A Certain Justice

by P. D. James

  He said: “What shall I do about the rest of the staff, sir? And then there are the members of Chambers. Mr. Ulrick always comes in early on Thursday if he’s in London. They’ll want to get to their rooms.”

  “I’ve no intention of preventing them. If the police want Chambers closed for the day, that will be for them. Perhaps you’d come with me while I telephone, then you’d better stay on the door. Tell the staff as they arrive as little as possible. Try to keep them calm. Ask any members of Chambers to have the goodness to see me immediately in my room.”

  “Yes sir. There’s Mrs. Buckley, the housekeeper. She’ll be fussing. And then there’s the daughter. Someone will have to tell her.”

  “Oh yes, the daughter. I’d forgotten about the daughter. We’ll leave that to the police and to Mr. Laud. He knows the family.”

  Harry said: “Miss Aldridge was due at Snaresbrook Crown Court at ten. She was expecting the case to end by this afternoon.”

  “Her junior will have to cope. It’s Mr. Fleming, isn’t it? Ring him at home. You’d better tell him that Miss Aldridge has been found dead in her room, but say as little as possible.”

  They were in Mr. Langton’s room now. Hubert stood for a moment with his hand hovering on the telephone. He said with a kind of wonder: “I’ve never had to do this before. Dialling 999 hardly seems appropriate. I’d better try the Commissioner’s office—or there is someone I know at the Yard, not well, but we have met. It may not be for him, but if it isn’t, he’ll know what has to be done. He’s got a name that’s easy to remember—Adam Dalgliesh.”

  2

  The appointment for Detective Inspectors Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant to take their qualifying test at the West London shooting range had been made for eight o’clock. Anticipating some difficulty in parking, Kate set out from her Thames-side flat at seven and arrived at seven-forty-five. She had completed the preliminaries, handed over her pink card showing the record of her previous shoots, and had made the required declaration that she hadn’t taken alcohol in the last twenty-four hours and wasn’t on any prescribed drugs, before she heard the sound of a lift and Piers Tarrant came unhurriedly through the door precisely on time. They greeted each other briefly but there was no conversation. It was unusual for Piers to be silent for long, but Kate had noticed on their practice shoot a month earlier that he had said nothing throughout the whole shoot except to congratulate her briefly at the end. She approved of his silence; talking was not encouraged. The shooting gallery wasn’t the place for chatter or badinage. There was always about it the heightened atmosphere of incipient danger, of serious men engaged in a serious purpose. The officers of Commander Dalgliesh’s squad shot at West London by special arrangement. The gallery was normally used only by officers on royal- and personal-protection duties. More than one life could depend on the speed of their reactions.

  Kate was apt to judge her male colleagues by their behaviour when shooting. Massingham could never bear to be outscored by her and seldom was. The qualifying shoot was not intended to be competitive; officers were supposed to be concerned only with their own achievement. But Massingham had never been able to resist a quick glance at her score and had made no attempt at generosity if she outscored him. To him success at the shooting range had been an affirmation of masculinity. He had been brought up with guns and had found it intolerable that a woman, and one with Kate’s urban background, could handle a weapon effectively. Daniel Aaron, on the other hand, had seen the practice shoots as a necessary part of the job and had cared little whether he scored higher than Kate provided he qualified. Piers Tarrant, who had succeeded him three months earlier, had already shown himself a better shot than either of his predecessors. She had yet to learn how much that mattered to him, how important it was that she could still outscore him.

  It was one of many things which she had not yet learned about him. Admittedly they had only worked together for three months and no major case had broken, but she still found him puzzling. He had come to Dalgliesh’s team from the Arts and Antiques Squad set up to investigate the theft of stolen works of art. It was generally considered an élite squad but Tarrant had apparently asked for a transfer. She knew something about him. Policing was a job in which it was difficult to safeguard personal privacy. Gossip and rumour soon provided what reticence hoped to keep private. She knew that he was twenty-seven, unmarried, and lived in a flat in the City from which he cycled to New Scotland Yard, saying that he had more than enough of cars in the job without using one to get to work. He was rumoured to be knowledgeable about the Wren churches in the City. He took policing lightheartedly, more casually than Kate’s dedication sometimes found appropriate. She was intrigued, too, by his occasional swings of mood between a gently cynical amusement and, as now, a self-contained quietude which had none of the depressing contagion of moodiness but had the effect of making him unapproachable.

  She stood at the door of the authorized firearms officer’s glass-fronted office and watched Piers as he completed the preliminaries, assessing him as if she were seeing him for the first time. He wasn’t tall, less than six feet, but although he walked lightly there was a streetwise toughness about the shoulders and long arms which made him look like a boxer. His mouth was well shaped, sensitive and humorous. Even when set firm, as now, it suggested an inner, barely contained amusement. There was the faintest suggestion of the comedian about the slightly pudgy nose and deep-set eyes under slanting eyebrows. His mid-brown hair was strong, an undisciplined strand falling across his forehead. He was less handsome than Daniel, but she had been aware from their first meeting that he was one of the most sexually attractive officers with whom she had ever worked. It had been an unwelcome realization, but she had no intention of letting it become a problem. Kate believed in keeping her sexual and professional lives separate. She had seen too many careers, too many marriages, too many lives messed up to go down that dangerously seductive path.

  A month after he joined the squad, on impulse, she had asked: “Why the police?” It was unlike her to force a confidence, but he had answered without resentment.

  “Why not?”

  “Come off it, Piers! Oxford degree in theology? You’re not the typical copper.”

  “Do I have to be? Do you have to be? What is the typical copper anyway? Me? You? AD? Max Trimlett?”

  “We know about Trimlett. A foul-mouthed sexist bastard. Trimlett likes power and thought joining the police was the easiest way to get it. He certainly hasn’t the intelligence to get it any other way. He should have been chucked out after that last complaint. We’re not talking about DC Trimlett, we’re talking about you. But if you don’t like the question, that’s OK. It’s your life. I’d no right to ask.”

  “Think of the alternatives. Teaching? Not with today’s young. If I’m going to be bashed by louts, I’d rather be bashed by an adult lout when I can do some bashing back. The law? Overcrowded. Medicine? Ten years’ hard labour and at the end you sit handing out prescriptions to a surgery of dispirited neurotics. Anyway I’m too squeamish. I don’t mind dead bodies, I just don’t fancy watching them die. The City? Precarious and I can’t add up. The Civil Service? Boring and respectable, and anyway they probably wouldn’t have me. Any suggestions?”

  “You could try male modelling.”

  She thought she might have gone too far, but he had answered: “Not photogenic enough. What about you? Why did you join?”

  It was a fair question, and she could have answered: To get away from that flat on the seventh floor of Ellison Fairweather Buildings. My own money. Independence. The chance of pulling myself out of poverty and mess. To get away from the smell of urine and failure. The need to do a job which offered opportunities, and which I believe is one worth doing. For the security of order and hierarchy. Instead she said: “To earn an honest living.”

  “Ah, that’s how we all begin. Maybe even Trimlett.”

  The instructor checked that they were to fire not Glocks but the six-shot .38-calibre Sm
ith and Wessons, issued them earmuffs, their weapons and the first bullets for hand-loading, holster and ammunition pouch and jet-loader, then watched from his window as they went through to the shooting gallery, where his colleague was waiting. Still without speaking, they cleaned their weapons with a four-by-two rag and loaded the first six bullets into the chambers by hand.

  The authorized firearms officer said: “Right, ma’am? Right, sir? Seventy-round classifying shoot from three metres to twenty-five, two-second exposure.”

  They fitted the earmuffs and joined him on the three-metre line, standing one on each side of him. Against the dark-pink wall was the row of eleven target figures, stark black, forward-crouching, guns in hand, with a white line encircling the central visible mass which was the target area. The figures were reversed to show only the blank white backs. The AFO barked out his command, the crouching figures swung back into view. The air crackled with gunfire. Despite the earmuffs that first explosion of sound always surprised Kate by its reverberating loudness.

  When the first six rounds had been fired they moved forward to inspect the targets, sticking white circles on each hole. Kate saw with satisfaction that hers were nicely grouped in the centre of the visible target area. She always wanted to achieve a neat, concentric pattern and had occasionally come close to it. Glancing across at Piers busy with his white markers, she saw that he had done well.

  They moved back to the next line and, finally, to twenty-five metres, shooting, checking the hits, reloading, checking again. At the end of the seventy rounds they waited while the instructor added up and recorded their scores. Both had qualified, but Kate had scored the higher.

  Piers spoke for almost the first time. “Congratulations. Go on like this and you’ll get seconded for royal protection. Think of all those Buck House garden parties.”

  They checked in their weapons and equipment, received their signed cards and had almost reached the lift when they heard the telephone.

  The AFO put his head out of his office and called: “It’s for you, ma’am.”

  Kate heard Dalgliesh’s voice: “Is Piers with you?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve just completed the qualifying test.”

  “There’s a suspicious death at Eight, Pawlet Court, in the Middle Temple. A woman QC at the criminal Bar, Venetia Aldridge. Collect your murder bags and meet me there. The manned gate from Tudor Street will be open and they’ll show you where to park.”

  Kate said: “The Temple? Isn’t that for the City, sir?”

  “Normally, yes, but we’re taking it with City back-up. An exercise in co-operation. Actually the boundary between Westminster and the City runs through the middle of Number Eight. Lord Justice Boothroyd and his wife have their flat on the top floor and Lady Boothroyd’s bedroom is said to be half in Westminster and half in the City. Both she and the judge are out of London, which saves one complication.”

  “Right, sir, we’re leaving now.”

  Going down in the lift, she put Piers in the picture. He said: “So we’re to work with those giants from the City. God knows where they recruit their six-footers. Probably breed them. Why is this for us, anyway?”

  “Senior barrister murdered, judge and his wife living upstairs, sacred precincts of the Middle Temple. Not exactly your usual scene of crime.”

  Piers said: “Not exactly your usual suspects. Add to which the Head of Chambers probably knows the Commissioner. It’ll be pleasant for AD. Between grilling members of the Bar he’ll be able to contemplate the thirteenth-century effigies in the Round Church. Should even inspire a new slim volume of verse. It’s time he gave us one.”

  “Why don’t you suggest it? I should like to see his reaction. Do you want to drive or shall I?”

  “You, please. I want to get there safely. All that banging away has unsettled my nerves. I hate loud noises, especially when I’m making them myself.”

  Clicking on her seat belt, Kate said on impulse: “I wish I knew why I always look forward to a shoot. I can’t imagine wanting to kill an animal, let alone a man, but I like guns. I like using them. I like the feel of the Smith and Wesson in my hand.”

  “You like shooting because it’s a skill and you’re very good at it.”

  “It can’t only be that. It’s not the only thing I’m good at. I’m beginning to think that shooting is addictive.”

  He said: “Not for me, but, then, I’m not as good as you. Anything we’re good at gives us a sense of power.”

  “So that’s what it amounts to, power?”

  “Of course. You’re holding something that can kill. What else does that give you but a sense of power? No wonder it’s addictive.”

  It hadn’t been a comfortable conversation. With an effort of will Kate put the shooting range out of her mind. They were on their way to a new job. As always she felt, along the veins, that fizz of exhilaration that came with every new case. She thought, as she often did, how fortunate she was. She had a job which she enjoyed and knew she did well, a boss she liked and admired. And now there was this murder with all it promised of excitement, human interest, the challenge of the investigation, the satisfaction of ultimate success. Someone had to die before she could feel like this. And that, too, wasn’t a comfortable thought.

  3

  Dalgliesh arrived first at Number Eight, Pawlet Court. The court lay quiet and empty in the strengthening light. The sweet-smelling air was pricked with a faint mist, presaging another unseasonably warm day. The great horse chestnut was still weighted with the heaviness of high summer. Only a few of the leaves had stiffened into the brown and gold of their autumn decrepitude. As Dalgliesh entered the court, carrying his murder bag which looked so deceptively like a more orthodox case, he wondered how a casual watcher would see him. Probably as a solicitor arriving for a consultation about a brief. But there were no watchers. The court lay open to the morning in an expectant calm, as removed from the grinding traffic of Fleet Street and the Embankment as if it were a provincial cathedral close.

  The door of Number Eight opened as soon as he reached it. They were, of course, expecting him. A young woman whose smeared and puffy face showed that she had recently been crying ushered him in with an inaudible welcome and disappeared through an open door to the left, where she seated herself behind the reception desk and stared into space. Three men came out of a room to the right of the hall and Dalgliesh saw with surprise that one of them was the forensic pathologist, Miles Kynaston.

  Shaking hands, he said: “What’s this, Miles? Premonition?”

  “No, coincidence. I had an early consultation at E. N. Mumford’s Chambers in Inner Temple. They’re calling me for the defence in the Manning case at the Bailey next week.”

  Turning, he introduced his companions. Hubert Langton, Head of Chambers, and Drysdale Laud, both of whom Dalgliesh had briefly met before. Laud shook hands with the wariness of a man who is uncertain how far it would be prudent to acknowledge the acquaintanceship.

  Langton said: “She’s in her room on the first floor, just above this. Do you want me to come up?”

  “Later perhaps. Who found her?”

  “Our Senior Clerk, Harry Naughton, when he arrived this morning. That was at about nine. He’s in his office with one of the junior clerks, Terry Gledhill. The only other member of staff in Chambers is the secretary-receptionist, Miss Caldwell, who let you in. Other people, staff and members of Chambers, will be arriving soon. I don’t think I can keep members of Chambers out of their rooms, but I suppose the staff could be sent home.”

  He looked at Laud as if seeking guidance. Laud’s voice was uncompromising: “Obviously we shall co-operate. But the work has to go on.”

  Dalgliesh said calmly: “But the investigation of murder—if this is murder—takes precedence. We shall have to search Chambers and the fewer people here the better. We don’t intend to waste time, ours or yours. Is there a room we can use temporarily for interviews?”

  It was Laud who replied: “You can have mine. It’s two f
loors up at the back. Or there’s the reception room. If we close Chambers for the morning that will be free.”

  “Thank you. We’ll use the reception room. In the meantime it would be helpful if you could stay here together until we have had a preliminary look at the body. Detective Inspectors Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant are on their way with the back-up team. We may have to tape off a part of the court but I hope not for long. Meanwhile I’d be glad to have a list of all occupants of Chambers with their addresses, and a plan of the Middle and Inner Temple with all the entrances marked, if you have one. It would also be helpful to have a plan of this building showing which rooms the members occupy.”

  Langton said: “Harry has a map of the Temple in his office. I think it has all the entrances marked. I’ll get Miss Caldwell to type out the list of members for you. And the staff, of course.”

  Dalgliesh said: “And the key. Who has it?”

  Langton took it from his pocket and handed it over. He said: “I locked both the outer and inner doors after Laud and I had seen the body. This one key opens both.”

  “Thank you.” Dalgliesh turned to Kynaston. “Shall we go up, Miles?”

  It interested but did not surprise him that Kynaston had waited for him to arrive before examining the body. As a forensic pathologist Miles had all the virtues. He came quickly. He worked without fuss or complaint however inconvenient the terrain or repellent the decomposing corpse. He spoke little, but always to the point, and he was blessedly free of that sardonic humour with which some of his colleagues—and not always the least distinguished—attempted to demonstrate their imperviousness to the more gruesome realities of violent death.

  He was dressed now as he always was whatever the season, in a tweed suit with a waistcoat and a thin wool shirt with the collar ends buttoned down. Mounting the stairs behind his stumbling gait, Dalgliesh wondered again at the contrast between this graceless solidity and the precision and delicacy with which Kynaston could insinuate his fingers, gloved in their second skin of white latex, into the body’s unresisting cavities, the reverence with which he laid those dreadfully experienced hands on violated flesh.