Babyface

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 campaign trail. Sharing gossip was his equivalent of kissing babies.

‘So will you ask her?’ Gavin was saying.

‘I’m not sure that it’s a good idea for me to be schmoozing round Kay at the moment.’

Gavin gave me a quizzical look. ‘Do I need to know what that means?’ He was a great clerk, but I could see him hoping he wasn’t going to have to deal with my personal problems, which might take a lot of time.

‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘In fact there’s no reason why I shouldn’t invite her myself. When I ring her up to tell her about Wednesday, I’ll ask her. I have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing at all.’

‘Now you’ve really got me worried,’ he said.

EIGHTFriday Evening (#ulink_8b2b37ec-9cb7-5da1-a0d7-875154896413)

It was gone five o’clock when I got home, and I was planning a pleasant evening in with Friends and people from Seattle, all sharing a takeaway. The phone was ringing. I threw my bag down beside the sofa and retrieved the phone from the arm of the armchair, under yesterday’s Guardian. ‘Hello?’

Kay said, ‘Were you ever going to ring me to let me know what happened in Birmingham?’

‘I’d thought about it.’ We didn’t stand on ceremony in our relationship, we just got straight back in and took up where we’d left off, eight years before. ‘But then I thought phone calls didn’t figure in our professional association, since you failed to ring me about the case before I started it.’

‘I didn’t actually know you were doing it. One might almost say I was misled by your clerk. But I would have had no objection.’ She sighed. ‘So?’

I sat on the chair and stretched my legs, examining my shoes. How do you get marks out of suede? ‘It all went well. He is still your client. The judge wanted to know why Dr Quirk was a fully bound witness.’

‘For goodness’ sake! It’s the whole point of the trial.’

‘Exactly. And he got furious with me for not being Simon Allison, plus we had a small argument about the different professional approaches of the London and Birmingham Bar and he took the name of my head of chambers.’

‘Not to invite him to a drinks party?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘How long did this hearing last?’

‘About twenty minutes.’

‘Dear God, Frankie, you’re not safe to be let out.’

‘Some people like living with danger. And I only had ten pages of brief to go on.’

‘I didn’t know Simon couldn’t do it.’

‘And … eh … Danny said he wants to change his plea. He wants to plead guilty.’

‘Oh, not again. What did you say to him?’ I knew she was thinking of all the work she had done, which might be wasted.

‘It had nothing to do with me. It was hard enough to persuade him not to do it there and then. You should be thanking me.’ I felt unappreciated.

‘Did he tell you he was guilty?’ If a client tells you he’s guilty you cannot put forward a not-guilty defence on his behalf. ‘Did he say that he did it?’

‘Oh no.’ I thought back to our conversation. ‘Although he didn’t actually say he didn’t.’ Perhaps he felt he didn’t need to. ‘He’s just fairly realistic about his chances of an acquittal and he wants to get some consideration for a guilty plea. Who knows, maybe he did do it.’

‘The police case is very weak. At the very least we should put them to proof.’ Even if the client is guilty, you can test the prosecution case to see if it stands up. ‘But there’s more to it than that. I don’t know Danny at all, but there’s something not right about this.’

‘I did have a few ideas you know.’ I dragged my notebook out of my bag and read the list I’d made sitting on the futon in Julie’s house.

‘I’ve already got that,’ she said.

‘This is my list, I just made this up,’ I protested.

‘Well, it’s identical to the advice Simon wrote.’

‘Great minds,’ I said.

‘I don’t know about that, but perhaps you should do crime. You have a criminal mind.’

‘Don’t send me back there again,’ I begged. Memories of being hated by everyone, the judge, prosecuting counsel, the police, even the ushers, just for representing defendants, were still clear in my memory. ‘I met Yolande,’ I said to change the subject.

‘Oh, what’s she like? She’s been ringing me about three times a day for the last ten days.’

‘Why don’t you speak to her?’

‘Danny’s such a tricky guy. He’s given me specific instructions not to and I can’t afford to mess him about. For all I know there are things she knows which I absolutely shouldn’t know.’

‘She seems to know things that might help his case. She could be an important person.’