Frances Fyfield - Trial by Fire

`Quite right, quite right.' He nodded sagely, swallowing the unlikelihood without difficulty and adding inconsistently, 'But you do know the facts?'

`Roughly, yes.'

`The case is quite straightforward.' Redwood said. 'Open and shut. Fellow wants to end relationship with older married woman, loses his cool, hits her, and then stabs her in argument. Funny place to pick, though, Bluebell Wood. He buries her and goes home, leaving enough traces for an army: walking stick covered with blood and hair, hers, of course; heavy footprints all over the place, made by his very distinctive boots; cigarette ends in the clearing, his brand.'

`Have the police found her clothes, jewellery, handbag?' Helen asked, knowing full well they had.

In the compost heap in his garden. I ask you, what a fool. The handbag and clothes, all neatly packaged. Jewellery and money from handbag, gone without trace, greedy bastard.'

Helen was silent, allowing the exclamatory flow to continue, wondering on the nature of our Brian's problem. Not the same as hers. He never suffered from second thoughts or surprise.

`No alibi, of course, though the girlfriend did try.'

She remembered. Poor Christine had attempted to say Antony had been at her house before midnight on the night of the murder, gave it up when Bailey gently pointed out to her that he already knew she had not seen Antony for two days after the woman's death, a knowledge he had only gleaned because Helen had told him. In view of the prisoner's limited admissions, such a pretence was no help in any event. Any chance of Helen resurrecting her friendship with Christine had died after that, but that was not within Redwood's knowledge, nor should it be.

One problem, though,' Redwood ruminated. 'Man won't admit killing her.' His voice was hurt, as if Sumner's refusal to confess guilt was a personal insult. 'Intelligent chap, too.

Can't understand it.'

Intelligence had very little to do with it, Helen thought, while trying not to smile. Nor was it incumbent on any defendant to admit guilt in the interest of expediency and saving public money, even if he was guiltier than sin. He had the right to protest his innocence all the way to the grave, causing storms of fury and irritation en route if it helped him at all. Man must fight like a cat for freedom, fight dirty if he must, lie if he must. That's what I would do, she thought: I'd make them prove every damn thing. 'How inconsiderate of him,' was what she said out loud, the irony of her words quite lost on her companion.

`Quite, ' said Redwood eagerly, forgetting in the loneliness of the office that he was in the invidious position of debating with the member of staff he could least afford to admire. In the dim recesses of his mind he suppressed the uncomfortable knowledge that Helen West could run this office better than he could himself, was the natural deputy he never chose, preferring to keep her talents in obscurity. For today's purposes he also ignored the knowledge that the junior troops already flocked to her for any kind of advice from the state of their marriages to the state of the law, and they would continue to flock to her even if Helen did nothing to encourage them.

She was popular for her wicked mimicry in an office full of cigarette smoke, bad language, and plenty of shouting under stress; she was authoritative without effort – all the things he longed to be and was not – while all he could hold against her was a less than immaculate conviction rate. Watching her dealing in court, he could find no fault in her except for her turn of speed and what he called promiscuous sympathy for both victims and defendants, but she was as hard as nails when necessary.

Yes, take a plea here, she would say, a bindover here; no, absolutely no bail; honestly, don't be such a fool as to ask if he has nowhere to live; I'd help if I could, but I can't. What do you want, blood? The way she had of letting them go, the toothy schoolboy barristers of the opposition, the shifty defendants, and even the megalomaniacal court clerks, gods in their own arena, all placated and left with their dignity.

I don't want to humiliate you, she might have said, but I will if I have to; don't push me to be fair, there's no bloody need. Other advocates faced with weary thieves might have thought from time to time, there but for the grace of God go I; Helen West actually believed it. She moved in pity, only occasionally expressing anger over the sad exposure of charlatans, fools, and youth. Redwood's beliefs were not the same. He did not see himself as the same humanity, saw all of the defendants on the other side of the dock as a race apart.

I wonder why,' he was musing out loud. 'Why, oh, why he won't admit the killing?'

`Well,' said Helen cautiously, venturing a further grim joke, 'he would radically increase his chances of a life sentence if he did. Or maybe he's telling all he knows and he didn't really kill her at all.'

`What?' He looked up, outraged, saw Helen's eyes fixed on her hands, and dismissed the last remark as one made simply for the sake of argument. 'Of course he killed her. He's charged with murder.' As if that was all it took. Helen struggled with the ridiculous corollary: if you want to kill someone, simply get yourself charged with that person's murder and regard the deed as done. Save yourself the trouble.

Of course he killed her. Mud still on those boots he never wore afterwards, though he wore them every day before. Stick with silly handle thwacked across the brow, his stick, no one else's stick. A sweater full of brambles in his laundry box, and scratches on his face. And after a God Almighty row like that and her acting like a cat, he says he walked away and left her for someone else to kill? Come off it. Besides, who else had a motive? He, on the other hand, was frightened that Mrs B. would tell that girlfriend of his, whom I must say, he must have been fond of, enough anyway to be terrified of her finding out he'd been screwing the other one all the time.'

Helen could not stand it, loathed all this superior supposition, as well as hating that demeaning word, which Christine would hate equally. Screwing whom all the time? 'He wasn't,' she said swiftly before caution prevented the words, regretting them as she spoke them, unable to stop. 'At least Christine – "the girlfriend" to you, my friend to me – said he wasn't. He'd told her. She would have known. She told me.'

He looked shocked. Our Brian rose from the desk against which he had leaned, as relaxed as he ever would be in the presence of a subordinate.

`She what?'

`She told me,' Helen repeated, still disobeying the careful impulse and following the instinct to defend. 'She's a friend of mine.'

`You, Miss West,' he said majestically, with a pomposity she found indescribably silly, 'you, in cahoots with a defence witness?'

`No, not exactly. Not in cahoots. In conversation, perhaps. Unfortunately no longer, I'm sad to say. But listen to me, you ought to know: Christine Summerfield did know of Sumner's affair. She knew from the start of knowing him. She knew he was going to meet Mrs Blundell on the night he did, and I can and will give evidence of that knowledge if necessary.'

`Helen – Miss West, I mean..

`Well, what do you mean?'

`You are being naive,' our Brian said indulgently. 'That is what she told you, but perhaps she told in anticipation of exactly this situation.'

Oh, yes,' said Helen, temper running like a car engine. 'She's a soothsayer as well as a social worker. Bit of double leprosy going on there, Mr Redwood, I mean Brian. And a jury would see it as rubbish coming from a mouth as disingenuous as hers. I'm sorry, I don't believe Antony Sumner killed Mrs Blundell to spare Christine the knowledge of his affair. I just don't believe it. He may have killed her, but not for that reason.' All of this emerged far more sharply than intended in reaction to Redwood's underlying prejudices and also to the fact she had never, but never yet in three whole weeks, had the chance to argue the same toss with Bailey. Our Brian was here; he would have to do.