Babyface

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you have an early closing day? Or a late opening?’

‘I’ve lost too much time already.’ She saw my expression. ‘I can’t go, all right?’ A small flush rose up her neck.

‘Then tell Simon, the barrister, when he comes up.’

‘For the start of the trial? No, that’s too late. Danny will have pleaded guilty by then. And I don’t want that on my conscience.’ She took a mouthful of coffee. ‘If he goes down for this, he’ll be inside for years. He won’t get time off because he never does, he won’t show remorse. He can’t go down for this.’ She shuddered.

‘But why did he bother getting a new solicitor if all he wants to do is plead guilty?’

‘I made that happen. I wanted someone to fight for him.’

‘But it’s his choice, surely.’

‘No, it’s not!’ she said sharply. ‘There are other people involved.’ She took a mouthful of coffee and paused. ‘He just needs time.’

It wasn’t only Danny who needed time. I leaned over to pick up another biscuit, casually easing up the sleeve of my jacket. It was getting late.

‘Look, you obviously stopped him pleading guilty this morning,’ she went on. ‘You had a go at the judge. You’ve got to help me.’

‘Ehhh…’

She leaned down and picked up her handbag from the floor. She took out a small gold-covered diary and a slim, gold ballpoint pen. She turned to the back of the diary and looked up at me. ‘What’s your number?’

She wanted my number. She shouldn’t have my number. She wanted my number so that she could write it down. With her left hand. She could find my chambers’ number in any directory.

‘020 7249…’ I was giving her my home number. I hesitated. I shouldn’t. There wasn’t anything I could do for her. I was a barrister, not a private detective. Her hand moved gracefully across the paper, covering each digit as she wrote it, elegant, liquid, smoother in every way than writing with the right hand. I was putty. I gave her the rest of my number.

‘Mmm, a London number. I come to London sometimes.’ She smiled at me, her eyes a stunning dark blue.

‘So call me.’ It just slipped out.

‘OK.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up.

We walked through the shop together. I threw a last regretful glance at the comfy sofas. I might have to come back to do some furniture research.

FIVEWednesday Afternoon – The Inquiry (#ulink_e174c863-052c-506f-bca3-04ed6c4bfac1)

It was quarter to two. How had that happened? My solicitor’s office was on Broad Street, near the Convention Centre. There was little point in trekking all the way over there if the inquiry was starting at two thirty. I rang him from the street on my mobile. I realised it was the first time we had spoken to each other. He was new to the firm and most of our communication had been by email. Now, he sounded weary. ‘Don’t worry about the fresh paper. It’s nothing urgent,’ he said.

‘Is it stuff I ought to know before this afternoon?’

‘Oh no. Some statements from two social workers from London saying they visited the children on a regular basis. And there’s a couple of reports from other inquiries. I’ll bring them down to the Grange. I thought you were coming in this morning to pick them up,’ he said vaguely.

‘Unfortunately I had to do a directions hearing for a colleague and it went on rather longer than I expected.’

‘Who was your judge?’ he asked.

‘Norman?’

‘You were lucky to get out alive.’

‘Given how things turned out, death might have been a blissful release.’

He laughed.

Encouraged, I went on, ‘One of the barristers there said … Do you know any reason why our case, well, this brief would be regarded as the poisoned chalice?’ I asked him.

‘No, not at all,’ he said. But then he’d only been on the case about three weeks. ‘Look, I’d better go now. Do you know how to get to the Grange?’

I told him I did and then he said he’d got to find a fresh shirt before we started this afternoon. I wasn’t sure whether I should be reassured that personal presentation was important to him or worry that he had to change shirts in the middle of the day. Perhaps it was the Birmingham way. I looked down at my own, black, shirt, it was creased and sticking to parts of my body. Perhaps I had things to learn from the Midlands.

The inquiry was being held at the Grange on Dalton Street. The name, the Grange, might make you think it was a large old country building covered in ivy, with fields of cows somehow miraculously nearby. But no. It was a square 1950s concrete municipal office block, grey and flat with wide steps leading up to a vast glass door. The upside was that inside the building were long wide corridors which led into large airy rooms. I was directed to the first floor, down one of the long corridors, through a wide vestibule to the room where the inquiry was to be held. In fact it was two rooms whose shared middle wall was folded back to create an enormous space with one huge glass wall, looking out over a scratchy piece of lawn. Inside the room were historically daring light fitments, municipal chairs and long trestle tables.

Lawyers are not used to appearing in rooms with natural light and I wondered if it was the glare of the sun that made the room seem empty. A woman in a short purple jacket and black slacks was straightening green baize on the top table. She looked up at me with a polite smile. ‘Can I help?’

‘I’m Frances Richmond, counsel for the … victims,’ I said breathlessly. I had to find another name for my clients. Calling them victims made them sound weak and pathetic when they were actually angry and frustrated and hungry for action. I looked wildly round the room. Whatever they were called, they weren’t here.

‘Oh,’ she said, and gave me a puzzled look. ‘I’m Mrs Gisborough, eh, Ellen Gisborough. I’m part of the administrative team. We’re providing secretarial and administrative support for the inquiry. We’re not starting till tomorrow. Have you not been told?’ That was the reason for the look.

With a rush of paranoia I wondered if it was just me who didn’t know, or if it was our team who hadn’t been given the information. Was this what Roseanna had meant?

‘So you won’t know it’s the press conference this afternoon.’

‘Ah,’ I said. We both looked round the room. ‘Not for the clients then?’

‘Not really. I think your solicitor said something about them not wanting photos.’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes, this afternoon is just – what would you call it? – a bit of PR for the inquiry.’ She stopped as if she had said too much. Which she probably had. Busily, she began to pull the other tables in the room into a straight line facing the head table. There was nothing to do but help her.

At twenty-five past two, lawyers began to appear. You could tell they were lawyers because they carried large pigskin briefcases. Three of them were men who I would, at some stage, be able to distinguish from each other. At the moment they all had plump cheeks, varying shades of grey hair and wore subdued navy suits. As a gesture to the press conference, I assumed, they were all wearing snazzy ties. A woman introduced herself as Catherine Delahaye, the advocate to the inquiry. She and the only other woman wore careful, understated peach-coloured lipsticks and small, black polished shoes. I felt worn and dusty, the word ‘hack’ seemed to hang over my head like the ghost of things to come.

At two thirty the panel of three came into the room and we all stood. The panel sat and then so did we. I had placed myself next to a large man who looked in his late fifties, wearing a double-breasted suit and a navy blue tie with large red spots. I put a low pile of my papers in front of me, then, leaning across my neighbour, took a glass from the tray Mrs Gisborough had anxiously provided, and poured myself some water. ‘Water?’ I asked him, but he obviously didn’t hear.

Mrs Gisborough ushered in the press and I began writing, as if I were preparing incisive, justice-provoking, questions. I wrote ‘Bad Company’ – I ought to dig it out and play it. Then I wrote ‘Pay bills’. Then ‘New Suit?’ Finally I added, ‘Solve the mystery of Danny’s murder charge (personal interest only). Possibly need more info from Yolande. Tell Kay? No.’

There was a camera crew with several metres of trailing wire and a BBC logo on their camera, and two journalists who looked more dishevelled than I did. They were almost professionally crumpled, as if how to wear baggy corduroy was something they had learned on their media studies courses. The journalists eagerly wrote down every word as the Chair of the panel introduced the panel members, a senior social worker from Sussex, a childcare expert from a Scottish university, and himself, Henry Curston QC. I vaguely recognised him. He was something auspicious at the Bar Council and his face had been in Counsel magazine on one or two occasions.

The BBC crew moved away from the panel and directed their attention to the legal representatives. As the TV camera panned round towards me, I put down my pen and bent confidentially towards my neighbour and began talking earnestly about the weather.

He looked at me with disdain, then turned firmly away from me and spoke to the person on his left.

The camera panned away. The Chair bent across the table, looking questioningly from side to side, murmuring to his colleagues. The journalists craned forward excitedly, their pens poised, waiting for some details, some hint of the dreadful stories to come, to thrill their readers, to please their editors, to make their mark, then sank back despondently as the panel nodded to each other and rose and left the room. The press conference was over and the press disappeared like grease spots when you squirt Fairy Liquid into the washing-up bowl. The lawyers pushed back their chairs, picked up their pigskin bags and, laughing and joking with each other as if they’d all been friends for years, filed out of the door. I was left packing my notebooks into my non-pigskin bag. I didn’t want them to like me, I didn’t want them to be my friends, but I felt loneliness lapping at my ankles.

‘The chair has asked me to say we’re starting at ten thirty tomorrow morning.’ Catherine Delahaye had stepped back into the room. I looked round to see who she was talking to. It was me. I just stopped myself throwing my arms round her neck. She took out a sheet of paper from a plastic folder. ‘I thought it would be useful if I circulated a list of all the legal representatives’ phone numbers, so I can be in touch if anything crops up. Especially people from out of town.’

‘Do you mean here, or in London?’ I took the sheet of paper which was divided with two meticulously ruled lines.