Sign of the Times (35 page)

Antonia bustled around the kitchen, apron over her trousers, applying the finishing touches to the meal, whilst she awaited her guests.
 
White wine chilled in the fridge, the Pinot Noir breathing on the worktop.
 
Everything was ready.
 
Then the doorbell rang.
 
As Antonia went to answer it, first removing her apron, she smoothed her hair in the hall mirror, whilst Jack came downstairs to join her.

“Hi Carrie.
 
Come on in.
 
Malcolm, nice to see you again,” she greeted her best friend from her previous job and her husband.
 
The men shook hands, the women received kisses and embraces.
 
Jack passed their coats to Felix who disappeared to hang the coats upstairs.

Antonia had just invited them to take a seat in the lounge, where she would serve drinks, when the bell rang again.
 

“I’ll get it,” Jack said.

Jack showed the guests in.
 
Elvi was one of the teachers at the kids’ school, but they had met through Chris.
 
Chris was one of their friends from the gym.
 
Guiltily Antonia realised she hadn’t been recently.
 
Jack tended to go in the morning.
 
He was usually up with the larks.
 

Ten minutes later, last as usual, came Patricia and Edmund.
  
Pat was a friend of Antonia’s from school.
 
They saw each other three times in a month and then didn’t see each other for two years.
 
Yet, they always drifted back together seamlessly, as if they’d only spoken yesterday, a symbol of true friendship, Antonia always thought.

Once all the guests were settled, Antonia served the canapés; little gem lettuces with cucumber, mint and chilli yoghurt; crostini with brie and grape; artichoke bites in puff pastry and finally Catalan toasts with sun-blushed tomatoes.
 

“These are lovely,” gushed Carrie.

“Have some more,” Antonia offered her the serving dish again.

Next Antonia served the starter of aubergine terrine with mushroom duxelle.
 
It hit the spot with her guests.

“I have to confess, Antonia. I wasn’t sure it was my thing.
 
I don’t think I’ve ever had terrine before, although I’ve seen it on menus, but this is delicious,” Edmund said in his lovely west coast drawl.
 
Edmund had met Pat when she was in the States for a training course.
 
After a short courtship, he’d chucked in the job he’d detested anyway and moved to the UK.
 

“Thanks,” Antonia beamed at him.

After a short interval, the main course was served.
 
Tournedos of beef
,
topped with mushrooms, with roast potatoes, done in goose fat and shredded Savoy cabbage. There was much ooh-ing and aah-ing, as this was served up.

“I am never going to be able to move again,” expressed Elvi in dismay.

“Ah, don’t sweat it,” said Edmund. “Enjoy tonight, repent tomorrow and go for a long walk.”

They were discussing the best local places to go walking, when the doorbell rang. Jack looked at Antonia questioningly.
 
She shrugged.

“I’ll go,” she said.

She heard the chatter continue, as she closed the dining room door behind her. She opened the front door and took a step back in fright.
 
A policeman stood in front of her.

“Mrs Bacon?”

She nodded.
 
“Is everything OK?” Clara was the only one out of the house, but she knew that she was safely at Giselle’s.
 
She’d called when she arrived.

“We need to speak to you about your son, Felix.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name, Officer,” Antonia looked back at the dining room door, behind which her guests were busy enjoying themselves.

“I didn’t give my name.
 
It’s Archie Furnival and I’m not here on police business.
 
Yet,” he added.

Antonia must have looked suitably confused as he rushed on, pushing a young girl in front of him.

“This is my daughter, Jessica.
 
She’s made an allegation against your son,” he said. and I’d like to get to the bottom of it before I have to make it official, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Wordlessly, she showed them into the hall.

Chapter Fifty Two

Jack - LIBRA

Diplomatic and refined. Intelligent, thoughtful and warm.
 
Romantic, crave relationships and enjoy luxury. Have strong sense of justice.
  
Good leaders. Peacemakers
.

“The Daicovicius and Mr Manning are in reception,” Jack’s secretary, Gloria, announced.
 

“Show them in,” Jack said.
 
Thomas Manning had briefed him on the phone the other day.
 
It was the first case of its kind to be brought against the NHS in Scotland.
 
The Daicovicu’s son had needed emergency surgery for a burst appendix.
 
He was mistakenly administered the wrong drug and dosage
and died shortly afterwards in hospital.
 
It would normally be a clear-cut case of medical negligence, but there was nothing clear-cut about this case.
 
Alexandr Daicoviciu
was an illegal immigrant, who’d managed to evade detection in the nine months he’d lived in Scotland, whilst he sought work and a way to gain legal status.
 
His dreams of making a new life for himself and his family, who’d stayed behind in Bucharest, had ended in his death.
 
Now his family wanted justice, justice and compensation for the wife and son he’d left behind.
 
It was Jack’s job to ensure they got it.
 
It was just the sort of challenge he relished.
 
Something which hadn’t been done before
.

 
In some ways it was a miracle that Jack was an Advocate, he was so laid back.
 
He worked hard for his clients, but he wasn’t stuffy, but down to earth and he seemed to connect more easily with jurors as a result.
 
Added to that, the people he prosecuted often let things slip to him as he was so disarming, they let their guard down.

“Pleased to meet you,” Jack held out his hand, first to the victim’s father
,
then to his wife, then to the widow and finally to the interpreter.
 
“Please, take a seat.”
  
Jack asked the interpreter if they knew any English.
 
The father knew
a little
,
but
the women didn’t speak any English.
 
Jack asked the interpreter to relay to the Daicovicius what he knew so far.
 
Mr Daicoviciu asked the interpreter a barrage of questions.
 
Mr Manning came back to Jack with,

“Did his son have any rights?
 
Has a similar case happened before?
 
Can they get help with the cost of taking his body home?
 
Can they get compensation for his family?
 
Will there be an interpreter in the court?
 
Who pays for that?”

Jack answered their questions one by one. The Daicovicius had arrived two days ago, initially to arrange to take their son’s body home, but the Home Office wasn’t yet willing to release it, given its connection to the scandal.
 
Both mother and wife had wept floods at this.
 
Thomas Manning was the interpreter brought in to help the family.
 
As it was so early in the proceedings, they didn’t know when the case would be heard.
 
Jack said he would be in touch with the NHS and the Home Office about repatriating the body to Romania.
 
He took as many details as he could from them about what Alexandr was doing here, when he’d been here, if he had lived in the UK previously, if so, where.
 
He asked question after question in an attempt to build up a complete profile.
 
Eventually, when he felt he had exhausted all possibilities, he told them he would contact them shortly and Gloria showed them out.
 

Jack finished his note taking and buzzed Gloria through to retrieve the dictation.

“Can you type this up for me ASAP?”

“No problem,” Gloria sashayed back out of the room.
 
Jack glanced at his diary to see what the rest of his day held.
 
Ah, his least favourite case, the Lafferty murder trial.
 
Dave Lafferty, eighteen, of Nitshill, Glasgow, was accused of stabbing to death a twenty seven year old mentally handicapped man at a bus shelter in Edinburgh’s Leith area, whilst his two friends looked on.
 
Apparently he had done it for kicks, one of his friends capturing it on his mobile.
 
The wonders of technology, Jack thought. Not only did it advance us for good, but also for evil.
 
What motivated these people to kill an innocent person?
 
Could it be attributed to violence on TV?
 
After years of programmers and film-makers saying no, now medical research was saying yes.
 
Was it really all down to social factors?
 
And what of the two who had looked on?
 
They were appearing on less serious charges, but even if they were convicted, with good behaviour and parole, they’d be out in minimal time.

 
Sometimes the whole Justice system made Jack weary.
 
The charade the courts perpetrated wasn’t Justice.
 
Too many crooks had excellent counsel who could get them off, especially the rich.
 
The prisons were too full and the prison service was a shambles.
 
Prisoners likely to re-offend, were being allowed out into the community before the end of their jail term.
 
If they happened to escape, the response was, ‘our procedures and processes were followed.’
 
It was a joke.
 

Dave Lafferty’s parents were ordinary, blue collar, working class, good people. They hadn’t much money, but they believed they’d instilled the correct values into their son.
 
So, where had it all gone wrong?
 

Sometimes it was a relief to go home, throw off the cloak of the Law and lead a normal life like everyone else.
 
Except it wasn’t really like that.
 
Jack spent hours locked in his study, answering emails, preparing for court, making calls and spending less time with his family.
 
He had to make some changes.
 
He worked to live, not the other way round.
  
Maybe he
should
think about early retirement.
 
But how to pay for school fees, the luxury holidays, plus their £600,000 home in Newton Mearns?
 
He’d always intended to work until he was sixty-five, but now, it was worth re-evaluating.
 

Jack thought back to when he first met Antonia.
 
She was very attractive and had such presence, which he found alluring.
 
They didn’t have much back then, as students.
 
Although several years older than her, they’d both been at the University of Glasgow at the same time, as Jack had taken a gap year, back when it wasn’t yet called that.
 
Antonia had gone to university to read English and Russian a year earlier than usual, when Jack was in his final year.
 
At that time there weren’t as many business courses available.
 
You went to university, unless you studied Medicine or Law, to gain an education, not simply to pass exams and get a job.
 
He felt for his children now.
 
There was so much pressure these days, to do well, to get good grades, go to a top university.

For all the worldly goods they’d amassed over the years and despite the fact that they had an excellent marriage, could he really say he was happier now?
 
OK, nothing was quite the same as the first flush of young love, but even with the addition of their two children, all the money they had now, didn’t make them any happier.
 
In fact, they saw so much less of each other now, as they were always working.
 
What
was
the point?
 
Couldn’t they just live with less stuff?
 

Jack worked late that afternoon.
 
He didn’t often have these maudlin lapses, but afterwards he always attacked work with renewed vigour.
 
Of course he knew why he was still here.
 
He wanted to get scum off the streets, make the country safe for its citizens to live in, including his family.
 
The cruelty, brutality and pure evil he saw just unnerved him sometimes.
 
The legal profession had a reputation for being emotionless, but it simply wasn’t true.
 
They were just people at the end of the day, not immune to feeling.
 
It was no different to a doctor or nurse’s attitude in the face of sickness or death.
  
It was their coping mechanism.
 
This case, with the mentally handicapped man, had sickened him.
 
The man was defenceless.
 
He didn’t even know what was going on.
 
He felt the same anger when he prosecuted young men who’d murdered a ninety year old for her pension, or in some cases the fifty pences which were in her electricity meter.
 
Society was changing and not for the better.

Looking at his Rolex, he saw it was six thirty.
 
He’d call his golfing buddy, Oscar, see if he was free.

“Hello?” Oscar answered.

“Hi, it’s Jack.”

“Jack!
 
How you doing?”

“Good thanks.
 
You?”

“OK, sales are slow.”

It flitted through Jack’s mind that Oscar had just characterised his well-being by how well work was going.

“You busy?” Jack cut straight to the point.

“I was just finishing off.
 
Why?”

“Any plans for tonight?”

“Well, I
was
going to the gym, but I don’t know if I can be bothered.”

“So how does a pint sound?”

“Great.
 
It’s been a long day.”

“Well, I’m at the office.
 
How about I meet you in All Bar One in half an hour?”

“Sure.
 
Best get finished off.”

“See you in a bit.”

As Jack opened the door to the pub, two young women burst out, already rather inebriated, giggling their heads off.
 
Maybe more than drink was responsible for their light-heartedness.
 
There was something vacant about the eyes, which might have been an indication of something narcotic.

He’d experimented with drugs himself in the sixties, everyone had.
 
Nobody knew of the negative effects it could have, the depression and schizophrenia it could cause.
 
He hadn’t touched drugs since.
 
He thought Felix had probably experimented with drugs, but he couldn’t see Clara doing it.
 
He’d have to be careful she didn’t get in with a bad crowd.

She was a good girl, very intelligent, and sending her to Craigholme, a private single sex school, had been one of their better ideas.
 
It was a pity they needed to go down this route, as neither he nor Antonia had attended private school, but with Education in its current state, they owed it to their children to give them the best possible start
.

Jack dropped his briefcase on one of the wooden Mackintosh style chairs. Dumping his raincoat on top, he headed over to the bar, keeping one eye on the table.

“Vodka and coke, please,” he motioned to the bartender.
 
The barman returned with said vodka and coke and wiped the bar with a damp cloth, before putting the drink on a beer mat.
 
Jack handed the barman a fiver and told him to keep the change.
 
He realised he hadn’t let Antonia know he was going out with Oscar and she might be expecting him, even though he was often late.
 
He pressed Home on his contacts list.

“Hello?” Clara said.

“Hi sweetheart.
 
It’s me.”

“Hi Dad.
 
You looking for Mum?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Just a sec.”

“OK.”

“Guess what Dad?”

“The Pope came for tea?”

“Don’t be silly,” his daughter said.

“Elvis has risen from the dead?”

“No!”

They often played this game, whenever Clara said ‘guess what?’
 
She paused for dramatic effect and said, “one of my poems is being published in a collection.”

“That’s fantastic”

“Isn’t it?”

“You must be pleased.”

“I am quite chuffed.
 
In fact, I’m off to see what else I can come up with before I become an adult and have no imagination left.”
Her father chuckled and a minute later Antonia came on the line.

“She told you?”

“Yes.
 
Isn’t it great?”

“Yes.
 
A budding poet in our midst.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the pub.
 
Thought I’d catch up with Oscar tonight.
 
I’m having one of my days.”