Errors of Judgment(27)

She set off after them, maintaining a discreet distance, a slight figure in tight jeans, knee-length boots, and a baggy suede jacket over a cowl-necked sweater, hair pulled scruffily back in a hairband. Her eyes were fastened on Leo. He and the thin man paused at the doorway to Middle Temple Bar, waiting for someone who was coming up the lane from the Embankment end. As he drew closer, Gabrielle recognised the young man who’d been with Leo in the pub, and at Blunt’s last night. She’d been careful not to meet his eye across the roulette table, but she had the feeling he’d recognised her. He might say something to Leo, and that could be a problem.

The three men went inside, and Gabrielle crossed the lane to Fountain Court, where she dithered for a while, kicking shoals of dead leaves and wondering what to do. This was getting pathetic. She had to be braver. It was tonight or never. If he’d gone for a drink, which he obviously had, he surely couldn’t be more than an hour at most. When he came out she would follow him to where she knew his car was parked in King’s Bench Walk. Then she’d just have to go for it. She felt her stomach drop through the floor just thinking about it. Resigning herself to another wait, she walked back to the bottom of the lane and leant against the wall, eyes fixed on the doorway to the bar.

‘I’ll get these,’ said Leo.

Anthony and Michael Gibbon settled into a couple of armchairs. The bar was almost deserted, with only two people hunched silently over a game of chess at the far end.

‘Place is dead,’ said Anthony. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘When I was a student,’ said Michael, taking off his glasses and polishing them with the end of his tie, ‘this place would be absolutely heaving at this time of night. Of course, back then, you could get a treble Scotch for seventy-five pence, or near enough.’ Leo returned from the bar at that moment with two whiskies and a pint of beer. ‘I was just remarking to Anthony – remember how in our day this place would be full to bursting every evening? Everyone came. Students, juniors, QCs, the odd High Court judge. The bar was so heavily subsidised you could get drunk on next to nothing. Great days. Of course, that kind of thing is frowned upon now.’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose and replaced his glasses, and took a sip of his Scotch.

‘D’you remember Jess?’ said Leo. He shook his head. ‘Dear God.’

Michael smiled and nodded. ‘She ran the bar thirty years ago,’ he told Anthony. ‘Long gone. Absolute battleaxe, face that would turn milk. Everyone was terrified of her, even the most senior people. I have never known a woman carry out the business of dispensing drinks so begrudgingly, or with such apparent loathing for her customers.’

‘People used to compete with each other to get her to crack a smile,’ said Leo, ‘or just be civil. But the more fawningly polite they were, the more they tried to butter her up, the worse she was.’

‘Andrew Carrick had the trick. Jess absolutely loved him. He was this very tall, pompous QC, who used to swan in and order drinks in the most lordly way, calling Jess “my good woman”, treating her like some parlourmaid. She lapped it up. It was the only time I ever saw her smile. He would lean over the bar and tell her filthy jokes, and she would cackle. The rest of the time she had a face like stone.’

Anthony smiled. He’d heard all this before.

‘Of course, it’s not just the bar,’ said Michael. ‘It’s the whole place. Did you know,’ he said to Leo, ‘that they’ve closed the buttery?’

‘Really? That’s sad.’

‘And one evening last summer,’ went on Michael, ‘I came in, bought a drink, was about to take it outside, when someone told me the garden was out of bounds. Can you imagine? They were catering some outside event, so members of the inn weren’t even allowed into their own garden. I frankly don’t know what the place is coming to.’

‘I hear,’ said Leo, ‘that they’re thinking of turning this whole building over to offices.’

Michael tut-tutted and shook his head. He and Leo sat silently sipping their drinks, deploring the way the world was going. ‘So,’ asked Michael after a few moments, ‘what was it you wanted to talk to us about? You’ve been most mysterious.’

Leo set his glass down on the table. ‘I’m thinking of applying to become a High Court judge.’

Anthony felt a momentary shock. He knew Leo had been sitting as a recorder here and there for the past eighteen months, which was one of the prerequisites, but he hadn’t really expected this. ‘I assumed you were just going through the motions,’ he said. ‘With the recorder thing.’