Capital

the work of convincing for them – that the story was all it took. So it was as if the story was the most important thing. But for Fiona Strauss, the important thing was herself, and she needed this to be acknowledged before she would take an interest in a case. Then the story could have its due. Mrs Kamal saw this, and acted on what she had seen.
    ‘But we need you, Ms Strauss. We are lost without you. We have rights on which we cannot act. The door is closed to us. We are excluded from justice. Without your help we don’t even know where to begin to seek it. The legal position may be as clear as you say – I am sure it is as clear as you say – but the moral position is clear also. We know that the fight against such injustices is your whole life. We know that. And all we can do now is ask for your help for us and for Shahid. He is in a dark place. You must help us bring light to him, Ms Strauss, because there’s no one else we can turn to.’
    The lawyer separated her arched fingers and briefly, silently, drummed on the desk in front of her. Then she sighed, a sincere sigh, and said, ‘Very well. I will do what I can.’
    ‘You have no idea what this means to us,’ said Mrs Kamal, seizing her hands. The Kamal family were loud with relieved thanks, with exclamations, with gratitude and approval.
    They spent another twenty minutes talking about what to do next. The lawyer promised to make representations to the police, and to explore the possibility of a press conference – exactly the thing the family had wanted all along. The Kamals left happy, except for Usman, who still seemed furious.
    In the car on the way home – there had been extended discussions about how to get in to the appointment, and the non- desirability of paying the congestion charge, versus the unthinkability of Mrs Kamal taking the Underground – Rohinka said, ‘Well. That lady lawyer is quite a piece of work.’
    Mrs Kamal said, ‘I liked her.’

77
     
     
    Doctors and lawyers. Lawyers and doctors and men from the insurance company. That, now, was Patrick and Freddy’s life – and because Mickey always came to meetings with them, it was his life too. For the doctors – doctors plural, because they saw several different specialists – they went to surgeries in and around Harley Street. For the lawyers they went to three different sets of offices. The club’s lawyers were in a tall block in the City of London, with a view of other tall City blocks. The fittings were modern, steel and glass and sophisticated coloured plastic. The insurance company’s lawyers were in offices in Mayfair, a Regency building with, again, modern fittings, except in the big conference room where the two sides met, Freddy and Patrick and Mickey and one or two of their lawyers at one end of an oval oak table, which was polished so brightly that the gleam of reflected halogen spotlights made it hard to look at. As for Freddy, his lawyers were in Reading: it was a firm Mickey had briefly worked for and still trusted. The drive out of London to the lawyers’ offices was a relief, even if the only countryside they saw was the fields on either side of the M4.
    The whole process felt like a form of torture. It didn’t begin that way – in fact it had begun with a strong sense of optimism-in-the-face-of-hard-times. After the first meeting at the insurance company, Mickey had turned to Patrick and Freddy and had said, ‘Well, that went well.’ He ought to have known better, he thought now, he really ought to have known better. He ought to have known that any case which had so many lawyers and doctors in attendance was a carcass, around which the professionals were clustering to gorge like vultures. But he had allowed himself to believe in the atmosphere of confidence, the sense given that all those present were men of good will whose only interest was in solving the unfortunate problem to the mutual satisfaction of all parties. What had happened to Freddy was tragic, but the system existed to provide a remedy, and only the details were left to be determined.
    But what had happened to Freddy? That was the first problem. The doctors didn’t agree. Doctor number one, an orthopaedic surgeon, was a very formal man in his middle fifties with enormous dark-framed glasses who always seemed to be passing judgement on whoever he was speaking to. He had the weirdest body language of anyone Mickey could remember seeing, because he had so little of it: talking or