Dick Francis - Silks

‘Right, then,’ said the team leader finally. ‘That wasn’t too bad. No rats or anything. And no human remains.’

‘Human remains?’ I said, surprised.

‘Nasty stuff,’ he said. ‘All too often these jobs involve cleaning places where old people have died and no one notices until the smell gets so bad.’

I shivered. ‘What a job,’ I said.

‘Pays well,’ he said.

‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘Didn’t find my chequebook did you?’

‘All your paperwork’s over there,’ he said, pointing at a couple of large cardboard boxes sitting alone on the floor. Amazingly, my chequebook had survived, and was only slightly stained by the red wine.

I wrote him out a cheque for the agreed exorbitant amount and then they departed, taking with them most of my worldly goods to be delivered to the council dump.

I wandered aimlessly around my house, examining what remained. There was remarkably little. The cleaners had put cardboard boxes in each of the rooms, into which they had placed anything left unbroken. In my bedroom, the box merely contained a few trinkets and some old perfume bottles that had stood on Angela’s dressing table. Other than the fitted wardrobe, the dressing table was the only piece of furniture remaining in the room, and that was only because I couldn’t bear to see it go. I had asked the men to return it to the bedroom when I had caught sight of them loading it onto their truck.

Angela had sat for hours in front of its now-broken triple mirror every morning, drying her hair and fixing her make-up. She had loved its simplicity and, I discovered, it was too much of a wrench to see it taken away, in spite of the broken mirror on top and the snapped-off leg below.

My bed had gone, Julian Trent’s knife having cut not only the mattress to ribbons, but the divan base beneath as well. In the sitting room everything had been swept away to the tip. Only a couple of dining chairs and the chrome kitchen stool had survived intact, although I had also kept back the antique dining-room table in the hope that a French polisher could do something about the myriad of Stanley-knife grooves that had been cut into its polished surface. I had also saved my desk from the dump to see if a furniture restorer could do anything about the green embossed panel that had once been inlaid into its surface but which now was twisted and cut through, the sliced edges of the leather curled upwards like waves in a rough sea.

The trip back to Barnes had been necessary and worthwhile. Not only had I managed to bring some semblance of order to my remaining belongings, but my hatred and contempt for Julian Trent had been rekindled. There was fire in my belly and I aimed to consume him with it.

I decided not to spend the night at Ranelagh Avenue as there was nothing left for me to sleep on, other than the floor, and I didn’t fancy that. At about six o’clock I ordered a taxi and booked myself into the West London Novotel, overlooking Hammersmith flyover.

I lay on the bed in the room for a while idly watching the continuous stream of aircraft on their approach into London’s Heathrow airport. One every minute or so, non-stop, like a conveyor belt, each aluminium tube in turn full of people with lives to lead, places to go, each of them with families and friends, wives and husbands, lovers and admirers.

I thought about other eyes that might also have been watching the same aircraft. Some of my past clients, plus a few that I had prosecuted, were housed at Her Majesty’s expense in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, just up the road from the hotel.

At least I was able, if I wished, to join the throng in the air, coming or going on holiday to anywhere in the world I liked. Depriving someone of their liberty by sending them to prison may rob them of their self-respect, but, mostly, it deprives them of choice. The choice to go where and when they please, and the choice to do what they want when they get there. To lose that is the price one pays for wrongdoing, and for getting caught.

As I watched those aircraft, and their apparent freedom from the bounds of earth, I resolved once more to release Steve Mitchell from the threat of a lifetime spent watching the world pass him by through the bars of a prison window.

Bob collected me in the silver Mercedes at eight-thirty on Friday morning, and we set off northwards from Hammersmith to Golders Green.

Josef Hughes was waiting for us when we arrived at 845 Finchley Road. I hadn’t been very confident that he would be there, firstly because I’d had to leave a message for him with someone else in the house using the payphone in the hallway, and secondly because I had real doubts that he would be prepared to help me. But, thankfully, my fears were unfounded as he came quickly across the pavement and climbed into the back seat of the car.

‘Morning, Josef,’ I said to him, turning round as best I could and smiling.

He continued to peer all around him, sweeping his eyes and head from side to side. It was the frightened look that I had come to know so well.

‘Morning,’ he said to me only after we had driven away. He turned to glance a few more times through the rear window and then finally settled into his seat.

‘This is Bob,’ I said, pointing at our driver. ‘Bob is most definitely on our side.’ Bob looked at me somewhat strangely but I ignored him.

‘Where to now?’ Bob asked me.

‘Hendon,’ I said.

We picked up George Barnett from outside the Hendon bus station as he had requested. He didn’t want me going near his home, he’d said, in case anyone was watching. He, too, looked all around him as he climbed into the car.

I introduced him to Bob, and also to Josef.

‘Where now?’ asked Bob. I purposely hadn’t told any of them where we were going.

‘Weybridge,’ I said to him.

Josef visibly tensed. He didn’t like it, and the closer we came to Weybridge the more agitated he became.

‘Josef,’ I said calmly. ‘All I want is for you to point out where you were told to go and tell the solicitor about approaching the members of the jury in the first Trent trial. We will just drive past. I don’t expect you to go back in there yourself.’

He mumbled something about wishing he hadn’t come. The long finger of fear extended by Julian Trent and his allies was difficult to ignore. I knew, I’d been trying to do so now for weeks.

As we went slowly along the High Street Josef sank lower and lower in the seat until he was almost kneeling on the floor of the car.

‘There,’ he said breathlessly, pointing above a Chinese takeaway. COULSTON AND BLACK, SOLICITORS AT LAW was painted onto the glass across three of the windows on the first floor.

Bob stopped the car in a side street and then he helped me out with the crutches. I closed the door and asked Bob to try and ensure that neither of his remaining passengers lost their nerve and ran off while I was away. I also asked him to get Josef out of the car in precisely three minutes and walk him to the corner and stay there until I waved from the window. Then I walked back to the High Street and slowly climbed the stairs to the offices of Coulston and Black, Solicitors at Law.

A middle-aged woman in a grey skirt and tight maroon jumper was seated at a cream-painted desk in the small reception office.

‘Can I help you?’ she said, looking up as I opened the door.

‘Is Mr Coulston or Mr Black in, please?’ I asked her.

‘I’m afraid they’re both dead,’ she said with a smile.

‘Dead?’ I said.

‘For many years now,’ she said, still smiling. This was obviously a regular turn of hers, but one that clearly still amused her. ‘Mr Hamilton is the only solicitor we now have in the firm. I am his secretary. Would you like to see him?’