‘Mr Appleton?’ urged Reid.
‘Yes,’ agreed Appleton, rigidly maintaining his minimal script.
‘But you refused to undergo any medical examination, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ demanded Reid, matchingly short.
‘There is no biological or physical impediment in my becoming a father!’ insisted Appleton.
Reid strained the maximum silence from the remark before saying, ‘Without undergoing any medical examination you know there is no biological or physical impediment to you becoming a father?’
Bartle was sitting with his head bowed, although not as deeply as Alyce and Appleton stood flushed on the witness stand, washed away by a tide he couldn’t fight against. Eventually he said, ‘That is what I believe.’
‘Believe because of some internal conviction?’ pounced Reid. ‘Something of which this court is unaware? Or because you have already been the father of a child?’
‘Your honour!’ exploded Bartle, coming finally to his feet.
Before Pullinger could respond, Reid said, ‘I am finished for the moment, your honour.’
‘What in the name of fuck was that?’ demanded Jordan, as they settled in Reid’s office. There were glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels on the desk. Once more Alyce had insisted she couldn’t withstand a review.
‘I’ll tell you what that was,’ offered Beckwith. ‘You remember me telling you that courts were theatres, in which people performed? You’ve just witnessed a performance deserving more Oscars than there are Academy Award categories. You were brilliant, Bob. Absolutely fucking brilliant.’
And I never believed the man capable of opposing a speeding ticket, thought Jordan, still needing time to properly assimilate it all. ‘We never discussed any of this! I never knew you had so much to throw at him!’
‘I don’t remember our agreeing to talk about – to discuss – everything,’ said the resistant Reid, pointedly.
Looking between the two of them Beckwith sniggered and said, ‘You play a lot of poker, Harvey, as a professional gambler?’
‘Some,’ allowed Jordan, further confused.
‘Then you know about bluff.’
Jordan looked from one lawyer to the other. ‘Will someone – either of you – tell me what the hell you’re talking about?’
‘All Bob had were the newspaper cuttings,’ explained Beckwith. ‘We don’t expect there to be any surviving toxicology evidence from Sharon Borowski. Which was why Bob delayed until the last minute asking the coroner for it, because we didn’t want to be told there isn’t any. It gives Bob the chance to recall Appleton, with whatever might arise during the hearing. Appleton and Bartle will be shitting rocks that we know more – have something – which was what I meant by Bob’s Academy Award performance.’
‘What about Appleton already having fathered a child?’ persisted Jordan.
‘Who knows whether he has or he hasn’t,’ shrugged Reid. ‘He’s admitted to not undergoing a fertility test. What more did I need?’
‘But you knew about a bracelet?’ persisted Jordan.
‘No I didn’t,’ denied Reid. ‘I just tossed it into the pond to see if I could make ripples. And I did.’
‘You mean there wasn’t any evidence for any of the inferences and innuendoes you spread around in there today?’ demanded Jordan.
‘Every question was justified from the evidence available before the court,’ insisted Reid. ‘We can’t be caught out, like the other side was caught out with chlamydia. And the opposition don’t know where we’re coming from next.’
Jordan wasn’t sure where he was coming from next, either. He’d been too confident of being dismissed from the case and had even more grossly misconceived how fully he’d thought he was being included by the two lawyers. He wasn’t the driving force any longer, he accepted. And then he further accepted that perhaps he never had been.
Twenty-Seven
‘B ody language,’ said Jordan, his approach – and hopeful recovery – mentally rehearsed from the ill-tempered email exchanges he’d read between Bartle and Wolfson. And he did have to restore himself in the lawyers’ judgement, Jordan decided: recover a lot and not allow his overconfidence to imply – the overconfidence verging on conceit – that he could do Beckwith and Reid’s job better than they could.
Beckwith frowned and looked up from his Jack Daniels, with which they’d both continued at the hotel after the initial celebration in Reid’s office. ‘You want to help me with that?’
‘You asked me earlier if I played poker. There are two essentials to win at the game. You need to be able to memorize every discard, to narrow down what your opponent might be holding. And read his body language.’
‘And bluff, which Bob did so well today,’ added the lawyer.
‘I’ve been watching Leanne Jefferies,’ said Jordan, doggedly. ‘All day today she’s actually sat as if she’s trying to distance herself from Appleton.’
‘Are you surprised?’ exclaimed Beckwith. ‘If the jury finds against her she’s going to go down for big bucks. She’s got every reason to hate the guy. Certainly to despise him.’
‘Which I think is a new hate,’ urged Jordan. ‘Her lawyer’s from the same firm as Appleton’s and she went along with using a Boston venerealogist, both of which has got to be under pressure from Appleton. My impression is that she didn’t realize the shit he’d dropped her into until she ended up in court. She doesn’t know yet which way Pullinger’s going to go with what they tried with the venerealogists, and today she heard, my guess is for the first time, that before her Appleton was screwing a hooker whose infection she caught.’
Beckwith, whose cross-examination of Appleton was to begin the following day, appeared to consider the argument. ‘Could be you’re right.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe an idea to widen the rift a little, before we get her on to the stand?’
‘Better to widen it a lot.’
‘Trust me, Harvey,’ sighed Beckwith.
He was trying too hard again, Jordan accepted. Quickly he said, ‘There’s something I don’t understand.’
‘There’s a lot I still don’t understand,’ remarked Beckwith, gesturing for refills.
Jordan hoped the lawyer wasn’t getting drunk on the basis of that day’s success. ‘Why did Appleton volunteer his affairs with both women, actually providing Alyce with the grounds for divorce? And for the claim against Leanne?’
‘I’m there ahead of you,’ insisted Beckwith, vaguely mocking. ‘It’s on my reminder list for tomorrow. But thanks.’
‘Why didn’t Bob go for it, today?’
Beckwith sighed again. ‘Because it’s not the strategy we’re following.’
Which he didn’t know about, acknowledged Jordan, wondering if it had been decided when he’d been at the ante-room window with Alyce. ‘Which is?’
‘Re-examination,’ disclosed Beckwith. ‘Bob achieved it today on a limited point. If something comes out tomorrow, he can stretch – or try to stretch – the remit. As I can if Appleton slips between his replies to me and the replies he’s already given to Bob. And we can do it all over again with Leanne when we get her on the stand.’
‘What about Alyce?’ demanded Jordan, at once. ‘Won’t she be exposed to a double act, from Bartle and Wolfson?’
‘If they work out our game plan,’ agreed Beckwith. ‘As you will.’
‘Were you going to warn me, if I hadn’t asked?’
‘Of course.’
Jordan didn’t believe the other man. ‘Is Bob going to warn Alyce?’
‘It would make good sense to do so. I don’t like how shaky she is.’
Neither did he, thought Jordan. ‘Bob should try to get her excused from the court.’
‘Too soon,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘Pullinger will have seen a lot of women break up in pieces far worse than Alyce has done so far. Divorce is never a walk in the park.’
He had all his illegal sites still to access, Jordan remembered. And he hadn’t yet helped himself to that day’s tranche of Appleton and Drake’s money. That thought prompted another. He said, ‘Are things going more slowly than you anticipated?’