A Clear Conscience (16 page)

‘I
don't have any coffee,' Cath said, ‘only tea. What time is it?'

‘Nine thirty.'

‘Well, I suppose we've got time. Only he comes back around midnight, and I've still got to pack.'

‘Fine,' said Mary, ‘I mean fine. What do you want me to do?'

‘Put the kettle on, I suppose, since you wanted a drink. Then give me a lift to my brother's place. I've always kept the key, you see.'

‘You're leaving?' said Mary. ‘Now?'

‘What do you think I said?'

‘Where will you go?' Mary was nonplussed, awkward, wondering just what situation she seemed to have precipitated and whether the woman was sick in the head.

Cath was impatient, she seemed to imagine Mary had come armed with an agenda in perfect accord with her own.

‘I've got a place to go, I told you. My brother's.'

‘Look,' said Mary.

‘Oh, all right then,' said Cath, turning away. ‘I'll walk or get the bus. It's only one stop, but I've got a few things to take.'

‘Listen,' said Mary desperately. ‘Do you want to make a complaint against your husband?'

‘What would I want to do that for?'

‘Then why are you leaving?'

‘That's none of your business. Are you going to help or not?'

Mary thought of Shirley Rix. Shirley had been slow with explanations and the help had still come too late.

‘I'll help,' she said. ‘Forget the tea.'

T
he Eliots' small garden had become scrubland, resembling a poor football pitch after a long season without rain. Now it was swampy, the way Jane Eliot liked it best. She had added to the demise of the remaining flower-beds by jumping out of her bedroom window, conveniently on the ground floor at her own insistence. The route out of her window and round to the back door which led, via a corridor, back into the house, was one she could repeat again and again, flinging herself out from the edge of her bed, running back, doing it again, for no purpose other than a slight thrill. This evening, dressed in nightie, she paused in the twilight to rescue a remaining flower, without apology for having crushed the rest in weeks of indifference.

People
dug in the ground and hid things. Her friend Susan had a dog which hid bones in their garden. Jane was in possession of stolen goods herself and, while the theft had been easy (from the bottom drawer of Daddy's desk, where he kept small surprises for them all, especially for Mummy), conscience had this way of creeping up. Jane loved perfume, always had to beg for it, as well as other grown-up indulgences, and she did not see why. So she had taken the biggest boxes she could find. The earth seemed a good enough place to preserve the contraband, ready for transfer to school at the end of these long holidays. While Mark and the others shouted over a game in the kitchen, Jane scrabbled with her hands at the soil below her window. Just as it was occurring to her that she would find it impossible to disguise all this dirt on her front and would have to invent something to explain it, she struck gold.

Not gold exactly, but a golden justification of very base metal. An old something or other; she could say she had been mining. Perhaps it was worth a fortune, and ugghh! Worms! She pulled the thing out of the hole she had made, dropped it and stood back, squinting in the dying light. It was a dagger, something like that, it had a handle like a sword and a metal sheath, rusty, unpleasant to the touch. Jane looked round, then moved three yards away and quickly dug another hole, a shallower grave for the Givenchy.

Then she carried the bayonet indoors and found she was wrong. Neither parent thought it was anything special and in no way did the discovery excuse the dirt. So she went to bed in mild disgrace and clean clothes. The bayonet remained in the kitchen. They were not alarmed: it could have been there for ever, although Emily remarked that the blade had been sharpened once.

Alistair
suggested they could use it to poke the fire in winter. His parents had done the same. They did not listen to Jane when she said maybe it came from the man who had crept into the garden. The one who was scared of perfume.

It was a good tale to tell, raising the spectre of the bogeyman who no longer gained her the attention he had, but it was like all good tales. No-one believed you.

P
re-trial conferences. Ryan hated them. Going over old
ground with a new barrister who pretends he understands it. Bailey, looking both aggressive and uncertain, and a timid young man from the CPS taking notes.

‘This is the way I see it,' Bailey announced. ‘No, more like the way I smell it. Feel it, if you like,' he added, noticing the expression on Ryan's face at the mere mention of intuition. ‘Like I feel egg coming down all over my face.'

‘Well I understand why you find it so unsatisfactory,' Alistair Eliot remarked. ‘But it's too late, isn't it? I mean the way it's been delivered to me, your investigation is complete. Trial date set, only a month away. Trail gone cold and hardly time for further enquiries now. Of course it isn't entirely fair. There were three men involved in the fight, on either side. The three who came back to collect the money they'd lost had weapons: pool cues, a knife or two. The other three, including the dead man, Damien Flood, weren't armed, unfairly disadvantaged, you might say.'

Ryan considered the relative sizes of the men and the boys, and shook his head. Fights between drunks were never equal.

‘Damien Flood doesn't seem to mind the disadvantage, according to one of his friends. He wades in, gets into a close scuffle with our defendant, who manages to hit him on the side of the head, and he reels back. His friends are so big that they've frightened one youth and disarmed another. They leave Damien, take up the chase. They catch the one who grappled with the deceased. With remarkable restraint, they merely slap him, find out where he lives and let him go. Then they go back and look for Mr Flood, who seems to have gone home. He is not where they have left him, slightly hurt, as they thought. They go to Damien's bedsit. No sign. They back-track through the leisure centre. Find him
there. Call the police.'

Alistair shook his head. He was in formal role, sitting in chambers: a small room, shared with three others, crammed with books. Ryan considered a barrister ludicrous without wig and gown, found himself shocked at the sight of an obvious scorch mark on a shirt, noticed how the man's hair lay flat against his skull as though waiting for the headpiece. Then Alistair caught Ryan's scrutiny and smiled with such unfeigned sweetness that the other man blushed.

‘Anyway, ‘ Alistair continued, ‘because Damien's friends knew where the youth they had pursued actually lived, he was arrested. He has always refused to say who the other two of his gang were and is adamant none of them, bar himself, carried a knife. He's also adamant he only used it to inflict a scratch, but the evidence,' he glanced at a lurid photograph on the desk, blenched slightly, ‘is clearly to the contrary.'

‘A little flick knife,' Bailey murmured.

‘Not enough to do damage like this, you mean?' Alistair asked gently.

‘The pathologist says possibly, but only with considerable force. Since we don't have the actual knife, only one identical to the one the boy describes, who can say?'

We should have found that knife, Bailey thought. The boy said he chucked it away, can't remember where, but showed us an identical one he kept at home.

‘In any event,' Alistair continued, ‘it makes little enough difference. We aren't putting the case on the basis that this boy was totally responsible. We're putting it on the basis that our defendant went away and armed himself, on his own admission. He came back to the scene intending to do serious bodily harm. In the ensuing fight, a man was killed. We do not need to prove anything else, but the
intention
to do serious injury. If death results, even by recklessness, it is murder. That's the law. Murder does not necessarily involve an intention to kill. Even if his
compadres
were equally guilty, it does not make this one innocent of murder. What egg on face do you mean, Mr Bailey? It seems to me you
have done the best you can.'

Surnames here. No first-name terms in this set of chambers, not like at home, laughing over the Eliots' kitchen table.

Alistair spread his hands. ‘But,' he said, ‘having told you I don't see this case as anything other than straightforward, albeit stuffed with dissatisfaction, leaving the defendant free to blame his absent friends, I must now tell you that I am walking away from it. The CPS agrees someone else should take over. We juniors are easily interchangeable, you know,' he added, noting Ryan's look of disgust. Fickle bunch of bastards, Ryan thought. They take on a brief and all that money, then they dump you in the shit almost at the door of the court.

‘Yes, I understand,' Bailey was saying, giving Ryan a stern glance before relenting and explaining. ‘Didn't I tell you, Ryan? Damien Flood's sister works for Mr Eliot's wife. It all gets a bit personal, see?'

All Ryan could see, from his position of discomfort, crowded up against the third desk in this room, was the top photo on the desk. Taken at the scene by flashlight. Damien Flood, sprawled against a tree, trousers undone, belly exposed. Not the belly, the contents, spilling out on the ground. Not a stabbing, an evisceration. Lights and liver like his granny used to boil for their pets, and for the first time in a case he had never really cared about, Ryan could see why Bailey was worried. That little punk on remand could not have done this, not without help. Could he?

A fly landed on the lurid colours of the photograph. Out of some kind of respect for the dead, Bailey flicked it away.

‘I
'm sorry about this,' Alistair Eliot said after the others had gone and they were left alone in the crowded room, sunlight streaming through. ‘I didn't feel I had a choice. I've sat down outside a local pub and talked to a man who's a witness in the case, the dead man's sister is in my house every day … Can you imagine doing the trial, even as the junior, with Quinn doing all the talking and me the homework? I'd have to explain to poor Cath what was going on, wouldn't I, and then either she, or I, or Emily, would feel
about as comfortable as a hair shirt.'

‘There's no need to apologise,' said Bailey. ‘Ignore my sergeant's sulking. Nothing lost. You only opened the damn file a few weeks ago and there's plenty of time for someone else to absorb it.'

‘I need advice,' Alistair said suddenly, ‘of a domestic nature.'

Bailey grinned. ‘You're asking me? Why not try an expert?'

‘You'll do. You know more about women. So far, I haven't breathed a word of this to Emily. I adore my wife, Bailey, you know I do, but I've got the feeling she'd smother Cath with kindness, counselling, etc. She'd be knocking on the door of the Spoon and Fiddle and dragging the husband out by his hair. You see, Emily always believes something can be done. About everything and everyone. I don't.'

‘Nor do I. Is that your answer?'

‘I hate keeping things from her, but how can it help? Would it be worthwhile, do you think, if I popped into the pub, I do quite often anyway, and just dropped a hint to Joe Boyce, I mean, something just to let him know I knew that he hits his wife? I don't know much about these things, more Helen's line, isn't it, but I've always imagined that if a chap knows someone else knows he's hitting his wife, it may limit him. For shame.'

‘Or it may make him stop her coming to work for you.'

‘Oh,' said Alistair, confused. ‘I didn't think of that possibility. Dear God, what a privileged, sheltered life I lead.'

‘There's something else,' Bailey said, wanting to comfort him. ‘My sources are Ryan, via a lady in a domestic violence unit, strictly confidential, you understand? Your cleaning lady is dealing with her own problems. She's left her old man and holed up in the place where her brother lived. Her husband, according to her, does not know the existence of the place. It's on the same bus route,' he added irrelevantly, thinking of the convenience of the family Eliot. ‘Does that make you feel better?'

‘Yes, much. I still feel I should have a word with Mr Boyce.'

‘Ah,' said Bailey. ‘I thought I might set Ryan on him.'

Alistair looked surprised. ‘Is that wise?'

Bailey sighed. ‘I doubt it.'

‘How's Helen?' Alistair asked, shaking himself, changing
the subject with evident relief.

‘Fine,' said Bailey, a shade over hearty. ‘Very busy.'

That was early in the week. There had been a note in reply:

OK? It was brilliant. Helen West's domestic talents included an ability to slap paint on walls, applying extra to gum up cracks, but it took a while to get going. It was an act of economic conscience to limit the decorator to the difficult bits: it did not follow that she relished the rest. So to find, along with Cath's poorly written note, evidence of the first coat covering the bedroom walls in a colour called golden white, was a discovery tantamount to the finding of treasure. There is nothing, Helen realised, quite as exciting as the sight of pristine paint. Beat sex, beat everything, and if Bailey chose to persist in stand-off mode, that was fine, too. He was welcome to sulk until it was all done, and with the unexpected bonus of Cath, it would take a week rather than a month. If Emily Eliot's curtain lady worked with similar speed, as promised, this would be a seven-day revolution. Then Helen kicked the rolled-up carpet in the living room. She had thought it would
do. Cath's broad hint in the note she had left could not have been clearer.