Neil White - Beyond Evil

Charlie moved quickly along the alley, despite the pain in his shoulder, always keeping an eye on the exit, waiting for someone to appear. The walls were high, and so for as long as he kept in the shadows he was safe. Then he passed an open gate, a thin stream of light just reaching across the bricks. He glanced in and saw someone he recognised. A client, sitting on his back step, smoking.

‘Patrick?’ he said, sighing in relief.

The smoker stopped and peered into the gloom, his cigarette disappearing into his hand. ‘Who is it?’

Charlie stepped into the light that was coming from the kitchen door.

‘Fucking hell, Charlie Barker,’ Patrick said, laughing. ‘What the fuck are you doing, creeping around behind my house?’

Charlie shrugged, and then winced as his shoulder sent a sharp stab of pain. As he looked down, he saw that his suit was ripped where his knees had hit the floor. ‘Trying not to get killed.’

Patrick must have noticed Charlie’s blood-stained and torn clothes, because his gaze went to his body and then back up to his face. His look grew serious. ‘Oh yeah, man, I heard about Miss Diaz. It was on the news. What the fuck’s going on?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ Charlie said, breathing heavily, the relief chasing the adrenaline away. ‘Except that some people don’t like the idea.’ He looked at his hand. It was shaking. ‘Look, can we go inside, Patrick? I need some help.’

Patrick nodded and got to his feet. ‘You’ve always been there for me, man. Come in.’

Charlie mumbled his thanks and followed Patrick inside.

The house was a typical terraced house, except without the kitchen extension. There was a room at the back and one at the front, and then straight onto the street. Once the door closed, Patrick opened out his palm to reveal what he had been smoking outside, and Charlie got the hot, sweet smell of relaxation.

Charlie reached out for it, and as he passed it over, Patrick looked surprised. Charlie inhaled deeply, the roach wet from Patrick’s lips, but it was what he needed. ‘I wasn’t always a lawyer,’ he said, and the pain began to recede from the wound in his shoulder.

‘What the fuck happened to you, man?’ Patrick said, his voice low.

‘I fell down some steps,’ Charlie said, and then passed the reefer back. ‘Have you got a car?’

‘Depends who’s asking,’ Patrick said, and grinned.

Charlie smiled, despite himself. ‘Call it legal privilege.’

‘I use an old Corsa,’ he said. ‘It’s out the front, but if anyone asks, it’s nothing to do with me.’ He reached over and grabbed some keys from a worktop. ‘Bring it back when you can.’

As Charlie thanked him, he noticed something in Patrick’s eyes, and realised what it was: gratitude for Charlie never looking down on him. Charlie had put forward Patrick’s excuses over the years as if he believed in the whole truth of them, and so Patrick saw him as an equal, despite the letters after his name and the lawyer label. Charlie had turned to Patrick because he knew Patrick would help him, and he was right. This was Charlie’s circle of support, and he needed them. And what Charlie knew about his clients was that although their morality seemed to point in different ways to most people, they would always help out someone in trouble, because they recognised some of that need in themselves.

Charlie shook Patrick’s hand and then cut through the house. In the living room was a young woman he had seen trailing Patrick at court, a lank-haired brunette with homemade tattoos on her wrist and blackened teeth. She didn’t look up when Charlie went in, and then he spotted the bottle of bargain sherry. There was a young child, maybe eighteen months old, lying alongside, playing with a cuddly toy, but his mother was fast asleep, in a stupor.

Charlie looked away. He didn’t feel like judging. Not today.

‘Thanks, Patrick,’ he whispered, nodding down at her.

‘Don’t worry about speed cameras,’ Patrick said. ‘The plate goes back to a scrapped Ford Mondeo. Nothing will come back here.’

‘There are some things I don’t need to know,’ Charlie said, and then clicked the door closed, before bolting into an old sky blue Corsa.

It started on the third turn, and as he drove along the terraced street, Charlie started to feel some of his dread lift. He needed to get to the office. He knew where the video would be, and if it was important enough to murder for, he knew he had to get it before Amelia’s killers found it.

His mind went back to Donia. He should call the police, he knew that, but something made him uncomfortable about her. It was all too neat. She arrived to do work experience, and then people started dying. The people in black knew where to go. Was it all a set-up, Donia in on the whole thing? They had threatened to hurt her, but what had it been? Hair-pulling? It could have been an act.

The journey to his office was brief. He drove to the end of the road and then some way up the hill.

He didn’t go in the front way, where the takeaway owner might tell someone that he’d seen him. Instead, he drove to the street behind and then went into the alley that came out behind his office. There were black wrought iron streetlights lining the route, so it made it harder for people to hide there. Charlie blocked the alley with the car. He had a quick look round as he got out and then dashed into the yard, before running up the fire escape that went to the rear door of the office.

Charlie didn’t turn on any of the main lights once he was inside, because he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Instead, he closed all the blinds and relied on desk lamps.

He went to the desk in reception and found the key for the safe. That was where they kept all the videos, in a small storage cabinet in the reception area. As he fumbled with the key and unlocked it, he saw rows of discs. They were logged by file reference, a sticker on each case. Charlie couldn’t remember Billy’s reference, but he knew it would begin with PRI. His fingers clicked through the discs, but there was no disc with Billy’s reference on.

Charlie slammed the door closed. If the master disc had been in there, they had taken it, which was why they had left the knife behind and not killed him. They thought they had everything. The letters that Linda hadn’t got round to posting. The disc from the cabinet, if ever there was one. But if they had those, why were they still hunting for something?

He went into Amelia’s office. It was obvious that the police had been through it. Not looking through the files, but checking drawers and at the back of cupboards. As he looked, Charlie felt the sadness for Amelia rush at him, the shock of seeing her dead, and how she died. He picked up a photo frame she kept on her desk. It was her family again, close and smiling.

Tears jumped into his eyes, took him by surprise. She was a young woman, beautiful, her life unfulfilled. He thought he could still smell traces of her perfume, and he expected to hear the click of her heels or the angry snap to her voice. He wiped his eyes, angry with himself. He had no time for grieving now.

Amelia’s client files were not in cabinets, but on shelves, in alphabetical order, alongside large folders that contained materials from whenever she went on a training course, the compulsory hours they both had to do to keep their practising certificates. Charlie’s just piled up on the floor until they made their way to the bin.

Amelia did a lot of personal injury work, and the cases always moved slowly. So she did what most lawyers did; she worked her way through her cabinet methodically, going through each file in turn, writing an update letter, each one billable, or doing any chasing that needed doing. It took around three weeks to get to the end, and then she would just start over again. Updates, chasing, generating paperwork that generated money.