Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield Page A

thoughts.
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    O utside, the night was peculiarly still and stiff with an icy cold which formed her breath into puffs of vapour, so cold, she immediately wanted to turn back inside, but driven by her own hunger, she did not. The frost which had formed in the darkness of dawn and melted in the afternoon, now drew exquisite patterns on car windscreens like some exotic artist. From the great distance of a mile or more, she heard in the stillness the great roar of an enormous crowd. There was no sound the same: the sound of the mountain moving to Jehovah. Helen stopped, chilled to the marrow by that distant roar of the jungle lion waiting to get out. Then the cars started again: the lights of the main road hit her eyes. The sickness had passed.
    Oh Lord, do not let me be afraid of the dark.

C HAPTER F IVE
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    R edwood was often asked to give lectures – to new recruits, to clubs, to Justices of the Peace. They were good for his profile, so he did them when he could not farm them out.
    â€˜The mandate of the Crown Prosecution Service,’ he was fond of beginning in a good, loud voice, ‘is to prosecute without fear or favour, according to the evidence, those who break the criminal law. Evidence is supplied to us by the police. It is we who decide what to do with it.’
    He made the process sound civilised and eminently streamlined. What he did not say was that his own office was drowning in paper. They were more vulnerable to paper than they were to heart attacks. The paper would kill them first.
    â€˜Our office is computerised, of course,’ he would say, remembering not to cringe. So it was, in a manner of speaking. The computer received information and dictated the next move for every case: they all had pathetic faith in it without any understanding, but it did not obviate the necessity for portable paper to go to and from courtrooms and barristers’ chambers, fraying in a dozen sets of hands, often without a duplicate, until finally it was filed in the vast areas of the basement where Redwood never trod.
    â€˜Because of the confidential, incriminating nature of the material we keep, we do, of course, take great care with security …’
    Even he had to wince at that. By security, Redwood meant the high railings with their lethal spikes, the assiduous sccurity men they had by day and the lazy character they had between seven in the evening and the same hour next morning, and also at the weekends. He came from an agency, it was cheaper. Redwood hated the building so much, he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to get in. Only a fearless child could climb the railings. It didn’t occur to him there was any need for better security.
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    â€˜R ose, any chance I can have tomorrow’s paperwork by one’clock? Like I asked earlier? Only I’d rather not come back this afternoon.’
    Rose raised a harassed face from the files she was marshalling into piles, in date order, each like a rocky monument on the floor round her desk.
    â€˜I dunno. Doubt it,’ she said rudely. Helen felt her temper rise. The link between her worries and her sense of humour was proving tenuous, the thread of it not only thin but frayed. She made a last effort.
    â€˜Please can you find me tomorrow’s files? Surely it isn’t too much to ask?’
    Rose was embracing a bundle of six to her bosom, and she dropped them abruptly, turning as she did so. She was shaking with tension, but it looked like a gesture of petty defiance.
    â€˜Rose,’ said Helen with warning in her voice, ‘I really do have to go at one, and I might not be able to get back. Can you sort tomorrow’s stuff for me now? Please?’
    Rose turned to face her, livid with anger. The spikes of her hair, subdued of late, seemed to rise round her head like the defensive spine of a hedgehog.
    â€˜And supposing other people have to leave early too? Supposing there’s no-one else to do their fucking work and