A Place of Safety

by Natasha Cooper

  As she turned to look at him, he flinched at the fury in her eyes.

  ‘I am the best secretary you have ever had, or are likely to have,’ she said. ‘So stop making excuses to blame me for whatever it is that’s eating you. I am not the problem.’

  Toby hadn’t the energy to deal with her now.

  ‘I’m going down to the basement,’ he said, turning away. ‘Buzz me on the internal phone when you’ve finished the letters or if my call comes through.’

  There were only a few barristers in the clerks’ room when Trish got back to chambers, but even one would have been enough to stop her going in. She couldn’t have her rivals knowing that her only brief at the moment was Tamara O’Connor’s tiresome bail application this afternoon. As she passed the open door, she overheard Steve talking to young Sam Makins about one of his other cases.

  ‘And if you get stuck, talk to Trish Maguire. She dealt with the family for years and knows the background.’

  ‘OK,’ Sam said in the husky voice that sounded as though he must get through at least forty full-strength cigarettes a day. In fact Trish had never seen him smoke anything while he was her pupil, and his skin had always had the taut clear look that came from perfect health and fitness.

  ‘As you know, she’s good,’ Steve went on. ‘Anything she says is worth listening to.’

  That’s something, Trish thought, moving quietly on down the corridor. Maybe Steve will get me more real work soon. And with luck he’ll get a move on with calling in all the unpaid fees. Otherwise I won’t be able to pay my January tax bill. Or David’s next set of school fees.

  In her own room, she sat down, trying not to resent the fact that her father had left her with all the responsibility for his son. A DNA test had proved Paddy’s paternity, and yet he had never agreed even to meet David.

  Trish knew perfectly well that she had played a part in his stubbornness, but, at the time, she hadn’t understood what she was doing. She’d been trying to put it right ever since, but so far Paddy had held out against her, as well as leaving her to pay all the bills.

  ‘All the more reason to find out what Henry Buxford wants to know quickly,’ she muttered, opening up her laptop and plugging in the modem.

  Even so, there didn’t seem any point going back to the gallery this morning, now that she knew the director wasn’t going to faint at her questions about the de Hooch – or answer them. With luck she would learn something useful from the papers Buxford had promised to send her. Once she’d read them, she could try interrogating Toby Fullwell again. You always got more out of people if you had a few facts to use as a lever.

  The first email she read was from George, saying simply: ‘You haven’t forgotten dinner at the Carfields tonight, have you? Do you want me to collect you or shall we meet there? They live on the river, just by Tate Modern.’

  Sighing, Trish clicked on ‘Reply’ and told him she’d meet him there, if he’d send her the address. That way, neither of them need hold the other up if work got in the way.

  She had never met their hosts and didn’t like going to formal dinners in the middle of the week, but Jeremy Carfield was the founder of a huge software company and one of George’s biggest clients, so he had to be kept sweet. And it wasn’t as if she had to get up early to work on any case papers now.

  Knowing that George would forget to buy them anything, she made a mental note to get something herself. Wine would be insulting and silly for a man as rich as Carfield, she thought, and chocolates were a bit ordinary. Flowers might be all right, except that they always got in the way when hosts were busy greeting their guests and pouring drinks. The whole business of giving presents to people who didn’t need them and would probably recycle them or take them to a charity shop irritated her, but everyone else did it, so she had to join in.

  Her phone rang. It was Steve, wanting to know whether she could accept a brief for a dispute between a catering company and some manufacturers of kitchen equipment. It sounded small and deadly dull, and it was going to be heard in Guildford of all places, but at least it was something.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, adding as a reward for obedience: ‘There’s more in the pipeline. I’ll put the papers in your pigeonhole. You’ve already got a bunch of personal stuff in it. You ought to come and empty it. It’s messy when it overflows and you know I don’t like mess in the clerks’ room.’

  There was the faintest hint of a smile on Trish’s lips as she put down the phone. Now that no one would think she was hanging around in the hope of picking up some crumbs from the silks’ table, she didn’t mind going in to collect her post.

  Her pigeonhole wasn’t quite overflowing, but it was full. There was the traditional pink-tied brief for the catering dispute, as well as a bunch of ordinary-looking post and an expensive, stiff cream-coloured document envelope with her name and address in equally expensive handwriting. This must be Buxford’s information about the Gregory Bequest.

  A quick look at the catering company dispute told her she need not start on that yet. She almost wrenched her forefinger from its socket as she ripped open the envelope, so thick was the paper. As she slid out the neat pile inside, she saw a handwritten note on the top.

  Dear Trish,

  Thank you for agreeing to take this on. As you will see from the board meeting minutes and the other documents, the whole business of the trust is very simple. But if there is anything you need to ask, please don’t hesitate.

  Yours ever,

  Henry

  Nice and clear, she thought, but then it would be. Anyone with his responsibilities would have learned long ago to waste neither time nor words. She turned quickly through the top sheets, adding each one to the neat pile when she’d finished with it.

  In the past she had had to discipline herself to keep her papers tidy; now it was second nature. She could work much more quickly with neat, clearly identified bundles than with the mess she’d allowed herself in her early days.

  The first interesting item was the probate valuation of Helen Gregory’s estate after her death in 1969. Trish saw that she had had very little money, and her only assets had been her house and its contents. As Henry had said, the valuers hadn’t thought much of the paintings, but the phrasing they had used struck Trish as unnecessarily contemptuous:

  ‘Sundry cardboard tubes containing oil paintings of doubtful provenance and value. Those examined proved to contain nineteenth-century copies in the style of various well-known artists. Notional value one thousand pounds.’

  A yellow Post-It stuck to this had another handwritten note from Henry: ‘Even the experts can sometimes get it wrong!’

  There was also a copy of Helen Gregory’s will, leaving everything she possessed to her only son, Ivan, without specifying what that was. Below the will came the documents drafted to set up the trust, which were a great deal more professional than the first probate valuation. That, too, was typical of Henry Buxford.

  Trish turned on to see the advertisement that had been sent to all four broadsheet newspapers, inviting applications from men or women suitably qualified to be director of the collection, Toby Fullwell’s letter and c.v., a copy of the trustees’ letter appointing him, and his contract. Below those were his preliminary report of the state of the collection and second opinions from other experts on some of the most important paintings, including the Rembrandt.

  All the other experts agreed that it was indeed genuinely by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, even though it was painted on canvas and not on panel. Trish learned to her surprise that canvas, being so much cheaper than wood, had rarely been used at that date except for copies, but that in this case the X-rays had confirmed that the painting was indeed the master’s own work.

  Apart from the probate valuation and the brilliance of the deal Buxford had negotiated with the Inland Revenue once he and the other trustees had discovered some of the gems in the collection, there weren’t many surprises in the papers he had sent. Trish re
ad on for the rest of the morning, making notes at intervals and listing the very few questions that occurred to her.

  She was taken aback by the price of expert restoration of old masters, but compared with the sums Antony Shelley, for example, cost his clients it wasn’t so much. And she was surprised by the amount of freedom the board had given Toby Fullwell.

  In the minutes of the latest board meeting, she read his report of the sale of the de Hooch. She couldn’t see anything in it, or anywhere else in the papers, to make her doubt what Toby had said or give any reason for the fear Buxford thought he had seen.

  ‘And yet he must know what’s he talking about. He’s spent his whole adult life assessing other people,’ Trish muttered, moving on to the next sheet in the bundle. ‘And he must have terrified enough young bankers in his time to know fear when he sees it.’

  ‘What’s that? Talking to yourself again?’

  She didn’t need to look up to know that the gibe had come from Robert Anstey, her biggest rival in chambers. He was doing his best to achieve the kind of reputation Antony Shelley had as one of the most brilliant generalists at the Bar, accepting cases of all sorts. Trish occasionally wondered whether her determination to keep her practice entirely commercial was quite sensible, but she wasn’t going to let Robert see any of her doubts. Or let him know how little work she had at the moment.

  ‘Did I disturb the great brain with my chatter?’ she said, making her expression wide-eyed and innocent. ‘So sorry. Now I come to think of it, I’m glad you dropped in. There’s something I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘You’re not telling me that you’ve finally come to accept the fact that I really do know more than you, are you, Trish? Wonders will never cease.’

  ‘Yes, Robert, amazing though it may seem, there are some things you have that I do not.’ She watched him preen. ‘You were at Cambridge, weren’t you?’

  ‘I was. I’ve always felt sorry for people who had to go to one of those ghastly red-brick horrors. Oh, God! Trish, I’m so sorry. I keep forgetting that you’re one of them. How awful of me!’

  She gave him a look that should have reduced him to ash but only made him giggle.

  ‘You must be much the same age as a bloke called Toby Fullwell. I don’t suppose you remember him, do you?’

  ‘Vaguely. He was friends with a flamboyant chap called Peter Chanting, and everyone knew him. But they mixed with an arty crowd. Not really my sort. How have you come across Fulwell? He’s not a client, is he?’

  ‘No. But I’ve been reading about this rather glamorous little gallery he runs,’ Trish said, knowing how Robert hated hearing about other people’s successes and hoping that would make him talk. ‘He seems on the young side for quite so much responsibility, so I was wondering how he’d done it. You must remember something about him.’

  ‘Not a lot. He was a nonentity who ran about doing favours for rich blokes in the hope they’d pay some of his bills. I don’t think it worked, except with Peter Chanting, who was grateful enough to stump up for Toby to join him on an exotic trek one summer. Tibet or Kathmandu or something.’

  ‘That sounds pretty generous.’

  Robert laughed. ‘Doesn’t it? One or two people wondered if Toby could’ve been his bumboy, but in spite of the artiness he was always into girls.’

  Only a dinosaur like Robert could make a remark like that, Trish thought, as he said:

  ‘Why are you so interested?’

  ‘Oh, any red-brick graduate like me just loves hearing gossip about proper universities, Robert,’ she said, batting her eyelashes at him. Then she caught sight of the time. ‘Shit. I’ve got to go. Can we finish this later?’

  She picked up the tidy pile of papers and slid it into the thick envelope, without looking back at Robert. He was still there. She could hear his breathing and smell the faint whiff of medicated shampoo that hung about his hair these days. At least it had stopped the flaking dandruff that had once made his shoulders look like a freshly dusted chocolate tart, but someone should have told him to rinse his hair more carefully if he didn’t want to smell like a chemist’s. Slapping the envelope into her briefcase, she added her laptop and moved to fetch her overcoat from the hanger behind the door.

  ‘Could you move, do you think? I really do have to go.’

  ‘Why? What’s so important? Some little domestic errand, I suppose, for that boy you’ve adopted. You want to be careful, Trish. Pseudo-maternity is blunting your edge and only the sharpest of the sharp get to do commercial cases with Antony Shelley.’

  Trish turned to smile over her shoulder. She wasn’t going to admit she was off to represent a pathetic client in the magistrates’ court. ‘Actually this isn’t anything to do with my brother. Antony asked me to sort out something privately for Henry Buxford.’

  Helen closed her aching eyes. She was exhausted, having been on her feet for nearly twelve hours. They’d just moved her back on to day shifts, and so she hadn’t got much rest last night. She always found it hard to adjust to sleeping in the dark again.

  The kidney bowl in her hands felt very cold, and gripping it helped to keep her mind working properly. Any moment now the doctor would call for her and she’d have to get back to work, but for a minute or two she could stare out of the window at the road down which Jean-Pierre had walked away from her.

  Even though the sun had sunk behind the horizon at least an hour ago, there was enough moonlight to see everything for a hundred yards or more. Thick black shadows were thrown by the bushes at either side of the white road. Sometimes they seemed to move. Once or twice, she thought she could see a man-shaped shadow leaving the bigger blobs of the hedges and coming towards her, but it always turned out to have been a mirage when she looked a second time.

  Would he ever come back?

  ‘Nurse! Nurse!’

  She went to do her job.

  Chapter 5

  Half an hour after she’d left chambers, Trish was sitting with Susie Brown, Tamara O’Connor’s solicitor, in one of the cells below the magistrates’ court, watching their client struggle to stop crying. Tamara was shaking and there were needle tracks up and down both arms, as well as long scratch-marks from her ragged fingernails. She was sharply thin, and her grey, doughy skin was blotched with picked spots.

  Who could have thought she’d be a suitable mule? Trish asked herself. Everything about her screamed ‘heroin addict’. Any woman who looked like this, flying in from anywhere that produced drugs of any sort, was bound to be stopped and searched.

  ‘Have a fag,’ Trish said, pushing an open packet across the table. She herself had never smoked, but her painful years in crime and family law had taught her always to have a packet ready for her clients and today she’d bought one specially.

  ‘Thanks.’ Tamara wiped her hand under her nose. She sucked on the cigarette, then had to put it down again to cry properly, dropping her face on to her arms. Trish brushed Tamara’s hair away from the lighted cigarette end.

  ‘OK, Tamara. Now, have you really got names to give the police?’

  “Course,’ she said from inside the circle of her arms.

  ‘You do understand the risks you’ll be taking if you become an informer, don’t you?’

  The woman lifted her face. Trish understood the meaning of the word ravaged in a way she never had before.

  Oh for the day the state decides it’s lost the war on drugs and legalizes the lot! she thought. At least then the fools who choose to destroy their own lives with smack and coke and everything else can get on with it and leave the rest of us in peace.

  There would be no mules then, no dealers, and none of the other crimes that always attached themselves limpet-like to the first one. Prices would be controlled, so burglary and street crime would be less common. And maybe, just maybe, some of the drug-takers would lose interest when their habit was no longer glamorously wicked.

  ‘Of course,’ Tamara said, dragging Trish back into her job. ‘But it’s the only way I’m ever goi
ng to see my kids again.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ As Tamara started crying again, Trish cursed herself for sounding so sharp. It wasn’t the client who was making her angry. She tried again, much more gently: ‘Have the police been telling you they’ll get your kids back for you if you help them?’

  Tamara shook her head. ‘No. They haven’t said anything. But my boyfriend said I would. That’s why I told them I’d talk after this, when they’ve let me out on bail.’ Her voice tailed off, and she sniffed. ‘Can I have my fag back?’

  Susie, who had rescued it, handed it over. Trish started to explain that there was no way the police could make Social Services give Tamara back her children while she was in this state, however many names of drug dealers, importers or manufacturers she might give them. Before she had got very far, watching Tamara’s blankly stubborn expression, she had to give up. Susie shook her head and pointed at her watch.

  ‘We’ll be called any minute now,’ Trish said. ‘Your solicitor and I have to go up now. But whatever happens we’ll see you afterwards. OK?’

  On her way upstairs, Trish phoned Steve to ask who would be dealing with Tamara after today. He laughed and told her that Robert had agreed to take on the case.

  ‘That’s not even funny, Steve. Be serious: who will be doing it?’

  ‘Young Sam Makins. He’s taking on most of your old clients. Tamara will be all right with him, if you really won’t do it.’

  Susie tugged at her arm.

  ‘Got to go, Steve. I won’t see you this evening; I’m due to fetch David from school, but I’ll let you know how it goes when I see you tomorrow.’

  Trish settled her shoulders and went into court to do her job. Not remotely to her surprise, the magistrates were unimpressed by her practised advocacy and remanded her client to custody.