I was surprised that he was in on a Saturday night and even more surprised that he was alone.
‘Coffee or a stiff drink?’ asked Tom Briscoe when he opened the door of his Highgate home. It was a terraced cottage overlooking Pond Square, small but with an appropriate air of Georgian grandness.
‘Coffee. Decaf,’ I said, already feeling anxious as I stepped inside, not venturing more than a few feet beyond the threshold. The door opened straight on to an open-plan living space. I looked and listened for another person in the property but it was almost as quiet and dark and still as the deserted Highgate square outside.
‘I’m so sorry about this,’ I said gripping the strap of my handbag tighter. ‘I know it’s late, but it shouldn’t take long.’
‘It’s fine. Come through,’ he said, keeping his distance but directing me towards the sofa with a sweep of his hand.
He disappeared into the kitchen and I looked around the dimly lit space. The dining table was covered in files and legal textbooks, and I could see the soft glow of a laptop screen, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate. I’d always considered Tom to be a bit of a chancer, a privileged public schoolboy who had got where he was through the old boy network, but this scene said something else. A workaholic on a Saturday night, putting in the graft and extra hours.
‘Is Hannah not here this weekend?’ I asked, taking off my coat. I put it over the back of his club chair, and felt suddenly conscious that I wasn’t wearing a bra. I folded my arms in front of me, wondering if I still smelt of sex and the sea. All I wanted now was to get this meeting over with.
‘I’ve told you, it’s not that sort of relationship,’ he smiled, coming back through and handing me a mug of coffee. It would usually have been my cue to tease him, but the last thing I felt like doing was joking around.
As I curled my fingers around the blue-and-white striped mug, I could feel the steam rise up in front of my face. I sat down on the sofa as he sat in the armchair opposite me.
‘So are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ he said finally, sensing I was in no mood for chit-chat.
I muttered an apology for being so vague when I’d called him on the way back from Essex. As the foul weather had tailed off as we approached London, Martin had become more agitated with every passing mile. It was a side of him that I had never seen before, one I had to admit was not especially attractive.
‘You must know a lawyer,’ he’d pressed, until in the end I got on the phone and called the one person I knew who might be able to help, even though I felt very uncomfortable doing so.
I was not in the habit of calling Tom Briscoe late on a Saturday night. In fact our paths rarely crossed outside of chambers. But Tom and I went back a long way. We were not close, but we were bound together by history and geography. We had both arrived at Burgess Court to start our pupillage on the same day and had spent every day of our working lives together; if that didn’t give me licence to arrive at his house at this time, then I don’t know what did. Even so, I didn’t like being here. Not when I’d spent the afternoon fucking the client I was here to discuss. I had come here because Martin was desperate and I would do whatever I needed to do to help him.
I took a sip of coffee before I spoke.
‘I’m handling a divorce,’ I began cautiously. ‘And my client’s wife has gone missing.’
Tom seemed to perk up a little bit in his chair, whilst I desperately tried to compose myself. I couldn’t betray the back-story to what I was about to tell him. I knew how dangerous it would be to do so.
‘Missing?’ replied Tom.
‘She hasn’t been seen since Monday, and the police are taking it seriously. There’s going to be a TV appeal tomorrow night, unless she turns up.’
I looked at him and noticed that he looked tired, with purple semicircles under his eyes.
‘And where do you fit into this?’ he said, putting his coffee down on the wooden floor.
‘The police are interviewing my client as we speak. I’m the only legal representation he’s got right now and he’s worried.’
‘You mean he’s nervous.’
‘She’ll almost certainly turn up, Tom,’ I said, resenting his implication that Martin was feeling guilty.
He didn’t say anything and I knew I didn’t have long before he would lose patience with me.
‘I just need some advice. Martin – my client – is relying on me, and I said you might be able to help.’
Our eyes met, a remembrance of things past, an incident five years ago that neither of us would ever forget. Tom Briscoe had been a criminal defence barrister back then, the protégé of our former head of chambers, now retired, handling a lot of legal aid work. He did the odd bit of family law on the side, but it was the drama of the criminal bar that he loved – until he was instructed by Nathan Adams, a thug on a GBH charge. Adams was on trial for a vicious attack on his ex-girlfriend, Suzie Willis, which had left her with a fractured spine. It was senior work for one who’d only been at the bar for the length of time Tom had, but his performance in court had been devastating. Cross-examining Suzie on the stand, Tom Briscoe had portrayed her as a habitual drunk, destroying her credibility and had succeeded in persuading the jury that his client was innocent.
Six months later, Suzie was dead – murdered by Adams. He’d hunted her down, taken a knife to her throat and sliced it from ear to ear: her punishment for daring to testify against him.
I’d never had the guts to discuss what happened with Tom directly. How much he had known about Nathan and Suzie’s relationship, her long list of suspicious injuries that hadn’t been reported to the police, or about Adams’ violent history and his links to a West London crime syndicate.
However much he knew, what happened to Suzie Willis made Tom Briscoe jump horses from the criminal bar to family law. The look in his eye told me that he didn’t want any reminder of his professional past.
‘For a start, do you think he should have a lawyer with him for his interview?’ I pressed.
‘I thought you said the interview was happening.’
‘It is. I think a police officer is visiting him at his house, although he’s already spoken to someone earlier in the day.’
Tom stood up and went over to the dining table. He picked up his laptop and brought it across to the sofa.
‘I assume they’ve searched her house already.’
‘They found her passport and phone, but they couldn’t find her purse. That’s obviously a good sign.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Tom, looking sceptical. ‘I remember a murder trial I observed as a pupil. A woman had gone missing from the family home; the husband said he had no idea where she might be. He was eventually arrested and found guilty of killing her. He’d made it look as if she’d taken off by hiding her personal possessions after he’d disposed of the body.’
I flashed him a look of disapproval.
‘What’s she called? The wife.’
‘Donna Joy.’
I watched him tap away at the keyboard, his fingers rattling over keys. ‘There’s an appeal online already. A number to contact: Kensington CID.’
My heart was thumping as I peered over his shoulder at the screen. There was a photo of Donna and a description: five feet six inches tall, weight around nine stone, last seen wearing a pink coat and black trousers. She’d gone missing after being escorted home following a night out at the Green Fields restaurant on the King’s Road last Monday.
I found myself mentally adding more details to the text as I read it. I could confirm that she had been in the Green Fields for ninety-seven minutes, that she had been drinking, and her hair was at least three shades darker than it seemed in pictures, thanks to a trip to the Josh Wood salon twelve days earlier that she had indiscreetly recorded on Instagram.
The appeal ended by saying that the police were concerned for her welfare, but I doubted that they were nearly as concerned as I was.
‘Most people who go missing turn up,’ said Tom with a shrug. ‘A tiny proportion don’t, but out of those, the majority have a history of mental issues or depression that’s pushed them into taking their own life.’
‘So it’s unlikely anything has happened to her,’ I said, pleading for reassurance.
‘Did she suffer with depression?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Adults have a legal right to disappear, Fran, you know that. And we have no way of knowing what the hell was going on in their relationship. Maybe she’s playing games,’ he said, as I nodded my approval of his assessment.
‘But maybe something has happened to her. A TV appeal means she’s been classed as high risk.’
‘High risk?’ I frowned.
‘In danger. In danger of hurting themselves or being hurt. Who was she with on Monday night, any idea?’
‘Her husband,’ I said flatly.
‘Your client.’
‘They met for dinner. Apparently they slept together, but he says he didn’t spend the night. No one has seen her since. She missed her FDR hearing on Friday and her sister’s birthday party the previous night.’
‘No wonder they want to talk to him.’
I didn’t want to hear that.
‘So what’s he like?’
‘Smart. Very successful.’
‘So the press could have a field day with it.’
I’d heard about Missing White Woman Syndrome before and knew that this case came with added drama. Donna Joy wasn’t just blonde, white and beautiful. She was estranged from her millionaire hedge-fund banker husband which meant her story came with a ready-made bogeyman.
‘He didn’t hurt his wife,’ I said, hearing protective scorn in my own voice.
‘How do you know?’
I thought of us on the Spitalfields roof-tops. ‘We just have to hang in there and soon, really soon, it’s going to be this. Just us. No Donna, no sneaking around, just me and you.’
‘What do I tell him?’ I asked.
‘It wouldn’t do any harm to talk to a criminal defence solicitor. Matthew Clarkson is very good. He might also want to speak to Robert Kelly. He’s a media lawyer, deals with reputation management. If the press start playing silly buggers, he might be worth a call.’
Tom stood up, pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his address book.
‘I suppose your client should start worrying if they make him take part in the appeal,’ he muttered as he wrote down two numbers on a piece of paper from his yellow legal notepad.
‘Why would that worry him? He wants to do everything he can to help.’
‘I’m not sure they’d have the estranged husband there at any press conference, unless they were trying to test his reactions. He might also get a visit from the family liaison officer. Ostensibly they’re there to help, but they’re also a pair of ears on the ground.’
‘My client had nothing to do with her disappearance,’ I said, hearing a touch of steel in my voice.
Tom looked at me and for a moment neither of us spoke.
‘As you said, I bet she’s turned up by morning.’
The mood had shifted. I felt hot and uncomfortable just being here. ‘I should go.’
He smiled and glanced at his watch.
‘It’s late. How did you get here? Did you drive?’
‘No,’ I replied too quickly, thinking of Martin’s car dropping me on the edge of Pond Square. ‘I should call a cab.’
‘Don’t be daft. I’ll give you a lift.’
‘Honestly, I’ll call a cab.’
‘Saturday night, at chucking out time? And Uber will be price surging. Come on. I’ll grab my keys.’
He ushered me out to a four-by-four parked in front of the house.
‘I hope you’re charging your client double time for this,’ grinned Tom as he deactivated his car alarm, two sharp beeps that pierced the quiet of the night. ‘Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty. He’s lucky to have you.’
He gave me a look, a knowing half-smile, and a sense of dread made me wonder what, and how much, he had worked out.