Prey to All by Natasha Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

dealing with that was to treat it with the contempt it deserved, offer no evidence of their own, and point out to the jury that no one can be convicted without proof.’
    ‘Quite right, too.’
    ‘Maybe. But Deb says she wishes she hadn’t gone along with it. She thinks the whole case turned on what her sister and the GP said about her temper and the way she treated her father. She thinks if she’d been allowed to give evidence and been frank about what she felt and why, and how she’d dealt with her fear and anger to enable her to go back and look after him she’d have made a better impression on the jury.’
    ‘It’s possible. But it does sound as though she has quite a temper.’ George didn’t look sympathetic. ‘The prosecution’s questions would almost certainly have provoked her, and she might well have shown herself in her true colours. She’d have been well and truly dished then.’
    Uncontrolled anger had always been one of George’s bugbears, Trish reminded herself, as she registered his implicit criticism of Deb. He thought it wrecked your judgement when you let it ride you and had a destructive effect on you and all your targets. Even righteous anger was anathema to him. It was their one major point of conflict. Trish had never seen George lose his temper with anyone or anything. Sometimes that seemed creepy. At others it was reassuring.
    ‘Come on, Trish! Admit it. I can see you liked the woman, but use your professional brain for a moment. It was a judgement call Phil made, and you might have made the same one yourself.’
    Trish took a huge swallow of wine to take away the taste of the admission she didn’t even have to articulate. George was stacking plates.
    ‘So, what was it that made you decide she was innocent?’ he asked, scraping the remains into the bin.
    Trish organised her thoughts. ‘I liked her.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ he said, with her favourite smile. ‘But you’ll need more than that.’
    ‘And I believed her story of the teeth and the bag.’
    ‘Better.’
    ‘Patronising git,’ she said cheerfully, and ducked as he threw a tea-towel at her.
    ‘And I can’t imagine why – if she had killed him – she wouldn’t (a) have worn gloves when dealing with the bag, before pressing his own hands on to it, and (b) left it on his head. She isn’t remotely stupid: she’d have known at once that her best defence would have been suicide and that if she were to run that, the bag would have to have been found on his head.’
    ‘OK. I’ll buy that.’
    ‘Great,’ she said, with enough sarcasm to make him threaten her with the tea-towel again.
    ‘Now, did you see there’s going to be that brilliant French film about murder in a chocolate factory tonight?’ he said. ‘Channel Four. It’s on in five minutes. D’you want to see it?’
    ‘Why not? I’ll take those out and make us some coffee. You go and warm up the telly.’

Chapter 4
    Trish caught sight of Phil Redstone as she ran upstairs at the Royal Courts of Justice. His face stiffened as he recognised her. ‘Trish!’ he called.
    ‘Can’t stop,’ she answered, leaning over the banister, the strap of her bag trailing into space. ‘I’m on my way to a hearing. Catch you later?’
    ‘I want …’
    ‘Later, Phil. It’s OK. Don’t worry.’
    She went on her way, sure that he must have heard she was looking into the Deborah Gibbert case for Anna’s film. Somehow she’d have to reassure him that she wasn’t about to rip up his reputation in public. He couldn’t be afraid of any kind of legal sanction. Nothing said in court was actionable, and barristers couldn’t be sued for negligence in court work.
    After all, someone had to lose every case. You couldn’t go round complaining about your counsel just because it happened to be you who got the wrong verdict, even if you knew you were innocent. Not all clients understood that, of course, but colleagues should.
    But there wasn’t time to think about any of it