Babyface. Elizabeth Woodcraft

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СКАЧАТЬ pillars.’ She laughed. ‘That’s a joke.’

      I didn’t smile. ‘So who’s in a concrete pillar? Fleming?’

      ‘Maybe. Do you want another sandwich?’ she said.

      I shook my head. ‘I want you to tell me why you’re here. All this is very interesting, but I don’t represent Danny and I can’t really have anything to do with this.’

      She tilted her head and smiled at me. ‘You started this conversation.’

      ‘You rang me, you brought the sandwiches.’ Was this our first argument?

      ‘You seem friendly. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.’ She gestured at the plates spread over the table. ‘Someone to have lunch with.’ She gazed at me.

      I looked away first. ‘This may sound crass but why don’t you talk to Effo, or Sandra? You seem to know them quite well.’

      She shook her head and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. ‘I think it goes a bit further than that. Something happened twenty years ago.’ She gestured her head towards the thin brief on the shelf.

      I didn’t know what happened, I didn’t have all the papers, I wanted to say, but I was still protecting everyone’s professional probity.

      My face must have said it anyway. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I doubt Danny’s told this new solicitor about spats.’

      ‘Fights?’

      ‘In a funny kind of way.’

      I waited but she said nothing more, concentrating on crushing her cigarette into the paper clip dish. Then she looked up at me and gave me that smile.

      I walked out of chambers with her. The air was hot and dry as we crunched in the gravel towards the main road. It was almost two o’clock. People were hurrying back to work along Fleet Street. Men in stiff white collars and grey, pinstriped trousers and women in black suits and sensible shoes, all with briefs tucked under their arms, walked briskly towards the High Court.

      ‘Spats?’ I repeated, rolling the word round on my tongue.

      ‘I have to go,’ she said, and turned and waved her arm in the air. A taxi with its orange light glowing careered wildly towards us. She wrenched open the door, climbed in and fell into the seat, then leaned forward, as if to say something, but pulling the door shut she simply called, ‘Bye!’ and she and the taxi drove away.

      

      I wondered if my frustration showed on my face as I slunk back up the stairs to chambers. All that effort, all those sandwiches. For what? For nothing. I really knew nothing new about Danny, just some confusing information about this man Effo. Her and her gold jewellery and her left-handedness. Well, that was it. That was it. I would just ring Kay and tell her I had done the hearing, with the merest hint of professional difficulty, leave a note for Simon, mentioning the page 213 point, and that would be the end of my involvement in the case of Danny Richards.

      Firmly, I turned the handle of the front door.

      Marcus was standing in front of the shelves of Halsbury’s Statutes which lined the walls of the corridor leading to the clerks’ room. ‘I suppose you’ve heard,’ he murmured, pulling out a grey and red volume, his desire to impart gossip obviously transcending his personal antipathy to me.

      ‘What?’ My desire to know transcending everything.

      ‘He’s going to sit.’

      ‘Who? Tony? That’s great.’ Anthony Garforth QC was our head of chambers. And he was becoming a judge. It was always useful to have a judge in chambers. So this was very good news, for Tony and for the rest of us. And it meant that Tony’s hard work had paid off, all the talking to judges, becoming a Bencher at his Inn, attending Criminal Bar Association dinners. ‘Tony must be thrilled, where’s he sitting?’

      ‘Our head of chambers is to sit as a Mental Health Appeal Tribunal Chair.’ Marcus’ mouth puckered in distaste, which is what stopped me from saying, ‘But Tony doesn’t know anything about mental health.’

      Marcus wanted to be a judge himself, and he couldn’t work out why he wasn’t a QC. Plus he despised Tony. He watched my face, but I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of thinking I agreed with him about the strangeness of Tony’s appointment. That irritated him but there was more to tell and he didn’t want to lose the chance of informing the uninformed, even if it was only me. He leaned back against volumes twenty-five – twenty-seven of Halsbury. ‘It has been decided to have a chambers party.’ He was examining his fingernails. ‘To congratulate Tony, and also, of course, to remind solicitors of our existence. Not that my solicitors need that kind of reminder.’

      ‘There are solicitors who actually instruct you?’ I asked. ‘I thought your briefs appeared through parthenogenesis.’

      He wasn’t sure whether that was an insult. But he gave me the benefit of the doubt. ‘Who was the attractive number in your room just now?’ he asked.

      I blinked at him. I couldn’t be bothered to question his terminology. ‘A friend,’ I said, ‘a concept which may be foreign to you.’

      ‘A friend,’ he mused. ‘You should choose your friends more carefully. She was flicking through your briefs as I came into your room.’

      ‘I expect she was looking for a needle in a haystack,’ I said, ‘searching for the story of a good man.’ My heart was racing. She said he’d been the one looking, hadn’t she? Oh God, which one of them was telling the truth?

      ‘The party is in three weeks,’ Marcus droned on, not certain whether his barb had hit the target. ‘There’s a three line whip on all members of chambers attending. Including you.’ His voice lifted in surprise. ‘Crime’s a bit slow at the moment and apparently you still know some of the old criminal solicitors.’

      Kay was the only criminal solicitor I really knew but she got a lot of very good cases. High profile political activists – the cases that got noticed, the ones where the barristers were filmed walking into court because there were no other action shots available.

      ‘I’ll have to see if I can clear my diary and fit it in,’ I said. I put my shoulder against the door of the clerks’ room and pushed.

      

      ‘We’re sending out the invitations on Monday,’ Gavin said, as I stood by the printer waiting for an updated version of my diary to appear. ‘Kay never comes to these things normally, and Tony’s trying to do his paternal bit for the members he leaves behind, making sure the work is still coming in. I think he thought she might come if you said you’d be there.’

      ‘All lesbians together, you mean, the lesbian Mafia? The trouble with Tony is he thinks we go round in packs, walking in step, wearing slinky clothes. If only that were true.’ Something he’d said struck me. ‘Tony’s not leaving chambers is he? I thought you were a member for life till you went to another set.’

      ‘Oh, his name will still be on the door, but he won’t be around so much and he’s stepping down as head of chambers.’

      So that was the reason Marcus was trying to be friendly. He wanted to be the new head of chambers and he was on the СКАЧАТЬ