A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  Quite a few of my clients came from Somers Town. Usually I saw them in police cells or magistrates’ courts, but occasionally I came here on child custody cases and went inside the flats. It was a district of harassed lone mothers and frail pensioners, of unruly kids, addicts of every known substance, and recidivist rogues; but also a community of buoyant families, devoted couples, hard workers and gentle no-hopers. For the most part the criminals were feckless small-timers, for whom self-improvement was something to do with bodybuilding or winning the lottery.

  Sitting there, listening to the cacophony of their lives, I felt a sudden burst of affection for all the joy-riders and drunken brawlers of my acquaintance for whom consequences were rarely a consideration and detection a constant surprise. Unlike Mr Ronnie Buck, they didn’t plan or scheme, there was rarely any malice in their actions, just stupidity and impulse and false bravado. Most were feckless, not wicked. They didn’t have the brains, ruthlessness or brutality to acquire a villa in Marbella. None of them, in the event of half killing a policeman, could have pulled off a plea of self-defence. Quite apart from having no spacious grounds into which a policeman might trespass unrecognized, they would have been sure to sabotage their own defence in some way. They usually did.

  When my feet grew cold, I walked on towards Primrose Hill. By the time I reached Regent’s Park Road the drizzle had thickened, the air had a harsh bite to it and angry flurries of wind blew against my face. In the steady flow of Friday-evening traffic a car slowed and drew up a short way ahead. The passenger door of the Mercedes swung open and Paul’s greying head appeared. He gave me a look of injury and faint exasperation as I climbed in. ‘Where on earth have you been? I’ve been driving around for hours.’ Abandoning this approach with a lift of one hand, he pulled out into the traffic and said in a conciliatory tone, ‘I was worried. You all right?’

  I said, I’m okay. Just a bit tired.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you take a cab, then? Walking in this weather. And in that coat. And through King’s Cross. You might have been mugged.’ He chuckled drily. ‘And by one of our own customers.’

  ‘I wanted to walk. I needed to clear my head.’

  ‘Something happened?’ He kept glancing across at me, searching for messages in my face.

  He seemed sober but then he rarely showed his drink at this stage of the evening. ‘Something you haven’t told me about?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘A bad outcome?’

  ‘No, a good week mostly.’

  ‘That’s what I thought!’ he asserted instantly. ‘A not guilty on that assault. And those children out of care and back with the mother in Shoreditch. Mrs Singh, wasn’t it?’ Paul had a faultless memory for such things. Though we rarely discussed each other’s cases in anything more than outline, he never forgot a name or a significant detail. ‘All highly satisfactory,’ he reminded me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So…Are you unwell, darling girl?’ He put anxiety into his voice and followed it with a quick squeeze of my hand.

  ‘No, like I said, just tired.’

  ‘Ahh. You and me both. We’re behind with our holidays, aren’t we, Lexxy? Should never have cancelled that West Country weekend. My fault. Entirely my fault.’ He blinked at me contritely. ‘When’s the next one? What have we got in the diary? I promise not to screw it up this time.’

  ‘Crete, in about five weeks.’

  ‘Crete? What, for a weekend?’

  ‘A long weekend. Four days.’

  ‘Oh,’ he murmured doubtfully, sounding the holiday’s death knell as surely as if he had torn up the air tickets. ‘At any rate, we’ll do something in March. Definitely.’

  We had left Primrose Hill behind and were entering the white-stuccoed terraces of Belsize Park. Almost home.

  Paul’s mobile rang and he pulled over to speak to Ray Dodworth, the former police officer we used as an investigator. Someone had been founds an important witness in an assault case. Elated, Paul punched the heel of his hand against the steering wheel and made a delighted face at me. He rang off with: ‘Ray, you were wasted in your previous life!’

  Driving on, he outlined the case to me, talking rapidly and exuberantly, and it occurred to me not for the first time that he felt truly alive only when he was winning a case.

  He laughed, ‘Cheer up, Lexxy. You’ll be all right after the weekend. After a bit of sleep.’

  ‘I wish we weren’t doing quite so much.’ I said it lightly, so he wouldn’t take offence.

  ‘We aren’t, are we? No, we aren’t. Just out tonight. And the Johnsons’ tomorrow. And a meeting on Sunday. Not so much. You’ll be fine after a bit of sleep. Just fine.’ He flung me a rousing smile and kept glancing across at me. ‘You sure you’re not unwell?’

  The single wiper raced frantically across the windscreen, the lights of the houses blurred. ‘No, I’m just…’ I cast around for the right word. ‘…A bit concerned, I suppose.’

  ‘Concerned?’ He manoeuvred the car into a parking space opposite the house. Switching off the engine, he waited expectantly but I didn’t want to talk about it here and, gesturing postponement, I got out and led the way in through the front gate and up the steps.

  The phone was ringing as I opened the door but by the time I reached it the machine in the study had picked up the call.

  Wordlessly Paul and I went about the tasks of homecoming, a ritual honed over the ten years of our marriage. Mail briefly glanced over and placed on the hall table. Lights switched on in the kitchen and living room. Curtains drawn. Two long-stemmed glasses taken down from the cupboard, Chablis from the fridge. All the time I could hear the indistinct tones of a male voice being relayed through the tinny speaker of the answering machine. Passing the study door I made out the words: . . could call me back as soon as possible. As you can imagine we,re fairly desperate. ,

  I stopped abruptly. The voice had jogged my memory in a place that belonged to a time long ago. Images from childhood washed through my minds old ties and affections stirred a corner of my heart. For an instant I felt disorientated, displaced.

  Then the machine reset itself with a loud clicks the memories fell away and I realized that, by some mysterious association, the voice had reminded me of a childhood friend named Will Dearden. I hadn’t seen him in twelve years, not since my parents had moved from Norfolk to the opposite corner of England. I had no idea why my memory should have played such a tricky but trick it surely had to be. He wouldn’t know my number; he would have no reason to call.

  Fairly desperate…I was going into the study to play back the message when Paul called me from the kitchen. ‘Smooth and crisp and beautifully chilled and waiting for your custom!’ This was another ritual: the taking of the first glass together. We tried not to let telephones or mobiles or faxes get in the way, though in the last year or so this resolution had increasingly gone by the board.

  Paul had filled both glasses.

  I said, ‘I think I’ll have water.’

  ‘Water! Oh, come on, just half a glass.’ Paul always hated to drink alone.

  ‘No. That champagne…I couldn’t drink any more.

  ‘Half a glass.’

  ‘No, really.’

  Shrugging, he tipped my wine into his glass in such a rush that it overflowed. He swore under his breath and fetched some kitchen paper to mop up the spill. Skirting round him, I helped myself to mineral water from the fridge. Finally we sat down and faced each other across the kitchen table.

  ‘What’s this big concern, then?’ Paul asked breezily. ‘If it’s about that holiday in Marbella, don’t give it another thought. I just said it to make him happy. Of course we won’t go.’ He gave me his most reassuring smile, boyish and candid, though behind it I noticed that his eyes were ringed with tiredness and his mood wary. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Was that it?’

  ‘It’s going to be hard to turn Buck down now that we’ve more or less said we’ll go. He’s not someone to take no for an answer.’ />
  ‘Nonsense. It’ll just be a question of finding the right excuse.’

  I couldn’t help thinking it would have been simpler to refuse straight away, but there was no point in saying so now. Putting off the moment of truth a little longer, not wanting to detract too heavily from Paul’s achievement, I said warmly, ‘It really was a fine win. Well done.’

  He waved this aside with a small movement of his glass, but he was pleased all the same. ‘Well, it was Jenkins mainly.’ This was the bumptious but painstaking QC.

  ‘But it was you who produced that witness.’

  ‘Oh, lucky!’ He cast his eyes heavenward and chuckled. ‘Dead lucky!’

  ‘And she was a good witness?’

  ‘Brilliant. A gift. Karen Grainey. Clear, confident, credible. No form in the family, not so much as a parking ticket. Quietly dressed, well-spoken. Didn’t pretend she’d seen DC James’s face, nothing that might have got her into trouble under cross-examination. Just what he was wearing. Just the fact that she saw him climb the wall and disappear into Buck’s garden.’

  ‘And she was at the window looking out for her daughter?’

  Waiting for her to come back from a disco, yes.’

  ‘No difficulties with that?’

  ‘No,’ he said, a little touchy all of a sudden. ‘Why should there be?’

  ‘I mean, the prosecution didn’t question it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about the trespass story?’

  Paul made a wide gesture. ‘He trespassed, that’s all there was to it.’

  ‘Didn’t the prosecution point out that he would never have gone over the wall without radioing his partner?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have dared try that one! He was disobeying orders, wasn’t he? He wasn’t likely to announce it to anyone, was he?’

  Yet I would have thought that was exactly what he would have done, especially when his partner was the one person who could watch over him, especially when the garden belonged to Ronnie Buck. But I could see that more questions wouldn’t go down too well and, nodding in vague agreement, I let the subject drop.

  Paul took a gulp of his drink and said expansively, ‘So…what is it, Lexxy? Out with it!’

  It was hard to begin; harder still to hit the right note. ‘I know it’s difficult to get these things right,’ I said carefully. ‘But the party this evening. I feel it was…well, a bad idea.’

  ‘A bad idea?’ He was immediately defensive.

  ‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Having all the staff there. And most of Buck’s family. And holding it in the office.’

  ‘Well, we couldn’t very well have gone to the pub, not with all the press around!’

  ‘No, but…I think a quick drink with just you and him might have been more suitable.’

  Paul spread his hands in a show of bewilderment. ‘He’s a client. I don’t see the problem. We’ve had a few drinks after big cases in the past.’

  ‘He’s a villain, Paul. I think it’s unnecessary to extend the relationship beyond the professional.’

  ‘But it hasn’t gone beyond the professional!’ he retorted, looking offended. ‘I told you, there’s no question of our going to Spain. And a party, for God’s sake. What’s a party?’

  ‘We didn’t have to do it, though, give the party. It was inappropriate.’

  ‘Nonsense! How can it be inappropriate? Dozens of our clients are villains, Alex. That’s our business. Defending villains.’

  ‘Not like Buck. None of them are like Buck.’

  He shook his head slowly and deliberately, as if I had taken leave of my senses. ‘But the whole basis of our job is that we don’t make judgements. How can we? How can we draw the line between a mugger and a murderer? They’re all in deep trouble when they come to us. They all have a right to a defence. For God’s sake, Lexxy, don’t get on your high horse all of a sudden.

  Someone had to defend Buck. If it hadn’t been us, it would have been another firm. And at least he pays good money, on time. For heaven’s sake…’ He took another gulp of wine, a large one. His drinking was another subject which, going by past attempts, we also found impossible to discuss. Paul rarely drank more than a pint or so during the day—not openly at any rate—but he had taken to drinking in the evenings with regularity and determination. Except at the occasional wedding or wake, he rarely showed his drink and most people would never realize he’d had more than two or three, but I realized all right. I saw the change in him, the steady descent into stubborn argument and futile confrontations with traffic wardens and waiters, the unresolved anger which was a legacy of a childhood scarred by alcohol and deprivation, and the self-denigration which was the other side of his insecure nature. I watched him drink with apprehension, but most of all with helplessness.

  ‘It’s OUT job to defend people,’ he stated doggedly.

  ‘But Ronnie Buck’s in a totally different league, isn’t he? A drug dealer on a large scale, the worst sort. A leech living off the misery of kids. And sheltering behind his money, doing his best to put himself beyond the law. He’s got absolutely nothing to recommend him.’

  Paul scooped up his glass and drained it. ‘Are you saying we should never have taken him on?’

  ‘I would have been happier if we hadn’t, yes.’

  ‘You would have been happier,’ he echoed, pouring himself some more wine. ‘Well, you should have come out and said so at the time, shouldn’t you!’

  ‘But…’ I softened my voice. ‘I did, darling. I did say so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I said…’ I tried to recall my exact words. ‘I think I said the case was likely to be a can of worms. That Buck wouldn’t make a very pleasant client.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’ His mood was unyielding. ‘You never said that. No, Alex, I’m sure you never said that.’

  ‘Well…if not that, something very like it.’

  ‘No,’ he said with finality. ‘I would have remembered.’

  There are small moments that eat into your trust for ever, small moments that undermine your love and, try as you might to erase them, stick hard in your memory.

  Catching my expression, Paul said in a tone of good-natured injury, ‘Honestly, Lexxy, I would have remembered. Honestly. Something of that sort!’

  I let it pass. ‘Well, it’s history now.’

  ‘Anyway, since when could we afford to be choosy about our clients? Since when could we afford to turn business away, for God’s sake?’

  ‘This isn’t about money,’ I argued with sudden heat. ‘It’s about doing the sort of work we want to do.’ I sighed, and added in a calmer voice, ‘Besides, we’re doing fine, aren’t we? Financially. Well up on last year.’

  ‘But higher costs, too. Don’t forget the salary rises. And the legal aid budget’s going to be slashed for sure. A swingeing reduction. We could be in real trouble.’ For Paul, no amount of success could ever banish his sense of financial insecurity, no amount of money convince him that it couldn’t at any moment be snatched away from him. Born into poverty in Liverpool, to an impecunious Irish father who drank himself to a quick death and a mother who succumbed to apathy and despair, the uncertainties were too deep. Nothing I said ever lifted his anxiety on this score, but it didn’t stop me from trying.

  ‘Darling, even allowing for the salaries, we’re well into profit for the year.’

  His mobile began to ring in his jacket, which was hanging over a nearby chair. ‘Yes, but next year’s another year, isn’t it?’ He was about to take the call when he glanced at my face and, thinking better of it, turned the mobile off.

  ‘But we’ve never had a bad year yet, have we? Each year’s been better than the last.’

  Unable to deny this, Paul frowned at his glass and twisted the stem back and forth. ‘So what are you saying, then—that we should pick and choose our clients in future?’

  ‘I think we should, yes.’

  Hardly meeting my gaze, look
ing indignant, he continued to rotate the glass stem. ‘But what happens when Buck offers us more business?’

  I understood then: it had already happened.

  ‘He’s likely to, is he?’

  ‘Well, the family is. His brother’s being investigated for VAT fraud.’

  ‘We could tell them we don’t do fraud.’

  ‘Come on! Every criminal firm does fraud. Besides, fraud’s hardly a heinous crime.’

  ‘But the family business is heinous!’ I said hotly. ‘Crushing a young officer’s head is heinous! VAT fraud is just the tip of a large and unpleasant muck heap.’

  He paused as if to consider this, but the wine had already darkened his mood and I could see that he didn’t want to face this kind of argument after a day that should have earned him nothing but celebration and praise. ‘It’s a job,’ he repeated truculently. ‘And we’re just jobbing lawyers. It’s not for us to reason why, not for us to look down from some great moral height. Really, Alex, I think you’ve lost sight of what it’s all about. I think you’ve got too high an opinion of yourself.’

  The words were out, there was no taking them back. For a moment he looked as though he might try, then he shook the thought away and stared crossly into his drink.

  I could see that it’d be best to leave things alone before further damage was done. We were both tired, we had a dinner party ahead of us, the evening had to be weathered before we could fall exhausted into bed.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, signalling my retreat with a thin smile. ‘Let’s leave it there.’

  ‘I don’t see that there’s anywhere else to leave it, Lexxy. Honestly.’ And he gave a baffled gesture that contained a measure of reproach.

  I stood up and said, ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ On my way past him I leant down and lightly kissed his forehead.

  ‘Honestly, Lexxy,’ he repeated softly, but not so softly that I couldn’t make out what he’d said. As I left the kitchen I heard the clink of the wine bottle as it met the rim of his glass.

  I was halfway upstairs before I remembered the phone message. As you can imagine we’re fairly desperate. I hesitated—there was precious little time for a bath as it was—but duty got the better of me, as it usually did, and I went down to the study. The display on the machine registered three messages. The first was the window cleaner, the second a tennis-playing friend of Paul’s, wanting to fix a game for Sunday morning.