‘It really isn’t that simple,’ I said to her. ‘In an ideal world, then yes, that would be the best route, but we don’t live in an ideal world. For a start, doing that might cost me my career.’
‘Surely not,’ she said.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I have been very economical with the truth in a business where it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. In fact I have told outright lies to the police, and the law is pretty unforgiving of lies. I may have even been guilty of holding the court in contempt. I have certainly misled the court and that is the most heinous of crimes for a barrister. That alone is enough to get disbarred.’
‘But you have a good reason,’ she said.
‘Yes, indeed I have,’ I said. ‘I was scared. And I still am. When I saw Trent outside my chambers yesterday I was so scared I nearly wet myself. But all that will have little bearing for the court. I know. I have dealt with intimidation in some form or other almost every week of my working life and, until recently, I was like every other lawyer who would tell their client not to be such a wimp and to tell the truth no matter what the consequences. The courts are not very forgiving of those who fail to tell the truth, even if they are frightened out of their wits. I’ve seen witnesses sent to prison for the night because they refuse to tell the judge something they know but are too afraid to say. People don’t understand until it happens to them. And it’s happening to me now. Look around you. Do you think I wanted this to happen?’
I was almost in tears. And they were tears of frustration.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked finally.
‘I am going to defeat him by getting Steve Mitchell acquitted,’ I said. ‘The only problem is that I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage it.’
‘But then what?’ she said. ‘He won’t just go away.’
‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,’ I said with a laugh. But it wasn’t really a laughing matter.
‘But won’t that get you even deeper into trouble?’ she said.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But at least if Mitchell gets convicted he would then have grounds for an appeal. And I’m sure he didn’t murder anyone.’
‘Does the picture of Millie help?’ she asked.
‘It might,’ I said. ‘Where is it?’
‘Here,’ she said, pulling out a digital camera from her handbag. ‘It’s not that good. That photo frame was in the background of some pictures I took in Millie’s room when we had a drinks party there for her birthday. I thought about it during a boring lecture this morning after what you said last night. I checked when I got home and there it was.’ She smiled in triumph.
She turned on the camera and scrolled through the pictures until she arrived at one of three girls standing with glasses in their hands in front of a mantelpiece. And there between the heads of two of them could be clearly seen the frame and the missing photo. Eleanor zoomed in on the image.
‘Amazing things, these cameras,’ she said. ‘Over eight million pixels, whatever that means.’
It meant that she could zoom right in and fill the whole screen with the picture of Millie Barlow with Peninsula’s head in her lap with the mare standing behind with the stud groom. At such a magnification it was a little blurred but it was just as Eleanor had described it.
‘Well?’ she said as I studied the image.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It surely has to be important, otherwise why was it stolen from Barlow’s house? But I just can’t see why. It must be something to do with the stud groom, but I don’t recognize him. You can see his face quite clearly in spite of the blurring, but I’m certain I’ve never seen him before. It’s not Julian Trent, that’s for sure.’ Somehow I had suspected that it might have been.
Eleanor spent her second night in my house and, this time, she didn’t sleep in the room with the teddy bears’ picnic wallpaper. She slept alone in my bed, or what was left of it, while I dozed fully clothed on the torn-up sofa downstairs with my crutches close to hand. Neither of us felt that it had been the right circumstance to make any further moves towards each other and I was still worried that, with a broken window in the utility room, my castle was far from secure.
I woke early with the daylight, and what it revealed was no better than it had been the night before.
Julian Trent had been vindictive in his approach to the destruction and had even cut up my passport. It wasn’t that I couldn’t replace what he had destroyed, but he had made my life so much more complicated and annoying. Where did one start to get rid of all this mess?
I looked in the drawers of my desk for my insurance policy. Clearly not all the wine was soaking into the rug. Trent had saved a couple of bottles to pour into my paperwork, which was now red and still dripping.
Eleanor padded down the stairs wearing my dressing gown.
‘Careful,’ I said, looking at her bare feet. ‘There’s broken glass all over the floor.’
She stopped on the bottom stair and looked around. ‘Must have been quite a party,’ she said with a smile.
‘The best,’ I said, smiling back.
She retreated back to my bedroom and soon reappeared, dressed and with her shoes on. I was a little disappointed at the transformation from my dressing gown.
‘I’d better be going,’ she said, more serious now. ‘It’s well gone six and I need to be at work at eight. Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I have a car picking me up at eight.’
‘You’d better have this,’ she said, handing me her camera.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I may use it to take some shots of this lot for the insurance company.’
‘Good idea,’ she said, standing still in the middle of the hallway.
It was as if she didn’t really want to go.
‘What are you doing tonight?’ I asked.
‘I’m on call,’ she said miserably. ‘I have to stay in Lambourn.’
‘Then can I come down there and return your camera to you this evening?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes please,’ she said with a wide grin.
‘Right, I will. Now get goingoryou’llbe late for your patients.’
She skipped down the stairs, and I waved at her from the kitchen window as she drove away, her right arm gesticulating wildly out of the driver’s window until she disappeared round the corner at the top of the road.
I used the rest of the free memory in Eleanor’s camera to take shots of every aspect of Julian Trent’s handiwork, right down to the way he had poured all the contents from the packets in my kitchen cupboards into the sink, which was now blocked. I didn’t know what good the photos would be but it took up the time while I waited for the car.
I found a clean shirt lurking in the tumble drier that young Mr Trent had missed with his knife and, even though there was no water in the bathrooms with which to shower or wash, I had managed to shave with an unbroken electric razor and I felt quite respectable as I hobbled down the steps and into Bob’s waiting Mercedes at eight o’clock sharp.
I had brought my mobile phone and the Yellow Pages into the car and, while Bob drove, I set to work finding someone to fix the utility-room window.
‘Don’t worry about the mess,’ I said to the first glazier I called, who finally agreed to do the job for a fat fee. ‘Just go through the kitchen to the utility room and fix the window.’
‘How shall I get in?’ he asked. ‘Is there someone there?’
‘I left the front door open,’ I said. After all, there wasn’t much left to steal. ‘The keys are on the stairs. Lock the door when you are finished and put the keys back through the letter box. I’ve got another set.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Will do.’
Next I called my insurance company and asked them to send me a claim form. They might want to come and have a look, they said. Be my guest, I replied, and I fixed for them to come on the following afternoon at five o’clock. They could get a key from my downstairs neighbours, who would be back from their school by then.