Babyface. Elizabeth Woodcraft

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed very interested in Danny’s case.’ She indicated the thin brief now lying on top of a pile of back copies of Family Law. I thought I’d thrown it onto the shelf with my notebooks when I had brought the plates in.

      ‘Did he?’ I said cautiously. Marcus must be annoyed that Simon had got the case. Corpseless murders were considered rather exotic in the world of the criminal barrister.

      ‘He seemed a bit disappointed when he saw it was so thin.’

      Silently, I moved the brief to a higher shelf and sat down.

      I still wasn’t sure why she was here. It didn’t feel as if she was here for me, there was something else. Silence stretched between us. I yearned for a small personal activity to fill in the space. Smoking for example: I could lean across the table, take a cigarette from her packet, look round the room tapping the cigarette on the box, strike a match, inhale, look at the cigarette, look attractive. But I don’t smoke and she did.

      ‘You weren’t smoking at the shop, were you?’ I said.

      ‘We’re not supposed to smoke in the shop. It burns holes in the stock.’ She took another cigarette out of the packet. ‘Do you mind?’

      ‘No.’

      She sat smoking, relaxed, at ease, her arm draped along the window sill. As if she was just there for a pleasant lunch, a ‘picnic couvert’. While I jittered, fiddling with a piece of cellophane.

      I shook my head. Sod it, why not? ‘Did you know Terry Fleming?’ I wasn’t sure if this was helping her or me.

      ‘Vaguely.’

      ‘Do you think he’s dead?’

      ‘Are you interested or are you just making conversation?’

      ‘I thought you were interested.’

      ‘I’m not particularly interested in Terry Fleming.’

      ‘I thought he was the cause of all your problems.’

      ‘My problem is to stop Danny pleading guilty to this charge.’

      ‘Well if Simon knew more about Terry Fleming, he wouldn’t have to.’

      ‘Tell Danny that.’

      ‘I just wondered if Terry Fleming had taken off.’

      ‘Good point,’ she said, and I had that ridiculous glow of pleasure again. ‘He has disappeared before.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘When things got hot. When he fell out with people or had trouble with business deals, that kind of stuff. They all do. They all have their little places. Danny does.’

      ‘Like prison you mean?’

      She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘They go and wait for things to calm down, for a new deal to be done.’

      ‘I didn’t get the sense that Terry Fleming was a businessman.’

      ‘He had his car business,’ she said. She looked round. I had no ashtrays. I had a small dish containing paper clips, which I now emptied into a drawer, and gave to her. ‘But I meant more generally, Effo’s business.’

      ‘Who’s Effo?’ The question was out before I could stop it.

      She looked at me with her eyebrows very slightly raised. This was obviously information that was in the papers I hadn’t had. But I didn’t try to explain that. And apparently she wanted to tell me.

      Edward Farnigan was known as Effo to his friends, of whom there were, apparently, many and in high places. He was a well-known local businessman, a property developer, an entrepreneur, with a hand in a lot of pies. He had a number of people who worked for him, including Terry Fleming and Ronald Catcher. He owned the Lambada Casino and Hombre, the menswear shop, where Terry Fleming had bought that last fabulous suit. And Effo was successful in his work, he had a number of big cars (‘A Roller,’ Yolande said, ‘and a really nice Jag’) and a large mock-Georgian house with a swimming pool in Solihull to prove it. I wanted to say obviously not that successful, because who would choose to live in Solihull, but it was her story, so I said nothing.

      ‘So, Terry might be lying low while some deal of Effo’s gets sorted out. Where does he go? Can’t we get hold of him?’

      She shrugged, jutting her lower lip to exhale, relaxed, casual.

      ‘Who knows about this? Effo? Should someone be talking to him?’

      She shook her head. I felt as if I was missing the point. Perhaps all of this was clearly set out in Simon’s brief.

      ‘I don’t think anyone wants Effo to be involved, if at all possible. Certainly not Sandra.’

      I waited. If I showed I didn’t know what she was talking about it might look as if Kay hadn’t briefed me properly, and that Kay wasn’t up to the job. If Kay wasn’t up to the job, she might think Simon wasn’t up to it either.

      ‘Sandra, Effo?’ she said, mildly irritated. ‘Yolande, Danny?’

      ‘I’m sorry, there are so many names.’

      ‘Sandra is the one who eventually drew the short straw and got Effo.’ She tapped her cigarette into the paper clip dish. ‘Sandra’s a natural blonde, you know. Unlike me. Effo likes the natural look. And he pays for it. All Sandra wants these days is a quiet life. I think the excitement of being with Mr Big has worn off. She’s spending a lot of time in the London flat at the moment, till the heat dies down. She’s always been a bit independent.’

      I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, although an independent woman and a flat in London made it more interesting. ‘Had Sandra and Terry Fleming been getting close?’

      ‘If they had, then she’d be the dead one, wouldn’t she?’

      The easy way she said it stunned me. ‘For goodness’ sake, who would have killed her?’

      She smiled at me and I felt like Miss Prim the Sunday school teacher. Perhaps I would be better off in the library, looking up the meaning of the term ‘equality of arms’.

      ‘So, in the past, when Terry Fleming has laid low for a bit, how long has it taken for things to calm down?’

      ‘Depends. Depends what they’ve done. Effo has various people to sort things. Sometimes that’s Terry, occasionally it’s Danny. Depends who’s in his good books. People get a call, they do a job. Could take a couple of weeks, a couple of months.’

      ‘Well, Fleming’s been missing for a lot longer than that. But what’s your point?’ I was thinking aloud. ‘Is Effo a respectable businessman, or a member of the Birmingham … underworld? What’s he doing using the services of someone like Danny?’

      Smoke curled round her nostrils.

      ‘I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate,’ I said.

      ‘In Birmingham,’ СКАЧАТЬ