‘This is cosy,’ Jenny said, peering round my right shoulder with those huge, dove-grey eyes.
I was too busy looking at her to answer. I stepped out of the basement and pulled the door half shut behind me to block her view.
Jenny at forty-six was now a middle-aged, middle-class socialist: curvier, more conservatively dressed, but still stylish. An old grey blazer over a new white turtleneck, jeans and heels and a Stella McCartney shoulder bag; a touch of eyeshadow and pale lipstick; deeper lines and darker hair tied back with a few hanging, wavy tendrils. At once so familiar and so different, like a childhood home after a change of owners; you know the rooms and every flaw, but the wallpaper and furniture have changed. Had it really been eighteen months since I’d seen her last? It seemed impossible, yet I couldn’t decide whether that was because the time apart felt a lot shorter or so, so much longer.
‘I went upstairs first,’ she said. ‘They told me you were down here. Nice couple.’
‘I’ve never really spoken to them,’ I replied, clearing my throat with an unpleasant hack.
She raised her eyebrows as she so often had before. ‘He’s still a hit with the neighbours.’
Jenny’s habit of talking in the third person, a habit I’d learned to love and grown to hate.
‘I couldn’t see your car parked on the road,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me it finally died?’
‘Murdered, I fear. Although the jury’s still out on whether it can survive.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Her eyes were clocking me, making fast deductions. ‘How’s your head?’
‘Still sore if I press it hard enough.’
‘I read about what happened in the news, of course. The attack. Then your sister messaged me at New Year. You went there for Christmas?’
‘Had to go somewhere,’ I said.
‘About time you made some sort of effort with them.’
Down at my side, I lifted my thumb from my fist; barb number one.
‘Dad kept the newspaper clippings,’ she went on. ‘Another story for the Rook book he’ll never get around to writing.’
‘How is Phillip?’
‘Dying.’
That hit me like a hook to my ribs, stealing my wind. Phillip Tilden had been more of a father to me than my own ever had. Even after those nights when Jenny would storm out to stay at her parents’, he’d always kept me in good favour. He was a decent man. Now I felt appalling for not calling him since the divorce. ‘Why? I mean, how?’
‘Cancer. Pancreatic. Advanced.’
‘Shit.’ I assumed this was the reason for her visit. I relented and opened the front door. ‘You want to come inside?’
She breezed in and then stopped as if she’d hit a brick wall. ‘Jesus. It smells like stale smoke and sour piss in here.’
‘That’s the name of this new aftershave I’m trying.’ I closed the door behind us. In her cage, the dog started to growl.
‘He has a dog now!’
‘Scout,’ I said.
‘You always disliked pets.’
‘You always disliked opening your mouth for the dentist, but I’m assuming that isn’t such an issue any more,’ I couldn’t help replying. ‘How is Tom?’
‘Ever the acid-tongued barrister,’ she muttered, circling the futon. ‘Tom is fine.’
‘I take it he made it through the winter without needing me to come and show him how the boiler works.’
She looked back over one shoulder, those damn eyebrows rising again. ‘Elliot, I’m not sure you ever knew how the boiler worked.’
Atop my head, I could feel a single curl of combed hair fighting the pomade, lifting upwards into a more wilted imitation of alfalfa. I flushed, brushing it back down.
‘At least you’re not still wearing that stupid hat,’ she said.
‘Drink?’
She turned and stared at the kitchenette with an expression of horror. ‘I’ll pass, thanks. You know, you could’ve taken the coffee machine.’
‘Your father,’ I said, getting myself a lager from the fridge. ‘How long …?’
‘Does he have to live? Realistically, we’re talking about a length of string, but the string is more like stretched cotton. Cotton snaps. So probably sooner rather than later.’ She always spoke like this.
I opened my can with weak hands. ‘And your mother? How’s she handling it.’
‘About as well as can be expected.’
‘He’s still at home with her?’ I asked.
‘Where else?’
‘I wasn’t sure if he’d gone to a …’ The word formed on my lips – hospice – and dissolved there. ‘I should give him a ring.’
‘He’d appreciate that.’ Her eyes drifted down to my left hand, the fingers wrapped around the beer.
‘I don’t wear it,’ I told her after a huge, cold mouthful.
‘I read in the paper –’
‘Don’t believe everything you read.’
‘Hmm.’ After lapping the entire room twice over, she perched on the nearest arm of my folded futon with narrowed eyes. ‘What have you been fucking around with now, Elliot?’
‘Excuse me?’ My stomach lurched; for one bizarre second, I thought she was referring to Lydia. ‘What do you mean?’
She swung her bag onto her knee and opened it. From inside, she produced a clear plastic wallet, which she held between two fingers as if it might erupt into flames at any moment. It looked sort of funny, like something out of a corny old spy film, until I saw the single sheet of A4 paper inside.
There were seven words. Printed, not handwritten. Large, plain font.
YOUR TRIAL OR YOUR LIFE. LOSE ONE.
I swallowed. ‘What’s this?’
‘This was lying on my doormat this morning.’
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I could feel sweat spreading across my forehead. I emptied half of my beer. ‘It came in the post?’
‘Does it look like it came from the Royal Mail? Delivered by hand in the night, I assume.’
‘Did Tom see it?’ It sounded like a stupid question, but it seemed a matter of personal embarrassment.
‘God no. He’d have had the police over in minutes.’
I nodded. This wasn’t the first threat that had found its way to that address – at one time they’d been terribly frequent – and I was glad to see that Jenny had remembered my preferred way of handling things. That said, their former frequency had undermined their severity and they tended to go straight into the recycling along with the circulars and takeaway menus. This was different, not least because I was no longer the one at risk. The threat was clearly aimed at me, but it was Jenny who could be in danger, and only hours after the Osman warning had found its way to Andre Israel.
‘I thought this shit would’ve left after you did,’ she said. ‘How are they still coming to my house?’
‘Same way they always did, I suppose. Our address was no great secret, considering you worked from home and advertised it on three separate websites.’
The grey in her eyes turned red before she was up on her feet. ‘You’re saying this is my fault?’
‘No.’
‘That’s exactly what you’re saying!’ She threw the plastic slip wallet at the floor with force; it drifted casually, almost brazenly, which annoyed her even more. ‘Where’s your car, Elliot? What happened to it?’
‘Vandals.’ With one eye I checked my watch, which was the equivalent of throwing a can of gas onto a fire.
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she snapped. ‘Do you have somewhere more pressing to be?’
‘As a matter of fact, I have a date.’ I told myself not to say it smugly, but like a door slammed in her face, it had the impact I was looking for.
‘Right. Well. Don’t let me take up any more of your precious time.’ She was already storming for the front door, opening it, a fireball with a designer handbag swinging wildly behind her.
‘Jenny –’
‘It’s Jennifer.’ She stopped at the bottom of the steps outside. ‘Keep the note. And if I find another, it’ll be you answering to the police.’
And as she thundered up the staircase, I could feel my heart leathering against my ribs. Not because I was angry, I realised. It was because I’d missed our fighting as much as everything else.
The last thing I wanted to do next was meet the solicitor, but a stiff drink was definitely on the agenda. I took the death threat along with me, folded in my coat pocket, for light conversation.
I was already late by the time I hailed a black cab, and it took another twenty minutes to get through traffic to the Dog and Duck, a tiny pub on a corner in Soho that had once hosted the likes of John Constable and George Orwell and boasted these facts to this day. The Thursday crowd was piled deep outside, spilling off the kerbs onto Bateman and Frith Streets, and I couldn’t see her standing among it. I had to elbow my way into the building, which was incredibly old and still decorated with its original glossy tiles, mahogany panelling and enormous Victorian mirrors.
Lydia was there waiting. She’d managed to secure for herself one of the copper-topped tables at the rear of the bar, and she appeared to be as relaxed as I was rattled, arms stretched across the back of her seat.
‘Over here, Elliot!’
She was wearing a crimson dress that spoke nothing of business; against so much red, her strawberry-blonde hair seemed blizzard white. Her goblet of gin was a fishbowl. Raspberries and ice floated like sailors overboard.
I tugged my shirt straighter and pointed to her glass. ‘Do you want another?’
‘I wouldn’t say no. Just tell them I’m having the usual.’
It took me almost five minutes to get served, so I took two pints and another fishbowl back to the table with me. She finished off her first and moved the same plastic straw into the new glass. ‘Two pints?’ she noted.
‘It’s a two-pint kind of night,’ I said, and then slid the plastic wallet out of my pocket and onto the copper tabletop for her to read.
She choked around her straw, eyes bugging out, and put her glass down. ‘Where has this come from?’
‘No idea. They could’ve at least signed it, so I know who wants me dead this time.’
‘Jesus!’ Her eyes were darting around suspiciously, as if anybody in the bar might be responsible. ‘Did it come to your office?’
‘My wife’s doormat.’
If her eyes could’ve only widened further, I think they’d have tumbled out into her drink. ‘Your wife?’
‘Ex-wife,’ I swiftly adjusted. ‘I’m still getting used to the idea.’
‘You get used to it, believe me. So, this was posted?’
‘Sometime last night, I presume, to the house I used to live in.’
‘Jesus,’ she said again. ‘How could they find the place?’
‘Quite easily, I suspect. The former Mrs Rook works from home. Art studio in the loft. She keeps the address, and our surname, as her place of business online.’ I drained half a pint and felt better for it. I needed to belch but managed to hold it down, albeit with watery eyes. ‘The more pressing question is: who the hell stands to gain from Charli Meadows going to prison?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I did have my own suspicions, but I can’t see what he could gain from her being incarcerated.’
‘He?’
‘Oh, nobody. Nothing.’ I drank some more.
‘Elliot, I hope you’re not holding out on me.’ She looked down into her glass and swirled the liquid, imitating a starlet’s pout, breaking up the raspberries and ice. ‘We’re in this together, aren’t we?’
Her confidence was obvious. In her younger days, Jenny had been confident in her own purposely outrageous sort of way, but this was different. Lydia’s was a confidence in people she hardly knew, and its effect was at once beguiling and oddly unnerving.
‘I’m not holding out on you,’ I said, stuffing the note back into my pocket. ‘That would require me having some idea of what was going on.’
‘But there is a he, isn’t there?’
I nodded. ‘Charli has a boyfriend. A younger man by the name of Deacon. Did she ever mention him to you?’
‘No.’ She frowned. ‘She explicitly told me she was single, in fact.’
‘Probably because this Deacon is a former inmate at the prison.’
‘Now that is interesting,’ she said. ‘You suspect he put the drugs in the car?’
‘He was inside at the time on a drugs charge. Perhaps he was coercing her into bringing what she assumed was tobacco onto the grounds for him.’
‘Plausible,’ she said. ‘Highly plausible. I’ll nose around, see if I can find anything out about this Deacon and his convictions. Are you certain that this note is actually referring to the smuggling case? Is there not another trial you have lined up?’
‘It’s the Meadows case. I’m sure of it.’
‘It isn’t hard for somebody to get hold of a printer and a sheet of paper. What about this drug-dealing case you’ve been assisting Zara Barnes with? Is she your pupil? I didn’t think silks took them on.’
‘Not mine, no, she’s –’
‘Oh God! The railway case last year! From the papers, she was your junior! So, she was there the night that …’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow.’ She whistled and took another long pull on her straw, leaving cherry-red lipstick on black plastic.
‘This Israel case,’ I said briskly. ‘How many of the defendants did you represent from the raid?’
‘All of them.’
‘The whole lot?’
She hummed around the straw, then smacked her lips dry. ‘Almost didn’t bother going when I got the phone call at eleven o’clock on a Thursday night. What a mistake that would’ve been. Thirty cells at Leyton Custody Centre, and six were occupied thanks to that raid.’
‘This may sound peculiar,’ I said, ‘but have any of the other defendants mentioned a gang that calls itself the Cutthroats? E10 Cutthroats, I believe.’
‘No!’ She laughed, which caught me off guard. ‘What are they, pirates?’ Her laugh simmered to a smile. ‘Elliot, as much as I’d like to chat about the pirates of the East End, are we really going to talk about work all night?’
This made me feel a little embarrassed, and I hesitated. ‘No, not at all.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘So, what else is going on in the life of Elliot Rook?’
I considered it for a moment, sure that something other than work still existed in my world. ‘I got a dog this week,’ I said brightly.
‘A dog?’ She raised her brows, eyes shining playfully. ‘That’s cute.’
‘You haven’t seen the thing.’
And the conversation went from there.
Over the next couple of hours, I felt very much like a chauffeur behind the wheel of an unfamiliar car; as a professional orator I could keep conversation going, but not without the occasional stall. Lydia didn’t seem to mind. In fact, for somebody who didn’t want to discuss work, whenever the threat of silence loomed she simply talked for the both of us, filling empty air with gossip about various judges and solicitors, which I enjoyed much more than I probably should have.
Between us, Lydia and I were a little more than tipsy when we staggered out of the Dog and Duck. The evening had turned cold, and she tightened a thin jacket over her dress while I lit myself a cigarette. Her green eyes glowed as she tracked her Uber’s advance on her phone. There was dead air between us again, but it wasn’t so awkward now. Still, I found myself wanting to fill it.
‘This was nice,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’
She looked up from the phone and rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t have to thank me, Elliot. This isn’t charity. I asked for your company, remember?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose you did. In that case, you’re welcome.’
She laughed softly, ‘Wow, thanks,’ and pointed to approaching headlights. ‘This is my car.’
‘I’ll walk you to it,’ I said, and when we got there I opened the door for her.
‘The perfect gent,’ she chuckled, climbing into the back. A moment passed, something electric between us, but it had gone almost before I’d even noticed it. She held the handle from the inside, preparing to close herself in. ‘So, where will your evening take you now?’
I checked my watch and smoked. ‘I’d like another look through the case papers before I turn in. Apart from that, just trying not to get myself killed will keep me plenty busy.’
‘Good idea.’ She shook her head, started to close the door and paused. ‘The case isn’t going anywhere. You should give yourself the rest of the night off. Life’s too short, Elliot.’
I smiled, nodded, and patted the pocket with the death threat inside it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s getting shorter every day.’
I closed the door and waved her off, and she slipped away into the night.
I held the smile until she was gone, and only then did I really start to worry about the warning on my life.