Babyface

‘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,’ she said slowly, tapping her cigarette unnecessarily over the paper clip dish, ‘people do things for Effo. And if they don’t, people – other people – disappear.’ She looked at the tip of her cigarette for a second. ‘It’s not just London where people end up in concrete 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.’