Courting Trouble (9 page)

‘Gimme it,’ a male voice snarled. It was then I saw the knife. He jabbed the serrated, evil tooth towards my abdomen.

I’m a lawyer. The only wound I’ve ever received is the odd paper cut. Which is why I was about to hand over my handbag when my mother roared, ‘Oy! That’s a hundred per cent genuine imitation Dolce and Gabbana!’ then kicked the man so hard in the shin with her leopardskin heel that he dropped the knife. Next, she stomped on his instep and twisted his arm. ‘Judo, the handshake that bites back,’ I thought to myself. As she spun his arm up behind his body, she ripped off his hooded jacket. With his head and face now exposed, all menace evaporated. Our assailant was a boy of no more than fourteen, his face lightly frosted with acne. He actually looked like Justin Bieber, but the version that had been made to steal beer for his dad at the age of nine and watch his mum get high on crack.

‘Gimme back me hoodie,’ the boy whined. ‘I’ll catch cold. See? I’m snifflin’ already.’

My mother kicked the knife into the light, where she could see it. ‘Oh, good God. It’s a friggin’ butter knife. What were you going to do? Slather me to death with marmalade? What kind of hardened criminal
are
you?’ Roxy scoffed. She then dipped into her pocket and retrieved a fistful of jellybeans which she thrust out at him on her open palm before relaxing her grip on him. The kid snatched up some sweets, then scuttled away.

‘Jellybeans?’ I asked, as we descended the reeking staircase. ‘You bring your only daughter on to a crime-riddled estate armed with a packet of 9-calibre candy?’

‘My secret weapon,’ she explained. ‘I always carry a supply in my pocket. It soothes the raucous. Most of these kids are just misguided and disadvantaged. They wouldn’t know happiness if it jumped up and bit them in the bum. At school, they write essays entitled “What I’m Going to Be
If
I Grow Up”,’ she called out as she catapulted down the last flight. By the time I caught up with her at the car, a crowd of girls in stack heels the size of mill chimneys had gathered around it, lounging on a patch of threadbare grass in the feeble sunshine.

‘Maybe the locals are planning a little barbecue,’ my mother suggested.

‘Oh, well, that’s nice . . .’

My mother gave me one of her condescending if-only-my-daughter-specialized-in-criminal-instead-of-civil-law looks. ‘“Barbecue” is the local terminology for burning a body in a petrol-doused car. Possibly ours. Estates are made up of decent, hard-working people, Tilly. But flats become vacant, the council does nothing, the rats move in first, then the drug dealers, who also thrive in dark corners. Pretty soon it’s a no-go area.’ She pointed to the shabby, squalid block opposite us, which was throbbing with heavy metal bass and drums. ‘If you’re surrounded by crime, no matter how hard you try to protect your family, some of them will be sucked into the underworld. Especially when there’s no work.’

She glanced back warily at the girls gathered by our car. But we soon saw why they were there.

In huge scarlet dripping letters on the stairwell’s outer wall was emblazoned the still-wet graffiti ‘Chantelle’s a dirty slut’.

My mother went barrelling towards the gang, her face fierce. ‘Who did this?’ she demanded. The wind made a comedy of her beehive, which now listed precariously to the left, a pale pagoda of toppling curls.

The girls collectively gave us the finger, their nails long enough to fight off a porcupine.

Roxy marched to the corner shop to buy turps and two scrubbing brushes. I trailed after her. A sign on the shop counter read ‘No pork products sold here.’

‘Shame there’s no ban on chauvinist pigs then,’ Roxy fumed. As she scoured and scratched at the graffiti, she mumbled, ‘As I keep saying –
if only I knew a good lawyer
.’

I picked up the other brush and also attacked the scarlet lettering. An icy wind had sprung up. It moaned around the sharp corners of buildings, slapped my face and thwacked the backs of my stockinged legs. Bemused onlookers watched us work, our hands numb and red raw with cold. A clump of males in hooded puffa jackets and black chinos swaggered into view. The group of girls suddenly resembled a shoal of petrified fish as sharks slowly circle. I thought of Chantelle, terrified and cornered. I thought of my own darling daughter, just a few years younger.

‘Okay, Roxy,’ I told my mother, ‘I’ll take the case.’

Before you eat anything in prison, just remember that every morsel of food about to pass your lips was supplied by the lowest bidder. That was my mother’s advice to Phyllis when she was carted off to Holloway – a hotel where the guest is always wrong – after bail was refused by the local magistrate, just as I’d predicted.

Both of Chantelle’s assailants had denied the charges of rape, conspiracy to rape, grievous bodily harm and aggravated assault. Roxy swept back into the office bearing these bad tidings. She plonked herself on the couch and immediately cracked open two things – the spine of a legal notebook for her and a chocolate block for me.

‘Right. Plan of attack. As both scumbag rapists are pleading their innocence, and conviction rates for rape trials are lower than Lady Ga Ga’s bikini line, it’s imperative that our gran goes on trial first.’

‘Why?’ Countess Flirtalotsky wanted to know, leaning in excitedly. When paying us a visit from her stately pile in the country, the Countess likes to feel part of the action, even though the only law she really understands fully is pre-nup proceedings.

‘If the Crown Prosecution Service doesn’t get a conviction in Chantelle’s rape trial, then the jury will lose sympathy with our ball-blasting gran. She will just be a deranged, vengeful old bat who shot two innocent blokes in their precious gonads in cold blood and will spend the rest of her life monitoring due dates in a prison library.’

The Countess shuddered. ‘That just can’t happen.’ I glanced at her, surprised at this uncharacteristic show of compassion. ‘I mean, prison libraries have such terrible book selections. And absolutely no Pushkin.’

‘The point is’ – Roxy got us back on conversational course – ‘if we want to get Phyllis out of prison, then someone has got to talk to the Senior Treasury Counsel. The case is so newsworthy it’s been kicked up to him.’

‘Who is he?’ If the Countess had been a cat, her whiskers would have been twitching.

‘It’s the senior prosecutor at the Old Bailey. He has the power to persuade the chief clerk to list our granny’s case first, before the rape trial.’

‘You should talk to him, Roxy. You can talk anyone into anything,’ I said, dwelling for a moment on the potentially lucrative legal career I had swapped at Jack’s commercial Chambers, where our exorbitant fees would be sufficient punishment for any wrongdoer, for the pandemonium of life as a criminal legal-aid lawyer on Planet Pandora.

‘No, I think this job’s a cert for you, Tilly.’

‘Me? Why me?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Well, I think in this case, only
you
have the right powers of persuasion. The new Senior Treasury Counsel has just been announced. It’s a name you know well. One Jack Cassidy.’

I made the face of someone undergoing a surprise enema. ‘Mother, Jack won’t do something for nothing. And the something he’ll want is for me to go on a date with him and, basically . . . I’d rather eat my own pedicure shavings.’

‘Who’s Jack Cassidy?’ the Countess called from the office kitchen, where she was searching for wine.

‘He was once my lover-in-law.’ My mother was clicking away on her laptop.

‘Jack Cassidy was not my lover, Mother! He was just the guy who tricked me out of my virginity.’

‘Oh, you misery-guts. Why can’t you stop acting as though you’re in a Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movie, admit that you’re still attracted to the bloke and just go on a bloody date?’

‘Yes, I could date Jack . . . or I could stay home and rearrange my own internal organs with a chainsaw. A much more enjoyable experience.’

Jack’s chiselled face blinked on to Roxy’s computer screen, along with various press reports of the eligible barrister helicoptering into Ascot on the arm of a Hollywood movie actress he was ‘linked to romantically’, limousining out of Annabel’s nightclub in the company of George Clooney and lying supine on the yacht of some movie mogul in Cannes in swimming trunks so tight you could detect the man’s religion.

A blog called ‘Male Lawyers Hottie List’ flashed up, and my mother clicked on the link. The Countess read his winning entry aloud:

‘
Phwoar!
Jack Cassidy ticks so many boxes, we’re going to need new boxes!! With his strong jaw, waves of luscious dark hair and suave man-of-the-world Cary Grant-charm, including a dimpled chin and naughty twinkle, the man would look more at home nursing a Martini in Monte Carlo than a case file in The Temple. Jack, cutting a fine figure in his smart suits, apparently works his abs like he works his briefs. Girls, there’s some really hot flesh on this skeleton argument!

A 6’1” hunk who played rugby, tennis and cricket for Oxford Uni, he knows he’s
da bomb
, not only because of his undeniable sexiness but also because of his impeccable academic record, topping his year with a starred first and a cornucopia of prizes.

Jack took his smarts straight to the piggybank, joining Regal Helm Chambers. Yes, legal ladies, Jack Cassidy as
numero uno
Lawyer Lost Object of the Year is a no-brainer! Being Jack’s girlfriend could be tough, though, as you have to keep all those pesky paparazzi at bay. Can’t a couple go to Elton John’s white tie and tiara summer ball in peace?!’

‘Strange how those bloggers see Jack as top barrister tottie . . . while I see him more as a lapsed satanist,’ I said coolly.

‘Really? My own hotness committee confirms that Jack Cassidy could have a very lucrative jockey-underwear endorsement deal,’ the Countess purred, peering over my mother’s shoulder.

‘What the man has is a giant “To Let” sign on his brain. It’s empty and up for grabs to anybody.’ I snapped shut the laptop lid so forcefully, I nearly severed Roxy’s fingertips.

The Countess’s eyebrows are tweezed into pencil-thin arcs which give her a slightly surprised expression, even in her sleep. But she really did seem surprised at my reluctance to date the Senior Treasury Counsel. ‘Of course you’ll go and sweet-talk him . . . But you may have to borrow some of my clothes.’ She cast a disparaging eye over my bobbled jumper and frayed jeans.

I am five foot seven, with green eyes and red hair, parted, like my politics, on the left, but still have a figure which can sashay down a Barcelona beach and get wolf whistles – at least if I’m holding my stomach in so hard my neck gets thicker. But when it comes to sartorial expertise, well, whoever makes my clothes is too embarrassed to sign them.

‘Yeah, sure, I could borrow some of your clothes . . . as long as I wasn’t planning to eat more than a twig for two weeks,’ I mocked. ‘Besides, I’m not going to talk to Jack Cassidy. The man is just not my cup of slime.’

Roxy gave me a stern, levelling look. ‘Tilly, I didn’t go through thirty-six hours of labour to give birth to a limp bit of lettuce. I have nipples down to my knees because of you.’

‘Mother, the man has no moral code. Barristers like Jack believe a man is innocent until proven destitute.’

‘Just think about all the sacrifices I have made for you, Matilda! Those perfectly straight teeth in your lovely mouth; that law degree on your wall . . . they represent my holiday home in the Dordogne, a bespoke Versace suit, the BMW sports car of my dreams . . . and all the other things I don’t bloody well have.’

‘You forgot the best gift you’ve given me. Guilt. The gift that just keeps on giving.’

‘If you don’t go to see Jack, I’ll take terrible revenge. I’ll buy Portia a descant recorder.’

Ignoring this truly horrendous threat, I retreated behind a magazine left by a client and immersed myself in the travails of Rihanna, a profoundly misunderstood young woman. (Apparently, wealth and fame are okay, but true spiritual happiness is the source of all enlightenment and still seems to be eluding the poor poppet.)

‘Let me paint you a picture,’ Roxy persevered. ‘Prison is a place where you get
promoted
to cleaning toilets. With your own toothbrush. Right now, our poor, beleaguered, scared old gran is being taken from the court cells in a prison escort van known as a “sweat box”. Once the prison gates slam shut, she’ll be frogmarched to a holding pen to be photographed and fingerprinted and given a pat-down search by staff . . . And I mean the kind of intimate pat-down that’s usually only associated with childbirth. But nobody will hear her weeping above the drug-withdrawal screams of other inmates. Although, in Britain’s overcrowded jails, it’s easier to get hold of drugs than underwear, which is rationed to two pairs of knickers a week. So it’s probably preferable to be off your face actually, when locked in your cell for twenty hours a day – just you, a psycho, sex-addict cellmate with gastroenteritis and your communal dunny. Wardens will take away all Phyllis’s property – watches, jewellery, self-esteem. She’ll then undergo a risk analysis to see whether she’s likely to self-harm during the critical early days of her imprisonment. That’s when most suicides occur. If we don’t get Phyllis’s trial on first, she could be on remand for a year, having poo put in her porridge and boiling water “accidentally” spilt over her. If she’s not pulverized into granny gruel by any prison cooks who are on the payroll of those rapists’ drug bosses.’

‘How fascinating,’ I commented casually, glancing up from the magazine page I was reading. ‘Jordan’s undergone five breast implant operations. Boob jobs are like TV evangelists. You know they’re fake, but you can’t stop looking at them,’ I commented conversationally.

‘Matilda, if those rapists intimidate Chantelle into not giving evidence, our gran is going down. You might as well just shove her out of an aeroplane with a cast-iron parachute.’

‘Do you really think Chantelle will go to water in the witness box?’ the Countess asked, reappearing from the tiny kitchen with three wine glasses.

‘Courts are bloody scary places,’ Roxy sighed. ‘The defence barrister will portray the poor kid as “delinquent” and “manipulative”. He’ll say that it was consensual sex that got a little rough. He’ll suggest Chantelle’s not a victim but merely a naughty girl doing grown-up things. Or a bunny-boiler type who had a vendetta against these two innocent blokes because they wouldn’t go out with her.’