

## JUST TO HELP HIM OUT

## AND TO HELP HIM ON HIS WAY ...

### By Ernest Marlin

A Wegworld Ltd Publication ©2013
Just to Help Him Out and to Help Him on His Way...

By Ernest Marlin

A Wegworld Ltd Publication

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © Ernest Marlin 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publishers.

Events in this work are based loosely on real events, but have been changed and compiled to create a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents have been changed and are used in a purely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26
PROLOGUE

It was hot, uncomfortably hot. John Lovett paused to mop his balding brow with a grubby hankie before continuing across his field towards a ramshackle, old barn that stood in the corner of the meadow surrounded by ancient oak trees.

Just visible behind the barn was his reason for walking across the field this steamy July afternoon. It was the bonnet of a white van. He had seen it earlier that day when he was driving along a nearby lane, Nightingale Lane, on his way to town, catching sight of it as he glanced towards the barn from the road. There had been no particular reason for him looking apart from the fact that he was always on the look-out for intruders. Travellers, he feared and loathed them the most and it was travellers he suspected as he caught sight of the vehicle.

'Pikies,' he said aloud to himself as he stopped his vehicle and turned it around before driving back to the farm to get his gun.

Now armed and dangerous, he was on his way back to the barn, not along the public highway, but across his own land.

He approached the barn cautiously, stepping slowly and deliberately through the weeds and tangled undergrowth that surrounded it. There was no sign of anybody being about. All was silent, save for the gentle soporific cooing of a dove in a nearby tree and the distant sound of traffic on a road. He peeped around the corner of the barn and saw the van parked with its rear towards him. There were windows in the rear of it, but he couldn't see through them.

He paused. A bee buzzed drunkenly past his head and awoke him from the reverie into which he had fallen. He advanced cautiously towards the van with his shotgun under his arm, safety catch on, and then stopped dead as a slight breeze wafted the scent of death towards him.

It was unmistakeable. The smell of corruption. Anybody who has smelt a dead cat in a roadside ditch will know that it's a smell you can cut with a knife. This, though, was not a dead cat. This was a dead man sitting in the driver's seat of the vehicle, his head slumped forward on the steering wheel.

With his grubby hankie held firmly over his nose and mouth, John Lovett walked ahead of the driver's door and then turned back to look more closely, now upwind of the dreadful smell of rotting humanity. It was only now that he noticed the length of pipe coming through the passenger side window and held tightly in place by the window itself. Without investigating further, he had little doubt that the other end of the pipe would be found over the vehicle's exhaust.

_Carbon monoxide poisoning_ , he thought as, shaken, he returned to the farm to call the police. He almost wished that it had been travellers after all.
CHAPTER 1

The body was found on the Wednesday. Five days previously, the then living custodian and occupant of that body had been alive and appeared, at least to the casual observer, to be well.

The white van and its driver had arrived on a fine, sunny Saturday evening at the home of Jim Hunt, a solicitor who wearing shorts and watering the garden was not a little surprised at its arrival. Jim groaned and ground his teeth as he recognised the driver. It was Derek Spencer, a builder in his fifties that he had acted for over many years. He liked the man well enough, but it was Saturday evening.

_For heaven's sake_ , he thought to himself. _Was there no privacy? What on earth could the man want?_

He forced himself to smile as he wiped his hands on his shorts, turned the hose off and walked towards Derek who was getting out of the van and smiling at him in a lopsided way. Their hands connected in a damp handshake as Derek said apologetically,

'Sorry to call on you at home like this, but I really need to talk to you.'

'What about?' said Jim mystified.

'Now listen,' said Derek, putting his hand on Jim's shoulder in an almost paternal way. 'I'm not piddled and I'm in my right mind, but I've decided to kill myself and I want to change my Will.'

He delivered this announcement in such a matter of fact way that Jim laughed and said, 'Come on Derek! Pull the other one!'

'No, no, Jim, listen,' said Derek earnestly. 'I mean it. You know the trouble I've had with that cow of a wife – I've tried and tried, but I can't get rid of her,' he continued with mounting irritation and much rolling of the eyes. 'It's no good, she's cleverer than me and she runs rings around me.'

'That's no reason to do anything silly,' interrupted Jim, continuing and stating the obvious, 'You can sort it out through the courts.'

Again he groaned inwardly. He had been aware for many months of the breakdown of the marriage and had done his best not to get involved. Notwithstanding the fact that he had told Doreen Spencer, Derek's wife, that he could not help her and that she needed to consult a solicitor other than himself, she had still from time to time rung him sounding desperate and appealing for advice and help he was not able to provide.

So, despite the fact that he had not been directly involved, he had, as it were, watched the shipwreck from afar. When he said to Derek that the pair could sort it out through the courts, he knew that in saying that it was something he had already said repeatedly and which for some reason neither had been able to grasp or attempt, at least as far as he was aware.

Derek continued. 'I know and you have always seen me right, but,' he paused and looked Jim straight in the eyes, 'I'm over 50 and I just haven't got the strength to fight her anymore. I've tried everything I know. I gave her money to go away, but she came back and I've had enough. She's too clever for me.'

'Look, Derek,' said Jim, trying to appear and sound serious which was not easy given the air of unreality he felt about the conversation. Was it really happening? Was he imagining it? He patted Derek on the shoulder in a comforting way, but really to satisfy himself that he was actually there. He felt solid enough so he continued, 'You cannot do something daft just because of a domestic problem that can be sorted out.'

'True,' replied Derek, 'but it's not just that. The business has gone down the tubes.' He paused and added, reading Jim's mind, 'Oh, I know it's my own fault with my drinking, but that bastard manager has nicked so much money I don't see how I can recover. I'm too old now to start again.'

Jim decided to change the subject. 'Come in the house and have a cup of tea,' he suggested.

'Alright,' said Derek, 'but you won't change my mind.'

They went in the house together. It was summer and warm and the kitchen door was open. The smell of baking wafted out of the door as they entered.

Jim knew Derek of old. He was a man of extremes; hard-working one moment then off on a week-long bender the next when no-one would know where he was. He had deliberately and knowingly drunk his way through one marriage and one business to Jim's certain knowledge.

He had come up the hard way. Born on a pre-war council estate in Barnet with a father who worked as a 'scav' or scavenger, as a street sweeper was called, was not the most promising of starts. He knocked about doing odd jobs after leaving school at fourteen until he was called up to do his National Service which, unfortunately for him, coincided with the war in Korea which he had, however, survived with no visible marks apart from the tattoo on his right forearm which depicted a cross and the words 'Korea, never again!'

After he completed his service, he returned home and drifted into building work. He was observant and had an agile mind, and without serving any kind of apprenticeship he soon acquired a sufficient smattering of knowledge of the various trades to set himself up as a jobbing builder and prospered on the rising tide of England's post-war economic recovery that began to gather pace during the 1960s.

Derek had a restlessness about him and a kind of self-destruct built into his character so that he would work hard to build a home and a business and then, having achieved that, it was almost as if he became bored with success and he would set about dismantling everything. This he achieved by the simple but destructive process of drinking to excess.

Drink always had a fascination for him. He had no hobbies apart from drinking. His living room in one home Jim had seen actually resembled the inside of a public house, the impression reinforced by the presence of a full-scale bar that he had obtained from a public house he had worked on and which was complete with beer pumps, barrels and all the optics and other paraphernalia that would greet a member of the public on entering a pub.

Behind the bar there was a large mirror which bore the legend 'In Vino Veritas' inscribed upon it in letters of gold, and next to it was a large photograph of a scantily-clad and extremely well-endowed barmaid who offered the invitation to 'Ride Me If You Can'. Quite how it was possible to rise to both challenges was a mystery to Jim.

A complete range of every imaginable form of spirit and liquor completed the bucolic picture of an alcoholic's heaven.

Both Jim and Derek sat down at the kitchen table after Jim had evicted the family cats from the chairs. Hortense, a really snotty, piebald cat retreated to the window sill where she sat and peered at them both imperiously.

Jim looked at Derek carefully. In his judgement he was without doubt sober. Jim had had some experience of Derek in circumstances where that had most definitely not been the case.

Like all alcoholics, Derek liked nothing better than to have a drinking companion and so if Jim had to meet with Derek about business, then he tried to do so as far away from lunchtime as possible to avoid being dragged out to lunch, which for Derek meant the start of a long drinking session that at best would last hours or until he fell over. Unfortunately, such was his tolerance to alcohol, acquired after much practice; it took a lot to knock him over.

Jim had been caught out by this once and that had been enough. Drunks can turn nasty when you don't join in and Derek had become unpleasant when Jim had said, in an effort to get away politely, that he had to get back to his office for an appointment. In the end, Jim had simply got up and said, 'Cheerio,' and left Derek to it. Derek had taken the precaution of laying in some reserve companions by buying drinks for the whole bar when he had seen that Jim was determined to go and so had plenty of company to continue drinking.

This particular evening he was sober and, although smiling, apparently deadly serious.

'So, where do I come in?' asked Jim.

'I want to change my Will.'

'Why?'

'Well, at the moment if I die it all goes to Doreen and I don't think that's fair. My daughter, Lorraine, should get some – I've worked hard enough and she is my flesh and blood even if we haven't always seen eye to eye.'

Jim pondered for a moment. From what he knew of Derek's affairs, given that the building business had been run down by a lethal combination of Derek's neglect and the manager milking it, meant that his biggest asset was his house.

The home, a large, detached property in a leafy suburb had only a small mortgage on it and would be worth a lot of money. Derek had acquired the land after his first marriage ended with his share of the divorce settlement. At that time, it had a derelict, old bungalow on it, but he was in a born-again phase, having reduced his former business, home and marriage to ashes, and he quickly rebuilt the property.

His new building company was doing well and when there was the occasional lull in activity, he used his home as a hospital job for his otherwise unoccupied craftsmen. The result was a palace arising phoenix-like from the ashes, a brash statement of his new-found drive and optimism.

Then he had met Doreen. Quite how this had come to pass, Jim did not know. He was first made aware of it when Derek asked him to meet him at a pub for lunch. This was absolutely the last thing that Jim had wanted and, perhaps with a baleful glance backwards, Derek had been quick to reassure Jim that he was a changed man adding that he wanted Jim to meet his new girlfriend, Doreen.

That sounded reasonable enough and indeed so it proved. Jim met them at the pub and was introduced to Doreen, a pleasant-seeming woman as far as first impressions go, and lunch together with the business that they had to discuss passed off without incident.

Jim was asked back to Doreen's home nearby which he had not the slightest desire to see, but was caught unawares by the invitation and didn't have the time to come up with an excuse quickly enough.

Her home nearby was a modest, little house, neat and orderly in appearance. Jim was shown around and made appreciative noises as the various changes and improvements Doreen had made were pointed out to him in exhaustive detail.

Not only was he not in the least interested in home improvements, but somebody else's home improvements he found mind-numbingly boring within seconds of the subject being raised.

He had once, with a girlfriend, gone to an infinitely forgettable dinner party, save for the fact that the hostess had subjected the guests to a lengthy account of the trouble she had had getting the living room curtains made to her satisfaction.

All attempts to change the subject were brushed aside as the woman went on and on in excruciating detail to a now totally crushed audience wilting under the tyrannical tedium of the woman's account.

At one stage, Jim thought he would wave his handkerchief, which fortunately was white, as a sign of surrender, but then he realised that he didn't have the strength any longer even for that.

Now he was being shown the downstairs lavatory which would have made the lavatory on an aeroplane or a broom cupboard seem spacious, so small was it. Doreen was about to launch into an account of the difficulties she had encountered having it tiled when Derek unintentionally came to Jim's aid since he fancied a drink.

Given that they were not married and Doreen was on her best behaviour, his request was not only heeded but dealt with promptly and within moments Jim found himself sitting on a chair in the living room opposite Derek, now comfortably ensconced in a pink leather armchair cuddling the half pint glass of brandy Doreen had given him before sitting shoeless at his feet gazing submissively up to him with cow-like eyes.

Jim seized his chance and stood up announcing that he needed to get back to his office and, ignoring all protestations to the contrary, beat a hasty retreat to the door and away.

Not a totally reformed character then, he had thought to himself as he drove back to his office.

Events must have progressed because in due course Jim was made aware that Doreen had become the new Mrs Spencer and joined Derek in his spacious home.

Some years passed. The pair appeared to prosper. Derek often asserted that he no longer drank and was a changed man. Then, periodically, there were disquieting events as gradually the cracks started to appear.

Derek started to ring Jim at his office and to complain about Doreen and not long after Derek first rang, Doreen started to ring too. Neither wanted advice which was just as well since he could hardly have advised them both. Both seemed to be sending out increasingly desperate SOS signals with Jim's function being simply that of the observer watching the ship of their marriage foundering from afar.

This went on for some months. Then, just when he thought it must come to a head, he had a phone call from Derek sounding cheerful and saying that they had patched things up. All was well, but he wanted to put the house into both their names. This, he thought and hoped, would make her happy.

This Jim was duly instructed to do and the day came when both sat before him, Derek smiling, Doreen strangely subdued, as he explained what was to happen. They were both, he informed them; to own the house as he understood they wished to as beneficial joint tenants which meant that if one of them were to die, then that person's share would pass automatically to the survivor. They confirmed that that was what they both wanted and the house was put into their joint names.

Now, sitting in his kitchen on the hot July evening, Jim reminded Derek of the situation with regard to the house.

'You remember you put the house into both your names?'

'Yes. I thought at the time it would make her happy and keep her off my back, but if anything she got worse.' His face darkened as he frowned at the recollection of their married life together and then launched into a lengthy condemnation of the woman who was not there to defend herself.

_That was just as well_ , thought Jim to himself because the things that Derek was saying about her were so offensive and so critical of her that there would probably have been at the very least a screaming match between them with him as the umpire.

According to Derek, who wanted Jim to record everything he said about her, she was just as bad as the manager of his former business had been, always scheming to get his money off him. She would hide the cheque book to stop him using it, she went through his pockets, she hated his daughter, Lorraine, and she was spiteful to his little dog, Ted.

Jim had met Ted on one memorable occasion and in his view a more spiteful Jack Russell terrier would be difficult to find. The dog was like a piranha on four legs and nothing short of a very hard kick in the ribs ever got it to sit still and leave you alone. Derek though, he knew, adored it.

'In fact,' continued Derek looking at Jim earnestly, 'when I'm gone you mustn't let her have Ted. She'll starve him to death deliberately.'

'Surely not,' said Jim doubtfully.

'You don't know how evil she is.'

Whether she was or not, Derek certainly sounded as if he meant what he was saying. He actually thought, but did not say, that in removing Ted, Doreen would be performing a public service. He realised, though, that Derek would not welcome a remark along those lines.

He tried to move things forward. What had been a pleasant, relaxing, summer evening had descended into some kind of life and death struggle, or so it seemed. Whatever the rights or wrongs of that, he was being asked to prepare a Will by a man he had known for years, who was stone-cold sober and who appeared to be in his right mind, at least in so far as that applied to Derek.

He was a man of passions. Now he wanted a Will. When he wanted something, he was a force to be reckoned with. Jim gave in to the inevitable and reached for a piece of paper and a pen.

'Right,' he said firmly. 'Tell me what you want.' Derek relaxed a bit.

'Look,' he said, 'I only want what's fair, half for her and half for my daughter.'

'That's all very well, Derek, but Doreen already owns half the house because you gave it to her. If you go 50/50, Lorraine will get only a quarter of the house. She'll share your half with Doreen, and,' he added,' as it stands at the moment, you own the house as beneficial joint tenants. If you die, your share goes to Doreen automatically.'

'Can you do anything about it?'

'We can, but I need to serve a written notice on her signed by you severing the joint tenancy.'

'What's that in English?'

'It's a short notice changing the basis upon which you own the property so you can leave your share by Will rather than that it passes to her automatically. Mind you,' he cautioned, 'it means she can do the same. If she were to die, you will not automatically get her share.'

'I don't care about that, Jim. I won't be around. Let's just do it.'

Jim took up his pen and began to write in the ponderous terminology of the law, 'I hereby revoke all former testamentary dispositions made by me and declare this to be my last Will'.

He drafted the Will there and then on the table top, since he was required to and he could see no alternative. He drew the Will as required. Derek left his half of the house to Lorraine and he left everything else to Doreen so whatever there might be, the remains of his building business for example, would be covered by the everything else clause.

Jim called his sister, with whom he lived, to join them and she left her young children upstairs to whom she had been reading a bedtime story, and together with Jim acted as a witness when Derek signed the Will on the kitchen table in front of them.

Jim wrote out a short statement for Derek to sign as well in which he set out brief reasons for making the provisions in the Will that he had. It was with some difficulty that Jim got Derek to tone down what was said. Derek was virulently rude about Doreen, but Jim, who much later would have cause to regret it, insisted that Derek keep it as factual as possible and leave out all his criticisms and scathing remarks.

Finally, Jim wrote out a notice from Derek addressed to Doreen and signed by Derek severing the joint tenancy that they currently had of the matrimonial home and replacing it with the new arrangement. They would continue to own the property equally, but it meant that Derek could now leave his share by Will as he wished too to his adult child by his first marriage, Lorraine.

Smiling and relieved to have sorted things out, Derek then left giving Jim as he went a cheque drawn on his building company account saying as he thrust it into Jim's hands,

'Thanks, Jim. I've signed it and left it blank so you can fill in whatever figures you like.'

Then he got into his van and drove slowly off saying through the open window as he left,

'I like it here, Jim. It's got a nice atmosphere.' Then he was gone. Jim waved him off then looked at the cheque before tearing it up. He knew that the building company had no money so whatever figure he put would be a waste of time. Then he turned and went into the house.

'He seems a strange one,' said his sister to him as he went into the kitchen.

'You're right,' said Jim. 'He likes dogs.'

Then he went to have a shower.
CHAPTER 2

Derek's manager, to whom he had alluded when speaking to Jim, was a man called Oliver Arkwright, a young man in his thirties from Bradford.

Jim had been introduced to Oliver by Derek saying that his business had grown beyond the point where he could manage it all himself and that Oliver, who was a surveyor, would be able to help him by managing the business day-to-day and, as a surveyor, providing estimates and quotes for customers, freeing Derek up to do more essential things.

Quite what these other essential things were was not specified, but with the progress of time it became apparent that with Oliver managing the business, as Derek fondly imagined, he was able to concentrate on his hobby, namely drinking.

Oliver was a young many in his thirties around about Jim's age in fact. A veneer of respectability and normality clung to him. He had short hair and always wore a suit. He was totally unremarkable in appearance. If you passed him in the street and were asked later to described him, you would be hard pushed to do so.

Behind this bland and unexceptional exterior, however, there lurked a rake whose main interest in life was to knob as many women as he could get hold of, laying siege to them until from flattery or weariness they succumbed. Having succeeded, he would knock them up in short order and be on to the next one before the baby was born.

This pattern was obvious enough in hindsight, but not at the time. One or even two relationships floundering might be put down to bad luck or bad judgement, and at first the true character of the man was hidden behind a fog of apparent remorse and even threats of suicide, all of which, of course, became less believable as time went by and the pattern repeated itself with fresh victims.

To pay for his serial womanising and the mounting child maintenance which were the Achilles heel of his system, he eventually resorted to stealing from his boss, Derek.

This, too, was easy enough at first. All he had to do was manipulate Derek by encouraging his drinking, an activity into which Derek was only too happy to divert all his energy and attention. So it was that Oliver was able to run cash jobs on the side, cheat and swindle the men over their wages, sell off the firm's equipment and materials, all whilst Derek lay comatose in some drinking den with like-minded aficionados of alcohol.

It couldn't go on indefinitely, of course. Something was bound to give sooner or later. What brought things to a head sooner rather than later was the fact that Oliver, bored and seeking fresh excitement, decided to go in for a bit of variety. Oliver had occasionally felt attracted to men, but a Calvinistic upbringing had militated effectively against any experimentation of that kind, at least until one evening when after a few drinks he decided quite suddenly to try a little cottaging.

The cottage he had in mind was no rural idyll, but a lavatory at a lay-by on a busy nearby orbital road and which, rumour had it, was a meeting place for homosexuals looking for a sexual encounter with a stranger. It was at this squalid location that one rainy and dark autumn evening he made his way by car, parking in the lay-by near the small brick lavatory building.

He sat in his vehicle for a while looking into the gloomy night as the car rocked slightly from side to side in the gusts of wind caused by the constant stream of traffic going past him.

There was a lorry parked in the lay-by and other vehicles ahead of that. Eventually, as if having made his mind up, he got out of his car quickly, turned his collar up against the rain and hurried in the gloom towards the dimly-lit lavatory building. He reached it and went in.

There is something about the smell of a men's urinal on a rainy night that makes cats' piss smell almost attractive. He wrinkled up his nose, but he had come this far and was determined to continue.

There were two cubicles and he entered the one on the right which was vacant. The other appeared to be occupied. He went in and shut the door. As he did so, he noticed that there was a large hole which had been gouged out of the wall between the cubicles at about waist height. He watched fascinated as an erect penis was thrust through the hole and into his cubicle.

That's not there to hang my coat on, he thought. Had he been a lawyer, he would have recognised that this was what one of the denizens of the law might have described as 'an invitation to treat'. He was no lawyer, but he could recognise an invitation when he saw one. Resolutely, he took hold of the erect penis. A sigh came from the other cubicle.

Unbeknown to the now preoccupied occupants of the cubicles, above their heads in the loft maintaining observation on them both was no less a person than police constable Jonathan Augustus Higgins who, on seeing them enthusiastically sampling forbidden fruit – forbidden in a public place anyway – carefully placed on one side his now almost finished Chinese takeaway and glancing reluctantly at what was left exited the loft climbing down with one boot on the sink and the next on the slightly lower urinal before reaching the floor.

Here, he straightened his jacket, placed his helmet on his head and banged firmly on the doors of the cubicles saying in a stentorian voice, 'You're nicked.'

Derek, temporarily sober and coincidentally in between drinking bouts, was asked as a consequence to bail Oliver out when the call came from the police station. Basically, having nobody else to call upon, Oliver had given Derek's name as a potential surety for him to turn up at court. In the process, Derek inevitably learned what it was Oliver had been arrested for.

He was shocked. He had all of the prejudices of the English working class and, individuals whom the lads had termed 'Arab bum bandits' during his National Service in Palestine, was one of them.

The shock kept him sober for longer than usual and he went into the office at the yard where what he found shocked him still further. He was not a very literate man, but even he could recognise the difference between order and chaos as he looked around the untidy office at the edge of the builder's yard from which the business was, in theory at least, managed and run.

Slightly dazed, he slumped down in the mock leather executive chair and looked at the desk strewn with papers. He couldn't help but notice the letters from the bank explaining about the overdrawn firm's account. Overdrawn! He had always run the business with cash in hand. He hadn't needed an overdraft and yet now they were overdrawn?

His stunned gaze fell upon a pile of cheques sent back unpaid by the bank after they had been presented against the business account.

That was not all, though. There were also numerous cheques written to pay cash which had been paid by the bank. He looked at them in amazement. Some were for large sums in cash and all were apparently signed by him, D Spencer. He didn't remember signing these cheques. He looked more closely.

The closer he looked, the more he was satisfied that he hadn't signed them. Who had? It could only have been that little toe-rag Oliver, he thought, as he began to feel really angry. Not only had he stood bail for the little pervert, but the bastard had been stealing from him.

At that moment, the door opened and in walked Oliver Arkwright. For a moment there was silence as both men, surprised, looked disbelievingly at each other. Then, his face purple with rage, Derek threw himself across the desk at Oliver and grabbed him by the lapels of his donkey jacket. He was a heavy man which is a polite way of saying he was significantly overweight and the desk was a large one, so he had only a tenuous hold of Oliver's jacket.

Oliver instinctively stepped backwards and his jacket came free of Derek's grasp leaving Derek stretched across the desktop floundering about like a beached turtle.

In other circumstances, he would have looked quite comical, but it was entirely clear to Oliver that caution was the better part of valour and he turned and left the office as quickly as he could and sprinted across and out of the yard before Derek had time to recover and come after him.

Overweight as he was, Derek was so enraged that he pursued Arkwright across the yard, now armed with a shovel he had grabbed on the way. Arkwright was a much younger man and made good his escape leaving Derek bent double clutching his knees and gasping for breath at the yard entrance.

Two labourers who had watched the proceedings with interest looked at each other. One said to the other, 'Sure, I didn't know that the boss could run that fast.'

'You've never seen him going into a pub,' said the other and they both hurried to help Derek now sagging under the impact of sudden unaccustomed exercise, all anger gone.

That was the last Derek saw of him, although there was a stream of threatening correspondence from the solicitor consulted by Oliver. That was where Jim came in and it was Jim who suggested instructing a forensic handwriting expert to look at all the cheques Derek said had been forged.

This took some time and in the meantime Oliver started civil proceedings in the High Court, claiming damages for all the wrongs he considered he had suffered at Derek's hands, all on the assumption that Derek would not stay the course and would eventually pay him off simply to get rid of him.

In this he was mistaken, however. Derek was determined and indeed so determined was he that he stayed off the booze or at least toned it down for the time being.

In due course the handwriting expert's report came through and confirmed that the cheques, all of which had purportedly been written by him, had not in fact been written by Derek. Given that it was Oliver who had conducted the day-to-day affairs of the business; it was perfectly plain that if documents were forged, then he was the likely culprit.

Oliver seemed to think so anyway and soon after the handwriting expert's report had been disclosed to his solicitors, he sued for peace. Since he had started the court proceedings, the only way Derek would agree to them being discontinued was if Oliver paid Derek's legal costs. This he did, having little option in the circumstances.

Game, set and match to Derek who was delighted at the outcome.

This still left the little matter of a run-down business in debt with unpaid tax and other bills. Instead of knuckling down to pull things around, Derek went on a celebratory victory binge. By the time it ended, he had no business and his first wife, Lorraine's mother, had divorced him. Such was his track record by the time he met Doreen.

CHAPTER 3

On the Monday morning after the Saturday visit by Derek, Jim was sitting at his desk in his office unsure of quite what to do next. The Will and notice of severance lay on the table before him. He knew that, to be effective, the notice had to be served and yet how was he to manage that?

He didn't want to contact Doreen. During the phone calls that she had made to him, he had repeatedly said that she needed her own solicitor to advise her and that he couldn't do so, but that hadn't stopped her ringing him.

He should really not have taken the calls, but out of a sense of sympathy for her in her obvious distress, he had felt obliged to do so even though really all she was doing, like so many clients, was trying to treat him like a counsellor or therapist of some kind. There was absolutely no advice he could give her, nor did he offer any beyond suggesting she consult a solicitor of her own choice.

Now, he had a problem. He could post the notice to her, but what if she later said she had never received it? Then fate took a hand. The phone rang and his secretary told him it was Doreen Spencer. He took the call. She ignored the usual preliminaries and got straight to the point.

'I must see you.'

'Why?' he asked. She didn't say, or wouldn't say, just repeating again and again in an increasingly agitated voice,

'I must see you.'

Jim thought quickly. If she did come to the office, he could give her the notice face-to-face and so he said,

'Alright, come over straight away.'

She put the phone down and an hour later walked into his office. She appeared calm and was well dressed. He was slightly surprised. She didn't seem in the least bit agitated. She sat down. Jim paused.

'Yes, Doreen?' he said.

She bit her lip and said,

'Derek's gone and I don't know where. I've looked everywhere for him. Nobody has seen him.'

'Look, Doreen,' said Jim, anxious to keep matters as brief as possible, 'I don't know where he is now, but I saw him on Saturday when he came around to my house and instructed me to prepare this notice,' he said as he handed her the notice signed by Derek. She took it and said nothing, just looking at him blankly.

'Where is he? What has he done?'

'I don't know, Doreen.'

He wanted to get rid of her. First Saturday had been invaded by an alcoholic builder pressing his problems upon him, now it was the wife in front of him and, frankly, he had had enough. _I am not a bloody agony aunt_ , he thought irritably.

'Look, Doreen, I'm sorry that you and Derek are having a difficult time, but as I have told you many times, I cannot get involved in any of that – I'm sorry, I really am.'

'I thought you were a friend and that you would help me,' she said pathetically.

_Well-acted_ , he thought, _you cow. You come here only to pump me and to find out what Derek was up to knowing that of all people he would be likely to speak to me. Well_ , he thought smugly, _you certainly got a surprise!_

All of this flashed through his mind in a moment even as he stood up and with his most sympathetic expression on his face ushered her to the door. At the door she paused and looked at him. For a brief instant, the pathetic façade dropped and he found himself looking into the steely eyes of a witch.

'You've got a lot to answer for,' she said quietly before leaving.

He sighed with relief when Doreen had gone. He had felt awkward, uncomfortable and embarrassed. Despite not wanting to get involved in any way, shape or form, Derek had involved him.

He liked Derek, but Derek had dropped him in it. He had been unable to refuse the man what seemed to him at the time to be a perfectly reasonable request, namely to be able to leave his estate, created after all by him, to whomsoever he chose.

He did not disinherit his wife. She had already been given half the house, but he had wanted to ensure that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, got some benefit from his estate too. That seemed entirely reasonable to Jim, but then he wasn't Doreen.

Still, he consoled himself. It would all blow over. Derek would go off on the piss yet again and then sober up and come home and they could then sort it out between them. Even as he thought that, it seemed to him that that was unlikely, but Derek was a strange character. He had a capacity for rising phoenix-like from the ashes. He would sort something out.
CHAPTER 4

Not this time, though. This time Derek would not rise from the ashes, he would be reduced to them. Two days later, on the Wednesday of the week, Jim received a tearful telephone call from Lorraine, Derek's daughter.

'It's dad,' she sobbed. 'He's dead.'

Jim could hardly believe his ears.

'No,' he said disbelievingly. He had not thought that Derek would actually take his own life. Then he quickly realised that he didn't know that that had happened. He didn't know anything actually. What he did know was that he had a very upset young woman on the phone who was telling him that she had just lost her father.

Jim had never thought that they were close, but then perhaps neither Derek nor Lorraine had realised during his lifetime that they cared for each other quite as much as they did, with Derek altering his Will in her favour and now her deeply upset at his death.

_If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand people_ , he thought. Every time he had seen Derek and Lorraine together, they either argued or tip-toed carefully around each other obviously trying to keep the peace. Perhaps it was because in many ways they were very similar.

Both were quick-tempered and wanted their own way. Both always knew best. Add alcohol on one side and rebellious youth on the other and you had a volatile mix. Jim knew that she had often told Derek that she hated him. Now he was gone she was bereft.

'What happened?' said Jim, largely to move the conversation onwards. He knew that they would find out in due course because there would be an inquest.

'He was found in his van with a hosepipe fixed to the exhaust. They say it looks like suicide.'

Jim groaned inwardly. Don't tell me the stupid bastard actually did top himself, he thought. Lorraine was, of course, not aware of her father's visit to his house on the Saturday before. _Was now the time to mention that?_ he wondered. _Probably not_ , he thought. There would be time enough for that later.

*

Events moved quickly onwards. Given the circumstances of the death, there would have to be an inquest so that the circumstances of the death could be explored and determined. Arrangements were made by the coroner's office and the body was then released for burial. Jim went to the funeral.

The church was packed and there, at the front covered in flowers, was Derek's coffin. The atmosphere was one of shocked silence and then Doreen arrived clad in black with a black veil, being supporting by her adult children as she made her way haltingly to the front of the church.

Jim glanced across to the pew where Derek's first wife and daughter, Lorraine, were standing together. At that moment, they looked back at him and their eyes met. Both of the women raised their eyes to heaven as if to say, 'what a performance'. And indeed that was Jim's view.

Doreen and Derek had only been married a short time and much of that they had spent fighting or so it had seemed to Jim. It was perfectly rational that Doreen should feel upset, but the performance she put on of the devastated wife was worthy of an Oscar.

After the service, the coffin was whisked away by Doreen to a crematorium where only she and her children were to be present. It was a plain enough statement. _This is my husband_ , she was saying. _I will dispose of his remains as I see fit._

It was quite obvious to Jim as he stood outside the church amongst the crowd of mourners, most of whom were now looking forward to becoming revellers at the extravagant wake that had been planned, that the battle lines were already drawn. On the one hand you had the proprietorial second wife, and on the other the daughter from whose look of contempt and hatred at the back of the so-called grieving widow meant that there was going to be a war and that it was going to be to the death.

'At least we've got the dog,' said Derek's first wife as she and Jim left the churchyard through the lych gate.

'What?' said Jim.

'We've got his dog, Ted. He dropped it off at my house on the Sunday before he was found and asked me to look after it. He said on no account was I to let Doreen have it. I didn't pay much attention to it, although I thought it was a bit strange.'

'Funny,' said Jim. 'He said the same thing to me. He seemed to think Doreen would harm the dog in some way.'

'That vindictive cow is capable of anything,' said his first wife as she got into the car with Lorraine. Jim watched them driving away and then sat on the churchyard wall. He had a lot to think about.
CHAPTER 5

For a while all was quiet. A sort of phoney war prevailed where the adversaries watched each other at a distance through binoculars, but otherwise did nothing.

Jim got on with his usual work. He was busy as usual and more pressing concerns required attention. He mentioned what had happened briefly to his partners at their weekly partners' meeting. Although he didn't think that he had done anything which might give rise to a claim, he was sufficiently concerned about the situation to at least bring it to their attention.

Jim was the junior partner in the long-established practice. He was well thought of and generally liked, but in a partnership, as in life, people only stand by you as long as it is in their best interest to do so. Nobody is indispensable or irreplaceable.

The younger partners were not terribly interested in what had happened. One of them at least was more interested in the rapidity at which the sherry decanter made the rounds. The senior partner, Briggs, however, looked thoughtful as he sucked his unlit pipe in a manner in which his wife had long given up trying to break him of.

'Hmm,' was his response to any attempt by her to deliver a lecture upon his shortcomings and which, for reasons best known to the dear lady in question, were usually pronounced upon as he lay in bed and was about to drop off to sleep. He would eventually remove the pipe, not in response to her dripping tap tactics, but principally because if he fell asleep with the pipe in his mouth, he might swallow it and choke. At any other time, he and the pipe were inseparable.

He was also inseparable from his dog. The dog, an ancient Labrador, resembled him. Either that or he resembled the dog. Both were thick-set and had lugubrious faces flecked with grey whiskers.

Both farted quite a lot, although Briggs would try to cover his trumpeting by blaming the dog. 'Damn the bloody dog!' he would say aiming a kick at the animal which, if connected, would tend to cause a very real eruption of staccato farting from the animal's rear end.

The pair were inseparable and the dog spent most days lying under the partner's desk. At least he did not smoke, although it contributed in other ways to the rich texture of the air in the room.

After the partners' meeting, Briggs motioned to Jim to remain in his room as the others filed out to return to their respective offices. The weather was still warm and the windows of the oak-panelled room full of shelves heavily laden with dusty legal tomes were mercifully wide open.

Outside in the market square, the stallholders were busy trying to clear up after a long day. Their shouts and banter floated in through the open windows, together with the sharp odour of fish from the stall directly below the office. The clouds of tobacco smoke drifting across the room mingled with the smell of wet fish to add an interesting texture to the already rich atmosphere in the fart-filled room.

Briggs settled himself in his leather wing-backed armchair, put his pipe where it was invariably to be found, namely his mouth, and smiled affably at Jim.

'I'm sure it will be alright, old sport,' he said in his usual jocular manner, 'but just in case, if I were you I would keep a very low profile over this Spencer business.'

'I agree,' said Jim, 'but I am the executor under the Will I drew for him, so that might be a bit difficult.'

Briggs frowned and thought for a while. 'Well,' he said after a while, 'you can always renounce saying that your position is a difficult one.'

'Personally yes, but legally difficult?

'I suspect so. I wouldn't mind betting that the wife challenges the Will. Since you drew it, that puts you in a bit of an awkward position, particularly since in the past you have acted for both sides at one time or another in relation to their personal affairs. You can bet the daughter will want the Will to be proved, since otherwise she stands to lose that which her father intended she should have. No, I think that you would do well to keep out of it.'

'I agree,' said Jim feeling sick and wishing that Derek had not put him in this position by coming around to his house as he had. He wondered momentarily whether he had perhaps created the difficulty for himself. Should he have refused to do the Will? Even in hindsight, he didn't really see how he could have done.

'Well,' said Briggs interrupting his thoughts. 'I think we can reasonably anticipate that as soon as they have had their war over the estate and licked their wounds, they will look to recover any real or imagined losses.'

'And we all know where they will look,' said Jim grimly. 'Me.'

'Spot on, old sport,' said Briggs cheerfully. 'Part of the joy of being a solicitor. If I were you, I wouldn't say a dicky bird to anybody. Keep quiet. Remember the old Russian proverb.'

Jim remembered the old Russian proverb as taught to him by Briggs when he was Briggs' trainee. It was one of the many sage sayings that the old boy had come out with over the years. The punch line and moral of this particular one was 'When you are in the shit, keep your mouth shut!'

In the situation in which he now found himself, that seemed eminently sensible advice.

*

A week or so later, Jim was at work when he received a call from the coroner's office.

'Good morning, sir,' said the officer, an elderly police constable whose main function in life was to act as the coroner's officer, a function which he discharged calmly, politely and with a degree of gravity well suited to such a solemn process revolving as it did around establishing the reason for the end of some individual's life.

Most people imagine that courthouses are places of high drama, whereas in fact most court cases in Jim's experience were like watching paint dry. Not so with the coroner's court where an individual's departure had often occurred in tragic circumstances and the shock and upset were still raw and fresh. The proceedings were in public, but the public tended to be persons who were closely connected with the deceased and often the atmosphere would be charged with emotion.

The coroner's job was not an easy one, but the coroner in question, one Leonard Satterthwaite, was a deeply religious man of sombre appearance with a thick, black beard tinged and flecked with grey like some Greek or Russian patriarch whose very presence commanded respect. His every pronouncement was made in a calm and measured way as he conducted the proceedings in a steady and unhurried manner in which everybody present was able to take comfort. The coroner was in control.

The coroner's office had rung to advise Jim that he would be required to attend to give evidence as being one of the people who had seen Derek not long before his death. The coroner had already seen a short statement that Jim had made and judged it important that he be there.

Jim asked who else would be giving evidence and was told the pathologist, the person who had found the body and, to Jim's surprise, so too would Oliver Arkwright.

'Why Arkwright?' he asked surprised.

'Well, all I can say is that there is some question about exactly when Mr Spencer died and I believe Mr Arkwright can give evidence about that,' said the officer before ending the conversation. That was a turn-up for the books, thought Jim and wondered what the significance of when Derek had died had to do with anything. Surely, also the pathologist as a scientist would be able to deal accurately with the time of death? They invariably, in his experience, gave evidence not only as to the cause of death, but the likely time.

He sighed. He would find out soon enough what it was all about. He turned his attention to the next file on his desk and reluctantly opened it. A divorce. _Great_ , he thought, _just what I needed to cheer me up_.
CHAPTER 6

The inquest was held in the local magistrates' court, now doubling for the day as the coroner's court. The courtroom was purpose-built and of recent vintage with a raised platform and bench from which the coroner was able to cast an elevated eye over the proceedings in front of him. Behind him on the wall was the royal crest with the words, 'Dieu Et Mon Droit' encircling it in Latin. This was the symbol of his authority. He wore no wig, nor robes, but was soberly dressed in a dark suit and waistcoat.

Before him in attendance was the coroner's officer and facing them were the desks and benches behind which the advocates for any interested parties were seated. Sometimes, of course, in straightforward cases there would be no lawyers there, but today there were.

Both Derek's daughter, Lorraine, and his wife, Doreen, were present and represented by lawyers who conferred earnestly with them in whispers. The witnesses, including Jim, sat at the back of the court where the public sat normally and waited for their turn to come to give evidence.

Jim glanced around him. He hadn't been surprised to see both Lorraine and Doreen, and there also, just as the coroner's officer had said, was Oliver Arkwright sitting amongst the crowd. The room was in fact quite full and there was hardly any room for the journalists from the newspapers squeezed in at the end of one of the benches that lined the side walls.

As the proceedings got under way, Jim momentarily wondered if perhaps Derek wasn't there in spirit or looking down on them from somewhere. If he was, Jim felt certain that he would have felt quite at ease. Derek was himself no stranger to courts.

There had been several occasions over the years when Jim had represented Derek in front of magistrates, usually for something to do with drink and driving. He'd forgotten, now he came to think about it, how many times he'd got his driving licence back for him. He smiled at some of the stunts Derek had pulled. He had been quite an actor.

He had prided himself on a hand tremor that would supposedly move involuntarily when giving evidence, but which was intended to demonstrate anxiety and remorse. Jim had thought it equally well might indicate an alcoholic who badly needed a drink and forbade him to do it when talking about his evidence beforehand. Derek did it anyway.

Whether or not the magistrate recognised a like spirit is a moot point, but Derek got away with it and afterwards put it all down to his superior acting techniques, although acknowledging hastily that Jim had had something to do with it as well.

The first witness called was the pathologist. Courts always showed doctors an exaggerated respect and did all they could to speed the doctors' progress through the proceedings, presumably on the assumption that their services were urgently needed elsewhere and they must not be delayed a moment longer than necessary. It was laughable really, for all they knew the doctor was off to play tennis or go shopping with his wife.

Mere mortals, on the other hand, were completely at the mercy of the system which required them to hang about and spring into action when they were needed.

Jim knew that he was as guilty of all this as other lawyers. He, too, would smile ingratiatingly at a doctor and address him or her with exaggerated respect. He, too, expected witnesses and other bit-part players in the court drama to wait patiently and be glad to do it. Now, though, he was going to be a witness himself. The shoe was on the other foot. He felt surprisingly nervous at the prospect.

The doctor was running through the cause of death – asphyxiation and carbon monoxide poisoning. Nobody was particularly surprised to hear that, given the circumstances in which the body had been found.

The interesting part came when Doreen's lawyer rose to his feet to cross-examine the doctor on behalf of his client behind him, her head bowed, a sorrowful expression on her face, but Jim felt sure, listening intently to the proceedings.

The lawyer, a local solicitor that Jim knew well, explained that he was acting as an agent for the solicitors who represented Doreen, a London firm, who were far too busy to attend themselves and so instructed a local solicitor to act as their agent. Either that or Doreen couldn't afford to pay their fancy fees for attending. On reflection, Jim thought that that was more likely.

Notwithstanding that, her solicitor agent knew what he was doing and got straight to the point.

'When do you estimate the deceased died, doctor?' he asked.

'I think that the advanced state of decomposition of the body indicates that the deceased died some days before he was found,' answered the doctor firmly.

'Care to hazard a view as to what day?' asked Doreen's solicitor quizzically. Jim looked at Doreen. Was she holding her breath?

'I would say Sunday,' said the doctor. Doreen silently clapped her hands under the desk, but Jim saw it.

Jim suddenly realised what all this was about. The man was dead. Why did it matter when he had died? Answer, it mattered because if he had died before the notice of severance had been served on Doreen, then they still at that time owned the house as beneficial joint tenants and his share of the house passed to her by right of survivorship and regardless of what his Will said. Jim had served the notice on Doreen on Monday.

If Derek died on Sunday, the notice was of no effect in altering the basis upon which they owned the house. That meant that the Will he had made at Jim's house might be valid, but Derek's half of the house would not go to Lorraine, his daughter, as he had wished, but would pass automatically to Doreen. She would have been holding the parcel, so to speak, when the music stopped. All this passed through his mind in a flash.

Then Lorraine's lawyer stood up, a smooth-looking character with a superficially affable smile, but about as cuddly as your average crocodile.

'On what do you base that opinion, doctor?' he asked.

'The advanced state of decomposition of the body,' answered the doctor.

'I see,' said the lawyer. 'If I were to tell you that there is a witness here today from whom the court will hear shortly and who will say that he saw Derek Spencer alive and well on Tuesday, the day before his body was found, you would say that that was impossible, would you?'

'I would say that was highly unlikely,' the doctor said frowning. _Gordon Bennett_ , he thought to himself, irritably. _They told me this was only going to take a few minutes. Nobody told me that I wouldn't be away from here by now. I'll miss my tennis match._ This was insane.

He'd at last managed to arrange a tennis match with the young and rather attractive lady doctor who had just joined his practice. He had been looking forward to that meeting and the start of what he had hoped would be a long and intimate association. Now this twit was going to make a meal of things and ruin it all.

Not only did he find that irritating, it also irritated him more than a little that his expert opinion was being questioned. He was accustomed to what he said being treated as holy writ. His utterances from the Olympic heights of medical knowledge and righteousness were normally treated like the tablet of stone given to Moses on Mount Sinai. In short, it pissed him off a treat.

The lawyer continued in a leisurely manner.

'Surely, you don't mean unlikely, do you doctor?'

'I do mean unlikely,' he answered shortly.

'I suggest, with respect,' continued the lawyer emphasising the word respect and with a suitably ingratiating leer on his face that he deluded himself by assuming was an affable smile, 'Your evidence must be that it was impossible. You have given the time of death as Sunday. Therefore, it is impossible, is it not, that Spencer could have been alive on Tuesday?'

The doctor ground his teeth.

'Er, I suppose that's right,' he said.

'Well now, let's just look at the evidence a little more carefully,' continued the lawyer with the condescending air of one guiding an infant or a novice through a very simple problem. 'We know that it was very hot weather at that time, don't we?' breaking off to add quite unnecessarily, 'Indeed as it still is,' this last remark being directed at the waistcoated coroner and was delivered with the unctuous smile of a like-wise waistcoated lawyer.

What he was saying was, we are the same, you and I; we are not going to let a little thing like an oppressively hot courtroom make us do anything remotely sensible like remove our jackets or waistcoats. Good heavens, no! That is the sort of thing that lesser mortals do, men and I suppose the occasional woman of our sort are above such mundane matters and are inherently superior.

Having underlined his and, of course, the coroner's innate superiority and thus aligning himself with judicial authority, he continued,

'Would I be right in assuming that hot weather would speed the rate at which a body decomposed?'

'Yes, of course,' said the doctor.

'Would it not then be entirely possible that Spencer's body might well have decomposed to the extent that it did in a little over twenty four hours?'

Doreen looked intently at the doctor. _Was she holding her breath?_ Jim wondered.

'I suppose it's possible,' conceded the doctor. He'd had enough of this. If he could just get out of here in the next five minutes, all might not be lost with the nubile young partner.

'Thank you, doctor,' said Lorraine's lawyer with exaggerated respect as he sat down, adding quite unnecessarily as he did so, 'No more questions,' in the direction of the coroner.

'Very well, thank you, doctor. You may go. I'm sure that you have important matters to attend to,' smiled the coroner in the direction of the by now rapidly receding figure of the doctor who as soon as he was out of the court sprinted towards the car park.

'Must be a medical emergency,' said the coroner's officer who saw him go. Back in court, the coroner looked at his watch. It was time for his morning coffee.

'It might assist the parties if we take a comfort break at this stage.'

Everybody smiled back at him and rose to their feet as he did before he left the courtroom by the door behind his chair.

I wonder if there are any ginger biscuits today, he thought as he strolled back to the judges' retiring room.
CHAPTER 7

The break was short one. The coroner came back after about five minutes which is the time it took him to swallow his tepid coffee with disappointment. There had been no biscuits.

'Let's press on and waste no time,' he announced brusquely as he sat down and continued with the proceedings. It was still not Jim's turn to give evidence. The court next heard from the farmer who had found the body. His evidence was brief, but it was he who had rung the police.

Police constable Atkinson and police inspector Dumbleton were the hapless officers tasked with attending the unhappy and very smelly scene. Neither had been very happy.

These jobs were not pleasant and, given that the Met boundary was miles away, there was absolutely no prospect of pushing the vehicle over the boundary and ringing in to the police station to announce that the corpse was not on their patch after all and perhaps the Met boys should come out and deal with it?

The police officers were called in turn and both gave evidence of what they had found, namely a man, aged about 50, now known to be the deceased, Derek Spencer, sitting in the driving seat of the vehicle slumped over the wheel.

The vehicle had some building equipment in it, but there was nothing remarkable about that. There was an almost empty bottle of whisky on the passenger seat and, on the dashboard, a faded photograph of a group of soldiers from some far-off conflict standing in a group grinning at the camera.

There were some names on the back, but otherwise who they were and when the photograph had been taken was not clear. Wherever it was, it looked cold, the men wearing an assortment of woolly hats and other garments over their uniforms including, in one case, even a fur three-quarter length coat.

The vehicle's engine was not running. It was out of fuel which was perhaps hardly surprising because the deceased driver would not have turned the engine off after he had succumbed to the fumes. A pipe ran between the exhaust and the front passenger window.

There was no note left by the deceased as was sometimes the case according to the inspector who, over the years, had dealt with a number of such cases including some equally unpleasant ones which occurred when people had stuck their head in front of a London express train as a means of securing their passage to eternity.

On one such occasion in his experience, he reflected, the deceased's socks were stuffed full of letters to various people including one to the object of the deceased's desires – not, it turned out, his wife.

Then it was Jim's turn. He felt a rush of nerves as he took the oath, all eyes on him, and swore to tell the truth, 'So help me God'. He had heard the oath recited many times in his career, but now as he spoke the words out loud, they seemed to acquire a heavier significance.

He felt quite unsettled at first. Then he realised that he had made the mistake of listening to his voice rather than simply concentrating on what he was saying. He knew as an advocate that to listen to what you were saying or wondering how it sounded was not a good idea. He forced himself to concentrate and to listen to the questions.

These from both Doreen's lawyer and Lorraine's were put to him quite reasonably and without any stage effects, no dramatic pauses, no questioning eyes raised in mock alarm or concern to the heavens. Whether this reflected the fact that he, like them, was a lawyer and an advocate, he didn't know, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.

It's alright when you are in the position of power and able to dish this out to people. It wasn't anything like as pleasant to be on the receiving end.

He was asked, of course, about the visit to his home, but more particularly about Derek's state of mind. Had he been drunk? Had he truly understood what he was doing?

It didn't take Jim long to realise that the deceased's knowledge and capacity were being probed. If you are going to challenge a Will, this presents an obvious way of doing so. If the deceased did not have the necessary mental capacity or did not know what he was signing, then a Will could be effectively challenged.

In this case, the questions were important to one party, namely Lorraine, because she wanted the Will to stand, and to Doreen for the exact opposite reason. She wanted the Will to fail. If it did, then an earlier Will he had made leaving everything to her made during the heady days of early infatuation would prevail. A great deal, therefore, hung on Derek's capacity and knowledge.

Unfortunately for Doreen, Jim was entirely satisfied that not only did Derek know what he was doing, but he did it for a very clear reason. He wanted to benefit Lorraine. He was also stone-cold sober.

The questioning went on for some time until the coroner, with one eye on the clock, interrupted and asked if, in Jim's opinion, Derek knew what he was doing. Jim replied,

'I have no doubt at all that he was sober and that he knew exactly what he was doing and why, and that the Will I prepared for him accurately reflected those wishes.'

He tried not to look at Doreen as he said this, but his glance was drawn to her as if by a magnet. The look she gave him would have chopped a stone statue off at the ankles at twenty yards. If looks could kill, he thought as he stepped down from the witness box, he'd be standing next to Derek right now.

It was time for the luncheon recess. Jim's office was nearby and so he went back there to check his telephone messages and to have a sandwich. Before he had a chance to do either, though, he had an unexpected visitor. It was Lorraine Spencer, Derek's daughter.

He had seen her at the coroner's court, but they had not spoken. He had judged it better not to do so partly because he was going to give evidence and partly because, since he had no intention of talking to Doreen, he had felt it was better not to do so. He had not wanted to appear to be on one side or the other. Now Lorraine had called at the office to see him. He could have refused to see her, _but then_ , he thought, _why should I?_

He invited her into his office and asked his secretary to let them have a couple of cups of coffee. He had a table in his room with a couple of easy chairs and they sat there to talk. It was, he felt, more appropriate than him sitting behind his desk and interviewing her like a client.

He also asked her how she was. He hadn't seen her, nor her mother, since the funeral. She raised her eyes to heaven and said all sorts of things had happened.

Firstly, there had been a tussle over the dog. Doreen had sent a solicitor's letter immediately after the funeral demanding the return of Tim, the little dog that used to accompany Derek everywhere. They, that is she and her mother, refused point blank. They, too, now had solicitors representing Lorraine and he had explained that the dog had plainly been a gift by Derek.

There it had rested, the tussle over the dog symbolic of the wider fight for possession of the deceased's estate that was about to begin.

'You saw how the cow was at the funeral,' said Lorraine bitterly. 'She should have got an Oscar for that performance.'

'Well, she may have been upset,' Jim ventured to comment.

'Upset!' she snorted. 'The only thing that upset her was that dad got away from her long enough to scupper her plans.'

'How do you mean?' said Jim intrigued.

'Well,' continued Lorraine, 'the way I see it, she drove him to it.'

'What?' exclaimed Jim.

'Yes,' she replied calmly, looking straight at him. 'You see she knew dad well, or she thought she did.'

'Did you know that he attempted to kill himself about six months ago?' she asked. Dumbly, Jim shook his head. No, he didn't, he admitted.

'What happened then?' he asked.

Lorraine explained that one night she had had a call from Doreen. This in itself was unusual because they hated each other. Doreen sounded upset. She wanted Lorraine to go over to their house. Derek, she said, had tried to kill himself. She had found him drunk trying to fix a pipe to the exhaust of his car, a Triumph Stag with dark, tinted windows, and had, with difficulty, stopped him, but then he had run off into the night and she didn't know where he was.

Lorraine had gone over there and saw the car and the pipe, and together they had driven around for half an hour or so until they found him collapsed on the grass verge by the roadside. With some difficulty, they had managed between them to get him into Doreen's car and to take him back home where they put him to bed to sleep it off.

'Yes, but I don't see, Lorraine, how that demonstrates that she drove him to kill himself,' said Jim when she had finished.

'You don't know what happened after that,' continued Lorraine. 'I went round and spoke to dad one day when she was out somewhere and he told me that the marriage was over and he was desperate to get rid of her, but she wouldn't go and she wouldn't give him any reason for staying.'

'That's pretty much what he said to me when he came around to make his Will,' said Jim.

'Right, well I think that she knew that if she hung in there, sooner or later he would try again and then she would get the house.'

'So, that's why you think that she drove him to it?'

'Absolutely, in my opinion, as if she killed him herself.'

'Good grief,' said Jim not knowing what else to say. The suggestion was truly incredible, but he, too, had wondered why Doreen had seemed to cling so tenaciously to Derek. Looked at objectively from her point of view, what was the attraction of living with an alcoholic?

It must have been a nightmare. She could have left and gone to a solicitor. The house was already in her name as well. Through the courts she might even have got more than half. She didn't leave though. He considered what effect that would have on a man with a volatile temperament like Derek. Certainly it was one of the reasons Derek had given him for wanting to die, to escape finally and at last.

Lorraine left. Shortly afterwards, he, too, returned to the coroner's court still struggling in his mind with the thought that somebody could actually psychologically and cold-bloodedly drive someone to their death. It hardly seemed possible. Was it not just Lorraine's dislike of Doreen finding expression?

The next and indeed the last witness was Oliver Arkwright, the dismissed and disgraced manager. Jim was intrigued to hear what part he had had to play in the whole macabre story.

Oliver was sworn in and gave his account to the coroner. Although he didn't mention it in the context of his forced and rapid departure from Derek's building business, Oliver related how he had worked for Derek for some years and had seen him on a daily basis. Now, however, he was working for another local builder called Connolly, a man Jim had occasionally come across and who he believed was one of Derek's drinking cronies.

Was Oliver working the same routine with Connolly that he had with Derek, encouraging him to indulge his hobby and then to cheat him? Quite possibly, he thought, but then that was Connolly's business and had nothing to do with whether or not Arkwright had seen Derek or when.

Oliver gave evidence that on the Tuesday, that is the day before Derek's body was found, he had seen him in a drinking club during the afternoon carousing with friends including Roger, whom he had gone to collect having had a call from him to pick him up.

He had, he said, been surprised to see Derek and not a little anxious, since the last time he had seen him he had given a very good imitation of a man about to commit murder. This last point he didn't mention, however, finishing by saying, 'I'm sure Jim Connolly can vouch for what I say.'

There wasn't much in the way of challenge that Doreen's lawyer could put to Arkwright. What was he going to suggest? That he was mistaken? Short of suggesting and being able to establish that Arkwright was either a liar or a raving lunatic, there wasn't much he could do. Doreen looked glum. Lorraine looked triumphant. Derek had been alive the day after Jim had served the notice on Doreen.

The coroner withdrew to consider his decision. Jim waited outside the court at first and then went to a room tucked away from the rest that had the important function of being the place from which tea and coffee were dispensed by the court staff to those in the know and those in favour.

A septuagenarian usher reigned supreme here, black-robed and elegant in a tailored three-piece suit. In another life, he had been a travelling representative for one of the large fashion houses and never tired of telling everyone about it whenever he got the opportunity.

Today, he had brought in his bone china tea set announcing to all those present that that was the way tea should be served, carefully filling the cups from a bone china teapot. Jim, like everybody else, made appreciative noises. After all, if it pleased him to make a performance out of a cup of tea, that was fine.

The important thing was that he was prepared to make it. Still no biscuits though, noted Jim, as he thoughtfully sipped his tea and tried not to listen to the usher's long account of a business trip to Manchester for his firm whilst appearing at least to pay attention. He wasn't married so he hadn't yet acquired the necessary expertise, but he had grasped the basic concept generally summarised by the words, 'anything for a quiet life' that he had heard so often from the mouths of married colleagues.

He noticed inspector Dumbleton on the other side of the room and made his way over to him intent on putting something to him which he found rather troubling. After a few initial pleasantries, he got to the point and said in a soft voice to the inspector,

'You don't think that it could actually have been murder, do you?'

The inspector looked at him quickly and then motioned to him to step out of the room, which they did going into the empty courtroom number 2. The inspector was a man of few words.

'What do you mean?' he enquired.

Jim said,

'Look, I realise it sounds silly, but,' and then he related what Lorraine had said to him during the luncheon adjournment.

'Sounds a bit fanciful to me,' said the inspector doubtfully when he had finished.

'Yes, I know what you mean, but regardless of what Lorraine said, all of which could be taken with a bucket of salt given the animosity between the two women, it started me thinking. Everybody is more or less taking it as read that it's suicide. That's the likely verdict, but,' he looked the inspector in the eyes, 'what if?'

'What if it wasn't suicide?'

'Yes,' he said simply. 'I bet you haven't investigated it as anything other than a suicide.'

'True.' The inspector looked thoughtful and then said, 'I don't think there's a great deal more we can do, but I'll have a word with my scenes of crime officer and see if there is anything useful we can do. I'll let you know if anything comes of it.'

The usher stuck his head around the door.

'Ah, there you are!' he said. 'The coroner is ready to come back.'

Together, with everyone else, they filed into the courtroom number 1 and rose to their feet as the coroner entered.

The lawyers bowed. Everybody else shuffled their feet as if they were in church and everybody sat down. There was silence as the coroner shuffled his papers before proceeding in a sonorous measured voice to recount the facts he had found. Jim took a note, as did the other lawyers present.

The two sentences he underlined were the ones where the coroner said that he found as a fact that the deceased had been alive and well on Tuesday and the concluding sentence he uttered,

'In conclusion, I am satisfied that for reasons that were important to him, the deceased took his own life.'

That was that then, thought Jim, as he left and went back to his office.
CHAPTER 8

That, of course, was anything but that. There then commenced a titanic struggle between Doreen and Lorraine over Derek's estate. Jim was not involved. All he heard were the distant rumblings of whatever was going on between their respective legal representatives.

As far as he was concerned, Doreen had no chance of challenging the validity of the Will, and the time of Derek's death was, although perhaps open to dispute on forensic evidence, nonetheless nailed by the testimony of Oliver Arkwright, a man who had no reason to love Derek and his family and no reason to lie.

Apart from those distant rumblings, Jim had no contact with what was going on. He had other things on his mind. They busy life of even a small town solicitor meant that his attention was of necessity soon focused elsewhere.

Most of his work was contentious, that is to say it involved an argument of one kind or another. It might be a boundary dispute with neighbours literally at daggers-drawn over the position of a boundary fence. It might be a marital dispute or an argument between partners or the shareholders of a small family business.

Whatever it was, he could be absolutely certain that it would take him about 5 minutes to explain the law and then 25 minutes apologising for it not reflecting the clients' view of things.

'What?' they might exclaim. 'That surely can't be the position.'

Jim would reiterate, perhaps for the fourth time, that it most certainly was whilst privately wondering why, if they knew better than him, they had bothered to ask him in the first place. The conversation often continued with, 'Well, that's ridiculous.' They would say, 'Do you mean to tell me ..?'

There would then follow an interval of varying length when they would argue with him about what the law should be or if it was really as he had outlined it and, frankly, the doubtful look on their faces suggested that they suspected he was mistaken and they had clearly come to the wrong person for advice, then it ought not to be like that.

He often thought that his life would have been much easier and he a wealthier man if he had simply told them all what they wanted to hear which was essentially that they were right and their opponents were wrong.

He had long suspected that there were plenty of lawyers who would do that. If the client wanted a fight, and more importantly could pay for it, then they would be happy to oblige them and crank it for all it was worth.

Later, much later, he learned that something of the sort had happened to Doreen who had seen her share of Derek's inheritance significantly diminished by the depredations of the legal bills she received from her lawyers.

The position was made even worse for her because not only did she have heavy bills to meet, but despite her and their best efforts, they were not able to successfully challenge the Will. In short, she lost and Lorraine received her inheritance under a Will that Jim was not paid for drafting, let alone the notice of severance which also stood the test of everything that Doreen and her legal advisors threw at it.

Such comfort as he drew from that and from the fact that Derek's wishes had been carried out was short-lived, however, because having lost hands-down in her battle with Lorraine, Doreen then looked around to see where and whether she might be able to recover her losses. As Briggs, the senior partner, had foreseen, Jim was now in the frame. The guns of the legal profession he now found pointed directly at him.

The First World War began when the Germans marched into Belgium, the Second World War when the next generation of Germans with a wanderlust marched into Poland. In Jim's case, the hostilities commenced with the arrival of an enquiry agent, one Henry Perkins, a balding middle-aged man wearing a raincoat over a suit too big for him who poked his head around the office door one day and said,

'Would you, sir, by any chance be James Hunt?'

'I would,' said Jim.

'Well then, sir,' continued Perkins advancing uninvited into Jim's office, 'I am obliged to serve these papers upon you,' and so saying handed Jim an envelope which, when Jim opened it, contained a writ, a High Court writ, issued in the Queen's Bench Division. He stared at it dumbstruck.

'I have the original here, sir, should you wish to see it.'

'No, thank you.'

'Very well, sir. I will bid you good day,' and with that Perkins left smartly.

Perkins had been an enquiry agent for many years and learned long ago that a prompt departure was prudent. There was no telling how someone might react when served. In his experience, there were three types of individual, those who meekly accepted the writ or summons, those who tried to do a runner, like one bloke he eventually served by having a colleague knock on the front door of his house whilst he himself waited in the backyard and served the man as he climbed out of the kitchen window.

Having been served, the man was as nice as pie and invited him in for a cup of tea which he drank whilst the man proudly showed him all the other writs and summonses he had and which he had pasted to create an attractive pastiche on the kitchen wall.

'Where do you think this one might look good?' he had enquired of the latest addition to his collection.

The third sort were the most dangerous. They were the ones who attacked you. Sometimes you had to be really tasty on your toes to avoid coming to harm.

He had been chased around building sites by men armed with shovels; he had had dogs set upon him and had had some narrow misses. One might reasonably wonder why it was that he did the job, but the truth was he loved it.

He loved the excitement and danger of it all. Most of all, he loved the challenge. That was why he enjoyed serving travellers. They were a real challenge and one which he found it impossible to resist.

Irish didicoys, pikies or genuine gypsies, he didn't mind which part of the travelling fraternity his target belonged to, he simply adored the challenge and pitting his wits against theirs. This meant that serving proceedings on a solicitor was small beer by comparison.

Jim hardly noticed his departure. Dazed, he sat there in his office for a few minutes. He knew what a writ meant, of course. He knew that it had to be dealt with, that he had so many days in which to file an appearance and only so many days thereafter to file a defence or judgment could be obtained against him in default by the plaintiff.

He read the writ, but couldn't really take it in beyond the fact that he was the defendant and Doreen was the plaintiff.

As his brain slowly started to work, he began to consider his position. The firm carried professional indemnity insurance as they were required to, and the first thing would be to inform the insurers who would appoint lawyers to represent him. That was fine as far as it went.

What troubled him most initially was that he was obviously going to have to inform his partners. What effect might that have on his position both now and in the future?

Reluctantly, he rose to his feet and headed for the senior partner's study. What was Briggs going to say about this?
CHAPTER 9

When Jim knocked and entered the senior partner's room, he found Briggs in a contemplative pose, standing with his hands clasped behind his back gazing out of the window with his pipe in its usual position, clenched between his teeth. The dog was asleep under the desk, or appeared to be. Either way, it did not deign to look up at Jim's entrance.

'I'm sorry to trouble you,' began Jim, bracing himself for what might prove a very unpleasant interview.

'Mmm,' murmured Briggs absentmindedly. Either he was miles away in his thoughts, thought Jim, or just possibly that had been the easiest noise to make without having to go to the trouble of taking the pipe out of his mouth. Jim pressed on.

'There's something I need to tell you.'

Briggs half turned his head without moving his body and raised an enquiring eyebrow.

'I'm awfully sorry to have to tell you, but I have just been handed this,' he said and laid the writ gently on the desk as carefully as if it were an unexploded bomb.

Briggs turned, stepped to the desk, sat down in his leather upholstered chair and picked up the writ. There was silence whilst he read it through to himself.

'This is that little matter that you mentioned to me?' said Briggs at length.

'It is.'

'You will recall I pointed out that once they had finished knocking spots off each other that it would be your turn?'

'I do and it seems you were right.'

'That gives me no pleasure at all.'

'I'm very sorry it's come to this,' said Jim both looking and feeling crestfallen. 'I still don't think I did anything wrong.'

'Well, let's put it in the hands of our insurers. They will take it from here and I have no doubt that we will be told in due course whether the plaintiff,' he glanced at the writ, 'this Mrs Spencer has a good claim or not. We will have to tell the partners at the next meeting. I suggest you prepare a brief report to deliver to them and provide a copy of the writ so they can read that. It concerns us all as a practice. She who sues you sues all of us effectively.'

'Right,' said Jim turning to go and then pausing at the door and adding, 'All I did was to prepare a Will for an old client when he asked me to. What did I do wrong?'

'You should know by now, Jim, that right and wrong have nothing to do with the law. You, like all the other poor wretches who fall foul of our wonderful legal system, will now have to go with the flow until you are spat out at the other end. There is no point in struggling against the current. Just keep your nose above water and your eye out for a bit of driftwood to cling to. Trust to luck and keep your mouth shut as far as possible.'

With those sombre words of advice ringing in his ears, Jim left the senior partner's room and decided to take a leaf out of Derek Spencer's book. He went to the nearest pub for a stiff drink.

What he didn't know and what Briggs had no intention of telling him was that many years before he had been in a similar situation when he had been caught up in the fall-out following a family dispute over a Will. He had learned the hard way that if any aggrieved party can find a hook to hang a claim on, then they will.

In his particular bit of unpleasantness, he had been forthright and open with all the contending parties about the circumstances in which the Will in question had been prepared. He had shown them his file notes and given a detailed account of everything he had done. In short, he had played it with a straight bat like a solicitor and a gentleman or, as he later came to realise, like a complete prat.

After the warring parties had signed an armistice and settled their dispute, they went away to lick their wounds. It wasn't long, though, before they, with the assistance of solicitors' bewigged brethren, the learned members of the bar were picking over the pieces and subjecting everything to a highly critical post mortem, the sole object of which was to enable the aggrieved party who had come off worst to bring a claim against Briggs and through him to reach the treasure chest of his insurers. El Dorado!

In this aim they were ably assisted by yet more of the bewigged brethren, the learned judges sitting in highly critical judgement of the actions of others, of actions taken and decisions made often under great pressure. They, remote in their ivory towers and with an inherent contempt for solicitors who if not actually part of the hoi polloi, nonetheless as far as they were concerned were requested to use the tradesman's entrance and speak when spoken to.

With icy disdain, they would help the claimant to put the boot in asking pointed questions to which there was no correct answer as far as they were concerned.

'Did you make an attendance note of that conversation?'

They lived in an unreal world where solicitors were required to make an attendance note if a secretary asked for petty cash to buy lavatory rolls.

If the answer was 'no', you were in trouble. If the answer was 'yes', they simply continued, 'Do you remember the conversation recorded in the note?'

'No, my lord, it was three years ago,' the hapless solicitor would say in the vain hope of mercy.

'Ah!' his lordship would say triumphantly. 'So you don't remember the conversation!' In short, you were stuffed either way.

Finally, after the pantomime ended, his lordship would apply a standard of no less than perfection before which even a saint hoping to enter paradise would probably be found wanting and would proceed coldly and methodically to find in favour of the plaintiff, lacing the Judgment with darts intended to injure such as, 'In these circumstances it is hardly conceivable that a competent solicitor would not have etc, etc, etc,' the word 'competent' being heavily emphasised whilst casting a baleful look in the direction of the by now crushed and humbled solicitor.

Solicitors did it too, of course, when they were in court, but they only did it as mere mortals and thus whatever they did was bound to fall far short of the pearls of wisdom doled out from the Olympian heights of the bench.

In any event, having been through the fiery furnace, Briggs not only understood how Jim felt, but he felt sorry for him.

It remained to be seen whether his partners would be equally understanding.
CHAPTER 10

Several months later, Jim made his way to London for a conference with the barrister and solicitor appointed to represent him in the proceedings.

He found himself, together with a superficially friendly representative of the insurance company, sitting at the far end of a long table, at the other of which sat learned counsel appointed and instructed on his behalf, or was he? Which master did he serve, Jim found himself wondering. Was it him or the insurers who were after all paying him? Whose interests would he protect best?

Jim, despite being a relatively young man, was not wet behind the ears. He had little doubt that it would be the insurance company's best interests that would be foremost in the mind of the barrister or at least, he reflected, they had better be if the barrister was hoping for any more work in the future from that source. No matter how important the case and what its impact was on Jim and his partners, he knew that he was in reality just a piece on the board in the game being played out.

He listened cautiously as counsel; a corpulent, balding man wearing the barrister's uniform of dark jacket, waistcoat and pin-striped trousers, smiled a crocodile smile at him from the far end of the table and proceeded to outline how he saw the case and the prospects of success.

Doreen, counsel began, summarising her case as put before the court, was trying to argue that Jim owed her a duty of care and that Jim had breached that duty of care by making a Will against her best interest for her husband, Derek, as a result of which she had suffered loss.

'How,' asked Jim surprised, 'can she say I owed her a duty of care? I wasn't acting for her at the time. She wasn't a client.'

'Ah!' said counsel, 'but she says that she was.'

'How can she say that?'

'Haven't you read the statement of claim?'

'Yes, of course, but what does she base her assertion on? That she was my client and I owed her a duty of care?'

The insurance company solicitor interrupted.

'I think Mr Hunt will not yet have seen the details of the matters upon which the other side will rely. I haven't yet had the chance to provide him with copies of the correspondence from them where they set out their position,' he said smiling apologetically at Jim.

Jim was bemused. After that less than helpful explanation, he still had no idea. He must have looked perplexed because learned counsel, with the condescending and indulgent air of a parent guiding a small infant around a minor obstacle, interrupted saying,

'Let me explain. She says that she had been in touch with you about her affairs prior to the weekend and had arranged to see you to discuss them. It follows, therefore, according to her that when you did the Will for Mr Spencer on the Saturday evening, you were acting wrongly and against the interest of her as your client.'

'Firstly,' said Jim angrily, 'she did not arrange to see me about her affairs. She insisted on coming to see me and wouldn't say why and not only that, but it was on the Monday. It wasn't before I made the Will.'

'That's according to you. She says she did instruct you.'

Jim sighed. The penny dropped. What a fool he had been, he thought, not to ask her why she wanted to see him before he gave her the notice of severance! He had walked right into that one.

Now she could and was saying that it was a meeting arranged to discuss her affairs. Both he and she knew that wasn't true, but it was his word against her and she could always point to the fact that she had arranged with him to go to his office. He couldn't deny that. It was true.

What was not true is that she was going to instruct Jim to act for her. He had told her often enough that he couldn't and wouldn't, but, he realised, by allowing her to come to his office seizing on it as he had gratefully at the time as an opportunity to serve the notice, it enabled her now to assert that she was there on business.

All this flashed through his mind in an instant.

Counsel continued adopting a tone of voice which Jim had heard often enough in courts, superior, self-righteous and judgemental.

'As an experienced solicitor you would have been aware when Spencer asked you to change his Will, effectively cutting her out of it, that you were in a position of conflict, that is her interests conflicted with his and you should have declined to do it. By doing it, you broke your duty of care to her. She suffered a loss, the other half of the house she would have otherwise received either by right of survivorship or under his previous Will, and she now seeks to recover that from you.'

Jim said nothing. It was as if circumstances had conspired against him. It was a lie. He knew that and Doreen knew it, but she was plainly determined to pursue him.

_Lorraine was right_ , he thought bitterly. She had been trying to shaft Derek, but at the last instant he had foiled her by changing his Will. _Now_ , he thought _, she was determined to shaft him in Derek's place – what a scheming cow!_

He ground his teeth, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was snared and would be at the mercy of events which, in this case, meant the legal system in which he had so little confidence.

Counsel's voice broke across his thoughts.

'I can see you have much to think about, but all is not lost,' he said brightly. 'You will give your evidence and if it is believed, the law is in our favour.'

'So you consider that we should fight the case and not concede liability?' said the grey man from the insurance company earnestly.

'Absolutely,' said learned counsel smiling his most ingratiating smile at he who held the cheque book. 'We shall fight this and we shall win!' he pronounced triumphantly.

Jim's heart sank. Talk about the kiss of death, he thought, as, sitting there helplessly with nothing to do but observe, he watched the barrister and solicitor and insurance man go into a huddle and begin to sort through a mountain of papers on the table before them. He caught snatches of what was being said, but nobody asked him about anything and he simply sat there as if paralysed, numbly watching what went on.

He knew well enough that nobody can predict the outcome of any court case. It was like trying to predict the winner of the Grand National. What really worried him was that this senior member of the bar, the barrister in whose hands his fate would be, felt able to say categorically that they would win.

He sighed and thought that he must be an even bigger berk than first impressions had suggested. So far, it seemed to Jim, he seemed to have all the intellectual qualities of a First World War general. 'Come on lads, one more push and we've got Jerry beat!' They had been right – eventually, but a lot of men paid for that mindless optimism with their lives and limbs.

This wasn't a war, of course. Or was it? The conference eventually ended and they parted with the customary pleasantries, the insurance man in particular shaking counsel's limp and rather damp hand with enthusiasm. Counsel smiled wanly at him and then retreated into some inner sanction within chambers.

_Time for a fag_ , thought Jim, as he, too, left.
CHAPTER 11

As he walked back to the station through the cloistered courtyards of the Middle and Inner Temples, the Inns of Court as they were known where common law barristers for the most part had their chambers, he reflected on what had been said. He had felt no empathy with any of those present, nor was he convinced that he stood anything more than at best a 50/50 chance of a favourable outcome.

In theory at least it didn't matter since the practice was insured against claims. They were obliged by The Law Society, their governing body, to carry negligence insurance. They had, of course, paid their premiums and would now be covered against the financial costs of defending the claim and any award if the claimant was successful.

If they lost, all they would have to pay was the excess on their policy, a few thousand pounds, whereas the insurance company would have to stump up the rest. So far, so good, but that he knew would not be the end of it. They might well find it difficult to find an insurer at the next annual review and their premiums would no doubt increase dramatically.

This would not make him popular with his partners who might want to penalise him in terms of his share of the firm's profits by, for example, reducing it to reflect the higher premiums.

It went further than that though. The firm was long established. It had an excellent record. There hadn't been a claim brought against it for over 25 years. They were proud of that and would see a successful claim as bringing their practice into disrepute. There would be adverse local publicity and their practice might well suffer as a result.

The person responsible for all this would be Jim. Even if his partners didn't throw him out of the firm, life would plainly be rather difficult, he thought gloomily as he walked into the Strand and took the crossing over to the main entrance of The Royal Courts.

His intention was to take a short-cut through the courts and out the back via the judges' entrance and into Lincoln's Inn on his way to Holborn tube station.

He had spent his years training in London and knew the rabbit warren of courts and court offices that made up the Royal Courts of Justice intimately. Acquiring that intimate familiarity had been a necessity since often, particularly when you were new to it, you might find yourself trying to issue a writ, for example, in the offices in the Queen's Bench corridor only to be told on reaching the front of a queue of other clerks, all clutching bundles of papers and waiting to present them, by a bad-tempered and less than helpful court clerk that he had the wrong forms or needed to pay a fee.

'Pardon?' the hapless Jim had asked in a futile bid for help from the court clerk who had already moved on to the next person in the queue. There was no help there. Help usually came from a more experienced clerk in the queue who would whisper as he passed, 'It needs stamping'.

'Oh, where do I do that?'

'Ground floor stamp office'.

Attempts to progress claims procedurally might be frustrated in any of a variety of ways; wrong forms, wrongly filled in, insufficient copies, documents not stamped and so on in a seemingly endless series of obstacles to be overcome.

A dogged persistence was required, together with stamina and that is where a knowledge of the quickest route from where you were to where you needed to be became important if your bleached bones were not to be found in some rarely visited, obscure corridor or room of the High Court where all was still, save for the steady tick, tick, ticking of the clock in the master's clerk's antechamber, the ancient incumbent of which had not been seen for some time and who was possibly either dead or retired

All of this, of course, he remembered as he made his way through the great hall of the court, his metal-heeled shoes ringing on the stone floor as he strode along looking up to the far-off roof and to the sides of the gigantic portraits of judges long dead. It always impressed him. It was like a cathedral, but not one built to the glory of God.

This one did not glorify the spirit. On the contrary, it glorified the law and sought to infuse the legal process with a degree of majesty. In short, it was designed to make you shit yourself, he thought gloomily, and what's more, it worked. Fortunately, his hard-won knowledge of the labyrinthine pile meant that he knew where the nearest lavatory was and he quickly made his way there.

At the next partner's meeting, he reported what had happened at the conference. There was a silence when he had finished speaking. He sat at the large, polished, mahogany desk with the sherry decanter and glasses in the middle, as yet untouched, and wondered what the other partners were thinking. Nobody spoke for a while, but at length one of them asked,

'Any idea when the trial will take place?'

Jim answered that the case was a floater; that is there was no fixed date, but that they had to be ready for a date in the autumn. That was that for the time being at least he concluded as he left the meeting feeling as if the sword of Damocles was suspended over his head.

He was alright, he thought, for the moment, but only just and living on borrowed time. Final judgement had been suspended pending the outcome of the trial, but he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that even if the claim failed, his position within the partnership may already have been irretrievably damaged.
CHAPTER 12

Despite the distinct sense of foreboding that he felt, life had to go on. He still had a job to do and clients' affairs to manage. In fact, he quickly found that by concentrating on work, he was able for brief periods of time to forget about the impending court case. It was always there, of course, at the back of his mind, but he did what he could to suppress it and work certainly helped.

One Friday afternoon, a couple of weeks later, one of his colleagues at work, one of the young assistant solicitors, knocked on the door of his office.

'Come in,' he called. The door opened and in walked Geoff Higgins who handled most of the criminal work in the practice along with a retired police officer who did most of the legwork visiting prisons, taking statements and attending Crown court hearings with counsel instructed for the client.

Although Jim, too, had cut his teeth on criminal work when newly qualified, he now seldom attended the magistrates' court. As he had become more experienced and more senior, his workload had gradually altered, but he could nevertheless still handle criminal work if necessary. That, it turned out, was the reason for Higgins' visit.

'Look, Jim, I know it's a bind, but it's my engagement party this Saturday and according to the rota I'm on duty to cover the police station. Would you mind covering for me, please?'

Jim groaned inwardly. It was no joke being on call. You were on duty for 24 hours and could be called out to attend the police station at any time, night or day, within that 24 hours. This was because some bright spark had decided that it was essential that everybody arrested by the police and taken to a police station had to be told of their right to free legal advice from the duty solicitor, whichever unfortunate individual that might be.

Parliament, in its infinite wisdom, initiated the system as usual without any real consideration of how much it might cost the State to provide this service to everybody whether a person potentially at risk, such as a juvenile, or just some drunken yob charged with criminal damage after the pubs closed. It wasn't long before they were doing everything they could to cut down the cost to the public purse whilst holding on to the principle, as they termed it, of free representation.

That, however, was by the by. Jim felt that in all conscience he could hardly refuse and so, with a weak smile, he agreed.

'Thanks, Jim! You're a pal,' beamed a delighted Higgins.

Thus it was as a consequence of his inability to say no, Jim found himself on call the following day, Saturday.

Most of the day, Jim was left in peace. His phone was on ready to take any call that might come through, but for the most of the day it was silent. This, he knew from experience, did not mean that he would not be called at night. Almost invariably that's when the calls came and particularly in the early hours after the pubs turned out.

So it was that at 1:30 am he was awakened from a deep sleep by a call from the control centre asking him to contact the local station about a man whose name he did not catch, but who had been arrested on suspicion of theft.

Morosely, he rang the nick and asked to speak to the custody sergeant whose bright and breezy manner did nothing to endear himself to Jim, now sitting on the edge of his bed trying to rub the sleep from his eyes.

'Alright, sarge,' he said. 'What's it all about?'

'We have a gentleman in custody, sir, who wishes to avail himself of your services,' said the sergeant cheerfully.

'What, now?' said Jim feeling foolish, but keen to go back to sleep. 'Can't it wait until the morning? He's entitled to rest isn't he?'

'Sorry, sir,' said the sergeant less than reluctantly. 'The aforesaid gentleman would like to see you now.'

Jim resisted the temptation to be rude. It was, after all, his job. He was on call. He had no option but to go.

'Alright,' he growled. 'I'll be there in about 20 minutes – don't let the bastard go to sleep!' He couldn't resist adding that. It had actually happened to him on one previous occasion that he had driven for an hour to a distant police station at 2:00 am one morning only to be told on arrival that the prisoner had gone to sleep.

'Wake him up,' Jim had said.

'Sorry, sir,' the sergeant had said apologetically, 'but I have to allow him to rest. He's had quite a lot to drink, I believe, and he needs to sleep it off.'

Jim had never forgotten that. He was determined that that was not going to happen again.

Jim made his way to the police station using the front entrance. The waiting area before the front desk had the usual riff-raff hanging about, bleary-eyed and enquiring in pissed voices about their mates who had been arrested and were now in custody in the cavernous depths of the police station.

The desk sergeant, a calm and capable-looking copper in his forties, politely fielded their enquiries. They would find out in due course. If they wanted to wait, would they please pipe down or, he added sternly, he would either arrest them as well or eject them.

There was a pause during which Jim thought it could go either way, but there was something about the commanding presence of the police officer which decided them in favour of compliance. They piped down and sat or squatted in a disconsolate group. Before long, they began to nod off.

The officer turned to Jim at last.

'Yes, sir?' he enquired.

'I'm the duty solicitor, sarge. You've got some hero in custody that requires my assistance.'

'Very well, sir, if you don't mind waiting a moment, I'll arrange for you to be escorted to the cell block.'

After a few minutes the escort arrived in the form of an attractive WPC who was, he noted with regret, impervious to his lascivious smile as he greeted her arrival. In silence they walked together through the police station and then down the stone steps towards the cell block where, on arrival with a jangle of keys, she briskly opened the heavy metal door to admit him. He thanked her as he walked in. He hadn't completely given up hope of arousing some interest in her. In vain.

'S'right,' she said without looking at him before slamming the door. He heard her footsteps receding as he turned to face the officer in the charge room who was the officer in charge of the cells. He didn't know this one either.

He announced who he was and why he was there. It turned out that this was the officer who had rung him. As Jim stood there, the officer shuffled through some papers before briefly explaining that the prisoner had been nicked on suspicion of theft of a generator from a building site. There had been a great many such thefts over the previous few months and he was suspected of having something to do with those as well. They wanted to interview him formally under caution, but he had requested legal advice first.

'So, sir,' the officer concluded, 'shall I sort out a couple of cups of tea?'

Jim was grateful. Just occasionally, in his experience and usually when your feelings of compassion for the rest of mankind were at a low ebb, somebody would do something which acted like a small flicker of light in the darkness and restored your faith.

'That would be really nice,' he replied and meant it.

With another jangle of keys, he was admitted into the cell area itself. The smell was familiar. Unwashed feet, hot and sweaty feet, the shoes for which lined the cell corridor outside the cell doors. Jim braced himself. Now the technique learned in the presence of Briggs and his dog of shallow breathing without smelling would come in handy. The cells had no open air ventilation, the windows being constructed of inches thick small cubes of glass that a pick axe would not have broken. Each cell had a lavatory and a low bench upon which there would be a rubber, foam-filled mat for the prisoner to lie on and survey the graffiti-covered walls and door of his accommodation.

The sergeant slid open the hatch of the cell and peered in.

'Alright, lad, on your feet,' he called through at the cell's incumbent. 'Solicitor to see you.'

'Any chance of a fag, sarge?' a voice said sleepily from within.

'We'll see, later.'

The door bolt was slid open and with a creak and a further rattle of keys, the heavy metal door was pulled open. Bracing himself, Jim stepped in. The prisoner rose to his feet. There, to his astonishment, Jim saw the unkempt and untidy figure of Oliver Arkwright.
CHAPTER 13

The door of the cell slammed shut behind Jim as he stared at Arkwright. In fact, both men stared at each other in momentary disbelief. Then Arkwright laughed.

'There's a turn-up for the books!' he said. 'My old boss, Derek's, solicitor! What ill wind blew you here?'

Jim thought fast. He didn't see how he could advise Arkwright given that he had acted on Derek Spencer's behalf against him and not that long ago either. On the other hand, it was for something entirely different and Derek's affairs had been concluded long ago. He was now the duty solicitor and he was there to do a job. Arkwright was no less deserving of advice if, indeed, he still wanted it.

'It's up to you, Arkwright,' he said. 'I don't see why I can't advise you about your present difficulty so long as it has nothing whatever to do with Derek Spencer's affairs. Does it?'

'No,' said Arkwright sitting down on the rubber mat.

'Well,' continued Jim, 'do you want my help or not? You are not obliged to accept it, but if you do, I will advise you to the best of my ability.'

'I don't see why not,' said Arkwright after a pause, adding hopefully, 'got a fag?'

Jim groaned involuntarily and then pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered Arkwright one. In that claustrophobic cell it was going to be the smell of either feet or fags and it no longer mattered to him particularly which one it was. The cigarette might even be preferable, he thought, as he sniffed cautiously.

'Right, what's it all about?' he asked and sat down as well as Arkwright lit up. Jim listened whilst Arkwright explained that it was all a mistake. He was innocent of any dishonesty. He had bought the generator from an Irish builder who had told him that it was surplus to his requirements. He had paid a fair price and so on.

Jim groaned inwardly. It never ceased to amaze him how many innocent people were arrested by the police. Prisons, he knew from experience, were full of them, each one the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Still, he reflected, innocence or guilt were largely irrelevant to his role in this situation and so he continued,

'The sergeant told me that it was found in your possession within a few days of it going missing from a building site. Recent possession can be good evidence of theft.'

'That's as may be,' scowled Arkwright, 'but I bought it fair and square.'

Whether he had or not did not really concern Jim. He was not an investigating police officer. If Arkwright told him he hadn't done anything wrong, then that was good enough and he could advise him accordingly. He did so, briefly summarising the law relating to theft.

He advised him of his right to remain silent, but given that he was found physically in possession of the generator, he ought perhaps to agree to be questioned so that he could provide an explanation. He warned him that if he didn't do so at this stage and was charged with the offence, that he might find himself in difficulty at the trial if he then tried to put forward an explanation.

'Will you stay with me during the interview?' he asked.

'That's part of my job, but I can't answer the questions for you. And remember,' he cautioned, 'there's nothing worse than answering some questions but refusing to answer others. It's either name, rank and number only or you answer the lot. What do you want to do?'

'Tell 'em I'll be interviewed,' he said, adding quickly, 'can you get me bail?'

'We'll see,' said Jim. It would depend on whether the police had any objections to bail in the first instance and would not want to consider it at this stage anyway.

Jim rang the cell bell for the custody sergeant and, after a short delay, was let out of the cell. As he waited for the sound of approaching footsteps, he felt again the slight feeling of anxiety he had always experienced in the past about whether he would be let out or not. It was silly, he knew, but he always had to force himself to relax and be patient until the door was opened. He was always glad when it was.

Whilst arrangements were being made for Arkwright to be interviewed, he went upstairs to the police canteen. It was getting lighter in the sky as dawn now approached and he was feeling hungry.

At the top of the stairs leading to the canteen, his senses were seduced by the welcoming smell of eggs and bacon being prepared for officers changing shifts, and he happily joined the queue with them. A few minutes later after a brief internal struggle over whether to have beans and fried bread as well as eggs and bacon, which good sense lost, he was sitting at a table downing the lot as rapidly as possible. He hadn't realised how hungry he was.

At length, he sat back with a sigh clutching his mug of hot, sweet tea and surveyed the scene around him. There, he noticed, was the attractive, but frosty WPC who had let him into the cell area. She was talking to a CID inspector he knew with a reputation for the ladies. That explains it, he thought ruefully. No chance there then.

Still, life was looking better, replete as he was with a large, cooked breakfast inside him. He beamed in a good-natured way at no one in particular. Then, as he sat there thinking happy thoughts, he felt a pat on the shoulder. Looking up, he saw that it was his chum, the inspector, that he had last seen at the inquest into Derek Spencer's death.
CHAPTER 14

'Hello, Jim,' said the inspector smiling. 'You look pleased with yourself.'

'Two reasons,' grinned Jim back. 'One, I've just had a fry-up and two, I'm off duty in half an hour.'

The inspector laughed.

'Reasons for being cheerful indeed.'

'Fancy a cup of tea?' said Jim, and the inspector swiftly joined Jim at his table with two steaming mugs of the liquid which refreshed, but does not inebriate.

'I've been intending to give you a ring,' began the inspector, having reduced the liquid in his mug by a half at one gulp.

'Yes?' said Jim enquiringly imagining that he wanted legal advice about something or other. He could not have been more mistaken.

'It's about what you said to me at the inquest,' continued the inspector, 'suggesting that it might not be suicide.' Jim remembered. 'Well,' said the inspector, 'we ran a few checks. There wasn't much really to investigate, but we tried to check out the origin of the photograph – you remember? The one on the dashboard of some army lads.'

Jim nodded. He remembered.

'We spoke to his first wife and she said that he was in the group. She pointed him out. It's just as well she did because I would never have recognised him. It seems that when he was a National Serviceman, he was called up for the Korean War and served with a regiment called the Glosters; the picture apparently was of him and his mates. She didn't know any of them and he never spoke much about his experiences, but funnily enough, not long before he died, she did receive a visit from a chap of about the same age who had said he was looking for Derek and that they had been pals together in the army.

'She explained that they were divorced, but gave him some idea of where he might find him, you know, where he went for a drink, that sort of thing. She didn't want to give his home address because she wasn't sure how pleased Derek might be to see him. He had never said anything to her about old army friends and so far as she knew he had never seen any. The war was, after all, what 25 years or more ago?'

'Dunno,' said Jim. He had only dimly heard about it. He remembered from school that there had been British troops supporting the Americans in the Korean War and he had read a bit about the famous battle of the Imjin River in which they had taken part, but that was about it.

'Anyway,' continued the inspector, 'that was that and quite honestly I don't see how we can pursue any further enquiry along those lines, since his ex-wife didn't know the man's name let alone how we might contact him. The only helpful thing we came across were some fingerprints on the whisky bottle on the front passenger seat.'

'Really?' said Jim expectantly. 'And?'

'Well, they are of a man known to the police. When we ran them past criminal records, we came up with a match and guess what.'

'What?'

'He's in custody here today. His name is Oliver Arkwright. His prints were on the whisky bottle.'

Jim whistled. That was food for thought. Why on earth would his fingerprints be on the bottle? Ordinarily it might not signify much, but he and Spencer were not friends and would hardly likely to have been dinking together.

'Can you question him about it?' asked Jim after a few moments silence.

'I'd like to, but on what basis? As far as we know, no crime's been committed that we could arrest him for, that's to say we don't have any evidence that would justify arresting him, wouldn't you agree?' Jim did agree.

The inspector looked at his watch. 'Right, well I'm on duty myself now so I'd better get to it. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but there's not much else I can do.'

Jim thanked him and the officer left the canteen. Jim did too thoughtfully descending the stairs trying vainly to grasp the significance of what the inspector had told him.

By the time he had reached the bottom of the stairs, he had decided that he would stay on and sit through the police interview of Arkwright, even though he was technically now off-duty and a different solicitor could have taken his place who would now be the duty solicitor for the current day. An idea had begun to form slowly in his mind.

Arkwright was pleased that he was going to remain. He was quite enthusiastic about it, particularly when Jim said that afterwards he would try and sort out bail for him.

The interview took place in a purpose-built room with no windows, just a table and chair for everybody to sit upon and a recording machine on the table. Two officers conducted the interview whilst Jim sat slightly to one side and listened. The interview was taped from the outset and the whole procedure explained by the officers to Arkwright clearly and, in Jim's view, satisfactorily.

It didn't take long, about half an hour. Jim listened with one ear, but in reality his mind was working overtime. What, he wondered, was Arkwright's connection with Derek's death and, more intriguingly, was there any link with Doreen? She had known Arkwright when he worked for Derek. Neither of them had any reason to love him. What if they had joined forces in some way?

All of this was pure speculation. He realised that, but the pressure of the court proceedings brought against him by Doreen and the position that that had put him in with his partners was beginning to tell on him. He was not sleeping all that well. The impending court case was always there at the back of his mind and created in him a sense of foreboding and impending disaster. He might, in most people's minds, have been clutching at straws, but he had a vague but growing sense that if he could establish some direct connection between Doreen and Derek's death, then it might in some way help him and even free him from his present difficulties. _Was_ , he wondered, _Oliver Arkwright that link?_

By the time the interview ended, he had come up with a plan, a desperate and unorthodox plan, but one that he was determined to try. After the interview, he arranged bail with the police officers. Arkwright was to be bailed from police custody to return at a later date whilst they made further enquires in the meantime following what he had said during interview.

Arkwright was grateful. Outside the police station he thanked Jim who said nonchalantly, 'That's alright. It's all part of the job.' He turned to go and then hesitated as if having had second thoughts. 'Tell you what – I can give you a lift home if you like?'

Arkwright accepted gladly. He had no other means of getting home and so the two of them left the police station car park in Jim's car.
CHAPTER 15

During the drive to Arkwright's home, Jim gave him a cigarette to smoke despite the fact that he hated people smoking in his car. He, himself, was not a smoker. He only had the cigarettes as part of, as it were, his duty solicitor equipment. Prisoners invariably smoked and it sometimes eased things along when dealing with them if you were able to offer them a smoke.

Now he offered Arkwright a cigarette for the same reason. He had some more questions for him. Arkwright lit up and took a deep drag of his cigarette.

'I expect they will have been warned about you at home?' enquired Jim with a concerned expression his face.

'No,' answered Arkwright. 'I live alone and keep myself to myself.'

_Good_ , thought Jim.

'What are you doing with yourself now?' he enquired in need of something to talk about. 'Still in the building game?'

'Sort of,' said Arkwright laughing. 'I'm in plant hire.' Then, almost as if to unburden himself he continued to Jim's surprise, 'After Derek and I parted company, I needed something to do. I was potless and then one day something Derek had told me about his time in the army came to me. He told me once over a few drinks that when he first did his National Service he was sent to Palestine where he spent most of his time flogging army gear, guns, even to the Arabs. That's what gave me the idea for plant hire.'

'I don't see the connection, I'm sorry,' said Jim not understanding him.

'Well,' continued Arkwright patiently, 'I had no plant so basically I put the word about that I would buy plant with no questions asked and soon I had a lot of plant to hire out, all of it nicked. Since it was nicked, I got it for pennies in terms of its real value.'

'Good grief,' said Jim.

'Yes, I've got quite a nice little business going,' he said again laughing, 'hiring out plant as often as not to the very people it was nicked from in the first place!'

Jim was glad that he would not be representing Arkwright any further. Arkwright had his own solicitor which, as far as Jim was concerned, was just as well because he could not in all conscience have acted for him on a not guilty plea in these circumstances. Even the malleable conscience of a criminal defence solicitor used to living and working in the sewer-like world of the criminal sub-culture would not permit him to go that far.

They reached where Arkwright lived, a scruffy looking block of 1950s council flats on the edge of town. On the edge of everything, Jim thought, as he pulled up and looked around the graffiti-covered walls, litter and dog shit which decorated the place. Arkwright must have guessed what he was thinking.

'No place like home,' he smiled opening the door.

'I live at number 5 at the top. Thanks for the lift.'

Jim watched whilst Arkwright got out of the car and then headed for the stairs leading to his flat. He waited until he was out of sight, then he, too, got out of the car and headed towards the stairs. What was he going to do? Part of him knew full well what he was going to do, and the other part of him screamed at him not to do it. He ignored that voice. He suspended conscious thought and went on to auto-pilot as he made his way up the stairs. It was still quite early and there was nobody around. The neighbours, it seemed, were not early risers. It was after all a bit early for the postman bringing their benefit cheques.

He reached the doorway to number 5. It was shut. He tapped on the door and after a moment or two Arkwright opened it. He looked surprised when he saw Jim who said,

'I forgot something. Do you mind if I come in?' but stepped through the doorway without waiting for an answer. Arkwright took an involuntary pace backwards. He suddenly looked worried as well he might, thought Jim distantly in some far off part of his mind as if he was watching the scene as a bystander.

Jim got straight to the point saying quietly,

'Your prints were found on the whisky bottle in the van when Derek's body was found. How do you explain that?'

'Piss off,' said Arkwright contemptuously. Jim was glad he said that. It made it possible for him to excuse to himself what he was itching to do, namely to beat the shit out of Arkwright. He stepped forwards quickly and grabbed Arkwright by the throat with both hands pulling him towards himself, and when the startled Arkwright was close enough, he aimed a vicious head-but at Arkwright which connected with Arkwright's nose causing it to bleed profusely.

'Oh dear,' he said stating the obvious. 'Your nose is bleeding,' and then dragged him to the bathroom where he held him over the bath whilst he put the plug in and turned both taps on.

'You're mad! What the fuck are you doing?' groaned Arkwright. 'I don't know anything about it.'

'Listen, nancy boy,' Jim said quietly in his right ear whilst he watched the blood drip from Arkwright's nose into the rising bathwater turning it pink. 'After that little episode when you were nicked for the fun and games in the public lavatory, you may remember that the police took your fingerprints? Yes? Well, those same dabs were found on the whisky bottle found with the dead Derek, so I think you do know something about it.'

Arkwright said nothing.

The bathwater was now sufficiently high to allow Jim to easily push Arkwright's head into and under the water which he proceeded to do with a fervour and venom that surprised even himself. Odd, he thought to himself, how quickly the thin veneer of civilisation is lost when it comes to it. What he was doing was wrong. He knew that. It was inexcusable and he couldn't give a fuck. Two or three immersions were enough to make Arkwright gasp.

'Alright, I'll tell you. Just stop.' Jim stopped. He was almost disappointed. Arkwright slumped on the floor leaning against the bath. Jim sat on the lavatory and lit a fag which he gave him.

'Yes?' he said.

'Look, I know I robbed him rotten, but I didn't hate the bloke. I didn't want to kill him.'

'Well, what did you do?'

Arkwright sighed. 'Look,' he said sounding repetitive, Jim thought. 'I know there was that incident in the loo, but I like women, I really do ...'

'And?'

'After Derek slung me out of the firm, I had a phone call one morning from his wife.'

'Doreen?'

'Yes, she said she needed my help about something and asked me to go around to her place.'

'Really – and you went?'

'I did. I was curious. At first I thought that Derek was trying to trap me and work me over or something like that, but in the end I went. I had seen his car outside his usual drinking place and so I took a chance and went to his home.'

'What happened there?'

'Doreen opened the door and invited me in. She was nice as pie. In fact, she was all over me. Actually, I found it a bit embarrassing. She's quite an attractive woman, but she's older than me. I thought she was coming on a bit strong.'

'Continue, please,' said Jim listening carefully.

'She told me to go into the living room whilst she fixed us a couple of drinks. I went in there and waited. All over the coffee table there were these porno mags. I'd never seen anything like it. Well, of course, I couldn't resist having a look and to be honest by the time she'd come back, I was up for it.'

'Meaning?'

'I picked her up, carried her upstairs and gave her a good rogering.'

'I see.'

'After that, I went round there daily for a bit and then, to be honest, I was worn out and wanted to knock it on the head, but then she asked me if I would help her and said she would make it worth my while.'

'What did she want you to do?'

'She said Derek was drinking away everything they had. I could believe that. She said she had to try and protect herself. She said he was so bad he had already tried to kill himself once. She had tried to help him, but had given up and now just wished he would get it over with. I asked where I came in and she said that if I could just get him to take one drink too many, there was a good chance he would have another go.'

'But how were you supposed to that that?'

'She knew that I could read him like a book. I knew where he drank and when. All I had to do was catch him on a bender and keep him going.'

Jim considered what he was being told. It would have sounded ridiculous if he, too, hadn't been aware of Derek's self-destructive tendencies. He was quite literally capable of drinking himself to death and that, it seemed, is what Doreen had in mind. Then, at least, she would be free of him and able to salvage what she could from the wreckage.

Even so, it confirmed what Lorraine had said to him about her suspicions. Why is it, he wondered momentarily, that women can be so much harder-headed than men?

'So what happened then?' he asked.

'Nothing much. I kept an eye on him – watched where his car was, that sort of thing and then, on the Tuesday of the week he died, I bumped into a mate who told me that Derek was having a real session with some friends at the club he usually drinks at, so I decided to take a look. When I got there, there was a real party going on even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Derek was there laughing his head off, some other builders I know and lots of people I didn't know. It's amazing how many friends you can have when you are buying the drinks.'

True enough, thought Jim. It sounds as if Derek was putting the cart before the horse, celebrating at his own wake before the main event.

'So what did you do?'

'I didn't do anything. I just hung around. It seemed to me that this was just as good a chance as any. I bought a bottle of whisky and had a couple of drinks myself in the corner out of the way. Then, I got bored and decided to leave. I hadn't finished the bottle, but I wasn't going to leave it so I took it with me. I was out in the car park having a slash against the wheel of my car when suddenly Derek was there right by me. I thought I might be in trouble, but, pissed as he was, he was quite pleasant.'

'Did he say anything?'

'Yes, he says, 'Hello Oliver, I'm just saying cheerio because I'm off to top myself'.'

'He said that?'

'Yes, on my mother's life he did. All I did was say good luck mate, here have one on me and gave him the bottle of whisky.'

'And then?'

'He took it, got into his van and drove off. How that man could drive when pissed, I don't know, but then he had a lot of practise I suppose.'

'And that was that?'

'Yes.' He paused, looked earnestly at Jim and said, 'Look, I know none of this looks that good, but I didn't kill him and as far as I know his missus didn't either, although to be honest she had every reason to. He was a devil when he was in drink and if he went on a bender he would disappear for days.'

Jim suddenly and unaccustomedly felt rather ashamed of himself.

'Look,' he said rising to his feet, 'I'm sorry I thumped you.' He pulled Arkwright to his feet and tugged at his clothes in a belated and futile attempt to tidy him up and to make amends in some way. 'You can take it further if you like?' he said after a brief struggle with his conscience. Arkwright grinned.

'Not much point really is there? Who would believe me?' True, thought Jim.

'Yes, well ok then I'll be off,' he said making for the door. He opened the flat door and stepped out on the terrace. The sun was shining in direct contrast to the way he felt.
CHAPTER 16

The day of the trial finally dawned. Jim was early. He had allowed plenty of time for the journey and so had time to stop in Lincolns Inn Fields for a cup of tea sitting outside the little café at a table by the tennis courts. The café was more of a shed really, just an open counter over which an endless stream of cups of tea and cheese rolls were dispersed to the customers.

There were no frills to the fare on offer, cheese rolls or, if you fancied something more exotic, cheese and onion or cheese and tomato. If pushed, they might even stretch to a bit of tuna, but it was only the odd weirdo who would ask for a tuna roll. That, at least, is the impression that such a request would create to judge by the expression on the face of the stout lady behind the counter.

Tea was dispersed from an enormous metal kettle with a large wooden handle on top and one behind. This was used rather like a watering can over the rows of heavy, white china cups arranged tightly together on a metal tray filling several rows with one swing of the kettle as the stout lady glanced at the long queue of individuals waiting to be served.

Consternation would be caused if somebody, on arriving at the front, asked for coffee when the stout lady poised ready with a spoon and large tin of sugar was about to enquire how many spoonfuls the customer required, she would frown and place the spoon and can down with a clatter and then fuss and cluck like a disturbed hen whilst an old jar of Camp coffee was sought for and finally produced and an evil dark-looking liquid prepared.

With the steadfast stoicism and restrained impatience of the British, the queue behind the offending individual collectively pursed its lips and narrowed their eyes, their unspoken thoughts echoing around in the grim silence. What is this twerp thinking of? What is he, some kind of weirdo? Perhaps he's a bloody foreigner!

Jim felt very comfortable there. It was familiar and fitted like an old pair of shoes and, for a few brief minutes, he was able to savour his cheese and onion roll in peace and even for a few moments to forget about the impending court hearing.

Thus fortified, he resumed his walk to the Royal Courts now looming in the distance and casting their baleful shadow over the surrounding area. To avoid them for a little longer, he dawdled in Lincolns Inn itself before taking a deep breath and resolutely striding into Carey Street directly behind the courts, evincing to the casual observer, a strength of purpose and confidence he certainly did not feel.

He knew well enough where he had to go to. Familiar as he was with the courts, he knew exactly where he was expected to be and how to get there. The trial, he knew, having spoken to the barrister's clerk on the telephone the night before, was listed for hearing in court number 5.

There was a part-heard case on before them, that is to say a case not concluded, so there would be a little while to wait before the trial in which he was the defendant could begin. This was quite normal. They would just have to hang around in the corridor outside until the judge was ready to deal with the matter, solicitors, barristers and witnesses milling around in the limited space available since, of course, other courts in the same corridor were also sitting and a good many people could be expected to be in attendance.

Jim got on quite well with his barrister's senior clerk. He was a physically very powerful man with impressively broad shoulders despite his years. Jim didn't know how old he was exactly, but he knew that the grey-haired clerk had started in these chambers as a junior clerk after he had been demobbed at the end of the Second World War, so he obviously had a lot of miles on the clock. He also had a character and presence born of experience and exuded capability. In fact, Jim would have felt a lot happier had the senior clerk been representing him rather than learned counsel himself. That, however, could not be.

What the clerk could do, however, was to give Jim a confidential insight into the character of the judge hearing on the trial. This he did the evening before as soon as the name of the judge became known.

'It's a woman, I'm afraid,' said the senior clerk whose name was Percy. 'She was a pupil in a neighbouring set years ago and I've watched her progress over the years.'

Jim knew that barristers, as well as badgers, lived, or rather in the case of barristers, worked in sets and so he understood what Percy was saying. The lady had been a pupil or trainee within other chambers in the Temple. Jim asked him what she was like.

'Well,' said Percy weighing his words carefully, 'When she was practising at the bar she was known for a certain toughness and intransigence and she has not softened with the passage of time. Indeed, she is known for her short temper and, worst of all, she does not like men.'

_Just like an old Labrador my dad had_ , thought Jim. He wasn't, in fact, surprised to hear she was tough. There were not many women at the bar which was not an easy life in any event, and in order to not only survive but to get on in this most masculine of environments, she would have had to have been tough. It appeared that an appointment to the bench had not softened her. That also was not surprising.

Another wise, old clerk had told him once that when a barrister was appointed to the bench, whether male, as was normally the case, or female, at first they were relieved to be out of the hurly-burly and the uncertainty of life at the bar. They had a regular income every month and their pension at the end of it was secure with their backsides firmly on the Chancellor's woolsack. Then, however, after a while when the relief had worn off and they realised how many years stretched ahead before they could retire and get the pension, they became bored. As they became bored, they became testy and acquired reputations for being bad tempered.

Jim knew, of course, that not all of Her Majesty's judiciary were like this, but it appeared that he had drawn a short straw and got one that was.

He made his way past the Court of Criminal Appeal and then paced along the stone flagstones of the corridor, a masterpiece of Victorian, gothic stonework, along which were ranked side by the side the Courts of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court and in which Her Majesty's High Court judges, known in the profession as red judges, conducted their business.

As he walked along the corridor, he glanced into the courtrooms that he passed and as he did so occasionally caught a glimpse of bewigged heads and above and beyond them the red that indicated to the presence of the judge presiding.

Finally, he reached court 5. Doreen was already there standing between her solicitor and barrister, a short, fat little man whose watch chain accordingly stretched in an ark over his large waistcoated stomach.

Jim nodded and said good morning as he arrived. The barrister acknowledged him with a nod back. The other two gave no sign of having heard him and stared into the middle distance. Jim was used to this. The atmosphere at most court hearings was often as relaxing as waiting for a dental appointment with the sound of the drill reverberating around the waiting room. Space was very limited, so the opposing parties usually standing in frosty silence had little option other than to tolerate the presence of their sometimes hated opponents waiting for proceedings to begin.

The minutes ticked by.

_Where's my bloody barrister_ , wondered Jim, and then sauntering majestically along the corridor learned counsel appeared as was customary in wig and black robe. The solicitor accompanied him looking harassed.

'Morning,' said the barrister beaming expansively and then went across to talk to his opponent about something. They knew each other, but did not shake hands. _Yet another of the conventions of the bar_ , thought Jim.

Eventually, the case before them finished and the judge retired allowing Doreen and Jim and their respective legal teams to file in through the ancient, wooden swing-doors into the recesses of the courtroom itself, now empty of people apart from themselves and the court usher, yet another black-robed individual.

The familiar smell of a courtroom greeted them as they entered, a musty slightly dusty mixture of well-polished wood and old books. They all sat down; counsel in front, the solicitor and Jim sitting behind him. The benches they sat at were wooden and polished smooth with the passage of time and countless backsides. Unlike school benches, no-one seemed to have been tempted to record their presence or to while away the tedium of a case by carving their initials in the wood.

Jim had always thought this was not surprising, although familiar with courts, was himself impressed by the heavy, wooden majesty of their surroundings, the wood-panelled and book-lined walls, the raised wooden bench at which the judge sat and the royal crest behind. In these surroundings, one spoke in hushed whispers and sat with hands in laps, eyes on the elevated chair where the judge would sit.

High above them light filtered in through some windows near the ceiling which served to dimly illuminate the proceedings. Jim was watching specks of dust spinning around in the shafts of light when her ladyship re-entered the room, her arrival announced by the usher.

'Silence and be upstanding.'

They all complied and, with the ponderous formality of the law, all bowed to the judge as she entered and stiffly bowed in their direction before taking her seat.

Jim studied her carefully. She was robed, of course, and had a wig upon her head below which grey, curly hair could be seen. Jim watched as she sat calmly surveying the scene whilst the barrister for Doreen rose to his feet and said deliberately,

'May it please your ladyship ..,' and then began to outline the case for Doreen. The judge occasionally nodded and said, 'yes,' in a nasal manner, but otherwise simply listened. The, 'yes,' was pronounced 'nyes,' in a deliberate and drawn-out manner without moving her lips which Jim found fascinating and was followed by a little sniff, although quite what that signified, he had no idea.

As was customary, counsel outlining the case left no stone unturned which, together with the evidential process, was gone through carefully and with all the speed of a stunned slug travelling with his brakes on. What this would have ordinarily meant was that Jim would have found it very difficult to stay awake. On this occasion, however, he listened to every word as if his life depended upon it, which in a sense it did.

The first witness was Doreen, and Jim sat there grinding his teeth as she gave another performance worthy of an Oscar. She was now the wronged woman and, what was even worse, the wronged client.

The judge listened attentively to her and made notes as she spoke. When the death of her husband was referred to, Doreen even managed a tremor in her voice and swayed slightly. It was masterly, thought Jim grudgingly. She might have taken lessons from Derek himself.

The judge was full of solicitous concern.

'Do take your time, Mrs Spencer, we quite understand. Would you like some water? Would you like to sit down?'

_It was sickening_ , thought Jim. _Couldn't they see that the woman was a bloody fraud? She hated her husband. She had been having an affair with his manager for heaven's sake and yet here she was acting the victim for all she was worth_.

After a short adjournment granted by the judge to allow her to recover her composure as the judge put it, she continued with her evidence. She was adamant that she had arranged to see Jim about business affairs and that he had been acting for her at the time he made the Will for Derek.

'I don't know why he did that,' she asked imploringly of the judge with a little girl lost look that was, Jim thought, a masterpiece of artistic understatement and one which found its mark with the judge if the hawk-like glance the judge threw at Jim was anything to go by. He felt as a small rodent must on catching a glimpse of the shadow of an approaching kestrel.

His barrister did his best to cross-examine Doreen, but he did not succeed in shaking her evidence. To be fair to the man, it was difficult to cross-examine a little girl lost type of witness without seeming to bully her and that, particularly in front of this judge, so solicitous for Doreen's welfare, could easily be counterproductive. Doreen was allowed to return to her place which she did taking small and hesitant steps with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth as if to stifle the sobs that she might otherwise give way to.

Eventually, it came to Jim's turn to give evidence. He held the bible in his right hand, looked at the judge and took the oath.

'I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth'. He said it in a firm and steady voice standing erect and facing the judge rather like an experienced policeman takes the oath before giving evidence.

Although Jim was not particularly religious, he regarded the oath as binding on his conscience and in any event could not bring himself to go through what he regarded as the pantomime that some witnesses went through choosing to affirm rather than to take the oath. Godless bastards, he used to think when this occurred. Surely they didn't think that pretending to be men of principle or conscience would particularly impress the court?

Nothing, in his experience, impressed a court. The best course of action designed to get you through the elaborate process of which you were a largely helpless part was to stand up, speak up and shut up. Your conscience and whether or not you took the oath or affirmed was irrelevant, presupposing as it did that the proceedings have anything whatever to do with right or wrong in the moral sense. It was a process and a very unpredictable process at that.

His barrister invited the court to treat his statement as read. That is to say, he was not going to have to give his evidence in chief, as it was termed. They had all read it and the judge and the barrister had a copy of his statement before them as part of the bound bundle of documents that had been prepared for the hearing.

It didn't mean, however, that he was going to get off lightly. On the contrary, it just meant that he was offered up for cross-examination by Doreen's barrister that much more quickly.

Doreen's barrister stood up and smiled ingratiatingly at the judge before twitching his robe with his left hand and adjusting his spectacles with his right. He started as they generally did with a bit of a warm-up question. 'You are an experienced solicitor are you not?'

This bloke has a degree in stating the bleeding obvious, thought Jim morosely to himself, but pulled himself together. Listen and think, he told himself. He, after all, knew how the system worked.

Like most questions, it didn't matter how he answered. If he answered, 'no,' the barrister would labour his inexperience and that would be worked up into a general critique of his ability to do anything let alone understand the often subtle nuances of client conflict. If, on the other hand, he said, 'yes,' then the barrister would simply go at it by a different route suggesting that, as an experienced solicitor, he would surely have been aware of the danger of client conflict when he made the will.

Jim had been an advocate himself. He knew well enough that it often did not matter how a witness responded to a question, the advocate just continued on a different tack.

The best thing, he knew, was to keep it short. Don't indulge in long explanations. You simply gave your tormentor more to question you about. There was a terrible temptation to explain and to try to persuade your questioner to accept what you were saying that made some people very bad witnesses in their own cause. They failed to appreciate that the person questioning them was a hired gun for their opponent and was no friend of theirs.

Others hoped that the judge might be impressed and won over. Again, more often than not, a futile hope. A bit like a fallen gladiator in the arena anxiously watching the wavering thumb of a Roman emperor, you had only a 50/50 chance no matter what you said or did. Thumbs up or thumbs down decided on the caprice or whim of the moment.

The questioning ground on and on and on. Jim had answered the first question.

'I have been qualified for 10 years,' which was true and an incontrovertible fact.

'So, would you say you are experienced?'

'That is not for me to judge'.

And so it went on, verbal fencing, the barrister probing patiently for a weakness of some kind, anything that might enable him to make a point to the judge in support of his client's case.

The truth was the judge, Jim suspected, would have pretty much made up her mind by now anyway and be debating her decision with herself with only half an ear on the proceedings.

He knew that you couldn't second-guess what a judge was thinking and until they pronounced their judgment in a case, you were in the dark about it.

On the other hand, this judge had seemed to him to have been very sympathetic to Doreen in her plight as she had presented it to the court, a woman wronged, and here was the judge, another woman of a not dissimilar age. It would be only natural if she identified with Doreen and sympathised with her. Add to that the tendency of Her Majesty's judges, the vast majority of whom were drawn from the ranks of the members of the bar, to be less than sympathetic to solicitors, and the future did not look bright.

Still, he wasn't going to give up without a fight. The luncheon adjournment came and he was still giving evidence, that is to say he was being grilled relentlessly by Doreen's barrister who had all the time in the world of a man being paid by the hour.

Jim was glad of the break and made his way out of the court intending to stretch his legs and to catch a breath of fresh air by going for a walk outside. First, he paid a visit to the nearest toilet, resplendent from the outside with Gothic arch and heavy door, but inside smelling as usual of men's urine aimed not all that carefully at the urinals to judge at least by the puddles on the floor.

Whilst he was stood contemplating the wall above the urinal trying to hold his breath and not to smell the ammonia in the air, he glanced to his right and there to his surprise he saw Perkins, the enquiry agent who had served the court proceedings on him.

'Hello,' he said. 'Fancy bumping into you here.'

The enquiry agent turned his head towards Jim saying,

'Hello sir – it's a small world isn't it? I'm up here giving evidence in another case. How's your case going or would you rather I didn't ask?'

Whilst talking, both men had, without looking at each other's dripping appendages for to do so would be bad form, given the aforesaid appendages a few shakes before stuffing them back whence they had come. What man, after all, would be interested in another man's dick? It was best not to stray into such dangerous territory. Together, they left the lavatory. Jim felt able to breathe deeply again.

'I can't talk about the case,' he explained. 'I'm still giving evidence.'

'I glanced into your court,' said Perkins. 'I sometimes pop into other courts when I'm waiting to give evidence. It's less boring than waiting outside. Anyway, I noticed there were a number of other members of the public watching the proceedings.'

'True,' said Jim. He had noticed himself that there were other people present. This was normal. The proceedings were public and anybody could and did come in and listen if they chose to do so. In cases where there was some really salacious evidence being given, you could hardly get through the door.

'One of them,' he continued, 'I'm pretty sure I've seen before.'

'Really?' said Jim now quite keen to get out of the building and to get some air. He didn't wish to appear rude, but time was short. The hearing would be resuming in about 45 minutes' time.

'Look, there he is – that's the bloke I meant,' the enquiry agent said pointing to a bespectacled man in his fifties walking towards them along the corridor. 'That's him,' Perkins repeated. 'I saw him at the inquest as well; odd that he should be here too.'

Jim thought so as well. What person, he wondered, apart from someone directly involved in the case would be bothered to follow it to this extent? He watched whilst the man drew level with them and passed, giving Jim a sympathetic, sideways glance as he did so. At least, it seemed to Jim, that it was a sympathetic glance or perhaps, he thought, he imagined that, being in need of sympathy after the rigorous questioning prior to the adjournment.

'Well, I hope he finds it entertaining,' said Jim caustically. 'Now I really must go and get some air,' and so saying he took his leave of the enquiry agent and quickly made his way out of the court building and into The Strand to be greeted by the usual roar of traffic and bustling pavements. He didn't feel much like dodging around people on the pavement and so he made his way to Chancery Lane to the Law Society's building there opposite the Public Records Office. It was only a few minutes walk and there he would be able to find sanctuary in the library or common room.

He entered the building, not these days guarded by tail-coated individuals as in previous times. He realised as he walked in that he quite missed the ritual of being confronted by a large but affable individual with the pointed enquiry, 'Excuse me sir, but are you a member?' It had been a bit embarrassing when as a mere articled clerk or trainee, as they were now called, you had to admit that you were not a member as yet. The footman, for that was what he looked like would step slowly aside and say, 'Very well sir, you may, of course, enter, but do please remember that you may not use the common room. That is reserved for members.'

These days, he thought morosely as he walked past the common room glancing in as he did so, any old Tom, Dick or Harry could go in the common room. Why, even women were allowed in.

When he came to think about it, he wondered that the paintings of past presidents stretching back into the mists of time that decorated the common room walls did not fall to the floor at this defiling of the innermost sanctum of these High Priests of the law. Why, it was tantamount to Cromwell's men stabling their horses in churches during the Civil War or strewing the assorted bones of Saxon kings all around Winchester Cathedral. In short, not all change was for the better.

Whilst he gloomily pondered the remit of change, he decided to pay a quick visit to the gentlemen's lavatory in the basement. This was partly to ease a sudden call of nature, and partly to check and see if the white-coated attendant of this most gentlemanly of gentlemen's lavatories was still there. No smell of ammonia as of massed battalions of incontinent cats met the nostrils on entering these facilities.

One entered and there nearby, standing discreetly with a towel over his arm and looking a bit like a ship's steward, would be the attendant. One ignored him and proceeded to face the highly-polished porcelain, noting reassuringly that this heavy-duty object like most of the others in the world appeared to have been born in Birmingham many years before, but so solidly had it been made and so well designed that it still rendered sterling service, not merely in London, but throughout the furthermost reaches of what had once been a mighty empire.

After meditating on this and other matters for a while, one went to a crystal-clean wash basin where bars of soap were available, and not scented soap, but coal tar soap as would suit any real man. Then, at the very instant that a towel was required, the attendant would be there like the genie of the lamp and, without a word, a clean, pressed towel would be handed to you.

Then the discreet attendant helped you on with your jacket, produced a soft brush from somewhere and brushed your shoulders before inviting you to let him add a little polish to your shoes. All of this required at the least a half a crown tip or perhaps, if you were feeling generous, five shillings. It was worth every penny.

Now, as he had half expected, there was no attendant. He had been replaced by a machine which dispersed paper towels and an electrically operated shoe polishing machine. Feeling even gloomier, he made his way upstairs to the library.

He entered and looked suspiciously around before breathing a gentle sigh of relief. Here, at least, you could still hear the clock ticking and your own thoughts, that is such thoughts are you might have before nodding off in one of the large, leather upholstered chairs.

Years ago, when he had been training, he had often visited the library on the pretext of researching some difficult point of law, but in reality to take sanctuary from the world for a while. Many of the heavily laden book shelves were so arranged that they formed quiet corners into which one might retreat with a suitably impressive large, legal tome tucked under the arm.

Once there, comfortably ensconced in a leather wing-backed chair with the book on one's knees rather like a tramp in the park on a park bench with newspapers over him to keep him warm, it was easy to drift gently off and to leave the busy world behind.

In the past, he had sometimes imagined that he would spend and end his days thus steeped in learning, taking delight in obscure, but to him comfortably familiar snippets of law. That might have proved the case had he opted to be a librarian, but the dog-eat-dog world of private practice was quite another matter.

Points of law and private practice were, in his experience, almost mutually exclusive. The words didn't belong in the same sentence. In private practice, you were in business to make a living and to do so for as long as possible without being sued or struck-off by The Law Society for some professional misdemeanour.

This last doom-laden outcome was a very real danger if you fell afoul of the professional body. If that sanction was imposed, you could not practice as a solicitor. All those years of study for nothing. It had led one acquaintance of his once to announce that his one remaining ambition as a solicitor was to retire before being struck-off. No such thoughts troubled Jim on this occasion who managed to fall asleep until awakened with a jolt by some inconsiderate librarian dropping some books with a clatter.
CHAPTER 17

It was soon time to return to court 5 and to face the music.

'You are still under oath, Mr Hunt,' said Doreen's barrister smiling at him in the witness box. Was he licking his lips, Jim wondered, he certainly looked as if he was about to enjoy a good meal.

The judge to Jim's right and at roughly the same level had not looked at him during the morning when he gave his evidence, despite the fact that Jim had, as was required, answered the barrister's questions not by looking at the barrister, but standing at an angle to him and looking at the judge watching her pen moving across the paper as she took notes. A witness was obliged not to speak too quickly and if he or she did so, they would be quickly admonished by learned counsel, telling them to, watch the judge's hand. This was meant to mean that when the judge stopped writing, you could carry on talking.

That was well and good for the judge, thought Jim, but it was tedious for the witness. Jim was getting bored. He was tired of watching the dust moving lazily in the shafts of light that came through the windows high above them. He was fed up of standing there waiting for the crabby, old judge to note down what he said. Was it really that difficult? Apparently it was.

'And what happens next?' the barrister might say. Temporarily forgetting to look at the judge's fingers crawling cross the page like some bony spider line dancing, he answered the question at normal speed to the evident irritation of the judge who would snort and exclaim,

'Eh? What? I didn't catch that.'

'What didn't your ladyship catch?' Jim asked in a misplaced effort to be helpful.

'If I knew that I wouldn't be asking,' snapped the now apparently even more irritable symbol of the majesty of law.

Eventually, after much huffing and puffing and quite unnecessary irritability, the ladyship would allow her ruffled feathers to be smoothed by both members of the bar before her, each trying to out-do the other in solicitude.

_Silly old cow_ , thought Jim grimly as he watched this pantomime. He didn't know what the spectators in the public gallery made of it. He glanced in their direction. There were not as many there as there had been during the morning.

_Probably bored to tears_ , thought Jim, followed by, _I know how they feel_. He did notice, however, that the stranger identified by Henry Perkins was there sitting in the corner on the back bench. Jim decided to have word with him at the first opportunity.

Now was not that moment, however. Learned counsel for Doreen looked anxiously at the judge and enquired leaning forwards with his hands held together as if in supplication to some deity,

'With your ladyship's leave?' or in other words, 'Do you mind if I carry on luv?' as most normal people might have put it. Her ladyship kept him waiting pretending to be busying herself with her papers and then without looking up saying through pursed lips,

'Very well.'

_Alright sunshine, crack on_ , thought Jim.

So the afternoon wore on. The angle of the light coming through the windows shifted. The room became a little gloomier. It wouldn't last much longer, Jim knew, because the judge would not continue sitting beyond 4:00 pm. She would be likely to rise then and to adjourn the hearing until the following day if there was still evidence to hear or submissions from the barrister.

Jim wondered what impression the evidence was making on the judge. His instinct told him that the issue was finely balanced. It was his word against Doreen. Not only that, but among the documents that the court had before it, there was a clear file note from him which he had made after one of Doreen's panicky calls to him and which foolishly he had answered out of sympathy for what he had then thought was a desperate woman. In it, he had faithfully recorded that yet again he had given her no advice and had told her clearly that, as he had said to her before, he could not act for her.

This was in effect what he was relying on before the court, that Doreen knew that and so she could not have come to his office having instructing him to act for her because he had repeatedly told her that he could not and would not do so.

Counsel for Doreen tried to undermine the value of the note by asking,

'We can all see that there is a note, Mr Hunt, but do you remember the conversation that led to you making it?'

Jim knew that if he said 'no,' then the barrister would immediately suggest that there was there no means by which the court could be sure that the note was accurate. Jim saw that one coming. He didn't, in fact, remember that particular conversation, but he knew it was exactly the same as every other conversation of the type he had had with Doreen and was completely clear in his own mind that the note mirrored not only that conversation, but every other one he had had and so he said,

'Yes.'

'You remember it?'

'Absolutely,' he said firmly.

'It was 2 years ago,' counsel reminded him.

'Some things stick in your memory, and this done does.'

Counsel for Doreen look crestfallen. Jim sounded all too believable. Then the judge looked directly at Jim with steely, blue eyes over her half-moon glasses resting on the end of her nose. Jim realised that the judge was irked. This was not to be confused with the judge erring, which is when the judge is politely told by a higher court that they were wrong. Even judges occasionally balls things up.

No, this was irked or, in ordinary parlance, pissed off. Jim was proving troublesome or so she apparently thought. She was sufficiently displeased for it to show on her face as she firmly pursed her thin lips which then turned a delicate shade of puce.

'So, you told her that you couldn't act for her?' she began.

'Yes, my lady.'

'Are you sure she understood you?'

'Yes, my lady.'

The judge looked slightly perplexed, but only for the merest moment before she brightened up and a faint smirk appeared on her face.

'Ah,' she said as if a sudden revelation had occurred to her, 'but did you write to her afterwards and confirm it?'

No, of course, Jim had not. Why would he have done? It was wholly unnecessary, but since no letter had been sent, her ladyship now had the nail upon which she would hang her judgment. Jim realised this all too well. As he stood there, it was as if behind the judge's bewigged head he could see an image of his case going down into the depths like the Titanic when it sank in the Atlantic all those years ago.

Doreen's barrister knew too which way the wind was blowing and simply said,

'No more questions, my lady.'

The case was then adjourned for final speeches and judgment until the following day.
CHAPTER 18

That evening Jim called in briefly at his home and told his sister that he needed a breath of air and was going for a walk across the fields. His sister, who knew him well and who understood that this was his way of dealing with tension or stress, simply smiled and said she would see him later.

Jim set out at once without even bothering to change, walking along the footpath that started near to their home and which led to the small village with a fine Paladin church set apart from the village and surrounded by fields.

He knew where he was going and didn't need to find the way. He could have walked there in the dark or blindfolded so familiar was he with the surrounding countryside.

At first he walked slowly, his head hanging dejectedly, his eyes on the ground, but after a while the bird song, the gentle caress of a breeze upon his cheek and the sweet smell of the undergrowth began to work their restorative powers upon him and he walked erect taking in his surroundings. Familiar as he was with them, he never tired of looking at them, not merely to admire them or to observe any activity that there might be, but he looked at them as if trying to draw them within himself, to swallow them whole.

By the time he reached the churchyard, nature's balm had soothed him and, although he was now feeling tired, he also felt relaxed. He felt his body walking, felt the ground beneath his feet and felt at one with his surroundings.

He reached the portico of the church. The building was not much to look at from the rear where the brickwork was exposed, but no trouble or expense had been spared in making the front and the interior as impressive as possible. That was all well and good. What interested him more were the human touches, the graves and their inscriptions, the memorials to men who had died many years ago often in some remote corner of the empire in battle or from disease. More poignant were the more recent graves and inscriptions, some of which he noticed were for people of a not dissimilar age to himself, young as he undoubtedly still was.

He sat on the steps of the portico and leant against one of the massive pillars that supported the roof and looked across the graveyard towards the sheep grazing beyond the ha ha that surrounded the old graveyard.

_It was not a bad place for your earthly remains to spend eternity_ , he thought, as he sat there, his head resting on the stone of the pillar.

Feeling better, he retraced his steps towards home.
CHAPTER 19

The next day, smartly dressed in his best bib-and-tucker, as his grandfather would have said, he made his way back to court 5 at The Royal Courts of Justice. As he paced along the stone corridors towards the court, he wondered idly why it was that his grandfather had used that expression.

He realised that he had not the faintest idea. His grandfather had been a sort of repository for sayings of no known provenance. There undoubtedly would have been one, but he, James Hunt, had not the slightest idea of what it might have been. His grandfather was long dead so he couldn't ask him now.

It was a pity; he thought to himself, that just when you reached an age when you might have had a really interesting conversation with your grandfather, he was no longer there, just a memory of his laugh and the sound of his voice.

Just think of what he might have been able to tell you about his life, about which Jim knew very little, let alone his experiences and the feelings that motivated him. How had he first got off with grandma? Had she led him a merry dance? Now all that was gone, his ashes helping to nourish an already over-fed rose bed at a North London crematorium.

He had by now reached the door of the court. The other players were there. The tension was palpable, but Jim felt relaxed. He felt more like an observer, present but somehow remote from what was actually going on.

The usher opened the door of the court which had until then been locked necessitating their hanging around in the corridor. They all filed in and sat down. The judge appeared looking her customary frigid self and the final submissions were made to her by both Jim's barrister and Doreen's.

This took them each an hour.

_Never let it be said_ , Jim thought as the last barrister to speak sat and his bottom again connected with the wooden bench behind it, _that any stone on the beach has been left unturned and never use one word where five can usefully be employed_. As a general rule, no barrister appeared to feel that he or she had done justice to their client's case unless each point they had to make had been made at least three times. Sometimes the legal arguments employed could become so Byzantine in their complexity that they were difficult even for an experienced lawyer like Jim to follow.

For example, learned counsel would say clearly and earnestly,

'My client denies categorically that he was there and further that he was engaged in any wrongdoing,' quickly followed by, 'If, which is strenuously denied, he was there, he took no part in any wrongdoing,' followed by a further backwards mental somersault, 'And in any event, it is not admitted that the matters complained of amount to wrongdoing of the kind described, or at all.'

There was quite a bit of that further or in the alternative, sorts of arguments employed by both barristers, by the end of which even the judge looked in danger of nodding off. Fortunately, the sudden silence which occurred when the last barrister's droning voice ceased speaking was enough to jerk her ladyship back into the present and away from the seductive daydream she was having of a holiday in the sun with an attentive, muscular and much younger male personal trainer.

'Yes, very well,' she said in her usual clipped tones and glancing at the clock as she spoke, 'I shall need a little time to consider my decision. I suggest that I release the parties to return at 2:00 pm.'

Everybody stood up and bowed. Her ladyship retired and as Jim felt sure to stretch her legs, have a fag and work out how best to stitch him up like a kipper. He realised that he might be doing her an injustice in thinking such thoughts, but on the other hand that was the impression that the proceedings had left upon him.

Preoccupied as he was by such gloomy thoughts, he failed to notice the man with whom he then collided in the corridor as he headed for the steps down to the main hall. Both men apologised to each other in the manner common to the British whose apologetic words masked their true feelings which were more along the lines of, 'Watch out you idiot! Are you blind?'

Having uttered the usual exculpatory expressions required by the standards of good manners, Jim, who was now looking ahead of himself instead of at the ground, realised that the person with whom he had collided was the mystery spectator identified to him by the enquiry agent, Henry Perkins.

'Ah,' he said, 'I've wanted to have a word with you. I'd noticed your interest in the proceedings and was wondering what your connection to Derek Spencer might have been. I gather that you were at the coroner's court as well.'

The man, an earnest, fit-looking man in his fifties, might, he realised, tell him simply to mind his own business, but he did not. Instead, he said,

'Derek and I go way back. We were in the army together. I only caught up with him again recently.'

'I see,' said Jim, 'but why are you following this trial? It has nothing to do with him.' The man smiled quizzically.

'Oh, I think it does,' he said. 'It interests me to see how wide-ranging the effects of one man's actions can be.'

He looked at his watch and then said,

'Now is not the time to discuss this further. I'll come and see you if you like at your office after the trial is over and when the dust has settled a bit.'

'Do you know where to find me?' asked Jim.

'Yes, and I'll ring you in due course.'

With that he walked off down the corridor. Jim still wasn't entirely sure what it all signified. He understood what the man had said, of course, but his answer was enigmatic to say the least. He wondered if he would indeed contact him and then went off himself to have a sandwich. The condemned man's last meal, he thought morosely.
CHAPTER 20

As it turned out, he wasn't far wrong. Although he wasn't literally carried away to a place of execution and there hanged by the neck until he was dead, nonetheless her ladyship did a comprehensive hatchet job, not only on his case, but on him as well.

As soon as she started summarising as she delivered her judgment out loud to the assembled parties, the facts she had found, he knew what the outcome would be. He had long ago worked out that all a judge had to do was to decide what the outcome was that they wanted and then to select the facts that supported their decision.

They had to deal with the inconvenient facts, of course, but a bit of practice on the bench after a lifetime dissembling at the bar, made that relatively easy. Judges are bound by precedents laid down in previous cases, but that's not too difficult to get around either, since they just distinguished the case before them on its facts from the other cases and found as they saw fit.

The dispassionate observer who was not a party to the proceedings might be forgiven for saying that Jim's thoughts, apart from being an outrageous slander on the fair-mindedness of Her Majesty's judiciary at the very least, smacked of sour grapes.

Jim would have been the first to concede that those views were a reasonable interpretation of the circumstances, but he felt certain that the praying mantis under the wig had it in for him. He may have been wrong about that, but the result was clear enough.

He lost.

Doreen won hands down.

The judge found that she was the more reliable witness in that her memory of events could be preferred to Jim's. She had, the judge found, been his client at the time that he made the Will for Derek and, therefore, by making the Will as he had for Derek, he had acted against another client's interests.

The consequence of this shattering defeat was that Jim's insurers would have to pay out the damages Doreen sought and which, when paid, would reimburse her for all the money she had to pay to Lorraine. Having won the action, she was also entitled to her legal costs in full.

As far as certain parts of the legal profession are concerned, costs are almost an art form. These, Jim knew from experience, could be approached in a variety of ways. The least sophisticated, when he had been training, was the practice of weighing the file with one hand – hence the phrase used to justify the claim for costs that it was 'a grave and weighty matter'.

Although now frowned on, it was actually the method employed by some clerks in criminal cases. Jim had been at court numerous times when, after a criminal trial had concluded, his most important task had been to take learned counsel's brief to the clerk sitting in court to have counsel's fee marked on it.

This entailed entering the courtroom and performing a bow as if in the presence of some Eastern potentate and then, bent double so as not to presume to look the judge in his eye, scurry to the clerk, yet another bewigged figure sitting below him, to have the brief 'assessed'.

This was done by the clerk looking at it, when he condescended to do so, sniffing it rather like a dog being offered a bone and then balancing it in his right hand and mentally as well as physically weighing it. He might then pause and look at Jim and say, for example, £50 on the brief and £25 refreshers, as the daily fee was called, all delivered in the interrogative and inviting a response. Jim's response needed to be worthy of a Shakespearian actor in its look of horror mixed with impending and imminent poverty. A few mumbled words might help and this is where 'a grave and weighty matter' might be employed.

It also helped if Jim had stuffed the brief with everything he could lay his hands on to make it bulkier and heavier.

It also helped if his lordship, perhaps irritated by the disturbance, however slight, below him and distracting his lordship from discreetly admiring the legs of the young probation officer, raised an eyebrow or tapped the desk with his pencil. The court clerk finely attuned to the slightest signals and portents from the deity above him would hastily conclude the negotiation and scribble a figure on the brief.

Holding the brief in both hands, Jim might then reverse bent double to the door of the court, pass the ranks of wigs and solicitors' clerks whilst in the background droned the voice of whatever learned member of the bar it was whose turn had come to furrow his brows, clasp his gown behind his back and cross-examine some witness with a clarity and speed that would render even the most incurable insomniac insensible.

Snappier modern firms, however, now had time recording, the Holy Writ of the legal profession and the gateway to riches untold. It was quite simple. You merely recorded how much time you spend on everything. Given some people's notional tendency to exaggerate, some unscrupulous members of the legal profession managed to work 25 hours a day. The impact on the bill would be impressive.

There was also a doubling-up effect if the solicitor spoke to an assistant or trainee, for example, they would both record the time spent talking about the same thing. Creatively employed, time recording became not only a nice little earner, but as the sheaths and reams of time reading schedules were produced to substantiate some outrageous claim for costs which were difficult to refute.

Jim had no doubt at all that the bill from Doreen's lawyers and his own for that matter to the insurance company would be enormous.

The decision would mean that Jim's firm's insurers would pick up a very hefty bill indeed for Doreen's damages and her legal costs, and also have their own legal fees to meet. Jim's firm's contribution would be their excess under the insurance policy they had which limited their immediate financial exposure, but their good record was now ruined and their future premiums would reflect that so they would be penalised financially for many years to come.

As if that wasn't bad enough, whilst the parties remained in court absorbing what the judge had said and its full implications, Doreen's barrister, to Jim's dismay, rose to his feet and proceeded to rub salt in the wound by raising the issue of professional misconduct.

With a well posed look of apologetic concern, learned counsel enquired,

'In the light of your ladyship's comments, is this a matter which ought perhaps to be drawn to the attention of the Law Society's disciplinary body?'

_What_ , thought Jim, suddenly thunderstruck. _Is it not enough to lose the action? Must I now be dragged up in front of the Law Society? What does he mean?_

The learned judge continued the pantomime of professional concern sighing and saying,

'Yes, I regret to say that the thought had gone through my mind as well.'

_Bloody hell_ , thought Jim, _Where will all this end_?

The judge shuffled her papers and looked meaningfully at Jim, or at least that is what he assumed from her stare in his direction.

'I think, on balance, that that is not a matter for the court. I will leave that to others.'

_Thanks a bunch_ , thought Jim bitterly as the judge rose to her feet and sailed out of court. Jim and his barrister left as well followed by the jubilant Doreen and her legal team.

He was determined to maintain some semblance of dignity in defeat, but that was not helped by Doreen's apparent determination to enjoy her moment of triumph. Having briefly thanked his barrister and solicitor, both of whom had assumed appropriately sympathetic expressions when he looked in their direction, he made his way back along the corridor towards the Court of Appeal intending to leave the Law Courts by the Carey Street exit and to make his way back to Holborn tube station.

He had reached the end of the corridor and was turning left when he heard a clatter of high heels behind him. He sensed, rather than saw that it was Doreen and kept walking. She caught him up just as he passed a stone alcove on his left which led to a balcony which opened out on to the main hall. From this eminence one could survey all that went on below. He had no intention of pausing to enjoy the view. It was one he had seen many times and, in any event, he wanted to get clear of the building as soon as possible. Doreen had other ideas.

Suddenly, she was there clutching his arm. He turned to look at her slightly alarmed. She had the look of a wild woman about her. During the course of his life in the legal profession, he had had to deal with some awkward characters from drunken clients who turned up at the office demanding to be seen, or irate individuals for whom he might not even be acting, but who were incensed by the actions of somebody or other or just simply incensed for some reason related purely to themselves. Such individuals required careful handling and sometimes very firm handling.

Doreen now presented herself just as such an individual. He was not, however, at his best. His morale had been dented severely by the trial and its outcome. Moreover, Doreen lugged him into the alcove and stood between him and hallway. In order to get out, he would have to go through her or she would have to step aside.

She began to insult him in a methodical, gloating way. It seemed that, according to her, he had got his just desserts for his actions which from her perspective bordered on the infamous. Tired as he was, he realised quite quickly that he was simply a convenient stand-in for the husband who had successfully removed himself from the scene and thus spared himself a tongue-lashing from this fiend of a female. Jim began to gain some inkling of why Derek might have been desperate to get away from her.

Still crushed as he had been by the trial's outcome, he was not going to take this without putting up a fight. Quite calmly and deliberately, he decided to press a few buttons and began by saying,

'So, yours was a happy marriage was it?' he asked quietly. 'Derek had no reason to want to leave you?' Doreen shut up. 'He didn't kill himself to get away from you?'

Doreen, who had moments before been acting like a fiend from hell, suddenly crumpled and actually started sobbing.

'I loved him,' she said.

That was a bit of a surprise to Jim. He had previously taken a cynical view of what he thought had been purely performances on her part for the benefit of whoever might be watching, but now looking at her dribbling lips and the tears which had begun to flow down her face and nose, he wasn't at all sure. If she was acting, she had truly missed her vocation in life because it seemed so genuine.

Then a strange thought began to arise in his mind. What if he had got her all wrong? He had only ever had one half of the story. Every story has two sides. People see things very differently. He knew that – they remember them differently as well. He had been involved in road traffic cases where the witnesses describing what they recalled happening might have been describing different accidents, so different were their accounts.

It was one of the reasons why identification evidence gave so much trouble in criminal proceedings. People could be unshakably convinced that the person that they had identified was the person responsible for a crime was the person that they saw and yet, despite the fact that they honestly believed what they said, they could be entirely wrong.

Had he, he wondered, been wrong about Doreen? As if to answer his unspoken question, she told him quietly in sentences punctuated by sobs,

'Everybody hates me and blames me for his death, but I loved him. He was terrible to live with. I never knew what state he would be in when he came home or even if he was going to come home. I did everything I could to stop him drinking. I hid the cheque book. I stopped him getting hold of any money and I tried to find where he was when he went missing.'

'That's why you came to my office on the Monday, wasn't it?'

'Yes,' she said simply. 'I hadn't been able to find him in any of his regular haunts and then I had the idea that you might know.'

'Well, thanks for telling the court that you were instructing me to act on your behalf,' said Jim bitterly. 'That judge swallowed that one hook, line and sinker.'

Her eyes narrowed. The tears ceased.

'I am now a woman on my own. I have to look out for myself. At my age it's too late to start again. How was I going to manage with only half a house?'

'Sell and use your half to buy somewhere smaller,' replied Jim, his involuntary feeling of sympathy fast disappearing. 'But now you're alright, aren't you?' he said bitterly.

'Your insurance company can afford it,' she said simply.

Jim was lost for words. This was unusual for him, but faced with such staggering selfishness he could think of absolutely nothing to say. It plainly didn't matter to Doreen what the full ramifications of her actions might be. It didn't matter to her that she had subjected him to these court proceedings or that his future in the partnership would now be in doubt.

So long as she was alright, none of that counted for anything. But then why would it? It was a hard world and nowhere was this brought more sharply into focus than in Her Majesty's courts.

He said nothing, but pushed past her and walked away. He could no longer bear the sight of her and had to get away.
CHAPTER 21

He retraced his steps across Lincoln's Inn Fields and by the time he reached the tea shack, he had recovered his equilibrium sufficiently to be able to sample its pleasures again. With a large, steaming, chipped, china tea cup full of the dark brown liquid and a crusty roll packed with cheese and, on this occasion, onion – to keep the witches away and by that he meant Doreen – he sat in his favourite place by the tennis courts. As he chewed, he mentally drew up a balance sheet.

  1. He had first found himself in between two people locked in the throes of marriage breakdown who had periodically appealed to him as if he was some kind of umpire, despite his best efforts to direct them elsewhere.

  2. Out of the blue, he had been visited at home and asked to write a Will. 'Asked,' was, in fact, the wrong word. Derek had been insistent.

  3. He had written a Will and a notice of severance on the kitchen table which the massed armies of the legal profession had not been able to fault.

  4. He had not been paid a penny for it.

  5. He had then become embroiled in a contentious probate situation as Doreen and Lorraine fought it out over Derek's estate.

  6. After Doreen lost that battle, she had come after him and his insurers. He had lost.

  7. The consequences of that defeat would now result, he had no doubt at all, in his position within his firm being untenable and he would have to leave.

He finished the roll at about the same time as he finished his clinical assessment. He looked heavenwards, that is to say in the general direction in which the Divinity is thought to reside and said out loud,

'Thank you, God.'

A lady at a neighbouring table looked at him strangely, her cup poised between saucer and mouth, arrested by the comment she had obviously heard him make. Embarrassed, he quickly slurped the remainder of his tea and headed for the station, anxious to shake the dust of the place from his feet as quickly as he could.
CHAPTER 22

The train carried him quickly homewards. The case had ended and the journey home did not take long. In fact, rather like the tumbrel that carried the condemned man to the gallows, it even seemed to Jim to travel with unaccustomed speed so that by the time he reached his destination, the day was still young and he had no excuse for not going to the office before going home.

Home is where he would have preferred to have gone to lick his wounds and to digest the events of the day and even of the preceding weeks and months. He had, he felt, much to think about.

Still, he consoled himself with the thought that there was no point in putting off the unpleasant task of informing his partners of the trial's outcome. He might as well get it over with, he considered, as grim-faced he approached the senior partner's heavy, oak door upon which he knocked firmly with his knuckles before a roar of, 'Enter,' from within bade him proceed. He took a deep breath and entered the room.

He was at once struck by the familiar smell of tobacco, mercifully this time not mixed with fart, since neither the senior partner nor his dog appeared to have made a trumpet of their respective arses, or at least not sufficiently recently to leave an impression on the room's atmosphere. In fact, as he looked around the room, he realised that the dog was not there at all.

Briggs realised what he was thinking and without being asked removed the ever present pipe from his mouth and said, 'My secretary has taken him for a walk. He's been a bit constipated recently and needs the exercise.'

'Ah,' responded Jim thinking that at least he would be spared the dog's efforts to free itself of whatever wind had accumulated within its revolting body and which even now might be about to be released in some stupendous eruption to the acute discomfort of the hapless secretary and anybody else who might be within ten yards or so of the beast.

Briggs then rose to his feet from behind his desk and approached Jim. He had guessed the outcome, realised Jim, because he placed a hairy hand on Jim's shoulder and smiled sympathetically at him saying,

'I see we lost.' It was more of a statement than a question. All Jim could do was nod.

'Hmm,' said Briggs and turned to gaze from the window out over the bustling street below. Neither man moved nor said anything for a while until the cathedral clock nearby struck the hour, its bells booming over the town and the heads of the town-folk just as it had done for countless years.

The sound of the bells seemed to raise Briggs from whatever reverie into which he had sunk for he stirred and said half to himself,

'I do hope that bloody dog has not fouled the footpath. The local council are very hot on that sort of thing and it would be most embarrassing if I were to be fined. I can imagine what fun the local paper would have with it.'

'Not half as much fun as they will have with the outcome of the trial,' volunteered Jim still standing on the same spot he had remained on since entering the room.

'True,' conceded the senior partner. 'Shit sticks wherever it comes from.'

He seemed to Jim to be remarkably sanguine.

'I'm sorry about all this,' he began.

Briggs cut him short giving him another sympathetic smile.

'Don't apologise, old boy,' he said. 'Not your fault really. You were caught up in events beyond your control.'

His pipe needed refuelling, an exercise he carried out without needing to look at it. It was something of a ritual really. First the pipe would be knocked against his foot or the bookcase, depending on where he was standing, leaving ash and bits of tobacco as a record of his passing.

Then there would follow much sucking of air through the wooden mouthpiece, after which his hand would either reach for the leather pouch in the cast iron metal tobacco pot on his desk shaped like a gargoyle, or search absentmindedly through his coat pockets for the reserve pouch he always carried.

A quantity of tobacco would be removed with a pinch of the fingers before being stuffed into the pipe, a process which always shed a liberal quantity of tobacco on his coat and waistcoat before it was completed and the pouch returned to its place. Only then did Briggs continue.

'Think of it as the fortunes of war,' he said thoughtfully, sticking the pipe back in his mouth, and then asked, 'Any likelihood of an appeal?'

'Counsel was making positive noises, but quite honestly if his opinion of our chances of success before the High Court judge were wide of the mark, I don't have much faith in what he says about the prospect of a successful appeal.'

'Hmm,' said Briggs sucking at his pipe, adding, 'Well, it's a matter for our insurers. They pay the piper and so they call the tune. All this is going to cost them a pretty penny and I daresay us as well in the long run.'

'That, in a way, is what worries me most,' said Jim glumly. He knew full well that despite his sympathetic reception from Briggs, the other partners were not going to be pleased. He knew full well that the knives would be out for him and even if nobody actually said it to his face, his days at the practice were numbered now.

Briggs called a partners' meeting that very afternoon. It was a sombre occasion. The assembled partners draped over the chairs or leaned against the book shelves of the senior partner's room while they listened in silence to Jim's account of the proceedings and their outcome.

When he had finished there was silence in the room. The senior partner's dog, which had been returned by a relieved secretary, raised its head and looked hopefully at Briggs, its internal clock telling it that it was time for a little something. Briggs, however, for once was not attuned to the needs of his smelly friend. He was watching the partners carefully and trying to assess their reactions. He, too, knew that in all probability it would be better for all of them if Jim left the partnership and moved on.

They all knew it except the dog, of course, who had resorted to friendly overtones towards Briggs in the form of sticking a wet nose and a slimy mouth into his hands. That, it knew, usually worked as indeed it did on this occasion with Briggs seizing it gratefully as an excuse for ending the meeting.

'Well,' he said brightly. 'We all have a lot to think about between now and the next partners' meeting on Friday – I'm afraid I shall have to get on and sort out some food for this dog of mine.'

All the partners left. One of them muttered to his colleague when he thought he was out of earshot,

'I'd have the bloody dog put down.'

'Pity we can't have Jim put down,' answered his colleague only partly joking as they returned to their respective rooms.

CHAPTER 23

Jim's sister was, of course, sympathetic when he returned to the house they shared and told her all that had happened. They were close. They always had been. Jim knew that he would have his sister's sympathy come what may. She didn't have to say anything. It was something that he could almost take for granted, although not that he did. That particular evening though it was not sympathy that he wanted, but solitude. He wanted to retire from people and nurse his wounds alone. Solitude and comfort he found as always in close proximity to nature.

He went for a walk alone in the surrounding countryside walking at first with his head sunk forward as if to study the ground as he walked. In fact, his eyes saw nothing. At first he merely felt despondent, but then after he had walked a mile or two, his mood lightened and he felt able to take in his surroundings.

He knew that before he had reached home he had already decided to leave the partnership. He had already come to the conclusion that there was no future for him there, but more than that, the whole episode had lowered his morale. He had lost his love of the law. It was as if he had been infatuated with a woman and then one day looked at her across the table and realised that the magic had gone.

That had actually happened to him once. He had met a young Lancastrian when he was a student on a training course and, being an individual who dropped his heart lightly, had soon become besotted with her. He had loved to be in her presence, bathed in the warm hue that she exuded and all of this without any words or acts of affection on his or her part.

At the end of the course they had travelled home by train and for part of the way were on the same train sitting side by side until their paths separated at Crewe. She was heading north and he was travelling on to London. During the course of the shared train journey, she had spoken non-stop in a carping, gossiping voice about this person or that.

He hadn't listened to what she actually said. Her voice had been enough by its tone to completely strip him of his sense of infatuation for her. At first the words were like daggers systematically cutting him up. He couldn't get away. He felt imprisoned in the seat next to her as she gossiped on oblivious of the effect she was having on him. Finally, when she had at last succeeded in stripping him of any shred of affection for her, her monotonous voice and banal comments had quickly given him a severe headache.

That was how he now felt about the law and the legal profession. The magic had gone. The dreams he had once entertained had been punctured. He knew in some way as he walked on that he had crossed some psychological watershed. The future was going to be different.

He was too tired to think what that future might be, but as he walked and began to feel better, the thought of revenge came into his mind. First and foremost in that regard would be Doreen, he thought, closely followed by certain members of the legal profession. He had one in mind in particular, the learned judge.

He realised, of course, that it wasn't supposed to be like this. He had been brought up to shrug off life's setbacks. A scout smiles and whistles under all difficulties, he had been taught. Until recently he had even believed it, but not now.

By the time he reached his favourite Paladin church, it was beginning to get dark and the owls were hooting. He looked up at the moon and knew that he wanted revenge.
CHAPTER 24

During the course of the following week at work, he quietly announced his intention of retiring from the partnership. A few cursory remarks were made about that 'not being necessary' or that he should 'take time' and 'think again'. His presence was 'valued'. These, however, were more, he felt, for the sake of politeness and appearances rather than meant with any degree of seriousness.

Young as he was, he knew that well enough about the British, the English particularly, that just because they were being polite to you didn't mean that they agreed with you or liked you. In fact, the more icily polite they were, the less they liked you.

His mind in any event was made up. This was accepted and there was a palpable relaxation of tension within the firm. He was going and so everybody now knew where they stood in that regard.

He was not leaving at once. He would need time to complete some work and the firm would need to reorganise itself a little in the light of his intended departure. They might even need to recruit a replacement. All of that could be decided and dealt with during his notice period which he had given to them of a month.

A calendar month, he thought to himself as he measured it mentally. A short enough time, but also quite long if, as was the case, the firm and, of course, he in particular were receiving regular calls from the local press. In one way this was tame enough, but the callers were persistent and often quite aggressive. What they did print when the local rags appeared was actually inaccurate, but Jim had no intention of engaging in any kind of correspondence or debate with the local press. That would really fan the flames. He chose to ignore it.

One comforting and unexpected effect of the publicity was that he received quite a number of calls from friends and clients and even, to his surprise, from professional colleagues who were supportive and encouraging. This salved his wounds a little, but his mind no longer focused on the wounds he had received. He was focused on revenge, although quite how that was going to be achieved was not yet clear to him. Then, to his surprise, one morning he received a call from Arkwright.

Jim took the call. He wondered what the man could want. He remembered with embarrassment the thumping that he had given him in his own home. Was he going to announce his intention of a complaint to the Law Society or did he see the chance of dunning him for money?

Superficially Arkwright's call was to express sympathy for Jim following the outcome of the trial, but Jim quickly realised that the main purpose of the call was indeed money. Not his. He, after all, could be expected not to have any money in the near future and for a long time afterwards. No, the target was the old bird ripe for plucking, namely Doreen. This he deduced from the simple remark that Arkwright threw into the conversation.

'Do you know how Doreen is doing?'

Arkwright, he knew, never made a disinterested remark in his life. He was obviously interested in Doreen and that in all probability for her money. Jim actually knew quite a lot about Doreen's circumstances and suddenly felt the desire to impart that knowledge to Arkwright. What poetic justice that would be, he exalted to himself after he had put the phone down. The dear lady who had plucked others should herself be plucked by a real expert.

He had arranged to meet Arkwright for a pint at lunchtime in a quiet, little pub in a side street a short distance from the office. It was an unpretentious pub with no music and not many customers where Briggs used to go on Saturday mornings to play dominos with his cronies whilst the dog, dragged there reluctantly, lay snorting under the table.

It was no surprise to Jim that the window next to where the players habitually sat was always open, rain or shine. Had that window not been open, he thought, they would have needed a canary in a cage to tell them when the atmosphere in that confined space was becoming injurious to health.

Jim met Arkwright in that very same snug by the open window. Despite that, there was a lingering aroma of tobacco or at least Jim hoped that that was what it was.

Arkwright got the drinks in. This, to Jim, was an absolutely sure-fine sign that he wanted something and so it proved. He got straight to the point.

'Where is the old bird? I think it's time we renewed our acquaintanceship.'

'Tired of the building game?'

'Yes, and plant hire. A few individuals I know have been nicked and it won't be long before one of them points the finger at me to save their own neck. It won't be true, of course. Some of those bastards would sell their own mother if need be.'

Jim knew he was right. Whenever they swore a dreadful oath, it was always on their children's lives or their mothers' lives, never their own. On the other hand, Arkwright was hardly as pure as the driven snow, but then, when he came to think of it, not many people were.

'So, you think that it's time to move on?'

'High time and while I was wondering where best to employ my talents, it was then that Doreen and her recent good fortune came to mind.'

'Well, good luck to you, but what do you want from me?'

It turned out that Oliver had not been able to locate Doreen who, since the trial, had managed to pull off a successful disappearing act. He wanted to know if Jim could help. As luck would have it, he could. Lorraine had rung him and given him an update on Doreen's movements. How she had found out, he hadn't troubled himself to enquire, but the fact was she had.

Doreen, she told him, had gone to Scotland where she was buying a hotel to concentrate on golfing holidays; a new life effectively, a new start far from the events of the recent past.

Much the same considerations seemed to appeal to Arkwright who said he was quite taken with the idea.

'Well thank you for that,' he said to Jim with a smile.

'Don't mention it,' smiled Jim back. 'I think you are just what the lady needs,' then, looking thoughtful, he added, 'Mind you though, she will be more of a challenge than either Derek or your recent employer to fleece.'

'Don't worry about me,' replied Arkwright, again with a smile. 'I like a challenge.'

He drained his glass and stood up. 'I'd better get going,' he said. 'Got to pack me golf clubs.' He turned to go.

'How will I know how you are doing?' Jim asked Arkwright as he turned to go. Arkwright thought for a moment and said, 'Give me your address and I'll send you a postcard when I've got me feet under the table and things are going well.'

Then he left. Jim didn't really expect to hear from him again, but he was glad at least that Doreen now had Arkwright on her heels. It was like putting a ferret down a rabbit hole, he thought smiling to himself.

He, too, drained his glass and stood up. That only left the lady judge. She might prove altogether more difficult. He would just have to wait and see if the Fates went his way, he concluded, as he made his way back to the office.

*

As it turned out, the Fates seemed to working overtime for that very afternoon he received a telephone call from Clarissa, a lady solicitor he had known in practice for years and who had rung him to commiserate with him over his poor fortune. He was pleased to hear from her and even more pleased to hear the story she recounted to him about the lady judge who had heard his case.

She had been amazed when she had learned who it was. It had seemed such an incredible coincidence to her, she said, as she told him about her brother who was, or had been, working on a Caribbean island as a personal trainer. It seemed that he had told Clarissa about one client of his in particular, a middle-aged, lady judge, who had had one training session with him and then spent the rest of her holiday pursuing him and trying to persuade him to return to England to live with her.

Jim felt a twinge of sympathy despite himself. The woman was lonely, he thought. Maybe that's why she presents the face that he she does to the world. He shook himself. _This won't do_ , he thought. _Actions have consequences_.

He asked Clarissa for her brother's telephone number and whether he was back in the UK. It turned out that he was and working as a personal trainer in the London area. After the conversation with Clarissa ended, he pushed his chair back, put his hands behind his head and leaned backwards in the chair looking thoughtful. Clarissa had also said that her brother had some advertising literature. It wouldn't be difficult to send some by post to the dear lady.
CHAPTER 25

It was obviously a season for surprise for a little later he had another one. He was seated in his office looking at the calendar on the wall and mentally ticking off the days until he left the firm for good. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was his secretary who told him that his 10:00 am appointment had arrived to see him.

'What?' he had exclaimed. 'I thought I made it clear that I was taking no new clients on.'

His secretary agreed that he had, but this particular gentleman had been most insistent. He particularly wanted to see Jim and he would only need the one consultation. She apologised, but in the circumstances said she had thought it would be alright. It wasn't alright as far as Jim was concerned, but, on the other hand, his workload had diminished rapidly as files had been distributed to other colleagues in the firm.

He was also beginning to feel a bit bored and so in the end, although he had grumbled about it, he was ready enough to see the man. He was also a little curious. Why him?

As soon as the man was ushered in, he recognised him. This was the man he had spoken to at the Law Courts after Perkins, the enquiry agent, had pointed him out. This was an old, army colleague of Derek's from years ago. What on earth could he want now with Jim? Jim didn't have long to wait to find out.

'I can see that you remember me,' said the man smiling. 'Allow me to introduce myself. Tom Higgins is my name and I am temporarily in England on a visit from my home in Australia.'

For the first time Jim noticed the slight Australian accent, so this announcement came as no surprise.

'I am from these parts originally. Derek and I were pals at school together in Barnet.' He winced as if recalling a painful experience and then explained, 'It was a very long time ago, a very long time ago. To be honest, I don't really like to think about the past too much. It brings back too many memories.'

Jim remembered that Higgins at the High Court said something about having wanted to look Derek up. Surely that was for old times' sake, thought Jim, saying aloud,

'Well, why did you want to find Derek?'

Higgins was silent for a moment and then looked Jim straight in the eyes and said, 'I wanted to get even with him.'

As far as Jim was concerned, he now had even less idea what was going on. He said simply, 'I don't understand.'

Higgins laughed. It was not the sort of laugh you get from a person who is amused. It was more contemptuous and cynical.

'There's no reason why you, nor indeed anybody else, would understand. Only Derek and I would understand and he's no longer with us, is he?'

'Well, go on,' said Jim getting a bit tired of being held in suspense for so long.

Higgins began his tale.

'It goes back,' he said, 'to when we were young men, lads really. We had been friends at school and were the same age, so when our call-up papers came through to do our National Service, we more or less did that together too.' He paused. 'Any chance of a glass of water?' he enquired.

'Sure,' said Jim. 'Let's have some tea,' and swiftly arranged this with his secretary. He would have preferred to have done it himself since his secretary tended to make rather weak tea and he liked it strong. Let's hope she lets the tea stand a bit longer this time, he thought and then turned his attention once more to Higgins. 'Go on,' he said.

'Well, it was 1950 and it was just our luck that our National Service coincided with the war in Korea. Have you heard about that? It's way before your time.'

This was true, Jim acknowledged, but he had learned a bit about the Korean War in school. It had been principally an American war in Asia, but Britain and the Commonwealth had been involved too as well as other European countries.

'I've heard of it,' said Jim.

'Well, it was our bad luck to be one of the regiments sent there to serve alongside the yanks.'

'You weren't in the Gloucestershire Regiment?' Jim enquired. He had heard of them.

'Yes,' said Higgins nodding his head. 'Everybody has heard of them, but the Northumberland Fusiliers were also there and another regiment, the Ulster Rifles. We were all part of the same brigade, 29th division. Most of the blokes were regulars, but not Derek and me. We were conscripts, just green behind the ears, Barnet boys and a bit like fish out of water.'

'Did you have a tough time?' Jim asked curious to hear more.

'Yes,' said Higgins simply, 'and some of us more than others.'

'I don't quite understand,' said Jim. This, he felt, was getting to be a lot like drawing teeth.

'Have you ever heard of the battle of the Imjin River?' asked Higgins.

'I have,' said Jim. 'The Glosters were attacked by thousands of Chinese and completely overrun.'

'Not just the Glosters,' said Higgins. 'The Rifles and the Fusiliers as well, but my battalion, the Glosters, had the bad luck to receive the brunt of the Chinese attack. There were thousands of the slant-eyed bastards,' he said with feeling. 'We held them off and held them off, but in the end we were surrounded and overrun. I was captured and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner until long after the rest of our men had got back home again.'

Jim said nothing, but listened. He had an idea that Higgins might at last be getting to the point.

'You see, the thing is,' said Higgins leaning forward, 'I shouldn't have been there at all. It was my turn for leave a few days before the battle, but Derek pulled a stroke with the company sergeant major telling him some cock and bull story – it doesn't matter what it was, but the result was he got the leave I should have had, so he was on rest and recuperation while I found myself in the middle of a battle. A bloody fine mate he was.'

These last words were almost spat out. The bitterness of the betrayal by his so-called friend still seemed fresh and strong, thought Jim.

Higgins continued. 'We had a terrible time. You have no idea what it's like to have hundreds of men charging towards you trying to kill you. That's bad enough,' he said grimly, 'but it's even worse when you are all firing like mad, but the bastards are not stopping.' He paused then added, 'they did at first, but then we were overrun.'

'What happened to you?' asked Jim. 'How did you survive?'

'Lord only knows,' said Higgins raising his eyes to heaven as he spoke. 'I certainly didn't deserve to for better men than me were killed. To tell you the truth, I don't know. My last memory is of being in a mass of men shooting and stabbing at each other, me too with the best of them, and then it all goes blank. I think I received some sort of blow to the head which put me down and out, but I don't really know. I only know that when I woke up I had a hell of a headache. That wasn't the worst of it, though. I was looking down the wrong end of a barrel of a gun with a frightened-looking Chink looking down the other end.

'I don't know who was the more frightened, him or me. He had the advantage though and I'm no hero, so I just slowly raised my hands above my head and hoped he was feeling human. For a while it hung in the balance and then I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by someone else and hauled to my feet. There was lot of shouting going on and I thought that every moment it would be my last. Eventually, I was shoved and prodded across the ground to a sort of hollow where I suddenly found I was not alone.

'I recognised some other lads from the regiment already there and kneeling on the ground with their hands clasped behind their heads. I joined them and was mighty relieved to find I was not alone. Each one of us was searched in turn; everything was pulled out of our pockets, fags, photos, money, anything and everything. I didn't put up any kind of resistance. I didn't think that they would need much of a reason to kill us. They had lost a lot of blokes and you could hear the cries and groans of their wounded all around us.'

He looked at Jim and paused before saying,

'There really are times, you know, when your life hangs in the balance. That's not so bad if you don't realise, but if you do, then you shit yourself. I would have too if I had had anything to eat in the previous 48 hours.'

'Where were you held prisoner?' asked Jim anxious to move things on. He still wasn't altogether sure why he was acting as a sort of father confession to Mr Higgins. Higgins may have been shafted by his old mate, but that had nothing to do with Jim as far as Jim was concerned. Higgins answered his question.

'They moved us north to a camp well inside North Korea. It took a week. We were done-in by the time we got there and virtually starving. The bastards gave us virtually nothing to eat. We only had water and a bit of rice and it wasn't much better in the camp either except at least we were with our own blokes, yanks mostly, but some Brits like ourselves.'

'The war didn't last longer than a couple of years did it?' said Jim.

'It lasted long enough,' replied Higgins, 'and whilst the cease-fire negations went on and on, we were stuck in that bloody camp. I tell you, I'll never forget it. I was always hungry and desperate to get out.'

'Did you try to escape?' asked Jim.

'No, I wasn't that brave to be honest. I just wanted to get back in one piece.'

'You must have been angry with Derek,' observed Jim.

'No, not really, not then, not at first. You see, I didn't know that he had worked a fast one until long after the war. After I got out and was discharged from the army, I didn't go home. I couldn't. It's hard to describe, but I just wanted to leave my old life behind, so I went to Australia and have been there ever since.'

'Well, what brought you back?' asked Jim.

'I came back because I found out what that bastard Derek had done.'

'How?'

'By chance. It's a small world, you know. I was in a bar in Northern Queensland when who should come in but a bloke I knew in the mob. Terry, his name was, and we recognised each other at once. He worked as a clerk with the headquarter staff. Well, after we had sunk a few beers together, he said that I had been really unlucky to change my leave dates. I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't change my dates. Then it turns out it was Derek who had told them I had changed my dates and swapped his leave for mine which meant he went on leave when, by rights, I should have done.'

He paused and then added,

'I knew Derek was a Jack-the-lad. He always had been. He'd sell his own mother if he got half a chance, but I didn't think he would shaft his best mate.'

Jim was silent and then asked,

'So why are you telling me all this, Mr Higgins?'

'I dunno, difficult to say really. Perhaps I just wanted someone to know and,' he added, 'I felt sorry for you and the way things have gone wrong for you. He was always like that, you know. He was always trouble for anyone who got mixed up with him.'

'He certainly had an impact on my life,' said Jim contemplating briefly the ruin of his legal career.

'At least you know you're not alone,' smiled Higgins, 'and the bastard's dead now.'

Jim looked at him carefully and then asked,

'Did you have the chance to meet with him before he died?'

'Yes,' said Higgins. 'I went to see his first wife who told me where he drank and I called in unannounced to see him. He pretended he was pleased to see me and I pretended I was pleased to see him. I wasn't actually. As soon as I saw him, I knew I had to kill him.'

It was suddenly quiet in the room as neither man said anything. Then Jim spoke slowly,

'You decided to kill him?'

'Yes,' said Higgins standing up. 'Come with me and I'll tell you the story. I'd rather not do that inside. I'd prefer not to be overheard.'

With that, he stood up and without looking back he made his way out of the room. As if in a trance, Jim too rose to his feet and followed Higgins down the corridor, down the stairs and out of the building, catching Higgins up by the large, oak door of the offices.

'Do you mind driving us in your car?' enquired Higgins calmly. Why not, thought Jim, and together they went to the firm's car park nearby.
CHAPTER 26

Together they drove to the edge of town.

'Where to?' asked Jim, although he suspected he knew the answer already. He was right. Higgins suggested Nightingale Lane, the place where Derek's body had been found.

It wasn't far to go and the two men made the journey in silence. Jim was preoccupied with his thoughts. He had, he realised, up until then been preoccupied with the feeling that he above all had been the victim in all of this. As he saw it, he had been the victim of circumstances and he had been the victim of the consequences of those circumstances.

Now it was beginning to dawn on him that there was another way of looking at it. He had been only one of the victims. Higgins, Doreen, him, they had all been adversely affected because of the supreme selfishness of one man, Derek, whose actions had blighted all their lives even as he had pursued his own determined path to self-destruction. Like a ship sinking, his descent had created a vortex which had dragged them all down after it.

Now it no longer seemed particularly important to Jim whether Derek had taken his own life, been driven to it or had been murdered. He was indifferent to whether or not Higgins had killed him, but Higgins wanted to tell him the remainder of his tale and he was prepared to listen. He had nothing better to do.

They reached Nightingale Lane. Jim parked in a little lay-by. It wasn't a real lay-by, just an indentation where the lane met an access to a field, but it served to park the car off the road. Together, he and Higgins walked to the barn nearby and, as they walked, Higgins continued with his story.

'As I said,' he said in a matter of fact way, 'I had decided to kill him, but the question was how. We were drinking together and he had had a lot more than me which was just as well because I wouldn't have been able to keep up with him. I don't know how much he had already had before I joined him. Anyway, as his drinking pals slid under the table one by one, I thought of a way to get him out of there. I challenged him to a drinking competition.

'I said I bet I could drink more whisky than he could and suggested we go somewhere quiet where we wouldn't be disturbed. He said he knew just the place and off we went. I bought a large bottle of whisky at the bar and we left. I needed the loo and he went to his van. When I came out, he was talking to some bloke who used to work for him and it turned out that he had given him a bottle of whisky too. This was perfect, he said, because we now had one each, and off we went. He insisted on driving. I don't know how he did it because there must have been more alcohol in his veins than blood, but he managed it, pissed as he was.

'So, we fetched up here, parked by this barn, him in the driver's seat and me in the passenger seat, each with a bottle of whisky in our hands. As we sat there we talked about old times. He became quite maudlin and told me what a mess he had made of things and how he had decided to end it all. I couldn't believe my luck. I said I didn't believe him, but he said he even had a piece of pipe ready in the van for when he decided to top himself. I went and had a look and it was true, there was a length of hose in the back. He got out too and had a piss up against the barn. I decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss, so I gave him a rabbit punch on the back of the neck and dragged him back to the van. Getting him in wasn't easy, but I managed it. Then all I had to do was start the engine, connect the hose and shut the door.'

'And that's what you did?' asked Jim.

'Yes,' said Higgins in the same matter of fact way as if he was talking about an everyday event. 'I waited as the van filled up with exhaust fumes just to make sure nothing went wrong.' He paused. 'You know, he opened his eyes at one point and looked at me out of the window. I smiled at him and pointed to the photo of us in the army that I had put on the dashboard. He looked at it and back at me. I don't know if he realised that I knew what he had done, but I didn't care. Anyway, he just smiled and closed his eyes again.'

'So you killed him?'

'Well, yes and no,' smiled Higgins. 'I prefer to think that I helped him on his way.'

*

A month or so later, Jim found himself on a boat heading for an island off the southern Greek Peloponnese. It was an old boat and travelled slowly which suited him since he was in no hurry and it gave him time to take in and to enjoy his surroundings. The sea was a deep azure blue and the sky only slightly less so.

The boat was full of islanders returning home from Athens and holidaymakers with their suitcases and luggage. Jim had only a rucksack with him which had all that he felt he would need. There was not much of his old life that he had wanted to bring with him. In fact, in leaving his principal purpose had been to leave it all behind.

As he stood there, it seemed now like a lifetime since he had left his old life. He had received a postcard from Arkwright in Scotland extolling the virtues of his new wife, Doreen, and announcing with satisfaction that his golf handicap was improving significantly. Jim was pleased. It had been an act of kindness on his part to put the pair of them in touch. He had also learned, though Clarissa (his solicitor friend), that her brother now numbered a certain lady judge amongst his regular clients. Apparently, her brother tolerated his infatuated client because of her financial generosity, but notwithstanding that he was going to terminate their relationship. It was beginning to irritate not only him, but also his young wife.

To Jim, it was obvious that life was moving on for all of them. He had no particular interest in any of them anymore.

He had had no clear idea of where he wanted to go when he left, but a few weeks cycling in Austria cleared his head. He had joined some German friends and was enjoying a meandering cycle tour with them, cycling from village to village and staying in small farms and guest houses along the way.

One day, they had arrived together at a rather larger village, a spa founded at the end of the 19th century when a natural spring rising in the fields near the village was found to have restorative qualities for certain ailments.

As a consequence, the place had grown and now had regular visitors who came to take the waters which, in this instance, seemed to consist of largely swimming monotonously back and forth in large swimming baths provided for the purpose. Jim's German friends wanted to spend a day or two there and insisted that they too, could benefit from taking the plunge. Although not convinced, Jim agreed reluctantly to join them.

The weather was warm and it was pleasant enough to sit in the sunshine despite the sulphurous smell of rotting eggs that the water gave off. This didn't seem to trouble the ranks of octogenarian Germans in their little cloth bathing hats swimming back and forth in serried ranks and looking as bored as it is possible to be. Jim looked around and it was apparent that everybody in the place was either ancient, by his standards, or handicapped in some way. He wasn't entirely sure why at first, but he felt uncomfortable.

His friends suggested some refreshment and went away and bought some hotdogs, small tasteless bread rolls with smooth-skinned, brown frankfurter sausages hanging out of each end with a dollop of what passed as mustard in Europe on the end.

He was about to take a bite, food after all is food, when he happened to glance down the far end of one of the pools which was very shallow, so shallow that if you sat in it, it would hardly cover your legs. It also had a concrete ramp leading to it rather than steps. What caught his attention and fixed his gaze was the sight of a white-trousered carer pulling some invalid by his feet into the pool.

The man was on his back and being gradually tugged towards the water. He plainly was not able to help himself and appeared paralysed. Jim looked at the man and then down at the sausage he was about to bite. The similarity between them of podgy flesh underneath a taught, shiny, brown skin was striking. He suddenly felt quite sick and told his friends he was going for a walk which he promptly did without waiting for their response.

When he had managed to get a little distance away from the place, he sat on a bench under a tree and considered things. He realised that what made him feel uncomfortable and even sick was the overpowering reminder he was being given of his own mortality and vulnerability. These are facts which for most of the time we are all adept at ignoring. This time, though, wherever Jim had looked there was an uncomfortable reminder right in front of his eyes. Life was short. He knew now what he wanted.

He wanted a new life and he was going to find it. Careers no longer interested him unless it happened perhaps to be that of a deckchair attendant on some sun-drenched, Greek beach. Assets and property he saw for what they were, simply diversions from the real business of living. So, he had resolved forever to shake the dust of his old life from his feet, put his trust in God and journey on.

His journey had now brought him to Greece. As the boat drew near to the dock in the island's little harbour, a dog was stretched out flat in the heat on the harbour wall. It made a half-hearted attempt to lift a limp ear at the sound of the boat's approach.

Apart from that, it moved not a muscle, not even when Jim, who having disembarked, walked past carrying his rucksack. Jim paused briefly to acknowledge a fellow spirit. This dog has seen it all, he thought to himself, and if he lives another 10 years, he will see nothing different. He smiled and continued on his way to find a room for the night.

THE END

 A reference to the smell of ammonia that comes from cats urinations.

 A ha ha is a trench at the end of the lawn or edge of the graveyard which separates it from the adjacent field. The trench prevents sheep or other animals from entering the graveyard or garden
