The House in the Woods (Atticus Priest Book 1) Read online

  “Plainclothes?”

  “That’s right. I’m used to looking at this from their side, but the skills and experience are transferable.”

  “Salisbury police?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Bourne Hill.”

  “That’s where they’re running the case. Do you know the DCI there? Mackenzie Jones?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “She’s the bitch in charge.”

  “She used to be my boss.”

  “You like her?”

  Atticus shrugged, and she spoke again before he could answer.

  “She’s got it in for Ralph.”

  He felt the need to defend her. “She’s probably just doing her job.”

  It was a ridiculous impulse, given what had happened between them, and he realised as soon as he said it that it was foolish to take Mack’s side over that of a potential client.

  Allegra didn’t seem to have heard him. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s been an ordeal. The whole thing—total nightmare.”

  “I’m sure it has.”

  “Is there anything else that you need to know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So? Will you help?”

  He started to weigh it up, whether he should get involved in something like this, already seeing how any work he did would butt up against the case that Mack had put together, and then chided himself. Who was he kidding? He was in no position to turn down the money, and Mack was a big girl. He didn’t owe her anything and she’d cope.

  “I charge my time at fifty pounds an hour, and I’ll need paying up front for the retainer.”

  “Of course.”

  “Expenses, too. I can bill you for those separately.”

  She reached into her bag and took out her purse. “How much for the retainer?”

  Atticus thought of the parlous state of his account. Four hundred would clear his overdraft.

  “Five hundred, if that’s all right?”

  He watched, with something akin to incredulity, as Allegra took out a wad of notes and started to count them out.

  “Here you are.” She handed them to him. “You’ll give me a receipt?”

  He fumbled through the piles on his desk until he found a blank piece of headed notepaper. He wrote down that Allegra had paid £500 as a retainer, signed and dated it, and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, folding the receipt and slipping it into her purse. “What’s next?”

  “I’ll need to talk to you again,” he said. “A proper talk, about the case. Are you available tomorrow?”

  “It’s the first day of the trial. Maybe you could be there, too? You probably should.”

  “What time?”

  “Ten o’clock,” she said.

  “Salisbury?”

  “Yes.”

  She stood, and Atticus took her offered hand. “I’ll be there.”

  He showed her to the door.

  “Thank you. You don’t know how much of a relief this is. It feels like I’ve been doing this on my own for months.”

  “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  She thanked him again and made her way carefully down the staircase. Atticus closed the door and went to the bay window. She emerged from the passage below and took out her phone from her handbag as she waited for a gap in the traffic to cross the road. She looked first to the left and then to the right, the opposite of what might have been expected of a local. Atticus noticed it—it suggested that she was used to traffic approaching from the opposite direction—and then realised that her almost imperceptible accent was American. Boston, he thought, but certainly not working class. A well-educated New Englander who was either adept at hiding her accent or who had been here long enough for it to be softened away almost to nothing.

  He watched as Allegra put the phone to her ear and crossed, turning right and then sharply left into the entrance of the multi-storey car park. Bandit mooched over and Atticus scratched him behind the ears as he watched Allegra disappear.

  “Happy days,” he said to the dog. “Things are about to take a turn for the better.”

  9

  Atticus woke up early the next morning. He washed and dressed, put Bandit on his lead, left the office and locked the door behind him. He climbed down the stairs and let the dog drag him outside. The jeweller who had one of the workshops facing the garden was just opening up.

  “Morning,” the man said.

  Atticus nodded a greeting and made his way out onto the street. He walked to the junction with the High Street, turned left, then passed through the medieval gate and into the Cathedral Close beyond.

  The cathedral’s pale grey Chilmark stone glowed in the dawn light. He never tired of the view. The building was set amid immaculately kept grounds that accommodated a changing selection of sculptures and modern art. There were ancient trees between the grounds and the road that ringed them, and then a set of historic buildings that included a series of grand residences, some of which had been turned into museums. The cathedral, though, outshone them all. The spire reached high into the air, and, as he looked up, Atticus saw the pair of resident peregrines arcing around it in search of prey.

  Atticus let Bandit stretch his legs and then made his way back to the office. He opened the door and climbed up to the landing. He took a can of dog food from the cupboard and rapped loudly on the glass panel of the door that led up to the flat above. He heard the sound of heavy footsteps and then saw the blur in the glass as Jacob came down.

  He opened the door. “Atticus,” he said, with a smile, “you okay?”

  “I’m good,” he said.

  Jacob had been upstairs since before Atticus had rented the office. He made a decent living playing online poker and spent his spare time on Fortnite. He was in his late twenties, although he looked older. He had lost most of his hair and hid his baldness beneath beanies and ball caps. He wore a chain that linked his wallet to a belt loop, had fairly average tattoos on both forearms, and wore hoodies and baggy jeans to the exclusion of everything else.

  “I know it’s short notice,” Atticus said.

  “You need me to look after him?”

  Bandit wagged his tail.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all. I like doing it. He’s my lucky mascot. I made three hundred the last tournament he was with me. Got one starting in an hour.”

  “That’s great. He just told me he feels lucky today, too. Twenty quid?”

  “Works for me.”

  Atticus reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He opened it and removed a £20 note. He folded it in half and handed it to Jacob.

  “Give him a good walk,” he said. “He likes the cricket pitch at Harnham. You can let him off the lead there. He likes going in the river, too.”

  “I know,” Jacob said. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after him.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back late afternoon or early evening. Here’s his food.”

  He went back to the office, grabbed his notebook and slipped it, together with his phone, into his leather satchel. He locked the door, went down to the passageway and set off.

  The courts were housed in a modern building that had been constructed at the turn of the century and shared the underwhelming architecture of the noughties. It had walls constructed from pale brick, a wide canopy that reached out over the frontage, and dark glass in the windows. Atticus went to the main door, next to stencilled letters that read SALISBURY LAW COURTS and a large royal crest, and checked his watch. It was ten twenty, meaning that proceedings would begin in ten minutes. There was a clutch of people circulating inside, and he pushed through the doors to join them. He looked up at the screen on the wall and saw that Crown v Mallender was being heard in Court Number One.

  He passed through the security gate, sending his phone, keys and loose change through the X-ray machine in a plastic tub. He took the stairs to Court Number One. The waiting area outside was as bu
sy as it was downstairs. There was a collection of vinyl sofas set out on fresh grey carpets. The area was full of members of the press and other onlookers who were waiting to go through into the public gallery. The trial was big news; the murders had excited the public ever since the first reports had broken, and the fate of the defendant was evidently and unsurprisingly an issue that held the fourth estate rapt.

  Atticus looked around for Allegra, but couldn’t see her. He made his way to the front of the queue, opened the door and went inside. The court was at the top of the building and was far brighter than many of the other courts that Atticus had been in before. It was a modern space, with skylights in the vaulted ceiling, white painted walls and light-coloured wooden furniture. The judge’s bench was on a platform raised above the rest of the room. Ahead of that was the desk for the court associate and then the benches for counsel for the prosecution and defence, with identical desks behind for instructing solicitors. To the right of the judge were two rows for the jury, with six chairs in each row. The dock was an enclosed space directly opposite the judge, with extensive glass windows allowing the accused to see everything that was happening. Next to the dock were the public and press galleries, and rounding out the space was the witness box. The court was equipped with thin LCD panels and a series of microphones.

  Allegra was sitting at the end of a row at the front of the public gallery. The door squeaked as it closed, and she turned around and saw him. He raised his hand in acknowledgement and she stared back at him, without responding; she was evidently worried about the start of her husband’s trial.

  That was reasonable.

  He took one of the only empty seats behind Allegra at the back of the gallery. Most of the men and women sitting around him looked like reporters, conferring with one another in hushed, excited whispers. The remainder were harder to place; Atticus guessed that some would be relatives of the deceased, while others were students and interested members of the public. This was a big story, the culmination of a summer of lurid reports in the press as the details of the case were dripped out.

  The barristers were already at their benches: two Queen’s Counsel, one for the prosecution and one for the defence, both men with a junior to assist them. Atticus didn’t recognise Ralph’s brief, but the Crown prosecutor was familiar to him: it was Gordon Abernathy, a ferocious QC who had been bestowed with the nickname of ‘the Bruiser’ and a reputation for bullying witnesses, court staff and, it was said, even judges themselves. Atticus was aware of a story whereby Abernathy and the judge in a complex fraud case at the Royal Courts of Justice that had stretched on for months had been left with the necessity of arranging their evenings out at the Garrick on alternate nights so as not to be there at the same time. He was a fine choice for a trial of this nature and, were Atticus in Ralph’s shoes, he would not have been encouraged.

  The solicitor sitting behind Mallender’s brief was a large and red-faced man. He looked back at Allegra and smiled at her. Atticus recognised him: Dafyd Cadogan, a lawyer from Salisbury with an office just around the corner from him. Ralph and Allegra must have chosen him to run the defence. It was not an inspiring choice. The partners of Cadogan and Crane LLP had, variously, been investigated by the Law Society for embezzling client funds, sued for negligence on at least two separate occasions in the last year, and were rumoured to be six months in arrears on the rent for their office.

  Ralph Mallender was brought up from the cells by two burly security guards and ushered through a door opening directly into the closed-in dock. He was dressed in a smart dark blue suit with a crisp white shirt and a thin blue tie. His face was pale, and, as he looked over to the public gallery, he caught his wife’s eye. Atticus glanced down and across at her in time to see her mouth “I love you,” and, as he looked back, he saw that Mallender had found a smile from somewhere.

  Atticus saw the door at the front of the room open and watched as Detective Chief Inspector Mackenzie Jones made her way inside, followed by her sergeant, Tristan Lennox. She was wearing the same sober suit that he remembered from the last time he had watched her give evidence, matched with a white shirt. Her hair was down, immaculate as ever. She was carrying a folder that contained, Atticus guessed, some of the written evidence that would be examined at trial. She took her seat behind the prosecution brief. She didn’t look back into the gallery and didn’t appear to have noticed Atticus.

  The associate came to the front of the room. “All rise.”

  Atticus stood and paid attention. The journalists took out their phones so that they could tweet developments as soon as they took place. The whispered conversations died out, to be replaced by the electric buzz of tension.

  The Honourable Mr. Justice Somerville came into the court. Atticus had googled him after seeing his name on the monitor outside: he was sixty-eight, assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division and had previously had a successful practice as a Queen’s Counsel specialising in criminal law. The rest of his biography was standard: educated at Charterhouse and Durham, with previous experience as a recorder. He had a reputation as something of a hanging judge. A sensational national newspaper columnist who had been given a stringent sentence for drunk driving had later described him as “cold as a bag of frozen peas” and “a bloodless dictator who sat in judgement on those unfortunate enough to pass through his domain.”

  He was wearing scarlet robes, as was the custom in murder trials; the arbiters were ‘red judges’ when dispensing justice for the most serious crimes. He took his seat on the bench at the front of the room; the royal coat of arms was displayed on the wall behind him. It was slightly to the right of his chair; Atticus had heard that the reason for the placement was to suggest that the judge was sitting at the Queen’s side.

  The usher cleared his throat and, with a solemnity that befitted the archaic nature of the proceedings, said, “Draw near all ye who have business in the trial of the Queen against Ralph Mallender.”

  The associate stood and turned to the dock.

  “Ralph Mallender, you are charged with murder, contrary to the Common Law. The particulars of the offence being that you, Ralph Mallender, murdered Hugo Mallender on the 24th of December 2018. How do you plead?”

  “Emphatically not guilty,” he said. His voice was firm.

  The associate repeated the process for the other three charges that had been laid against him, being that Ralph had murdered his mother, sister and brother. Ralph repeated his not guilty plea, his voice strong and clear every time.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Mallender,” the judge said. He turned to both sets of counsel. “Is everything ready?”

  Both barristers said that it was.

  Somerville turned to the associate. “Are the jury-in-waiting ready?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “Bring them in.”

  Atticus was familiar with the process and, even after seeing it so many times before, still found it deliciously anachronistic. There was an usher standing by the door to the rear of the courtroom. She went out through it and returned with a number of potential jurors; Atticus counted twenty of them. They were shown to seats next to the jury box.

  Somerville turned to them. “Good morning. You are members of a jury panel. Twelve of you will be selected as jurors to try the case in this court today. There are several guarantees of the fairness and independence of any jury. One of them is that no one on the jury should have any connection with the person being tried or anyone who is a witness in the case. This case involves an incident that happened at Grovely Farmhouse near Great Wishford in Wiltshire on Christmas Eve last year. Because a jury must decide the case only on the evidence given in court, it is essential that no one on the jury has any personal connection with, or personal knowledge of, the case or anyone associated with it. The defendant’s name is Ralph Mallender, and he is the person standing in the dock. Mr. Abernathy, who is prosecuting this case, will now read out the names of the people who may be called as witnesses or who are connected with the c
ase. Please listen carefully to the names and think about whether you recognise any of them.”

  Abernathy stood and read out a list of names. Atticus recognised several of them from his time in CID, including Mack and Lennox. Abernathy concluded the list and sat down. His opponent, identified by the judge as Mr. Crow, took to his feet and read out a list of the witnesses that the defence would rely upon.

  Somerville continued. “If you think that you have any knowledge about any person connected with the case, including the defendant or any of the witnesses, please indicate that by raising your hand or writing a note explaining this and handing it to the usher.”

  No one did.

  The associate stood and picked up a number of paper slips. She shuffled them in her hands and then turned to the defendant.

  “Ralph Mallender, you are about to hear the names of the jurors who are to try you. If you wish to challenge any of them, you must do this after the name has been called, but before they are sworn.” She turned to the two seated lines of men and women and said, “Members of the jury-in-waiting, when you hear your name called, please answer ‘here’ and proceed to the jury box.” Pausing for emphasis, she picked a slip and announced, “Barry Gardner.”

  One of the men stood, gave a strident, “Here,” and allowed himself to be ushered across the courtroom and into the first row of the jury box.

  “Abigail Winters.”

  An elderly woman stood and made her way to the seat next to Gardner.

  The associate continued, reading out another ten names. The usher guided each new juror to the box.

  Somerville nodded his satisfaction. “Let the jury be sworn.”

  One of the ushers went to the first person on the jury and asked on what oath the juror wished to be sworn. The juror said he was Christian, and was handed a Bible and told to recite an oath that he would faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence. The usher thanked him, told him to sit down, and moved on to the next.