Eleanor spent her second night in my house and, this time, she didn’t sleep in the room with the teddy bears’ picnic wallpaper. She slept alone in my bed, or what was left of it, while I dozed fully clothed on the torn-up sofa downstairs with my crutches close to hand. Neither of us felt that it had been the right circumstance to make any further moves towards each other and I was still worried that, with a broken window in the utility room, my castle was far from secure.
I woke early with the daylight, and what it revealed was no better than it had been the night before.
Julian Trent had been vindictive in his approach to the destruction and had even cut up my passport. It wasn’t that I couldn’t replace what he had destroyed, but he had made my life so much more complicated and annoying. Where did one start to get rid of all this mess?
I looked in the drawers of my desk for my insurance policy. Clearly not all the wine was soaking into the rug. Trent had saved a couple of bottles to pour into my paperwork, which was now red and still dripping.
Eleanor padded down the stairs wearing my dressing gown.
‘Careful,’ I said, looking at her bare feet. ‘There’s broken glass all over the floor.’
She stopped on the bottom stair and looked around. ‘Must have been quite a party,’ she said with a smile.
‘The best,’ I said, smiling back.
She retreated back to my bedroom and soon reappeared, dressed and with her shoes on. I was a little disappointed at the transformation from my dressing gown.
‘I’d better be going,’ she said, more serious now. ‘It’s well gone six and I need to be at work at eight. Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I have a car picking me up at eight.’
‘You’d better have this,’ she said, handing me her camera.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I may use it to take some shots of this lot for the insurance company.’
‘Good idea,’ she said, standing still in the middle of the hallway.
It was as if she didn’t really want to go.
‘What are you doing tonight?’ I asked.
‘I’m on call,’ she said miserably. ‘I have to stay in Lambourn.’
‘Then can I come down there and return your camera to you this evening?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes please,’ she said with a wide grin.
‘Right, I will. Now get goingoryou’llbe late for your patients.’
She skipped down the stairs, and I waved at her from the kitchen window as she drove away, her right arm gesticulating wildly out of the driver’s window until she disappeared round the corner at the top of the road.
I used the rest of the free memory in Eleanor’s camera to take shots of every aspect of Julian Trent’s handiwork, right down to the way he had poured all the contents from the packets in my kitchen cupboards into the sink, which was now blocked. I didn’t know what good the photos would be but it took up the time while I waited for the car.
I found a clean shirt lurking in the tumble drier that young Mr Trent had missed with his knife and, even though there was no water in the bathrooms with which to shower or wash, I had managed to shave with an unbroken electric razor and I felt quite respectable as I hobbled down the steps and into Bob’s waiting Mercedes at eight o’clock sharp.
I had brought my mobile phone and the Yellow Pages into the car and, while Bob drove, I set to work finding someone to fix the utility-room window.
‘Don’t worry about the mess,’ I said to the first glazier I called, who finally agreed to do the job for a fat fee. ‘Just go through the kitchen to the utility room and fix the window.’
‘How shall I get in?’ he asked. ‘Is there someone there?’
‘I left the front door open,’ I said. After all, there wasn’t much left to steal. ‘The keys are on the stairs. Lock the door when you are finished and put the keys back through the letter box. I’ve got another set.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Will do.’
Next I called my insurance company and asked them to send me a claim form. They might want to come and have a look, they said. Be my guest, I replied, and I fixed for them to come on the following afternoon at five o’clock. They could get a key from my downstairs neighbours, who would be back from their school by then.
Bob took me first to chambers, where he went in to collect my mail while I half sat and half lay on the back seat of the car. Bob reappeared with a bundle of papers which he passed in to me through the window. And he also had Arthur in tow.
‘Mr Mason,’ said Arthur through the window, formal as always.
‘Morning, Arthur,’ I said. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Sir James is very keen to see you,’ he said. I bet I knew why. ‘He needs to speak to you about Monday.’ Monday was the first day of Steve Mitchell’s trial in Oxford.
‘What about Monday?’ I said. I, too, could play this little game.
‘He thinks it may be impossible for him to attend on Monday as the case he is on at the moment is overrunning.’
What a surprise, I thought. I bet it’s overrunning because Sir James keeps asking for delays.
‘Tell Sir James that I will be fine on my own on Monday,’ I said. ‘Ask him to call me over the weekend on my mobile if he wants me to request an adjournment for a day.’ I wouldn’t hold my breath for the call, I thought.
‘Right,’ said Arthur. ‘I will.’
Both he and I were plainly aware of what was going on, but protocol and good manners had won the day. So I refrained from asking Arthur to also inform Sir James that he was a stupid old codger and a fraud, and it was well past the time he should have hung up his silk gown and wig for good.
Next, Bob drove me just round the corner to Euston Road, to the offices of the General Medical Council, where I spent most of the day sitting around waiting and very little time standing on my right foot, leaning on my crutches, arguing my client’s case against a charge of professional misconduct in front of the GMC Fitness to Practise Panel. Each of the three accused doctors had a different barrister and the GMC had a whole team of them. It made for a very crowded hearing and also a very slow one. By the time we had all finished our representations and each of the witnesses had been examined and cross-examined, there was no time left in the day for any judgments and the proceedings were adjourned until the following morning, which was a real pain for me as I wanted to be in Lambourn.
I tut-tutted to my client and told him, most unprofessionally, that it would mean much greater expense, another day’s fees. He almost fell over himself to ask the chairman of the panel if I would be required on the following day. He seemed greatly relieved when the chairman informed him that it was up to the accused to decide if and when they had professional representation, and not the members of the GMC. I was consequently rapidly released by my client. My fellow barristers looked at me with incredulity and annoyance. Two days’ fees may have been better for them than just one but, there again, they hadn’t planned to go and see Eleanor tonight.
I called Arthur on my mobile and asked him to arrange for all my boxes, papers, files, gown, wig, and so on for the Mitchell trial, to be sent direct to my hotel in Oxford, where I would be spending the weekend in preparation for Monday. No problem, he said. Sending boxes of papers by courier all over the country for court hearings was normal practice.
Bob was waiting for me in the Mercedes outside the GMC offices.
‘Back to Barnes?’ he asked.
‘No, Bob,’ I said. ‘Could you take me to Lambourn?’
‘Be delighted to,’ he said with a big smile. Bob was being paid by the mile. ‘Round trip or one way?’ he asked.
‘One way for tonight, I think,’ I said. ‘I need to make a call or two. And, Bob, can we find a photo shop that’s still open, one where you can stop outside to drop me off?’
He found one in Victoria Street and I spent about half an hour at a self-service digital photo machine printing out the pictures I had taken that morning with Eleanor’s camera. I also printed out ten six-by-four-inch copies of the blown-up image of the Millie and foal picture. They weren’t perfect, and looked a little more blurred than on the camera, but they would have to do.