‘I seem to have hit the wrong note, rather. But put it to him again, Mrs Parsons, will you? When he’s in a calmer mood. It was a serious point and may prove to be his only real defence. If he chooses to adopt it, that is.’
He opened his car door, then another thought struck him.
‘Oh, and don’t worry. I’ve never yet stooped to suing one of my own clients for assault. Wouldn’t be very good PR now, would it?’
‘He did what?’
‘Pulled the man’s nose, dragged him to the floor, and spat in his ear. Then...’
Lucy struggled to keep her voice neutral, but her emotions bubbled beneath the words. Officially she was, of course, appalled; but underneath she could not disguise her guilty delight. Lucy had always loathed being patronized by plummy QCs like Sir Richard; never before had she seen one so swiftly, comprehensively humiliated.
‘Sweet mother of God, Simon, what have you done now?’ Sarah hid her face in her hands, and peered at Lucy between her fingers. ‘He really did that? Pulled his nose and spat in his ear?’
Lucy nodded. ‘Smack in the middle. He used his monogrammed hankie to clean it out.’
‘
Oh
. Oh dear me.’ Sarah began to shake. At first Lucy couldn’t identify the reaction, then she realized it was laughter. A wild, hysterical kind of laughter, but laughter all the same. And once Sarah had begun to laugh Lucy started too, as she’d been longing to do all morning. The two of them rocked back and forwards in their chairs, hooting helplessly. Lucy wiped her streaming eyes, and passed the tissues to Sarah.
‘So what now?’ Sarah asked, sobering suddenly. ‘Will he still take the case, d’you think?’
‘He was still speaking of Simon as his client, when he got into his Jaguar.’
‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. But it’s hardly likely to increase his level of commitment, Lucy, is it?’
Lucy frowned. ‘His feelings ought not to come into it. Sir Richard Haverstock is a
professional
, Sarah.’
‘Yes, he is, isn’t he?’ Sarah met her friend’s eyes with a deadpan grimace. ‘A Queen’s Counsel, no less. Not a spittoon.’
‘Look, I’ve spoken to him and he doesn’t hold it against you. He understands that you’re under a lot of stress and he’ll forget all about it and give you the best defence he can.’
‘How can he?’ Simon asked angrily. ‘He wants me to plead guilty. He thinks I did it.’
‘He wasn’t saying that exactly, Simon. He was saying the prosecution have a strong case.’
‘So he’s given up already. That’s it, isn’t it?’
Simon, Lucy and Sarah were back in the interview room in Hull. It was less than a week before the trial was due to start. Sir Richard had not been back to see Simon again, but Lucy had had several long phone conversations with him. The man had been smooth, urbane, reassuring.
‘It’s his duty to give you the best advice he can. He said if he could present you in a sympathetic light, you might get eight years and be out in four. Which is a lot less than life.’
‘Eight years?
Christ.’ Simon stared out of the window, while a warder watched through the door. Since his assault on Sir Richard, Simon was handcuffed during visiting.
‘Is that what
you
do, then, mum? Tell people to plead guilty when they didn’t do it?’
‘Sometimes, Simon, yes. If the prosecution case is very strong, I might advise a client to do that in his own best interests. But it’s always the client who decides, not the lawyer.’
‘Yeah, well I’m the client and I’m pleading
not
guilty, OK?’
‘I think you made that clear to Sir Richard when he was here,’ said Lucy. ‘And I’ve told him that over the phone. Naturally he’ll defend you on that basis if you insist, he said.’
Simon looked down at his manacled hands. He was thinner and more subdued than she remembered, Sarah thought. She wondered if they were giving him some sort of calming drug. Or more likely, the impending urgency of the trial was getting to him.
‘Yeah, but what does he actually
know
about my case? He’s only met me once.’
‘I’ve sent him the papers,’ Lucy answered. ‘Four box files. He’s had them a week now.’
‘
A week?
’ Simon stared at her, anxiously. ‘Is that long enough?’
Lucy hesitated. The truth, she knew, was that Sir Richard had probably not given the papers more than a cursory glance so far. His massive, complex, and highly lucrative drug smuggling case was due to finish tomorrow, and had certainly occupied all his mental energies for the past month or more. By comparison, Simon’s case was small beer. But if the drug trial did finish on time Sir Richard and his junior would still have a long weekend to familiarise themselves with the evidence.
This was not unusual. Barristers prided themselves on assimilating large amounts of complex information swiftly. They were used to it. It was how the system worked. It was clients, rather than lawyers, who were unhappy with it.
She explained all this to Simon, who began to sway his head from side to side, in a panic.
‘You mean, they still don’t know shit about my case? They’re going to read all this stuff that you and mum have spent months on in just
three days
?’
‘They’ve already read some of it, Simon, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to talk to you about it last week.’
‘He didn’t talk to me, the ponce - he told me to plead guilty!’ Simon got up, walked to the window, and rested his manacled hands on the bars. The guard peered in anxiously. ‘Christ! The miserable sod advised me to plead guilty and he hadn’t even read the case! I thought at least he’d done that!’
‘Simon, he knew the main facts ...’
‘Sod the main facts! He’s supposed to know
everything
about it, isn’t he? Specially if he tells me to plead guilty!’
Panic was clear on his face. ‘This is the guy you chose to defend me? Mum? Lucy?
Why?
’
‘Because he’s a top criminal QC, Simon,’ Lucy insisted. ‘We were very lucky to get him.’
‘And that’s your idea of luck, is it? A guy who tells me to plead guilty before he’s read the papers? A guy who wants me to rot in here for four long years?’ He gazed for a while at the windblown clouds racing freely over the rooftops. Then he took a deep, sobbing breath and turned back into the room. ‘Well, I don’t want him.’
‘What?’
‘You heard, I don’t want a turd like that defending me. I’d rather defend myself.’
‘You can’t do that, Simon,’ said Sarah coolly. ‘Be sensible. You don’t know the first thing about the law.’
‘Maybe not.’ He focussed on her for the first time. ‘But
you
do, don’t you, Mum. Why don’t
you
defend me?’
‘
Me?
I can’t, Simon.’
‘Why not? You’re a barrister, aren’t you? And at least you know about my bloody case. You know everything about it, you do. You even saw Jasmine’s body.’
‘Which is exactly why I can’t defend you. I’m too closely involved. I’m your mother, after all ...’
‘True. And
you believe I’m not guilty, as well.’
‘Yes.’ If there was a hesitation in her voice it was the tiniest possible one, so tiny that Sarah hoped only she herself heard it. ‘Yes, I believe you’re not guilty.’
‘Well then. That’s a thousand times better than Sir Richard Pissface.
You
should do it.’
‘I understand why you think that, Simon, but I can’t. I told you, I’m too closely involved. The whole point of hiring a barrister is to hire a professional, an expert in the law who can put forward your arguments in the best way possible without the liability of ....’
She hesitated, words unexpectedly failing her for a moment.
‘Without
what,
mum? Without the liability of actually
caring
one way or the other, is that what you were going to say?’
‘Something like that, Simon, yes. It’s how the system works.’
‘Then the system stinks. It’s a load of shit.’
For a while no one said anything. The three of them thought hard. Simon’s eyes were locked on Sarah’s. Lucy watched, afraid to speak. This wasn’t just a matter of legal advice now, she thought. It was between Simon and his mother.
‘Is that true, mum? You’re not allowed to defend me, really? There’s a law against it?’
Sarah’s mind was racing - through everything she’d learned since she began to practise law. Simon had raised a question which, in all those years, had never actually come up.
‘I don’t think there’s a law against it exactly, Simon,’ she said falteringly. ‘It’s just the way it works.’
‘And you’re happy with that, are you?’
‘I didn’t say I was happy with it ...’
‘Mum, listen to me. All the time I was a kid, you were studying. You couldn’t go swimming with us, you couldn’t play football, because you had an essay to write or a book to read. Always. Then when you passed your exams and we thought it would get better, you got more exams, more essays. Remember? You were away for weeks, months on end. Study, study, study, that’s all you ever did. I never saw you. Your studying was more important than games and housework and cooking, you said, I’d understand that some day. You’d be a lawyer and I’d understand.
‘Well now you
are
a lawyer and I’m stuck in this stinking cesspit of a gaol, accused of a murder which I didn’t do - and I
don’t
understand. Not at all, not a bit of it.
Why
can’t you defend me? You’re a barrister, aren’t you - just as good as Sir Richard Filthy Ponceface - and you actually
know
all about my case, which he doesn’t and no other barrister does. I’m just asking you to use what you know. And you say you can’t because you’re my mother.
Christ!’
He turned away, gazing blindly at the clouds outside the window. Sarah was shocked. It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make.
‘That’s just cruel, Simon,’ she said faintly. ‘I didn’t abandon you when I studied. ...’
‘You may not have meant to, Mum ...’
‘I didn’t mean to and I didn’t do it! You know I didn’t! You were fed, you were clothed, you had friends and a father - Bob, he spent hours with you ...’
‘So why did you always have your nose in a book, then? Why?’
‘Because I wanted to get out of the filthy slum where we lived. That’s why. Because I wanted to make a life for myself and for you and all of us. A life in which we could be proud to hold our heads up and not scrounge around like victims blaming society for everything. That’s why, Simon. And I did it, too, didn’t I? Only you ...’
‘Only I what?’
She shook her head, despairingly. ‘Only you didn’t understand, Simon. You still don’t understand, do you? I wasn’t doing it just for me, I was doing it for all of us, for you most of all! And now look...’ She waved at their drab, dirty surroundings. ‘What are we doing
here,
Simon?’
‘Do you think I want to be here, Mum?’
‘No, but you got us here. No one else ...’
‘Well, now I want you to get me out! That’s what I’m asking, Mum.
Please.
You know how to do it, no one else does.’
‘You shouldn’t have such faith in me, Simon ...’
‘Why not? I’ve seen how hard you work. What else was it for, all that study?’
‘God!’ She slammed her hand hard on the table. ‘You still have no idea, do you? If only you knew, if only you understood what it was like having you there all the time. Holding me back, and yet being the reason, the only reason I did it all ...’
‘So are you saying you
can’t
do it because the law won’t let you? Or are you saying you
won’t
do it because you don’t care? Which is it, Mum? Tell me.’
Sarah’s anger left her as suddenly as it had come. She couldn’t answer; she didn’t know what to say. She looked at her tall, desperate son, his hands manacled in front of him, and was struck dumb.
‘Or did you do all that work, all that study, just so you could defend druggies and burglars who you don’t know and don’t give a shit about? Is that it, Mum? Is that your great profession which you studied so hard for all these years, to get us out of the slums?’
‘Simon, you don’t understand!’ She reached one hand tentatively towards his. ‘You need a cool head to defend you, not someone who loves you and ...’
‘Love, my arse!’ He snatched his hands away. ‘If you loved me you’d defend me, that’s the truth of it. Not this ...’
‘You need a top criminal QC - someone detached and brilliant who ...’
‘Who doesn’t give a shit about me. No, I don’t, thank you.’
‘You’re just trying to make me feel guilty, Simon. What you really need is someone much, much better than me.’
‘What I want is someone who
cares,
Mum. Don’t you care about me?’
‘Of course I care, Simon. That’s the whole point. That’s why I shouldn’t do this. If I messed it up I’d never forgive myself.’
‘That’s exactly the point, Mum - don’t you see? No other lawyer in the world - not even Lucy - cares about this case much as you. That’s exactly why I want you to defend me.’
Their eyes locked, each desperate to convince the other. For once in her life, Sarah felt herself losing the argument. Losing, and despite herself, wanting to lose. She drew a deep breath. ‘You really want this, Simon? Even though I tell you it’s unwise?’
‘If I say I want it I do, Mum. Trust me.’
‘It’s you who’ll be trusting me, more like.’
‘Yeah, OK.’ A nervous smile flickered on his lips. ‘You mean you’ll do it then?’
She hesitated, struggling to maintain some detachment. ‘If you really want me to.’
‘Mum!’ He laughed aloud with relief. ‘
I want you to.
OK?’
‘All right, Simon.’ She felt like a priest giving a blessing. ‘I will.’
Only she wasn’t a priest, she didn’t believe in miracles. Especially not miracles performed by her.
‘Sarah ...’ Lucy’s voice warned. ‘I’m not sure you can ...’
‘I will if I
can
, Lucy, that’s what I’m saying. Simon, look, there are laws and precedents and the judge will have to decide about those. If he won’t let me I can’t do it. But if you really want me to defend you and the judge allows it then I will. That’s what I’m saying. I still don’t think it’s wise, it’s probably not wise at all.’