Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

‘What’s wrong? What are you looking at?’

‘That suit.’

‘Oh.’ Lucia moved closer. ‘It’s nice.’

‘Not that one. The blue one, there.’

‘That one’s nice too.’

‘It’s not nice, Lucia. Look at the cut. Look at the cloth. Look at the stitching on the cuff.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s exquisite. To describe such a thing as nice is like describing the Millennium Star as shiny.’

‘It’s a suit, Philip. You wear it to work.’

Philip shook his head and turned away from the shop window. ‘This is what happens,’ he said. ‘This is what happens when you forsake literature and take Don Brown to your bedside. Your vocabulary shrinks and your taste buds wither.’

‘Dan. It’s Dan not Don.’

Philip wafted his hand in the air, as though just the name carried with it a stench. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Lucia?’

‘No. What? What do you mean?’

‘What’s happened? Why are you suddenly talking about resigning?’

Lucia stopped to allow a Japanese man dressed in Burberry to take a photo of his wife at the entrance to the Burberry store. Philip strode through the shot and gestured for Lucia to catch up.

‘You know what’s happened,’ Lucia said. ‘What’s happened has happened. It’s enough.’

‘You don’t agree with your boss. If that were enough, Lucia, half the workforce would be handing in their notice. It’s left here. Not far now.’

‘Don’t you have people to do this sort of thing for you?’

‘Alas,’ said Philip. ‘None of my people has the same inside leg as I do. A visit to the tailor is something I must endure myself. Although the inside-leg bit I must admit I enjoy.’

Lucia tutted, rolled her eyes, forced a smile. They walked on in silence until Philip once again came to a halt.

‘What now?’ said Lucia. She turned to the shop they had been passing. In the window were lingerie and ladies’ night-wear and several unidentifiables that were predominantly fluffy and pink. ‘Or perhaps I don’t want to know.’

‘Let’s find somewhere to sit,’ Philip said.

‘Sit? What about your suit? Didn’t you say you had a meeting to get back to?’

‘The suit can wait. The meeting can wait. This way.’ He took Lucia’s hand and guided her back the way they had come. They crossed Bond Street and passed along a side road lined with art galleries and car showrooms until they came to Berkeley Square. They found a crossing and then a gate into the island park. The grass was yellowed and brittle and strewn with office workers, Starbucks cups and Pret A Manger carrier bags. Most of the benches were similarly occupied but Philip guided Lucia to a seat tucked in a corner and only half decorated by the birds from the trees above.

‘Sit,’ Philip said.

Lucia sat.

‘Talk,’ Philip said.

Lucia was silent.

Philip glanced warily at the bird muck. He brushed a palm over the cleanest section of the seat and then checked his hand. He lowered himself close to Lucia. ‘Talk,’ he said again.

Lucia could feel Philip’s leg against her own. His bony shoulder pressed against hers. She shuffled to her right until the arm of the bench poked against her ribs but with a glance at the mess on the bench beside him Philip followed. Lucia thought of Walter and tensed so she would not shudder. She turned her face away and found herself watching a man in a bedraggled black suit sharing crusts of bread with an equally unkempt pigeon. He threw one then ate one, then ate another and threw another.

‘It’s not me, Philip. I thought it was but it isn’t.’

‘What isn’t you? Which bit?’

‘All of it. The people. The work. The choices.’

Philip laughed a weary laugh. ‘That’s life, Lucia. That’s how it is everywhere, with everything. It’s not just the police force.’

Lucia shook her head. She sighed and looked up and found herself suddenly irritated by the clouds above. It was hot still, stifling, and the storm that threatened was like a sneeze that would not come. It was all suspense, Lucia thought. All suspense and no release.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s more than that. I was wrong. About Samuel. About the school, about the headmaster. I think I was wrong.’

‘You weren’t wrong.’

‘I think perhaps I was.’

‘You weren’t,’ Philip said, a conviction in his voice that Lucia craved but no longer felt.

‘How would you know, Philip?’ Lucia stood. She paced. ‘All you know is what I told you.’

Philip nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘So did it occur to you that I might have left something out? That I might only have told you the evidence that supported the case I was trying to make?’

‘Must I keep reminding you, Lucia? I’m a barrister. Of course it occurred to me.’

‘Well then. Exactly. So I was wrong. You don’t know that I wasn’t wrong.’

Philip got up. He flicked a hand across his trouser leg, picked at a speck that was not there. ‘You did what we all have to do, Lucia. In any walk of life. Faced with a dilemma, we have to consider the evidence and make a judgement. I know you weren’t wrong because I trust your judgement. Perhaps not in novels but in general I trust your judgement.’

With a gesture, Lucia batted away Philip’s attempt at humour. ‘You shouldn’t,’ she said. She continued pacing.

‘Lucia. I know you. You’re only questioning yourself now because it’s easier to believe you were wrong than to ignore the fact that you were right.’

‘You don’t know me, Philip. You’re David’s friend really, not mine. I’ve seen you what. Twice in six months.’

‘That’s twice more than I’ve seen David. And he was a colleague. He became a friend by default. He became a friend because we became friends.’

Again Lucia shook her head. ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking. You wouldn’t want to know what I’ve been thinking, why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing.’

‘Tell me,’ Philip said. ‘Tell me why you think you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing.’

Lucia stopped. She bit down hard and returned Philip’s gaze.

‘Tell me,’ Philip said again.

‘Fine,’ said Lucia. ‘I will, if you want to know. It’s because I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for the man who murdered three children. I can put myself in his situation and I can imagine doing what he did.’

Philip did not hesitate. ‘Nonsense,’ he said.

‘I told you.’ Lucia resumed pacing.

‘You feel sorry for him. I can’t say I agree but I can empathise. That’s all though. That’s where it ends. You could never do what he did. None of us could. Maybe one person in a hundred million could do what he did.’ Philip took Lucia’s shoulder and brought her to a halt. ‘Lucia. Listen to me. It’s not pity that’s guiding your judgement on this. If I know you at all, you came to a decision in spite of how you felt, not because of it. You were right and your boss was wrong. Morally. You were right.’

‘He was jilted, Philip. The woman he loved dumped him and started sleeping with the bloke he despised more than anyone. There’s your motive. I didn’t mention that before, did I?’

‘A contributing factor,’ Philip said. ‘Nothing more. This man, why did Szajkowski despise him? Because he tormented him, am I right? And his affair with this woman. Who’s to say it wasn’t conceived as part of the same torment?’

Lucia began to move again, three strides one way, three strides back. ‘Szajkowski’s sister,’ she said. ‘She told me about Samuel, about how cruel he could be. She told me he was a bully himself.’

‘Sibling rivalry,’ Philip countered. ‘Prejudicial and unsubstantiated and therefore inadmissible. Irrelevant too, probably, because all brothers fight with their sisters. Please, Lucia. Will you please stand still for just a moment?’