by John Fairfax
‘Remember what I said, Needles,’ warned the guard. ‘Break him in nice and I’ll see you get some touches.’
The cell door slammed. The lock turned. Needles rose, not bothering to press the flush.
‘Gottaburn?’
Benson wanted to scream. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘A cigarette. Have you got any baccy?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Then start. There’s nothing else to do in here.’ Needles lowered himself slowly on to a chair, reached for some needles and yellow wool and started knitting. ‘Except flush my throne.’ He nodded towards the toilet.
‘Good lad,’ he said, after Benson obeyed. ‘We’re going to get on. What’s your name?’
‘Benson. William . . . Will.’
‘Well, you can forget Benson, William, Will. I’m going to call you Rizla. And if anyone asks your name, you say “Rizla”. That includes the screws. Got it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good lad. What are you in for, Rizla?’
‘Murder.’
Needles undid a stitch. ‘Silly boy.’
That night Benson lay curled in foetal anguish listening to Needles snore and scratch himself. But his right hand was clenched tight – the same hand that had struck Paul Harbeton – and in it was the one thing that mattered: a sliver of a wafer of hope.
PART ONE
Two days before trial
1
‘Another murderer?’
‘Yep.’
‘Who?’
‘Have a guess.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You have. He’s all over last week’s papers.’
‘What . . . no . . . get off . . . the guy operating from an old fish and chip shop?’
‘None other. But it was a fishmonger’s. There were no chips.’
Until that moment Tess de Vere had only been half listening. It was a dreary Monday. She was having lunch with Gordon Hayward at the Ming Palace in Hatton Garden, a short walk from where they worked at Coker & Dale, Solicitors, 56 Ely Place, London. Gordon was head of the criminal law department. He was also thirty-nine, single and interested in Tess. Possibly obsessed. Had been since her arrival at the firm four months ago. His latest tactic was to suggest business lunches. On this occasion he’d proposed divine dim sum, a celestial Languedoc and a discussion about a pending judgment from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The application was about covert surveillance of legal consultations in a police station. It had some bearing – though tenuous – on a hopeless case of Gordon’s. For light relief, Tess had tuned in to a not-so-hushed conversation coming from the table behind. So far it had gone like this:
‘The dim-wit sacked me.’
‘No.’
‘Bloody right. Four days to trial and she pulls the plug.’
‘Get off.’
‘Picks up the damned phone on Friday night and says she wants out. Doesn’t trust me. Says I don’t believe her.’
‘Do you?’
‘No, but that’s not the point, is it? You weigh up the evidence. You give your advice. And if you have to, you lean on ’em.’
‘Absolutely. Help them see sense.’
‘Get the best result.’ The speaker had evidently filled his mouth; he spoke while chewing. ‘And it wasn’t just me. Counsel had a go too.’
‘Urged her to plead?’
‘Informed persuasion, nothing more. And what do you get for your trouble?’
‘A slab of legal aid.’
‘Yes, but only for the preparation. I’ve lost the trial fee.’
‘There’s other fish in the sea.’
Gordon was having trouble too: with his chopsticks. The dim sum kept slipping away. He was chasing one round the bamboo steamer, his mind on the provisions of Part II of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
‘Of course, intrusive surveillance has to be authorised,’ he said. ‘You can’t just listen in and make notes. You need a mandate. But it doesn’t end there. As you rightly said this morning, there have to be adequate safeguards to protect the examination, use and storage of the material obtained. That’s the key term, adequate. I’m not remotely suggesting you’re unfamiliar with the legislation’ – he managed to trap the dim sum; he raised it, triumphantly – ‘but what about the Covert Surveillance Code of Practice provisions? Don’t they cover any lacunae in the primary legislation? That’s my worry, Tess, and with respect to my – and I have to say very interesting – case . . .’ His chopsticks swivelled and the dim sum fell back into the steamer. Tess resumed her eavesdropping:
‘I mean she’s as guilty as sin. Hasn’t got a cat’s chance in hell.’
‘What happened?’
‘She’s gets a bit too cosy with her boss. Starts shagging him. Which is fair enough because he’s a nice guy and loaded. But . . . have a guess.’
‘He’s married?’
‘That’s par for the course.’
‘He wants out?’
‘That’s your birdie.’
‘She won’t back off?’
‘There’s your eagle.’
‘So she blackmails him? Threatens to tell the wife?’
‘You’re in the bunker.’
‘Kills him?’
‘Bloody right. With a broken bottle.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Right in the neck. Watches the poor sod bleed to death and then walks off as if nothing happened.’
‘Diminished responsibility?’
‘God no, just passion gone wrong. He held out the good life and then tried to take it back. Sent her over the edge. Fatal Attraction.’
‘Great film, that. Especially when the dog goes missing.’
‘It’s a rabbit.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s a bloody rabbit. You couldn’t boil a dog. Not on a domestic cooker.’
‘Hang on, I think it was a cat.’
Gordon filled Tess’s glass, smiling shyly. His soft, blue eyes were defenceless. ‘I’m glad you’re back, Tess. You’ve brought some sunshine into a sometimes grey and musty building. I’m sorry, I should have asked. How was Strasbourg?’
‘Grey and musty.’
‘The symposium went well?’
‘Put it this way, a week is a long time to discuss prisoner rights and the limits of rehabilitation. I was ready to break out by Saturday night.’
In truth, Tess had been unsettled. Sitting at the back of the hall listening to a presentation on the lack of clear and constant jurisprudence from Strasbourg in relation to the effect of Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights 1950 on UK ‘whole-life orders’, she realised she didn’t want to do this any more. It was incredibly important work, but the required legal choreography had lost its allure. She no longer felt driven to formulate the technical steps necessary to bring a government to heel. With the ache of an exile, she longed to get back to first beginnings. Back to front-line crime, defending people who didn’t have a cat’s chance in hell.
‘My own view is that Strasbourg is losing its way,’ said Gordon.
‘Really?’
He’d taken to impaling the dim sum – something he’d never have done if he hadn’t thought they were approaching the border controls between mere colleagues and friendship. Gordon was increasing his stride, eyes fixed on a greener land.
‘Yes. Article Eight of the Convention is all very well – and I’ll continue to squeeze it for all it’s worth – but who would have thought that “the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence” – I omit, with due deference, the masculine pronouns – would stretch to prohibit the interception of criminal communications?’
‘It doesn’t.’
Gordon tugged a dice-themed cuff-link. ‘I was only joking. You know that. Where would we be without Article Eight?’
The couple behind might have given the question some thought, mused Tess, itching to shift tables. The sacked solicitor had moved on to the evidence:
/>
‘Her DNA is on the bottle. Her footprints are at the locus in quo. She’s seen arriving before the killing and leaving afterwards. They catch her at Dover on her way to France with tickets bought the morning after the murder. And when they pick her up, she’s got a cut to her hand consistent with a broken glass injury. What do you think she says when they put on the tape recorder?’
‘Go on.’
‘She cut herself on a tin of tuna. Do you get that? A tin of bloody tuna.’
‘John West?’
‘Do you know . . . that’s the one question I didn’t ask.’
‘That’s why she sacked you. Anyway, what’s her defence?’
‘Hasn’t got one. Just says it wasn’t her. That’s why I leaned on her. Had to. But she just wouldn’t budge.’
‘Well, she’s stuffed, then.’
‘Like I said.’
‘Who’s picked up the brief?’
‘Well, that’s your best question yet. Another murderer.’
And it was at this point that Tess sat quite rigid, no longer pretending to listen to Gordon, who’d moved on to Valenzuela Contreras v. Spain. Because the conversation behind became suddenly charged: she was tingling with intuition.
‘Another murderer?’
‘Yep.’
‘Who?’
‘Have a guess.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You have. He’s all over last week’s papers.’
‘What . . . no . . . get off . . . the guy operating from an old fish and chip shop?’
‘None other. But it was a fishmonger’s. There were no chips.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m not. It was only fish—’
‘Not that, you prat. Or should I say sprat?’
Tess watched Gordon’s mouth moving but no sound reached her.
‘I got a call this morning from some market-trader-sprat who calls himself a clerk. Asked me to send over the brief at once.’
‘Didn’t know he had a clerk.’
‘Well, he has. Called himself Archie.’
‘What’s the brief’s name again?’
‘Benson. William Benson. Or, as he’s known inside, Rizla. Can you get your head around that? A barrister called Rizla?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither.’ The speaker paused as if to wipe his mouth. ‘If he hadn’t killed somebody, I could almost feel sorry for the clown.’
‘Why?’
‘C’mon, you’re in the sand again. He’s not only going to lose, he’s going to make a complete fool of himself. This’ll be his last case.’
Gordon was looking at Tess, forlorn, wondering what he’d done wrong. He’d shared the best of himself and now he felt naked. Clumsily, he began to cover his embarrassment with Weber and Saravia v. Germany. The border controls were more stringent than he’d thought.
‘Gordon,’ she said, ‘domestic law will be found wanting next week, in part at least, but the ruling won’t help your case. It’s critically different. We can’t talk now because I have to go. I’ve got some research to do.’
‘Are you free tonight?’ His voice almost cracked. His shaved scalp was shining with perspiration. ‘Sublime partridge and oak-aged Rioja?’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a conference. New work. Cutting edge.’
2
‘It’s him,’ said Tess, sipping a Corpse Reviver.
‘The guy you banged on about from Paris to Prague?’
‘I banged on about the limitations of the jury system. There’s a difference.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. I pointed out that a verdict returned according to the evidence can still be the wrong one.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Damn it, yes. I was trying to explain a conundrum: the idea of something that’s true and false at the same time.’
‘I don’t recall any conundra.’ Sally had gone for a Mojito. A classic Cuban highball.
‘You’re impossible. Utterly impossible.’ Tess shifted back to the present with a suppressed smile. ‘He did it. He actually did it. He walked a thousand miles.’
‘Where from?’
‘Forget it.’
Tess had first met Sally Martindale at university. She’d disappointed her Irish republican parents by favouring Oriel College, Oxford, over Trinity College, Dublin. Given that her father was English, with an ancestry stretching back to the Norman Conquest, and that her mother had taught at the Royal College of Music, the argument – with allusions to the Great Famine and crimes of the Black and Tans – had verged on the bizarre, not to mention incoherent. So Tess had left a rugged stone house overlooking Galway Bay and taken a room with a view on to a trimmed lawn, the sound of the sea breathing through her window replaced, in the first instance, by a quintessentially southern county English voice – polished vowels with crisp consonants – calling out her name:
‘De Vere? Where the hell are you?’
Tess had leaned on the sill and looked down to see a girl she’d met in a pub the night before, a History of Art fresher at Magdalen. At that first meeting, she’d been dressed in oversized flannels and battered combat boots (a bid, she explained, to kick-start an Oxford-based grunge revival). For the morning after, she’d plumped for flared jeans, a low-cut white blouse suggestive of lace underwear and high heels (in homage, it turned out, to a seventies Bazaar cover photo of Jane Birkin standing on a yacht).
‘Help me finish these, will you?’ She’d held up a brown paper bag and a bottle with gold foil around the neck. ‘The cherries cost more than the wretched plonk. Would you believe that?’
Sally could have asked the porter for Tess’s room number. She could have looked at the board of names. But no, she had to sail into the quad and call out like an auctioneer at Christie’s ignoring the microphone. They’d become friends, their attachment cemented by the mutual disclosure of bruising love affairs, inter-railing (from Paris to Prague), extravagant arguments, tearful reconciliations, shopping, drunkenness and shouting from the cheaper seats at Covent Garden, la Scala, and – only once – the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. They’d been inseparable at Oxford. And they’d been inseparable when they’d moved to work in London, Tess drawn to the world of criminal law and Sally to an assistant manager’s desk in a West End art gallery. They’d met every week for cocktails, a sacred arrangement that had only once been broken: when Tess had shocked all and sundry – Sally included – by taking a job in Strasbourg. Having returned to London five years later – only four months ago – the tradition had been quickly reinstated. They’d opted for the Beyond Lounge in Kensington.
‘This man got life for a crime he didn’t commit,’ said Tess. ‘He then writes to the parole board admitting his guilt. Next, he signs up for a law degree, gets it after six years, and then applies to join the Inner Temple. Every kind of obstacle is thrown in his way and he just climbs over them, one after the other. As soon as he’s released he starts the Bar Vocational Course. Scores outstanding in the final examination. Finally, he gets a pupillage at 14 King’s Bench Walk, but only because the head of chambers defended him back in ’99. When it comes to an application for tenancy, there’s a rebellion. They vote him down. No one else will take him. Not in London, not in the Provinces. He squats here, squats there, picking up bits of work in the magistrates’ court, a plea or two in the Crown Court, injunctions in the County Court. They’re all just waiting for him to throw in the towel. But none of them spotted what he was doing.’
‘And what was that?’ Sally had had to squeeze the words in.
‘He was building up three years’ in practice. That’s all you need.’
‘For what?’
‘To open your own chambers. And that’s what he’s done.’
‘He’s going it alone?’
‘He’s no other choice. Maybe it’s what he wanted all along.’
Tess had spent the afternoon poring over newspaper articles, columns, blogs, posts. The scandal of William Benson, barrister-at-law, m
ember of the Inner Temple, practising from Congreve Chambers, 9B Artillery Passage, Spitalfields, had blown up while Tess was in Strasbourg. A sympathetic profile published in the Guardian on Monday had provoked a savage rejoinder from the Sun on Tuesday. Backed by Paul Harbeton’s outraged family, an online campaign had been started to shut Benson down. To pass ‘Paul’s Law’.
‘They’ve collected 218,000 signatures already,’ said Tess. ‘They want the Justice Secretary to propose emergency retrospective legislation.’
‘To what end?’
‘Prevent anyone working in the justice system if they’ve been convicted of certain grave offences.’
‘Sounds sensible to me.’
‘Sure, but in a civilised society we give people a second chance. That’s sensible too.’
Tess wished she’d listened more when she was in Strasbourg. If anyone’s circumstances tested the limits of rehabilitation, it was Benson’s.
‘Well, pardon me for shifting from the depths to the surface, but he is one good looking—’
‘Oh, pack it in.’
Sally had been tapping on her tablet. She’d found a photo of Benson standing outside his chambers. He didn’t look remotely proud. Just determined. And sad.
‘Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed,’ said Sally. ‘Just look at that barely contained suffering. The dark eyes. The shadows in his soul. It’s positively Russian. I’d do anything to make him feel better.’
‘You’re impossible.’
‘I’m right. What a paradox. The only way to get anywhere near him is to do something terribly wrong. How completely wonderful.’
Sally now ran the Etterby Gallery in Chelsea. But a second passion was graphology. The study and interpretation of handwriting. As a sideline to selling contemporary black-and-white photographs and English watercolours, she advised companies on staff recruitment and individuals on their relationships – even down to the whether they should start one or not. Her specialism was the art of human relations.
‘Do you think he’d be interested in a thirty-something who couldn’t care less about public opinion? A brunette of wit and charm?’