I thought of trying to tell him that I had ridden in a race reserved only for amateurs and he wouldn’t have been allowed to ride in it anyway. But it would probably have been a waste of time and he clearly wasn’t in the mood for serious debate. I went on ignoring him and finished my shower, the warmth helping to return some strength to my aching muscles. Barlow continued to sit where he was. The bleeding from his nose had gradually stopped and the blood was washed away by the water.
I went back into the main changing room, dressed and packed up my stuff. The professional jockeys all used the valets to look after their equipment. Each night their riding clothes were washed and dried, their riding boots polished and their saddles soaped ready for the next day’s racing. For me, who rode only about once a fortnight and often more infrequently than that, the services of a valet were unnecessary and counter-productive. I stuffed my dirty things in a bag ready to take home to the washer-drier in the corner of my kitchen.
I was soon ready to go and there was still no sign of Scot Barlow. Everyone else had gone home so I went and again looked into the showers. He was still sitting there, in the same place as before.
‘Do you need any help?’ I asked. I assumed he must have had a fall during the afternoon and that his face was sore from using it on the ground as a brake.
‘Sod off,’ he said again. ‘I don’t need your help. You’re as bad as he is.’
‘Bad as who is?’ I asked.
‘Your bloody friend,’ he said.
‘What friend?’ I asked him.
‘Steve bloody Mitchell, of course,’ he said. ‘Who else do you think did this?’ He held a hand up to his face.
‘What?’ I said, astounded. ‘Steve Mitchell did this to you? But why?’
‘You’d better ask him that,’ he said. ‘And not the first time, either.’
‘You should tell someone,’ I said, but I could see that he couldn’t. Not with his reputation.
‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘Now you piss off home like a good little amateur. And keep your bloody mouth shut.’ He turned away from me and wiped a hand over his face.
I wondered what I should do. Should I tell the few officials left in the weighing room that he was there so they didn’t lock him in? Should I go and fetch one of the ambulance staff? Or should I go and find a policeman to report an assault?
In the end I did nothing, except collect my gear and go home.
CHAPTER 2
‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ someone said loudly in the clerks’ room as I walked in on Monday morning.
Such language in chambers was rare, and rarer still was such language from Sir James Horley QC, the Head of Chambers, and therefore nominally my boss. Sir James was standing in front of the clerks’ desks reading from a piece of paper.
‘What don’t you… believe?’ I asked him, deciding at the last moment not to repeat his profanity.
‘This,’ he said, waving the paper towards me.
I walked over and took the paper. It was a printout of an e-mail. It was headed CASE COLLAPSES AGAINST JULIAN TRENT.
Oh fuck indeed, I thought. I didn’t believe it either.
‘You defended him the first time round,’ Sir James said. It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Yes,’ I said. I remembered it all too well. ‘Open-and-shut case. Guilty as sin. How he got a retrial on appeal I’ll never know.’
‘That damn solicitor,’ said Sir James. ‘And now he’s got off completely.’ He took back the piece of paper and reread the short passage on it. ‘Case dismissed for lack of evidence, it says here.’
More like for lack of witnesses prepared to give their evidence, I thought. They were afraid of getting beaten up.
I had taken a special interest in the appeal against Julian Trent’s conviction in spite of no longer acting for the little thug. That damn solicitor, as Sir James had called him, was one of the Crown Prosecution team who had admitted cajoling members of the original trial jury to produce a guilty verdict. Three members of the jury had been to the police to report the incident, and all three had subsequently given evidence at the appeal hearing stating that they had been approached independently by the same solicitor. Why he’d done it, I couldn’t understand, as the evidence in the case had been overwhelming. But the Appeal Court judges had had little choice but to order a retrial.
The episode had cost the solicitor his job, his reputation and, ultimately, his professional qualification to practise. There had been a minor scandal in the corridors of the Law Society. But at least the appeal judges had had the good sense to keep young Julian remanded in jail pending the new proceedings.
Now, it seemed, he would be walking free, his conviction and lengthy prison sentence being mere distant memories.
I recalled the last thing he had said to me in the cells under the Old Bailey courtroom last March. It was not a happy memory. It was customary for defence counsel to visit their client after the verdict, win or lose, but this had not been a normal visit.
‘I’ll get even with you, you spineless bastard,’ he’d shouted at me with venom as I had entered the cell.
I presumed he thought that his conviction was my fault because I had refused to threaten the witnesses with violence as he had wanted me to do.
‘You’d better watch your back,’ he’d gone on menacingly. ‘One day soon I’ll creep up on you and you’ll never see it coming.’
The hairs on the back of my neck now rose up and I instinctively turned round as if to find him right here in chambers. At the time of his conviction I had been exceedingly thankful to leave him in the custody of the prison officers and I deeply wished he still was. Over the years I had been threatened by some others of my less affable clients, but there was something about Julian Trent that frightened me badly, very badly indeed.
‘Are you all right?’ Sir James was looking at me with his head slightly inclined.
‘Fine,’ I said with a slightly croaky voice. I cleared my throat. ‘Perfectly fine, thank you, Sir James.’
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he said.
Perhaps I had. Was it me? Would I be a ghost when Julian Trent came a-calling?
I shook my head. ‘Just remembering the original trial,’ I said.
‘The whole thing is fishy if you ask me,’ he said in his rather pompous manner.
‘And is anyone asking you?’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ said Sir James.
‘You seem well acquainted with the case, and the result is clearly important to you.’ Sir James had never sworn before in my hearing. ‘I didn’t realize that anyone from these chambers was acting.’
‘They aren’t,’ he said.
Sir James Horley QC, as Head of Chambers, had his finger on all that was going on within these walls. He knew about every case in which barristers from ‘his’ chambers were acting, whether on the prosecution side or the defence. He had a reputation for it. But equally, he knew nothing, nor cared little, about cases where ‘his’ team were not involved. At least, that was the impression he usually wanted to give.
‘So why the interest in this case?’ I asked.
‘Do I need a reason?’ he asked, somewhat defensively.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t need a reason, but my question remains, why the interest?’
‘Don’t you cross-examine me,’ he retorted.
Sir James had a bit of a reputation amongst the junior barristers for enjoying throwing his superior status around. The position of Head of Chambers was not quite what it might appear. It was mostly an honorary title often held by the most senior member, the QC of longest standing rather than necessarily the most eminent. All of the forty-five or so barristers in these chambers were self-employed. The main purpose of us coming together in chambers was to allow us to pool those services we all needed, the clerks, the offices, the library, meeting rooms and so on. Each of us remained responsible for acquiring our own work from our own clients, although the clerks were important in the allocation of a new client to someone with the appropriate expertise. But one thing our Head of Chambers certainly did not do was to share out the work amongst his juniors. Sir James had never been known to share anything if he could keep it all to himself.