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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

       ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

ONE

       Wednesday Afternoon – Chambers

      The phone on my desk rang. I licked my fingers, moved my cream cheese and tomato sandwich and picked up the receiver.

      ‘Frankie, I know you said you wanted to do paperwork tomorrow, but Davidson’s have just rung. Kay’s got a quick in-and-out job for tomorrow morning that she wants you to do. She’s faxing the papers through. It’s at Highbury Corner Mags.’

      I groaned. A quick in-and-out at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court was a contradiction in terms and Gavin, my clerk, knew that very well. Then again, if Kay Davidson wanted me in particular there might be something interesting in it.

      ‘What is it?’ I asked.

      ‘Drunk and disorderly.’

      ‘Drunk and – Gavin! I’m meant to be doing those appeal papers in Morris. We’re nearly out of time.’

      ‘She said it was important.’

      ‘Oh, what, important that someone regularly in the Court of Appeal should return to the magistrates’ court?’

      ‘Someone regularly where?’

      ‘All right, someone who would like to be regularly in the Court of Appeal. Someone of nearly ten years call –’

      ‘Who is charming and eager to help out a clerk in distress …’ Gavin was playing the game in his gruff, cockney accent.

      ‘Someone who has been at the Bar for nine years, and who may well be charming and eager to help out a clerk in distress but who has, it should be remembered, forgotten most of the crime she ever knew – you are saying it is important that she should do this case?’ I asked.

      ‘Yes,’ he said.

      ‘Isn’t there anyone else?’ I wheedled. In the pause that followed I knew Gavin was pretending to look at the computer screen to see what everyone else in chambers was doing the next day. He liked Kay. If she had asked for me, he would make sure she got me.

      ‘No,’ he said. There’s no one else.’

      ‘All right, Gavin, I will do it. But if I’m not out of court by half past eleven you will seriously regret it.’

      ‘You say the sweetest things,’ he said. I replaced the receiver and picked up my cup of tea.

      My phone rang again. I spilt tea on my sandwich as I answered it.

      Gavin said cheerfully, ‘I’ve got Kay on the line, to have a word about tomorrow.’

      ‘OK.’ I pushed the briefs on my desk out of the way of some insistent drips of tea and looked for something to make notes on. I found a piece of paper that looked suspiciously as if it had been on my desk for some time. I read ‘FR ring Dr Henry’ and a number with a Brighton code, and promised myself I would do it as soon as I had spoken to Kay. Gavin put her through.

      ‘Frankie, I’m sorry about this case.’

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought, as I dabbed at the tea by the desk calendar.

      ‘It’s just that it’s an old client of yours.’ She paused. ‘It’s Saskia.’

      ‘Saskia! My God, Saskia.’

      I hadn’t seen Saskia for at least five years. Tall, blonde, lovely Saskia. She had large grey eyes and a wide friendly smile with perfect teeth. I’d represented her on several occasions when she’d been arrested after demonstrations. We’d had some good results, mainly due to that charming smile. She made you think of full cream milk and welfare orange juice, as my mum would say. She was in fact more a child of the seventies and eighties, rebelling against the Conservative government.

      ‘What is Saskia doing being charged with drunk and disorderly? I would have thought a little marijuana was more her thing.’

      ‘I don’t know. She rang me from the police station. She sounded in quite a state.’

      ‘What time was she arrested?’ I began making notes.

      ‘Half past two this afternoon.’

      ‘Half past two! Where?’

      ‘Balls Pond Road. Outside the sofa factory.’

      ‘I can’t believe this. What was she doing in Islington? I thought she lived in Manchester now.’

      ‘I don’t know any more about that than you do. It was a very short phone call,’ Kay said. ‘The last I saw of her was at one of those women’s sixties evenings at Camden Town Hall. That was years ago.’

      ‘Do you mean THE women’s sixties evening, where you and I … ?’

      ‘Yes.’

      I snorted. That must have been seven years ago, almost to the month. Kay and I had had our final, noisy, passionate argument at the back of the hall when she refused to dance to ‘Get Ready’ by the Temptations. She said you couldn’t dance to that beat, whereas anyone with half an ear for music … but don’t get me started. Kay and I hadn’t spoken to each other for nearly a year after that night, and since she was a criminal solicitor and I had stopped doing crime shortly after, we had rarely spoken since.

      ‘What’s in the brief then?’ I said professionally.

      ‘That’s about it, actually.’

      ‘And I assume this is a freebie.’ I tried not to sound calculating.

      ‘We’d never get Legal Aid for it.’ Did she breathe deeply before saying, ‘How about I take you out to supper to make up for it?’

      ‘When?’ I asked.

      ‘When you like.’ She was expansive. ‘How about tonight?’

      Mentally I surveyed the contents of my fridge. Olives and semi-skimmed milk would test the powers of the best TV chef. I put majesty into my voice: ‘All right, where?’

      ‘What do you want to eat?’

      ‘Italian?’ I ventured.

      ‘There’s a good Korean restaurant near here.’

      ‘I said Italian.’

      ‘I know you did.’

      I wondered who had stood her up. I could hear the olives calling me, pathetically, tragically. The milk, I knew, was sour.

      ‘Chinese?’ I was willing to compromise. I always had been. There was silence. ‘I don’t want to eat Korean,’ I complained. ‘The only thing I like are those flowers carved out of carrots and turnips, and you can’t eat those.’

      She sniffed.

      ‘Think Italian,’ I continued. ‘Think of red wine and garlic and crusty bread and a cheerful companion. We can go to that place on Upper Street and you can drive me home after.’

      ‘I’ll see you there at seven.’ I didn’t like her resigned tone of voice. ‘I’ll bring your brief,’ she added.

      ‘And your happy face,’ I pleaded. I put the phone down and said, ‘Damn.’ I’d been so close to getting through a phone call with Kay without whingeing. I began dabbing Tipp-Ex over the tea stains on the instructions to prepare Mrs Morris’s notice of appeal.

      I always forget where Gino’s is and I got off the bus at the

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