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RedDoor Press - Alex Churchill

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155 pages

English

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Sophie Angel is the night lawyer. Once a week, she's the one who decides what the papers can and can't say.During the day, she's a barrister. She struggles for justice in a system that's close to collapse, where she confronts the most dangerous aspects of humanity. Her life changes when a wealthy Russian offers her the biggest case of her career, a rape trial with a seemingly innocent client.But is someone manipulating Sophie from the shadows? With her marriage under strain and haunted by nightmares from the past, Sophie must find the answer to these questions before it's too late.This is a story about betrayal, trust, guilt and innocence, played out from the courtrooms of London to the darkest corners of Soviet era Moscow.

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Thriller

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Publié par	RedDoor Press
Date de parution	30 avril 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839780219
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Night Lawyer
Alex Churchill

Published by RedDoor
www.reddoorpress.co.uk
© 2020 Alex Churchill
The right of Alex Churchill to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
Excerpt from ‘Little Gidding’ from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot, published by Faber and Faber Ltd. Reproduced with permission.
Excerpt from ‘Little Gidding’ from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot. Copyright © 1942 by T.S. Eliot, renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, places and incidents are either imagined by the authors or are used in a fictitious context. The legal aspects of the story are as accurate as is possible within the context of a novel, but there may be inaccuracies, for which we apologise.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Clare Connie Shepherd
www.clareconnieshepherd.com
Typesetting: Jen Parker, Fuzzy Flamingo
To Paul, Francesca and Katya
David, Freddie and Rosie
‘We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’
Excerpt from ‘Little Gidding’ from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
Book Club Questions
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
‘You’ll be all right here on your own?’
Chris, the night editor, looks at me, coat and briefcase in hand.
I nod and turn back to the screens on my desk.
He hesitates a moment longer, then walks away. I can see his stocky figure reflected in the window; a ghostly outline overlaying the city lights outside. He walks with a rolling gait, like a cowboy or a sailor, although as far as I know, he rarely leaves the office except to go home and sleep. I hear the faint electronic echo announcing the lift’s arrival, followed by the silence of an empty building.
This is my eyrie. I have a hawk’s view of London, outlined in circles, boxes and towers of lights. Random patterns of white, yellow, red and green mark out the roads, the traffic and the landmarks up to the darkness of the horizon. Pinprick aeroplane lights inch across a wide arch of black sky. You can’t see the stars but an occasional tiny satellite hovers brightly.
I work at the centre of the hub, ‘on the bench’, sitting next to the night editor so that he can consult me for an instant decision as the papers go to press. He always wants to know exactly how far he can push a story before it becomes libellous. Sometimes he even steps over that line.
The section desks stretch out like spokes from the editor’s desk – features, news, foreign affairs and, in the far distance, the magazine and lifestyle sections. I work here on Friday evenings, after my week in court, arriving at seven o’clock in the evening when most of the journalists are still working at their desks. But as it gets later, the lights go off at desk after desk as computers are closed down and journalists leave, until the room is lit only by the eerie glow of the giant news screens up on the walls and the city lights outside the huge windows.
Just before midnight, I sit in the only pool of light left in the vast office, scrolling down my screen, trying to make sense of what is happening to my life. I follow the online trails, carefully going through the second, third and fourth pages of Google, burrowing deeper down the rabbit holes of information than I have ever gone before.
Everything seems clearer up here. I can think. I feel more real. For a moment, I just sit and watch cars move along the roads like brightly lit ants. The London Eye has halted for the evening, outlined in a circle of red light. I go over and over the words I’d heard in the robing room that afternoon, picking them apart for explanations. I run Theo’s name through various search engines. He’s been in hundreds of cases and been interviewed many times by small legal publications and blogs, so there are thousands of hits on his name. Every now and then a different Theo Frazer pops up too; one that is too old or too young.
Sometimes I go down dead ends, or get distracted, straying down the tunnels of my subconscious, following words and phrases by instinct rather than by reason. I don’t find anything I hadn’t known before. I’m just beginning to think that it is all gossip, nothing more.
I send an email to Lydia Brennan to ask her what she had meant, rewording and deleting it dozens of times. Eventually, I just click ‘send’.
I jump as my mobile phone echoes shrilly in the silence. I look at it. Not Theo.
‘Yes?’ I half drop it trying to answer, catching sight of Philip’s number flashing up. ‘Philip? Aren’t you asleep?’
‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’ Philip sounds tired, as if he hasn’t properly woken up.
‘No, no. It’s fine. I’m at the paper.’ I watch a tiny light inch across the vast black horizon outside the windows.
‘The police have just called. It’s Adam Harris.’
‘Who?’
‘Harris,’ he says. ‘The case at Bullingdon you turned down. He’s escaped from prison. A guard’s in hospital and lucky to not be dead.’
Hundreds of online references to Theo are still on one of the screens in front of me and tweets roll down on the other screen, along with headlines about Uganda, the President of the United States, a baby scandal in the North of England and an incident involving refugees in Europe. At both ends of the room, there are eight giant screens, most silently tuned to different news programmes. One records how many hits the online paper got for each story, and how long people spend reading that story. This is a continually changing leader board, so we can see what people are interested in on a minute-by-minute basis. It is fairly quiet at this time of night, and the order remains unchanged for minutes at a time.
I am practised at sounding calm. But in reality, I am just as capable of feeling panic as anyone. It drenches me in white hot fear and the room temporarily seems brighter and sharper, tilting temporarily as my world destabilises. But we professionals know we must keep these things concealed. It’s what gives us our edge. Fear is not weakness. Fear is survival. And when you forget that, you are truly in danger.
‘There’s nothing up about it yet, oh, no wait, here it is.’ I read aloud. ‘“Escape from Bullingdon Prison. A prisoner, Adam Harris, 32, got hold of a razor…” He’d have needed more than a razor, surely, to get out of a secure prison? Oh, I see, he seems to have escaped while being transferred to court. “…with two other men, who have been recaptured. The public is advised that he’s extremely dangerous”.’
Adam Harris’s prison photo comes up. His dead, penetrating eyes stare out of the screen at me.
‘They think he’s coming to find you,’ says Philip.
‘Me? Why?’ I remembered that I thought I had smelt cigarette smoke and heard the sound of footsteps behind me when I’d emerged from the Tube station that evening. But I’d forgotten about it by the time I reached the office.
‘When they searched his cell, they discovered some notes. All about you. And I have the prison psychiatrist’s report here. There’s a credible diagnosis of erotomania as well as psychosis and a few other things.’
‘What?’
Philip clears his throat. ‘Apparently he told one of the other inmates that you’d turned his case down because it wouldn’t be ethical for you to represent someone you were in love with.’
‘I turned his case down because he’s a violent rapist who tried to burn his last victim to death, and who expected me to say that he was innocent. There’s a ton of forensic evidence against him. There was no way I could defend him. He must be mad.’
‘I think that is rather the problem,’ says Philip. ‘He’s mentally unstable and very violent. The police are going to visit you tomorrow about providing security at home, but they wanted me to advise you to be very careful tonight.’
I look up from my desk, through all the chest-high glass partitions that mark out individual workstations to the big glass double doors to the lift. ‘I’m in a newspaper office, with about three levels of security between me and the outside world,’ I remind him. ‘I really couldn’t be anywhere safer. Anyway, he wouldn’t know I worked here.’
‘A man who can get out of Bullingdon can probably get into a newspaper office,’ says Philip. ‘Be careful, Sophie. Just be very careful.’
I forget about Adam Harris and stop listening to him, as an email from Lydia lands in my inbox, with information about Theo. I say goodbye to Philip without hearing anything else he says, so that I can open the email and study it carefully. When one woman tells you something about your husband, y