Post Mortem, Gary Bell [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

Zara and I stood together, watching the Meadows twins walk those grounds, arm in arm, towards the exit.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘I think we’d better get out of here too, before somebody tries to invoice us for that lawn.’

‘I can’t.’ Zara sighed. ‘Linford is giving me a lift to the Scrubs.’

‘Andre?’

‘It’ll still have to be listed in court and officially thrown out there, but I think he’d like to hear the news this afternoon, in person, don’t you?’

‘I do. When are we leaving?’

‘We?’ Zara shook her head. ‘Not we. Not this time.’

I recoiled. Just a touch. ‘Why not?’

‘This is something I have to do on my own,’ she said, and her expression turned a little sad. ‘I didn’t think it would end like this. Do you think it counts?’

‘Counts?’ I frowned, lost. ‘Counts for what?’

‘You know …’ She shuffled her feet. ‘Pupillage comes to the six-month mark on Sunday and … well, it’s not exactly a win in court, is it?’

I smiled. ‘It counts. A young man is going home to his family because of you. Once again, you have gone above and beyond. You’ve done more than any barrister of twenty, thirty, forty years’ call would’ve done.’

‘You think so?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘In all the ways that truly matter, it counts.’

32

‘Well, you messed that one up, Rook,’ Percy said. ‘You were briefed in one of the largest mass-murder cases in English history, and you successfully managed to get all the charges against your client dropped before the trial ever began. If I wore a hat, I’d take it off to you.’

I was sitting in one of Rupert’s leather wingbacks on the fourth floor of our building with my eyes closed. ‘It’s called justice, Percy.’

‘Justice doesn’t pay the bills.’

Unfortunately, having just that morning collected both my car and its astronomical repair bill from Delroy Meadows, that was something I’d learned the hard way. I had been back in the newspapers though, and the requests for my counsel were once more flooding into the building. Even Isaac Reid, the convicted double murderer in Belmarsh, had been in contact about me appealing his conviction after all; it seemed that he wasn’t as scared to give evidence on the true killer now that the Macey twins were behind bars.

At least one thing about Daniel Macey had been true though: he really was a genius with a spray gun, and my car looked better than it had done in years. The only thing that Delroy hadn’t been able to source was an original 1987 Jaguar emblem. I told him not to worry; I’d quite recently come across one of those.

Now it was Monday 26 March, the first day I’d physically come into chambers since the incident at Snaresbrook the previous Tuesday. I was hoping that the fallout might’ve died down by now, but it had taken me almost ten minutes to fight my way through the frenzied pupils on the ground floor.

Percy was sitting in a matching wingback on the opposite side of Rupert’s room. I opened my eyes and watched Rupert as he busied himself. On his desk was an open bottle of cognac. Beside it were eight glass tumblers.

‘How’s Ernie, Rupert?’ I asked. ‘I hear you went to see him over the weekend.’

‘Quite well, all things considered,’ he replied, pouring a few fingers of amber liquid into each of the glasses. ‘Grateful for the card. Embarrassed by the collection. You know how Ernest is. The hand is healing quickly, but he’s impatient. He wants to come back to work already.’

‘Good,’ Percy said. ‘The corner lamp in my room blew last week, and I’ve been sitting down there in semi-darkness.’

Just before I had chance to call him a useless toff, there came a knocking upon the door and I sat upright. My entire body clenched. It was time.

There were forty-five junior barristers at Miller & Stubbs, along with four Queen’s Counsel. Two of these silks were, of course, Rupert Stubbs and me. The others were Hugo Darby and Alan Booth, who were leading the short procession of men now filing into the room. Immediately behind them were two of our longest-standing clerks, Nigel Goody and Francis Keene, followed lastly by Charles Stein, Zara’s pupil-master.

Every member of our current tenancy committee, present and correct.

It was a room full of middle-aged white men. That made me nervous. I tried not to think about the crushing defeat I’d already seen on Zara’s face when I left her sitting in my room on the way up here.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ Rupert began, handing out the drinks while each man chose one of the various scattered seats. ‘You all know why we are here. Today marks six months since Miss Zara Barnes was invited into chambers for pupillage. Ordinarily, of course, this committee would have voted on whether or not to accept her as a pupil in the first place, but we didn’t quite get the chance with this one.’

‘No,’ Percy added rather resentfully. ‘We didn’t get chance because Rook, who has never before been interested in acting as a member of this committee, took it upon himself to offer her the place after I’d already turned her away.’

A disapproving grumble rippled through the room.

‘Yes,’ Stein noted, ‘then he dumped her onto me.’

‘True,’ Rupert said, coming to rest on the edge of his desk, ‘though that hardly matters now.’ He took a sip from his own glass and smacked his lips together. ‘Since establishing this set with Aston Miller, I have been proud to share my name with some of the greatest legal minds this country has to offer. The decision to offer tenancy here is never taken lightly. Now, since he is our newest silk, Elliot has been invited onto this committee along with his fellow Queen’s Counsel. However, given his relationship with this pupil, I do wonder if he is in any sort of position to make an objective judgement.’

‘Definitely not,’ I said. From my glass, I took a mouthful. ‘I’m not