Freed From Behind The Paywall: A Real Life Murder Story - Part Four of Four
The End.
St James, Piccadilly
Part Four.
Soon afterwards, the air was filled with helicopters and searchlights and barking dogs and paramedics. Someone offered Stuart an oxygen mask. He refused it. He kept saying, I killed him, I murdered him. If I hadn't separated from him this would never have happened.
At some point, his phone rang. It was Rod's sister, calling to find out if her brother was all right.
He's dead, he's here, he's in the bath, oh it's terrible, he's dead.
Andy took the phone from Stuart and said to her calmly, We've found Rod. He's dead.
When the police knocked on her door at 5am, Rod's sister was expecting them. She had been convinced that her brother had killed himself and was sure she could have done something to prevent it. So when she was told that he had been murdered, she felt a kind of relief. Then came the rage and the grief.
Back in London, Charlotte didn't speak to Stuart until six the following morning. He had spent most of the night at Southwark police station.
Stuart said, Do you know?
And Charlotte said, Yes I know. Rod is dead. His sister told me.
Stuart said, Yes, but do you know?
Charlotte said, Do I know what?
Stuart said, Rod was murdered.
Charlotte, like Stuart, felt knocked back by the impact of what had happened. She was in the middle of the bedroom when the phone call came; then she found herself collapsed in the corner. She still clung to the phone. She screamed into the mouthpiece, I know who did this.
Stuart told her to call the police. She was put through to an investigating officer. She told him, I know who did this. His name is Ozzy, he's a student at Stratford College, his phone number begins with 0208 534. His mobile number is in Rod's Filofax, which is in his brown Gap bag which will be leaning up against the island in the kitchen. It will be under 'O' for Ozzy. One of Charlotte's great strengths as an agent was that she had an excellent memory for details.
Usman had arrived at Rod's flat some time around 11.30 that Friday night. He had promised to have sex with Rod. Rod, who was exchanging text messages with Seok Kyu Choi in Korea, buzzed him in through the two sets of security doors and into his flat. Some time later, Usman tied Rod up in the bathroom, with Rod's consent.
A holdall with sex toys was found in the bathroom. Whether it was Rod's or Usman's was uncertain. It contained a leather hood with eyeholes, a whip, handcuffs and ropes. Rod's hands had been manacled behind him and his feet bound with rope. He had been suspended from a crossbeam above the bath. He wore the hood over his head. Once he was secure above the bath, Rod would have been able to see Usman through the eyeholes in his hood. Usman took a camera out and began photographing Rod. Rod would have been able to watch him as he did so.
He would also have been able to see him produce the knife that was to disembowel him.
Usman left the flat early the next morning. He was seen by a neighbour wearing a heavy, long coat - Rod's coat - and a pair of Rod's shoes. It struck the neighbour as unusual that he was wearing such a coat, since it was warm. He was carrying a black bin-liner which contained the camera, a wallet, Rod's Jaeger watch and a diamond tiepin. Usman thought this would help to make it look like a robbery. In the bag, presumably, was also the murder weapon, which was never found, and Usman's shoes, too soaked with blood to wear.
After leaving Rod's apartment, he went to the flat he secretly shared with his wife, Nabela, in Beckton. They had met early in 2003 when she and Usman were both students at Newham College.
Nabela Razak was divorced and had two children at primary school. Her ex-husband had committed an honour killing some years before and was still in prison. Without telling any of his family, Usman married Nabela in November 2003 under an Islamic law known as a nikah. They did not require an imam. All that was required was for a wali - a trusted friend - to be present as a witness. Nabela asked her best friend's husband, Stephen Ramgit Rainer, a dispatch rider living in Leytonstone, east London, to be their wali.
After they were married, Usman hardly ever stayed the night with Nabela. He only came to the flat during the day. His wife was left alone on most evenings. Rainer did not think it was the way a husband should behave.
On Saturday, 22 May, the night of Charlotte's engagement party, the night after Rod was murdered, Rainer and his wife were getting ready to go to a barbecue in Harold Hill, near Romford, in east London, when Nabela telephoned. The Rainers had been expecting to meet Nabela and Usman at the barbecue but Nabela asked Rainer if he would come to the flat in Beckton. She spoke calmly, but she said it was urgent. It took him about 40 minutes to drive to Beckton and when Nabela answered the door she was distraught, shaking. They sat at the kitchen table and, weeping, Nabela told Rainer that two months earlier, Usman had been abducted by four white men in Earl's Court. They had stopped as he waited at a bus stop, asked for directions, then bundled him into the back of their van, where each of them had raped him.
Please don't tell anyone about this, Nabela said. It's so much shame and embarrassment. She was sobbing and, as Rainer tried to comfort her, Usman came in. He'd heard the sound of his wife crying.
Rainer asked him about the rape. Is this true?
He said it was. He described to Rainer what had happened, and then, bafflingly, explained that rather than reporting the men, he had befriended them after meeting them again by chance a few weeks later at the Olympia exhibition centre in west London, where he said he was working as a security guard for a pop concert.
After this, Usman said, he talked to them regularly on the phone.
He said he only had a number for one of them - a man called Roderick. When pressed, he said the other men were called John, Paul and George. He wouldn't give any further details.
Nabela confirmed that a posh man by the name of Roderick, who sounded white, had been phoning Usman on his mobile. Rainer was angry. He didn't believe anything Usman said. He asked him more about the men. Who were they? Why would he befriend them? Usman told him it was because he had wanted revenge.
It was then that Usman confessed to Rainer and his wife that he had gone to the Tabard Centre in Southwark the previous night and murdered Rod. Usman said, I wanted to hurt him, but I didn't want to kill him. I just went mad. I wanted him to feel the pain I felt.
No way, said Rainer, I've had enough of this bullshit. You're lying.
Rainer still didn't believe what Usman had told him. Nor did Nabela. He had lied so many times, he had dramatised his life so often, that anything he said was in doubt. Rainer thought this was just another of his fantasies. He got into his car and set off to drive home. But he had a puncture and returned soon afterwards. While he waited for the RAC, Nabela pleaded with him to help.
Usman still had the black bin-liner.
He said he needed help to get rid of the contents. Rainer asked him, If you did kill this man why do you still have these things in your possession? Usman said simply that he didn't know what to do with them. Rainer asked him about the man he had killed. Usman said, A literary agent. Fame. A well-known person. Homosexual. Rich.
Thinking that the contents of the bag were merely stolen property, Rainer and Nabela drove Usman around the local streets disposing of the evidence. Rainer said, If these need to be got rid of, I'll get rid of them. If Usman had stolen them, then he wouldn't want to throw them away, thought Rainer. Nabela agreed that this was the best course. She wanted to protect her husband. She thought he might be a thief; she didn't believe he was a murderer.
The Jaeger watch, the symbol of Stuart's devotion to Rod, was thrown down a drain. The clothes were scattered at the back of a supermarket and were never found. The camera was later recovered, with the pictures in it of Rod suspended over the bath.
After they had finished disposing of the evidence, they bought some food and returned at about 11pm to Beckton, where Usman and Nabela spent the night. The next day, Rainer returned to Beckton. He and Nabela decided they needed to contact Usman's brothers, Ali and Khurram. They arranged to meet the brothers in Docklands, in east London, at a quiet location. Usman stayed in Beckton. This was the first time that Ali and Khurram, or any of the family, were aware that Usman was married. Nabela told her brothers-in-law what had happened. Then Nabela and Rainer returned to Beckton. Later that day, Ali, Khurram, Khalida and Sadia all arrived to see Usman. A short while later, Rainer left the flat and returned to Leytonstone. He was not party to the family's decision to send Usman to Pakistan. The next day Usman and one of his brothers were on a flight via Dubai.
While Usman was on the plane, a police officer turned up at the Durrani family house and confirmed that Usman was suspected of murder. The officer searched Usman's room. He couldn't find his passport anywhere. He told the family that if Usman was trying to flee the country, someone ought to get in touch with him and make sure that he returned immediately. The family, now aware that Usman had actually done what he had claimed, contacted the brothers, who received the message in Dubai. Usman was brought back to London.
The next day, the whole family together - Khalida, Ali, Khurram and Sadia - walked Usman to the police station in Forest Gate, only a few minutes away, on Romford Road. He was arrested, but later released on bail. The police observed him over the next few days. At one point, young men were seen to be kissing his hand in the street.
The police speculated that he had achieved a measure of respect among the community as a result of claiming to have carried out an honour killing. While he was out on bail, Usman checked himself into the mental health unit of Newham University Hospital. It was a week or so later before an officer from Lewisham police station arrived to take him into custody. He was formally charged with the murder of Rod Hall.
When Usman met the detective who was going to interview him, he seemed friendly and talkative. The detective used the word bouncy. Usman talked quite happily about football, college and his wife. Sometimes he would take a photograph of Nabela out of his wallet and stare at it. However, when he went into the formal interview he was silent. He gave the interrogating officer a catatonic stare, looking right through him. The officer, who had dealt with numerous homicides, found it disturbing.
He could do the stare, he could look right through you. Most people can't do that. It's very strange. Unsettling. He was a very chilling person.
Usman Durrani wouldn't even speak to give his name.
Homosexuality, sadomasochism and religion, according to the prosecution psychiatrist who assessed Usman while he was in custody, are a 'toxic brew'. He had seen the same combination in cases of extreme violence and murder again and again. Many homosexuals who are religious or come from religious families are tormented by their sexuality. At Usman's trial, the prosecuting counsel asked his sister Sadia about the predominant attitude towards homosexuality in the Muslim community. She said: I think the attitude comes from the story of Lot [in the Qur'an, Lut]. And it is a curse and a cursed act. It is something that is seen as unnatural so if anyone is to have tendencies for that it is to suppress it. In our community, it is seen as a very bad thing and in our religion as a major sin. There is not actually a case I know of in our local community of anyone being openly homosexual so I am pretty sure they would be ostracised.
Usman showed emotion at his trial only when the counsel for the prosecution suggested he was a homosexual - then, he rose to his feet, shouted out and gesticulated angrily.
Male homosexuality is another ingredient in the 'toxic brew' because it is often the case that gay men seek out the transgressive more than heterosexuals or lesbians. S&M, the third ingredient in the brew, can run out of control. Passion becomes anger; what is at one moment arousing may in the next be unbearably painful. Crucially, the tools to do harm are there at hand.
It may simply be that Usman Durrani is insane. But none of the psychiatrists who assessed him after his arrest - acting for the prosecution or the defence - thought that he was mentally ill by any technical definition. The assessment at the psychiatric unit of the John Howard Centre in Homerton, east London, where he was referred for psychiatric tests, was that he fulfilled the criteria for a diagnosis of personality disorder. Personality disorder is not a mental illness.
The defence psychiatrist was convinced by the arguments of James Gilligan, a leading American forensic psychiatrist. Gilligan has suggested that one of the most dangerous conditions in the risk of violence is shame.
There would have been a huge amount of shame associated with homosexuality in an Islamic family. In addition to that, a secret marriage to an older woman with children would have added to the burden. If Usman did suffer from a personality disorder, or deadening shame, he was still a seductive and attractive young man. He was, in the words of the prosecuting psychiatrist, self-centred, narcissistic, effeminate, exasperating, evasive, elusive and unreliable. The defence psychiatrist called him coquettish and said that he saw himself only as a victim. Usman showed no understanding of the effect of what he had done, on either his or Rod's family.
Impulsive and grandiose, Usman expressed no guilt or regret. He cried sometimes during consultations, but his tears seemed false or were those of self-pity. It was both psychiatrists' opinions that he would be capable of committing another murder. He was extremely manipulative. He had a soft, girlish, classless voice. He had a habit of lowering his head and looking through his fringe of floppy hair. So powerful was his ability to influence people that members of the prison staff at Feltham Young Offenders' Institute made personal visits to Usman at the psychiatric ward at the John Howard Centre (and one member of the Feltham staff wrote him sympathetic letters). After his arrest, Usman continued to seek attention. During his time at the John Howard unit he would scratch at himself with a pencil, enough to draw blood, and scream and rage out loud. He seemed to have a deep fear of being abandoned.
Shame, sexual stimulation, rage, loneliness: could any of these explain Usman's frenzied attack? The prosecution psychiatrist summed up Usman's behaviour in the language of his trade: A single behavioural act must always have a multiple of determinants. You don't kill someone for 'a reason'. You kill them for multiple reasons. Your unconscious mind being one of them.
As unfathomable as Usman Durrani's behaviour might have been, Rod Hall's was also mysterious. Why would you invite an immature and unstable, if highly manipulative, young man into your flat late at night and allow him to tie you up and place a hood over your head, so that you were completely helpless, especially when this person had threatened you and your family? Why did Rod, so intelligent and worldly, allow this to happen? Promiscuity combined with S&M could hardly be described as simply an erotic game. It's obviously risky. How can you be sure how far the other person wants to go? It can be a fine line between what is arousing and what is enraging. Killing is the most extreme form of sadism. It could also be the case that being murdered is the most extreme form of masochism. And that death, too, is a release.
The trial of Usman Durrani began at the Old Bailey in London in July 2005. Usman pleaded guilty to 'manslaughter due to diminished responsibility' as a result of suffering a significant abnormality of mind. His two brothers, Ali and Khurram, were in court every day. They wore conventional suits rather than their usual traditional Muslim dress, since the trial was taking place a few weeks after the London bombings of 7 July, and they didn't feel it would help their brother's case to advertise their culture and religion.
Charlotte and Stuart attended most days of the trial, Rod's sister less frequently. Charlotte had kept the Rod Hall Agency going without Rod and almost all the clients had remained loyal. Having arranged for a priest to 'clear' the flat in a ceremony, Stuart helped sell it to an unsuperstitious Australian couple who were pleased to buy it at a reduced price.
As at his police interviews, Usman never spoke during the trial. In the dock, he wore a dark grey suit that was too big for him, a white shirt and blue tie. He was slight, intense, angular, with very fine skin, dark circles round his eyes, a high brow and thick, straight black hair.
Charlotte had been scared of seeing him. She didn't want to fill in the blanks in her mind of Rod's death. But when she did see Usman, all she felt was an overwhelming sense of nothing. Stuart wanted to hate him. He had the most terrible fantasies about physically punishing him, until he saw him. But there in the courtroom Stuart found he couldn't. There were times when he even felt sorry for him. He looked so young and unimpressive. He was just a little boy.
For much of the trial, Usman stared at the floor or flicked casually through the evidence folder, looking at pictures of the crime scene and the postmortem photographs and diagrams. Like it was the Argos catalogue or something, said Charlotte. That he could even look at the evidence file was astounding to her. But Usman never showed a flicker of shame or recognition.
When he was not looking at the file or the floor, he read a book called Fortress of the Muslim: Invocations from the Qur'an and Summah. There are 134 invocations and supplications. These include: 'Invocations if You Are Stricken by Doubt'; 'Invocations for When the Wind Blows'; 'What to Say to the Unbeliever if He Sneezes and Praises Allah'; 'What to Say When You Feel Frightened'; 'Invocation to be Recited Before Intercourse'; 'What to Say When Slaughtering or Sacrificing an Animal'; 'Repentance and Seeking Forgiveness'.
The trial lasted for the best part of three weeks. Usman read his book, scrutinised the evidence folder, stared at the floor. On one occasion he complained to the judge that a man in the public gallery, a friend of Rod's, was staring at him. Other than that, he seldom looked up. Khurram, Ali, Khalida and Nabela did not take the stand, but Sadia Durrani and Stephen Rainer both testified.
The claims that Rod and three other men raped Usman were discredited. Even the defence accepted that the story was fabricated.
Usman had his guilty plea for manslaughter rejected and was accordingly sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. He will become eligible for parole - because of his youth and lack of previous convictions - in 2016. But it was the view of both the defending and prosecuting forensic psychiatrists that he was unlikely to be granted parole for many years beyond that date. It is also the view of the defending psychiatrist that, as Usman begins to accept what he has done, he will be a major suicide risk. For there can be no atonement for what he has done, the defence psychiatrist said. There can be no forgiveness.
Rod's funeral took place on 26 June 2004 at a church near the family's Sussex home, shortly after Usman was charged with his murder. It was a warm day. There were mainly family and friends present, about a hundred people in all. Rod's closest clients were there - Lee Hall, Jeremy Brock and Simon Beaufoy among them.
Stuart read John Donne's Holy Sonnet X, a reflection upon death ... And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men...
Charlotte felt despairing. I just couldn't think of anything but the coffin. It was awful, she said. The coffin was enormous. So wide. And Rod was so skinny. I kept thinking about his teeth. He spent a fortune on his teeth. He always said they would outlast him.
After Rod was buried, the mourners returned to the family home. Charlotte didn't know what to say to Rod's ailing mother. She had suffered several strokes that had affected her speech and understanding and Charlotte assumed that she scarcely knew what was going on. But when she finally found the courage to talk to her, the two women held one another, and Charlotte began to shake with tears. Rod's mother said, Don't cry, dear. I've cried all the tears.
It was clear that his mother knew exactly what was going on. She had the burden of her son's death to bear until her own death on Christmas Day 2007.
Rod Hall had died as he had lived, theatrically. He had died as if one of his clients had written the story. But if one of those clients had taken the story to him, would he have found it believable? He usually began his critique of writers' work with praise. In this instance, and for this story, he would have told the author that he enjoyed the back story, the historical tapestry of the characters in the drama, and how they were drawn towards each other because of the odd similarities in their otherwise very different lives. Even if it was slightly improbable, this part of the narrative, Rod might have agreed, was dramatically effective and convincing. He would have enjoyed the irony of the obvious parallels between victim and perpetrator, and perhaps even found them plausible. He would have noted that there were reasons for attraction between the two main characters which went beyond that of mere physical impulse.
Both men, Rod might have noted, were lonely. Both had overbearing fathers and were indulged by their mothers. Both came from close, loving, conventional families whose fathers hated the idea of homosexuality. They each wanted their life to be dramatic, to be special. They concealed from those closest to them their deepest secrets. They both wanted revenge of different kinds - Usman on his father, his relative and on Rod himself; Rod on Stuart, the lover who had rejected him.
Rod would have liked the power of the idea of shame in the narrative, since both men were deeply ashamed. Usman was ashamed by his lack of any ability that would have pleased his father; of the apparent suffering at the hands of the relative who he claimed abused him. He was ashamed of his femininity, unpopularity and homosexuality. And Rod would have liked the conceit that although Usman was ashamed of all these things, he was entirely unashamed of a brutal and pitiless murder.
As for the other character in the drama, the rich, successful protagonist, he was ashamed of growing old. He was ashamed of his secret desire to be dominated - to be the slave. He was ashamed of his addiction to promiscuity and sadomasochism. Above all, perhaps, he was ashamed of being lonely.
Rod would then have moved on to what he saw as serious problems. First, and not insignificantly, there were political or, if you preferred, practical problems. The story punched buttons that the theatre and film business may have found too sensitive to touch - Islamic conservatism and the sexual extremism of gay men. Rod would have known that many producers would have wanted to keep away from such subjects. The film and theatre businesses, for all their professed desire for work that is challenging and provocative, are in some respects also deeply conservative.
More seriously, there were flaws in the actual story itself, most particularly in the denouement. After all, could any audience seriously be asked to believe that the final act of murder would take place in a bell tower, which, as a symbol, combined both the invocations of an angry, ancient God and the uncontrollable urges of the cock? To cap it all, the bell tower was appropriated to evoke a fairy-tale narrative: that is, it was specifically designed to act as a theatre for the playing out of a myth. A corrupted fairy-tale tower into which a visitor, a storyteller and fantasist, entered as the witching hour approached to enact the perfect antithesis of a happy ending.
Rod would certainly have insisted that this part of the narrative be edited out or toned down. No one believed in phallic symbols any more. You need to introduce some consistency here, Rod might have said.
Is it a fairy-tale tower, or a religious tower, or a phallic tower? The writer might have pressed on. It doesn't matter. The point is, in the tower, on that night, certain gods revealed themselves to one another and came into conflict. Usman's God was there: paternal, stern, unforgiving, demanding and, in his immature mind, the expiation of sin by blood, the judgement of Lut. But our gods were there too: sex, love, and death - if Sigmund Freud is to be believed.
Rod might have paused, searching for a kind way to deliver his conclusion. Then he would have shaken his head and said, It just doesn't happen that way, and no one is going to believe it. And besides, no one takes Freud seriously any more. If the writer had pressed on, Rod would, as gently as he knew how, have delivered the final blow to the author's vanities. It's dramatic, I agree. But there's no redemption in it, no lessons, no hope. It's just too sad.
Rod was one of four friends or acquaintances of mine who died suddenly in 2004. This accumulation of shocks had shaken loose some deep-buried moorings in me. I was having trouble coping. I felt numb and lonely. My mind seemed unsteady sometimes. For the first time since suffering a serious breakdown 20 years earlier, I felt the power of the drive towards nothingness moving within. It was as if a thick, opaque shield that had protected me from a too-acute sense of my own mortality had suddenly crystallised and become brittle and thin.
Usman's act had reached out to me, a virtual stranger. What happened was affecting my marriage, my family. Depressed, I had - perhaps self-destructively - quit my main source of income, a London newspaper column. My wife was worried about me. I was so scared. I had become so scared of death.
At Rod's memorial, in September, at St James's Church in Piccadilly, I was still fragile and cold, as cold as the church itself. I stood by my younger brother, Jack, and we sang hymns and listened to the eulogies and dedications. I wondered if I would still love Jack if he had done what Usman Durrani had done. I felt certain that you had no choice in such matters. It clarified for me the suffering Usman had inflicted not only on Rod and all who were close to him, but on his own family who had loved him and had no choice but to continue doing so.
There was a string quartet playing. Jeremy Brock and the playwright and poet Liz Lochhead gave speeches. Brock talked of Rod's clothes, specifically of his fondness for leather trousers. He talked of his love of champagne, his taste, his aestheticism, his passion for food.
At the end, they played 'Funeral for a Friend' by Elton John. Its brash, gothic chords felt out of keeping. Everything, in fact, seemed out of joint. That was perhaps the nature of tragedy, even the definition of it. Above all, I felt that it was loneliness that hung in the air that day more than grief. Perhaps it was mine. Perhaps it was an echo of Rod's. Perhaps it was Usman's. Perhaps even now, as he awaited trial in Belmarsh, he clung to his loneliness, the loneliness that had started as a child when he was abused out of innocence.
Because to abandon it would be the start of his understanding of not only what he had done but what he had suffered. Or was the story of his abuse just another lie, another fairy-tale, the convenient invention of someone who had cast himself as the eternal victim-hero?
As the service concluded, I was aware that I felt nothing. I felt nothing at all. I just felt empty. I was almost the first one to leave the church. I couldn't wait to get out of there and forget about death and its fearful implacability. As I stepped out on to the street, all I wanted to do was look away from the part of me that was seduced by the tower; that in my most hidden self ached for it.
I think Rod knew that feeling, that longing for nothing, for nonfeeling, for death itself. I think Rod, in those final moments in the tower, found out all that there was to know about seduction and of fairy tales and of gods.
The End
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