Jordan wasn’t at all surprised that Daniel Beckwith’s vehicle was a personalized number-plated 4×4 with extra-wide wheels and special trim, along with dark-tinted windows. And coloured red. When he got inside Jordan saw it was equipped with satellite navigation, which didn’t surprise him either. He hadn’t expected to be able to see so clearly beyond the smoked glass, though.
‘You all set?’ greeted Beckwith. Today’s outfit was faded denim workshirt and jeans, with tooled cowboy boots and the regulation big buckle belt. The bison motif reminded Jordan of the shoulder-hunched photograph of Alfred Appleton.
‘You’re in charge: you tell me.’ And then I’ll tell you, Jordan thought, a decision already formulating.
Beckwith snatched a glance across the car as he began the manoeuvre to get to the Triboro bridge and the Van Wyke expressway for the airport. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m where I don’t want to be, facing – by your calculations – a potential financial judgement against me of millions, is what’s the matter.’
‘You got your head up your own ass, Harv,’ declared Beckwith, taking the macho car up the ramp towards the bridge, the traffic easier going out of Manhattan than it appeared to be getting in from the unmoving, traffic-congealed contra flow. ‘That cost estimate was before we got yesterday’s squeaky clean medical report. Which turned your problems a hundred and eight degrees in your favour: you’re now back on the sunny side of the street. Sit back, smile and enjoy the warmth.’
‘No!’ refused Jordan. ‘There are things we need to get straight between us, Daniel! And listen. I use your full, complete Christian name, don’t try to abbreviate it. You want to play out some macho fantasy with the way you dress and the car you drive, that’s fine. That’s your fantasy: get your rocks off. But I don’t like being called Harv, when my name is Harvey. And I don’t like having appointments made for me before I even know they’re being made, what those appointments are for or why, even, they’re necessary. I’ve wiped my own ass since I was about five, without any help from anyone, and hope I can go on doing it without leaving stains on my underwear for a long time in the future. As I intend doing a lot more – everything – for myself in the future.’
Beckwith snatched another glance as they turned into the La Guardia slip road. ‘Sounds to me like you’ve made your decision about your legal representation. So why you bothering to come down to Raleigh with me today?’
‘I have made my decision,’ confirmed Jordan. ‘My decision is that I want to be called Harvey when we talk and that I want to be consulted in advance before arrangements are made on my behalf and that I don’t want to be lectured about losing my temper – because I’ve got that completely on board and totally under control. But I want to continue with your representing me because we’re a long way down the track now and I really don’t want to go back – or down to Raleigh to find somebody else – to start all over again.’
‘Which isn’t exactly an overwhelming vote of confidence.’
‘Which it wasn’t intended to be. It was intended to tell you how I felt and how I’d like things to be between us from now on.’
‘Otherwise …?’
‘Otherwise we’ll have another conversation, very similar to this. And I will go down to Raleigh. Which brings us back to your choice.’
Beckwith took the car into the short stay parking lot, ignoring three available spaces until he found one that he wanted, close to a side wall. He hesitated after they got out to walk side by side with Jordan, still unspeaking, into the terminal. When they reached the departure pier he handed Jordan his ticket, deferring to him to check in first. The flight was already being called and they continued on into the aircraft. On the plane Beckwith stood back for Jordan to choose his seat and as always Jordan took the aisle.
Finally, when they’d settled in their seats, Beckwith said, ‘You travelled around America a lot, Harvey?’
‘Not a lot. Las Vegas, of course. The west coast a few times. New Orleans, before the hurricane disaster.’ It would have been a mistake to acknowledge the name correction.
‘Pity we couldn’t have driven to Raleigh and back in one day. Great country.’
‘I’ve changed my mind about returning to England too quickly,’ announced Jordan. ‘I’ll have to go back sometime, of course. But I want first to make sure everything is on track here: get a much clearer idea how it’s going to work out.’
‘Maybe a good idea. It’s your decision.’
‘Based upon your guidance.’
‘That’s what you’re paying me for.’
‘How are we going to do this meeting with Bob Reid?’
‘Officially it’s between attorneys. But there’s no reason for you not joining in if you think you’ve got a point to make that we’ve missed.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ He’d corrected the situation to where it should have been from the beginning, Jordan decided. It was a good feeling, the best he’d had for several days.
Raleigh, the first American state capital Jordan had visited, was hung with direction signs to the sites and events of its early settler history like flags at a victory celebration and Jordan got a tourist’s commentary to each and every one of them from Daniel Beckwith as the lawyer drove their hire car in from the airport, culminating in a brief detour to Capitol Square to see the horse-mounted statues of the three North Carolina-born statesmen who’d risen to become United States presidents.
They were only five minutes late getting to Reid’s offices, just two streets away from the square, and were ushered directly in. The first person Jordan saw, before the waiting lawyer, was Alyce Appleton.
She wore a dark grey trouser suit, brightened by a pink sweater, but it still reminded Jordan of Lesley Corbin’s official business uniform. Alyce had on the dark framed spectacles, too, but the thin wedding band was no longer next to the diamond engagement ring. She wore little make-up but Jordan remembered she hadn’t in the South of France.
Jordan’s initial thought was how difficult it was to imagine the antipathy he now felt towards someone with whom he had so recently – no more than three months, he guessed – made such uninhibited love.
Looking more towards the two lawyers than the woman, Jordan said, I didn’t understand this was how it was going to be?’
‘Neither did I,’ frowned Beckwith, turning accusingly towards the other lawyer.
‘It was obviously necessary for me to inform my client what was happening—’ began Reid.
‘And I insisted on being here as well,’ broke in Alyce, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.
‘I saw no legal bar,’ finished the Raleigh lawyer. He was a plump, red-faced, jowly man who needed the tightness of the waistcoat as well as the fastened jacket of his black pinstriped suit to hold in his stomach to prevent himself looking fatter than he was. The owl-round glasses looked precarious on his button nose.
‘It might have been better if we’d discussed it earlier between the two of us,’ said Beckwith, cautiously.
‘I thought we already had. If your client can be present, so can mine,’ said Reid, an asthmatic catch in his voice. ‘We’re both present to guard against conflicting problems … which I don’t anticipate there being.’ He looked at Jordan. ‘Do you have any objection to Alyce being here?’
Daniel Beckwith outmanoeuvred before they’d crossed the threshold of a court, thought Jordan, feeling wrong-footed himself. ‘Not if it will achieve more quickly what I want to be achieved. You’re the lawyers, to judge it legally.’
‘I want a written, without prejudice, understanding between us,’ insisted Beckwith.
‘As I do,’ said Reid. ‘With the attachment of a memorandum of agreement from your client. Alyce has already signed hers. I’ve taken the liberty of having the documentation prepared.’
Something else done for him without his knowledge or agreement, Jordan recognized, looking at Beckwith, who nodded. Jordan said, ‘OK by me.’ He signed first and while the two lawyers were completing the formality he said to Alyce, ‘Hello, belatedly.’
‘Hello.’
Neither smiled.
Jordan said, ‘So much for not exchanging addresses.’
‘I’m sorry … about all of it … about everything. I really didn’t know … suspect … it’s awful and I really am very sorry … embarrassed, too. Extremely embarrassed.’
‘I thought I was going to be sorrier than I already am until late yesterday afternoon.’
Alyce frowned, shaking her head. ‘I don’t understand …?’
‘It wasn’t until late yesterday afternoon that I got the all-clear from the venerealogist.’
Alyce flushed, visibly. ‘You surely didn’t think?’
‘Of course I surely thought,’ Jordan cut her off, mocking her words, close to letting the anger erupt. ‘You really surprised that I surely thought?’
‘This wasn’t set up as a fight,’ broke in Reid.
Jordan switched his attention, his anger locked down, pleased the way the reactions were coming. ‘What, exactly, was it set up for? I don’t believe I should be involved in this situation at all and want to be out of it … don’t want to go anywhere near a courthouse. That’s how it is – all of how it is – as far as I am concerned. Now tell me how I feature as far as you are concerned.’ He’d listened intently to himself, not just to the words but to his tone, and was sure Beckwith wouldn’t be able to accuse him of either losing his temper or his control.
It was Alyce who responded, ahead of her lawyer. ‘I don’t believe you should be involved or need to go anywhere near a courthouse, either. That’s why I wanted to be here. Just – and only – to tell you that. And to say sorry. Which I already have. Now I’ve said both – and hope you believe me – there’s no need for me to stay any longer if it’s a problem for you.’ She stirred in her seat, as if to get up.
There was an abrupt silence in the room, each man looking to the other. To his client Reid said, ‘You’re here now. Agreed to the confidentiality. You might as well stay; get some idea, beyond what’s briefly already been said, what’s going to come from Harvey’s side.’
Talking directly to Jordan, not to her lawyer, Alyce said, ‘What do you want me to do? Get out and stop embarrassing you more than I’ve already embarrassed both of us? Or stay?’
The embarrassment did surge through Jordan at the awareness of how he’d behaved. ‘Why not stay?’
Alyce flushed again. ‘What about my apology! Do you believe and accept I didn’t imagine you’d become involved? Or are you determined to stay tight-assed?’
Jordan stared at her for a long time before saying, ‘Thank you for your apology at my becoming involved. Which I accept.’
‘Now what about you?’ Alyce pushed on, positively red faced now. ‘How about an apology from you, for actually believing – contemplating – for a moment that I’d put you at risk from what my bastard of a husband exposed me to! You know what that makes me, your thinking that: it makes me sick to my stomach!’
‘Maybe our coming down wasn’t such a good idea after all,’ intruded Beckwith. ‘We’re not achieving anything here.’
‘Let’s all calm down. Drink some coffee or something,’ urged Reid. ‘We break up like this the winner’s going to be Alfred Appleton, with us the losers. We’re on the same side, aren’t we?’
‘I’d hoped we would be,’ said Alyce. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’
‘Coffee or what?’ bustled Reid. ‘Let’s cool down. Compose ourselves.’
Alyce had tea. The three men chose coffee. Reid led them all away from any formal setting, to an annex to his office. It was fitted with easy chairs and sofas and polished long-leafed plants that seemed to survive in pots filled with wood chippings, not earth.
There was another brief although less awkward silence. Then, looking between Jordan and Alyce, Beckwith said, ‘OK, you’ve each read the other’s initial statement and we’ve got the medical problem out of the way. So let’s move on from there, shall we?’
Jordan seized the moment, a lot of questions already formulated. ‘What about the court? Whether it’ll be an open or closed hearing?’
‘We want it closed,’ replied Reid, at once. ‘I’ve already intimated that to Appleton’s people. And to the court.’
‘To what response?’
‘None, positively, not yet,’ said Reid. ‘But Bartle inferred they’d oppose it.’
‘Scare tactics,’ judged Beckwith.
‘That’s what I think,’ agreed Read.
‘We can support your applications, even though we can’t initiate it,’ Beckwith promised. ‘Which we will if I don’t succeed in a pre-trial submission to get Harvey dismissed from the case.’
‘Which we’ll support you in,’ said Reid. He looked directly at Jordan. ‘That’s at Alyce’s insistence, before she and I talked about anything else. That’s one of the main reasons for my asking her to be here today.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jordan, uncomfortably, looking between the woman and her lawyer.
‘You’re closer to the ground here than I am,’ said Beckwith, talking to Reid. ‘You any indication yet who our judge might be?’
‘Not officially,’ said Reid. ‘I’m guessing at Pullinger.’
‘Ah!’ said Beckwith.
‘That doesn’t sound as if you’re pleased?’ questioned Jordan, gauging the tone in both lawyers’ voices.
‘Judge Hubert Pullinger prides himself on having the strongest and loudest moral voice not just in the county but in the entire state of North Carolina; far beyond that, even,’ explained Reid.
‘Whom I remember from when I practised here makes early, preconceived judgements from which he can rarely be persuaded by contrary evidence or argument.’
‘Can’t you apply for an alternative judge?’ asked Alyce.
‘He’s also the senior judge on the circuit,’ said her lawyer. ‘It would be about the worst move, politically or tactically, to try to make. If he gets the case, we have to live with it.’
‘Why are you guessing he’ll get it?’ asked Jordan.
‘He has first pick. And this is his sort of case,’ said Reid.
‘I want to know something: something very important,’ demanded Jordan, coming to another query on his long list. ‘We’ve gone past – never touched upon, even – what the hell criminal conversations are. Will someone set it – or them – out for me, beyond saying that they’re expensive!’
Before deferring to Reid, Beckwith briefly, but with a hard-faced stare, looked at Jordan and Reid intercepted the look. The local lawyer coughed a hollow cough and said, I guess that’s a question for me?’
‘It’s a question to anyone who can answer it,’ said Jordan.
Reid coughed again. ‘In layman’s language, criminal conversation is judged as an injury to the person. Appleton’s in this case, committed by you. It’s what’s technically known as a short liability tort, whereby it is only necessary to prove and establish that sexual intercourse took place, which both of you admit. It’s also necessary to establish that a valid marriage existed. Which it did. And that the suit is brought within statutory limitations. Which – once more – it is …’
‘It is not a defence that the defendant – you – did not know that Alyce was married, that Alyce consented to the act of sex, that Alyce was separated from Appleton, that Alyce seduced you or that the marriage was an unhappy one. Or that the spouse – Appleton – had been unfaithful,’ completed Beckwith in a breathless rush, anxious to prove he knew the legislation as well as the other lawyer.
It took several moments for Jordan to absorb it all and when he spoke he was still not sure that he had, not completely. Shaking his head in disbelief he said, ‘This should have been spelled out at the very beginning! While I was still in England. From what you’ve just told me, the two of you, I’ve got absolutely no defence whatsoever against the claims that are being brought against me!’
‘You asked for the law, which you got,’ said Beckwith. ‘My job – Bob’s job, in Alyce’s case – is to advance arguments that fit your specific circumstances and persuade the judge that my interpretation of that law is in your favour. Which I think I can.’
‘As I think I can,’ came in Reid.
‘I sure as hell hope you can,’ said Alyce. ‘You haven’t set out the law as specifically as that to me, either, until now.’
‘I think I have,’ said Reid.
‘I don’t,’ refused Alyce.
‘Appleton’s surely the guiltier party!’ said Jordan. He looked hesitantly at Alyce. ‘I’m sorry about this, talking as if you’re not here, but he has to be the person who gave Alyce chlamydia. And admits to two affairs.’
‘There were more, I’m sure,’ said Alyce. ‘All that time he spent by himself in Manhattan! He wasn’t by himself in bed.’
‘My first pre-trial submission is going to be a court order for Appleton to undergo a venereal examination,’ said Reid. ‘And our enquiry people are trying to find other women. The more we get the more Pullinger will come towards us.’
‘I’ve now undergone two medical examinations,’ said Jordan. ‘And I’ve been told by both specialists that it’s a curable infection. What if he’s had treatment: that there’s no trace of his ever having had it?’
‘I’m also going to apply for an order that his side produce his complete medical records, if they won’t do it voluntarily,’ said Reid. ‘And I’ve already asked Bartle for them to be volunteered.’
‘What about Sharon Borowski and Leanne Jefferies?’ demanded Beckwith.
Reid shifted in his seat at the insistence. ‘Sharon Borowski’s dead: killed in an auto smash eleven months ago; she no longer features. Leanne Jefferies is another commodity dealer, although not with Appleton’s firm. Works for Sears Rutlidge. Thirty, single. As far as our enquiry people can discover it really was a short relationship, as Appleton says it was. No indication of their still being together. But we’re issuing criminal conversation claims against her, of course, as soon as I get the name of her lawyer. That’s going to be another court application, as soon as I get a judge.’
‘The bank records are selective,’ Beckwith pointed out.
‘Already noted,’ said Reid, at once. ‘I’ve filed for consecutive statements.’
‘What about the money you gave him?’ Beckwith queried, looking at Alyce. ‘There must be a paper trail, from your statements?’
‘Withdrawn in cash, handed over to him in cash, in tranches of varying amounts, not a lump sum,’ said Alyce. ‘Like being repaid in Mercedes cars, he told me it was better taxably for it all to be done in cash.’
‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that you were being conned?’ asked Jordan, the expert.
‘Let me tell you about my husband,’ said Alyce, quiet-voiced, analytical. ‘When I married him I thought he loved me, which I don’t think he ever did, not at any time. It’s difficult now for me to believe that I loved him, but I think I did. He’s got a good act. I certainly trusted him, another mistake. It took me a while to recognize him as a manipulating bully. Realizing that he was a cheat – a cheat in every way – took even longer: long after he persuaded me to relinguish my position as chief executive of the parent Bellamy Foundation.. You want the analogy, it’s easy if you’ll allow the cliché. Alfred Jerome Appleton is a Jekyll and Hyde, everybody’s friend, everybody’s helper, the first with the biggest charity cheque, all for the big reputation and the big benefit it’ll bring him. Cross him and he’ll run right over you – squash you into the ground and enjoy doing it. But no one knows that, suspects it, even. And won’t believe that it’s possible for him ever to be like that, if we don’t get a closed court. It’ll be all my fault, all my lies. That’s why he’ll be happy with an open court. It’ll be a stage for him to perform on. That’s what he does, every day: performs, puts on an act to appear someone other than who he really is.’
Jordan stirred, in self-recognition. And had another thought, even more self-indulgent, as he heard Beckwith say, ‘No chance that Pullinger might know Appleton? Have had some social contact?’
‘What the hell …? demanded Jordan.
‘Prior knowledge or awareness would be grounds for disbarment,’ explained his lawyer.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Alyce. ‘In Boston – the entire state of Massachusetts – he probably knows every judge there is to know: every important person there is to know. But not down here.’
‘That’s something to bear in mind,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘What about you? Any chance your family’s come into contact with Pullinger? Same exclusion would apply.’
‘Not that I’m aware,’ said Alyce. ‘Today’s the first time I’ve heard the name. I could ask my mother: I’m living with her at the moment.’
‘What about Appleton’s claim, in his statement, that he provided financial support for your mother?’ asked Reid.
‘Total nonsense,’ rejected Alyce. ‘The Bellamy Foundation dwarfs the Appleton wealth ten times over. I think it was around that time, just after we got back from Hawaii, that I told him of my trust inheritance.’
‘He didn’t know you were an heiress before you got married?’ asked Beckwith, seemingly surprised.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Alyce. ‘It was something that never came up.’
‘And when it did he asked you to lend him $500,000 to help start his commodity business?’ pressed Reid.
‘It wasn’t like that, a flat demand for a half million,’ qualified Alyce. ‘He said it would help if he had some cash infusions, from time to time. Which, of course, I gave him; was happy to give him. And then he asked for more, which grew into another half a million.’
‘Which you were still happy to give him?’
‘Lend him,’ insisted Alyce. ‘Things weren’t going well by then; beginning to break down, although I don’t think I properly recognized what was happening at the time.’
Jordan wasn’t having any difficulty recognizing anything. His concentration – and retention – was absolute but it didn’t preclude his thinking in parallel. The feeling of dismissive antipathy towards Alyce had gone, replaced by the undiminished earlier embarrassment. Alyce Appleton was someone he’d briefly known, become briefly but pleasurably involved with but never imagined encountering again. Now he was reunited by unsought circumstances. What about right now, at this precise moment? Jordan couldn’t decide. It all sounded as he supposed it should sound, the necessary first meeting of lawyers, the initial strategy discussion that Beckwith had described it as being, but Jordan couldn’t actually discern any strategy evolving. Objectively Jordan acknowledged his attitude was driven by his overwhelming impatience – matched by his overwhelming need – to be rid of it all. But he couldn’t recognize any forward planning being formulated: it was all backward looking, not forwards. A closing remark of Alyce’s – ‘I came genuinely to think of him being seriously paranoid’ – brought Jordan conveniently back into the conversation.
‘Why should he have had you followed, as he obviously did, all the way to France? For the information he gathered about us there he must have engaged an army of private detectives!’
‘That was my final confirmation, about his being paranoid,’ stressed the woman, colouring again as she spoke. ‘I suppose he must have engaged them when I announced I was going ahead with the divorce …’ She hesitated. ‘I was not involved with anyone here. I’m still not, so there was nothing for him to find here, in America.’ She gave an uncertain movement. ‘France happened –’ she looked at Jordan – ‘I wish it hadn’t: wish you hadn’t got caught.’
Before Jordan could speak Reid said, ‘That’s a point to pursue …’
‘And I will, as you should,’ picked up Beckwith. ‘He’ll have to call the people he put on to you. We can take them back before France.’ He looked to the other lawyer. ‘You can establish on oath what Alyce has just said, that she wasn’t cheating before France. And from that I can establish that there was no prior contact between Alyce and Harvey, until France.’
‘But France still happened,’ said Alyce.
‘But not until after you’d sent me, in a letter with a date on it, in an envelope with a French postal date on it – both of which I’ll submit as evidence – instructions to file for your divorce. As far as you were concerned, your marriage was over. It wasn’t when your husband had his two admitted mistresses?’
‘Isn’t that covered – excused – by all the caveats you explained earlier in the criminal conversation statute?’ cut in Jordan.
‘Depends how I argue it,’ insisted Reid.
Maybe there was a benefit to the meeting after all, thought Jordan. He said, ‘What about after France? Do you think Appleton would have had the surveillance maintained?’
‘It might be something to pursue when we get to court,’ said Reid.
‘I don’t see the point or purpose of continuing the expense,’ said Beckwith. ‘He had his evidence by then, didn’t he?’
It wasn’t the reassurance he’d wanted but realistically there was no way either lawyer could say any more, accepted Jordan. ‘If he has he’ll know Alyce and I have met again, here today.’
‘In the presence of your lawyers, both of whom have legally attested the meeting in the without prejudice documentation,’ Beckwith pointed out. ‘It can’t be used in any court hearing to any benefit to Appleton, which is why it was drawn up.’
‘In the presence of your lawyers,’ echoed Reid, to emphasize his following point. ‘Just in case there is continuing surveillance, I don’t think it would be a good idea for you and Alyce to get together in anything other than in our presence.’
‘With which I fully concur, ‘ said Beckwith.
Alyce snorted a derisive laugh. ‘One of the few things that we can be assured of at this stage is that the likelihood of that being on either of our minds just doesn’t exist.’
‘I agree. To everything,’ said Jordan.
‘I’m still waiting, though,’ said Alyce, openly challenging Jordan.
‘I really am sorry for the way I behaved earlier,’ said Jordan.
‘I wish I believed you,’ said Alyce.
It was just after nine that night when Reid’s home telephone jarred in his den but he was still there, waiting. He said, ‘I was beginning to get worried wondering what had happened to you.’
‘There were delays at your end and then we got stacked at La Guardia,’ said Beckwith. ‘It was a goddamned awful trip back.’
‘How’d you think it went?’
‘Better than I thought it would, after the rocky start. I certainly don’t think they knew each other, before France.’
‘Neither do I,’ agreed Reid.
‘I hope we don’t get Pullinger.’
‘I’ll keep on the case until we find out for sure.’
‘I think they’ll do well in court.’
‘I was worried about Jordan, as you know. I thought he did OK.’
‘I thought Alyce did, too. Can’t have been easy for her, as Jordan said, talking about her as if she wasn’t there.’
‘Cute little gal. I envy him France.’
‘We need Appleton’s medical report,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘If he’s infected we can both blow Appleton out the water.’
‘I’m worried about that,’ admitted Alyce’s lawyer. ‘It’s too obvious a weakness in his case. I wrote to Bartle after you left, demanding the production of a specific report, as well as the medical history. And to Leanne Jefferies. I don’t imagine she’s going to be so fond of Appleton now that she’s going to be sued for criminal conversation.’
‘You think Appleton could have an actual mental condition, as Alyce intimated? It could help as much as the proof of chlamydia. And should show on his medical history.’
‘If I don’t get what I want from Bartle I’m definitely going to file for a pre-court hearing,’ assured Reid. ‘Jordan really make that good a living from gambling?’
‘Seems like it,’ said Beckwith.
‘I thought your guy made a good point about surveillance,’ said Reid. ‘I wish my people had produced as much on Appleton as his people did on Jordan and Alyce in France.’
‘There’s still time. We don’t have a court date yet.’
‘I’m glad we’re working together.’
‘So am I.’
‘Let’s keep in touch.’
‘Let’s do that.’
Harvey Jordan decided there was no reason for him to have considered as wasted time the frustrating day he’d spent in the Carlyle suite waiting for the results of the American venerealogist’s examination. He would have been distracted then, not devoting his absolute concentration upon what he wanted to do and the preparations necessary to do it. And the trip to Raleigh had been a useful interval to think things through as well as the opportunity to put things right between himself and Daniel Beckwith.
Today was the moment to start putting into practice the several decisions he’d reached and become pro-active: to start to work, in fact, with just the slightest variation from normal. Not wanting to risk being followed to all the places of public record and reference that he might need to visit – despite having so much useful information already available from the legal exchanges between the lawyers – Jordan’s first priority was to resolve the surveillance uncertainty. How to do that had come to him during the Raleigh meeting.
The most compelling reason for staying in grand hotels was the comprehensiveness of their services, which he utilized by having someone from the Carlyle’s guest assistance go out to buy the laptop he needed, which had the double benefit of him not being seen to make the purchase if he were still being watched and further distancing him from it by having its purchase price registered against the hotel and not charged by name against him, personally. It took Jordan the entire morning to configure the machine and put it on-line, not through an American provider but through the British Telecom Yahoo broadband server. He set up his payments through England, too, from the Paul Maculloch account at the Royston and Jones private bank.
From his previous lawful career Harvey Jordan had brought an unrivalled computer expertise to his new illegal career, in which phishing was essential. The first requirement for successful hacking was never to initiate a direct intrusion into another system, but to work through an intervening, unwitting ‘cut out’ server. The reason for such caution was twofold: computer protection had become extremely sophisticated since its inception, with many preventative systems utilizing tracing facilities to identify the source of a detected illegal entry attempt. It was this unknowing ‘cut out’ buffer computer system that showed up if Jordan’s cyber burglary got ensnared in a firewall, not Jordan’s laptop. The second advantage was that Jordan only got charged for the cost of accessing his cut out. Everything he did through it was billed against the unsuspecting host. Having penetrated the host system, like an intrusive cuckoo, Jordan then installed what in the self-explanatory vernacular of the trade is known as a Trojan Horse.
Over his years as an identity borrower Jordan had successfully stabled his Trojan Horses in a number of illegal sites throughout the world unknown to the genuine owner and while he religiously destroyed the individual computers he only ever used for one identity stealing operation, he’d left his secret entry doors open to all the host sites, creating a bank upon which he could draw without having to hack in to a new system. That day he chose to return to a long term cuckoo’s nest in the mainframe of a beer-distributing company in Darwin, Australia, that he hadn’t used for five years. He still worked as carefully as he always did, with every new job, alert for the first indication that his previous presence might have been discovered during a virus or illegal entry sweep during his absence, but there was no tell-tale hindrance or unexpected ‘entry denied’ flash on his screen and the 12,000 mile connection was made in seconds.
Continuing on was easier than normal, because he already had not just the publicly available website address of Appleton and Drake, a few blocks away from where he sat in Manhattan, but Alfred Appleton’s personal registration entry code supplied in the exchanged legal documents by Appleton himself. Jordan was, effectively and electronically, looking over Appleton’s shoulder in three minutes, and by another five had tied up a new, untraceable Trojan Horse within Appleton’s computer through which he could monitor every incoming and outgoing email the man had stored in the past and was likely to save in the future.
Which was only the beginning of what turned out to be a very successful and productive day. Like the gambler he was supposed to be – but wasn’t – Jordan had hoped Appleton would have conducted his correspondence with David Bartle at Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein through his office facilities and so it turned out to be. It took Jordan a further thirty minutes to get into the law firm’s main computer system from which he moved on to embed a separate monitor in the lawyer’s personal machine. He scrolled patiently through the inbox and sent box of Bartle’s email service to discover the name of the ultra-efficient private enquiry agency, called unoriginally, Watchdog, whose offices were downtown, on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. Jordan had been surprised by how easy it had been penetrating the computer systems of both Appleton and Bartle, despite the advantages he’d had from the legal documents, but expected more difficulty entering that of Watchdog. He was surprised once more than it only took him another thirty minutes to get through the company’s firewall and a further fifteen to get his Trojan Horse and his own password in place in the personal computer station of Patrick O’Neill, the director with whom Bartle had conducted all his email correspondence.
Jordan was cramped, physically aching, from the concentration with which he’d worked, without a break, into the middle of the afternoon. He still only allowed himself the briefest pause, just long enough to walk through the suite to the bathroom to wash his face and make himself a tall vodka and tonic from the well equipped, ice-maker and glass-backed permanent bar in the suite’s living room, excited at the possibility of being able to answer the most persistently nagging question since the entire episode began.
It took him much longer than the previous hacking, because he had constantly to switch back and forth between in and out emails between Bartle and O’Neill to maintain a comprehensive continuity between the exchanges and even then there were gaps which Jordan assumed to be caused by the two men on occasions preferring the telephone to their computers.
As Jordan’s understanding grew he learned that O’Neill had acted as an on-the-spot supervisor in France, with a staff that at its height grew to ten – with the addition of two photographers – once they’d established the affair between him and Alyce. Two of the Watchdog staff had actually flown on the same plane as Alyce from New York, and dated before that flight to Europe was a lengthy memorandum from O’Neill explaining that despite an intense, two months’ surveillance in Manhattan and East Hampton, they had failed to uncover any evidence whatsoever of Alyce being involved with another man. There were several references to him in France as being ‘someone of obvious wealth’ and as ‘someone who is very familiar with this area of France’.
And finally Jordan found what he was specifically looking for. He guessed it was an email response from Bartle to a telephone call, which would have had to have taken place on the day Alyce flew back to New York from Nice, maybe even from the airport itself. The lawyer had written that O’Neill was to maintain the surveillance on Jordan while he remained in France but that it shouldn’t be continued back to England. In that email Bartle had written: ‘There is incontrovertible evidence of adultery sufficient for proceedings to be initiated and the expense in obtaining it has already been substantial.’
Satisfied that he was no longer under Watchdog surveillance Jordan quit the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon opening four separate accounts at the four other already chosen Wall Street banks in the name of Alfred Jerome Appleton. As with the First National he specified that he would be predominantly using electronic banking and provided the West 72nd street apartment as the mailing address to which bank and credit cards and cheque books should be delivered. He used cash – ranging from between $2,000 to $3,000 – to establish the accounts, anxious now that they were set up to get back to the Carlyle for the first of the many intended phishing expeditions.
He got back into Appleton’s personal computer by five thirty and through it, using Appleton’s unopposed, never rejected password, had the key electronically to pass through every door to wander wherever he chose within the firm of Appleton and Drake. A tour, Jordan both professionally and logically accepted, was too much to attempt in one visit: too much, possibly, to complete over a number of visits. But there was no hurry. The initial priority was to establish the value of the company, which again at this first visit was impossible to calculate. What wasn’t impossible, though, was to confirm that it ran into millions of contracts bought short or long, all set out like prizes in a raffle to which he held all the winning tickets. Apart from Appleton and his partner, Peter Drake, there were five additional traders and between them, after the briefest journey through the combined buy and sell portfolios, Jordan conservatively estimated there were more than 6,000 already logged trades, going through the entire gamut of the company’s range, from metals, its major activity, through its currency, cereal and Chicago meat subsidiaries.
Jordan had only twice before stolen the identity of a commodity trader, but from that experience he knew the basic trading operations, the most important of which was that any buy-or-sell contracts agreed by traders were double-checked and confirmed by the ‘back office’, a secondary, double-checking filter to prevent any contract being overlooked beyond its regulated, three month completion date. But once it was checked and registered – and most important of all dated – it remained on the trader’s book until it was moved on. Which meant, after the back office confirmation, the lid to every cookie jar was open to him, to plunder at will. That night he limited his targetting stings, concentrating upon currency contracts, because of all the commodities they fluctuated the most, sometimes by the hour, and therefore were the most difficult to track. He further limited himself on this first visit to a transfer to the First National bank account, and even more strictly limited the amounts – all of them less than five hundred dollars – he electronically transferred from four, two-day-old currency trades, each in excess of one million dollars from which five hundred dollars would not be detectable, nor swell the initial fake Appleton account beyond what the bank were legally required to automatically report to the financial regulating authorities. The following day, Jordan determined, the taps would be opened more fully to fill all five accounts.
At last, closer to exhaustion that he could remember for a long time, Jordan closed down the laptop and pushed himself back from the bureau to go to the bar to make himself another celebratory drink, putting on room lights as he did so. He carried his glass to an easy chair, needing its relaxing softness. Gazing out unseeingly over the jewellery-box glitter of the Manhattan night, he shook his head at the memories of all the unnecessary, time-wasting scurrying around London he did in order to avoid any potential surveillance when there had been nothing or no one to avoid or from whom to hide. And then he laughed, recognizing how frenetic he would have seemed if people had been watching him. It might have all been unnecessary and time-wasting, and he didn’t like being made to scurry like a frightened rabbit, but he was glad he’d taken the precautions. There was even a positive benefit: his own money was now far better hidden than it had been and, pointless though most of it had proved to be, it had been a useful, if exhausting, lesson. As he’d reflected before, he had definitely become complacent, dangerously believing things could never go wrong to upset his perfect life, which he certainly didn’t believe any longer. But he was correcting the situation now, Jordan told himself, looking across the room at the blank-eyed computer: pro-active at last, thinking for himself, in charge, in control of himself. Before this was all over there were going to be people – Appleton in particular – who’d fervently wish that he weren’t so in control.
Jordan started work again early the following day, first reentering the available golden goose of Appleton and Drake and again, from the already dated currency trades, spreading $10,500 in transfers between his five Appleton bank accounts. Next he got into his own law firm’s computer to leapfrog into Daniel Beckwith’s personal station, staying there long enough to read the exchanges about himself between Beckwith and Lesley Corbin in London, and then between Beckwith and Reid in Raleigh. He was intrigued to read Lesley’s early opinion of him as ‘arrogant although knocked off his feet being caught with his pants around his ankles, a position in which it is always difficult to remain upright’, and the correspondence between her and the American lawyer questioning the income possible from professional gambling. It was Lesley, too, who had first suggested he would need repeated instructions on how to conduct himself in court to avoid antagonizing a judge or jury. She’d again used the word ‘arrogant’.
Jordan’s need for court training was referred to once more in the correspondence between Beckwith and Reid. Of more interest to Jordan was the email discussion between the two American lawyers about potential damage awards, with one suggestion from Reid that if there were individual judgements against Jordan on each listed claim, the total adjudication could go as high as twelve million dollars. Reid’s qualification – ‘in reality I can’t see it reaching half that figure if all awards go against him’ – didn’t do anything to reassure Jordan.
Neither did Beckwith’s response. ‘A sum in either of those amounts would inevitably attract national if not international publicity,’ Beckwith had written. ‘And from what we already know from our preliminary enquiries, both the Appleton and Bellamy families have a recognized social and financial standing on the east coast, which is an added publicity attraction. My client is anxious to avoid publicity, as you tell me your client is, which makes it imperative we establish as soon as possible who the judge is going to be. If it is someone who enjoys notoriety – as I remember several did from the time of my practising in Raleigh – there might be a difficulty in you successfully arguing for a closed hearing. We need to liaise closely on this point.’
Jordan was curious that there had been no exchange between the two men following the Raleigh conference, quickly correcting his impatience with the self-reminder of how recent it had been. Whenever it came – and for as long as he required it in the future – he had this permanently open window into their every thought: into every thought of anyone with whom he found himself entangled.
Except Alyce, he corrected himself sharply. Her lawyer would have been the obvious pathway but nowhere in the man’s computer address book could Jordan locate any email exchanges between Reid and Alyce, and so successful and unobstructed had his entry been into all the other computer systems that there was a blip of positive disappointment at his not being able to worm his way into the last of his targets.
He’d been wrong about all his suspicions of Alyce, Jordan acknowledged not even having to force the unfamiliar honesty. He’d been wrong about believing she might in some way be complicit with her husband in trying to get money from him, wrong in imagining that she would have exposed him to the sexual complaint with which she’d been infected, and wrong to have made his hostility so blatantly obvious towards her during the Raleigh encounter. Objectively, continuing the honesty, Jordan accepted that he had been as much the cause of Alyce’s misfortune as she was guilty of being his. Judging from what he had just read of Appleton’s efforts to uncover Alyce’s infidelity to compensate for his own, if he had not so deliberately set out to seduce her, Appleton would have wasted even more money having her pursued by the inappropriately named Watchdog.
Fully aware of the contradictions and inconsistencies there were in the vocation he followed, Jordan would have been the last to claim that he suffered a conscience from his actions and certainly didn’t consider that conscience was part of what he was feeling now. But there was at least a genuine regret at behaving as he had towards her in Raleigh. Maybe, he thought, there would be other opportunities to apologize.
There had been several times in the past, working as successfully in America as he had in England, when Jordan had actually considered relocating permanently to the United States. Everything he needed to adopt and take advantage of a new identity was so much more easily and publicly accessible in the States, if a person knew how and where to look – which Jordan did. Upon application the essential and identity-proving Social Security number was readily available; so essential that it was more often than not printed as a guaranteed payee authenticity, along with full addresses, upon personal cheques, which was why he had included Appleton’s on all five accounts he’d opened in the trader’s name. As he knew from the legal exchanges, it was on Appleton’s bank record. Determined upon avoiding any conceivable error on this very particular occasion he confirmed it as he accessed all the social register entries in Boston through the public library reference books and the archives of the Boston Globe. Through this he learned the Appleton family history from the Boston tax rebellion, that was the incendiary to the War of Independence, to the marriage of Alfred Appleton’s parents, from the records of which he double-checked the family name of the commodity dealer’s mother. From the same sources he got the names of the man’s prep schools prior to Harvard, into which he phished to learn that pre-college as well as at Harvard Appleton had been considered dilatory and disinterested in anything other than sailing. Through the Harvard records Jordan discovered three police references to drunken driving offences, none with conclusions, all presumably minimized into cautions due to his family money and influence.
It was while he was scrolling through the final Harvard records, cross-referencing dates wherever possible, that Jordan began to be troubled by an inconsistency that he could not immediately isolate, but which remained in his mind as he forced himself on. It was not until he had downloaded everything on to hard copy and was cross-referencing from all his various sources that it became obvious to him, although the basic mystery remained even more tantalizing.
Jordan realized that he had assembled virtually enough information about Alfred Jerome Appleton to write the man’s biography. But, missing from any publicly available source Jordan had so far accessed was what Appleton had done in the three years after his Harvard graduation.
How, where and doing what had Appleton spent that time? Jordan wondered.
And wondered further how much it would benefit him to find out. Which he would, Jordan thought, adding this to his list of determinations. And then he thought that Alyce would probably know.
But there again, she might not, Jordan accepted. He would still have liked to ask her in the hope she could provide a short cut to the information, but didn’t think he could – or should – so soon after the lawyers’ warning in Raleigh against he and Alyce meeting alone, to which she might not have agreed anyway. And there was the problem of providing a reason for asking the question, although that was not insurmountable.
Instead – after his early morning and now regularly timed raid upon Appleton and Drake’s easily available gold mine – Jordan escaped the entombment of the previous two days in his hotel room to take up the search in his preferred way of working by walking the corridors of the reference section of the New York public library, beginning in its Milstein genealogical division. At first it appeared to be a good route. Because the library is the largest sourced library in the world the history of the Appleton family of Boston was far more extensive than any he had been able to access from his laptop, particularly the details of Appleton’s sailing prowess, which was recorded with several indexed newspaper and yachting magazine reports. Jordan logged each and, when he had completed primary source searches, worked his way steadily through the miscrofiched copies of thirty-five different publications.
From them Alfred Appleton began to emerge a world class yachtsman, predicted, not just as a potential US Olympic team choice, but also as an obvious selection for the American team that competed in the America’s Cup in 1992. The date rang an immediate bell in Jordan’s mind: 1992 was the second of the missing three years. The final reference to Alfred Appleton was in The Yacht, in its February edition of that year. The two-line item recorded Appleton’s withdrawal – for ‘personal reasons’ – from among those on the selection list. Jordan switched from where he was working to access the records of the New York Yacht Club, the America Cup’s governing body. Appleton was named four times in the selection procedures in late 1991. Without explanation the man’s name dropped out of the list in November of that year. The only other mention was the same as that in The Yacht, of Appleton’s withdrawal. Again, there was no offered explanation other than the amorphous ‘personal reasons’.
Was he trying too hard, Jordan asked himself, so outraged at his entrapment that he was too eager to attach importance where none existed? It was years – although not too many – before Appleton’s marriage to Alyce, so those ‘personal reasons’ were too far in the past to have any possible relevance now. Or did they still have relevance, if the characteristics of honesty or integrity or moral rectitude or whatever other words covered personal behaviour – Appleton’s, not his – still applied? Jordan still wanted to know: he still wanted a fully supplied and primed arsenal of every available weapon at his disposal for the battles – wars even – with which he might conceivably be confronted. Or have others declare against him.
But who to fire these supposed weapons? He couldn’t, not yet. He was the unwilling conscript press-ganged on to a battlefield upon which he didn’t want to be and upon which he couldn’t officially shoot back at those who were shooting at him. Others – Beckwith or Reid or both – had to press the triggers, which meant they had to be led to where the ammunition was. He’d come in at the end, to fight his own, already decided and increasingly well-planned guerilla campaign, not needing anyone else’s help or company.
Guerilla campaigns relied upon intelligence, the sort of intelligence he was assembling. He was sure there was still some – maybe a lot – that Alyce could provide. How really difficult would it be to seduce her a second time, the difference being that they both kept their clothes on?
Calling upon a sailing analogy, Jordan decided that he was stuck in the doldrums, becalmed by circumstances with no forward movement after such an initial fair wind. This was surely because it had been such a good beginning, he acknowledged, pleased at the quickness of the balancing awareness. He’d achieved so much because so much had been literally handed to him on a plate in days instead of his having to probe and scour for weeks or months. So, he consoled himself, thoughts of doldrums and becalming was nothing more than stupid impatience.
He continued to access his strategic computer monitors, disappointed – but no longer impatient – at the absence of any further traffic involving the impending divorce action. It was an afterthought – which surprised him for it not having occurred before – to occupy some of the time towards the end of the week expanding what he already knew of the Bellamy family, which took him back to the New York library’s reference section.
What it lacked in terms of noted and recorded American history, it compensated for in longevity with forefathers predating the Appleton arrival in the New World by a good seventy years. A Nathaniel Bellamy was recorded as having fought in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and a William Bellamy briefly served on the personal staff of George Washington, although there was no cited, historical event accredited to either man. There were, however, substantial and continuing listings of over three hundred years of Bellamys who’d served in the North Carolina legislature and five – Alyce’s grandfather being the most recent – who had been elected senators to Congress in Washington. It was the grandfather who had founded the Bellamy Foundation which was described as one of the largest charitable groupings in the country. The printed records contained no reference, apart from her birth, to Alyce until her marriage to Appleton. The concentration then had inevitably been on the bonding between the two American founding families, all the details of which Jordan already knew. The one relevant – and contradictory – fact that did stand out to Jordan was the substantial land holdings throughout the state, predominantly in Forsyth, Rowan, Macon, Allamance and Durham counties, of the Bellamy family, which made nonsense of Appleton’s claimed offer of financially supporting Alyce’s widowed mother. Jordan wondered if Reid had picked up on that – or had it properly pointed out by Alyce – to refute the need, impudence even, for such a suggestion when the case finally reached court.
On the Friday morning, with an empty weekend before him and no contact from Daniel Beckwith, Jordan decided to go again to Atlantic City, and during the drive there made up his mind to call the lawyer on his Monday return. If there was no likelihood of any active court movement he could use the following week to go back to England and ensure no problems had arisen with the Paul Maculloch identity and the rental of the Hans Crescent flat. With the uncertainty of everything here in America it would be a sensible precaution to extend that lease for a further six months.
‘Pullinger,’ announced Reid.
‘Shit!’ said Beckwith.
‘It’s scarcely a surprise,’ said the North Carolina lawyer. ‘Hope you don’t mind my calling at a weekend, instead of waiting until Monday?’
‘I’m glad you did. No point in holding back,’ said Beckwith. ‘You got the official notification?’
‘A friendly call from the circuit office. I’m getting the formal notification in Monday’s mail.’
‘I guess I’ll get one too.’
‘You should do.’
‘What about a hearing date?’
‘Still to be fixed.’
‘I guess this puts me first out of the gate?’ said Beckwith.
‘I had Pullinger’s record checked. He’s heard three alienation of affection and criminal conversation cases. Each time he’s refused pre-trial submissions for dismissal.’
‘I ran the same checks,’ said Beckwith. ‘I’ve still got to try it.’
‘Of course you have,’ agreed the other lawyer. ‘I’ll file for an attendance of interest, obviously.’
‘You heard any more from Bartle?’
‘I’d have passed it on if I had. I might also apply to Pullinger for a compliance of exchange order, particularly over the medical records.’
‘The more we can get Pullinger irritated by the behaviour of the other side the better,’ agreed Beckwith.
‘What about Leanne Jefferies?’
‘As soon as I get an attorney’s response I’m issuing Alyce’s claim for alienation of affections and criminal conversation,’ said Reid.
‘And a medical report for her,’ prompted Beckwith.
‘The demand will go with the other claims.’
‘Anything more from your enquiry people?’
‘I’d have passed it on if there had been.’
‘We should meet again sometime next week.’
‘I guess it’s my turn to come up to you,’ offered Reid. ‘You going to include Harvey?’
‘He’s very hands-on. And the more he’s included in things the better I think he’ll perform in court if the dismissal submission fails.’
‘I might talk to the circuit office about availability for a closed hearing,’ said Reid. ‘It’s not dependent upon whether you succeed or not.’
‘The sooner the better,’ said Beckwith. ‘The moment there’s a public listing the media are going to be alerted. You warned Alyce against any public comment?’
‘I have, although it wasn’t really necessary. She wants to dig a hole and go hide in it. How about your boy?’
Beckwith’s snigger became a laugh. ‘He’s a tetchy son-of-a-bitch about what and how he’s called: to be referred to as “my boy” would send him ape. He certainly doesn’t need any warning about talking to the press. He’d like to go hide in the same hole as Alyce.’
‘Which was the start of both their troubles,’ reminded Reid, coarsely. ‘You got your diary with you to talk about next week?’
‘Your convenience,’ offered Beckwith.
‘Wednesday,’ chose the other lawyer. I might stay over.’
‘I’ll leave the evening free, in case. Harvey’s at the Carlyle, incidentally.’
‘High roller,’ commented Reid.
‘That’s what he tells me he is.’
‘Let’s hope he stays lucky.’
‘Let’s hope we all stay lucky.’
‘Getting Pullinger wasn’t lucky,’ reminded Reid.
‘Luckier,’ Beckwith corrected himself.
Jordan picked up the waiting message slips as he checked back in to the Carlyle and returned Beckwith’s call the moment he entered his suite.
Beckwith said, ‘I tried to get you a couple of times?’
‘I went to Atlantic City.’
‘How’d you do?’
‘Finished $4,500 up over the two days.’ And got accredited receipts for a total of $23,000 representing the money he’d taken in to the casinos and switched back and forth between dollars and chips, he reminded himself, more than satisfied with the trip. As he was more than satisfied with the accumulation in the five Appleton accounts in the Wall Street banks, which now stood at $56,000. The following morning he intended withdrawing most of it to put into the waiting safe-deposit boxes.
‘We’ve got Pullinger, the judge we didn’t want,’ declared Beckwith.
‘I was going to call you today to tell you I was thinking of briefly going back to England; see how things are there.’
‘You still can. Nothing’s going to happen except Bob coming up on Wednesday, to talk a few things through. Bring ourselves up to date.’
‘I’ll put it back,’ decided Jordan at once. ‘I’d like to be with you.’
‘I thought you would. There’s no real reason, though.’
‘I’ll be there,’ insisted Jordan. And lay out as many leads as I can for you to pick up, he thought.
‘Your choice.’
‘Will Alyce be there?’
‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘Just wondered,’ dismissed Jordan. ‘Where on Wednesday? What time?’
‘I’ll let you know.’
He had a day and a half to get all his ideas together for the meeting, thought Jordan: more than enough time.
The surprise wasn’t that the New York meeting was in Beckwith’s office but that Alyce was again ahead of him. And that Jordan was pleased to see her. He said, ‘Hello, yet again,’ and she smiled, very briefly, but didn’t speak. To the two lawyers Jordan said, ‘I’m sorry to be late. I allowed myself forty-five minutes! I don’t know how you manage to work at all in Manhattan.’
‘It’s an art form,’ said Beckwith.
‘So how bad is it that we got Pullinger?’ asked Jordan, as he sat.
Beckwith sighed. ‘You want coffee?’
‘I’d rather catch up on what I’ve missed.’
‘You haven’t missed anything,’ said Reid, as irritated at Jordan’s impatience as the other lawyer. ‘We small-talked, waiting for you.’
Jordan was aware of Alyce smiling again and this time wished she hadn’t. ‘Thank you. Coffee would be good.’ As well as his not appearing so anxious would have been good, he realized. He’d been thoroughly pissed off by the gridlock and the time it had taken him to stash his bank account money into the safe-deposit boxes, neither of which were causes for him flustering in as he had. He smiled his thanks to Suzie when she came in with his coffee, which he didn’t really want, wondering how she managed to breathe in her second-skin virginal white trousers and top.
‘So let’s pick up on your question,’ began Beckwith. ‘We’re stuck with Pullinger, which is bad luck but something we have to live with. What we really have to do is use the cantankerous old son of a bitch more to our advantage than to Appleton’s – ’ he turned to Alyce – ‘I guess we’ve already covered the ground but we’re going to have to talk about your husband as if he’s the enemy, OK?’
‘As far as I am concerned he is the fucking enemy. So let’s stop apologizing for something that doesn’t need or deserve apology,’ responded Alyce.
There was a brief, although not actually shocked, silence and Jordan was glad that her impatience had risen to match his, hoping she took his smile as appreciation, not condescension. As in Raleigh they were away from an official working area. There were more polished plants than in Reid’s annex and a skyscraper view uptown towards the unseen park. All the sepia photographs on the wall were of early American settlers and Native Americans, most in full tribal regalia, which Jordan supposed was fitting for someone of Alyce’s ancestry and Beckwith’s dress code.
‘Let’s do just that,’ said Beckwith, recovering. ‘I got the formal notification on Monday and the same day filed for a pre-trial dismissal hearing on our part. I haven’t yet got an acknowledgement, obviously …’ He paused, gesturing to Reid.
‘And I’ve filed for court acceptance, to be party to each and every pre-hearing application. As well as making our own applications. The first is for court enforcement of our being supplied with Appleton’s medical records. The second, again against Appleton – which is the only legal way open to me – is to enforce Leanne Jefferies, upon risk of contempt, to comply with the demands of Alyce’s damages claim by providing an attorney reference. Once I have her lawyer through whom to work I can apply for her medical records, to establish if she was a sufferer from chlamydia—’
‘What about the other admitted mistress, Sharon Borowski?’ broke in Jordan, his script – as well, he hoped, as its presentation – well prepared during the preceding day and a half.
Reid frowned, appearing irritated at having been interrupted. ‘I already told you, she’s dead—’
‘The result of a car accident, not a sexual disease,’ broke in Jordan again, looking directly at the North Carolina lawyer. ‘Bad luck, Sharon, rest in peace. But if Appleton caught it off her, not Leanne, got himself fixed, and Leanne is provably clean, who gave it to Alyce? I didn’t, which we can prove. Which leaves your case that Alyce didn’t have any lovers previous to me shot to bits before you even begin, don’t you think, Bob?’
From the reaction from both lawyers Jordan thought it was turning into a conference without words: clearly it was a possibility neither had considered.
Eventually Beckwith said, ‘That’s a damned good point.’
‘I suppose Pullinger could order the production of Sharon Borowski’s medical records,’ said Reid, although doubtfully. There was an asthmatic catch in his voice.
‘Do doctors keep medical records of people who’ve died?’ asked Alyce, quietly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘What I do think is that it could be one great big problem for us,’ finally admitted Reid.
‘Doctors might not keep medical records,’ Jordan pointed out. ‘Police or coroners might. If she died in a traffic accident there would have been an autopsy, wouldn’t there? With a pathology report?’
‘Let’s hope there was and that the medical examination went beyond finding the immediate cause of death,’ said Reid. He was talking now with a discernible wheeze.
The lawyer was embarrassed by his oversight, Jordan knew. As the man deserved to be. Jordan didn’t expect any more criticism from his own attorney for playing amateur advocate. ‘Could Pullinger refuse to hear a dismissal submission?’
‘If he did we could appeal over his head. So he won’t,’ said Beckwith. He looked towards Alyce. ‘I’m going to need to call you, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she accepted.
‘It’ll be an opportunity to bring out things that Appleton’s attorney might object to being introduced during your full hearing,’ picked up Reid, talking to his client. ‘That’s why I want participation access.’
‘Like the missing three years?’ questioned Jordan, seizing the obvious opening. They’d judge him a total smart-ass after today. But Jordan didn’t give a damn because it was his own ass he was trying to save and that was his only consideration.
There was none of the earlier initial irritation at Jordan’s intervention from the two lawyers, although Beckwith said, ‘Why do I think we’re going to be found wanting again?’
‘I’ve got little else to do here but read the statement exchanges and think about what’s there and what’s not there,’ said Jordan, weighing each word before he spoke, determined against being caught out himself. ‘I’ve spent some time in the library, reading reference books: there’s a lot about the Appleton and Bellamy families and their lineage. Appleton left Harvard a golden boy, no suggestion of a job apart from representing his country in the Olympics and being part of the 1992 America’s Cup team. It wasn’t a question of “if’ he’d be selected. It was a done deal. Except it didn’t become that. Appleton withdrew, for “personal reasons”, from any consideration of selection, for either the Olympics or the America’s Cup.’ Jordan was talking to Alyce now. ‘You any idea what those personal reasons were? Here’s a guy, always in the papers, society superstar and then abruptly, nothing for about three years until he joins his first Wall Street brokerage firm before breaking away to set up his own commodity businesses about six months before marrying you.’
For several moments Alyce remained looking contemplatively into her lap. ‘I didn’t know him in the early nineties, although I knew of him, of course. And you’re right, he was the golden boy and there was the expectation of him sailing in the Olympics and for the Cup. No one ever really knew why he pulled out of either.’
‘He pulled out?’ pressed Jordan. ‘Weren’t there any rumours. Didn’t you ever ask him, after you got married?’
‘I can’t remember them all but there were a lot of rumours,’ said Alyce. ‘There was something about a girl, but that was an obvious speculation: he had the pick of the crop. And I did ask him, after we got married. He said he didn’t want to talk about it but that he’d had a nervous breakdown that had to be kept under wraps, that no one would trust a nut who’d needed psychiatric treatment to handle their money …’
‘What’s the point you’re getting to, Harvey?’ queried Beckwith. ‘As Alyce says, it was before she knew him. Where’s the relevance with what we’re dealing with now?’
‘Maybe there isn’t any,’ conceded Jordan at once. ‘But doesn’t character and morality and integrity feature a lot in what we’re dealing with now? Why would a man guaranteed to feature – to represent his country – in the two most outstanding events of his chosen sport abruptly back off?’
‘Because he got sick, like Alyce just said,’ suggested Reid.
Jordan stared at the lawyer, letting the seconds build into minutes. ‘Don’t you think it’s worth having your enquiry guys poke around a little, ask questions? Find out if it’s true? I do.’
‘So do I, for whatever’s discovered,’ said Alyce. ‘You’ve forgotten the conversation we had in Raleigh, about my believing he had a mental problem? It could account for a lot of his behaviour. Still could.’
‘Like suggesting Alyce’s family might need his financial support when from what Alyce tells us was the reverse, when he set up on his own,’ said Jordan, snatching for another point. ‘Didn’t he have family money of his own? You establish he’s a fantasist, you establish he fantasized about Alyce having affairs, to excuse his own.’
‘You seem to have been working hard on this,’ accused Reid, irritation returning. ‘Harder than me or the people I employ to find out things for me.’
‘I’m not in any sort of contest with you or anyone you employ,’ rejected Jordan. ‘And I’m not trying to prove anything. I’ve got every good reason to work harder than anyone else and you can count them all in dollars. Your enquiry people letting you down? Fire them and get better ones.’
Reid flushed, his face hardening further. ‘I’m not trying to get into an argument with you here.’
‘I just told you, neither am I,’ insisted Jordan. ‘I thought this was a conference to exchange ideas to help all of us.’
‘Which it is,’ Beckwith hurried in. ‘You got any other specific thoughts or ideas?’
‘Nothing specific,’ said Jordan. There might even be a benefit from upsetting Reid; assessed from the preceding hour the lawyer certainly needed to try harder than he appeared to have done so far.
‘We’ve started to get the media approaches,’ disclosed Reid, anxious to move on. ‘I’ve had calls from the News and Observer and from NBC 17.’
‘They’ve tried to reach me, too, at the house in Raleigh,’ said Alyce. ‘I haven’t returned the calls, obviously.’
‘I told them it was a closed matter,’ continued Reid. ‘Nothing’s appeared so far. The uncertainty is what Appleton’s side will say publicly. I’ve told Bartle I’m going to file for a closed court. Confirmed it in writing, too, in the hope that will restrict whatever Appleton’s people might say. If they make a statement ahead of my application, knowing that I’m going to make it, Pullinger might consider it contempt, which would be in our favour.’
‘You spoke to Bartle by phone first?’ asked Beckwith.
‘Yes,’ nodded Reid.
‘Didn’t he give any indication if they’d oppose it?’
‘He said he hadn’t been called by the media but didn’t know if Appleton had, that he hadn’t heard from him. And that they’re having a meeting today, as we are. They’ve received notification of Pullinger’s appointment, as we have.’
‘How’d he sound?’ asked Jordan.
Reid humped his shoulders, frowning. ‘We’re on opposing sides. He didn’t sound like anything. If you mean did we talk in any detail, we didn’t. I made it sound like I was offering a favour, warning him about Pullinger’s possible reaction.’
‘Which I might reinforce,’ said Beckwith, contemplatively. ‘I haven’t informed Bartle I’m filing for dismissal. Pullinger could consider it contempt if either Bartle or Appleton spoke in advance of that hearing, too …’ He smiled around the room. ‘In fact that’s what I will do! Telephone him today and follow it up with a couriered letter he’ll get before today ends.’
‘He’s meeting Appleton today,’ reminded Jordan, unnecessarily. ‘You do it right now you give him the opportunity to warn Appleton off from saying anything.’
Now it was Beckwith who let the seconds build before saying, ‘Thanks for the prompt, Harvey. We’re all of us anxious to button down on publicity. Right now was exactly when I was going to break off to make the call: leave Alyce and you and Bob to maybe have some more coffee, talk among yourselves.’
Fuck you, thought Jordan, refusing the intended intimidation. ‘It’s good to hear we’re all moving in the same direction, Daniel. I’ll pass on more coffee, though.’
As Beckwith left the conference annex Alyce said to her lawyer, ‘How long before we actually get to court? Get to the end of it all?’
‘We get to the end when we get to the end,’ said Reid, clumsily. ‘I’m not going to agree an actual hearing date – I don’t mind how many postponements I get because of Appleton’s awkwardness – because every difficulty he creates is to our advantage with a judge like Pullinger. I let one thing go, because we’re in too much of a hurry –’ he was talking not to his client but directly to Jordan – ‘through impatience and the wish to get everything out of the way as quickly as possible, the more you’re at risk, both of you, of coming out the guilty parties. And like you’ve already told me, Harvey, you’re counting that risk in dollar signs.’
He had to allow the other man some recovery, Jordan decided. ‘Take as much time as is necessary to get it absolutely right.’
‘That’s precisely what I’m going to do,’ insisted Reid. ‘What Dan and I are going to do between us, get everything absolutely right.’
Reid had recovered enough, thought Jordan. To Alyce he said, ‘You living permanently back in Raleigh now?’
‘Mostly. I might stay over a few days here, having come up for this. Check the apartment out. There’s got to be a lot of mail.’
‘I postponed going back to London because of today. I’ll probably go back in a day or two. And I’m sorry about before, that day in Raleigh. I was out of order.’
Her obvious surprise matched that of her lawyer. Alyce said, ‘You already apologized for Raleigh.’
‘Today it’s my idea to do so.’
Alyce smiled, uncertainly. ‘Thank you.’
Daniel Beckwith returned noisily from his outer office, his jacket discarded elsewhere, yellow legal pad notes bunched in either hand. ‘Bartle isn’t seeing Appleton until later this afternoon, so the timing was perfect. He took the point of the call. Several points, in fact. Told me he’d obviously be at the dismissal application, anticipating that he’d be instructed to oppose it.’
‘He mention my call?’ asked Reid.
‘Not a word about it,’ said Beckwith.
‘What impression did you get?’ asked Jordan, inferring that this latest legal exchange had been more productive than that with Reid.
‘That neither he – nor Appleton – had expected you to defend the action,’ replied Beckwith, smiling. ‘I played it for him to come to me. Which he did. He seemed surprised that you were here in New York, that I wasn’t representing you in absentia.’
So surveillance still hadn’t been re-established, Jordan immediately deduced. ‘Is that good or bad?’
‘Good, for us. Opens the door for me to challenge everything that’s claimed against you as well as against Alyce, if my dismissal is rejected and the main hearing proceeds with Leanne Jefferies additionally brought into the action. We don’t actually have an outright defence: you’ve both admitted the adultery. But it strengthens the point – provides the strong mitigation – that Bob hit on in Raleigh, that as far as you were both concerned Alyce’s marriage to Appleton was over.’
Jordan hesitated, his mind on what he’d illegally read in Patrick O’Neill’s report of the Watchdog agency’s failure to find any evidence of Alyce having lovers in Manhattan or Long Island. ‘You know who Appleton’s enquiry agency is?’
‘Still waiting to be told,’ said Reid.
Jordan held out a calming hand towards the North Carolina lawyer. ‘We’re not in competition, remember? But whoever they are they must have been watching Alyce here, in America. And found nothing. Which they would have done, if there was anything to find, judging from the completeness of their observations in France. That’s surely in Alyce’s favour: part of the mitigation even?’
‘I’m not sure it goes as far as the mitigation, but it’s a point I thought we’d already touched on,’ said Reid. ‘Nothing’s going to go unchallenged but there’s a danger in the very word you used – completeness – in what they achieved in France. It’ll be a narrow path to walk. But I’m obviously going to walk it …’ The man paused, looking at the other lawyer. ‘I’m not sure whether it does more harm than good to your case.’
‘Neither am I,’ agreed Beckwith, philosophically. ‘But the rules are the rules. Your primary responsibility is to your client, my primary responsibility is to mine. We both do what we have to do.’
That hadn’t ended up as he’d intended, acknowledged Jordan. There was still more than enough time to improve upon it. He was encouraged at Appleton’s lawyer being wrong-footed by him personally contesting the claims, if indeed Bartle had been wrong-footed; he only had Beckwith’s impressions from one end of a telephone conversation.
The two lawyers had continued talking during Jordan’s reflections, but to all practical purposes they were technically establishing between themselves – although always consulting Alyce and Jordan on their availability – the precedence of prehearing submissions and unfulfilled exchange demands to Bartle to be made individually between the two of them. Twice, when they weren’t part of any discussion, Alyce smiled at Jordan, on the first occasion mouthing ‘thank you’, which Jordan didn’t understand.
It had gone six before they finally broke off, Jordan holding back for Alyce and Reid to leave the building separately and ahead of him. Still in the annex, Beckwith said, ‘I thought everything went very well.’
‘I want everything to go better than very well,’ said Jordan. ‘I want everything to go completely in our favour.’
‘He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,’ accused Reid. ‘Suddenly he’s a trial lawyer!’
‘I told you he was arrogant before you met,’ reminded Beckwith. ‘The points he made were valid, though.’
They were eating in a restaurant in Little Italy, a cavern filled with noise making it difficult for them to hear each other and impossible to be overheard by others.
‘We’d have got it covered,’ insisted Reid.
‘He covered it first,’ said Beckwith. ‘I prefer clients who think for themselves instead of expecting me to do everything for them.’
‘You really think Bartle was surprised at your third-party involvement?’
‘I even thought at one stage he was going to suggest a pretrial consultation between us.’
‘To slim down the claims to an agreed settlement?’ guessed Reid.
‘There’s an argument for doing so. As you said at the meeting, the adultery is admitted.’
‘Do you think Jordan would go for it?’
‘He’s made the point a few times that gamblers don’t gamble. If he got the possibility of millions pared down to a few thousand – but with the guilt legally established – it might appeal to him.’ He gestured towards the other lawyer. ‘You just dropped spaghetti sauce down your tie.’
Reid scrubbed at himself with his napkin. His head still bent he said, ‘That would kind of divide us, wouldn’t it?’
‘And be a clever legal move for Bartle to make.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Nothing. Wait for him to come to me. Like I told you, it’s only my guess.’
‘When are you going to file your dismissal submission?’
‘Tomorrow. Everything’s ready.’
‘So we could get a submission date set as early as next week?’
‘Not if Bartle hasn’t complied with all the exchanges. And we’re still waiting on Leanne Jefferies. I really can’t see why he’s holding back on Appleton’s medical stuff.’
‘Unless it proves Appleton was or is infected.’
‘If it does, Appleton’s case is holed below the waterline,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘It can’t be that simple.’
‘Then why?’ demanded Reid.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Beckwith. ‘When I file for dismissal I’m going to make the point that if I lose the submission I can’t proceed to full hearing until I’ve received everything that’s legally got to be exchanged.’
‘Did you tell Bartle that?’
‘It was when I told him exactly that I thought he was going to offer negotiation.’
‘Maybe you’ve put a fox into the hen coop?’
‘Rather me doing it to him than the reverse, his doing it to us.’
‘You going to mention it to Harvey?’
‘Not unless I get the approach from Bartle. There’s no point until I do.’
‘I’d like to hear, the moment you do. It could affect everything as far as I am concerned.’
‘Of course you’ll know. If it happens …’ Beckwith pointed across the table. ‘You’ve dropped some more sauce.’
Jordan recognized Alyce’s voice the moment he picked up the telephone in his Carlyle suite. ‘Hello,’ he said, in reply to her opening, pleased the curiosity didn’t sound in his voice.
‘I want to say thank you again, for what you did today, said today. A lot of things wouldn’t have been brought out if you hadn’t been there.’
‘Change your lawyer if you’re not happy,’ offered Jordan.
‘He’s the best there is in Raleigh.’
‘Which doesn’t say much for Raleigh.’
‘From being with you in France I wouldn’t have thought you were this ruthless.’
‘This isn’t France and we’re not having an adventure. This is reality with blood on the floor.’
‘I wish it wasn’t,’ Alyce countered.
‘You and me both. How did you know I was here, at the Carlyle?’
‘Bob told me. He showed me your statement, too. Why did you tell me you were an investment banker when you’re not?’
‘I thought it sounded better: more respectable.’
‘We weren’t being respectable.’
Jordan hesitated, considering his reply. ‘And now look where we are.’
‘If you don’t get dismissed from the case I want to take full responsibility in court.’
‘You discussed that with Bob?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think you should? It might screw up the way he’s going to argue your case.’
‘I did use you, to get my own back on Alfred.’
‘And told me as much in France. You didn’t know all this was going to happen.’ He’d have to tell Beckwith what she was saying: offering. It might do more to harm than help his defence, although he couldn’t think how.
‘We’ll see. You going to make the trip back to England?’
‘I think so. You going to stay on here in Manhattan?’
‘I think so. When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know. I shouldn’t need more than a day in London. I can fly back here on the last flight the second night.’
‘I want it all to be over soon.’
‘You said.’
‘You don’t mind my calling?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘I’m sorry you got caught up in everything like this,’ Alyce apologized.
‘You said that, too. More than once.’
‘Take care.’
‘And you. Try to think more about the three years immediately after your husband left Harvard.’
There was a pause from Alyce’s end of the line before she said, ‘You have this number?’
‘No.’
‘You have a pen?’
‘Yes.’
She dictated it and added, ‘Call me when you get back?’
‘I will,’ promised Jordan. He knew from accessing the computers of Appleton and his enquiry agency that they weren’t under surveillance any more, so they didn’t have to bother about their lawyers’ warnings about being together.
Harvey Jordan extended his intended absence from New York by twelve hours, getting back into Manhattan by the middle of the third day. There were three messages waiting for him at his Carlyle suite, which he’d maintained to provide just such a contact point. One was from Daniel Beckwith. The other two were from Alyce. Before responding to any of them Jordan checked his intrusion traps, which were undisturbed, and after that settled before his laptop at the bureau and steadily worked his way through his illegal Trojan Horses, none of which he’d accessed from London, adhering strictly to the unbreakable operational rule never to cast his phishing nets from more than one dedicated computer. He was particularly careful going into the system of Appleton and Drake, alert for any indication that his entry had been picked up on, which there wasn’t. Still preying on the currency trades, he spread almost $22,000 between his five accounts.
From Beckwith’s system Jordan was easily able to infer contact from legal representation of both Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies through the exchanges between his lawyer and Alyce’s, even though they were disjointed and incomplete because the two attorneys were obviously communicating, irritatingly, sometimes by email and on other occasions by telephone. Jordan’s further, even more irritating discovery was that Leanne Jefferies was being represented by Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein, the same firm engaged by Appleton but by a different partner. Leanne’s lawyer was Peter Wolfson, whose name was listed directly below that of Appleton’s attorney, David Bartle, on the company letterhead. Jordan ignored the immediate disappointment, quickly switching to his Trojan Horse stabled in the Brinkmeyer system in his search for electronic correspondence between Wolfson and Bartle. As he’d feard, there wasn’t any.
Jordan finally allowed the frustration to burst over him, physically hot. If Bartle and Wolfson were going to discuss everything between themselves within their own Madison Avenue building, which was clearly and most naturally what they would do, apart from occasional, but so far uninitiated, email contact with either Beckwith or Reid, there was no possibility of him eavesdropping on their thoughts or strategies. Objectively acknowledging his over-expectation, Jordan had still imagined he could sit upon the highest pinnacle overlooking everyone’s manoeuvrings and scrabblings, always to be ahead of every opposing move. What he had – precisely with all his computer entries – was the best spot in the foothills. Still sufficient. Still enough. But only just: not, by any assessment, as complete as he wanted his monitoring to be. But then he hadn’t yet accessed every site open to him. Still hopeful, Jordan followed his well-marked trail into every other hidden observation point in every other invaded computer. But found no further revelations, finally slumping back in the over-padded chair.
He’d hoped for so much more, some closely guarded confidence – confessions or admissions even – between the lawyers and their clients that he could have turned to his advantage. He at least knew things were moving forwards. For the moment, but not much more than a moment, he had to be satisfied.
Jordan was connected at once to Daniel Beckwith, who said, ‘Welcome back! I hear there’s more money in the pot?’
More for my benefit than yours, thought Jordan. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by the quickness with which Lesley Corbin had alerted Beckwith to his visit to Chancery Lane to deposit a further fifty thousand dollars – she was the essential conduit, after all – but he was. ‘I thought it was a good idea. What’s happened here while I was away?’
‘We’ve got our pre-trial submission hearing next Wednesday,’ said the American. ‘We need to meet before then, obviously. And travel down on the Tuesday …’ There was a pause. ‘You want Suzie to make your hotel reservation along with mine? Or do you want to do it yourself? The hotel choice isn’t great.’
Beckwith had been curbed, Jordan recognized. ‘We’ll need to be together in the same hotel. I’d be grateful for Suzie doing it at the same time as she books yours. What other developments have there been?’
‘Leanne is being represented by the same people who are looking after Appleton, although obviously not by the same attorney. She’s contesting Bob’s claim of criminal conversation.’
Why hadn’t he found that on Reid’s computer? wondered Jordan. An official, legal and lengthily argued rebuttal on original court-submitting papers, he guessed; he still thought there would have been some email reference he could have picked up upon. Jordan was discomfited at the possibility of more windows being shut against him. ‘How’s that affect us?’
‘It doesn’t, directly. Her lawyer is a guy named Wolfson, Pete Wolfson. Bob hasn’t yet got their official response, just a phone call telling him they’re opposing it.’
‘What about medical records?’
‘Promised by the week’s end. I’ve already filed for a court order, demanding production in case it doesn’t arrive by then. Even if it does it’ll form part of the record for Pullinger to realize their reluctance.’
‘There doesn’t seem to be any point in our meeting until Friday at the earliest then?’ suggested Jordan.
‘The medical stuff doesn’t directly impact upon our application,’ Beckwith pointed out. ‘We’re not reliant upon it, one way or the other, at this stage.’
‘I want to be as up to date as possible,’ insisted Jordan.
‘You will be,’ assured Beckwith.
He was appearing too anxious again, accepted Jordan. ‘What about media interest?’
‘Increasing,’ replied Beckwith. ‘I got a call from the London Times the day before yesterday. Bob’s hoping to get his closed court hearing next week too, depending upon the length of ours, which technically has to precede what Bob does. I don’t see why we should need more than one day, although Pullinger could reserve judgement. Which shouldn’t stand in Bob’s way, even if Pullinger refuses my submission.’
‘Did The Times have my name?’ demanded Jordan, alarmed.
‘That’s all that’s listed, nothing else that could identify you,’ said Beckwith. ‘I refused to talk about anything: answer any questions.’
‘They must know I’m English to have called in the first place.’
‘Your being English wasn’t the direction of their approach. It was all about the break-up of two of the oldest American colonial families.’
‘They could get the lead from Appleton’s side,’ said Jordan, more to himself than to the other man. He should have warned the London concierge, John Blake. He still could, although not today. It was 8.30 p.m. in England. Blake would have left the building by now. It had to be his first telephone call tomorrow.
‘I warned Bartle about contempt,’ reminded Beckwith.
‘They wouldn’t be risking that, guiding people to me. And I can’t imagine the threat of it restraining British newspapers for a moment.’
‘I can’t do any more than I’ve already done to prevent your identity coming out,’ said the lawyer, the impatience obvious.
Too anxious again, accepted Jordan. ‘Let’s wait until Friday to meet.’
‘You going to be at the Carlyle all the time until then?’
‘All the time,’ promised Jordan.
‘I’ll call you if anything comes up in between. Let’s say eleven on Friday. I’ll have Suzie make plane reservations to Raleigh as well. This time next week we should know where we are.’
‘That’s what I want to know,’ said Jordan. ‘Exactly where we are.’ The light on his telephone console began to flicker, indicating a waiting call.
‘You’re back!’
‘Just walked through the door.’ Jordan instantly knew the voice. ‘I was just going to return your calls.’
‘How was London?’ asked Alyce.
‘I got done what I went there to do.’ Jordan hadn’t expected it to take most of one day to extend the Hans Crescent lease, sort out the query letters held for him at Royston and Jones bank and – a spur of the moment decision, despite what he was now accumulating in the accounts in New York – to withdraw additional funds to deposit with Lesley Corbin, all of which had delayed his return by those twelve hours.
‘You spoken to Dan yet?’
‘A minute or two ago.’ This could so easily have been a casual, how-was-your-trip conversation.
‘So you know Leanne entering a defence?’
He had to ignore the lawyers’ warnings against contact with Alyce, Jordan decided: without being able to intercept any computer correspondence between her and her lawyer she was his only access to her side of the case. Testingly he said, ‘Only that. Dan didn’t go into any detail.’
‘We’re matching every claim Alfred is making against you,’ responded Alyce, without hesitation. ‘And intend inviting the jury to award punitive damages against Leanne Jefferies, as well. Bob sent our detailed claim to her lawyer yesterday; he’s from the same firm representing Alfred, incidentally. Bob thinks that’s a bad move on their part. Could be interpreted that Alfred and Leanne are still involved.’
As this conversation could be interpreted against him and Alyce, Jordan thought. The idea came with that reflection, as well as the awareness that the prompt to Reid had to come from Alyce. He said, ‘The way to bring it out in court would be for Bob to cross-examine her on who was paying for her defence.’
‘Yes it would, wouldn’t it?’ agreed the woman, just as quickly.
From the tone in which she talked Jordan imagined the woman to be smiling. ‘Maybe you should mention it to Bob?’
‘Already decided,’ said Alyce, the smile still in her voice.
‘You back in Raleigh?’
‘Still in Manhattan. I had more to do here than I thought.’
‘The application for my dismissal from the case is being heard next week.’
‘I know. I’m on standby to be a witness in your favour, if necessary.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He had to lead her thinking into telling him everything.
‘I thought I did at the conference in Raleigh; that I would support the application in any way I could?’
‘I hadn’t appreciated it to be as positive as that. I can’t imagine how I could help as far as you are concerned, but you know I’ll be there for you in whatever way I can.’
‘I think you did tell me. But thank you for telling me again.’
‘Let’s do that,’ urged Jordan. ‘Tell each other things at the risk of repetition.’ He had to know everything.
‘I …’ started Alyce but abruptly stopped.
‘What?’ demanded Jordan.
‘Nothing,’ refused Alyce. ‘Newspapers – the media in general – are chasing me. That’s another reason – the main reason, I suppose – for my not going back to Raleigh. They’re watching the estate: virtually camped outside.’
‘But not here in Manhattan?’
‘This is a new address, since I got back from France. What about …?’ Alyce trailed to a halt again.
‘What?’
‘My arm’s getting tired, holding the phone up for so long.’
He needed the continuing conduit, Jordan reminded himself again. ‘Your guy – and mine – insisted we shouldn’t meet unchaperoned.’
‘Which I think is bullshit.’
‘That’s what we’re employing them for – advice.’
‘I still think it’s bullshit. We’re adults, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Looking at a lot of potential problems we don’t want to make any worse.’
‘I shouldn’t have started this.’ The smile had gone from her voice.
‘Nothing’s started.’ He needed her, Jordan recognized. Needed her as a source of information and needed her support if she had to be a witness at the dismissal hearing. And he knew from accessing the Watchdog computer less than an hour ago that neither he nor Alyce remained under any surveillance.
‘Let’s forget it,’ she said, tightly.
‘What were you thinking of?’
‘I don’t know what I was thinking of. It’s not important.’
‘We’re each of us too dependent upon the other to fall out.’
‘Who’s falling out?’
‘It sounds to me like we could be. The first time I made the mistake and I apologized, twice.’
‘It just seems so … I don’t know … childish I guess, that we can’t talk to each other properly.’ Now the impatience had gone.
‘It would be better if you came here, somewhere public, and we had dinner very publicly in the restaurant, rather than me coming to your apartment.’
‘I wasn’t inviting you to my apartment.’
‘Then my suggestion works. I’ll make a reservation and be waiting for you in the lobby … say seven, seven thirty.’
There was a brief silence from the other end of the line before Alyce said, ‘I’ll be there at seven.’
There’d be a minimal insurance in telling Daniel Beckwith, Jordan supposed. But not tonight. Afterwards.
Alyce Appleton came into the hotel lobby precisely at seven with the self-assurance of someone who knew her rightful place in such moneyed surroundings; an impression that had come to Jordan in France but which he had forgotten until now. She saw him at once – which he’d intended, unlike the initial subterfuge at the Carlton – and continued on without pause, her face opening into a smile as she reached him. The blonde hair was loose and he saw at once that the diamond ring had been discarded, as well as the wedding ring. The shawl over one shoulder matched the blue of her skirt and made the perfect contrast against the paler sweater and Jordan was conscious of the looks that followed her, from women as well as men.
She said, ‘Hi. Quite like old times, meeting in hotels again!’
‘Not quite the same, though,’ qualified Jordan, surprised by the lightness.
‘Perhaps not,’ she agreed, falling into step as he led towards the bar. She chose mineral water to his martini. As they touched glasses she said, ‘You want to know a secret?’
‘As many as there are to know,’ Jordan said, meaning it.
‘I almost chickened out at the last minute, about coming tonight. I actually went back from the corridor into my apartment, to think.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
Alyce shrugged. ‘This is my call, isn’t it, us meeting like grown-ups? I thought about what we discussed on the phone, about Alfred and Leanne still being together.’
‘Are they?’ pounced Jordan, at once. ‘Have Bob’s enquiry people come up with something?’
She shrugged again. ‘I mean about what you said, about their both being represented by the same firm. Bob hasn’t told me anything of what his detectives have discovered. That’s what they are, aren’t they? Detectives?’
‘I guess,’ dismissed Jordan, disinterested in an immaterial definition; he knew from his earlier exploration of Reid’s computer that there had been no email contact from any enquiry agency. ‘But you changed your mind again and now you’re here.’
‘And I’m glad. What happened in France was wonderful and what’s happened since is total, awful shit and I like the idea of our being able to behave for a couple of hours as normal people – as friends, most definitely not lovers – and now we’ve got it out of the way I want to stop talking about it. There!’
‘Very positive,’ judged Jordan.
‘I used to be once, before I married Alfred. He took me over. Mr Svengali.’
‘I didn’t get the impression of you being beaten into submission in France.’
‘In France I’d escaped. I was free. It was a good feeling. One I hadn’t known for far too long. Not since …’
Jordan waited and when she didn’t continue said, ‘Not since when?’
Alyce shook her head. ‘France really was wonderful. Immediately before that, back here, I’d actually tried therapy, imagining it was my fault everything had gone wrong with the marriage. This is beginning to sound just like one of those therapy sessions, without the couch and with more noise. I don’t want to talk about it any more, OK?’
No it’s not OK, thought Jordan, disappointed. He said, ‘OK. Why don’t we eat?’
He’d personally chosen a corner banquette table at which they could sit side by side but separated at its apex, looking out over the dining room. She deferred to him choosing the wine, as he had in France, and restricted herself to two glasses, again as she had in France. He accepted her suggestion of the Chesapeake soft shelled crabs and they shared a Chateaubriand. Jordan cut short Alyce’s renewed apology for him becoming involved in the divorce action and they agreed that neither was looking forward to the following week’s court hearings.
‘Who’s ever heard of an affair being described as a criminal conversation, for Christ’s sake!’ exclaimed Alyce. ‘It must date from the time we burned witches.’
‘Everyone in North Carolina has heard of it, apparently,’ replied Jordan, ignoring the rhetoric. ‘And I agree it’s unbelievable that laws like it still exist in the United States of America … exist anywhere that imagines itself to be halfway civilized. Our problem is that there’s nothing we can do about it except go with the system, as half-assed as it is.’
‘Does Dan really think he can get you dismissed from the case?’
‘I guess he wouldn’t be trying if he thought it would be a total waste of time.’
‘When are you going down to Raleigh?’
‘Somewhen over the weekend, I suppose. I’ve agreed to Dan making the arrangements. You?’
‘The same, I guess. You know where you’re staying?’
Jordan shook his head. ‘Dan says there isn’t a wide choice.’
‘There isn’t. I’m glad I changed my mind tonight and came after all. It reminds me a lot of France.’
‘But for the differences we’ve already agreed.’
‘But for the differences we’ve already agreed,’ she echoed, smiling. ‘That reminds me of France, too. Saying the same things to each other.’
‘No doubt whatsoever?’ queried Jordan, although he accepted there couldn’t be from what Daniel Beckwith had just told him.
‘Read it for yourself,’ suggested Beckwith, pushing the venerealogist’s report across the desk.
Jordan did, twice. Looking back up to the lawyer he said, ‘So how did Alyce, who says I was her only other sexual partner apart from her husband, contract chlamydia?’
‘That’s what I asked Bob, before you got here this morning. And what he’s going to ask her.’
‘What else did he say?’
‘That Alyce is thirty-one years old and if she’s only ever had two lovers so far she’s the next in line to the Virgin Mary.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘Bob wasn’t trying to be funny. He’s one big pissed off attorney.’
‘Alyce lied: is lying,’ decided Jordan, the awareness spreading through him. He hadn’t learned anything from the Carlyle dinner, making it a waste of time, but he’d had that time to waste and he’d enjoyed being with her – and talking to her again the following day when she’d telephoned to thank him – and now he knew she’d been treating him like a fool – treating all of them like fools.
‘She’s got to be lying, hasn’t she?’ said Beckwith. ‘It’s knocked Bob’s case to hell and back. He’d just read Leanne Jefferies’ medical report when I spoke to him this morning. She’s clean, too.’
‘I met her this week,’ suddenly declared Jordan, knowing that it was essential that he did. ‘The same day that I got back from London. We had dinner together.’
‘You met Leanne Jefferies?’ frowned Beckwith, confused.
‘Alyce,’ corrected Jordan. ‘She called me after I spoke to you that morning. Called it childish that we shouldn’t meet. You should know.’
‘You’re damned right I should know!’ erupted the lawyer, his face colouring. ‘We told you, Bob and I, that you shouldn’t be together without one of us being there as well. Why the fuck …?’
‘It did seem childish that we couldn’t meet, like two normal people,’ said Jordan, defensively. ‘We had dinner, talked …’
‘Stop right there, right now!’ ordered Beckwith, his face redder with anger, holding up a hand. ‘Did you sleep with her?’
‘No, I didn’t sleep with her!’
‘You sure?’
‘What the fuck do you mean, am I sure! Of course I’m sure! How could I not be sure?’
‘I want it all … what you ate, what you drank, who you saw or who might have seen you, every single thing you said and talked about to each other … every fucking thing you did!’
‘Let’s work your questioning backwards,’ insisted Jordan, refusing the returning intimidation. ‘We didn’t fuck. The conversation came down to reminiscences, of France, apart from Alyce telling me that during their marriage Appleton psychologically controlled her. We would have been seen, by the hotel CCTV, always in public places. We had one drink, in the bar – she drank water, I had one martini – we ate soft shelled crabs and steak, with a vintage Chateau Margaux. I got the concierge to call her a cab and personally put her into it, all of which should be shown on the CCTV and confirmed by the hotel staff. We weren’t alone or out of sight for a minute and we can prove it. OK?’
‘No, not OK,’ rejected Beckwith, stridently. ‘You were told, both of you, not to get together in any way or circumstance that could be construed that your relationship was ongoing. Whether you considered that advice childish or stupid doesn’t come into any calculation or thinking. It doesn’t matter a damn what you think or whether or not you agree with that advice. That’s what you’re paying a whole bunch of money for me to provide and why you’re stupid, if you choose to ignore it. We know now – and the court is going to know – that Alyce has lied. And the court is also going to know – because I’ve got to tell them to avoid being made to look a jerk if I don’t tell them and there’s even more photos of you and Alyce in a hugger-mugger hotel setting – that you’re still seeing each other. Which totally fucks my plan of insisting next week that there is no continuing relationship, that you’re not trying to alienate Alyce’s affections and that you’re not engaging in every definition of criminal conversation, according to the relevant North Carolina statute …’ The man paused, breathless.
Recovering, he said, ‘I don’t think I’ve missed any of the important points of how well you’ve done blowing your defence to a multi-million-dollar damages claim right out of the water, do you, Harv? You think I’ve overlooked something, why don’t you tell me?’
‘It’s Harvey. My name is Harvey, not Harv.’
‘At this precise moment you name is cunt-of-the-month. Alyce Appleton has a string through your nose ring and you could end up a very poor man.’
‘Leanne Jefferies’ attorney is from the same firm representing Appleton,’ argued Jordan, weakly. ‘Doesn’t that indicate they’re still together?’
Beckwith sat staring across the table at Jordan, unspeaking, until finally Jordan said, exasperated, ‘What?’
‘Let me ask you what. What the fuck has that got to do with anything? It’s nothing whatsoever to do with you, with us, with our case. If Appleton is still fucking Leanne’s brains out that’s for Bob to prove and get Leanne to pay for, for her criminal conversations. I’m trying to get you off the hook and you’ve stuffed it right up your own ass. You know what I’d like to do right now? I’d like to withdraw from this case and from representing you. I think you’ve put me into a no-win situation and I’m a win person, not the other way round.’
‘So why don’t you withdraw?’
‘Because if I did I’d render you unrepresentable by any other attorney, which would leave you swinging in the wind, and I’ve got more integrity than that. I’ll go on doing my absolute and very best and you’ll pay through the nose for every second that I’m doing it. Until today trying to help you was damage minimization. Now it’s damage limitation, with whatever minimization I can work in as a bonus.’
‘I suppose I should thank you.’
‘I’ve had more than a gutful of what you suppose and I couldn’t give a bag of rotting shit for your gratitude. I’ll have to tell Bob about your tryst, obviously. Now we’ll have to go down to Raleigh tomorrow, give ourselves as much time as possible to see what he’s going to do and re-assemble my submission …’ The lawyer hesitated, halted by an afterthought. ‘You got any more hand-holding assignations planned with Alyce, the forgetful virgin?’
‘No. And we didn’t hold hands. Or anything else.’
‘Good,’ said Beckwith. ‘And don’t, not ever again.’
There was a palpable tension between the three of them in Reid’s office annex on that deserted Saturday. Dividing them, on Reid’s desk, were the finally supplied medical reports on Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies, as well as covering letters and copies of the woman’s rebuttals to Alyce’s criminal conversation damages claim. There were, also for the first time, photographs of Appleton’s supposedly brief mistress. Jordan was not surprised that, although older by six years, Leanne closely resembled Alyce in appearance and physique, confirming the adage that men always chose lovers that reminded them of their wives.
Reid gestured towards the documentation and said, ‘So there it all is, as far as my cases are concerned. A heap of shit.’
‘Not helped by continuing cosy hotel meetings between you and Alyce,’ came in Beckwith, whose criticism of Jordan’s Carlyle dinner with Alyce had concluded the review meeting in advance of the forthcoming court hearings. They’d flown down on the first available flight and this time there hadn’t been any tourist detours, just a fifteen-minute delay booking into the Hilton hotel. Reid had alerted them that Appleton intended to stay at the Sheraton during the hearing.
‘Let’s right now get some of that unnecessary shit out of the way to concentrate on what’s really important,’ demanded Jordan. ‘I don’t see and won’t concede that Alyce and I having had an innocent dinner, before or after which nothing occurred to resume our affair, could be any great big deal. Neither do I see the necessity to volunteer it to the court. I volunteered it to you so you wouldn’t be caught out. Neither of you will be under oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth if this goes the whole way. I will be. Alyce will be. If it gets brought out, it gets brought out. Let’s deal with it then. I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t meet her as I did and I still don’t. And I don’t – and won’t – believe either of you haven’t sat on your hands in the past about something you knew but didn’t want to come out in court and therefore didn’t say anything about. You both still with me?’
‘And wish I wasn’t,’ said Reid.
‘I’m not your immediate problem,’ insisted Jordan, waving his hand towards the separating desk and what was on it. ‘Those medical reports are your immediate problem. What does Alyce say about them?’
Both lawyers had fixed expressions on their faces, but only Beckwith was visibly flushed.
‘What she’s said from the beginning,’ replied the heavily breathing Reid. ‘That she’s only had sexual relationships with her husband and with you. Which has—’
‘OK,’ stopped Jordan. ‘So what do your enquiry people say? I know you’re employing them, because you’ve told me. What you haven’t told me is anything that they’ve so far discovered to help, in any way whatsoever. Appleton’s people failed to find any proof of Alyce’s cheating, until France. At the moment your opposition snoops are doing more for you than your own people are doing for you, don’t you agree?’
‘I’ve no reason nor cause to defend those I’m employing,’ rejected Reid, awkwardly. ‘But as you’ve raised it again I certainly intend bringing out Appleton’s failure to discover any lover other than you.’ The man looked sideways, to the other lawyer. ‘But I don’t intend mentioning the Carlyle dinner. Alyce hasn’t told me about it; you have. We’re co-operating for mutual benefit, not disadvantage, and at this precise moment I don’t need any more disadvantages than I’ve already got.’
‘I’m listening to what everyone’s saying,’ assured Beckwith, dully. ‘Maybe I won’t volunteer the Carlyle episode either. But can we establish here and now – ’ he turned to include Reid – ’and you get the specific undertaking from Alyce, that there’s no more social meeting, not even if the Pope is in the same room with you. I don’t care if you think it’s a childish insistence, or whether Alyce thinks it’s a childish insistence, or what the fuck either of you think about the divorce statutes of North Carolina. Like it or not, they are the statutes, the rules, by which you’re being judged.’
‘I think we went through this yesterday, in New York,’ dismissed Jordan.
‘And before yesterday in New York we very specifically went through it down here in Raleigh. And you – and she – ignored the advice,’ persisted Beckwith. ‘It happens again, I’m definitely withdrawing.’
This time Jordan didn’t respond with the direct challenge of the previous day.
Instead, he said, ‘So what about the most immediate problem?’
Turning again to the other lawyer, Beckwith said, ‘To get Harvey dismissed I’m obviously going to have to call Alyce on Wednesday. And hit her as hard as is necessary to prove she’s both promiscuous as well as being prepared to lie.’
‘I’ve already told her that – told her the impossible position these medical reports put her in,’ said Reid. ‘I thought it was the way to get an admission about who else she slept with and who gave her the infection.’
‘What did she say?’ asked Jordan, disregarding any professional protocol. There was an incongruity – yet another nagging inconsistency – hovering in Jordan’s mind but it wouldn’t harden into a positive thought.
‘I already told you,’ snapped Reid. ‘She insists there’s only ever been two men, her husband and you.’
‘She can’t maintain that in court, confronted with this medical evidence,’ said Beckwith.
‘I told her that, too. And late last night I heard from Wolfson. He’s filed for Leanne’s dismissal; he told me he’s subpoenaing Alyce. He’s obviously going to use Leanne’s medical report.’
‘I think your client’s going to be massacred,’ said Beckwith, unsympathetically.
‘I think so, too,’ agreed Reid.
‘Isn’t it your job to prevent that happening?’ demanded Jordan.
‘The moment she tells me the truth I’ll start trying,’ said Reid, just as belligerently.
‘You’ve got two days to persuade her,’ Beckwith told the other lawyer. ‘Until you do convince her your case isn’t worth a bucket of piss.’
‘It still won’t be, even if she does change her story,’ said Reid.
‘You’ve got three days,’ corrected Jordan. ‘She told me at the hotel she was coming down this weekend, which gives you tomorrow, Sunday, to talk to her if she’s already arrived.’
Reid looked casually at his watch. ‘Maybe I’ll give her a call when we’re through.’
The man was giving up before any fight began, looking for a mitigating escape, just as he was, Jordan decided. ‘What about the Carlyle meeting? If you both decide not to mention it in court, unless she or I are directly challenged, you’d better tell her not to say anything about it either, hadn’t you?’
‘I’m definitely not going to mention it now,’ confirmed Beckwith, talking not to Jordan but to Reid. ‘You’d better do what Harvey suggests.’
‘Of course I’ll warn her!’ said Reid, irascibly.
‘What about those missing three years after Appleton’s graduation?’ pressed Jordan, already knowing there was no computer correspondence between the lawyer and any enquiry agency, although accepting that it all could have been done by written letters, formal reports and telephone calls. He began concentrating upon what lay on the separating table. As nothing there was directly linked to him he didn’t have the automatic legal right to copies of his own. Reid had only paraphrased everything, not offering facts he could study and memorize in detail. All he could make out were the different names of the supplying venerealo-gists and their different addresses, both of which were in Boston.
‘What the hell good is anything that long ago going to provide?’ demanded Reid, repeating his earlier objection.
‘You won’t know until you find out, and from where I’m sitting you don’t seem particularly anxious to find out.’
‘I don’t need to share these conferences with you!’ retorted Reid. ‘Get out!’
‘You sure you don’t?’ said Jordan, not moving from his chair. ‘The way I recall it I’ve so far thrown most of the positive ideas into the pot.’
‘You know fuck all!’ erupted Reid.
‘Which is what you’re complaining about, knowing fuck all,’ said Jordan. ‘Maybe you need to change the direction of your enquiries as well as changing the people you appoint to make them for you.’
‘And maybe you need to do what I’ve just told you and get the hell out of my office and my building!’ said Reid. ‘We’re through, all three of us!’
That night the local television station finally broke the story of the divorce between the thirty-one-year-old member of one of North Carolina’s earliest settler dynasties and that of the scion of one of the founding New England families. As well as still photographs of both Alyce and Appleton – two from their wedding – there was archival TV footage of Appleton competing in yacht races off Long Island and at the Cowes Week regatta in England’s Isle of Wight. The story was based upon a court submission to be made in the coming week on behalf of a cited co-respondent in Alfred Appleton’s case against his wife, alleging criminal conversations. Harvey Jordan was mentioned by name but there were no photographs.
Jordan waited until after seven in the expectation that Daniel Beckwith might make contact but decided against calling the lawyer’s room in the floor above, wanting an uninterrupted evening. He ordered dinner from room service, glad his photograph hadn’t appeared on television, reminding himself to call John Blake again at the Marylebone apartment block the following day, to check once more about media approaches. Glad, too, that he’d brought with him the laptop and all the copied correspondence to which he was entitled, in addition to the names and Boston addresses he’d memorized that afternoon in Reid’s office. He didn’t know, but he guessed he was going to need it all to satisfy whatever it was that was nagging in his mind.
Reid had promised it was the best seafood restaurant in Raleigh, one that he didn’t know from when he’d practised there, but Beckwith had been disappointed. He was uncomfortable, too, that the local lawyer was already on his third gin martini, very dry and straight up, without any diluting ice. Beckwith was still on his first.
‘You should dump the motherfucker now,’ insisted Reid. ‘He’s so fucking smart, what’s he need a qualified lawyer for!’ The man had pushed his lobster aside, scarcely touched.
‘You fully up to speed to argue against Leanne’s dismissal?’
‘I will be by the time it gets before Pullinger.’
‘Jordan’s a pain in the ass and I suppose I should apologize for today as he’s my client, but nothing much – nothing that seriously contradicts or undermines anything Appleton’s filed against Alyce – seems to have been turned up.’
‘Tell me anything better that your guys have found!’ demanded the other man, with drunken truculence.
‘The cases are different,’ Beckwith pointed out. ‘All I’ve got to argue with is North Carolina law … and unfortunately the morals of your client, now that we’ve got all the test reports. We’re admitting the adultery. We didn’t have any alternative.’
‘I’m going to speak with the enquiry agents on Monday. Put a burr up their ass. And seeing Alyce tomorrow. How the hell can I prepare any sort of a defence – a case – until she starts being straight with me! She’s the plaintiff who initiated the divorce proceedings, for Christ’s sake!’
Reid gestured with his empty martini glass for a refill. When the waiter responded the man looked enquiringly at Beckwith who ordered Chardonnay, a glass, not a bottle.
Beckwith said, ‘You don’t have enough time, if Wolfson gets his hearing at the end of the coming week. Even if she comes straight tomorrow there’s still whatever might come out under my cross-examination on Wednesday which you’ll have to go through with her all over again. You need to apply for a delay; it was a sharp move for Wolfson to file for dismissal right on the back of my application.’
‘You think you’ll get judgement in your favour?’
Beckwith accepted his wine from the returning waiter, reflectively cupping the glass between both hands to consider the question. ‘Depends what I can bring out from Alyce. Now we’ve got the medical proof that Appleton and Leanne can’t have been the cause of Alyce’s infection, my strategy has got to be that Alyce entrapped Harvey as the fall guy, intending to name him herself to cover up for her unknown lover, whoever the hell he is. Or they are. But didn’t have to, because of the entrapment Appleton already had in place for her. Before the medical clearances, I reckoned my chances of dismissal were less than fifty percent, thirty tops. Now I’m still only giving myself fifty percent, with a son of a bitch like Judge Herbert D Pullinger.’
‘Everything depends on what Alyce says. Or doesn’t say,’ said Reid, more maudlin than reflective.
‘What time are you seeing her?’
‘We fixed ten.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. We could brunch somewhere after you’ve met with her?’
‘I’ll call.’
Harvey Jordan continued to be troubled by the uncertainty that came to him during the acrimonious – and therefore distracting – meeting with the two lawyers, and still hadn’t resolved it by the time he finished the uninteresting room service meal, which he abandoned half-eaten and pushed on its delivery trolley out into the corridor to give himself as much space as possible for what he intended to do, regretting, along with a lot of other things, not having asked Suzie to book a suite. Changing to one was his first priority on an already long list for the following day.
Daniel Beckwith’s courtroom ability remained worringly untested, although Jordan was hopeful. He wasn’t at all hopeful about Robert Reid, whom he suspected to have taken Alyce Appleton’s case more for its inherent benefit to his reputation for representing such a prestigious North Carolina family than trying too hard contesting an incontestable case in an American state governed by archaic divorce statutes. And Jordan’s concern for Alyce wasn’t at all altruistic. It was, as always, to save himself. Which was why he needed – as Harvey Jordan always needed – to know everything with which he might be challenged before any challenge occurred.
Whatever was nagging him from that afternoon’s encounter had to have some connection with something that had preceded it. But what? He had first to examine the official, printed-out and accusing material, Jordan decided. After that, he’d go through all the illegally accrued correspondence from each and every carefully collated source from all his invaded computers. After that Jordan wasn’t sure where else he would look or explore, apart, as always, his burgeoning Appleton bank accounts. And by then he didn’t expect to still be as unsure as he was, because by then he would have found the elusive inconsistency. If he didn’t find it the first time he’d have to go back – and back again – until he did.
Harvey Jordan was a necessarily methodical, analytical man and decided to begin his search in reverse, setting out in sections upon his bed all that he’d memorized from what had been haphazardly strewn over Reid’s desk, and continued moving backwards through all the court papers with which he had been formally supplied, right back to the original stultifying, stomach-wrenching opening letter from David Bartle at Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein informing him of his being cited as co- respondent in a financial damages-seeking divorce action. There was far more material than he’d anticipated and, aware that repeated reading of already familiar material could result in self-hypnotic oversights, Jordan further sub-divided his already separated divisions. He then settled unhurriedly to read. He did so, totally concentrated and without pause for an hour, at the end of which he’d failed to isolate any incongruity or anomaly.
Irritated, because he was sure the key to what he wanted had to be somewhere in there, Jordan started all over again, creating further sub-divisions until virtually all of the bed space was occupied. And still he found nothing, this time after searching for another full two hours.
Jordan allowed himself a contemplative break, moving from the uncleared bed to his laptop, scrolling through every downloaded exchange from every invaded computer. He was well into the initial correspondence between Daniel Beckwith in Manhattan and Lesley Corbin in London, insisting upon the first venereal examinations by the avaricious Dr James Preston when the long-sought answer began to formulate in Jordan’s mind. He forced his cramped body up from his chair to walk stiffly to the bed display, still not able to be completely sure because all he’d been able to memorize that afternoon were the names and addresses of the Boston examiners, not their specific findings or conclusions.
But they were very definitely set out in the results of his own, second examination in New York by George Abrahams. This convinced Jordan that he was taking the right path. Just as he remembered now – and didn’t have the slightest doubt whatsoever – that despite their detailed discussion about the medical findings, there had been no reference to anything Reid had done – or rather hadn’t done – to get any medical or autopsy result analysis on Sharon Borowski to ascertain if she might have been a chlamydia sufferer.
Jordan only realized the time had gone midnight when he saw it on his own watch as he reached out for the telephone, halting the move to pick it up to ring Beckwith on the floor above. The fact that the following day – or this day, to be precise – was Sunday didn’t preclude his hacking into the computers of the two Boston venerealogists to counteract the still hovering uncertainty. His challenge would be far more effective – unchallengable in return – if he could prove what he could only so far suspect.
Jordan guessed the following day was going to be even more fractious than the one that had just passed. And didn’t give a fuck. Reid probably would, though. And Beckwith. He’d funded his five New York banks from the accounts of Appleton and Drake that morning and didn’t expect there to be anything he hadn’t already read to have been added over the weekend, so he decided the long postponed revisit could wait until the following day.
He was glad he did, because what Harvey Jordan found when he logged on soon after 6 a.m. on the Sunday morning he regarded as another auspcious beginning to the day. In the correspondence attached to his five accounts he found three separate loan offers, the largest – from the Bank of America – up to a maximum of $10,000. In total, the loan offers, each of which he intended accepting, came to $24,000, which, added to what he’d accumulated from his daily withdrawals from Appleton and Drake’s account, came just short of $72,000. Keeping that day’s transfers to each of the five below $4,000 – and sub-dividing those to avoid them appearing even as large as that – Jordan increased the pot to $83,000, realizing that he had to return as soon as possible to New York to withdraw cash for his safe deposits again to avoid him exceeding the money-reporting limit. By the time he did, he expected loan offers from the two outstanding banks.
By 7.30 a.m. Jordan had obtained the computer addresses of the two Boston clinics. The specialist who had attested that Alfred Appleton was free of any venereal infection was Mark Chapman, whose clinic was on Boylston Street. Leanne Jefferies’ consultant, Jane Lewell, practised on Haymarket Square, on the opposite side of the common. Both had personally dedicated laptops. Jordan set out to embed his Trojan Horses again through his undetected Australian cut-out, ensuring any recorded trace of his entry would be wiped out by leaving an erasing virus activated the moment the main frames of both clinics were booted up on the Monday morning. It took Jordan almost three full hours to hack past the protective firewalls – a second immediately confronted him after he picked his way through the first – into Chapman’s personal and dedicated desk top. Jordan presumed the double barrier was to ensure patient confidentiality, which he was determined it wouldn’t, but it still surprised – and mildly irritated – him that it was more difficult to get into the doctors’ records than it had been to penetrate the other systems.
Jordan’s patience was rewarded just after ten with the opening up on his screen of the detailed procedures and examinations Appleton had undergone for the preparation of Chapman’s report. It coincided to the minute by the jarring ring of Jordan’s phone. Jordan hesitated, momentarily tempted to ignore it, before picking it up.
‘I had dinner with Bob last night,’ announced Beckwith.
‘And?’ prompted Jordan.
‘I wish it had been more productive,’ Beckwith allowed.
‘I think he’s ineffective and inefficient,’ judged Jordan.
‘I told you the medical stuff knocked his case from under him.’
‘What’s he doing about it?’
‘Seeing Alyce …’ The lawyer paused ‘Just about now, in fact.’
‘Not with you?’
‘She’s his client, not mine. We’re co-operating, that’s all.’
‘You must be thrilled with all the stuff you’re getting from him,’ mocked Jordan.
‘We might be meeting later, brunch maybe, depending on what he gets from her.’
‘“We” meaning you and I or “we” meaning you and Reid?’
‘Bob and me. He’s still pretty sore about the way you spoke to him.’
‘I would have thought he’d be used to being spoken to like that by now,’ dismissed Jordan. ‘I might need to speak to you later.’
‘What about?’
‘I’m still sorting through stuff,’ avoided Jordan. ‘Did you actually see – read – those medical reports on Appleton and the woman?’
‘Yes. Why?
‘I’m curious about something.’
‘You off playing amateur lawyer again?’ demanded Beckwith, although without any irritation.
‘Just curious,’ repeated Jordan. Hurrying on to avoid any further questioning he said, ‘And I’m changing rooms. This one is too small. I’ll leave a message with the new number when I get it, if you’re not around.’
‘And I’ll call you, when I get back from seeing Bob. If I see Bob. If I don’t maybe we could lunch?’
‘Let’s keep in touch,’ agreed Jordan. Now he was actually in to Appleton’s records he could well be through by lunchtime.
Jordan used his own written report from George Abrahams as a rough template to check against the findings from Appleton’s consultation, his disappointment growing as the two appeared – according to his layman’s understanding – to match, with the exception of their haematology groupings, Jordan’s being O, Appleton’s A. Patiently Jordan went through Chapman’s examination a second time, alert for anything he might have missed on his first reading, and again finished with the same understanding. It did not take Jordan as long to break into Dr Lewell’s computer at her Haymarket Square clinic. At first reading her examination of Leanne Jefferies appeared the same as Appleton’s, with the exception of her blood group being AB. Jordan went through it a second time, once more using Abraham’s report for a comparison and once more achieved what appeared to be a match. As an afterthought he went through both comparing them to what Dr Preston had supplied in England, with the same result.
There was a disparity. Jordan was sure of it: sure that he just wasn’t seeing it. But what? He’d only been able to get the briefest look at both reports on Reid’s desk, too fleeting – and too distant – to absorb beyond the more prominently printed names and addresses of the two venerealogists. But with Abrahams’ document spread out directly in front of him Jordan’s impression was that his own report was actually longer than those of either Dr Chapman or Dr Lewell.
There was an obvious reason for the apparent differences, Jordan realized. His own completed and signed findings weren’t comparable precisely because those for Appleton and Jefferies weren’t completed and signed: what he’d read on his phishing visit into the computers of Appleton and Leanne’s doctors were still in note form, not assembled into dictated documents. He’d wasted his time, Jordan acknowledged. All three sets of information seemed factually comparable but he needed the presentations of the opposing venerealogists to decide the diagnoses reached from them, not just the results of various tests.
Despite it being well past noon and therefore obvious that Beckwith and Reid had met, Jordan still called his lawyer’s room, but got no reply. He was given the choice of three suites and chose the largest, transferring everything and resetting his entry traps. He left a message with the suite number, as well as the fact that he was lunching in the hotel coffee shop, which turned out to be unnecessary because the table he was allocated had a perfect view of the entrance through which a returning Daniel Beckwith would come.
The scrod, with a side salad, was hugely better than his previous night’s dinner, which proved the undeniable hotel lore that a hotel restaurant was always better than room service. He still had something far more important to prove and hoped Beckwith wouldn’t be too long getting back.
Something else he couldn’t understand had just occurred to him.
‘The bitch wouldn’t budge,’ declared Reid. ‘I had her read both medical reports and explained every which way that it made her denials of any other affairs completely untenable, but she wouldn’t change her story by as much as this!’ He held up his hand with his forefinger and thumb too close together to show any intervening daylight. The Bloody Mary he had in his other hand was his first, and still only half-drunk, and Beckwith was glad.
‘Did you tell her I’d cross-examine her as hard as I could?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Didn’t that worry her?’
Reid shook his head. ‘She said she didn’t care how tough you were. That she was telling the truth and that was that. And that the judge and jury could make up their minds whether to believe her or not.’
‘Which they won’t.’
‘Of course they won’t! They’ll decide she’s promiscuous and that Harvey was one of many—’
‘Which I might capitalize on,’ broke in Beckwith, as the opportunity opened up to him. ‘If Alyce is a serial adulteress Harvey was just that, one of many who shouldn’t be made to pay for all the others.’ He sipped his own Bloody Mary, enjoying the drink and the abruptly occurring possibility.
‘It’s a dangerous argument,’ warned the other lawyer. ‘It’ll still cost him.’
‘But not as much as it might fighting every damned claim head on. This way I get to show that Harvey didn’t alienate any affection: that a lot of other unknowns did before him. OK, Harvey screwed her but he isn’t the marriage wrecker.’
‘If Pullinger finds in your favour that takes Leanne off the financial hook. And gives Appleton the petition, too.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Beckwith.
‘What little I can, which is very little indeed,’ said Reid. ‘Argue mitigation, in view of Appleton’s admitted adultery. That’s all I’ve got.’
‘What about Wolfson’s submission for Leanne’s dismissal?’
‘You’re right that I should seek a postponement,’ conceded Reid. ‘It’ll be too close behind yours and there’s no way of anticipating how much blood there’s going to be on the carpet when you’re through. I’ll enter the postponement application tomorrow.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘More time for preparation, in view of the lateness of their medical production.’
‘What if Pullinger demands details?
‘The medical stuff was late.’
‘And left you with nothing.’
‘And left me with practically nothing,’ agreed Reid. ‘You ever regret becoming a lawyer?’
‘Every time I lose,’ said Beckwith. ‘It doesn’t last.’
‘This time it will,’ said Reid. ‘This was my big one.’
‘It still will be.’
‘But for all the wrong reasons.’
‘You want another drink?’ invited Beckwith, his own glass empty.
‘It didn’t help yesterday and it won’t help today,’ refused Reid. ‘I already feel like shit without any outside help.’
‘She’s sticking to her story,’ Beckwith told Jordan. ‘It loses the case for her but gives us a hell of a good mitigation argument that’ll reduce any damages if Pullinger won’t dismiss you from the case altogether.’
It was 4 p.m., Jordan saw, glad of the extra time he’d had to prepare his explanation to his lawyer without disclosing his computer hacking. ‘Is Bob still with you?’
There was a momentary silence from the other end of the line. ‘No. Why? Didn’t you hear what I just said?’
‘I heard what you just said,’ assured Jordan, impatiently. ‘Did you actually read the results of Appleton and Leanne’s chlamydia consultations? Remember enough for a word for word comparison with what Abrahams supplied about me?’
‘What the fuck are we talking about now, Harvey?’
‘Did you?’
‘You’re not making a whole lot of sense,’ protested the lawyer.
‘Please answer what I’m asking you.’
‘Bob offered them to me, as I already told you. And I glanced at them. But no, I couldn’t quote either of them, word for word.’
‘I wasn’t given them to read: Bob paraphrased,’ Jordan pointed out.
‘They’re nothing to do with your part of the case.’
‘They were lying on Bob’s desk. And they were much shorter than what Dr Abrahams supplied in my case.’
‘Because I told him I wanted every detail that could possibly arise or be challenged. That’s what I’m trying to do: prevent you stumbling into a bear trap … which I think I now can, because of Alyce’s denials. Leave it, for Christ’s sake!’
‘According to the depositions, Appleton ended his relationship with Leanne Jefferies when, seven, eight, nine months ago?’ persisted Jordan, coming to his prepared reason for talking about the chlamydia reports.
‘I don’t have the papers before me. Eight, I guess. I can check, from the stuff I’ve brought down with me.’
‘And Leanne lives in Manhattan, right?’
‘I told you, I don’t have the papers before me: everything’s in my briefcases. You want me to look it up?’
‘I already have, from what’s been made available to me. Her apartment’s on East 106 Street.’
‘We soon going to get to wherever it is you’re heading, Harvey?’
‘Why does Leanne Jefferies, who lives in apartment 38b, 3200 East 106 Street, Manhattan, and who hasn’t had any relationship for eight months with Alfred Appleton, go all the way up to Haymarket Square, Boston – where the Appleton’s are one of the most respected of founding families – to undergo a medical examination to establish her sexual cleanliness?’
The silence this time from Beckwith’s end of the telephone was much longer than before. Finally the lawyer conceded: ‘I don’t know.’
‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea for someone to ask her, preferably in court? And for us to compare everything Abrahams said about me with what their specialists wrote about Appleton and Leanne?’
‘I’ll call Bob at home, now. Arrange a meeting for tomorrow.’
Harvey Jordan isolated the discrepancy within fifteen minutes, which was hardly surprising as he was the only one among the three of them to have studied the entire and detailed computer notes of Dr Mark Chapman and Dr Jane Lewell and knew his own venerealogist’s assessment practically verbatim.
‘Antigens!’ declared Jordan, straightening up from his comparison of the court-presenting dossiers of the three American doctors. The fourth, prepared by the English specialist, James Preston, was also on the table, although to one side and not part of the main comparison.
‘What?’ demanded Beckwith.
‘Antigens,’ repeated Jordan, isolating the reference in George Abrahams’ deposition, copies of which were before both lawyers to compare against those on Appleton and Leanne Jefferies, which were also in front of them. ‘And doesn’t that turn everything on its head!’
‘It might if we understood what in God’s name you were talking about,’ complained Reid.
Beckwith had warned Jordan of Reid’s overnight resentment – initially rejecting outright the suggestion of another meeting between them – at the possibility of Jordan’s further criticism, and there’d been a discernible hostility during the half an hour they’d already spent together. Uncaring, Jordan insisted, ‘See the mention, in what Abrahams wrote …?’ His finger traced the passage.
‘I’m there,’ confirmed Beckwith.
Reid nodded, without speaking.
‘Now, go on,’ urged Jordan, quoting, ‘“The patient’s blood, which is group O, was subjected to further, microbiological haematological examination to establish the presence, if any, of chlamydia antigens, which would have remained present if the patient had suffered the venereal infection but undergone successful antibiotic curative treatment. There was a complete absence of chlamydia antigens, which confirms the patient, Harvey Jordan, had never been a sufferer …’” He looked up, inviting a reaction.
None came from either lawyer, both of whom were moving between the three separate papers. He had to be careful not to give any indication of having seen the case notes, Jordan reminded himself. He said, ‘There’s no reference in the reports, from either Appleton or Leanne’s specialists, of antigens. Or of an examination of their blood to look for them. Appleton’s says: “haematological examination found no evidence of the chlamydia bacteria in the patient’s A blood grouping.” Leanne’s specialist says: “The patient’s blood, which is of the AB type, was completely clear of any chlamydia infection.” But there’s no indication of any microbiological tests to prove that neither Appleton nor Leanne didn’t have antigens in their blood, which would be the medical proof that they never suffered from it.’
Beckwith came up from his frowned comparison, his face clearing. ‘You’re right! Their depositions only prove that Appleton and Leanne are clear now!’
‘And it does turn everything on its head,’ agreed the finally smiling Reid. ‘The most important being that Alyce could be telling the truth after all.’
Beckwith wasn’t smiling, though. To Jordan he said, ‘You did well, picking up on the omission. Well for Alyce. But not so well for yourself. If Alyce hasn’t been sleeping around the defence I intended against your criminal conversation claims goes out the window.’
‘Does it?’ demanded Jordan. ‘What about what else we’ve already talked about this morning comparing the depositions, which were so late being delivered that you, Bob, think they’re grounds for a postponement? Aren’t you a tad curious that Leanne’s medical report was prepared by a Boston venerealogist, not one far more conveniently located in Manhattan? I am.’
The two lawyers looked at each other before Reid picked up the English deposition. ‘Your guy Preston didn’t list antigens clearance, either.’
‘Preston was anything but my guy: he was little more than a medical fraudster whose professional opinion – inadmissible in an American court anyway – was so inadequate that I had the second tests here, by Abrahams,’ refuted Jordan.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Beckwith, talking to Jordan. ‘If Pullinger thinks, has the vaguest suspicion even, that something is being withheld from him – which isn’t taking it as far as him thinking that he’s being lied to – we’re throwing the party.’
‘How we going to do this?’ demanded Reid, the resentment – and resistance – finally going. ‘These – ’ he lifted and let drop the Boston depositions – ‘are part of my case, not yours. A stickler to the rules like Pullinger won’t let you introduce them into your submissions.’
‘Not a problem,’ assured Beckwith. ‘There’s no North Carolina rule against our co-operating, is there?’
Reid considered the question. ‘None, as far as I’m aware. I need to check.’
‘You’ve got a day and a half to do that: and for us to work out a way around it if what I want to do is barred. A day and a half as well to chase up all the other outstanding queries to be answered by your enquiry people,’ said Beckwith, pointedly not looking at Jordan. ‘I want to hit Appleton as hard as I can, first time. It could determine the outcome of everything, your case as well as mine. We’d all of us be home free.’
Reid did look towards Jordan, but still without any animosity. ‘Thank you. You’ve put in a lot of work: more than any client should do; be required to do.’
‘I want to keep my hands on my money,’ said Jordan, meaning it.
‘And I want to say I appreciate it,’ said Reid. ‘Alyce should, too.’
‘You got a side office here that I could use?’ Beckwith cut across the apologies, talking to the other lawyer. ‘I need to call a lot of people. And go through a lot of law books I don’t have down here with me.’
‘You can take your pick of whatever you want,’ offered Reid.
‘Who’s going to talk to Alyce, tell her she’s no longer facing an inquisition?’ asked Jordan.
‘I am,’ said Reid. ‘I was pretty tough on her yesterday.’
‘Let’s not get too confident,’ cautioned Beckwith. ‘I still need to call her as my witness on Wednesday. And I won’t have her holding back on me.’
‘I’m not going to tell her that all her problems are over,’ assured Reid.
‘That’s good, because they’re not, for any of us. Not yet.’ said Beckwith.
Beckwith seemed passingly bemused by Jordan’s announcment that he was returning to New York during the intervening thirty-six hours but didn’t ask why, instead warning Jordan to be back in Raleigh in more than good enough time to be in court for the opening of the submission application. Jordan caught the first flight that morning, which got him into Manhattan before ten. He didn’t go directly to the Carlyle but detoured instead to West 72nd Street, where the three expected loan applications were waiting, as well as another from the Chase Manhattan, also with an initial $10,000 maximum. Finally at the hotel Jordan completed all four and hand delivered each along Wall Street, at each stop completing forms for the monthly repayments to be directly debited against the account. At each he also withdrew money from every account to spread between his various safe-deposit boxes. At all five banks he was greeted effusively but without any curiosity or suspicion by the managers with whom he’d opened the accounts. Back once more at the hotel Jordan spent a long time painstakingly going through every outlet at Appleton and Drake – concentrating upon the accountancy and financial control divisions – for any indication of his embezzlement having been discovered. And found nothing. He completed the visit by distributing a further $15,000, for the first time moving from the company’s currency division section to metals.
His most essential tasks completed, Jordan settled down to bring himself up to date from each of his other illegal entries, going first to his own lawyer, still in Raleigh, and found no additional material. He did better with Reid. There was contact, timed three hours earlier, with an enquiry agency named DDK Investigations. In it Reid complained at the lack of progress to a man identified as Jack Doyle in any of the enquiries they had previously discussed by telephone. In the email Reid repeated everything to which he wanted an urgent response. The reason for Appleton’s withdrawal from the America’s Cup selection and the three-year gap after Appleton’s graduation from Harvard topped the list.
Beckwith was not at the Raleigh hotel when Jordan first telephoned, but picked up the phone on Jordan’s second attempt, just before nine. It had been a hell of a day, apologized the lawyer. He wouldn’t know until tomorrow if George Abrahams could get to Raleigh for the Wednesday hearing to appear as an expert witness; if the venerealogist couldn’t re-arrange his diary Beckwith might ask for a postponement. He’d warned the court he didn’t expect to conclude his dismissal submission in one day and that there was a possibility of it even extending to three. He’d advised the lawyers appearing for Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies that sections of their depositions were likely to be questioned, suggesting that Drs Chapman and Lewell be put on standby to be called as witnesses. Beckwith had then been cautioned by Pullinger’s court clerk that the judge was extremely intolerant of his sittings being disrupted by what he considered time-wasting and inappropriate presentations.
‘Which there’s every likelihood of Pullinger deciding from my calling so many witnesses,’ concluded Beckwith.
‘What about Alyce?’ questioned Jordan, intentionally switching the discussion.
‘Bob told me she can hardly wait to confront Appleton in court.’
‘Let’s hope she’s not disappointed.’
‘Let’s hope none of us is disappointed,’ said the lawyer, heavily. ‘When are you getting back?’
‘The plane’s scheduled for three tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Let’s meet in the bar at six.’
The plane was on time, which gave Jordan more than an hour to move that day’s tranche of money into his banks, as well as again checking through the financial control and monitoring division to ensure he remained undetected.
Jordan was in the bar, waiting, when Beckwith arrived, in jeans, workshirt and cowboy boots. The lawyer ordered a martini – ‘because I think we’ve got cause for a celebration’ – and led Jordan to a table out of the hearing of anyone else in the room.
George Abrahams had re-arranged his diary and was arriving on the first Wednesday morning flight, the lawyer reported; a room had been reserved for Abrahams at their hotel for the Wednesday night as a precaution against the submission not being completed in one day. There had also been further telephone calls from the lawyers representing Appleton and Leanne confirming their attendance but without any indication whether their venerealogists would accompany them. If they didn’t, Beckwith said, he might apply for an adjournment, depending upon how his application went, primarily – although it was essential he cross-examine both specialists – to irritate Judge Pullinger at the other side’s prevarication. He’d arranged with court officials – as Reid had for Alyce – for them both to enter the court precincts through back access points, hopefully to prevent them being pictured by the expected TV cameramen and media photographers: there’d been several telephone approaches during the day from New York and local journalists, even though, as Beckwith’s application was pre-trial, it was automatically to be heard in camera. That would give him the opportunity to pressure the other side with unspecified challenges and potential revelations into applying for the eventual full hearing to be private. Reid was attending, as was his legal right, as an observing attorney because Alyce was listed as a witness, and in any case intended applying for a closed court if the submission wasn’t made on behalf of either Appleton or Leanne.
‘I think we’ve got them running scared,’ said Beckwith. ‘I can’t remember a lot of times when I could have dropped everything to confront an unspecified, out-of-town court challenge like the other side’s lawyers have done here. Neither can Bob.’
‘You’re talking lawyers appearing,’ said Jordan. ‘What about Appleton and Leanne being here personally?’
‘We won’t know that until tomorrow, when the court convenes. If either were my clients I’d keep them away.’
‘Could you call them, as witnesses, if they do turn up?’
‘I haven’t officially listed them. If they do show I could apply for Pullinger’s discretion. Which I might well do, even on a minor point. There’d obviously and very definitely be a legal argument which I’m sure I could use to move Pullinger into our favour.’
‘What are our chances of a complete dismissal?’ demanded Jordan, bluntly.
‘I’ve been through this with Bob,’ said Beckwith.
‘I want you to go through it with me!’
‘Slightly less than fifty percent. Which, as a gambler, you’ve got to accept as pretty good odds.’
For the briefest of seconds Jordan was disorientated by the reminder of how he was supposed to make his living. ‘I try for better.’
‘I can’t offer you anything better.’
It was a desultory dinner between two people brought together beneath the same roof who had already talked out all there was to discuss, each striving for conversation until the very end, when Beckwith suddenly said, ‘To use an expression that you’re more familiar with than me, we could be on the home straight here. I don’t want any surprises, OK?’
‘What’s that mean?’ demanded Jordan, genuinely bewildered.
‘You haven’t had any contact with Alyce, not since that night in New York?’
‘You know I haven’t.’
‘I don’t know you haven’t. That’s why I’m asking you.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘Not even by telephone.’
‘No.’
‘You’ll be on a witness stand tomorrow, on oath. I don’t want any outbursts.’
‘If there was going to be an outburst – if I didn’t have the anger locked away – I’d have already shouted you down for what you’ve just asked me about Alyce.’
‘Bob thinks you’re carrying a torch for her.’
‘After the mess she’s got me into! You’ve got to be joking! Bob Reid’s talking through his ass.’
‘There’s too much in what you’ve just said for me to handle all at one time,’ ended Beckwith, getting up from the table. ‘Breakfast tomorrow at eight, OK?’