Post Mortem by Gary Bell (inspirational books for students .TXT) 📗

THE BEAST AND WON! There were photos of half a dozen vendors standing diligently in powdered white. One was dressed in a recognisable deerstalker.

‘Impressive,’ I said, fumbling through my pocket for change.

‘I’ll be on the cover of Vogue next,’ she winked. I paid her double for the copy and she managed a stiff curtsy, keenly eyeing the shirt collar and tie peeking through my coat. ‘Say, did you ever get yourself a wife?’

‘Once.’

‘You’re not looking for another?’

I shook my head and smiled. ‘Once bitten.’ I rolled the magazine under my arm, tipped my hat and carried on.

It took two cigarettes to walk the whole repetitive sprawl of Oxford Street – another Next store, another River Island, the third or fourth McDonald’s – and then I was back in law-land, the place that still made the most sense to me, passing the open green of Lincoln’s Inn Fields where I used to spend my nights.

I cut straight through the grounds of Lincoln’s Inn itself, winding between the ancient stone buildings that had housed the chambers of various legal firms for generations, then crossed Chancery Lane and continued into the cobbled Took’s Court, coming to rest at the bronze sign for Miller & Stubbs Criminal Barristers. I paused there for a minute, savouring silence. Then I opened the heavy red door and stepped up into the town house.

Immediately they swarmed me.

‘Morning, Mr Rook!’

‘Good morning, sir!

‘Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?’

‘Need a hand with that briefcase, Mr Rook?’

Pupils. They were everywhere. I moved like a great white through an undertow, aiming for the staircase at the other side of the lobby. I caught the eye of Bronwyn, our receptionist, standing at her desk. She gave me the familiar pitiful smile, the sort that most in the building had adopted since reading about my divorce in any one of the intrusive articles printed over the course of winter: Rook made the chilling discovery after dropping his wedding ring, the final memento of ex-wife Jennifer, into the snow … God save our country’s right to journalistic freedom. Thankfully, the reporters hadn’t bothered stretching too far into my past. I wasn’t quite a household name, but the national coverage had brought work flooding into chambers from all over the country. To the horde of new pupils enlisted to deal with the surge I was practically a celebrity.

Fortunately, my room was up on the third floor, away from all the chaos.

For two decades I’d been crammed into shared rooms, elbow-to-elbow with my fellow junior barristers, but now I enjoyed the benefits of being one of only four silks in our set. I had myself a spacious, private nest in which to retreat.

Or, at least, I should have.

I was still grousing to myself when I walked into my room and shut the door behind me – ‘Can’t get a moment’s peace … let me get into the building, why don’t you? Bloody pupils …’ From the rear corner of the room, which should have been empty, came a familiar voice.

‘Oh? And what’s your problem with pupils?’

I stopped, and made a show of rattling the door handle behind me. ‘This must be broken,’ I said, ‘because I’m almost certain I locked it before leaving for the weekend.’

‘No, you did. I got Ernie to let me in. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Mind?’ I tossed my hat, briefcase and Big Issue onto my desk, and took a seat, or rather a slouch. Zara Barnes was sitting with her back to me, bent over her iPad and a spread of documents on the old writing bureau across the room where she so often squatted. ‘Why would I mind? There’s nothing in here except for a few dusty books, a tatty old wig and boxfuls of confidential papers that might be priceless to any number of criminals across the city. Who am I to question the authority of Ernie, our revered caretaker, when he decides which locks shall be undone?’

‘He guessed you’d say something like that.’

‘Did he now?’

She turned to face me, scrunching her eyes up behind her heavy glasses and adopting a dreadful impersonation of a cockney accent. ‘Whale, Miss Bornes, ol’ Rook ain’t gonna begrudge you no space to work, consid’rin’ ’ow you saved his life a few months ago. Withart your quick thinkin’, ee’d be good as brown bread!’

I staved off a smile and started arranging last week’s paperwork from my briefcase into the plastic in-tray on my desk. ‘You’re sure this was Ernie you spoke to? It wasn’t Bert the chimney sweep?’

‘Undoubtedly.’

I shook my head. ‘Whatever happened to that aspiring young go-getter we used to have around here who would always have the coffees waiting?’

‘She emptied her overdraft and maxed out all her credit cards. As soon as she can afford one, the round’s on her. I’ve got a meeting with the bank later this afternoon, so you never know …’

She hadn’t said it with any kind of resentment, but it made me feel acutely selfish all the same. Zara’s assistance had proven invaluable in the fraud case that had occupied most of my last two months, but as a pupil she hadn’t been paid for her time, and she was left scraping together a living out of the scant fees brought from her cases in the magistrates’. I’d twice suggested that she take some of my own payment and her reaction had taught me well enough to drop the subject. I probably would’ve acted the same way at twenty-four. In fact, at fifty-two, the fraud case had only just put my own finances back into the black.

In short, I should’ve bought the coffees.

‘You’ve been working a lot of cases lately,’ I said. ‘Haven’t they fetched you any decent fees yet?’

‘Sure, another few hundred shoplifters and I might be able to afford this month’s rent.’ She leaned back into a straight slice of pale light that crossed the room from the window and fell serious. ‘Not that I mean to sound ungrateful, you know I