‘Libel. Antony doesn’t think it’ll ever come to court. He says if I do nothing, the claim will probably go to sleep. He thinks I should just wait and see. But how could I, never knowing whether I’m going to be free or not?’
‘He’s got pretty good judgement,’ Trish said, ‘but defamation isn’t really his field.’
‘I know. He was colourfully frank about that on the phone.’ Beatrice managed a small laugh, which teetered on the edge of another sob. ‘But he offered to help me get my story straight before I present it to my publishers. They’re being sued too, you see, and they’ve summoned me to explain myself. I’m due there in about an hour. I only hope I won’t go and cry again.’ She blew her nose hard. ‘It would be too embarrassing for words.’
‘Why libel?’ Trish asked, settling for the easiest of all the questions that were buzzing through her brain. ‘I thought you wrote about the nineteenth century. Defamation may not be my speciality either, but I do know you can’t libel the dead.’
Beatrice rubbed her forehead as though it ached, but there were no more tears.
‘Except that this isn’t anything to do with my real work. Last year, I wrote a one-off memoir of Jeremy Marton. He was more or less my age, so everyone else in the book is still alive. Unfortunately.’
‘Marton?’ Trish repeated, trying to work out whether she’d ever heard the name.
‘He ran a refuge for the homeless in Soho. A couple of years ago the police discovered it was being used as a centre for drug-dealing, quite unbeknown to him. That didn’t stop them accusing him of being involved, though, and he killed himself. There was a lot in the papers at the time.’
‘Then I must have read about it.’ Trish frowned for a moment, then pinned down the memory. ‘It’s coming back to me. There was more than just drugs, though, wasn’t there? Hadn’t there been some wickedness in his past? Murder or something?’
‘That’s what the press made out. But it wasn’t murder. He never meant anyone to die.’ The indignation that bristled in Beatrice’s voice made her seem a lot tougher. More likeable too. ‘It was an accident.’
‘Why not tell me what really happened?’ Trish said, sitting more comfortably on the sofa and happy to encourage the sense of outrage. If anything could help Beatrice put her case to her publishers convincingly it would be that.
‘He got involved with a group of violent student activists while he was at university in the early 1970s,’ she said. ‘They persuaded him to plant a bomb. It was only supposed to make a bang and damage a symbolic bit of property. Unfortunately it went off just as a busload of schoolchildren were driven past.’
‘And they were killed?’
‘Twenty of them.’ Beatrice swallowed, but her eyes were still dry. ‘Along with the driver and two teachers. The other eight children were seriously injured. They’re in their late thirties now: some still can’t walk and two have such bad brain damage they’ve never been able to live independently.’
‘Unspeakable!’
‘That’s exactly what Jeremy thought.’ Beatrice’s voice warmed up as her self-control returned. ‘He was so shocked that he went straight to the police to give himself up. He served more than twenty years in prison, which ought to have been enough to satisfy the most fervent admirer of retribution.’
‘Didn’t it?’
‘He came out to face all the usual tub-thumping from the tabloids. There were plenty of cruel anonymous letters, too. And he once told his mother he never met anyone who didn’t assume they knew what kind of man he was because of what he’d once done. Even then he didn’t resent it; he just kept his head down and devoted himself to the homeless.’
‘Thinking he could make up for all that suffering by doing good works?’ Watching anger flash in the other woman’s eyes, Trish was glad to see she could stand up to a hostile tone.
‘You might not think it was enough,’ Beatrice said more coldly, ‘but what else could he have done? In any case, wasn’t housing the homeless a lot more use than selling his story to the tabloids and becoming a low-rent celebrity on the strength of his past violence?’
‘You’re right, of course. But the thought of those children makes it hard to sympathise with him.’
‘He’d have been the first to agree with you. He never thought he deserved kindness from anyone.’
‘How did you become involved with him?’ Trish asked, admiring Beatrice’s determination to defend her man without making light of his crime.
‘Through Jane, his mother. We live in the same village and we’ve been friends for years. But I never met him and she never mentioned his name until after he’d killed himself. Then she came to tell me he’d left her his diaries – they were all he had to leave – and that they’d made her understand him for the first time. She wanted help getting them published so other people would stop misjudging him too.’
Tears slid down Beatrice’s cheeks again. She put up a hand to brush them away, looking impatient.
‘She’d be appalled if she could see me now. She’s far braver than I am. I’ve never seen her cry. But that day she looked as if she was bleeding to death. I couldn’t have refused to help, even though I knew I’d have to write something myself to incorporate parts of the diaries. No one would have published them as they stood. Much too obscure. As it was I had to lean hard on my publishers to make them do anything.’
‘It’s very bad luck that your generosity has landed you in this mess,’ Trish said, now full of sympathy. ‘Who is it who’s suing you?’
‘Lord Tick of Southsea. Simon Tick.’ Beatrice sniffed and forced a brisker tone into her voice. ‘He used to be in local government until he got his peerage.’
‘And what’s the basis of his claim?’
‘He’s known to his family and close friends as Baiborn, which by a hideous coincidence also happens to be the codename used by the head of the terrorist cell Jeremy was working for when he planted the bomb.’
‘I’ve heard of plenty of coincidences even odder than that, but how on earth does anyone called Simon come by a nickname like Baiborn? D’you know?’
‘I do actually. It’s quite a sweet story. When I got his Letter of Claim I was paralysed with horror, as you can imagine. Then, once I’d got a few of my wits back, I looked him up and asked around until I found someone connected with his family. She didn’t want to say anything at first, but I got it out of her eventually. When he was six, or thereabouts, Simon Tick wrote a story set in the jungle. The main character was a baboon. He couldn’t spell and turned it into baiborn.’
‘And his family found that so funny they used it for his nickname?’ Trish said, her sympathy for any mocked child distracting her. ‘Pretty insensitive!’
‘I don’t know. If he hadn’t liked it, he’d hardly allow them to go on using it, would he? But he does, which is why I’m facing this appalling horror now.’
‘I honestly don’t think it’s as bad as all that,’ Trish said as she watched Beatrice’s eyes redden again, ‘even if Lord Tick doesn’t let the claim drop. I’d have to check, but I think there’s still a defence of unintentional defamation you could use if your barrister decides there’s enough to make this claim stick.’
‘What would I have to do?’
‘Offer to have an apology read out in court and pay some fairly nominal sum in damages, I think. Probably not much more than a few thousand pounds.’
‘Only I haven’t got a few thousand pounds,’ Beatrice said, in a voice that was all the more effective for being not much more than a whisper.
Trish stared at her expensive-looking clothes and hair.
‘And because of this bloody book, for which I’m never going to earn anything,’ she went on, sounding more ordinary, ‘I’m six months late with the one I was contracted to write, which means I’ve got six months’ worth of unpaid bills stacked up, and I’m up to my ears in debt as it is, and …’ She put a hand over her mouth, coughing. ‘Sorry. You don’t need to hear this.’
Tr
ish thought of the huge risks involved in letting any libel case go to court. Even if Beatrice successfully defended the claim and was awarded costs, which was the best possible outcome, she might never get anything out of Tick. She’d be left to pay her own legal fees, which could come to hundreds of thousands of pounds. If she lost …
‘It’s so unfair!’ Beatrice rubbed both eyes with a handkerchief, leaving streaks of mascara all over her face. ‘It’s not even as though the book’s been a success. None of the papers took any notice of it – they didn’t even review it.’
‘I’d have thought it was exactly the kind of thing that would catch an editor’s eye.’
‘We all thought so, but we were wrong. Unless they ignored it because it would have shown them up as callous and lying for the stories they ran after Jeremy’s suicide. But because there’ve been no reviews or features, hardly anyone’s bought it. Booksellers are already sending copies back to the warehouse in pallet-loads. It’s been a disaster all round.’
Trish had been wondering what she could possibly do to help. Here, at last, was something simple.
‘I’ll buy one, if you tell me the title. Or have your publishers withdrawn it?’
‘Not yet. But you’ll have trouble finding it in the shops. If you’d really like to read it, I’ll lend you a copy. I’ve got one here.’
Beatrice took a slim hardback out of her bag. The glossy laminated cover showed a black-and-white photograph of a young man, not much more than a schoolboy. He was sitting on the edge of a table, looking down. He had a broad pale forehead under a shock of dark hair and big round spectacles. The impression given by the photograph was of shy, scholarly gentleness.
Trish looked up. ‘You know, if you did stand up to Lord Tick and let him take the case to court, the press would have to pay attention. It might be possible to whip up such a scandal that it became a bestseller. You’d have to put up with a lot of flak, but people would definitely read it. You might even earn enough to clear your debts.’
Beatrice’s nauseated expression made Trish like her even more. Her publishers weren’t likely to be so squeamish. The forthcoming meeting could be a worse ordeal than she feared.
‘Look, let me read it tonight,’ Trish said. ‘Then, I’ll be a bit more clued-up if you’d like to talk again. If your publishers give you a hard time, I mean. We could discuss your options. Would that help?’
‘It would be wonderful,’ Beatrice said, winding the messy handkerchief round and round between her fingers. ‘But I couldn’t afford you. Antony only saw me today as a favour. I haven’t any money for legal bills.’
‘So you said. But don’t worry. We can put this down to friendship, too.’
Everyone in chambers did a bit of pro bono work here and there, and this wasn’t really even work: just a few hours of reading and a phone call. Trish owed Antony a lot more than that. Without his support, she might still have been pigging away on the dreariest of commercial cases, earning peanuts and fighting to convince her clerk that she could hold her own in court when it mattered.
‘While I’m at it,’ she said, ‘I’ll find out who’s really good at defamation, so that if the case does go ahead, I can recommend someone who knows what they’re doing and won’t cost you more than they should. How would that be?’
‘It would be incredibly kind. I don’t understand why you’re taking so much trouble for me.’
‘I’m intrigued by the whole story,’ Trish said with the reassuring smile she used to offer her youngest clients in the days when she’d practised family law. ‘And I think you’ve had a rotten deal.’
Beatrice smiled back. She was looking a little more like the distinguished writer and pundit she was. But there were still black streaks around her eyes.
‘Shall I show you the washroom before I go and tell the great man it’s safe to come back?’ Trish said.
She found him drinking her latte and watching Nessa, who was getting on with her work as though she was quite alone. Good for her, Trish thought, remembering how easily the strongest could be reduced to dancing, flirting acolytes in his presence. She said his name and watched his expression change to a grin that showed he knew more or less what she was thinking.
‘Have you sorted Beatrice?’ he said.
‘Only for the moment. If she’s in this much of a state now, I don’t know how she’ll cope with the next few months. Whatever her publishers decide to do, the tension’s going to get a lot higher. D’you think she’ll hack it?’
‘God knows. She’s had a lot of practice at dealing with disaster: hellish family background; husband with MS; slightly hopeless son; dry rot in the roof timbers; unmarried daughter with a baby; huge debts. That sort of thing. And she’s the only real earner in the whole outfit. This could be just one more thing she manages to bear, or the last straw. It all depends.’
‘If she’s that badly off, no one’s going to expect her to pay vast damages. Why on earth is this man Tick going after her at all?’
‘If I could see into the minds of people who go to law, I’d be …’
‘Even richer than you already are?’
He laughed. ‘How did you leave things with her?’
‘I said I’d read the book.’ Trish waved it at him. ‘Then be available tomorrow if she wants to talk about whatever her publishers say in this meeting. Will that be enough to keep you … what was it you said? Loving me for ever?’
His brooding expression broke into another vivid smile. ‘If you can get her off my back and my conscience, it will be. I’m completely swamped with work at the moment. If I’d realised how much reassurance she was going to need, I’d never have offered to see her in the first place. Weeping women have never been my thing. But I know you’ll cope, Trish. You always do.’
‘I wish I had a tape recorder running to replay that the next time you savage me for letting you down.’
‘Would I?’ Self-conscious amusement lightened his expression. He was probably remembering some of the insults he’d thrown at her in past moments of great stress. ‘Oh, well, maybe I would. By the way, how were the Caymans? I’ve hardly seen you since you got back.’
‘Great. I thought I might take David and George there next winter. The beaches are fantastic. Now that the two of them have decided that swimming is their greatest pleasure, it would—’
‘What’s Steve got you working on now?’ said Antony quickly. He’d taken a dislike to hearing Trish talk about her partner.
‘Apart from Clotwell v. Markham, which won’t come to court until the autumn, nothing very much. My most immediate brief is a dreary contract case involving a garage and a car-leasing company. So far I can’t see any particular problems – or excitements.’
‘I’m glad to hear Bee and I aren’t dragging you away from anything too thrilling.’
Chapter 2
Monday and Tuesday 12 and 13 March
‘Swmg w G. CUL8er. D’
Trish decoded the text message without difficulty. David had persuaded George to meet him at their favourite swimming pool in an expensive gym in Farringdon after he’d finished his prep, which meant she had no reason to rush home.
When he’d decided at the beginning of term that he was old enough to do without an escort to and from school, Trish had protested, but she hadn’t got anywhere. Sounding almost as reasonable and fatherly as George, David had said that it was really absurd for her to chase round trying to find a stand-in to collect him from school whenever she had a conference at going-home time or was likely to be stuck in court miles away. In any case, there wasn’t much point her interrupting her work just so she could come home to watch him doing his.
‘I wasn’t being neurotic,’ she said aloud to the empty room as she clicked off her phone, remembering the old battles. ‘Just responsible.’
David had had a terrifying childhood. When he was no more than a toddler in a buggy, he and his mother had seen a man killed. The two of them had been taken into the witness-protection scheme and moved al
l over London. Even that hadn’t saved his mother, and David had learned that it was never safe to trust anyone.
Trish had sometimes despaired of helping him, but he’d gained a lot of confidence recently. He had a new best friend at school, a quiet, day-dreaming boy called Julian, who needed a lot of looking after. David seemed to like that, which she could understand, and he’d lost his fear of letting anyone see what he really felt. Not even her greatest triumph in court had given her as much pleasure as watching him relax.
Knowing he was safe in the pool with George, she decided to stay on in chambers to skim through Beatrice Bowman’s book. It was only ninety-six pages and printed in fairly large type, so it shouldn’t take long. She tilted her chair back and swung her feet up on the desk to read in comfort.
The story behind Jeremy Marton’s crime was simple enough. He had gone to West Africa to work with Voluntary Service Overseas between school and university, where he was to study medical biochemistry. His VSO responsibilities included teaching very young pupils to read.
As an only child himself, he’d always wanted to be part of a big gang of siblings, and he soon found in the affection of the village children something of the warmth and fun he felt he’d missed. He became friends with several of their families and admired the way they dealt with a poverty he would have found unendurable. The number of children who died at birth or in their first few months shocked him into wondering whether he ought to make his life there, doing whatever he could to help.
Trish could see why Beatrice had defended him so vigorously. Despite the photograph on the jacket, she had thought of him as a grown man, not a boy just out of school. He couldn’t have been much more than eighteen, only six years older than David, when he went to Africa. She read on.
After a while, he noticed several of the children developing mysterious ailments. The trouble was insidious, sometimes starting with a kind of mental sluggishness. At first he was irritated, assuming they were slacking, then he noticed several other symptoms, often different in each child, as they grew weaker and weaker. When three had died, he knew he had to do something. As a first step he approached the doctor in charge of the local charitable clinic, who was as puzzled as he.
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