Simon Smith

Simon Smith is Mark Trafford’s old friend and the legal adviser who manages the immediate consequences of Sarah Trafford’s arrest. He offers her a route away from prosecution, but it depends on her accepting a false account of Joe Silvermann’s dealings. Simon’s role is therefore double-edged: he works to shield Sarah from the police while treating the truth about Joe’s death as expendable to that protection.

Identity and Introduction

Simon enters the story in the aftermath of Sarah finding Joe’s body and being taken in for questioning. Mark arrives with him; Simon carries a black briefcase and speaks loudly about lawsuits, apparently enjoying the prospect of confronting the police. Mark, by contrast, is livid. The scene establishes Simon’s confidence in formal pressure and legal argument, but also sets his buoyant manner against the distress of the people around him.

The evidence presents Simon chiefly through his connection to Mark and his conduct as Sarah’s adviser. He is Mark’s old friend, and his loyalty to that friendship shapes the counsel he gives. He does not first approach Sarah as an independent advocate concerned with establishing what happened to Joe. Instead, when he later visits her at home, his central task is to work out what account she can give the authorities and what consequences that account may avert.

Managing the Police Case

Simon arrives at eleven the morning after Sarah has been released. She struggles to let him in, make coffee, and concentrate; he takes a short, effective telephone call in response to his beeper. The domestic routine scarcely disguises the seriousness of the matter. Simon tells her that the case has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide whether to prosecute.

He frames the problem around the cocaine the police say they found in Sarah’s possession: four grams, an amount they can use to challenge her account of herself and her relationship with Joe. Simon does not treat her protest that she did nothing wrong as the decisive issue. He points out that she will have difficulty denying possession unless she claims the police planted the drugs, then dismisses that option as unlikely to succeed. His advice is tactical: he considers which version the authorities may accept, what the press may make of it, and how Sarah can avoid becoming the focus of a prosecution.

His proposed solution is for Sarah to admit that the cocaine was hers, say it came from Joe, characterize her use as personal, and agree to therapy. Simon presents this as a way to bend to the circumstances rather than fight a case that, in his view, would be costly and damaging. He also argues that a recent death associated with a happy pill makes this a particularly bad moment to contest the police’s approach to recreational drugs.

Joe Silvermann and the False Account

Simon’s plan does more than acknowledge Sarah’s possession. It makes Joe the source of the drugs and links his name to the police investigation into Lizbeth Moss’s death. Simon explains that the police want a person they can present to the press as responsible for Lizbeth’s death, and that blaming Joe would help redirect attention from Sarah. He predicts that Sarah can be treated as a comparatively sympathetic victim and then disappear from official view.

Sarah objects that Joe did not do it. Simon answers that Joe is dead and that the police can make his death look like a signed confession. He says the authorities have what they need and do not want the case complicated. Although he warns that the possession charge might be challenged because of the search, he argues that cooperation is the more useful course: Sarah should give the police enough to let them claim a result, then avoid attracting further attention. His confidence rests less on discovering what happened than on anticipating what institutions will find convenient.

The personal cost of this reasoning is plain to Sarah. She understands the scale of the accusation but cannot bring herself to make it against Joe. Simon counters that Joe cannot be helped now, whereas the false account could help her. The exchange makes their disagreement more than a difference over legal tactics: Simon treats Joe’s reputation as a resource that can be spent, while Sarah’s refusal preserves her obligation to the dead even when it threatens her own security.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Sarah eventually signs a statement saying that the cocaine came from Joe, that she had bought drugs from him twice, and that they had met in a pub. Simon assures her that this cooperation effectively ends official interest in her. The immediate outcome thus confirms the practical force of his advice, but not its truth: the statement recasts Sarah as Joe’s customer and helps provide the authorities with a usable account.

Simon’s counsel is rendered in brisk, unsentimental language, including the dismissive label SODDIT for the suggestion that somebody else planted the drugs. He also argues from Sarah’s social position, telling her that a middle-class woman can be presented as Joe’s victim and will be treated leniently. His calculations expose how class, public relations, and institutional convenience enter what appears to be a straightforward legal decision. He is not shown as indifferent to Sarah’s predicament; he is trying to reduce her danger. Yet his method protects her by asking her to help make a dead man the answer to questions that remain unresolved.

That compromise becomes visible when Zoë Boehm later tells Sarah to call the police and retract the statement about Joe selling drugs, calling retraction the simple act of telling the truth. The contrast clarifies Simon’s place in the story without erasing the immediate usefulness of his intervention. He helps Sarah navigate a threatening process, but teaches her to survive it through a lie. His part in the novel turns legal advice into an ethical pressure point: safety may be purchased, but the price is a version of events that serves the living and leaves Joe unable to answer.