Originally
sentenced at the Old Bailey in London
to seven years imprisonment but released after serving only two and a half, the
British writer broke the terms of his parole licence and absconded.
He moved into the
three-bedroomed house in the Algarve
village of Altura that had been at the root of his
decision to have his mother’s lover killed. She owned the house and while well
into her seventies lived there with Flávio Rosa, a Portuguese gardener and
odd-job man 30 years her junior. Married with four children, Rosa
resisted eviction following her death in 2003.
After years in
the Algarve interspersed with
trips to others parts of mainland Europe, Hills returned to England for a six-week visit in
December 2013. He arrived via an overnight ferry from the Hook of Holland to
Harwich in Essex .
“I thought I
might be arrested on landing, so I had a slap-up three-course meal on the boat,
costing almost forty pounds, one of the most expensive and one of the best
meals of my life,” he wrote in his blog.
“Then I was up for
a walk on deck, a leaf through the free copies of the Spectator, and an excellent night's sleep. At half-past-six in the
morning I approached the mean and sleepy-looking male customs official at
Harwich.
“How long have
you been out of England ?”
“Oh, a little
while.”
“And how long is a
little while in your world?”
“Oh, just a month
or two.”
“Go on, sir.”
It was an example
not only of Hills’ way with words, but his audacity and wry sense of humour.
Entering the UK
undetected didn’t work the second time around.
Friends,
including the British author Geoffrey Elborn, were expecting Hills to arrive
back about the 21st of last November. Only just before Christmas did they
discover that police had boarded his plane and arrested him on arrival at Gatwick Airport .
“He was taken to
Lewes Prison, where I wrote and had a cheerful letter from him saying he was
quite happy there,” said Elborn.
Hills has since
been transferred from Lewes in East Sussex to Rochester Prison in Kent .
Elborn says he and other friends have not been able to arrange any visits because
slots in the visiting rooms have been fully booked.
Apart from
tightly controlled personal visits, the contact rules allow prisoners to make
but not receive phone calls, and to receive but not send emails.
“Charles is more
or less resigned to being inside until 2016 and I think that he was advised not
to appeal,” said Elborn who had a phone call from Hills about two weeks ago.
“If he did appeal,
there would be a chance that his sentence would be increased and, if reduced,
he would be given conditions which would probably deprive him of any chance to
go abroad and he would be forced to remain in the UK until any new parole term
expired. As he has nowhere to live in the UK , he might as well see it through
in prison.”
Hills, 59, was
born in London where his mother, Maria José dos Reis, a young, post-war émigré from a peasant community near Mafra, worked
for many years, first as a maid and eventually as a silver-service waitress. She returned to Portugal in 1983 at the age of 60.
After her death
in 2002, Charles, her utterly devoted only child, became convinced that Flávio
Rosa had exploited confusion caused by Alzheimer’s and persuaded her to alter her
will so he could continue to occupy the Altura house.
A legal battle
ensued. Eventually the Portuguese courts overturned the will and Rosa was required to move out, but not before Hills’ bungled
efforts to hire hitmen.
The only person
hurt in his attempts to arrange a murder and disposal of the body was Hills himself.
On admitting guilt at the Old Bailey he told the court he was “not a natural
born killer.”
Indeed not. Charles
was a much respected literary figure. Under the name C.A.R. Hills he had written
books, edited the journal PEN News
and contributed to other British publications including Prospect magazine, the Guardian
and the New Statesman.
When asked a few
years ago in the Algarve
if he worried about being re-arrested for absconding, he said that although not
dogmatic, he held basic Christian principles and so, “It’s in the hands of
Jesus.”
* More background on Charles Hills :