Angela had died suddenly of a massive pulmonary embolism just four weeks before our baby was due. She had kissed me goodbye on that fateful Monday morning as happy as I had ever known her. It had been the first day of her maternity leave and she had still been in her dressing gown and slippers as I had left for work. All her life she had longed to have a child and now she was so close to fulfilling her dream. I had tried to call her several times during the day without any success but I had thought nothing was amiss until I had arrived home to find the place in darkness. Angela had always hated the dark, and she would have left lights on in the house even if she had gone out.
I had found her lying on the sitting-room floor, slightly curled as if she were asleep. But she had been so cold, and had obviously been dead for hours. Our son was dead too, inside her.
There had been no warning and no pre-existing condition. Regular checks at the clinic had revealed no hypertension, no pre-eclampsia. She had gone from healthy and happy to dead in the space of a few moments. So sad, the doctors had said, but it was the most common cause of sudden death during pregnancy. They also told me it would have been very quick and that she was likely unaware, losing consciousness almost instantaneously. Surprisingly, it was something of a comfort to know that she hadn’t suffered, that she hadn’t seen the void coming.
Everyone had been so kind. Friends had rallied round to make the necessary arrangements, my father had come to stay so I wouldn’t be alone, and even the judge in the trial I had been prosecuting had adjourned the proceedings until after Angela’s funeral. I could remember feeling like I was living in a time warp. There had been so much rushing around going on by others, while I had sat still and alone in my grief while the hours and days had dragged by.
Gradually, over the next few months, my life had sorted itself out. I had gone back to work and my father had returned home. Friends had come round less often with ready-cooked meals, and they had stopped speaking in hushed tones. Invitations began again to arrive, and people began to say things to each other like, ‘He’s still young enough to find somebody else.’
Now it was seven years later and I had not found somebody else. I didn’t really want to because I was still in love with Angela. Not that I was foolish enough to think that she would come back from the dead or anything odd like that. I just wasn’t ready to find anybody else. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I turned on the lights in the kitchen and looked in the fridge for something to eat. I was hungry, having missed my lunch, so I decided on salmon with penne pasta and pesto sauce. Since Angela died I had become quite a dab hand at cooking for one.
I had just sat down to eat in front of the television news when the phone rang. Typical, I thought, damn thing always goes at the wrong moment. Reluctantly I put my tray to one side, leaned over and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Perry?’ said a voice.
‘Yes,’ I replied slowly. After all, I’m not really Perry. I’m Geoffrey.
‘Thank God you’re there,’ said the voice. ‘This is Steve Mitchell.’
I thought back to our strange conversation in the Sandown jockeys’ changing room two days before.
‘How did you get my number?’ I asked him.
‘Oh,’ he said, as if distracted. ‘From Paul Newington. Look, Perry,’ he went on in a rush, ‘I’m in a bit of trouble and I badly need your help.’
‘What bit of trouble?’ I asked him.
‘Well, actually it could be rather a lot of trouble,’ he said. ‘That bastard Scot Barlow has got himself murdered and the bloody police have arrested me for doing it.’
CHAPTER 3
‘And did you?’ I asked.
‘Did I what?’ Steve replied.
‘Murder Scot Barlow?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course I bloody didn’t.’
‘Have the police interviewed you?’ I asked him.
‘Not yet,’ he said in a somewhat resigned tone. ‘But I think they plan to. I asked to call my lawyer. So I called you.’
‘I’m hardly your lawyer,’ I said to him.
‘Look, Perry,’ he said, ‘you’re the only lawyer I know.’ He was beginning to sound a little desperate.
‘You need a solicitor not a barrister,’ I said.
‘Solicitors, barristers, what’s the difference? You are a bloody lawyer, aren’t you? Will you help me or not?’
‘Calm down,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Where are you exactly?’
‘Newbury,’ he said. ‘Newbury police station.’
‘How long have you been there?’ I asked.
‘About ten minutes, I think. They came to my house about an hour ago.’
I looked at my watch. It was ten past ten. Which solicitors did I know in Newbury that could be roused at such an hour? None.
‘Steve,’ I said. ‘I can’t act in this matter as at the moment you need a solicitor, not a barrister. I will see what I can do to get you a solicitor I know to come to Newbury but it won’t be for a few hours at least.’
‘Oh God,’ he almost cried. ‘Can’t you come?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It would be like asking a brain surgeon to remove your teeth. Much better for you if you get a dentist.’ I was sure that, as analogies go, and with more time, I could have done better. And not many solicitors I know would have been happy to be called a dentist, not least by some brain-surgeon barrister.
‘When will this bloody solicitor arrive?’ he asked, again sounding resigned.
‘As soon as I can arrange it,’ I said.
‘The police have told me that, if I want, I can talk to the duty solicitor, whoever that is,’ Steve said.
‘Well, you can,’ I replied. ‘And for free, but I wouldn’t if I were you.’
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘At this time of night he’s likely to be a recently qualified young solicitor, or else one that can get no other work,’ I said. ‘You are facing a serious charge and I’d wait for someone with more experience if I were you.’
There was a long, quiet pause from the other end of the line.
‘OK, I’ll wait,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘I’ll get someone there as soon as possible.’
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘And Steve,’ I said earnestly, ‘listen to me. You don’t have to answer any questions until he arrives. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ he said with a yawn in his voice.
‘What time did you get up this morning?’ I asked him.
‘Usual time,’ he said. ‘Ten to six. I was riding out at seven.’
‘Tell the police that you are tired and need to sleep. Tell them that you have been awake for nearly seventeen hours and you are entitled to have a rest before being interviewed.’ Strictly, it may not have been true, but it was worth a try.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘And when the solicitor does arrive, take his advice absolutely.’
‘OK,’ he said rather flatly. ‘I will.’
Did he, I wondered, sound like a guilty man resigned to his fate?
I called a solicitor I knew in Oxford and asked him. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he replied in his Australian accent, he was too busy teaching some gorgeous young university student the joys of sleeping with an older man. I had learned from experience not to ask him if the gorgeous young student was male or female. However, he did rouse himself sufficiently to give me the name of a firm in Newbury that he could recommend, together with one of their partners’ mobile phone number.
Sure, said the partner when I called, he would go. Steve Mitchell was quite famous in those parts, and representing a celebrity client accused of murder was every local solicitor’s dream. To say nothing of the potential size of the fee.
I returned to my, now cold, pasta and thought again about last Saturday at Sandown. I went over in my mind everything that had been said, and particularly I recalled the strange encounter with the battered Scot Barlow in the showers.