Clover emerged from the bathroom as Troy was buttoning up his overcoat – the childhood ritual of keeping well wrapped up when poorly. It went with string vests and Vick rubs. By contrast she wore only the towel, clutched to her front.
‘Troy. Lend us a few quid, will you?’
‘What for?’
‘There’s things I need. Grandad bundled me up so fast I scarcely had time to pack.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘God, you’re suspicious. Thing things. Woman things.’
Troy said nothing.
‘All right, you asked for it. Knickers. I’m right out of clean knickers. And Tampax. I’ve got no Tampax at all.’
Troy unbuttoned his coat and jacket, reached for his wallet and took out a five-pound note.
‘Make it a tenner,’ Clover said.
‘A tenner!’
He should have put his wallet away instead of standing with it folded open. She pulled another fiver from it and ignored his protest. Then she flipped the wallet shut and shoved it back inside his pocket. She had to let go of the towel. It fell to the floor. She locked her arms around his neck – the familiar wrestling hold of a woman wanting something – a five-pound note in each hand. He could hear them crackle past his ears. She pressed her chest onto his, and he felt her nipples pushing through the fabric of his shirt.
She kissed him. One ear. Then the lips.
‘Ta. You’re a sweetie, really you are.’
And he knew he’d never see his ten quid again.
At the Bailey Troy wondered whether Cocket would put Fitz on the stand. If he were Cocket he would not – there was too much in the life of Paddy Fitz which Furbelow could exploit to advantage. But if not Fitz, who?
Cocket rose. ‘I call Professor Martin Pritch-Kemp.’
The court buzzed softly. Mirkeyn asked counsel to see him in chambers, and when they returned the call went out for Pritch-Kemp. Troy could guess what had been said. Mirkeyn reiterated that he had not allowed the Professor to be named, because he had been told quite clearly that the prosecution would not call him. Cocket would have replied that he had never said he would not call Pritch-Kemp, had no obligation to disclose such information and what the prosecution chose to do or not do was not his domain. Cocket would also have said that the court could not prevent Pritch-Kemp from giving evidence if he volunteered. And he surely had volunteered? God knows what Furbelow had said. Nothing, would have been the wisest course. If the prosecution had gambled on Pritch-Kempwanting to avoid scandal, then they did not know the man. Or perhaps it had never occurred to them that the Professor could be Pritch-Kemp?
‘Are you the man known to Tara and Caroline Ffitch as the Professor?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was your relationship with Tara and Caroline Ffitch?’
‘We were lovers.’
‘All three of you?’
‘Yes,’ said Pritch-Kemp. ‘Can’t have one without the other.’
Mirkeyn stared out at the court, simply daring anyone to snigger at the unconscious rendition of a line from a popular song.
‘Where did the three of you have sex?’
‘At their home.’
‘Dreyfus Mews?’
‘Yes. At my home, in Little Venice. At various hotels. We visited Paris and Amsterdam. At Dr Fitzpatrick’s cottage at Uphill . . .’
Pritch-Kemptrailed off and Cocket let him. It would not help for Pritch-Kemp to add to the list. They’d probably fucked in half the London parks and the backs of taxis, and Pritch-Kemp was just the sort of bloke to tell you so.
‘Were you charged by any of these establishments?’
‘Of course. Hotels are not free.’
‘But you paid no money at Dreyfus Mews or Uphill?’
‘Paid for what?’
‘For the use of a bed . . . or for services rendered.’
‘The answer’s no to both questions. Fitz didn’t rent me a bed, and I’ve never paid the Ffitch girls for sex.’
‘But did you ever give them money?’
‘Yes. I gave them presents and I gave them money so they could buy their own presents.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not? I’m a wealthy man. I was born rich; I’ve a good job and my books are bestsellers. Why should I not share my good fortune with my friends and lovers?’
‘And this . . . these gifts were not associated with sex?’
‘Not directly. But there was a time when, more often than not, if the three of us met we had sex. Hence if I decided to treat them it would, more often than not, be on an occasion when we had also had sex. But that is no more than coincidence.’
‘Did Dr Fitzpatrick know you had sex with the Misses Ffitch in his home?’
‘Of course.’
Don’t say he watched you do it, thought Troy, just don’t say it.
‘And do you know if either of the Misses Ffitch passed on the money you gave them to Dr Fitzpatrick?’
‘I do. He used to complain, jokingly, that they were eating him out of house and home, that they contributed nothing to his household.’
‘Jokingly?’ Cocket queried.
‘Just a tone of voice. A way of getting his point across. He said it often enough to make me think it rankled with him from time to time.’
‘To your knowledge, did Dr Fitzpatrick ever ask either of the sisters for a share of any money you gave them?’
Furbelow rose. ‘This is calling for hearsay, m’lud.’
‘Sustained.’
‘I have only one more question,’ Cocket continued. ‘Did either of the sisters ever ask you for money in exchange for sex?’
‘No,’ said Pritch-Kemp.
Cocket sat down.
It had been neatly contained, a thorough refutation of the basis of the prosecution case. Pritch-Kemp was a loose cannon who had not sent grapeshot flying off in every direction. At least not yet. As Furbelow rose again Troy was sure he saw in Pritch-Kemp’s eye the glint of combat.
‘Professor Pritch-Kemp,’ Furbelow began with relish – if the man was to be named, then he would at least have the pleasure of rolling the name around on his lips. ‘Are you in the habit of giving money to women you sleep with?’
‘Habit? I’ll do it if the mood takes me. Don’t you ever give your women a little something?’
This brought the public gallery to hysterics. Furbelow blushed, Troy could have sworn he blushed. The judge blew out his cheeks and gave Pritch-Kempwhat for.
‘Mr Pritch-Kemp. May I remind you that there is such a thing as contempt of court.’
‘Indeed you may, m’lud. For I have no contempt of this court. I am merely amazed at the ignorance of m’learned counsel. One would think he had never been with a whore, for he certainly seems not to know the protocol.’
There was an audible communal gasp. Pritch-Kemp had just given a hostage to fortune. In spite of all he’d said for the defence, caught on the cross he’d as good as called the Ffitches whores. Freud moved in mysterious ways.
‘I warn you, Mr Pritch-Kemp, choose your next remark carefully. Mr Furbelow, I take it you wish to continue?’
Furbelow would have to be a complete idiot not to want to press on now.
‘Thank you, m’lud. Am I to understand, Professor Pritch-Kemp, that you regularly go with prostitutes?’
‘Not regularly, no, but enough to know the ropes.’
‘Oh?’ Furbelow played to the gallery and Troy thought him a fool. ‘And what are “the ropes”?’ he sneered.
‘It’s perfectly simple,’ said Pritch-Kemp. ‘And half the men in London will tell you so. With a whore one agrees terms upfront and nine times out of ten one pays up front. One agrees conditions up front—’
‘M’lud,’ Furbelow chirped, ‘the witness is giving me a lecture!’
Laughter from the gallery. More laughter as Cocket intervened.
‘M’lud, am I to take it my learned friend is objecting to his own question? The witness was merely answering the question as put to him.’
It pained Sir Ranulph Mirkeyn deeply but he said, almost sotto voce, ‘Continue, Mr Pritch-Kemp.’
‘Thank you, m’lud. One agrees the price with a tart, and one agrees the conditions.’
‘Conditions?’ said Mirkeyn almost involuntarily.
‘You know,’ said Pritch-Kemp. ‘All her clothes off or just the necessary. Whether it’s half an hour or all night; whether it’s the full works or a hand shandy.’
‘A hand shandy!?’ Mirkeyn exclaimed with more vowels than Edith Evans could have inserted into three words. And then he had to hammer with his gavel for nearly two minutes to achieve enough quiet for the trial to continue.
‘And’, Pritch-Kemp went on to the dismay of the prosecution, ‘there’s a world of difference between agreeing a few quid upfront, and I do mean a few quid, and deciding that your lover would look nice in a new hat or a new frock the next time you see her and leaving her fifty quid to treat herself. I defy the married men of England to say they do not treat their wives. I defy the unmarried men of England to say they do not so treat their lovers.’
Furbelow looked pole-axed. He had foreseen an easy victory over the defence’s star witness, and even after a colossally dropped brick, the man had just wiped the floor with him. He ducked out with a wimpish ‘no further questions’, only to find Cocket asking to return to his witness. Clearly, it was crossing the old sod’s mind to refuse but, Troy knew, that would be merely another hostage to fortune, an unexploded shell for the appeal. ‘After all,’ Mirkeyn was probably thinking, ‘the harm’s done.’
‘Very well, Mr Cocket.’ And then the irresistible dig. ‘If you cannot prepare your case well enough to ask your questions at the right time and in the right order.’
Cocket did not mind the sarcasm. He knew there was yet more damage he could do.
‘Professor Pritch-Kemp, could you define prostitution for the court?’
Furbelow rose. Before he could speak, Cocket headed him off at the pass.
‘M’lud, Professor Pritch-Kempholds the Garrat Chair in English at King’s College. Might the court accept that the meaning of words is his profession and hence his testimony be accepted as that of an expert witness?’
If I could read minds, Troy thought, then the words ‘Jesus wept’ just passed through Mirkeyn’s. The judge put one hand over his eyes, quickly withdrew it and uttered a ‘yes’, scarcely concealing his rage.
‘Professor, when is sexual intercourse prostitution?’
‘When there is no element in the relationship between the man and the woman except a desire on the part of the woman to make money – when it is separated from any attachment and is indeed just the sale of her body – and no other desire on the man’s part but self-gratification.’
‘No further questions,’ said Cocket.
Troy wondered what this precision had achieved. He had seen the jury’s faces. This had not been well received. They were not the kind of people to flirt with the new morality or to find the moral and intellectual flirtatiousness of a man like Pritch-Kemp amusing. It had given the gallery a good laugh; it had made a fool of Furbelow, but it had angered the judge, and this final definition had left him wondering what it said about Fitz. It said plenty about Pritch-Kemp, but if this was the defence’s last word in the way of evidence, then it left an emphatic feeling of heartlessness – and he was not at all sure that it had not misfired. In trumpeting that Pritch-Kemp bought flesh, that he knew when he was with a whore and when he wasn’t, hadn’t the defence put too subtle an argument to the jury? Pritch-Kempwent with whores, ergo all women he went with were whores, regardless of his ability to define the terms? It may have worked wonders when the defendant was three hundred pages of paper and the whores fictional. Troy doubted whether it had helped a living, breathing man. They had been, he thought, too clever by half. If he’d been defending, he would have put one last question – ‘Do you consider your relationship with the Misses Ffitch to have been prostitution?’ – and he’d have told Kemp to keep his answer down to a simple ‘no’. He knew what the jury were asking themselves: ‘Was she or wasn’t she?’, when the defence’s job was to leave them with no subtlety and in no doubt.
Cocket called no other witnesses. All that remained were the final addresses to the jury and the judge’s summing up. Mirkeyn adjourned for an early lunch and told them all to reconvene at one. It seemed to Troy that this might be it. The court could get through what it had to in what remained of the day. Then, he thought, the jury would probably be banged up in a hotel for the night.
He had no appetite for lunch. He had a cup of tea in a caff in Blackfriars Lane and phoned home. The line was engaged.
As he walked back to the Old Bailey he caught sight of a large red-headed man ahead of him. A man walking with the laboured geometrical swing of a tin leg, kicking out into open space with all the weight of a vast body resting on the other hip. Up, swing, clank, bonk. He’d know that walk anywhere. Angus Pakenham, Anna’s wandering Aengus-husband. The red giant rounded the corner. Troy, as much as breath allowed, ran to catch up, but when he turned into Pilgrim Street there was no sign of the pilgrim. Perhaps it hadn’t been Angus? Perhaps he had better not report it as a sighting?