by John Fairfax
Benson felt like he was floating on air. Yes, he had his own problems. But he could live with them. The sun was shining. According to Archie, the phone was ringing. Hearts and minds were changing. The mob couldn’t touch him. They couldn’t reach the place he’d come to with the conclusion of Sarah Collingstone’s trial. They couldn’t deflect him from his ongoing purpose. He laughed out loud – a challenging laugh, hoping that someone out there was watching. There was rubbish heaped at his gate. More rotting fruit and leftovers, from rotting people who’d been left behind. But as he got closer, Benson stopped smiling; and he slowed, moving forward, abruptly changed, not sure that he could cope any more. His heart broke. The engine in his soul fell silent.
Reaching the pile of broken eggs, spilled milk and rotting fish, he fell on his knees. He looked up to heaven because he couldn’t look down. They’d killed Papillon.
66
Tess was surprised not to hear anything from Benson – something which alternately pleased and troubled her. She’d expected at least a call, or a call from Archie, but there’d been nothing. Which, from one perspective, is what you would expect between counsel, his chambers and a solicitor. You’re joined by a trial and then you each move on to other work, another case. And Tess hadn’t called Benson. So everything was sort of normal. Only she wasn’t entirely happy. She couldn’t forget the man with the scarred scalp; she couldn’t forget Benson’s unspoken pleading. She couldn’t ignore either of them. On an impulse she made a quick call. An hour later she parked outside Sally’s house on Chiswick Mall in Hammersmith. It was evening and the sun was sinking behind the rooftops, blackening the old slates.
‘This very damaged man told me Harbeton was a nasty piece of work,’ said Tess. They were strolling by the Thames. ‘He’s grateful somebody killed him. And he gave me a message for that someone who, it turns, out knew Harbeton. Benson turned up at the Radwell Brain Trauma Clinic looking for Harbeton in 1997. He’d found him by 1998. He was dead the same day.’
‘Won’t you ever accept he’s guilty?’ said Sally.
Tess didn’t answer, because she didn’t know the answer. She leaned on a wall and watched a couple of eights fight against the wind, heading towards Barnes. She’d tried rowing at Oxford and learned that you either let it take over your life or you got out of the water. She’d got out and never regretted it for one moment.
‘Sarah Collingstone was innocent,’ she said. ‘But her life was buried in lies, lies of other people’s making and lies of her own. It took a murder to get her out of the pit. But Benson isn’t a Sarah. He’s not someone who got trapped by someone else. He’s a Ralph. He’s a Ralph who went to prison and wants to be a Sarah. He trades off the fact he went down after a fight. They got him by a majority verdict. Which means at least one and maybe two people believed he was innocent. He holds on to them like a lifeline. But I’ve found the first great lie.’
‘I repeat, won’t you ever accept he’s guilty?’
After a long silence, Sally put her arm through Tess’s, giving her a tug, not to move on, but to let her know she wasn’t on her own.
‘Do you want some advice?’
‘No.’
‘Well, here it is: stop caring. Look what Benson has done. Look what he’s achieved. Andrew Bealing got justice. And so did his son. So did Sarah. And so did her father. It’s monumental, because without Benson, Sarah Collingstone would be serving a life sentence. You know that.’
‘I do. But I wanted to trust him. I wanted to believe in his story . . . his long walk from prison to the Old Bailey, an innocent man against the world. I don’t want to stop caring. I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter to me when it does. I’m part of the story.’ Tess watched the rowers vie against each other; one of the eights was pulling ahead. Despite her confusion, she’d come to a decision, here by the river. She had to distance herself from the eroding waves of doubt and hope. ‘Care or not care, I think it’s best if Benson moves on without me.’
Sally thought for a while. ‘So you won’t be instructing him any more?’
‘I won’t be proposing him to clients. It’s better that way. For him and for me.’
Sally thought some more. ‘We drop our investigation?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
This was a resolution Tess could live with. It was honest to the moment. The only other wrinkle was a misunderstanding at Coker & Dale. Her appointment as a consultant had been confirmed but the decision had been made after she had distanced herself from Congreve Chambers. Tess had kept her job for the wrong reason. This time Sally did pull her away. ‘Call me cheap and nasty and superficial, but I was so enjoying all that brick-throwing and men in black. It was sensational.’
‘It only happened once.’
‘Oh, I know, but there was the promise of more.’ Sally sighed. ‘I suppose this means the bet is off. If we’ll never know if Benson was guilty, I’ll never know why you went to Strasbourg.’
‘Sally, you amaze me. You’ve just demonstrated a grip on elementary reasoning.’
‘We had a deal. You’re a cheat.’
‘No, it’s force majeure.’
‘In that case, can I tell you what I think?’
‘I know what you think.’
‘You met Peter Farsely. You fell out with Peter Farsely. He stayed in London. You went to Strasbourg. Peter Farsely goes to New York and you come back to London. Do you really think I am so stupid that I haven’t made the connections?’
Tess, in a surprising abstraction, almost envied Sarah Collingstone. You could ask her anything, now, and she’d just tell you what you wanted to know and put the kettle on. That must be a fantastic way to be.
‘I’ve never thought you were stupid, Sally,’ said Tess, leaning her head towards her. ‘Eccentric, annoying and irreplaceable, but never stupid.’
‘Won’t you talk to me? You got hurt, I know you did. I can still see you’re not over it, even after all these years.’
‘I will one day, I promise.’
‘And between times?’
Tess didn’t know what to say. She loved Sally. If she’d talk to anyone, it was Sally. But things had changed since their punch and spam fritter days; sunny days of cheap fizz and expensive cherries. Getting arrested in Vienna. The part of her that could cry with laughter had been damaged, irreparably. These days, it was cocktails with amusing names. Sophistication over simplicity. She squeezed her friend’s arm and kept up the pressure, never wanting to let go.
‘I’ll be fine, Sally. I’ll be fine.’
67
Benson stopped going to see Abasiama. It wasn’t a formal decision as such. He just didn’t want to turn up and talk about Papillon or Tess de Vere. The two sources of grief seemed to be linked. They’d gone suddenly out of his life at the same time with comparable cruelty, for there is a kind of torture watching a phone that never rings. He’d last seen Tess on the night of Ralph Collingstone’s unmasking. Afterwards he’d expected – frankly – more compliments and praise, or at least the sharing of her astonishment, but the reserve shown earlier in the evening hadn’t evaporated. It had been there, like a cloud, blurring her reactions. She’d said, ‘Well done, Will . . .’ and then she’d looked for her keys. In the cherry red Mini, on the way back north of the river, it was Archie who couldn’t stop talking. No one else could get a word in. When parting, she’d shaken hands, glancing at Benson almost shyly. ‘Goodbye, Will,’ she’d said. And that was it. There’d been no ‘I’ll be in touch’. She’d looked uncertain and lost. He’d watched her drive off, remembering the first time he saw that car with its door wide open. Something had told him he wouldn’t be seeing it again at Seymour Basin.
Benson was no fool. He knew this sudden withdrawal was linked to Paul Harbeton. Tess had gone over Benson’s trial brief and now she doubted him. And he didn’t blame her. A majority on the jury had gone in the same direction. So it was no small wonder that a rainy day depression settled on him.
It had to be said, however, th
at good things began to happen. Benson’s success in the Hopton Yard killing placed his name on the lips of every solicitor and potential client in London, and possibly further afield. Work started coming in. Burglaries. Criminal damage. Theft. Arson with intent. Clients were insisting on having Benson when their solicitors had expressed reservations. There was a gentle groundswell of support that couldn’t be stopped. Even the Secretary of State for Justice, the Rt. Hon. Richard Merrington MP, had been obliged to fudge questions on any future legislation to prohibit his practice at the Bar. The proposal hadn’t been abandoned, but nothing was going to be rushed through, and in the meantime, Benson was thriving. The two online petitions had as much as cancelled each other out. He didn’t know the numbers, because it wasn’t the kind of thing he followed, but the battle of public opinion was no longer news. The attacks had diminished, too. Or so it seemed so far. There’d been fewer provocations, less rubbish emptied by his door, and no beatings.
Publicity about Benson had also attracted the attention of a handbag-clutching sixty-three-year-old who simply turned up one day demanding employment. Molly Robson had been a typist at the legendary Latchford Chambers all her working life. After knocking out QC’s and junior’s opinions for over forty years she’d gradually become an expert in criminal pleading, evidence and practice. Inadvertently. She knew Archbold backwards and read the supplements for fun. Which would have been fine if she hadn’t – when the rare occasion demanded it – dared to correct the work of her employers. Suggesting an alternative analysis. Citing cases. Changing the grammar. The young Turks hadn’t liked that at all. When she was made redundant in a shake-up, she thought of Benson.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked, looking at Harold in his tank.
Benson said he didn’t. She was wiry and small. Not a Congreve girl.
‘Well, I remember you,’ she said. ‘You squatted at Latchford’s for a while. No one wanted you around.’
‘That’s more than likely.’
‘They thought you were hopeless.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Short on talent, long on influence. That’s what they said. They only gave you a place because Helen Camberley leaned on Ted Ryan, the head of chambers.’
‘She did a lot of leaning, Miss Camberley.’
‘Your conviction didn’t help.’
‘No, it wouldn’t.’ She was a plain speaker, was Molly. ‘May I ask why you’d like to work for me?’
‘Well, strictly speaking, it’ll be the other way around. I’d like to get my own back, you see. They’ll not like me working here. So you doing the business in court while I type back at the ranch would be just wonderful. I’m hoping to use you, Mr Benson, to get at them. And that makes me a sort of boss. I won’t be ordered around.’
‘Of course not. Is that your only reason?’
Her large, bright eyes flashed something like excitement. ‘I typed your opinions, Mr Benson. Work you devilled for Ted Ryan and the rest. I never had to change a word. You’re going somewhere, Mr Benson. They don’t want you to, but you are. If you could do with some free advice and typing, let me come along for the ride. They kicked us both out. We can both kick ’em back.’
And so Molly brought her own computer and took over a small room facing Archie’s. She didn’t only type, she dusted and cleaned. She brought Archie homemade sponges and she talked nonsense to Harold. The place came strangely alive.
But still Benson’s depression refused to lift. Visits to CJ to play chess and talk about old Spitalfields had no effect, save to please the patriarch and his often-attendant daughters. Even a night out with Archie Congreve’s Tuesday Club left him morose and tired, for it’s exhausting to feign good spirits. The reason was simple: there’d been no word from Tess. Every day he thought of her light, lilting accent. He thought of her ankle bones. He thought of the way she screwed her eyes when she talked serious, arms folded tight, worrying about some DNA. He thought of her green velvet hat getting smaller and smaller as she walked away. He’d read every book of poetry on the shelf she’d examined, just wanting to read whatever she’d flipped through, wanting his eyes to rest on words that had held her lonely eyes. It was all ephemeral. Maddeningly, the memory of her lips grazing his cheek was fading, along with the scent from her hair. All Benson could hold on to was a handkerchief, washed free of someone else’s spit. He felt ridiculous. But he wouldn’t throw it away.
On a bitterly cold evening while rain and wind rattled the windows, Benson sat at his ship captain’s desk reading over a letter from Ralph Collingstone. He was doing okay. There wasn’t much that could disturb his peace of mind because he knew Sarah and Daniel were secure. His only anxiety was that Sarah had a boyfriend called Vincent and he wasn’t sure if Vincent was more attracted to the money than his daughter, money that belonged to his grandson. It was a difficult one, that. And he was grateful, too, for Benson’s advice, because Benson had told him to get a nickname asap. Needles’ decision to call Benson ‘Rizla’ had been a far-sighted move; an old hand’s ploy. Because everyone in prison wants a burn. Everyone likes someone who can give them a few cigarette papers if they’re short. That name, and a stash of Rizlas, had made Benson everyone’s potential friend. For very little money, he’d become a protected species. So Ralph had gone for something similar: ‘Matches’. So far, it was working just fine, though he wished he’d settled on something that was less in demand. People were all over him like flies.
Benson was so absorbed in his reading that he didn’t notice Archie and Molly’s presence. Archie was standing in front of his desk, holding a brief by its pink string. He was smiling like the boy in shorts he’d once been, here in this room, nagging his four fish-skinning sisters. Only he was Benson’s clerk, a gentleman with a silver watch chain looped across his bulging waistcoat. He tossed the brief on the desk.
‘There’s no stopping you, now,’ said Molly, standing at the door.
The brief was from Coker & Dale of 56 Ely Place, London EC1N. Printed in the centre was the case name and indictment number. It was another murder.
Benson stood up and went over to Archie. He put his hands on those wide, pudding-filled shoulders. ‘Thanks, Archie. Thanks for this place. Thanks for giving me a break. Thanks for taking the flak with me. Thanks for being my clerk.’
‘It’s a pleasure, Mr Benson.’
Abruptly moved, Molly scuttled out: ‘I think I’ll put the kettle on.’
Benson went back to his desk and pulled at the pink string. It was going to be a difficult and very public trial. The outcry against the accused had been medieval. Media speculation had been intense and hostile. Obtaining instructions hadn’t been a straightforward matter. The evidence against the accused was damning. Counsel was asked to use his best endeavours.
Benson would have walked a very long way for this. A thousand miles. And more.
Tess de Vere had instructed him in R v. Stainsby, the ‘Blood Orange Murder’.
Acknowledgements
Warm thanks to the following: Ursula Mackenzie, Richard Beswick, Iain Hunt and Grace Vincent at Little, Brown, Victoria Hobbs and Jennifer Custer at A.M. Heath, Conrad Williams at Blake Friedmann, David Young, Her Honour Judge Penny Moreland, Jude Hodgson (Membership Registrar, the Inner Temple), Charles Henty (Secondary of London and Under-Sheriff, High Bailiff of Southwark), Françoise Koetschet, Sabine Guyard, Christine de Crouy Chanel, Paulinus Barnes. And, specially, Anne.
The ECHR case first discussed by Tess and Gordon in Chapter 1 is R.E. v. The United Kingdom, Application no. 62498/11. The judgment was published on 27/10/2015 (Final judgment 27/01/2016).
‘Could Secondary DNA Transfer Falsely Place Someone at the Scene of a Crime’ by C. Cale, M. E. Earll, K. E. Latham and G. L. Bush, appeared in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1 September 2015.
‘DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints’ by R. A. H. van Oorschot and M. K. Jones, appeared in Nature, 387, 767 (1997).
About the Author
John Fairfax is the p
en name of William Brodrick who practised as a barrister before becoming a full-time novelist. Under his own name he is a previous winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award and his first novel was a Richard and Judy Book Club Selection.