The mid-October evening brought with it a cool chill as the wind played mischievously with the leaves that had already fallen onto the pavement and street. It was a grey evening, the cloud cover having progressively become lower as the afternoon passed. The woman, who was in her early thirties, walked briskly down the street her footsteps stirring the leaves on the path. She wore a scarf that almost covered her short blond hair. The grey coat that provided protection from the chill and her calf length boots made it impossible for any onlooker to guess at her ethnic origin. She walked briskly, with the air of someone who was in a hurry but unsure of where she was going.
In a moment she reached the end of the road. For a few seconds she paused as if wondering which way to turn. She looked behind her and observed the number on the nearest house. Fumbling for the tenth time in as many minutes in her coat pocket she retrieved a small white card. On it was inscribed a name, D.W. Palmer, his profession, and the address for which she was looking. She scrutinised it as if it were the first time she had read the inscription, when in reality she knew every detail by heart. This time she held on to the card as she turned left and continued her brisk stroll. She passed five dwellings, each almost identical to the last. At the sixth in the terrace she stopped and turned to look at the door. She paused and looked a final time at the small white card. Looking up she spotted the neat bronze numbers perched just above the doorway. She stepped forward and pressed the doorbell to the right of the dark blue door. Inside the dwelling a double chime sounded. While she waited she shuffled her feet, not because she was trying to keep warm but because she was nervous.
Inside the building every movement of the woman as she had approached the house had been carefully observed. From an upper room the man had a perfect view of what was happening outside. It was not his usual practice to observe a client in such a way, but the phone call a little over an hour ago had left him intrigued. As it was clear that time would be of the very essence he had decided to begin his assessment even before his client had introduced herself.
Damien Palmer had finished business for the day some time before the phone had started ringing. Indeed he had been in the shower and had only just managed to intervene before the answerphone would have taken the message. Now he was dressed for the evening. Smart casual wear had seemed to him to be the order of the day. As he watched the woman approach the house he detected the anxiety in her stride, and the one moment she glanced upwards he saw the strain in her face. There was perhaps, for a fleeting moment, something else, but Palmer could not be sure what.
The doorbell rang a second time and Palmer was already at the bottom of the stairs. He passed his office where the door was still ajar. The beginnings of the shelves of leather bound books could just be depicted. Had the door been completely open the full grandeur of his collection would have been evident. Not only that but the oak desk that grandly occupied the centre of the room added to the appearance of opulence. On the desk were two objects. The first looked like it belonged there. The ink blotter had been recently refreshed and was neatly lined up, a pristine sheet of blotting paper evident to the observer. The second object looked incongruous, for it belonged to a different era. The small black box lay closed on the right side of the desk. To Palmer this was possibly the most important piece of equipment he possessed. It was his lifeline to so much. Once activated, the lap top computer provided him with a lot of what was needed for him to do his job.
The door was not locked and even before the tones of the second chime had passed into history Palmer was looking out at his new client.
'Mr. Palmer?' she enquired purposefully.
'Damien Palmer at your service, and I take it that you are Miss Helen Cavendish?'
'You take it correctly. Thank you for seeing me at such short notice. Mr. Goodland spoke very highly of you. I hope you can help.'
'Yes, well he would, wouldn't he? Oh, I am sorry, do come in.'
'Thank you.' The door closed behind the woman as she entered the hallway. 'And why would he think highly of you, if you don't mind me asking?'
'Well,' he paused for a moment, 'it's nothing really.'
'It may be nothing to you Mr. Palmer, but as my liberty may depend on your skills I think I have a right to know.'
'Coffee? Tea perhaps? Please, do go in.' Palmer gestured towards his office and even pushed the door open.
'Coffee, thank you.'
'Fine. Please do take a seat, I won't be a minute.'
'But you still haven't told me why my solicitor thinks so highly of you.'
'I will do in the fullness of time. Not that we have much of it. First though, coffee.'
He allowed her to enter the room and then made his exit to the kitchen. In fact he always had a percolator running and the coffee was already prepared, but this was one of his idiosyncrasies, allowing his client time to settle down. 'After all,' he had reasoned not half an hour earlier, 'it might be the last decent cup of coffee she gets for a long while.' He sat in the kitchen for a couple of minutes waiting. There was no real need to rush at this precise moment. The rush would come later. Mr. David Goodland had been quite sure of that. Palmer already had one advantage over the woman in his study. Goodland had phoned him while she was evidently in his company. His tone of voice had expressed the urgency of the matter and he had been very persuasive in getting Palmer to see his client that same evening. But the real advantage was the fact that with his client already on her way Goodland had taken the trouble to ring a second time to give Palmer more comprehensive details of the situation. In fact the conversation had taken several minutes and Palmer had only just begun to form a plan of action when the woman had arrived. The coffee ruse was simply giving him a few moments to think.
'Coffee. I hope you like ground. I can't stand that awful instant stuff you get so much of these days.'
'Ground coffee is just fine, thank you.' Cavendish was sitting on the 'interview' seat that faced the desk.
'White? Sugar?'
'White, no sugar, thanks you.' Though evidently nervous, her voice was clear and polite.
The preliminaries over, Palmer sidled into his well-upholstered leather swivel chair and turned to face his client.
'Miss Cavendish I understand that you are in the gravest of situations and that you need my services to help you out of the gravity. Is that correct?'
'Yes Mr. Palmer, in a nutshell that is correct.' She reached down to the bag that she had deposited on the floor. She pulled open the top and rummaged inside for a moment. She withdrew her hand that held in it an A4 sized manila envelope. She handed it across the desk. 'Mr. Goodland asked me to give you this,' she concluded.
'Oh good, now if you would give me just one moment to look at this,' he began as he slit open the top of the sealed envelope, 'and then you can tell me all about it from the very beginning.'
He observed that the front of the letter had his name neatly typed in the middle, and curiously on the top had been hastily scrawled the two words 'By Hand' in black ball-pen. He opened the envelope and carefully extracted the contents. The two pictures he scanned over and put to the back of the pile. He hastily read the introductory letter, though there was nothing in its content that he was not already aware of. He found the cheque that the letter promised. The thousand pounds would probably cover most of his immediate disbursements and in any event he knew that the budget for this case was significantly greater. He then focused on a report. It was not particularly long and having scanned it he looked up at his new client.
'And so Miss Cavendish, your version of events?' His enquiry carried with it a smile that was deliberately disarming but not overly friendly.
She took a couple of sips of coffee and began her story. As she spoke, Palmer made a few notes. He was a quick writer but not particularly neat. Her story continued for some fifteen minutes and as she told it she slowly, but perceptibly, became more agitated.
'And the long and the short of it is this,' she said finally. 'If you can't help me then I will go down for something I didn't do and the real criminal will get away with it. In short Mr. Palmer, I need an alibi, because it was sixteen months ago and I haven't got a clue where I was or what I was doing at the time of the accident.'
'Hmm, and why the urgency tonight?'
'Well,' she paused, 'after the inquest it looked like the whole thing was a terrible accident. Now, though, in the past few weeks there's been that awful story put out,' and she pointed at the report Palmer was once again holding. 'It's anonymous of course but it suggests I arranged for them to be killed, and it's not true.' By now the woman had started to sob, the faint streaks of tears falling down her cheeks. Anyway Mr. Goodland found out today that a writ has been issued for my arrest. Indeed, Mr. Goodland feels it would be best if I went and surrendered voluntarily, but, oh dear I don't know what to do.'
'A tricky one I admit. And you do realise that by giving you this chance to speak to me your solicitor has placed himself in a very awkward position?'
'He has?' The woman looked puzzled.
'Of course.' Palmer sounded surprised at the woman's apparent ignorance. 'He knows about the writ and has had contact with you. He has a duty to contact the police. In fact, he could well have placed himself in a very difficult situation.'
'But my visit to him was strictly off the record. There is no record of it, or of my coming here.'
'That's as may be, but there is always a risk. Someone could have been outside his offices.'
'But I didn't meet him there.'
'No. Really?' The question was made with a mixture of surprise at the revelation and also a degree of incredulity. 'Forgive me but this letter of introduction has been typed, and so has the envelope. Also your solicitor phoned me from his offices, I checked just to be sure.'
'Oh that was easy. We actually met somewhere completely away from his offices, just because he was sure they are being watched. He had the letter and envelope prepared for me before I met him and all he did was set the Call Forward facility of his office phone to call you, and then he phoned his office from his mobile phone. I'd have thought you'd have known about those kinds of things.' Her voice was almost triumphant, but the tinge of anxiety remained and she continued to sob at intervals.
'That is very clever indeed. Perhaps your solicitor has missed his vocation. For your sake, I hope he hasn't. But why all the secrecy?'
'For the simple reason I had to talk to you before I got arrested. The rest of my life depended on it. You've got to find me that alibi.'
'I see.' Palmer rubbed the back of his neck as he contemplated the situation. 'Now we must consider the idea of turning yourself in. On the one hand your solicitor is right, but on the other it's going to make talking to you a lot trickier. Is there anything you haven't told me that I should know about?'
'I don't think so.'
'And you say your flat was searched thoroughly by the police straight after the accident and they found nothing?'
'That's correct.'
'That was sixteen months ago, so they are sure to want to search it again. I need three hours. Can you give me that?'
'I suppose so.'
'There must be no supposing about it. Those three hours are vital. Can you give me three hours, or not?
'Yes. I'll just go to ground for a bit.'
'Excellent. In that case, can I borrow your flat keys for a minute?' Even as he was asking Palmer was opening a drawer on the left side of his desk. 'Now, you're not supposed to see what happens next.' With that he took the two keys that she proffered and lifted the lid of the first of the two little metal boxes he had extracted. With infinite care he gently pressed the first key into the waxy substance in the box. That done he did the same with the second. When both impressions had been made he took a tissue and some spirit and carefully cleaned both keys before handing them back to the owner.
'Now, Miss Cavendish, do I have your permission to enter your premises?'
'Of course. What should I do next?'
'Well, I would suggest that you find somewhere to rest for a few hours, a pub or cafe, and then go home to bed. In the morning you should go back to Mr. Goodland and ask him to accompany you to the police station. I promise you, when you get home you will not know I've been there.'
With that Palmer rose from the desk. The two boxes lay where he had left them. He ushered the woman to the door and bade her farewell. As he shut the door the genial smile on his face faded as he prepared for the task ahead. He knew he had to work fast and that in all probability he was too late anyway. He also knew that he had been less than honest with the woman and that it was very likely she would never know whether he had been to the flat or not, but he had not the heart to tell her what was likely to happen that evening.
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