Elizabeth Woodcraft - Good Bad Woman

‘Exactly, you couldn’t keep men out.’ I tore a piece of bread in half, showering the table with flakes of crust. ‘You’d have male clients. Then there’d be the motorbike couriers, the postman, the window cleaner.’

The waiter placed our orders in front of us.

‘And I know you’d be the last to say this, Simon, but women barristers are not necessarily any better, whatever that means, than men. They’re not intrinsically more politically right on. Margaret Thatcher was a barrister. They’re not kinder or gentler – but you don’t want that in a barrister anyway.’ I stuffed chips into my mouth.

‘They usually smell nicer.’

‘Simon,’ I said. ‘Barristers are barristers. Rich, posh, privileged.’

‘Are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m trying to make a political point. I’m not, as it happens, as you can tell perfectly well from my vowel sounds. And I’m not rich … well, not particularly. Certainly not at the moment, anyway.’

‘This lunch is on me,’ Simon said with concern.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

We raised our glasses to each other. Simon said, ‘You don’t really think I’m trying to get rid of you, do you?’

‘No, Simon, I don’t.’

‘Because that would be absurd. Because, you know, I really like you.’ His cheeks began to glow. ‘And if there ever came a time when you thought you wanted to, you know, try … try again, try with a man … you could always turn to me.’

‘Thank you, but no.’

‘No strings attached, just to see, you know.’

‘Simon, give me a break.’

‘Just a bit of practice?’

‘Simon,’ I said, slowly swilling the contents of my glass, ‘if this were not expensive wine, I would pour it on your head now.’ I looked at his broad face and his eager blue eyes. ‘Just order two Armagnacs and we’ll forget you said that.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Sorry. This is rather good wine, isn’t it? I assume neither of us is in court this afternoon.’

‘I’m not,’ I said, still trying to assert a sense of annoyance.

‘But if the system is so awful,’ Simon said, as we sat with large glasses of rich amber Armagnac, ‘isn’t it going to corrupt you?’ He gazed at me.

‘It might, but not the way you want it to, Simon. Don’t start that again.’

‘Well, let me cheer you up and tell you about my morning in front of His Honour Judge Swiffham till you regain your sense of justice and love for all humankind.’

‘A slight feeling of pity may be as good as you’re going to get,’ I said. ‘We’d better have some coffee.’

I ordered two espressos and Simon began his story. We were a few minutes in when I realised he was talking about the dreadful pornography case that he had been involved in for weeks, led by our head of chambers. Their client had been found guilty and had been sentenced this morning.

‘And just as the judge was about to pass sentence, our client leapt up and shouted, “Police corruption! Police corruption! I paid good money to keep out of court, and look at me now. How much are you supposed to pay?”’

‘How much are you supposed to pay?’

‘I don’t know.’ Simon grinned. ‘But our client had obviously not paid enough. I didn’t know anything about it, it hadn’t been part of our case. But from something my client mumbled later in the cells, he paid something in the area of five thousand pounds. Not that he had anything to pay for, of course. His was an entirely above-board art bookshop. It was all a horrible misunderstanding. But I have to say, some of the officers in the case arrived at court in very nice cars.’

‘I suppose that’s one of the perks of working in Soho.’

‘Yes. Although not all our shops – all right, so we had a string of them – were in Soho. One of them was in Camden.’

‘Why do you do cases like this?’

‘It’s the cab-rank rule, Frankie. If it comes in with my name on, in my area of work, I have to do it.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said, thinking of barristers who return cases because there’s not enough money on the brief.

‘I don’t have your politics,’ he said. ‘But, anyway, I thought you did this kind of work when you did crime.’

‘I represented prostitutes, not the jerks who live off them. Although I did once represent a woman charged with running a brothel. When she got off, she gave me that china high-heel shoe on my table in chambers. But all of that’s a million miles away from your case.’

Somehow the story ended up involving hiccups, snoring and bad language. It wasn’t very funny but by the time we had finished the coffee, and against my better judgment, we were giggling like contestants in a quiz show. I felt sure enough time had passed for Marcus to have finished his conference so we got the bill.

‘He’s still in your room,’ Gavin said mournfully as we walked into the clerks’ room.

‘Can I make a phone call from here?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, Jenna’s desk’s free, use her phone.’ As junior clerk, Jenna had to take her lunch very late or very early. She was still at lunch. I rang Kay and told her as coherently as I could about Saskia’s court appearance, bruises and all.

‘Oh no,’ Kay sighed. ‘Where is she now?’

‘I don’t know, she just skipped off while I was on the phone.’

‘What, at court?’

‘No, in my flat.’

‘In your flat? God, Frankie, you never give up, do you?’ Did she sound irritated? I was.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘that’s none of your business and, anyway, she just came to have a bath.’

Kay shouted with laughter.

Normally, this is where I put the phone down, but I was seriously worried about Saskia.

‘There was a guy at court with brown shoes,’ I said.

‘Oh yes?’ Kay said. ‘So it’s true, brown is the new black.’

I squeezed my eyes tight shut with frustration, then went on calmly: ‘He seemed very interested in Saskia.’

‘I’m assuming he wasn’t a reporter, am I?’

‘I thought he was at first, he looked the type: seedy, greedy, all those -eedy words.’ I reflected for a moment. ‘Not tweedy, I suppose.’ I remembered I was talking to my instructing solicitor. ‘But then he left court at the same time as us, about half past eleven, and was driven off in a smooth black car. Saskia didn’t see him but she seemed quite shaken when I told her. What’s going on?’

Kay was silent.

‘Why was she so bruised, why was she so desperate to get out of the cells, and what was she doing in Balls Pond Road, of all places?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kay said.

‘She’s not involved in anything … iffy, is she? Nothing that could be connected to your break-in?’

Kay was silent, then said curtly, ‘Meet me tonight at the same place as last night.’

‘We didn’t actually meet last night, if you remember.’

‘Seven o’clock all right?’ Kay asked in a clipped voice.

‘Yes,’ I said humbly.

As I put the phone down it occurred to me that I was quite tired and I needed to do something that would wake me up and keep me awake if I was going to make it through to the evening.

‘I’m going to the pictures,’ I announced.

‘You going with, erm, you know?’ Gavin leered.

‘If you mean Simon, no, I’m not.’

‘Not what?’ asked Simon, coming through the clerks’ room to make himself some coffee. His blue and orange tie had something related to steak and chips on it.

‘Not going to the pictures with you.’

‘But why not? I love the cinema. Apollo 13, James Bond, Toy Story. Whatever. Toy Story 2. ’ Simon was eager, like a bouncy puppy. ‘We could share a tub of popcorn, although you probably like salted, don’t you? We could have one each. Ice cream, coffee. What are we going to see?’