Read Prey to All for Free Online Page B

the sound of her key and tried to hug her.
    ‘I’m boiling and sweaty and disgusting,’ she said. ‘It took ages to get back from the hospital and the car felt like an oven because I was clot enough to have the top down. I’d have been better with the air-conditioning. I need a shower.’
    George rubbed her head affectionately and asked if she wanted a drink.
    ‘Later,’ she called, as she ran up the spiral stairs, wrenching off her clothes. Their relationship had lasted more than long enough for him to know she wasn’t rejecting him, so she took her time in the shower, getting the prison stink out of her hair as well as the grime from her body.
    There didn’t seem a whole lot of point getting properly dressed again, so she pulled on an old pair of leggings, which felt as soft as pyjamas, and a long T-shirt, slopping downstairs again in her bare feet. George hugged her then and she fitted her long boniness around his ample curves.
    ‘So how was the visit?’ he asked later, as she was sitting in front of a plate of tabbouleh and cold spiced chicken. ‘And what did you think of Deborah Gibbert?’
    ‘This looks fantastic, George. Thank you.’
    ‘Pleasure. Now, Deborah Gibbert?’
    ‘Well, I can see why Anna likes her,’ Trish began, ‘but I’m still not sure whether she’s innocent. It’s a tricky one.’
    ‘I’d be surprised if she was, I must say. Phil Redstone would have got her off if anyone could,’ George said. ‘He’s a good advocate.’
    ‘I know. Usually, anyway. But it sounds to me as though he’d decided to loathe her.’
    ‘Ah.’
    That was one of the best things about knowing someone so well, Trish thought, distracted. You didn’t have to explain everything.
    ‘And, detesting her, he was sure she’d done it. I don’t think he tried half as hard as he would have done if it had been the sainted Cordelia in the dock.’
    George looked as if he knew exactly what Trish was talking about, even though she hadn’t yet told him about Cordelia. ‘Is Deborah untidy?’
    Trish nodded. ‘And noisy, and bad-tempered.’
    ‘Just the kind of woman to turn Phil off. She must have had a pretty ignorant solicitor if they thought he’d do her justice.’
    ‘Although she could have been tidied up for her first meeting with them,’ Trish said.
    You often had to act for defendants you disliked, as she always explained when asked by outsiders how any decent barrister could bring herself to speak for someone she thought was guilty. But if you knew your personal feelings were going to affect the work you did for a client, you were supposed to disqualify yourself. That – along with lack of time or expertise – was one of the few acceptable reasons for challenging the cab-rank rule.
    Trish used it whenever she could. Dirty doctors had luckily never come her way, or rapists, but she’d been offered several briefs for parents accused of child cruelty or neglect and she had always wanted to turn them down.
    Of course, it didn’t always work. Sometimes you didn’t know what you were doing to your client’s chances until it was too late. Maybe that was what had happened to Phil.
    ‘What did you like about her?’ George asked, watching her over the top of his glass.
    Trish knew he was asking because she needed to talk, rather than from any passionate interest in Deb or her case. She swallowed her mouthful and told him everything. As usual when she was really interested and knew her subject, she didn’t think about what she was saying or its effect; she
just let the words flow out from some not wholly conscious part of her brain, without any censorship.
    At the beginning of her career, she had practised every part of what she’d planned to say in court, over and over again, learning specially important bits by heart. But one day, something else had taken over. When she had fallen silent at last, she had felt as though she’d just come round from some kind of anaesthetic. She’d had absolutely no