Acceptable Loss (28 page)

Rathbone felt as if certainty had crumbled in his hands. He was holding a dozen shards, none of which fitted together to make a comprehensible whole.

“Perhaps you can do it without destroying anyone else,” Ballinger went on. “But if you can’t save Monk from himself, then you must follow the law, and your own sense of right and wrong. You did not do this to him; he did it to himself.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” Rathbone said gravely. “As it stands at the moment, I will be able to challenge the prosecutor on just about every point. But of course I shall not stop working until the case is thrown out.”

Ballinger smiled. “Thank you. I knew you would.”

I
T WAS THE EVENING
before Arthur Ballinger’s trial began. Rathbone sat in his armchair before a fire not really necessary yet but vaguely comforting. Margaret sat opposite him playing at a piece of needlework, and unpicking as much of it as she sewed.

“Who will they call first?” she asked, looking at him intently, her face strained. Tiny lines around her eyes were visible in the light shining sideways from the gas bracket at her left. He had never noticed them in the daylight. He felt an intense pity for her, and longed to be able to give her some comfort, but promises that could not be kept were worse than none at all. After they were broken, she would never be able to trust him again, and he could not rob her of that.

“Oliver!” she prompted. “Who will they call first?”

“Probably Monk,” he replied.

“Why? He didn’t find that wretched man’s body. Why not the policeman who did?”

“Maybe they’ll call him, but it’s rather tedious and adds nothing to the case. It’s a dangerous thing to bore a jury.”

“For heaven’s sake! It’s not an entertainment!” she said savagely. “The jury is there to do the most important job of their lives, not to be amused.”

Rathbone tried not to let any emotion sharpen his voice.

“They are ordinary people, Margaret. They are frightened of making a mistake, awed that the responsibility is theirs for a decision they have had no training to reach. A man’s life hangs in the balance, and they know it. They will find it difficult to concentrate, almost impossible to remember everything, and if either Winchester or I allow their minds to wander from what we are saying, they will forget half of it. Winchester is no fool, believe me. He will not repeat anything that is irrelevant.”

“What do you mean, irrelevant?” she demanded. “How can the truth be irrelevant? It is somebody’s life … Are they stupid?” Her voice was growing higher, less within the tight effort of control that she had kept up with difficulty since her father’s arrest.

He leaned forward a little. “The description of the river where they found Parfitt is not important enough for the jury to hear it from both the local policeman and Monk,” he explained. “It has nothing to do with who Parfitt was, or who killed him. They don’t need it twice. They will cease to listen, and that matters.”

“What will Monk say?” she persisted. “He’ll shade everything because he hates Papa. He’s never forgiven him for choosing you to defend Jericho Phillips. Men like Monk can’t bear to be beaten. What are you going to do to show the jury that it’s personal, that he wanted Papa to be guilty for his own reasons?”

Rathbone saw the anger in her face, and the fear. It was as if some part of her were facing an ordeal from which she might never recover. He ached to be able to reach out to her and simply hold her, to feel that intensity of closeness where pain can be shared. But she was too tightly knotted within herself to allow it, as if he were also the enemy.

“Margaret, Monk wants to end the abominable trade in child pornography, not persecute any one person. If he wanted revenge over Phillips, for heaven’s sake, don’t you think he got it at Execution Dock?”

She stared at him. “You don’t believe me, do you? You’re siding with Monk!”

He swallowed back the exasperation that filled him. “I am trying to defend your father. Personal attacks on the police are not going to accomplish that, unless Monk makes a mistake. If he does, I will take him apart for it, friend or not.”

“Will you?” she said doubtfully.

That was unfair, and at any other time he would have told her so. “You know I will,” he said gently. “Didn’t I do that, to both Monk and Hester, to defend Jericho Phillips? And I despised the man. How much more so would I do it to defend your father?”

“You know he’s innocent, don’t you?” Now she was really afraid, shivering where she sat on the sofa only a couple of feet away from him. What could he possibly say? He did not know that Ballinger was innocent. Of the murder of Parfitt, he probably was, because why on earth would he do such a senseless and unnecessary thing? But of any involvement with those who used the boats and the wretched children on them, no, he was not certain of Ballinger’s innocence at all.

“Oliver!” She was trembling now so intensely, he would have thought the room ice cold if he had not felt the heat of the fire scorching his legs.

“I know he didn’t kill Parfitt,” he answered her. “Of course I do. I’m afraid he might have gone further than he would like to have in defense of some of Parfitt’s victims. I’m not absolutely certain that he doesn’t know who did kill him, and he might be protecting them.”

“Why? Why on earth would he defend a man who … who murdered—Oh.” Her voice dropped. “You mean they might be his professional client? Yes, of course. He would go to trial and endure all the pain and the blame to protect a victim of Parfitt’s blackmail, all because he had given his word.” She stopped shivering, and the fabric that was stretched tight across her shoulders eased a little.

It was not what Rathbone had meant at all. He had been thinking of something far less noble, but now he had not the heart, or perhaps the courage, to deny it. He looked at her soft eyes, and her sudden reassurance, and the words died before he spoke them.

“It’s possible. I need to be prepared for surprises.”

“Wouldn’t he trust you?” she pressed. “After all, you are his lawyer, and what he tells you is in confidence.”

“Of course it is,” he agreed with an attempt at a smile. “Even from you, my dear.”

“Oh!” She searched his eyes, trying to read in them what he might be unable to tell her.

“What about this Winchester?” she said at length. “What is he like?”

“Very clever,” he replied. “Rather personable. He is deceptively charming, and at times amusing, but underneath it he has a very sharp mind indeed.”

“You’re frightening me!” she snapped. “You sound as if you’re saying he could win.”

“Of course he could win,” he answered her. “And if I forget it for even a moment, then I open the door for him to do just that.” He took a deep breath and tried to calm his voice and make it gentle. “Margaret, they have a case. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be going to court tomorrow. If I could have had it dismissed, don’t you think I would have?”

“Yes! Yes, I know. But it’s ridiculous! My father? How can anyone who knows him ever imagine that he would be … paddling about in the river murdering some … pornographer?”

Rathbone reached across and touched her hand, and she grasped hold of him. She clung so tightly, she pinched his flesh, but he did not pull away, and forced himself not to wince.

“Precisely because they do not know him,” he replied. “It is my job to show the jury that he is exactly what he looks to be and claims to be—a respectable husband and father, a good solicitor, who, in the course of his professional duties, has had clients both good and bad, just as I have myself. He has done his best to help all of them, without making personal judgments as to their worthiness—which is what the law requires, and justice demands.”

She tried to blink back the tears that filled her eyes, but they spilled down her cheeks. “You’re right, Oliver, and I love you for it. I’m sorry. I’m just so frightened that somehow it will go wrong. I have
no belief in justice. If it were real, he wouldn’t even be facing trial at all. And I’m sorry, but I think Monk is ruthless, and I don’t even trust Hester anymore. I think she’ll do anything for him, even lie if she has to, to stop him from looking bad—again. He can’t afford to make another terrible mistake, or he’ll lose his job.”

“You truly think she would lie for him?” he asked.

“For goodness’ sake, Oliver! She loves him,” she responded with exasperation. “She’s loyal! She’s his wife.”

“Is that loyalty?” he said very softly.

She looked puzzled. “What do you mean? Of course it is.”

“I don’t believe it is loyal to help someone do something that is wrong, something that could end in another person’s death. You would be helping them to commit a sin they would regret and pay for, for the rest of their lives. Would you want that? I wouldn’t.”

She looked confused.

“If you loved them?” he pressed.

“I … I don’t know. I would want to defend them. Wouldn’t you?” Now she was frowning. “Perhaps if I loved them enough, I wouldn’t even think that they could be wrong. Not as wrong as that.”

“And would you sacrifice your own judgment?”

“I don’t know. But that isn’t going to happen.” She shook her head fractionally. “I’m not married to William Monk; I’m married to you. I can’t grieve over Hester’s problems. That’s up to her.”

Rathbone had a sharp flash of memory, so vivid that it seemed Hester was in front of him now, her face as intense as Margaret’s, but angry, vulnerable, passionately concerned for the problems of someone else, needing to find an answer for them, unable to rest or sleep until she had. She had frightened him, and excited him. And he had loved her for that.

He lowered his eyes away from Margaret’s gaze. He did not want to see into her emotions, in case it left an emptiness in him. And he did not want her to see into his.

He let go of her hands and stood up. “I’m going back into my study. I need to read it all one last time. Try to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” It was a lie. He did not need to, or intend to, read it all
again. He simply wanted to be alone, where he also could rest. For all his attempts to comfort Margaret, he was a good deal more anxious than he wished her to know.

T
HE COURTROOM WAS PACKED
, and people were turned away even before the preliminaries of the trial commenced. By the time the first witness was called, the atmosphere was like that before an electric storm. Rathbone was not surprised. He had expected it, because the prospect of a respectable lawyer charged with murdering a seedy riverside pimp in particularly squalid circumstances had driven the more lurid journalists to speculate up to the legal limit, and beyond, in what it was permissible to print. Even thought he had expected the crowd, he dreaded the pain he would see in Margaret’s face. He had considered asking her not to come but had known that she would see it as an invitation to cowardice—worse than that, to betrayal.

Winchester called Monk first, as Rathbone had expected.

Monk climbed the spiral steps up to the witness stand high above the body of the court, and stood there elegantly, as always. He looked assured. Only Rathbone, who knew him so well, could see the tension in his body, the uncharacteristic complete stillness as he waited for Winchester to begin.

Winchester’s first questions were simple, a matter of identifying Monk so the jury knew exactly who he was, and his seniority, then establishing time and place, and who had called Monk to the scene, for what reason.

“You were standing on the riverbank in the early morning mist,” Winchester said.

“Actually, in the water,” Monk corrected him.

“Shallow?”

“Over the knees, and muddy.” Monk gave a slight wince at the memory of it.

“And no doubt cold,” Winchester added.

“Yes.”

“And the reason the local police had sent for you?”

“The body of a man, fully clothed, floating in the water. They
turned him over to identify him, which was actually fairly easy in spite of a degree of water damage, because he had a withered arm.”

“Withered?” Winchester questioned.

“His right arm was shorter than the left, and the muscle was badly wasted. It looked as if it was almost unusable.”

“Whose was this body?”

“A local man called Mickey Parfitt.”

“Did he appear to have drowned?” Winchester sounded no more than curious, his voice mild. “Do they call you for every drowning?”

“No,” Monk replied. “There was a nasty injury to the back of his head, slightly to the right of the crown. And we discovered there was a tight ligature buried in the swollen flesh of his throat.”

“Ligature? As in something long and thin tied around his throat and pulled so tight as to strangle him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice what it was that had done this?”

“Not at that time. We only really looked at it later.”

“Later?”

“When the police surgeon cut it off and brought it to me.”

Winchester raised his hand in a slight gesture, as if to prevent Monk from saying anything more. “We will come to that later. At that time, Mr. Monk, standing in the water in the early morning light, did you believe that Mr. Parfitt had come to his death from natural causes?”

“I believed it extremely unlikely.”

“An accident?”

“I could not think of any that would meet such evidence.”

“So it was murder?”

“I thought so, yes.”

“What did you do then, Mr. Monk?”

Monk described hauling the body out of the water, heavy and dripping with mud, then carrying it up to the cart, and finally back to Chiswick, leaving it in the morgue for the police surgeon to perform a postmortem.

“Then what, Mr. Monk?” Winchester looked relaxed, comfortable. Rathbone knew him by reputation, but he had not faced him
across a courtroom before, and he could not read his mood. He seemed deceptively bland, almost casual, as if he imagined this case would require only half his attention.

“I started to make inquiries as to the nature and business of Mr. Parfitt, and why anyone might have wished to kill him,” Monk replied.

“Routine?” Winchester said quickly.