Hugh shook his head. ‘Really. I’ll have some extra chips instead.’
The cold or the stress had made her slow, she gazed at him in puzzlement.
‘Spuds are good for vitamin C, aren’t they?’
‘But chips aren’t—’ Then, catching his expression, she coloured slightly. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the packet forward. ‘Have one for now.’
Hugh took the pastille dutifully and, as Isabel set off with Derek to find Court 12, slipped it into his pocket.
Resuming his scrutiny of the entrance, Hugh searched for Tom Deacon’s taut discordant figure, his characteristic staccato stride. At ten twenty he decided Tom must have got lost on the Underground or badly misjudged the travelling time. Tom had talked vaguely about staying with friends somewhere beyond Putney, as if there was some region of south-west London yet to acquire a proper name. Though it was more than twenty years since Hugh had been articled to a firm of solicitors in Westminster, returning each evening to a cramped flat-share in Fulham, he was familiar enough with the layout of the suburbs to know that the rail links were few and far between. Tom had probably underestimated the time it would take to reach the nearest station, and the number of changes necessary, and the likelihood of delays due to points failures, bomb scares, and driver no-shows. Hugh only hoped he wasn’t suffering a full-blown panic attack.
To know Tom Deacon was to worry about him. In the four years since Hugh had taken on Tom’s personal injury claim, through all the setbacks and delays, the hagglings and manoeuvrings with the other side, not to mention the numerous crises in Tom’s health and personal life, it seemed to Hugh that he had spent more time worrying about Tom than all his other clients put together.
Hugh called Tom’s mobile, knowing it would be switched off on the advice of his therapist, who insisted he pick up messages no more than twice a day. Hugh left a message anyway, reminding Tom they were in Court 12, saying he might have to go on ahead.
A moment later his phone beeped, but the text wasn’t from Tom, it was from Annaliese, Hugh’s PA, to say she would be dropping off some urgent mail at his house that evening.
Hugh left it as long as he dared, then, two minutes before court was due to begin, started up the stone steps at a run, diverting briefly to the first-floor balcony to take a last glance into the Great Hall below. He was veering away when a familiar figure caught his eye. It was Tom, standing in the queue for the security check. Even in the shadows at the end of the hall he was unmistakable, the bony head, the hunch of the sharp shoulders, the ill-fitting jacket cut by the straps of his rucksack.
Hugh hurried down again and, overcome by affection and relief, strode across the hall to meet him. ‘You’ve made it! Well done!’
Tom was too busy casting around the hall to notice his outstretched hand, so by way of a greeting Hugh touched his sleeve instead.
‘Problems on the Underground?’
‘Where’s Desmond?’
‘He had to go on ahead.’
Focusing properly on Hugh for the first time, Tom’s eyes flickered with agitation. ‘What about the conference?’
‘It’ll have to wait till lunchtime.’
‘But I need to talk to him.’
‘Court’s just starting, Tom. It’s ten thirty.’
Tom’s frown contained puzzlement but also what looked like a more general confusion, and Hugh wondered whether he’d overdone his medication. It had happened a couple of times before, most notably on the second day of the hearing when Tom, giving evidence, had found it so hard to form even
the most basic sentence that the judge suggested he step down till another day.
‘You all right, old friend?’ Hugh asked, noticing the pallor of his skin where it stretched over the sharp cheekbones, and the sheen of dampness that clung to his forehead.
‘Yeah . . .’ Tom murmured distractedly. ‘Yeah . . .’
‘Anything you need?’
‘No, I . . . just didn’t sleep too well . . .’
‘Always difficult in a strange bed,’ Hugh said, knowing that Tom hadn’t managed a good night’s sleep in five years, ever since the road accident when, unable to free his four-year-old daughter from the overturned car, he had been forced to watch her burn to death. ‘Look, do you want to go for a coffee first? Take a few minutes to—’
‘No,’ said Tom with sudden urgency, as if he’d finally understood how late it was. ‘No, we should get up there!’
They moved off, Tom walking in long jerky strides, his eyes fixed doggedly on the floor ahead. ‘What I’ve got to tell Desmond,’ he said, ‘it’s very important.’
‘Okay,’ Hugh said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what it is, then I can pass him a note?’
But Tom was wearing the stubborn, harried expression that suggested he had other plans. ‘It’s . . . too complicated. I’ll have to write it out.’
‘Fine. So long as I can see it first.’ Then, because this had sounded peremptory, never the best approach with Tom, Hugh added, ‘You know how it is, Tom. Procedure.’
‘I know the procedure.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Hugh said easily, as they started up the steps.
‘It hasn’t been
that
long.’
It had in fact been five weeks since the hearing had overrun its time allocation at Bristol High Court and been adjourned until the next gap in the judge’s peripatetic schedule. This week, the first available, had found the judge sitting here at the Royal Courts, so like a band of gypsies they had struck
camp and brought the caravan of lawyers, documents and witnesses to London.
‘I’ve been working on the case non-stop,’ Tom went on, with a hint of rebuke.
‘I know you have, Tom.’ And Hugh had batches of his typed notes to prove it, in duplicate, a set for him and a set for Desmond on which Hugh had exercised a certain discretion, either editing them heavily or omitting to forward them. More recently Tom had taken to calling Hugh in the evenings, sometimes quite late, to go over points they had covered a dozen times before.
Tom climbed the last few steps at the double.
Hugh said, ‘We shouldn’t have missed too much, you know. There’s bound to be some preliminary stuff before they call the first witness—’
‘
Price
,’ Tom breathed derisively. ‘Bloody
Price.
’ Price, a former army comrade of Tom’s, was giving evidence for the other side.
‘It’s not Price on first, Tom. It’s Dr Ainsley. Price won’t be on till this afternoon at the very earliest.’
Tom halted. ‘But you said it was going to be Price.’ The lack of sleep or the medication had lent his voice a childish whine.
‘What I said, Tom, was that Price
could
be on first if Ainsley got delayed. But Ainsley’s made it okay, so we’re back to the original schedule.’
‘For God’s sake . . .’
‘I said I’d phone if there was a change.’
‘You said it was going to be Price,’ he repeated reproachfully.
Tom had these little frets from time to time when events were crowding in on him and he was struggling to retain a sense of control. Hugh said reassuringly, ‘Much better to start the week with a key witness for our side. That way we get to restate our case before Price gets into the witness box.’
Tom moved forward again, but cautiously, as if the day still
had the power to spring further unpleasant surprises on him. ‘When will I be giving evidence?’
They had been through this on the phone as well, but Hugh answered as though for the first time, ‘I’m not sure, Tom.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Umm . . . Desmond thinks, unlikely.’
‘But as soon as Price has finished.’
‘You know how Desmond is – he likes to see how things go.’
Stopping again, Tom said hoarsely, ‘But you promised.’
‘No, Tom. What I promised was that I’d put your request to Desmond – which I did. I told him you were keen to counter Price’s evidence in person. Which he already knew from his last meeting with you. He’s really very clear about what you want. But at the end of the day we have to let him decide. He’s the advocate. He’s the expert. He knows how to play it.’
Tom tipped his head back and held it there for a second or two before relenting with a slow expressive closing of his eyes, as if further argument would simply cost him too much in terms of nervous energy.
At times like this, Hugh felt the impossibility of comprehending what Tom’s life was like, not just the battle to get through the day with its flashbacks and panic attacks, nor the nights with their jolting nightmares, but the fact that he was having to endure it alone. Two years after the tragedy Tom’s wife had left him, taking the two remaining children with her, and now lived seventy miles away with a new partner. To have lost his wife was bad enough, but to be separated from his children seemed unimaginable to Hugh.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
Tom sucked in a long breath. ‘Yeah.’
As they walked on, Tom returned to an old grievance. ‘I suppose there’ll be a whole lot more crap from the other side.’
‘Ainsley’s going to be a strong witness. I don’t think they’ll manage to beat him down.’
‘But they tied Munro up in knots, didn’t they?’
It was partly true. Munro, a psychotherapist who’d treated Tom with cognitive behavioural therapy, had produced an excellent written statement, but under cross-examination had through inexperience or lack of confidence hedged his comments with so many ifs and buts that he’d appeared ponderous and uncertain.
‘His evidence stood up okay,’ said Hugh firmly. ‘But we always knew the other side was going to throw a lot of mud, didn’t we? It doesn’t mean it’s going to stick.’
‘But that’s all the judge gets to hear – crap.’
Like many people encountering the adversarial system for the first time, Tom kept taking it personally. The opposition’s attempts to show that his troubles had started long before he witnessed his daughter’s death, that he’d been suffering depression and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder since his military service in Bosnia, never failed to unnerve him.
At the doors to the court Tom unhitched his rucksack and paused to straighten his shoulders and take a series of deep, snatched breaths, like someone who’s been taught relaxation exercises but hasn’t quite got the hang of them.
‘You realise Price may be sitting in court,’ Hugh said.
Tom gave a tight nod.
‘Well, play it cool, eh? Don’t give him the satisfaction of letting him get to you.’
‘Sure,’ Tom murmured. Then, allowing the idea more room in his mind, rallying to this vision of himself as a man in control, he gave a more definite nod. ‘Yeah. Sod him.’
His gaze had turned hard, his voice flat and unreadable, and for a moment he might have been the Tom Deacon of four years ago, sitting in Hugh’s office, asking him to take his case.
It was the time immediately after Hugh’s old firm Dimmock Warrington had merged with the up-and-coming Marsh & Co. While Hugh hadn’t opposed the merger, he hadn’t seen much point in it either and had been judged behind the times for
saying so. According to the forward thinkers, standing still was no longer an option; the firm had to grow or die. In the old set-up it had never been thought necessary to have a corporate objective; it was taken for granted that the firm would do the best possible job for its clients while providing a decent living for its partners and employees. But the newly formed Dimmock Marsh was made of more ambitious stuff and had rapidly acquired a mission statement, to become the top firm in Bristol and the West, or as the slogan-writers had it, The Best in the West. Specialisation and expertise were the new watchwords. Generalisation was regarded as a necessary but unprofitable sideline. Of the nineteen partners in the merged firm Hugh was one of only three not to answer the call to specialise, preferring to stick to the traditional hotchpotch of conveyancing, wills, probate, and contract: what he liked to call high street law, but which was now termed private client work. Under the new regime Annaliese was required to ask potential clients the nature of their business in advance so they could be directed to the appropriate specialist. But Tom Deacon had refused to disclose his reasons for coming to see Hugh, so, on welcoming him into his office that first day, Hugh was expecting to hear about some kind of dispute, with a neighbour perhaps, or a business associate, because in his experience it was confrontation that made people secretive; that or shame.
Tom Deacon was about forty and painfully thin, his neck scrawny inside the over-large collar, his jacket swimming on jagged shoulders. But most striking at first sight was his face, the skin so tight over the bones that the course of the veins and sinews was visible beneath, while a sharp groove had formed under each cheekbone, as though the flesh had been sucked inwards and held firm by some invisible claw. When Hugh got to know Tom better, he wasn’t surprised to find he was a heavy smoker and hard drinker who ate little and badly. But his immediate impression was of a man being consumed from within, as if by some voracious parasite.
Deacon sat down stiffly and, though the pristine steel-and-glass
decor shouted of a rigidly enforced no-smoking policy, he pulled out a cigarette. ‘Okay, is it?’ he asked, very much as an afterthought.
‘Sure. I’ll find an ashtray . . .’ For lack of anything better Hugh emptied the papers out of his wastebin and placed it next to Deacon’s chair.
Lighting up, Deacon fixed his intense gaze on Hugh. ‘I was recommended to you.’
‘Oh? Can I ask who by?’
But Deacon wasn’t about to be drawn. ‘A couple of people,’ he said vaguely.
‘Well . . . I’ll try to live up to expectations. So what can I do for you, Mr Deacon?’
Deacon stared at Hugh a while longer, as if making up his mind about him, before beginning to speak in the dull monotone Hugh would come to know so well. Until last year he’d had a good life, he said: a wife, two boys of six and three, a daughter of four called Holly, and a regular job as a joiner and cabinet-maker. Then one day when he was driving Holly back from a birthday party a car came round a bend on the wrong side of the road and crashed into them, sending their car down a steep slope where it landed on its roof. Knocked unconscious, he came round to the sound of Holly’s cries. He managed to unfasten his seatbelt and get out – the driver’s door had been thrown open – but as he went to free Holly the car burst into flames. The rear door was jammed tight, he couldn’t open it. By the time he got back to the driver’s door the interior was an inferno, he was beaten back by the flames. He was in hospital for several weeks, he couldn’t remember how long exactly. He had bad burns and a broken leg. When he eventually tried to get back to work he couldn’t hold down a job. The other driver, an eighty-year-old farmer, had suffered a heart attack just before the crash, and died as a result of one or both. The insurance company had offered Deacon thirty thousand pounds in settlement, but if he couldn’t work again then it wasn’t going to be enough. He wanted to know if he could get more.
He told his story without obvious emotion, gazing at Hugh in an unfocused way, as if looking through him to some distant world. Only when it came to the money question did his eyes sharpen again.
Hugh said, with considerable feeling, ‘My condolences on your terrible loss, Mr Deacon.’
Deacon gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.
In a tone of sympathy Hugh explained why he couldn’t take the case. It required an expert, and he was a generalist without experience in personal injury. The man Deacon should see was Martin Sachs, a senior partner at Dimmock Marsh who was highly respected in the field and could advise him on the best way forward.
While Hugh was speaking, Deacon’s expression darkened. With a shudder of tension or irritation, he stated bluntly that he’d come to Hugh on the recommendation of friends, that he’d chosen the man not the firm, and – showing a spark of the flint within – that he wasn’t about to be shunted sideways on to someone else.
Hugh knew he shouldn’t hesitate to turn the case down. Quite apart from the gaps in his knowledge, which would need a crash course to fill, a case like this would carry a huge weight of responsibility. It was one thing to guide clients through the mundane transactions of life, when the collapse of a house sale was considered a major setback, and quite another to deal with the aftermath of tragedy, when you had the one shot at getting the compensation right. There was something else that bothered him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on until he was showing Deacon out of the office. As they waited for the lift, Deacon said, ‘All I want is to get my life back.’
Hugh should have pointed out there and then that the law wasn’t in the business of restoring lives, that all it could offer was money, and then generally far less than you were expecting. But something made him hold back, probably the same thing that had made him go against his earlier intentions and agree to consider taking the case after all. At home that evening,
trying to explain it to Lizzie, he said he felt a duty to protect Deacon from the sharks who infested the personal injury pool, firms that promised the earth, took a fat fee, and delivered a rubbish job. He wanted to save him from Martin Sachs as well, for while his revered partner couldn’t be classified as a shark he had an aggressive bulldog style, all bark and worse bite, which would have been quite wrong for someone like Deacon, who would need support at every stage along the way.
‘So what’s worrying you?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Whether I’m up to it.’
‘Why wouldn’t you be?’
‘Lack of experience. Lack of speed. Having to fumble around in the dark . . .’
‘Would you do a worse job than Martin Sachs?’
‘No . . . No, I’d make sure I didn’t.’
‘There you are then,’ Lizzie said.
‘I’m still not sure . . .’
‘Why?’
‘Partly Deacon’s expectations . . . wanting his life back. The responsibility of the case. And . . .’ It came to Hugh then, the concern he hadn’t been able to name. ‘The feeling that Deacon’s holding on to his sanity by his fingertips.’
Hugh got a rough ride at the next partners’ meeting. Martin Sachs, sitting on a very high horse indeed, asked what point there was in having specialists if their expertise was ignored. Not only was it amateurish to use a non-specialist, but there was a considerable risk of mistakes being made, mistakes which, he hardly needed to remind everyone, could bring the firm’s name into disrepute. The chairman, an arbitrator by trade, suggested that Martin might act as an éminence grise for Hugh, guiding the case from behind the scenes, factoring his time into the fees equation. But Martin wasn’t having any of that. It would result in a dangerous blurring of responsibilities, he declared, and was therefore unworkable. There the matter might have rested if Ray Wheatcroft hadn’t come to the rescue. Ray, whose history stretched back as far as Hugh’s, to the old
firm and beyond, and who had become his closest ally in the combative climate of the new regime, pointed out that it was surely better to have won the job on less-than-ideal terms than not to have won it at all, particularly when it was such an unusual case which was bound to create widespread interest.
Hugh wasn’t convinced about the widespread interest argument, but it was enough to carry the day and permanently sour his relations with Martin Sachs, whose blood pressure rose visibly at every mention of the case, and didn’t get any lower when two psychiatrists confirmed that Tom Deacon was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, thus propelling the claim into a different financial ballpark, confirmed when Desmond Riley advised them to turn down an offer of three hundred thousand pounds and enter a fresh claim.