Blind Defence

Book 0: Benson and De Vere

by John Fairfax

Genres: Legal Thrillers

Synopsis

She was found hanging in a dingy London bedsit with a blood orange in her mouth. Diane Heybridge, a young woman without a past or much of a future, has captured in death the compassion denied her in life.

For the prosecution, this seeming suicide is nothing more than a bungled killing and a disgusted public looks to Court 2 of the Old Bailey for justice. Her callous, jilted partner Brent Stainsby stands accused of her murder and he's turned to the maverick legal team William Benson and Tess de Vere to defend him.

However, as the trial unfolds it soon becomes clear that there is far more to Diane Heybridge than meets the eye. She wasn't the weak and downtrodden victim now being presented to the jury. She was capable of a sophisticated form of vengeance. By the same token, Brent Stainsby isn't who he seems to be either. He's hiding a motive for murder unknown to the police and may well be playing a deadly game of poker with the judicial process. What began as a simple trial rapidly turns into a complex search for the truth beyond the confines of the courtroom....

Release date: July 31, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 100000

Sample

March 2000, HMP Codrington

‘Your name’s Benson, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why call yourself Rizla?’

‘Because I’ve always got a cigarette paper in my pocket.’

Meersham leaned forward and shoved a cassette into a portable TV video player. The machine whirred and tiny squares of fluorescent light appeared in his black eyes. He pointed at the screen and Skagman, who was standing behind him, tattooed arms afloat, made a guard dog’s grunt. Gulls screeched. Waves crashed in the distance.

‘Are you short?’ said Benson, his tongue sticking to his palate. ‘I’ve got loads.’

‘I don’t smoke. You should know that by now. I own this place.’

Benson had been on C Wing for a month, two’d up with Andrzej something-or-other, a scrawny lad from Warsaw who spoke no English. They were getting on fine. Andrzej lay on his bed, crying or sleeping. Benson studied medical or legal journals, evading a scream that would twist his guts if he thought about the lock in the cell door. Five minutes earlier, he’d been reading ‘Children, trauma and evidence: the potential suppression of truth’ by T. Maddison et al., in the International Quarterly of Forensic Psychology. Children, it seemed, sometimes dealt with trauma by reporting an event like a bystander rather than a participant. In the process, critical information known only to the child could be left undiscovered. Benson had just been wondering if Maddison et al. had missed the point – because the same could surely be said of adults – when, after twenty-two hours of bang-up, the cell door had swung open and Skagman’s drooping mouth appeared two inches from his own.

‘You’re wanted.’

Terry Meersham was in his late twenties. Pale and wiry, and short enough to look stunted, he was slouching on a stool, a gold dressing gown draped over his shoulders. His scrappy black beard suggested a youth trying to persuade the world he was old enough to buy his own lager but his eyes – watchful and still, like those of a cat – glittered with experience beyond his years.

‘What you in for, Rizla?’

Even after seven months inside, he wasn’t used to the word. ‘Murder,’ he said.

‘Respect, man, respect. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Is that all? You’re just a kid, aren’t you, Rizla?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who smokes.’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do?’

According to the jury, he’d murdered Paul Harbeton. As for Benson, like the children studied by Maddison et al., he’d partly removed himself from the trauma. There’d been a fight between two men outside the Bricklayers Arms on Gresse Street in central London. One of them, four hundred and ninety-nine days ago, had fallen to the pavement, his cheekbone fractured by a headbutt, blood pouring from his nose. Benson seemed to look at the prostrate figure as if he was that confused bystander. But he was the one lying on the ground.

‘I’m told Paul Harbeton gave you a Glasgow kiss,’ said Meersham.

‘Yes, he did.’

‘And then you followed him into Soho and cracked his head open from behind.’ Using a remote, Meersham rewound the video and began another viewing. The same gulls screeched all over again. The same waves crashed on the same shore. ‘That wasn’t very nice, Rizla.’

Benson agreed.

‘Skagman here always lets people know he’s coming, don’t you, Skagman?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Looks them in the eye. Look him in the eye, Skagman.’

Skagman did. And Benson found neither light nor shade; just a dull sheen like pond water. He stepped slowly back, colliding with another prisoner who’d just entered the cell, a squat figure with short arms and a shaved scalp. The bones on one side of his face were larger than the other, giving the impression of permanent swelling. In his hands was a cardboard box. Benson’s cardboard box.

‘This is everything,’ he said.

‘Say hello to Crazy Joe, Rizla.’

Benson did as he was told. After a sigh, Meersham cut the video. Leaning forward, thin legs wide apart, he started taking items out of the box, talking to Benson at the same time.

‘Do you know why he’s called Crazy?’

‘No.’

‘Have a guess.’

‘Really, I don’t know.’

Meersham was holding a photograph of Benson’s parents, Jim and Elizabeth. He threw it aside and reached in for another.

‘I said have a guess.’

‘Because he’s crazy?’

‘Bingo. Though I wouldn’t say that again if I were you. What’s wrong with your brother? This is your brother?’

He was holding a picture of Eddie, aged ten, sitting in his wheelchair.

‘Yes,’ said Benson. ‘He’s paralysed from the waist down.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was hit by a car … he was on his bike and he—’

‘Was he wearing a helmet?’

‘No.’

‘Brain damage?’

‘Yes.’

‘Serves him right.’ Meersham tossed the photo onto the floor. ‘What the hell is this lot?’

Meersham had found the journals. They too went on the floor, followed by the books: Charlesworth and Percy on Negligence, Clerk and Lindsell on Torts, and finally Smith and Hogan’s Criminal Law. Meersham looked at this last as if it was full of bad jokes.

‘You wanna be a lawyer?’

‘Yes.’

‘When you get out?’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t got a chance in hell.’

Benson’s defence counsel, Helen Camberley QC, had voiced a similar opinion. So had George Braithwaite, his solicitor. But Tess de Vere, the student on work experience, had urged him to go for it. She’d told him to persevere, and take the knocks until he’d made it back into court.

‘Nothing can stop me,’ he said.

‘Clear up the mess,’ said Meersham, not seeming to have heard.

Benson crouched down and placed the photos, the journals and the books back in the cardboard box. As he stood up, Meersham rose too, and slowly, allowing his gold dressing gown to slide to the floor. Straining for height, his long neck made a light crack.

‘I don’t care about your plans,’ he murmured, teeth clenched. ‘What bothers me is that you smoke. You’ve brought poison on to my wing. Do you know what smoking causes?’

Benson nodded.

‘Do you?’ said Meersham, his fine lips stretched thinner. ‘You’ve heard of peripheral vascular disease?’

Benson nodded.

‘Furring of the arteries?’

Another nod. Benson hadn’t, but he daren’t say no.

‘Weakening of the oesophagus?’

Benson didn’t react. Meersham was staring at him, white with rage.

‘Brain aneurysms. Cellulite. Stained teeth. And I haven’t even mentioned damage to the vessels that supply blood to the meat and two veg, have I?’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘Or the cancers.’

‘No.’

‘You’ve got seven days.’

Benson frowned. ‘For what?’

‘To get off this wing. If you’re still here on Saturday morning, I’ll have your kneecaps. Now get out.’

When Benson got back to his cell, he stopped dead at the entrance. Andrzej was leaning on the sink, dabbing at his smashed nose and mouth with toilet paper. He turned to Benson, muttering an explanation in Polish, and though Benson understood none of the words he knew what had happened: Crazy Andrzej had tried to stop Crazy Joe from taking Crazy Benson’s property. But something else had happened, too, and Benson couldn’t begin to express his gratitude. Because in this lawless, inhuman, noisy, filthy, forgotten universe, he’d found someone who’d do anything to cling on to his humanity. He’d found a friend, if only for a week.

The Rt. Hon. Richard Merrington MP, Secretary of State for Justice, folded the Daily Telegraph in half and laid it on the breakfast table of the family home in Highgate, a terraced Georgian gem on Pond Square. He’d purchased it during his wilderness years, when, as a political journalist, he’d dreamed of being the one written about, rather than the one who’d done the writing. A headline had been brought to his attention by the use of a thick black marker. If his twenty-year-old son, David, hadn’t been smiling he’d have sworn out loud – not at the item circled, but the desecration of his paper. Instead, he tried to sound merely disappointed.

‘Yes, I know. That silly woman sent him the Blood Orange murder. I suppose the show starts all over again. No doubt you’ll enjoy yourself enormously.’

‘That’s sexist for starters.’

‘What is?’

‘“Silly woman”. Her name is Tess de Vere.’

‘It’s no different to “silly man”.’

‘The register’s different. And it’s patronising, too.’

‘Really? Oh, I’ll mind my—’

‘Morning, darling.’

Merrington’s wife, Pamela, breezed into the room, stopped, swung a glance between husband and son and said, ‘Have you had another row?’

‘Just warming up, my love. You know how it is’ – he spoke while buttering some toast – ‘you get washed and dressed, you come downstairs, reasonably happy, and you find your paper vandalised by … God, how do I describe him? My son, I suppose, but that misses the point. Let’s try a designer radical who finds the erosion of orthodox values not just amusing but—’

‘He’s pissed off that Benson’s got a second big trial.’

‘Don’t swear, darling, please, it’s frightful on the ear.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly, my love,’ cooed Merrington. ‘This is the rousing speech of a dissident.’

‘I’m anti-establishment. There’s a difference.’

‘Really? In my dictionary—’

Pamela raised her voice. ‘Benson’s representing that awful man?’

‘Yes, my love, and I see you’re thrilled to bits. The underdog gets to bark once more. I wonder who gets bitten? Ah … hang on a moment … dear God, I never thought of that, it might just be me. Coffee, darling? Fresh orange juice?’

‘The trial’s next week, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, dear.’ Merrington looked up as if startled, agreeably, by an outrageous idea. ‘Thinking of attending? We could go together.’

The Hopton Yard killing had been bad enough. Merrington had come home to find his wife appalled by the stance he’d taken in relation to Paul Harbeton’s family. His son had come home for the weekend appalled by the stance he’d taken in relation to William Benson. They’d formed a double act of indignation, which became a trinity when his mother finished reading the Church Times. None of them had remotely understood the delicacy of Merrington’s position. And of course, he could hardly have revealed his various motivations, because they’d been, quite simply, ignoble. The appearance of Benson – a man with a conviction for murder – defending a woman charged with murder had been, he’d thought, a godsend for a newly appointed Justice Secretary. He’d joined his voice to the public outcry. An online petition calling on him to shut the likes of Benson down had prompted him to announce the necessary emergency legislation. Who on earth would want to oppose such measures? He’d been on to a winner. He’d presented himself as a man who listened to the voice of the people. Unfortunately, though, other people had spoken out. A second online petition had appeared, this one framed in terms of redemption. It had been called ‘Everyone Deserves a Second Chance’. Which had, inevitably, attracted those inclined to think beyond what they might feel. To his astonishment, in tandem with Benson’s performance at the Old Bailey, the mood of the country, and even the House, had threatened to turn against him. To avoid a climbdown within months of taking office, Merrington had nudged the proposed Bill sideways. He’d been compelled to meet a grieving mother and her four remaining sons, and tell them a promise is an elastic term in politics.

‘We’ll get there, Mrs Harbeton, I assure you. We just need to be patient. Choose our moment. Then strike with the sword of justice delayed. Not denied, please note; just delayed.’

He’d sounded as if he’d actually done something. They’d trooped out, consoled and deceived. Thereafter, it seemed as if the gods had cut him some slack, because Benson’s career had gone mercifully quiet and other, more pressing, questions had occupied his Ministry. The journalists had gone after other fish; and not for the first time, Merrington had been grateful for the forgetfulness of the media industry, who liked their scandals fresh, not to mention flapping. Insofar as Merrington had given the matter any further thought, he’d hoped that Benson would either tire of humdrum crime or – preferably – starve, forcing him to leave the profession. Regrettably, neither outcome had transpired. Benson’s name had appeared once more in the press. This time, however, the issue was not so much the notoriety of the advocate, though that was ever present, but the tragedy of the victim. The Blood Orange murder had captured the public imagination.

‘It really is an awful business,’ said Pamela, pouring herself a coffee. ‘That poor woman leaves Dover and comes to London wanting a better life, and then her nauseating jilted boyfriend, or whatever he was, tracks her down and … takes her life away.’

The Sun hadn’t been so diffident: he’d drugged her, jammed a blood orange in her mouth and then strung her up by an extension cable, hoping it would look like suicide. And it wasn’t all about having been dumped. By killing her he stood to net sixty grand from a joint inheritance. Money and bruised feelings were behind so many crimes, thought Merrington, dabbing his mouth. And protectiveness. Let’s not forget protectiveness. Most people, if the stakes were high enough, would do anything to shield their family from harm. Even a Member of Parliament.

‘I feel so frightfully sorry for her,’ Pamela continued, adding milk. ‘She’d been in London just over a week. She’d planned so many things. She’d bought a bike from a Red Cross shop. She’d got away from a dreadful place and a dreadful man and—’

‘There’s nothing dreadful about Dover, darling,’ said Merrington.

‘Well, every time we’ve gone there, somebody has sworn at you.’

‘Spat, darling.’

‘That happens everywhere, Mum.’

‘David’s right, you know. As my reverend father used to say, “Foxes have their holes …”’

And David, groaning, finished off the worn-out line: ‘“… but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” That says it all. You think you’re some kind of Messiah.’

Merrington demurred, lightly. Then he picked up the Telegraph and turned to the obituaries hoping to unearth some good ideas for his own.

‘Do you think Benson will pull out?’ said Pamela, sitting down. ‘It’s such a sordid case.’

‘He can’t pull out, Mum,’ said David energetically. ‘He’s bound by the Cab Rank Rule. All barristers are. If a brief lands on his desk he has to take it, regardless of what he thinks and regardless of the consequences.’

‘But the man’s guilty.’

Merrington looked up. ‘Darling, we’ve been over this—’

‘You don’t know that,’ said David, taking back control. ‘The Crown says they’re convinced he is. It goes no further. Now they have to prove it. Beyond reasonable doubt.’

‘You’re telling me Benson can’t just tell him to own up?’

‘My dear—’

‘Of course he can,’ David went on. ‘He probably has done. But if the guy insists he’s innocent, then Benson has no choice. He’ll have to do everything in his power to undermine the evidence presented by the Crown … even if he personally finds it convincing.’

Merrington’s eyes drifted towards his son. There’d been no swearing. No slang. He’d trotted out the tired explanations reserved for anyone puzzled (or outraged) by the mechanics of the criminal law. That Pamela still couldn’t grasp the importance of the Cab Rank Rule came as no surprise to Merrington. He’d tried countless times to enlighten her. It was her special charm not to understand. What struck him now was David’s phraseology. And the delivery. That ‘regardless of the consequences’ sounded vaguely middle-aged. Possibly self-important. It sounded like a quotation. As did ‘evidence presented by the Crown’. And David was reading Greats. He was meant to be quoting Homer. Or Virgil. Merrington suppressed a smile. His son had been talking to a lawyer. Probably a silk. Maybe someone seeking preferment.

‘Well, I’m delighted to note that a vandal knows something about life at the Bar. It may have escaped your notice, David, but the administration of justice is my remit.’

‘Haven’t you told your father?’ said Pamela.

‘No. Not yet.’

‘Well, you must,’ she enthused. ‘Go on.’

David had the same jet-black hair as his mother, only his was longish and tangled, while hers was short and neat. They had the same fine eyebrows, the same soft mouth. But David possessed his father’s mind – by Merrington’s humble judgement, sharp and clean – along with his appetite for unsettling the complacent, though he was yet to discover the true pleasures of causing outrage.

‘A friend of mine’s mother is a barrister,’ he began. ‘We went to watch her in court.’

‘And?’

‘It was incredible. I met her afterwards and we talked.’

‘No doubt she recognised your surname?’

‘I kept it back.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘It’s a distraction.’ David used the word as if he meant ‘embarrassment’. He shifted in his seat. ‘I’m thinking of coming to the Bar after Oxford.’

To conceal his delight, Merrington pretended to finish reading a sentence. ‘Not a bad idea.’ This was promising. For once they were speaking the same language. Until now, when considering future employment, David had spoken of homeless charities, revealing that engaging moral alarm which he shared with his mother. Rashly, Merrington had praised the impulse but questioned the potential outcome, the underuse of his talents, which hadn’t gone down well at all. Why? Because he’d denigrated the marginalised and those determined to help them. Merrington had been nonplussed. He loved Ralph McTell. So this talk of the Bar came as sweet honey from the rock. An appealing sincerity had settled upon David.

‘I enjoy the argument,’ he said.

‘I’d noticed.’

‘And there’s always something in the balance … it’s serious. Win or lose, it matters.’

Merrington feigned casual support. But mentally he was thinking of his grandfather’s wig. It would be Merrington’s gift to David. The imagined ceremony – a father and son moment in the drawing room – almost made his voice crack. ‘I’ve numerous contacts at the Bar. I could make a few calls if you like. Can’t promise anything.’ Which, of course, was untrue. As he well knew, outcomes – the desired kind – came with power.

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘I’d recommend one of the leaner commercial sets. Like Carnforth Buildings. Lord Wollman is Head of Chambers. He’s an old—’

‘I want to do crime.’

‘Oh God, I wouldn’t do that. There’s no money it. Not any more. I’ve slashed the fees.’

‘I don’t care about the money.’

‘You’ll be the first criminal barrister who doesn’t.’

‘It’s crime that interests me, Dad.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. But not with one of your conventional set-ups. They’re just part of the establishment.’

Merrington hadn’t got a first at Cambridge for nothing. He’d hadn’t worked his way to a ministerial department without acquiring various rarefied skills. Back-stabbing a friend in the name of moral necessity was one of them – it had secured him his current position – but by far the most effective – and harmless – was an ability to read people’s minds. Anticipating their next move and acting accordingly. And Merrington now knew why his earnest son had said nothing of the Bar; and why he was now moving cornflakes around his bowl, not daring to meet his father’s eye. There was no doubt about it. After completing his studies in Literae Humaniores at Balliol College, Oxford, the son of the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor (a combined position) would enrol on the Bar Professional Training Course, sit the end-of-year examinations, do brilliantly, because he was clever, and then seek a pupillage in a set of chambers that had somehow turned its back upon convention. Merrington only knew of one. And it only had one member. William Benson.

‘Don’t forget the homeless too quickly, David,’ said Merrington, as if he’d glimpsed a light. ‘They too need advocates.’

When Merrington got to Petty France he sat at his desk, looking at the chairs that had once been occupied by the Harbeton family. And he thought, with cold satisfaction, that he might well be many things, but he wasn’t a hypocrite. The advice he’d given to that grieving household was the advice he’d give to himself: be patient and choose your moment. In the meantime, however, he’d act. Because the stakes were high and, like every other parent and potential criminal, Merrington would do anything to serve the best interests of his family. He picked up the phone and dialled a private number.

‘Good morning, Bradley, it’s Richard. We’ll be needing your man with the gloves again.’

‘I’m in a fix,’ said Tess.

‘You’ve dressed for the occasion,’ said Sally.

‘I’ve dressed for the job.’

‘With Chanel No. 5?’

‘You’re unbearable. Can’t you hear me? I’m not happy about this.’

They were seated in the Days of the Raj Tea Shop in Chelsea. Tess was there because it was a haunt of her friend and soulmate Sally Martindale. And Sally went there because there was an integrated Browhaus and Ministry of Waxing salon, offering treatments of such consequence that she thought they should be available on the National Health.

‘Then you should never have instructed him in the first place,’ said Sally.

‘So you keep bloody well saying.’

‘Because you keep bloody well complaining.’

‘I don’t. And for the last time, strictly speaking, I didn’t instruct him. The client insisted.’

‘Strictly speaking, you instructed him. And deep down you’re pleased. You just daren’t admit it to yourself.’

They’d met for breakfast near Sally’s place of work, the Etterby Gallery, because Tess had a client conference with Benson nearby, at HMP Kensal Green. Sally had opted for the porridge, Tess for some toast. Tess’s mind, however, lay elsewhere. A pending trial. And the renewal of her association with William Benson. Six months previously, magistrates in Tottenham had committed Brent Stainsby for trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of Diane Heybridge, remanding him into custody. News of the case had spread quickly. The facts, simple and brutal, had roused pity and disgust among Londoners and throughout the south-east. He’d started getting hate mail. He’d been beaten up by his own cellmate. In a panic, and irrationally, he’d sacked his solicitor and called Coker & Dale, wanting to speak to Tess. And it became abundantly clear during the initial conference that by instructing Tess he thought he’d be getting Benson as well – their two names were twinned in his mind because of the Hopton Yard killing – and he wanted Benson and no one else. He wanted Tess and no one else. So Tess’s room for manoeuvre had been limited. In due course, she’d taken instructions and sent the brief to Archie Congreve, Benson’s clerk. At that point, the tabloid press had opened fire. Having campaigned to shut Benson down at the outset of his career, and failed, they’d now returned to the fray, ostensibly as champions of Stainsby’s tragic victim, their goal to denigrate Benson, the killer who’d trumped a Justice Secretary. And so Diane Heybridge had become a story. As had Benson. Again. All that aside, it was a distressing case made all the more difficult by the attitude of the accused.

‘Stainsby won’t admit anything,’ said Tess. ‘Not unless he absolutely has to. He seems to think that Benson is some sort of magician … that he’s going to pull off a mind-boggling trick once the trial is underway. But that isn’t going to happen. Stainsby’s going to get life.’

‘He’s no chance?’

‘Well, I can’t see any.’

Tess didn’t know where to begin. And she had to admit that for the first time as a lawyer she was having real difficulty grafting herself onto her client’s case. Like everyone else, she felt for the woman he’d allegedly murdered. Diane Heybridge had been a simple girl without much of a past and not much of a future. She’d been bullied and browbeaten and shoved aside by Stainsby since the day they’d met. Every witness had said so. She’d never really lived. She’d never really been happy. It was hard to look at the autopsy photographs – a wad of unforgiving close-ups – without thinking that a deeper. . .