LOST SOULS

Chapter Five

It was over an hour before anyone else showed up at Sam’s office. It was the same most mornings, quiet until just after eight. He preferred it that way normally, away from the office chatter, but it was different this morning. He was edgy, troubled by the old man outside the office. Every time he looked out of the window, he was there, staring up, watching him work.

And Sam was trying to work. The early-morning office time was important. Being a criminal lawyer could be a full day. All-day courts and all-night police stations, with clients and witnesses to see in between. Sam had a diary full of appointments, although he knew most of those wouldn’t attend. They’d turn up instead on their trial dates, expecting him to defend them when they hadn’t even bothered to tell him their story.

So the early morning was when Sam caught up, the office fresh with the smell of furniture polish after the attentions of the dawn cleaner. He briefed counsel, compiled witness statements from a jumble of notes, or dictated the stream of correspondence demanded by the Legal Services Commission.

The younger lawyers did it differently. They went for visible overtime, working late into the evening, hoping to be noticed. But it made no difference. Only one thing mattered, and that was the figures. How much money was made. No one asked when it was made.

At Parsons & Co, whatever problem needed sorting, there was always a lawyer willing to bill you for it. Crime had always been Sam’s thing, but when Harry Parsons had started out, he’d done everything from divorces to fighting evictions. As the firm grew, it sprouted departments. The criminal department was the most precarious, because the work was so unpredictable. Police budget cuts could lead to fewer arrests, or if a lawyer upset one of the bigger criminal families the department would find itself with fewer clients. The claims department was the money-spinner. It used to help people who called into the office, victims of real accidents. Now it just handled referrals from those claims farmers who advertised on television, the promise of free money slotted in between debt-firm commercials, and now the lawyers settled claims for people they never met.

Harry Parsons himself still worked in the office, but he didn’t venture out much, working instead from a room along a dark corridor of worn carpet and faded paint. A local legend, he’d built up the practice from virtually nothing, but he ran it now from a distance, trusting the departments to deal with the day-to-day domestics. Everyone else was jostling for position: the old man was due to retire in a couple of years, and they were all hoping for a share when he went.

They didn’t have the ace card that Sam held, though: he had married Harry’s daughter, Helena, and given him two grandchildren. As far as Sam was concerned, he was at the head of the queue.

Sam was looking out of the window when he heard the other lawyers and clerks begin to trickle in. They gathered in a room along the corridor and drank coffee, exchanged insults. Sam would wander in when he finished what he was doing. He was on his third cup of coffee and he could already feel his heart thundering, but he needed the kick. He had a morning in court to get through and the broken sleep was getting to him. He looked round when he heard a knock on the door. It was Alison Hill, the newly qualified lawyer in the firm, spending some time in crime until she decided what she wanted to do with her career. She would move on, he had seen the ambition in her eyes, but until then Sam liked seeing her around the office. She wore her hair back in a ponytail, clasped by a black clip, and her blonde locks gleamed. Whenever they met, Sam automatically toyed with his wedding ring, felt himself smile too much. She was tall and elegant, with a bright and easy smile, her green eyes deep and warm.

He nodded towards the window. ‘Do you know him?’

Alison walked over and looked into the street. Sam could smell her perfume, something light and floral.

She shook her head. ‘Never seen him before. Why, is he bothering you?’

He shrugged it off, but as Alison turned away from the window, Sam noticed she had a file in her hand.

‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

Alison looked down, almost as if she had forgotten she was holding it. ‘I’ve got this today, for trial,’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘Johnny Jones, for assault.’

‘What’s the problem?’

She looked awkward for a moment, and then said, ‘He seems guilty. I’ve looked at every angle and I can’t see a way out. He attacked the karaoke man because he missed his turn. Half the pub saw him do it, and it’s on CCTV.’

‘Sounds like a classy place.’

She grimaced. ‘It reads like the worst night of your life.’

Sam smiled, found himself playing the elder statesman. ‘Don’t worry about Johnny Jones. He’ll be convicted, guaranteed, but he won’t listen to your advice. He’ll want an acquittal out of pity, but he won’t get one. Just call it character-building.’

‘How come? It’s a complete no-hoper.’

‘Would you rather lose a no-hoper or a dead-cert winner?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Nothing you can do will get him an acquittal,’ Sam continued, ‘and the prosecution will give him a hard time for having the trial. He will get the verdict he deserves, and maybe even get the sentence he deserves. But’, Sam raised his eyebrows at her, ‘if you mess up a dead-cert winner, when you have made promises you thought you could keep, you’ll see your client’s eyes every night when you go to sleep, that look in his eyes as he gets taken down the steps. Fear, anger, confusion. Trust me, that’s worse.’

Alison sighed and then smiled. ‘Thanks, Sam.’

‘Any time.’ As she went to leave, Sam said to her, ‘Don’t forget the magic words, when you get to your feet.’

She looked confused. ‘Magic words?’

‘“Client’s instructions.” When you are asked if the “not guilty” plea stands, just say that those are your client’s instructions. It just gives a hint that you don’t believe in what you are doing.’

‘Why should I do that? It won’t help Johnny Jones.’

‘Forget about your client. You’re the one who matters, and for your sake the court needs to know which one of you is the idiot. There is only one thing worse than a lawyer making a hopeless application, and that’s a lawyer not knowing it is hopeless.’

‘Bang on the table, you mean?’

Sam grinned. He remembered that from law school, the old adage that if you are strong on the law, argue the law, and if you are strong on the facts, argue the facts. If you are strong on neither, bang on the table.

‘Bang it hard,’ said Sam. ‘Take every point, regardless of how pointless, just so that the punter thinks you’re a fighter. He won’t know you’re talking nonsense, but if you fight the case he will think you’re the best young lawyer in Blackley.’

Alison nodded, looking more relaxed now. ‘Okay.’

‘Remember, you’re Harry’s golden girl.’

She blushed, although they both knew that there was some truth in that. Helena, Sam’s wife, had once been a lawyer at Parsons, but had given it up when she’d had children. It seemed like Harry saw Alison as Helena’s replacement.

Sam looked back out of the window. The old man was still there.

‘If I get killed today, remember his face.’

‘Can I have your office?’

‘Get out.’

She was laughing as she went.

When he was alone in the room again, Sam watched the street life. The pavement was getting busy with lawyers from other firms, big egos in a forgotten Lancashire town. They barely noticed the drunks who congregated at the end of the street and shared cheap cigarettes and stolen sherry.

He watched the lawyers walk by for a while, waved at the ones who looked up. When he looked beyond them, he noticed that the old man had gone. He checked his watch and then stepped away from the window. He made a note of the time. Like most lawyers, he lived his life in six-minute segments.

Chapter Six

I watched Bobby as he watched television. Parenting was all new to me, but I loved Laura McGanity, and she and Bobby came as a pair.

Ambition had taken me to London a few years earlier, and I had fulfilled that, carved out a small niche in the crime circuit: Jack Garrett, crime reporter. It had come at a price, though, most nights lost chasing down drug raids or shootings, or writing exclusives on scams and gangsters, losing sleep as I waited for the door to crash in.

But then my father was killed a year ago. We had grown apart before that; we were like strangers when I went south, but since his death I had needed to come home to Lancashire. I didn’t know why, couldn’t work it out. Maybe it was as simple as guilt, trying to make up for the years when I had been away, chasing excitement, chasing dreams. Whatever the reason, I was back in Turners Fold, the small Lancashire cotton town where I grew up, all tight alleys and millstone grit; the town I had worked so hard to escape from.

It was harder for Laura, though. We’d met on a case -she was one of the detectives, while I was the reporter prying for a story. She was London to her boots, at home in the noise, the movement, the youngest daughter of a City accountant. I had given up a lot to move up north: my social whirl, my contacts, my new life in the city. But Laura had given up everything familiar.

I sat down next to Bobby. His eyes stayed fixed on the television—SpongeBob SquarePants— and I wondered how the move would affect him. Laura had divorced Geoff, Bobby’s father, not long before we got together and contact had been sporadic at first. As soon as I’d arrived on the scene, things had miraculously improved. But now I had dragged Bobby two hundred miles north, away from the urban clutter of his toddler years and into the open spaces of Lancashire moorland. We had settled in an old stone cottage, with a slate roof and windows like peepholes. At night the cottage seemed to sink into the hillside, the lights from within like cat’s eyes flashing in the dark.

I looked towards the window. I could see old redbrick mill chimneys in the town below us, the lines of terraces like slash marks in the hills. The town-centre streets were still cobbled in places, the edges worn smooth by the Lancashire rain. I’d forgotten about the rain. It was the reason for the cotton industry, the moist air good for working with cloth, but the cotton had gone now, leaving damp streets, dark and foreboding against slate-grey skies. Between the town and us was a rich green hillside, broken by dry-stone walls and clusters of trees. This was the Lancashire that people didn’t expect, the rolling open spaces. Only the brooding shadow of Pendle Hill at the other end of the valley broke the mood.

I checked my watch. Bobby had to be at school in half an hour. It was my turn today, Laura had been snatched away by a murder in Blackley, the next town along.

I felt my fingers drum the table. Was there a story in it? I needed something, because a child was still missing. They usually stayed away for a week, sometimes longer. Connor Crabtree had been gone for six days, and the nationals in town were all on countdown. It made it harder for me. I was just a freelancer, trying to sell stories to newspapers who had their own people at the scene, like I was a dog at the dinner table, waiting for scraps. I did best when the press weren’t there and I could get the early quotes.

I had sold a few stories though, small articles on the people affected by the abductions, and on the town itself, but they were just padding. Now Laura was at a murder scene and I was at home, doing the school run.

‘Are we going to school soon, Jack?’ asked Bobby, his voice quiet, almost a whisper.

I looked around, the sound bringing me back. I checked my watch. ‘Ten minutes,’ I said.

There was a pause, and then Bobby asked, ‘How long is ten minutes?’

I sighed, still not sure how to answer these questions. I’d had no training for this. It had been okay when I was just Mummy’s boyfriend who sometimes stayed over, but this was different. Now we shared the same house, vied for attention from the same woman.

‘A Postman Pat story,’ I said. He looked happy at that and turned back to the television.

As I watched him, I realised that this wasn’t a game any more. Bobby wasn’t just the noise in the house. He had to be nurtured, cared for.

I was about to stand up, to finish getting ready, when Bobby said, ‘Where’s Mummy?’

I stopped, thought about that. As always with children, a version of the truth was best. ‘You know she’s a police lady,’ I said, my voice soft.

Bobby nodded.

‘Well, sometimes police ladies have to go and help people. That’s where she is, helping someone.’

Bobby turned to look at me again. He didn’t look convinced, and already I sensed that his parents’ divorce had toughened him up too much for a boy of four. I found myself smiling, though. I could see so much of Laura in him. From the flickers of dimples to his mop of dark hair, stuck up around his crown, and the twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

I winked at him and ruffled his hair. This needed to work, I thought to myself, as much for Bobby as anyone else.

But then I remembered Laura, how she had looked this morning as she threw on her clothes in silhouette, the smell of her warm in my bed, the soft brush of her lips as she’d kissed me goodbye. No, I needed it to work for me, not just for Bobby.

As I thought about Laura, I realised that I needed to start looking for some more work. I’d built up crime contacts in London, people who would look at the stories I was selling, loose tongues in the police stations and hospitals. I was back at the start again, building up an address book, looking out for the angle the local papers might not report. The abductions would end eventually, but we had a mortgage to pay until then. Laura was at a murder. And where there is a murder, there is always a story.

I picked up my phone and dialled her number. After a few rings I heard her voice.

‘I can’t talk about the case,’ she said quickly.

I laughed. ‘Maybe I was calling to hear your voice.’

‘You heard it this morning.’

‘I’m a reporter, Laura. I’ve got to report, and I’ve got a source on the inside.’

‘Sorry, Jack, that ended when you saw me naked. It’s a rule of mine.’

I whistled. ‘Quite a price, but worth every penny.’

I heard a soft giggle, but when she asked about Bobby I knew that I’d had my final answer on the subject.

‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. The school is new to all the kids. Bobby will be no different.’

‘What are you doing today?’

‘I don’t know. I might have a creep around Blackley, see what I can find. Apparently there’s been a murder.’

‘Jack!’

I laughed. ‘If you won’t tell me anything, I’ll just have to find out myself

‘How long will you be out?’

I sensed the worry in her voice. Bobby needed collecting from school.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back.’

I sensed her relax. ‘Okay, thanks, Jack,’ she said. There was a pause, and then, ‘I’m sorry about all this.’

‘I knew you didn’t do nine-to-five when we met,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s good for me. I’ve gone straight to the school run and skipped the dirty nappies.’

She laughed. ‘I love you, Jack.’

‘I’ve always loved you,’ I replied, and then the phone went dead.

I looked down at Bobby, who had been watching me as I spoke. I nudged him lightly on the arm. ‘Come on, soldier. Let’s get you to school.’

And the glow I felt when he smiled at me took me by surprise.

Laura had gone to a quiet corner of the police canteen to answer her phone, but when she ended the call she turned round to see a grinning Pete holding two mugs of coffee. He was keeping her caffeine levels high.

‘That was beautiful,’ he said. ‘I feel all warm inside.’

Laura blushed and grabbed a cup from him. The canteen was small and busy, the tables filled by the extra uniforms, the footsoldiers, drafted in to help with the murder inquiry. The abductions were still the main focus though. There were posters on every wall and on the door, glossy blow-ups of a small business card, a simple image of large hands over a small head, protective, caring. One had been found in the pocket of each abducted child. The press knew about them but had agreed not to report them. In return they got daily updates. Every police officer in Blackley knew about them too, and had been told to keep a lookout. Every time someone was searched, their wallet and pockets were checked. If someone was brought into custody, their property was double-checked.