Simon Lelic - The Child Who

‘Leo!’

Leo, tapping his fingertips on his knees, had not even realised the lobby housed a lift. He raised his head and saw the wooden panels across from him had drawn stealthily apart. Beyond them was a sparkling brass interior, out of which stepped the man Leo had come to see.

‘Dale.’ Leo got quickly to his feet. He buttoned his jacket and aimed his hand at the one being propelled towards him.

Dale Baldwin-Tovey should, by rights, have been a tosser. It was the word Terry had used to describe him the last time the barrister had been engaged by their practice but, unsurprisingly perhaps, Leo had felt obliged to demur. Dale was younger than Leo and Terry both. In financial terms he was considerably more successful. He had more hair than they did in the places it mattered and less where the lack of it mattered double. His teeth were almost as impressive as Howard’s but his grin was less ostentatious. The man seemed embarrassed by his good looks and was openly so of his double-barrelled surname. Leo found him humble, engaging and almost disconcertingly bright. A tosser then, as Terry would have it, precisely because he was not.

‘You found us okay? How was the journey?’ With his hand on Leo’s shoulder, Dale guided him back towards the lift. The barrister pressed the call button and kept pressing it, as though unwilling for his guest to be kept waiting.

‘It was fine. Thank you.’

‘Good. Great. Thanks again for coming up. Sorry you had to bother but there was just no way I could leave London this week.’

Leo made a face. ‘It’s fine. Really.’ Although the truth was, he had almost cancelled. Ellie was refusing to return to school and Meg had asked Leo to speak with her. Not only had Leo not had the chance, he had barely spent more than a few snatched seconds this past week talking to Megan. His wife, he knew, was less than happy. But the case – Daniel – could not wait, which was something Megan did not seem to understand. Plus, of course, there were the notes. Leo did not trust himself not to show them to his wife and doing so, given her obvious anxiety, would not be fair, at least until Leo could decide for himself whether they were worth worrying about. Which, actually, was another reason why Leo had decided in the end to make the trip.

The lift arrived and Dale gestured Leo inside. The doors closed and Leo found himself surrounded by an army in his own likeness. The floor, a dark-wood parquet, was the only surface that did not gleam. It was Leo’s first visit to a set of London chambers and his astonishment must have shown on his face.

‘Don’t be fooled,’ said Dale. ‘The decor’s as contrived as the whiskey barrels in your local Irish pub. They want you to like coming here, that’s all – they want you to enjoy spending your money.’

Leo did his best to return Dale’s roguish grin.

They got out on the fifth floor and Dale led Leo along a corridor that did nothing to undermine the impact of the lobby. Elegant wall lights and walnut panelling channelled them into a meeting room and they sat across from each other at a table worth more, probably, than Leo’s car. There was coffee and a tray of pastries and Dale offered Leo both. When Leo declined, Dale slid the trays to one side. He clicked his pen.

‘So.’

It sounded ill-considered. More than that, it sounded naive. Arguing with his colleagues back in Exeter, a presumption of rectitude had allowed him to skirt the obvious flaws in his thinking. Dale, though, was not hostile. He clearly sympathised with Leo’s intent. Which meant Leo could not resort to bluster, nor hide behind a moralism that was beside the point. And so he fidgeted. He cleared his throat, for the fourth or fifth time it felt like – even though it was Dale he was willing to speak.

‘What about his IQ?’ the barrister said at last.

‘Ninety. He was tested last week.’

Dale responded by twisting his lips. Low, he did not have to say – but not low enough.

‘And the psychiatrist…’

‘Karen.’

‘Karen. She doesn’t feel there’s anything compelling we might use?’

The ‘we’ was reassuring, until Leo considered the context.

‘Nothing obvious. He’s of sound mind, capable of rational judgement. He knows right from wrong. He has post-traumatic stress disorder but no sign of anything underlying. She has her concerns, though.’

Dale raised an eyebrow but Leo could only disappoint.

‘They’re just concerns,’ he said. ‘Nothing concrete. He’s clearly damaged in some way but… Well. We knew that already.’

Dale clicked his pen again: a double beat, followed by another, and then another in a metronomic rhythm. ‘You could use someone else, you know.’ He held still as he spoke, as though wary of Leo’s reaction. ‘Assuming Karen left us room for manoeuvre in her report, we could always find someone who would be more… sympathetic.’

Leo shifted. He had considered it, of course he had. But, ‘He’s on legal aid. We wouldn’t get the funding. And it was hard enough convincing him to see Karen in the first place, let alone someone new.’ Again Leo shuffled in his seat. ‘Besides. This is about doing what’s right for the boy. It’s not about fabricating a lie.’

‘No one’s suggesting we lie, Leo. But truth, in this field, is hardly absolute.’

‘Of course not. But there’s the matter of consensus. And I trust Karen’s judgement. She’s not wrong. She was never wrong. For every expert we find who disagrees with her findings, the Crown will find ten who concur.’

Dale shrugged an eyebrow. There was quiet for a moment.

‘Let’s go back to the victim.’ Dale moved his weight to the opposite armrest, set his legs at a different angle. ‘What was the boy’s connection with her?’

‘They went to the same school. They lived in the same city.’

‘That’s it?’

‘It seems to be. The first time I spoke to Daniel, he could barely recall her name.’

‘She didn’t bully him? Taunt him? She didn’t provoke him in any way?’

‘Not that anyone has suggested. Not even Daniel. And to be honest, she didn’t seem the type.’ An image of Felicity’s hands, bloodless and bound in fairy lights, flickered in Leo’s mind. ‘She was in the wrong place,’ he said, forcing himself to focus on Dale. ‘At the wrong time. Or Daniel was: physically, mentally.’

‘So provocation, self-defence… ?’

Leo shook his head.

‘And he’s not an alcoholic? A drug addict? He wasn’t drunk or anything at the time?’

‘He’s twelve years old, Dale.’

Again Dale twitched his eyebrows. ‘You’d be surprised.’ He frowned at his leather-bound notepad. His pen, between his fingers, seemed to whirl of its own accord. Leo watched it spin, grateful on the one hand that a man with such dexterity was on his side; terrified, on the other, that having Dale as an ally might not make the slightest bit of difference.

‘I think you’re right,’ Dale said. ‘Diminished responsibility, if Daniel decides to plead not guilty, would be about his only option.’

Leo tensed. He sensed a but.

‘But, with the evidence we have, I just don’t see how we could make the case.’

The ‘we’, now, seemed generous. A consolation, that was all. Leo waited for something more.

‘When’s the arraignment?’ said Dale, after a pause. ‘A month, you said?’

‘Just over.’

‘And your client. Daniel. He’s insisting on this, regardless of your advice?’

Leo had been waiting for this. Waiting – but not ready. ‘He’s not insisting on anything in particular.’

The pen in Dale’s hand came to a stop.

‘He trusts me.’ Leo spoke to the table but realised as he uttered the words that they yielded a certain pride. He looked up. ‘Daniel’s instructed me to do what I think is best.’ He paused but the silence that followed felt like a condemnation. ‘He’s a boy, Dale. How can he be expected to understand the complexities of—’