A Place Of Safety Read online

  ‘Not my idea,’ said Lilly.

  ‘You obviously get paid too much,’ said Sheila.

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Will you two shut up?’ said Rupinder, and went back to the editorial piece on page five. ‘As locals and classmates alike have been attempting to come to terms with recent events, they will no doubt be horrified to learn that their neighbour and fellow parent has taken on the case for the defence. Lilly Valentine, a solicitor with Harpenden firm Fulton, Carter and Singh, has agreed to represent the asylum seeker charged with Charlie’s murder, who cannot be named for legal reasons.’

  ‘They’ve named the firm,’ said Sheila. ‘We’ll have them queuing up to take shots at us now.’

  Rupinder ignored her. ‘A source close to Charlie’s family described Miss Valentine as a disgrace. Some readers may find this harsh; after all, isn’t she just doing her job?’

  ‘The chance would be a fine thing,’ said Lilly.

  ‘But the Three Counties Observer has discovered that not only is Miss Valentine working for the defendant, she is letting her live in her house.’ Rupinder glanced nervously at Lilly. ‘While local people assumed the person suspected of an armed massacre was safely in custody, it turns out she is living happily only minutes from the school where the attack took place.’

  They all looked at the picture at the foot of the page. Anna and Lilly chatting on their porch, Jack with his arm around Lilly’s waist.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, tell me they don’t mention Jack,’ Lilly said.

  Rupinder cleared her throat. ‘And what do the police make of this unusual state of affairs? No doubt they’re affronted and demanding to have bail revoked. Actually, they’re not, perhaps something to do with Miss Valentine’s relationship with Sergeant Jack McNally, a child protection officer who is currently on a leave of absence.’

  The telephone rang and Sheila automatically reached for it.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Rupinder. ‘Put the answer machine on.’

  ‘But the clients,’ said Sheila.

  Rupinder sighed. ‘The clients are the least of our problems today.’

  Snow White read the report with a mixture of satisfaction and disgust.

  She was pleased that the world could now see Lilly Valentine for what she was. A traitor. That she would sneak the foreigner into their very midst showed there were no levels to which she would not stoop.

  Grandpa had always said it wasn’t the advancing armies that troubled him. ‘If you can see the buggers, you can shoot them.’ It was the covert cells that frightened him. Silent, deadly. ‘The enemy within.’

  How right he had been.

  This was it. The moment she had been waiting for. The moment when everything she had predicted finally came true. The enemy was within.

  She needed to clear her mind and consider her next move.

  Lilly put her head in her hands. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry she wanted to run away from the office, and this stupid case. The phone had not stopped ringing with requests for comment on the Three Counties piece. It would only be a matter of time before they were camped on the office doorstep.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Not really’

  ‘I will make coffee,’ said Anna.

  ‘Coffee,’ Lilly repeated. How could the girl think about coffee at a time like this? It was as if she didn’t understand the seriousness of what was happening. The papers, and therefore the world, knew Anna was living with Lilly.

  ‘And we have chocolate,’ said Anna. ‘One bar or two?’

  Lilly looked up at Anna. Her beautiful green eyes shone with an almost mystical phosphorescence.

  ‘Things are pretty bad, Anna,’ said Lilly.

  Anna nodded. ‘Before I come here, things were very bad, so this is an improvement.’

  Despite herself, Lilly smiled. Anna was right. The situation might be difficult but it was nothing compared to what Anna had suffered in the past.

  She reached into her drawer and pulled out a Picnic and a Curly Wurly ‘This is definitely a two-bar moment.’

  Her mobile rang and she checked caller ID. Jack. She was ashamed to admit it but she couldn’t face him. He’d told her not to take the case and warned that it would end badly. She’d call him later when she’d bolstered herself.

  A moment later it rang again. This time it was David. Oh, God, she certainly couldn’t talk to him right now. She could only imagine what he would say about Sam’s home being splashed over the headlines.

  It rang a third time and she switched it off. Cowardly, for sure, but necessary for mental health.

  Seconds later her computer sprang to life with a message in her inbox. Lilly sighed. When she had started out as a lawyer she was armed only with a pager and she regularly forgot to put a battery in that. People didn’t feel the need to be in touch twenty-four hours a day, and work got done, lives were lived.

  Her mother, Elsa, never even had a landline, and when Lilly went away to university they stayed in touch by letter—one a week until the day Elsa became too ill to write. Lilly still had every one in a shoebox tied with the pink chiffon scarf Elsa had worn on the day she died. Couldn’t do that with texts or emails, could you?

  She opened her message.

  To: Lilly Valentine

  From: Jez Stafford

  Subject: Eat your heart out, Mrs Beckham

  I see that you have media coverage dear Victoria would be proud of. At least you look cute in the picture. Not so sure about Jack.

  Anyway…the judge wants us round there now. He’s tried to call the office but can’t get through and your mobile’s turned off. No doubt you’re doing an interview with Richard and Judy.

  J x

  Lilly closed her eyes. Could she pretend she hadn’t got the message? There was no way for Jez to know whether she’d read it, was there? She was sure she’d read that somewhere.

  She quickly logged off and sat back in her chair. No phone, no mobile, no computer. It was disquieting.

  She picked up her bag. ‘Come on, Anna.’

  ‘We go home?’ said Anna.

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Nice earrings,’ said Jez.

  Kerry felt the hot flash of pleasure at her throat. ‘Thanks.’ She’d bought them last weekend at a craft fayre. The stallholder said the topaz stones matched her eyes.

  ‘I like your tie,’ she said, forcing the squeal of pleasure from her voice.

  He ran a hand down the yellow silk. ‘Christmas present.’

  She wanted to ask who from, but didn’t dare. He seemed distracted, repeatedly checking his watch.

  At last Lilly dashed into the robing room. Why did she always arrive like a whirlwind? And why did everyone smile? It wasn’t professional to keep everyone waiting and then explode into their faces, thought Kerry.

  ‘Who leaked the story?’ asked Jez.

  Lilly rolled her eyes. ‘Someone who hates me.’

  ‘No one hates you, Lilly,’ he said.

  Kerry sniffed. She might not hate the solicitor for the defence but she found her flipping annoying.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Lilly said. ‘When the mothers at Manor Park read that little lot they’ll be hiring a hitman.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose the judge is very pleased,’ said Kerry. ‘He’s trying to attract as little media attention as possible.’

  Jez laughed. ‘There’s no way he can blame you for this mess.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Lilly. ‘Anyway, let’s get it over with. I’ve spent the morning avoiding men I don’t want to speak to and I can’t put it off any longer.’

  She stood up and, to Kerry’s annoyance, Jez jumped to attention. Kerry’s own bulk precluded any sudden movements, but she refused to be rushed in any event. Just who did Lilly Valentine think she was?

  ‘Great suit,’ said Jez to Lilly as they swanned down the corridor.

  Lilly looked down at her nylon jacket and laughed. ‘Can’t say the same for that tie,’ she sai
d.

  Kerry sniggered to herself. Lilly had put her foot in it now.

  ‘Sheba gave it to me for Christmas,’ he said.

  ‘What did you give her?’ asked Lilly.

  ‘A hostess trolley,’ he said.

  Lilly howled with laughter and Jez joined her. Kerry wondered why that was funny.

  ‘My nan once gave me an ironing board,’ said Lilly, wiping her eyes. I was twelve.’

  ‘I can only imagine seasonal festivities in the Valentine household,’ said Jez.

  ‘Oh, they were hilarious,’ said Lilly ‘My mum used to try to get everyone on our street to be more PC. When Mr Johnson at number twenty-two called his dog Nigger Boy, she gave him a copy of Roots. Then she invited him to Christmas dinner with the Patels from the corner shop. They all got pissed on Babycham and ended up trying to do a seance.’

  Jez clapped his hands in mirth.

  Kerry imagined his Christmas dinners to be a magazine glossy with at least twenty friends squeezed around a table heaving with champagne and smoked salmon. A far cry from Lilly’s council-estate affair. Yet even that sounded more fun than her own. She usually visited her dad and his cat. They were all snoring by the end of the Queen’s Speech. When they woke around seven, Kerry would drive back to her dark flat and eat a tin of Roses.

  Judge Banks shook his head. He had the case file to his left and the latest edition of the Three Counties Observer to his right.

  ‘This is most unfortunate.’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour,’ said Lilly. ‘But at least this time I didn’t crash into your car.’

  ‘I hardly think this is a time for humour, Miss Valentine.’

  Lilly threw up her hands. ‘I’m not sure what else to do, Your Honour. This story is not my doing or that of my client. A reporter obviously followed me to my home and worked out that Anna was living there.’

  ‘Something that is surely no longer tenable.’

  Lilly thought he might try this.

  ‘Your Honour, I don’t see why not. The fact that this information has been made public doesn’t change the risk posed by my client. It doesn’t make her more likely to abscond and it doesn’t make her more likely to reoffend.’

  ‘Now everyone knows where she lives, the child herself may be in danger,’ said the judge.

  ‘You can grant a non-molestation order here and now, Your Honour, make sure they don’t come to my office or my house.’

  ‘That’s one possibility but we will have the world’s media breathing down our necks,’ he said.

  ‘The Three Counties Observer is hardly international,’ said Lilly.

  ‘Who knows where all this will end, young lady?’

  On the way home Lilly couldn’t help dwelling on Judge Banks’s ominous words. As soon as Lilly had tried to take control of this case, disaster lay at every turn—the cottage window, the office, the car and now the press.

  As she pulled up outside the cottage she craned her neck for photographers.

  ‘No one is here,’ said Anna.

  Lilly realised she’d been holding her breath.

  ‘The press have had their day and we’ll soon be old news.’ But she couldn’t help wondering what might happen next, and—as the judge had also wondered—where it all might end.

  Her phone beeped with an incoming text, answering Lilly’s question. It was the office.

  Just heard from Luton Crown Court that due to excessive media coverage, The Crown v Duraku has been transferred to CCC.

  She had her answer. The case was going to end at the Old Bailey.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Snow White pulled out onto the A5. Old Rusty screeched as she pushed the gear stick into second.

  ‘Distracted, darling?’

  Snow White smiled at her husband in the passenger seat. The car lurched forward and he moaned. He was hung over after a night out with the boys and needed a lift to the station.

  ‘You should have called a cab,’ she said. ‘I have better things to do than chauffeur you around.’

  He rubbed her knee and exhaled. Snow White could smell his breath. Scotch and mouthwash.

  She shot over a roundabout, oblivious to the horns of the other cars.

  ‘For the love of God,’ he said. ‘Keep your mind on the job in hand.’

  She sneaked a glance at her husband. He was a good man but a simple one. He wasn’t alive to the extreme danger in which they were living.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about that girl,’ she said. ‘Something should be done.’

  ‘Better not get involved,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not having your nose rubbed in it every day.’ She pulled up at the station, blocking in three taxis.

  Her husband leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  She watched him stagger to his platform and ignored the irate hooting of the minibus behind. A rag-head. Not even worth her contempt.

  The fridge had looked bare this morning and she thought she might pop over to M&S before the parking places rose to golden-fleece status.

  As she turned Old Rusty around she caught sight of red curls. It was the enemy. Snow White looked again, her heart pounding. She was with that anorexic girl, the girl, and they were obviously on their way to somewhere important.

  Once again it was time to take action.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Luke and Caz emerge from the tube at St Paul’s, surprised at the sea of people. They push past some meat-head in an Adidas tracksuit.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ the man snarls, his hand already drawn into a fist.

  ‘Leave it,’ says the man next to him, and Luke takes the opportunity to escape into the crowd.

  They’d made their way over to do a bit of begging, as nine-thirty always meant hoards of office workers dashing to Cheapside, but this was manic.

  ‘Crowds are good,’ says Caz, but she doesn’t sound sure.

  ‘There is something in the atmosphere, something tense. Luke had felt something similar once at a Gunners’ match and his dad had insisted they left before the final whistle.

  They can’t bed down in their usual spot just inside the entrance, because a group of skinheads have congregated, talking and nodding, organising something.

  Luke looks at Caz and she beckons him outside.

  ‘I think we should get off,’ she says.

  He looks at the beads of sweat on her top lip. ‘Don’t we need some money?’

  ‘I can get some,’ she says, avoiding his eyes.

  Luke feels a knot tighten in his stomach. Ever since he found out how Caz made extra cash he’s tried to put it to the back of his mind.

  ‘Let’s give it a try here,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t get a good feeling about this, Luke.’

  He puts an arm around her. ‘Like you’re always telling me, one person’s money is as good as the next’s.’

  She looks unconvinced, so he squats down on his heels and pulls her down with him. ‘With this amount of people we’ll have twenty quid in less time than it would take you to find a punter.’

  She puts her head on his shoulder, too sick and needy to argue.

  The men in the station start to emerge, still in groups but moving as one body.

  ‘Spare some change?’ says Luke to the nearest two.

  One looks right through him but the other snaps his head. ‘What did you say?’ His clothes are expensive but his chipped teeth and earrings tell Luke he’s spent his life on an estate.

  Luke bends his head and feels Caz shrink into him, her hand gripping his upper arm.

  ‘I asked what you said,’ sneers the man.

  Luke shakes his head and folds in on himself.

  The man nudges Luke’s leg with the toe of his loafer. ‘Don’t fucking ignore me when I’m talking to you.’

  The other man laughs and is soon joined by others until Luke can feel the press of a group above him. The man nudges again, only this time it’s more of a kick. ‘Fucking junkie scum.’

  Luke braces
himself. The homeless get beaten up all the time. Especially after last orders. Someone once set fire to Caz’s sleeping bag. And she was in it.

  Luke imagines what all those boots and trainers will feel like raining down on him.

  Another voice booms from behind, clear and authoritative. ‘Lads, lads, let’s not give anyone a chance to criticise us.’

  ‘It’s these dirty fuckers, boss, they do my head in, sitting here begging for money.’

  ‘Not a pretty sight on the streets of this once great city, I’ll grant you,’ says the boss.

  ‘Why can’t they just get a job instead of dossing around in their own filth?’

  The boss laughs, and it’s hard, humourless. ‘That’s a very good question, Bigsy. Why can’t they just get a job?’

  He moves to the front and squats down in front of Luke and Caz. Luke can smell the sharp lemon of his aftershave.

  ‘Tell me, son,’ he says. ‘Have you tried to get work?’

  The way the man is nodding tells Luke not to point out he’s a schoolboy from Harpenden.

  ‘Let me guess, where you’re from, all the jobs have been taken by the Poles. Plumbing, building, you name it,’ says the man.

  The group grunt their understanding.

  Luke’s only ever met one Pole and he was a consultant at the private hospital where his mum had an operation on her knee after a fall on a skiing holiday. But he nods his agreement.

  The boss gets back to his feet. ‘See, lads, this is what has become of the great white working classes. Reduced to poverty and despair by mass immigration.’ He pulls out a twenty-pound note and brandishes it so everyone can see. Luke wonders if he’s supposed to take it but his hands are shaking too much. The boss frowns as his note flaps in the wind. For a moment, Luke thinks he will put it back in his wallet but Caz snakes out her fingers and snatches it away.

  With that, the boss leads his flock down towards the cathedral.

  ‘I still think they’re dirty cunts,’ mumbles the first man, but he chucks three pound coins at them all the same.

  As the men round the corner, Caz jumps to her feet and sets off to Waterloo, where the word is a dealer has just got fresh stash from Afghanistan.