Richard. It wasn’t so difficult. A 3-metre drop, then a corkscrew round. The two of us made it through and now we’re crouching in a low passage, no room to stand, and we realise that Charlie hasn’t made it. He’s stuck. He’s shouting. We can hear his voice. ‘Guys! Guys!’ Then something else. We can’t make out the words because the water is so close. I’ve often told you that when you’re underground, water can sound like people’s voices. Well, right now it’s like the whole world is screaming at us.

I put my mouth right next to Richard’s ear and I shout as loud as I can, ‘We have to go back for him!’

‘No!’

I can’t believe I’ve heard him right.

‘No!’ He shouts it a second time. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘But he’ll die.’

‘To hell with him! Leave him!’

I can’t believe it. But I look at him and see that he is yellow, that he’s crying like a baby. I swear at him and I crawl back towards the contortion. And there he is. Charlie. Standing up. I can’t see his head. Just his feet and his legs coming out of the bottom of the tube and I guess that his cow’s tail or something has got caught and he hasn’t got any purchase. He needs to pull himself up to release it. And I could help him but then water starts jetting through and it’s black in the light of my head torch and all the walls are shuddering and I think if I wait another second I’m going to die here and I turn round and crawl away as fast as I can, leaving Charlie to stand there and drown.

That’s what happened, love. I’m not saying we could have saved him, but we could have tried. Maybe we could have got him out before the main surge hit. But we didn’t. We made it to the crack and waited there while the water rushed out underneath us. Then we followed it to the exit. We were both soaked and we were exhausted. We were covered in cuts, I suppose from the falling rocks. We were lucky to be alive but we didn’t feel that way. We were disgusted with what we’d done, both of us. Me as much as him.

I’m not going to pretend that I was any better than Richard, but I want you to know that it was him who said what we were going to do once we got out. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. I always heard he had a reputation for telling the truth but that wasn’t what he did this time, not when it would have stayed with him for the rest of his life. And think what it would have done for his career!!! Not the Blunt Razor. The Blubbing Loser. He made up the story about Charlie getting lost in Spaghetti Junction. We pretended we’d gone back in looking for him. In fact, we went straight up to Chris’s place at Ing Lane Farm and got him to call out cave rescue.

That’s half the story. My hand has already got cramp, sitting here, writing. I need to finish this and move on. So I’ll be brief.

I never really spoke to Richard again after that. Of course we were both at the inquest and you saw us together once or twice. But I couldn’t look him in the eye. I was disgusted with him. He made me sick. But I was also disgusted with myself. If the two of us had gone straight back together, I think we could have got Charlie out. But we left it too late. I never went caving again after that. You know that. Now you know why.

And then I got ill and the NHS couldn’t help and you told me to go down to London and talk to Richard. Did you never wonder why I was so against it? Why I put my foot down every time? We had all those arguments and I know I was upsetting you, but I never wanted to see him again and anyway, I knew in my heart that he probably wouldn’t help. The very sight of me would just remind him of the coward and the liar that he was. But you wouldn’t take no for an answer. You more or less dragged me on to the train. And this is the result of it. Here I am.

Do you know, I very nearly didn’t go to his posh house in Hampstead. I nearly rang him to say that I’d changed my mind. I was going to tell you that he’d refused to give me any money for my treatment and leave it at that. But I can’t lie to you, Sue. Long Way Hole was the only time in all our years together that I lied to you and it made me sick to my stomach. I went to see him, just like you wanted. And just like I expected, he turned me down flat.

He wasn’t anything like the man I remembered. Well, he was only a lad really, nineteen, when we first met. He was very polite. He invited me in. He offered me a cup of tea. But when I told him why I was there, he refused to help. He said that in view of what had happened, he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to involve himself in my affairs. Words like that. The strange thing is that over the years I think he’d persuaded himself that I was to blame. Well, I’d been the one who’d seen the storm clouds. That had all come out at the inquest and it was a matter of public record that I was the one who gave the go-ahead. (He even used those words . . . I wanted to punch him when I heard them coming out of his mouth.) But somehow he’d managed to conflate everything so that it was as much my decision as his to leave Charlie behind. Well, I could write more. I could write until the cows come home. But the bottom line is he threw me out.

This is the difficult part, Susan. This is the bit I don’t want to write. And it’s why you’re going to have to wait six long months until you finally learn the truth.

I’m going to kill myself. You know I’m no good as an invalid. I don’t like doctors and pills and all the hospital rubbish and I don’t like you and the girls seeing me sitting there, suffering. I want you to remember me how I was – the good and the bad bits – and not as an invalid, in pain. I’ve worked out what I’m going to do and I’m going to make certain it looks like an accident so those insurance weasels will be sure to pay out.

But first of all I’m going to tell Davina Richardson what really happened to her husband. Richard may breathe a sigh of relief when he hears I’m gone but I don’t see why he should get away with it. She doesn’t live too far from here and I just called her on her home line and she’s in. We didn’t speak. But we will. I’m going to make her promise not to tell anyone I’ve been there and then she’ll do the dirty work for me. Bring Richard down and wipe that lawyer’s smile off his face.

I don’t want to end writing about Richard. When you pulled that first pint for me back in Leeds, I knew straight off that you were the girl for me. You were beautiful then and you’re beautiful now. I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but that’s true of every marriage and, sitting here, I remember only the good bits. Our two girls, to start with. But that visit to Skye. Running the Three Peaks. Coniston Water. That weekend we had in Paris when we lost the passports. All the laughter. I hope you get married again, love. You should. You’re the best.

Try to forgive me for what I have to do.

Your loving husband,

Greg.

The letter was sent to Gwendolyn James in Huddersfield. She passed it on to the police. It is reproduced here by kind permission of Susan Taylor, Gregory Taylor’s widow.