Page 2 of By His Side
“Er… two.”
“Marvelous!” And with that, she closed her office door and left me standing out in the corridor.
There was no time to go home and shower, which wasn’t the most auspicious start to a date. But it was that or be late. In the end, I doubted Emily even noticed. Katherine had warned me not to talk about Emily’s husband, but didn’t seem to have given the same advice to her friend, who talked of nothing else. Whenever I tried to steer the conversation in another direction, I met with resistance. Despite the two of them having recently divorced, it seemed feelings were still present. At least on her side, anyway. I couldn’t speak for him.
I didn’t have to fake yawning; it started spontaneously. Not because of the conversation, but more as a reflection of how taxing the day had been. Emily went up in my estimation when she insisted we skip dessert so I could go home and get some sleep. I did, fallinginto bed like a drunken man despite only having had one beer and falling asleep as soon as my head touched my pillow.
I frowned at the two folders waiting on my desk when I already had a full schedule. And then I remembered that Katherine’s adoption leave started today, and that these were the cases I’d agreed to take on. There would be a replacement for her, seeing as her leave was for a year, but how long that would take to implement would be anyone’s guess. Sinking into my chair, I pulled them closer. The top one had nothing on the front except for a name:Ralph Fletcher. I had a quick flick through it, nothing that unusual jumping out at me. Ralph was fifty-two and had been in and out of prison for most of his life, his crimes petty enough that they only netted him six months to a year inside. He’d get out on license and then the cycle would start again.
I believed in rehabilitation wholeheartedly, but I wasn’t sure even I could stop the prison merry-go-round that Ralph was currently riding on. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try, just that I was realistic about the outcome, and wouldn’t beat myself up when he got sent back to prison again.
Putting Ralph’s folder to one side, I stared at all the post it notes in a variety of colors affixed to the other folder. It seemed Katherine had a lot to say about this one. I started at the top.Sorry about giving you this one, but Harry refused point-blank to take it.Harry was our colleague, his time as a probation officer nearing the fifteen year mark. He was the most qualified out of the three of us, but with that longtenure came a great deal of cynicism. No doubt he’d decided the case was beneath him.
I read on.Felix isn’t too bad as long as you treat him with respect.Felix? I lifted the first post it, Katherine having stuck it over the name.Felix Church.Why did that sound familiar? Had I had him as a client before? A moment of pondering had me concluding I hadn’t. Why did I recognize the name then?
Green post it-note.Obviously, it’s a tricky one. Sorry.
Blue post it note.He has a prison visit scheduled tomorrow prior to his release. You either need to make space for it or reschedule. I’d advise against rescheduling. It doesn’t take a lot to get his back up.
Pink post it note.I really tried to give it to someone else. I asked Mike and Lauren as well.
Yellow post it note.You know what… I need to discuss this with you. Call me.She’d circled those last two words so hard that the pen had gone through the paper. I dutifully picked up the phone and called her. She sounded breathless when she answered, like she’d run to get the phone. No doubt a seven-month-old was proving quite the handful. Rather her than me. I cut to the chase, figuring from the crying in the background that my time would be limited. “Why do I recognize the name Felix Church?” There was a silence. Well, not quite a silence, because Oliver was still proving that there was nothing wrong with his lungs. But Katherine had gone silent. “Katherine?”
“You don’t know who he is?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on, you do.”
“I don’t. Or I wouldn’t have asked.”
She sighed. “Eight years ago. The case was all over the news.”
“What case?” I could have gotten the bare bones of the case from the folder, but Katherine had asked me to call her, and I had, so she may as well give me the information now.
“A sixteen-year-old girl died. Her body was discovered in Epping Forest. She’d been strangled to death. The hunt for her killer took months. Her distraught parents were all over the news, begging anyone with any information to come forward.”
My stomach did a flip. I’d been your typical student during the manhunt, busy balancing final year exams with partying with friends. But I remembered the news coverage. Possibly because I’d visited Epping Forest a few times. I tried to recall what I knew about the case. “The murderer was a man in his thirties, wasn’t he?”
“Julian Blackwell.” The crying had stopped. I assumed Katherine had picked Oliver up and was rocking him. “He got life imprisonment.”
“So Felix is...”
“The boyfriend… the much younger man Julian had been cohabiting with for three years prior to the murder. Julian testified they were in it together.”
“And were they?”
“Well, Felix always denied it, but the court didn’t believe a word of it. As well as Julian turning against him, there was other evidence that implicated him.”
“Such as?”
“Traces of the girl’s DNA in his car. That was the killing blow, according to the press. Julian had his own car. Why would he have used Felix’s if he didn’t need to? It supports Julian’s account that they hid the body together. In the end, the jury found him not guilty of murder, but guilty of being an accessory and concealing evidence. He got thirteen years.”
“Hence him being out on license after seven.”
“Yeah. As you can probably imagine, they weren’t very popular,” Katherine continued. “What with the victim being a minor and the whole homosexual angle. The papers really went to town on it, making them out to be the gay Bonnie and Clyde. The trial was a complete shit show. Angry parents. Angry community. You’d have been hard pressed to find someone who wasn’t angry about it. You’re going to need to make sure he keeps his head down when he gets out. I talked to him about it, but I couldn’t tell whether it sank in.”
“What’s he like?” I asked, a pounding already starting up in my temples.
