Subject: Hamish Wolfe Dear Anne Louise,
He is not my client, although I am having my third meeting with him tomorrow and that could change. I’ll give you the nod and you can send out the usual press statement.
Maggie
Chapter 46
DAYLIGHT DOES NO favours for the Grey Mare at Bishopstone. It is a night-time pub, meant for live bands and overflowing pint glasses, for cigarette smoke creeping in from the smokers’ area out back. It is a pub that needs crowds pressed together, shouting into each other’s ears, coughing with the effort of making any audible sound. It is a pub for sports, on the huge wide-screen TV, for noise, for broken glass, for soon-forgotten fights in the doorways and furtive shags in the ladies’ loo. It is a pub where drugs are sold, if you’re lucky, dropped into an unguarded drink if you aren’t. It is a pub where smart women take their mai tais into the toilets with them.
In the daylight, every stain on the paisley patterned carpet is visible, and tangible. Every surface seems covered with a thin film of grime. With eight days to go before Christmas, even the festive decorations look shop-soiled.
Steve Lampton leads the way from the bar, carrying his own drink, and Maggie’s. He insisted on paying for them. He always does.
‘I’m loving your local.’ Maggie brushes crisp crumbs off the fake Tudor chair seat and sits, thinking of yet another dry-cleaning bill.
He grins and she sees his teeth have improved since the last time they met. He’s had them professionally cleaned and whitened, private dentistry he can now afford, making up for years of prison neglect.
‘It’s a bit of a dive,’ he admits. ‘But I only have an hour off work and I can’t lose my bonus, not this time of year.’
Since his release in 2007, Lampton has been forced to take one temporary contract after another. His jobs usually only last until one of his co-workers finds out who he is.
‘You actually his lawyer, then? That Wolfe bloke?’ Steve pulls out a chair and sits before gulping down most of his double Scotch. He always drinks quickly and, whilst he never really shows it in other ways, Maggie wonders if she makes him nervous.
‘Not yet. I’m thinking about it.’
He pulls a face that is half smile, half sneer. ‘You will.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You can’t resist a challenge. And Wolfe’s even prettier than me.’
She doesn’t argue. Lampton might be very easy on the eye, especially now he’s eating properly and working out regularly. He looks younger than his forty-five years, as though prison somehow pickled him. Wolfe, on the other hand, is in a league of his own.
‘Are those highlights in your hair?’ she says, because she doesn’t really want to talk about one of her men, with another of them. In prison, Lampton’s hair was always a dark, dirty blond. Now, even in the dim lights of the pub she can see the lighter streaks.
‘You can talk,’ he tells her.
‘What happened on the thirtieth of October, Steve? In this pub, if my memory serves.’
His face clouds. ‘Misunderstanding.’ His eyes, that haven’t left hers since she arrived, drop to the greasy tabletop.
‘You were cautioned. A woman made a complaint.’
He looks up again, bravado restored. ‘I misread signals. It happens. No harm done.’
‘I disagree. If you get arrested again, I can’t help you. I won’t even try.’
The knuckles of his hand whiten as he tosses back his head and makes a show of polishing off the drink. When he puts the glass down, he’s smiling again. ‘I got something for you,’ he says. ‘Christmas present.’
‘Will I like it?’
He lets his head fall to one side, looking at her appraisingly. ‘I like it.’
She makes a point of peering around the table to look at the carpet beneath his feet, although she already knows he brought nothing into the pub with him. ‘It must be very small. And you must be doing very well if you can afford jewellery for someone whom you don’t even need to keep on side any more.’
‘I didn’t bring it with me. It’s not the sort of thing you open in public.’
‘I’m not giving you my address, Steve.’
He leans forward. ‘Now, you see, that makes no sense to me, Mags. If you think I’m innocent, what reason do you got to be afraid of me?’
She laughs. ‘Remind me, exactly, when I said I thought you were innocent?’
He tries to laugh too, but doesn’t quite make it. He has never, quite, been able to reconcile her refusal to pretend with her willingness to work on his behalf.
He gets to his feet and looks down at her almost-empty glass. ‘Top-up?’ he offers. ‘Or are you racing back?’
She hands him her glass. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I’d love another drink.’
Chapter 47