Read Online Refuge by Andrew Brown - Free Book Online Page A

worried him. He had felt exhilarated by the seedy contest that marked a criminal trial. The stakes were always high; the public was interested in the sensational details; the mob often bayed for blood. He had felt like a warrior, an armour-clad gladiator stepping into the open ring, each time facing the monolithic state machinery. Victory had felt personal then. And easy. An astute lawyer facing an under-resourced investigation and uninterested prosecution could exploit the inevitable shortcomings in procedure and gaps in evidence. He had used phrases like ‘where the rubber meets the road’ and ‘the dirty work of justice’ when explaining his work to friends. He saw himself as performing the work that others were too scared to take on. It was he who had disdainfully dismissed commercial law as being manufactured and over-intellectualised.
    More recently, though, he had started to tire of the courtroom confrontation and the relentless, self-preserving versions offered up by his clients. The victories felt less grand and universal, and rather more hollow. One of his clients had come to him seeking advice on an employment dismissal, and Richard had impulsively decided on a foray into labour law. His appearance in the labour court had not been a triumph. He had omitted to make an essential procedural averment while preparing his papers. The application was postponed in order to give him time to remedy the defect, and he had been forced to ask Candice, the associate partner who headed their small labour unit, for her assistance. Sensing his humiliation, she did not raise the issue at any partners’ meetings and discreetly took over the file. Richard shuddered at the memory.
    The traffic had started to move along more easily, as cars peeled off the side ramps that took them down residential roads. The road curved around onto the greener slopes bordering the southern suburbs, where the streets were lined with pines, pin oaks and plane trees. He picked up the pace, but still felt unsettled. After consulting with Svritsky, he had met with a juvenile client and his mother. The police had stopped the boy and his friends in a car. Under his seat, they had found a variety of drugs: some rolled dagga cigarettes, a straw of flavoured tik, a tight corner of hash and some low-grade Ecstasy tablets. ‘Hash!’ Richard had joked lightly at his first meeting with the boy: ‘What are you? A throwback from the seventies?’ He regretted his flippancy now; they had made representations to the prosecuting authority based on the age of the boy and the relatively small quantity of drugs, but they were turned down. Richard should not have been surprised, as the escalation of the drug problem in schools had forced the prosecuting authority to clamp down on young offenders.
    ‘Why can’t they catch the real criminals and just leave our children alone?’ the boy’s mother had whined, rubbing the Lexus badge on her key ring. ‘They were just having some fun.’
    Richard had initially found the woman quite attractive, with her flouncy tops and lipsticked mouth. He had charmed her in the beginning, earnestly listening to her every complaint, taking meticulous notes and telling her thrilling anecdotes from the courtroom. But her son was a sullen, acne-riddled child who refused to answer Richard’s questions with more than a grunt or a shrug. He sat slouched in the chair, picking at the skin on his knuckles and bouncing one knee up and down. His mother’s incessant demands slowly worked on Richard’s nerves until her blouses seemed cheap and her lipstick tacky. Now she just left him feeling impatient and he wished that he could get rid of the entire matter.
    A sleek BMW convertible, top down, glided alongside him. He glanced across at the driver, her curled blonde hair bouncing in the breeze, protected from the brunt of the eastern wind by the long windscreen. She had one hand on the wheel and held a sleek cellphone against her ear with the