Twenty-One

Having steadfastly and successfully avoided any criminal proceedings so far in his life, Harvey Jordan had prepared himself for an understandable uncertainty at actually entering a court for the first time and was pleased – as well as relieved – that none came. On their way from the hotel Beckwith had talked expansively of courts being theatres in which people – lawyers particularly – performed but that wasn’t Jordan’s most positive impression, although he conceded that there could be some comparisons. There was certainly a formidable cast being assembled, their fixed expressions befitting impending drama.

As the appellants on that initial day, Jordan and his lawyer had the first table to the left of the court, just inside the separating rail. Directly behind that rail, in the public section, was George Abrahams, with whom Beckwith was at that moment hunched in head-bent, muttered conversation. The width of the entry gate through the rail separated Jordan from the position of Alfred Appleton and his lawyer, David Bartle. Beyond them, at another table, were Leanne Jefferies and Peter Wolfson. Behind the rail, on the right of the court, were a group of motionless, silent people among whom Jordan presumed to be the Boston venerealogists. Half turned in their direction as he was Jordan was instantly aware of the entry into the court of Alyce, Reid attentively at her arm. Alyce wore a neutral coloured, tailored suit and very little make-up and came through the court and the final gate looking directly ahead, to take her place at the separate table beside Jordan’s, on the far left of the court. As she finally sat Alyce looked at Jordan. But not as far as the opposite side of the court to her husband and his lover. Jordan smiled. Alyce didn’t, turning away.

Reid leaned towards Jordan and said, ‘You get in OK, avoiding the photographers?’

‘I think so. You?’

‘I’m sure we did.’

‘Alyce OK?’

‘It’s the first time she’s been near Appleton since it all began. She’s a mess.’

‘Tell her it’s OK.’ What on earth did that mean? Jordan wondered, as he said it. Alyce looked very pale.

‘I have already. She thought she’d be all right. She’s not.’

Beckwith returned through the gate and asked Jordan, ‘What was that about?’

‘Alyce is nervous.’

‘So am I,’ said Beckwith, jerking his head back towards the public area. ‘We’ve got a hell of a point to make. Choosing the moment to make it is the problem.’

‘What the …? started Jordan, to be overridden by the loudly demanded, ‘All rise!’

If this were theatre then Judge Hubert Pullinger was already wearing his costume for the role, thought Jordan, as the man upon whom so much depended entered the court. Pullinger’s raven-black gown hung shapelessly around a stick-thin, desiccated frame, an appearance denied by the scurrying quickness of his movements. The head came forward, though, when he sat, reminding Jordan of a carnivorous hunting bird, complete with the disease-whitened face Jordan remembered from a television documentary on vultures, ripped off flesh hanging from its beak. Halfway through the court clerk’s official litany identifying the hearing there was an impatient, head twitch towards Beckwith, an appropriately bird-like pecking gesture.

Beckwith hesitated until the clerk’s recitation ended before rising, with matching, head-nodding deference, to name himself, his client, and his purpose in making his application under the provisions of statute Section 1-52(5) of the North Carolina civil code.

‘Which I do, your honour, with some difficulty and trepidation,’ Beckwith added.

The pause was perfectly timed to allow Pullinger’s interception. ‘Both of which problems I can understand from having read the advanced case papers,’ said the man. The voice was not bird-like, but surprisingly strong from such a dried-out body.

‘Papers in which, in my submission, some of the facts are incomplete and because of which I am seeking the leniency of the court properly to provide,’ picked up Beckwith, no satisfaction at his timing in his voice.

‘This is a procedural hearing, on behalf of your client, for dismissal as I understand it of both the claims for alienation of affections and for criminal conversations,’ interrupted the judge, yet again. ‘Should I not hear and consider your applications before being asked to show leniency?’

Jordan’s concentration was more towards the right of the court than to the judge, at once alert to the half smiled, head-together exchange between Appleton and his lawyer to the judge’s persistent intercessions. Jordan acknowledged that despite the impression he’d earlier formed from photographs of the man, he had totally misjudged Appleton’s size and appearance. Appleton seemed much taller than the stated six foot three inches, the fleshy stature heightened by his overall, clothes-stretching heaviness. There was no longer anything of the sportsman Appleton had once been. The weight, oddly, appeared to bunch at his shoulders and neck, pushing his head forward, actually bison-like, over a belly bulged beneath a double breasted jacket opened to release its constraint and enable the man to sit, legs splayed, again for comfort. His face was red, mottled by what Jordan guessed to be blood pressure, the fading hair receded far more than it had seemed in the photographs. The marked difference in their appearance dictated that he restrict to the absolute minimum his personal visits to the banks in which he had opened accounts in Appleton’s name, Jordan reminded himself.

The smiling, head-nodding David Bartle was a large man, too, although physically overwhelmed by his client. Bartle had the sun weathered face indicating that he, too, might have been a yachtsman, the colour emphasized by an unruly mop of prematurely white, unrestrained hair. It was not as long as Beckwith’s but it appeared to be because Beckwith had his held at the nape of his neck by a securing band. Apart from the restrained hair there was nothing of the Wild West imagery, either. Beckwith wore a conservatively striped suit, shoes and a striped club tie beneath the collar of a crisp white shirt.

There was a similar, although more subdued, reaction to the judge’s pressure from the furthermost table to the right of the court, at which Leanne Jefferies and her lawyer sat heads also tightly together. As close as she now was to him Jordan decided that the apparent similarity between Leanne and Alyce was misleading to the point of there being no resemblance at all, limited to the blondness of their hair colouring and the style in which both wore it. Leanne was much sharper featured and could not have risked the minimal make-up with which Alyce succeeded. Leanne wore a powdered base and darkly shadowed eye mascara and the redness of the lipstick was close to being too harsh: the woman looked every day of her five years seniority over Alyce, the age Jordan knew the woman to be from his sessions with Reid.

‘I fear I am inadequately expressing myself, your honour, for which I apologize most profusely,’ said Beckwith, without the slightest indication of apology in his voice. ‘The leniency I seek is not out of the expected sequence that would normally govern a dismissal submission?’

‘Why should I be expected to agree to any such course!’ Pullinger broke in once more and Jordan decided that his mental analogy of a constantly pecking, flesh ripping vulture was an apposite one.

‘To prevent yourself and this court, even at this early stage, progressing further with such preliminary evidence which is, in my contention, inadequate, and risks being misleading unless now addressed and which, if not addressed, seriously endangers the arguments I intend making on behalf of my client …’ Beckwith’s pause was clearly timed as an invitation for another interruption, which this time didn’t come, creating the silence that hung in the court like the belated rebuke that Jordan was sure Beckwith intended. There were no longer any satisfied expressions from the tables on the other side of the court, either.

‘Mr Beckwith?’ prompted Pullinger, finally.

‘Your honour, I seek your guidance,’ said Beckwith, refusing to expand, and Jordan felt a frisson of alarm that his lawyer was pushing his false humility too far, a concern that was almost immediately confirmed by Pullinger’s further silence.

Breaking it, as he had to do, Pullinger said, ‘Are you moving towards inviting this court to find impropriety, Mr Beckwith?’

‘I am asking this court to allow me to proceed in a way different from a normal submission of its type,’ avoided Beckwith, adeptly.

Pullinger went to the opposite side of his court. ‘Mr Bartle? Can you help me with this set of circumstances?’

The now serious-faced Bartle was on his feet before Pullinger finished the question. ‘Your honour, I am at as much a loss as I fear you are. I have not the slightest idea to what counsel is referring or alluding. Because of which I formally ask for the court’s protection.’

‘Mr Wolfson?’ switched the judge.

‘I am equally at as much of a loss as my colleague, your honour, and ask as anxiously as he for the protection of the court,’ responded Wolfson. He was a small man compared to those immediately adjacent to him, with a moustache and Van Dyke beard so immaculately trimmed that both looked artificially stuck to his lip and chin, furthering Beckwith’s earlier theatrical comparison.

Looking between the two lawyers, the judge said, ‘I give both of you the guarantee of such protection –’ coming around to Beckwith as he spoke – ‘and warn you, Mr Beckwith, of the irritation of this same court if the allowance you request emerges in any way whatsoever to be a frivolous manoeuvre.’

‘I am grateful for such an allowance, your honour,’ responded Beckwith, who had remained standing throughout the exchanges.

‘Remain extremely careful, Mr Beckwith,’ repeated the emaciated man. ‘Extremely careful indeed.’

‘Which is precisely what I hope you will find I am being at the end of this consideration,’ said Beckwith.

Jordan thought, Shut the fuck up! Don’t gloat at having got what you wanted.

Dr Abrahams was at the rail gate before Beckwith completed the summons, not needing the prompt from the usher to complete the oath. The man was equally well prepared listing his qualifications, but Beckwith stopped him halfway through the recital, taking him back to identify in full every acronym, particularly Abrahams’ qualification as a veneralogist. That established, Beckwith went with the man’s impatience to record the length of his experience and the extent of his microbiological specialization.

‘Qualified as you are as a microbiologist also means that you are equally qualified and practised as a serologist?’

‘It does,’ replied Abrahams, in his clipped, formal manner.

‘For the benefit of the laymen among us in the court, what is serology?’

There was the vaguest sigh from the man. ‘Technically the study of serum. In practise the study of the blood to identify bacteria and viruses, in effect, identifying antibodies and antigens prevalent in communicable diseases and infections.’

‘Continuing in laymen’s terms, infections caused by bacteria?’

‘Not always, but predominantly.’

‘Virally created infections?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are antibodies? And antigens?’

‘Bodies that form in the blood to resist a toxin.’

‘Formed how? By what?’

‘I am sure the court is fascinated by this expedition into the mysteries of microbiology and serology,’ broke in Bartle, noisily grating back his chair as he stood. ‘But is there to be a practical point to emerge from this dissertation?’

‘A question that was beginning to exercise my mind,’ said the judge. ‘Mr Beckwith?’

‘A very practical and relevant point indeed, your honour,’ responded Beckwith, at once. ‘It is to establish the importance of the …’ The pause was intentional, a verbal marker as all the man’s other theatrical hesitations had been. ‘… omissions to which I wish to draw the court’s attention.’

‘My patience is limited, Mr Beckwith,’ reminded the judge.

‘And will not be stretched much further,’ promised Beckwith. Going back to Abrahams the lawyer said, ‘You were about to help the court with an explanation of antibodies and antigens.’

‘Both are traceably formed – created – within the blood by a patient’s natural immunity or resistance to a disease or infection, as well as by the induced resistance of antibiotics,’ said Abrahams.

There was a lot of movement now – sufficient to attract the judge’s frowned attention – between the two lawyers to the right of the court and the people directly behind them, Bartle finally getting up from where he sat to lean over the rail for closer consultation.

As aware of the activity as Jordan, Beckwith stopped his examination, looking between the animated groups and the judge and said, ‘Your honour, does the court require a recess here?’

‘I do not intend a recess but I might very well require an explanation,’ said the judge.

Bartle turned, startled, back into the court, standing fully. ‘I apologize if I have caused the court inconvenience, your honour.’

‘You have and it will not be tolerated again,’ snapped Pullinger, the redness of his irritation pricking out on his bloodless cheeks. ‘Any more than I will tolerate ill-prepared cases being prematurely brought before me or much more deviation from expected presentations. You will precede, Mr Beckwith, with the limitations of my patience in the forefront of your mind.’

‘Dr Abrahams,’ resumed Beckwith. ‘If an infection is resisted – defeated – by natural immunity or medication, do such antibodies or antigens remain traceable within a patient’s blood?’

‘For a time,’ replied the doctor. ‘That length of time depends, understandably, upon the type of infection or disease and the treatment to defeat it.’

‘Let us come to sexually transmitted diseases and infections,’ invited Beckwith.

For the first time the lawyer’s pause was for breath, not to tempt the judge’s impatience but Pullinger seized it. ‘Not a moment too soon, Mr Beckwith.’

‘Observing, as always, your honour’s guidance,’ responded Beckwith, just as swiftly. To the doctor the lawyer continued, ‘You have extensive experience of the identification and treatment of sexually transmitted disease, do you not, Dr Abrahams?’

‘I do.’

‘Is the manifestation of antibodies and antigens that you have described applicable in sexually transmitted diseases?’

‘Yes.’

‘In syphilis?’

‘Yes.’

‘In gonorrhoea?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about chlamydia or to use its more accurate clinical name, Chlamydia trachomatis?’

‘Yes.’

‘Within the last month you examined the man I represent in court today, Harvey William Jordan, for venereal infection, specifically Chlamydia trachomatis, did you not?’

‘I did. I also extended that examination to include syphilis and gonorrhoea.’

‘Can you describe, as simply as possible for the court’s benefit, how you conducted those examinations?’

‘I took invasive urogenital swabs, as well as those from the throat and rectum. I also took blood and urine samples.’

‘What were your findings?’

‘Negative, to every test for every possible infection.’

‘Specifically in the case of chlamydia, the tests are clinically referred to as polymerase chain reaction, PCP, or ligase chain reaction, LCR, a sensitive detection method for chlamydia DNA?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which were negative?’

‘Your expert witness has already attested to that,’ came in Pullinger.

‘I am anxious that there should be no doubt whatsoever of the findings, your honour,’ said Beckwith.

‘You have established that to my satisfaction, Mr Beckwith. I am still waiting to discover the other point you have promised me.’

‘Dr Abrahams,’ returned Beckwith, ‘had my client, Harvey Jordan, suffered any venereal infection that required medical treatment would the antibodies or antigens resulting from that treatment have been evident in his blood, even though he had been successfully cured by treatment from a doctor or specialist other than yourself of which you had been unaware.’

‘Yes, in the case of syphilis and HIV, possibly in the case of chlamydia’

‘Were there any such antibodies or antigens?

‘No.’

‘What is the irrefutable medical conclusions from the absence of any antibodies or antigens from the blood of Harvey Jordan?’

‘That he has never suffered or contracted a venereal infection.’

‘Which is very specifically spelled out and made clear in Dr Abrahams’ medical report already supplied to this court!’ exploded the now very visibly flushed Mr Justice Pullinger.

‘But not in any other medical report laid before this court, those of Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies, both of which were delayed until the very last possible moment for presentation before your honour,’ Beckwith pointed out, finally sitting beside Jordan.

Pullinger did recess the court, from which Bartle and Wolfson hurried out, trailed by their respective clients and the two venerealogists. Beckwith went through the rail for another, although brief, consultation with Abrahams.

Reid crossed from his table when Beckwith returned and said, ‘That was brilliant.’

‘I was flying by the seat of my pants from the conversation I had with Dr Abrahams,’ admitted Beckwith.

‘Even more brilliant,’ insisted Reid.

‘I’d only heard of Pullinger by reputation,’ said Beckwith. ‘I didn’t imagine he’d really be such a son of a bitch.’

‘You think there’s something to be found in the medical reports of the other side?’ prodded Jordan.

‘That’s the way Abrahams told me to go,’ said Beckwith. ‘I’m going to press as hard as I can to find out.’

‘And I’m going to risk trying an application about Sharon Borowski: as many applications as I can, while I think Pullinger will be favouring us,’ disclosed Reid. ‘If he slaps me down, he slaps me down.’

Jordan saw that Alyce was still staring straight ahead, ignoring everybody. When he pushed his chair back Beckwith said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Stretch my legs. Say hello to Alyce. No reason why I shouldn’t, now that we’re in court, is there?’

Beckwith shrugged.

Reid said, ‘Keep it brief.’

Alyce didn’t look in his direction as Jordan approached and there was a hesitation even when he reached her table and said, ‘Hi!’

‘Hello.’

‘How are you?’

‘Hating every moment of it! I was looking forward to it – facing him down – but now I’m here I feel … ashamed, I suppose. We had to sneak in … There were television cameras … It was awful.’

‘Did they get photographs of you?’

‘Bob doesn’t think so.’ She looked across at the two remaining lawyers. ‘What’s going on … I don’t understand what Dan is doing?’

‘The medical reports on your husband and the woman are incomplete.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It could, quiet a lot,’ said Jordan, carefully.

‘Is it to do with what Bob said about you?’

‘What did Bob say about me?’ said Jordan, only just keeping the demand out of his voice.

‘That you were clever and that you’d found something that helped me … about what I was telling him.’

‘It could be. Let’s see how the rest of the day goes.’

‘I don’t want to see how the rest of the day goes. I want to run away and hide and not come out for a long time.’

‘That’s …’ started Jordan but stopped.

‘That’s what?’

Jordan’s first thought had been to describe it as childish. Instead he said, ‘Giving up, with no reason to give up.’ His mind butterflying beyond his conversation with Alyce, Jordan thought it was difficult to conceive how someone like her could have gone to bed – had grunting on top of her – someone as heavy and animal-like as the man he’d just seen for the first time in court. Beckwith and Reid were properly listening to what he said now – despising him as well for being a smartass and he didn’t give a damn about that – and he’d go on pushing if he had to until what he’d read, but obviously not expertly understood, from the venereal case notes of Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies was explained. But what if the case notes didn’t mean anything? Everything would rebound back upon them. Like Beckwith, Jordan hadn’t believed that the judge could be such a cantankerous old bastard.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Who?’ said Jordan, momentarily lost in his own thoughts.

‘The woman he fucked, Leanne?’

‘I don’t believe you haven’t looked at her!’

‘I haven’t looked … don’t want to look.’

Jordan still didn’t believe her. ‘Much older than she really is, compared to you. Doesn’t compare at all – as well – with you …’

‘Perhaps she does things I wouldn’t.’

‘After France I can’t imagine what that might have been.’

Alyce shook her head, dismissing the memory. ‘I’m going to ask Bob if it’s absolutely necessary for me to be in court.’

‘Would that be a good idea?’

‘That’s what I want. Why shouldn’t it be all right?’

‘It could look to the judge – and the jury, when it’s eventually convened – as if you’re the guiltier party. Which you aren’t.’

‘I don’t care what it looks like.’

‘Don’t you care who’s proved to be guilty: if you’re branded as the slut that he’s trying to make you out to be?’

‘Not really.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘I don’t care what you …’

‘Believe?’ Jordan finished for her.

‘I don’t want us to fight.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Then let’s not.’

Jordan turned at the sound of Reid’s returning approach and saw that two of the men who had remained beyond the rail behind Appleton’s table were starring at him and Alyce. When Reid reached his table the lawyer said, ‘I told you to keep it brief.’

‘Why don’t you worry more about the strain on Alyce than our simply talking together!’ said Jordan, aware as he spoke of the opposition entourage re-entering the court.

‘I fear there has been created the possibility of a severe misunderstanding which I wish –’ Bartle turned to indicate the next table – ‘as well as my colleague, Mr Wolfson wishes, to make clear I am most anxious to correct—’

‘And which I am even more anxious to have explained to me,’ predictably broke in Pullinger.

‘It is fortunate, your honour, that present in this court today are the two medical experts who conducted the required examinations upon my client and that of Ms Leanne Jefferies, who is enjoined in this matter.’

‘How did that come about, that they should be present?’ persisted the judge.

Bartle lowered his head, not immediately replying, which Jordan decided to be in frustration at the constant intrusion. Beside him he saw Beckwith was scribbling a soldiers’ battalion of exclamation marks on his yellow legal pad.

‘I was obliged, as was my fellow attorney, Mr Wolfson, to have been alerted prior to today’s hearing by Mr Beckwith that there was some disparity between the required medical assessments.’

‘You had the evidence of Mr Beckwith’s expert witness in your required pre-hearing presentations,’ reminded Pullinger. ‘Why weren’t the omissions from your side corrected before today, so that this whole matter could have been resolved without the time-wasting disruption to which it has been subjected?’

Bartle turned pointedly to where Beckwith sat. ‘I regret, your honour, that neither myself nor Mr Wolfson were specifically advised what the challenge was going to be. Had we been, then this court would not have been caused the delay to which you are quiet rightly drawing attention. My request, sir – with which my colleague, Mr Wolfson, is in full agreement, to prevent any further delay in the proceedings – is that this session be adjourned until tomorrow to enable the apparent discrepancies to be rectified, with our deep and respectful apologies.’

Pullinger kept the lawyer standing for what seemed to be an age in the completely hushed court, irritably waving the man back into his seat when the uncertain Wolfson made as if to get to his feet, imagining that the judged wanted a supporting request.

Instead Pullinger turned to where Jordan sat with his lawyer and said, ‘Mr Beckwith?’

‘I am, as always, at your honour’s disposal and would not seek any further to delay the progress of my submission or anything else that might be brought before the court,’ said Beckwith. ‘But I would draw your honour’s attention to the fact that had the omission not been brought to your honour’s early attention this entire case might have proceeded with insufficient evidence at the court’s disposal, which I am sure you would deplore. A re-presentation of the medical reports will, I hope, rectify that problem, but I would respectfully request that your honour gives me the opportunity, upon such re-presentation, to explore the matter further if those re-presentations are applicable to the submission that I have not yet had the opportunity to pursue.’

‘I certainly will wish to examine most carefully what is provided to this court tomorrow,’ said Pullinger. ‘And give you now the undertaking that you will be allowed to do the same, as all three expert witnesses are present in court and as it is my wish that they so remain until the court decides otherwise.’ The vulture’s head swivelled. ‘I expect to be provided by 9 a.m. tomorrow with the redrafted medical report upon your client, Mr Bartle, and yours, Mr Wolfson. And I will say, at this point, that I will not tolerate another single instance of expected court protocol being inadequately complied with.’

‘It wouldn’t have been right for me to have interceded,’ declared Reid. ‘You’d won the point, hands down. If I had tried to add on more applications it would have defused everything.’

‘I know. Thank you,’ said Beckwith.

They’d gathered in Reid’s Raleigh office, after the local lawyer had smuggled Alyce out of the court and into a waiting car.

‘I will do, tomorrow, if it all goes well,’ persisted Reid, defensively.

‘You did the right thing,’ assured Beckwith. ‘I said I’m grateful.’

‘Any trouble getting Alyce away?’ asked Jordan.

‘I don’t think so. I didn’t see any cameras.’ Reid nodded to his telephone console. ‘There’ve been four or five media enquiries, asking me to call back. I’m not sure that I will.’

‘Alyce told me she doesn’t want to be in court,’ said Jordan.

Reid’s face tightened, irritably, at Jordan’s awareness. ‘She told me the same thing. She wants the judge to excuse her.’

‘You going to go to Pullinger with that?’ asked Beckwith.

‘Certainly not before the case has even properly started,’ said Reid.

‘I don’t think it would be a wise application to make at any stage,’ said Beckwith.

‘You think she’s up to it: sitting through everything that’s going to be said, all the details likely to come out?’ asked Jordan.

Reid shrugged, uncertainly. ‘Apparently there’s a lot of family pressure building up, disgrace and shame to the established dynasty, that sort of shit.’

‘Being excused court, to which I can’t imagine Pullinger agreeing in the first place, isn’t going to help, is it?’ said Beckwith. ‘Alyce is involved in a divorce action, simple as that. She’s got to hope you get Pullinger’s agreement to a closed hearing. That’ll give her the best protection she can hope for.’

‘And each day she’s got to scuttle about like a cornered animal to avoid being photographed,’ said Jordan.

‘Harvey! The media have got enough stock photographs of Alyce to open a picture gallery. If Bob gets a closed hearing the media pressure will relax after a couple of days and she’ll settle down to the reality of what she’s in and that’ll be that.’

‘Medical reports are the focus of the moment,’ said Jordan, looking between the two lawyers but stopping at Reid. ‘You’ve still got to get Pullinger’s order to try to get those of Sharon Borowski. Why can’t you get a doctor’s request for Alyce to be excused on the grounds of mental and physical stress?’

‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ protested Beckwith, loudly. ‘Where the fuck are we going here? You appointing yourself Alyce’s champion, defending her against all the woes of a collapsed marriage in which you are very much the exposed defendant! You’re still in the shit right up to your chin and if what we started today doesn’t work out in our favour, sinking down even further. Let’s you and I worry about you and me and let Bob worry about Alyce and the reputation of her famous family, OK?’

‘She doesn’t deserve to have to go through all this!’ insisted Jordan. ‘Did you look at Appleton today? See what he looked like!’

‘We haven’t sat through all the evidence yet: don’t know what Alyce deserves or doesn’t deserve to go through,’ refused Beckwith. ‘You’ve got to come back on course – on board – to why and how you’re here, what it could cost you and has already cost you and worry about your own ass, nobody else’s. Not even an ass as cute as Alyce’s. You hearing what I’m telling you, Harvey? Or are you going soft on me?’

Jesus Harry Christ! thought Jordan. Did he really need to hear what his lawyer was telling him! It was as if … He didn’t want or need to know what it was. What he needed – as Beckwith had just told him – was to remember where he was, why he was there and how much in the end it was likely to cost him. ‘I was just trying to be fair,’ he said, lamely.

‘Fairness has got nothing to do with anything,’ said Beckwith. ‘Start getting your priorities in order, OK?’

Twenty-Two

Harvey Jordan was too experienced at performing, at being, someone else for there to be any outward indication of his shocked realization that he was showing the slightest concern for anyone other than himself, certainly somebody, however inadvertently, who had turned his life on its head as Alyce Appleton had done. He continued the review of the day’s events with the two lawyers in Reid’s office and responded sufficiently in the car returning him and Beckwith to the hotel, but the moment he got there was relieved to escape into the seclusion of his locked suite uninterruptedly to examine and analyze what he started out regarding as an inexplicable lapse.

As such it was unthinkable, virtually beyond comprehension. And there’d actually been previous warnings from Beckwith, before that day’s very necessary and positive rebuke. But it didn’t demand sackcloth-and-ashes penitence, Jordan reassured himself. There was even a partial, acceptable, self-explanation. The situation into which he’d been pitch-forked wasn’t one to which he was accustomed and professionally skilled, unlike the environment – the bank account fraud being the most obvious – in which he knew practically by instinct every move and trick, was able to recognize every manoeuvre. It was because he knew every trick and manoeuvre that he’d adjusted and now had all his electronic spyholes already drilled: and because of them had that very day knocked Appleton’s lawyer flat on his fat ass to end up, so far at least, hopefully with the judge tilting in Beckwith’s – and therefore his – favour.

But it was still different from what he normally did and how he did it. Apart from his dealings with the New York banks he wasn’t playing a part, pretending to be someone else whose identity he would shuck off like an unwanted skin when he’d achieved all that he wanted. In court he really was Harvey William Jordan, doing everything and more to escape an entrapment and its potential cost under an incredible medieval law comparable to the rack or being hanged, drawn and quartered, financially if not physically. So it made good and very practical sense to show consideration to Alyce, to protect her even, because from today’s behaviour she was doing very little to protect herself, with the wheezing Bob Reid scarcely doing much more. Jordan had meant what he’d told her today. He didn’t want to fight her: didn’t feel any animosity towards her for what had happened. He didn’t yet know – and couldn’t anticipate – how he might need her but whatever and however that turned out to be, it was essential that at all times she remained on his side. Essential, too, that she confirmed that France had been nothing more than a holiday dalliance, ending with no commitments and no regrets but most importantly of all, with no alienation of any affections. He most certainly couldn’t risk Alyce turning against him and changing her story – the true and genuinely honest story – if things started to go wrong with her case and her defence.

And Daniel Beckkwith should recognize that. Jordan determined that Beckwith definitely would if the lawyer started lecturing again at any time in the future about how he was treating Alyce. Because he’d spell out to the man the obvious reasons for doing so: let Beckwith know that what he was doing needed to be done solely for his own self-protection. Maybe remind the thwarted cowboy, even, of everything he’d done and suggested already to bring them out ahead in today’s confrontations. For Reid or Beckwith or both of them to imagine that he actually had some lingering interest in Alyce beyond getting as far away from her and everything in which she had involved him was a load of crap. He’d tell Beckwith that, too, if it ever came up between them again.

It had been good to think things through, analyze everything in his mind. And he had analyzed it, subjectively as well as objectively. The two lawyers had got it wrong, perhaps understandably, and he had acknowledged how easily it had been for them to make the mistake. Now it was over, resolved in his mind which was the only consideration because his escape from each and every problem with which he was confronted was all that mattered.

Jordan was first in the bar after his nightly laptop session, freshly showered and changed ahead of either Beckwith or George Abrahams, with whom they’d fixed dinner before quitting the court. Abrahams, the next to arrive, hadn’t changed his clothes but he appeared more relaxed outside both the court and his consulting rooms. Beckwith arrived again in jeans and the bison-figured belt and tooled cowboy boots, hair flowing unrestrained.

The conversation was awkwardly stilted in the beginning, Jordan initially happy to leave the obvious effort to Beckwith and the venerealogist, waiting for something of relevance before intruding himself, alert to an inviting opportunity. It came as he was completing the second drinks order, from a remark from Abrahams. There was an echo of something that had passed between the two lawyers during their earlier, after-court conference but Jordan seized it ahead of his own attorney.

‘Isn’t there an agreed format, a template, in which these types of medical reports are prepared, for presentation to a court?’ Jordan asked.

‘I don’t believe so,’ said Abrahams. ‘It’s not particularly common: this is the first time in over a year, fourteen months to be exact, that I’ve been asked to prepare the sort of assessment I did upon you.’

Jordan looked between the doctor and his lawyer. To Beckwith he said, ‘I understood when I first arrived from England that it was far more frequent than that: that Dr Abrahams was your regular consultant?’

‘Dr Abrahams is the specialist I’ve called upon since I began practising in Manhattan. Twice, I think.’

‘Twice,’ agreed the doctor.

‘So each specialist presents his assessments and findings on a case-by-case basis, in the form of his own choice?’ persisted Jordan.

‘I suppose so,’ said Abrahams.

‘In other situations – I’m not asking you to betray any other lawyer or case confidentiality – have you ever before encountered the sort of omission about antibodies or antigens that was thrown up today?’ asked Jordan, who was unsure if the doctor’s pause following the question was for recall or the man’s reflection upon confidentiality.

Eventually Abrahams said, ‘I’ve come across it once before. It was the first time the venerealogist for the other side had prepared such a court assessment. It was lack of experience, not an intentional withholding.’

‘What are you suggesting the fault is in this case?’ seized Beckwith.

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ bristled the man.

‘It sounded to me as if you were surprised in this particular case,’ said Beckwith.

‘Dr Chapman is a recognized microbiologist in the field of sexually communicable infections,’ said Abrahams. ‘He’s published, to some professional acclaim, two specific papers, one even more specifically upon chlamydia. I would not have expected him to have ignored antibody reference or evidence, either positive or negative.’

‘Surely a positive finding would be of the utmost significance!’ pressed the lawyer.

‘Of course it would,’ finally confirmed Abrahams, his familiar testiness returning.

Beckwith did not respond to Jordan’s look, although Jordan was sure the other man was conscious of his attention. As he was sure of several other things. One was that Abrahams had been reluctant, without pressure, to appear to criticize a colleague whose publicly acknowledged work the man admired. Another was that Chapman’s reputation beyond Boston hadn’t been established by either lawyer, which yet again was more a failing of Reid, to whose case it was of more direct importance than Beckwith’s, although after that morning’s hearing that was now arguable. And the third was that if he hadn’t persevered – although Jordan accepted he hadn’t started out with any targeted intention – another potentially important discovery wouldn’t have been made. Quickly he said, ‘What about Dr Lewell?’

‘I know nothing of Dr Lewell’s work,’ replied the man. ‘I did not know of her until this case.’

‘The English examination that I underwent before coming here?’ Jordan asked Abrahams. ‘What did you think of it, professionally?’

Again Abrahams hesitated, before saying, ‘Muddled. Completely inadequate.’

‘Which was why I arranged the second examination by Dr Abrahams,’ stressed Beckwith.

‘Had you already exchanged that initial, inadequate English report with the lawyers representing Appleton and Leanne Jefferies?’

Now it was Beckwith who hesitated, recognizing the possible inference from the question. At last he said, ‘Yes. That’s why I had it carried out in England, as part of the accepted, pre-court exchanges. Then I changed my mind and decided we needed something from an American specialist.’

‘Without telling the other side?’

Beckwith nodded but did not speak.

Jordan said, ‘So, until you officially exchanged the second report they would have thought you were proceeding upon the first, English findings, findings which Dr Abrahams has just told us were muddled and completely inadequate?’

‘You’ve made your point, Harvey.’

‘Good,’ said Jordan. ‘Why don’t we go and eat?’

Jordan breakfasted in his room, more interested in accessing his computer sites than eating. He was disappointed that there was no email traffic but remembered that neither the opposing lawyers nor the Boston venerealogists had local facilities and that any communication would have been restricted to telephone or possibly hotel faxes. The overnight arrangement had been for Jordan and the microbiologist to link up with the two lawyers at Reid’s office, although Beckwith was alone when they reached it. Jordan hadn’t bothered with television in his suite, so the local newspaper coverage he’d read in the taxi, relegated to an inside page, was the first he’d seen of the previous day’s court opening. The legal restrictions limited the account to the basic facts of the pre-hearing application being postponed on a procedural technicality, to be reconvened that day. The stock photograph of Alfred Appleton was from his yachting days, which made the image virtually unrecognizable as the man whom Jordan had seen in court the previous day and because of the way she had dressed herself down, with practically no make-up, the library picture of Alyce wasn’t a good representation, either.

‘Bob has had to go to persuade Alyce to show up,’ announced Beckwith. ‘She called him last night, saying her doctor was prepared to appear today and say the strain would be too much for her to be in court.’

‘I don’t want to be kept here another day,’ protested Abrahams, at once. I should have been back in New York today; my diary’s shot to hell!’

‘You will be back tonight,’ promised Beckwith. ‘We can go on in her absence, with the judge’s agreement; she’s not part of my application. But Bob thinks Pullinger would consider it a spoilt girl’s cop-out and I agree. I don’t want to lose whatever we might have gained yesterday.’ He looked at Abrahams. ‘We’ve managed to get print-outs of Chapman’s medical journal papers you talked about last night, back at the hotel. They could turn out to be very useful.’

‘When will we know if Alyce is going to show up?’ asked Jordan.

‘Bob’s going to call from his cellphone.’ The lawyer looked very directly at Jordan, as if expecting him to say more, but Jordan didn’t.

‘You think I could safely make a late afternoon reservation back to New York?’ asked the doctor.

‘Maybe wait a while: give ourselves an hour in court to see how things go.’

They rode unspeaking to the Raleigh courthouse, using the same entry route as the previous day through connected city buildings. Jordan looked intently through the windows as they walked, but failed to detect any photographic ambush.

Beckwith’s cellphone went as they were ascending the inner steps leading up to their assigned court. The lawyer hunched briefly over it, his back to the flow of people up and down the stairs. Turning back to Jordan, he said. ‘Alyce is coming. So’s her doctor.’

Alyce looked visibly ill, walking falteringly but unaided and in total contrast to the striding confidence that Jordan remembered from her entry into the Carlyle hotel just a few days earlier. There was no make-up at all and the plain black dress, devoid of any jewellery, accentuated the pallor of her face. Again she ignored everyone, including Jordan, but when she reached her adjacent table she turned back for the reassurance of her doctor’s presence. The man was about the same age as Alyce, bespectacled and blond haired. He’d taken a seat directly behind her, nodding in reassurance at her look. Reid did not go directly to sit beside Alyce but continued on to the court clerk, gesturing as he talked to the blond newcomer. The clerk, in turn, had a whispered conversation with Pullinger after the judge’s arrival and Pullinger said at once, ‘Mr Reid?’

‘I should explain, your honour, that with your honour’s agreement the man sitting directly behind my client is Dr Walter Harding, the medical director of the Bellamy Foundation hospital here in Raleigh,’ introduced the lawyer. ‘Mrs Appleton is in court today with great difficulty, brought on by the strain of this matter. Dr Harding is prepared to testify before you, should your honour require it, as to Mrs Appleton’s physical condition. He is also prepared to remain in court, with your agreement, to ensure Mrs Appleton’s condition does not deteriorate further.’

The frowning judge looked invitingly to where Bartle and Wolfson sat. Bartle came at once to his feet and said, ‘It is regrettable that Mrs Appleton is feeling such strain but I would remind the court that distress and strain are inevitable consequences of proceedings such as these which have not, in this case, actually begun yet. And that we hope Mrs Appleton recovers sufficiently to avoid any serious disruption or delay.’

‘Sentiments with which I fully concur,’ said Wolfson, rising as Bartle sat.

‘As do I,’ said Pullinger. ‘And with which I am sure you also agree, Mr Reid?’

‘Absolutely, your honour. And thank you for the court’s understanding.’

Jordan was close enough to his own lawyer to hear Beckwith whisper, ‘Shit!’

‘Still on the subject of delay, I trust we are ready to proceed on the matter of medical submissions?’ asked the judge, going back to the two opposing lawyers.

This time they both rose together, each holding a bundle of papers separated by various tags. ‘These are redrawn medical reports prepared overnight by Drs Chapman and Lewell, upon which my fellow attorney, Mr Wolfson, would also like to address the court,’ announced Bartle.

Jordan was conscious of a movement from Beckwith, close beside him, but there was no whispered conversation.

Pullinger allowed some silence to build up in the court before saying, ‘Mr Beckwith?’

‘My expert witness, Dr Abrahams – at some professional and personal inconvenience – has remained here in Raleigh to assist your court, your honour,’ opened Beckwith, as he stood. ‘I very sincerely hope that he will not be detained beyond today. I equally hope that we will be able, expertly and professionally, to examine these new submissions, by recalling Dr Abrahams to the stand to give this court the benefit of his expertise. I would also respectfully ask, pending whatsoever is to emerge from the statements this court has yet to hear from the attorneys representing Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies, that their respective expert medical witnesses can be called to the stand to be examined on oath upon their resubmitted findings.’

There was immediate and obvious movement between the two now identified venerealogists, culminating with Chapman groping forward to attract Bartle’s attention. The attorney half turned towards the gesture but shrugged it off. Instead he rose to say, ‘Your honour, I hope already to have indicated an apology to your court, for a totally inadvertent misunderstanding which I am quite satisfied I can explain to your honour without any further need to protract what is, after all, a subsidiary matter to the main purpose of this court.’

‘Your honour!’ erupted Beckwith, before Pullinger could respond and by so doing coming close to being over-theatrical. ‘I am going to refrain from making the most obvious comments upon what has just been said to your court. Mr Bartle and Mr Wolfson have their expert witnesses behind them in this court! What earthly reason is there for those expert witnesses not being called to be questioned about their original findings, which could have substantial import upon my application before you today and which I in no way consider subsidiary?’

‘A question I would be interested in having answered for me,’ commented Pullinger. ‘Can you help me, Mr Bartle?’

It was not Appleton’s attorney who responded but that of Leanne Jefferies. To fresh movement behind both opposing lawyers, the bewhiskered Wolfson said, ‘Your honour, I wish to assure this court that my expert witness, Dr Jane Lewell, is at your court’s disposal.’

‘As is mine,’ tightly conceded Bartle.

The skeletal Pullinger let the court subside into foot-shuffling, throat-clearing near silence, his vulture-eyed concentration unbroken upon the right of his court. Eventually he said, ‘Mr Bartle?’

‘Your honour?’ responded Appleton’s attorney, forced to his feet again.

‘I do not consider that you satisfactorily responded to my invitation. I no longer offer that invitation, but it will remain on record and most certainly in my mind and I would like you, Mr Bartle, and you, Mr Wolfson, both to bear that very much in mind as this matter proceeds, to whatever its end. Do you, Mr Bartle, fully understand what I am saying?’

‘I do, your honour,’ said Bartle. ‘And in the light of your honour’s comments I withdraw my request to make a statement to the court.’

‘Mr Wolfson?’

‘I do, your honour. And I also withdraw the suggestion of my making a preliminary statement.’

‘Distribute to the relevant parties the newly provided material,’ the judge ordered his clerk. ‘There will be a recess of fifteen minutes to provide an opportunity to study that material.’

‘Dr Abrahams,’ opened Beckwith. ‘Will you tell this court what is indicated in the medical reports upon Alfred Appleton and Ms Leanne Jefferies that have only this day, less than an hour ago, been submitted?’

The venerealogist shifted on the witness stand. ‘Both Alfred Appleton and Ms Leanne Jefferies have been successfully treated for Chlamydia trachomatis.’

‘What is a chlamydia microimmunofluorescence test?’

‘That which is carried out to establish the presence of chlamydia antibodies following the infection of cervicitis in woman and urethritis in men.’

‘Cervicitis in women and urethritis in men are conditions caused by a chlamydia infection, are they not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do the medical reports of Drs Chapman and Lewell show that Alfred Appleton suffered urethritis and Ms Lleanne Jefferies suffered cervicitis?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is antichlamydia IgG?’

‘The antibody found in the blood of sexually active adults in response to the infection and which may be detected after successful treatment.’

‘Do the reports of Drs Chapman and Lewell show that Alfred Appleton and Ms Leanne Jefferies had antichlamydia IgG in their blood at the time of their examination by Drs Chapman and Lewell?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could there be the slightest doubt about that?’

‘Not according to what I have been shown today.’

‘Could it have been produced by another complaint or infection?’

‘The microimmunifluoscence test is remarkably sensitive and specific. It is medically recognized to be accurate in ninety-nine percent of woman and between eighty to ninety percent of men.’

‘Your honour!’ protested Bartle, rising. ‘The fact that my client suffered chlamydia is not contested.’

‘Nor is it on behalf of my client,’ said Wolfson, in support.

‘But it was not admitted to this court until an hour ago!’ insisted Beckwith, who had not sat during the interjection. ‘I would ask you to find, your honour, that this court be allowed the fullest opportunity to explore this matter, including how and why it was withheld from this court until this later hour.’

‘It was not withheld!’ refused Bartle.

‘It was most certainly not supplied, which is a requirement of such pre-hearing exchanges,’ came back Beckwith.

‘You will proceed, Mr Beckwith, hopefully without any further interruptions, in the hope of this court discovering the truth of the matter,’ ruled Pullinger.

‘The court has already learned of your outstanding qualifications in your particular profession field, Dr Abrahams,’ picked up Beckwith. ‘As I understand it, there is no formularized presentation for reports such as these we are discussing. Is that right?’

‘That is so.’

‘Did you subject the appropriate samples you took from my client to a microimmunofluorescence test?’

‘Of course.’

‘Which was negative?’

‘As I said in evidence yesterday.’

‘Had that microimmunofluorescene test proved positive and produced antichlamydia IgG antibodies, would you have omitted that finding from the report you submitted to this court?’

There was shuffling from the lawyers’ tables on the right of the court but before either Bartle or Wolfson could rise, Pullinger impatiently made a waving down motion with his hand.

The venerealogist still did not answer and Beckwith said, ‘Dr Abrahams?’

‘As we have already established, there is no formularized style of presentation.’

‘That wasn’t my question, doctor. Please answer it.’

‘No. Of course I would have included it in my report.’

‘Why?’

Abrahams’ irritation at the question came out in a snort, which he tried to turn into a cough, looking directly from the witness stand at Dr Chapman. ‘Because the whole purpose of such reports is to establish whether or not there is – or has been – an infection!’

‘Thank you,’ said Beckwith, abruptly sitting.

And said it again to the judge’s invitation to continue his submission when the court reconvened after the luncheon adjournment that Pullinger ordered at the conclusion of Abrahams’ evidence, with the agreement that the venerealogist should be released to return to New York.

‘Your honour!’ interrupted Bartle, jerking to his feet. ‘I would once more respectfully invite your honour to accept, with the apologies I have already expressed and would reiterate, my explanation for this most unfortunate misunderstanding, this oversight, and not further delay the progress of this case by calling Dr Chapman.’

‘An application that I also most earnestly request with Dr Lewell,’ said Wolfson, bobbing up as Bartle sat, as if both lawyers were performing vaudeville, if not theatre.

‘Why “most earnestly”, Mr Wolfson?’ demanded Pullinger.

Leanne’s lawyer looked blankly to the raised bench, initially appearing not to understand the question. The confusion increased when he did understand. ‘I meant … maybe a mistake on my part, your honour. I meant my client and I are anxious not to impede the progress of the court now that this medical difficulty has been resolved.’

‘I do not for a moment find that what you refer to as “this medical difficulty” has been resolved to my satisfaction,’ refused Pullinger. ‘Having been found – exposed – to be so lamentably wanting, are you, Mr Wolfson, or you, Mr Bartle, seeking to bulldoze this court to bury those failings?’

Both Bartle and Wolfson were standing now and their replies – ‘under no circumstance whatsoever, your honour’ – came practically in unison. Beside him Beckwith created another battalion of exclamation marks on his yellow legal pad, taking Jordan’s mind back to their adjournment lunch in the court cafeteria, at which Alyce, her doctor and Reid had not appeared. To Jordan’s insistence there, a euphoric Beckwith had gauged the chances of getting his dismissal at seventy-five percent. So surprised had Jordan been by the estimate that his initial, unconsidered thought had been that if he were discharged he could, within days, be back in England, the nightmare relegated to the place of bad dreams. Until a question hurried him back to reality. What, he asked himself, about Alfred Jerome Appleton and the personal promise he’d made to himself: what Alyce had in France called tit for tat? The fact that if he were discharged he wouldn’t be penalized for hundreds of thousands – millions even – didn’t come into any calculation. The bill would still be huge, here in America and in England. And he didn’t intend spending as little as a single bent penny of his own money in payment or settlement for anything. Appleton would, though. Jordan was more implacably determined than ever to recover everything and more – far more – for the upheaval the man had caused. So he wouldn’t be returning to London whatever the outcome of today’s hearing. Only when Alyce abruptly turned towards him did Jordan realize that throughout his reflection he had been looking at her. She frowned, questioningly. Jordan looked hurriedly away.

‘I hope I can be convinced of that,’ Pullinger was saying. nodding again to Beckwith to resume.

Dr Mark Chapman came reluctantly to the stand and took the oath looking fixedly at Appleton and his lawyer, not averting his gaze until Pullinger stated, for the record, that the doctor had been called to give evidence upon the application of a defendant lawyer.

‘Dr Chapman,’ began Beckwith, at Pullinger’s indication, ‘will you give, again for the benefit of the record and in full, not by acronym, your medical qualifications?’

Chapman’s hesitation lasted so long that Jordan briefly thought the man was going to refuse, but finally Chapman responded, with clipped, stilted formality, the faintest trace of an Irish accent in his voice.

‘In addition to those qualifications, you also contribute to medical journals upon subjects within your chosen expertise, do you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Regularly?’

‘No.’

From the way Beckwith was standing Jordan could see the faint smile on his lawyer’s face and guessed Beckwith had reached the same conclusion that he had, that the venerealogist intended to remain monosyllabic.

‘How many articles have you been responsible for in, say, the last five years?’

Chapman thought before replying. ‘Six.’

‘To the admiration of your peers? Dr Abrahams, for example?’

From Bartle’s table there was movement that ceased at Pullinger’s quick look.

‘I do not know.’

‘You have not received letters of appreciation, congratulation, from other specialists in your field?’

‘Not from Dr Abrahams.’

‘But from others?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘As I made clear, I asked you to give your qualifications in full for the benefit of the court record. In assembling them for myself I discovered the possibility of you taking up a position as lecturing microbiologist at Boston’s leading teaching hospital, which would accord you the title of professor, would it not?’

‘The appointment has not yet been made.’

‘Were it to be made in your favour, Dr Chapman, would you include the diagnostic importance of antibodies and antigens in your lectures?’

The man’s second hesitation was as long as the first. Eventually Chapman said, ‘Of course I would!’

‘Of course you would,’ echoed Beckwith. ‘Because as we have heard in very informative detail from Dr Abrahams, the discovery or otherwise of antibodies and/or antigens is a very necessary part of the investigation into infections and disease, either bacterial or viral, are they not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why then, doctor, didn’t you include your discovery of antichlamydia IgG in your examination of Alfred Appleton, the purpose of which was to establish whether Alfred Appleton had suffered, or was suffering, a chlamydia infection?’

‘I was responding to the instructions with which I had been served,’ said Chapman, with the quickness that hinted at prior preparation.

Now it was Beckwith who let the silence build into a mocking echo. ‘You were responding to the instructions with which you had been served?’

‘Yes.’ Chapman’s concentration was again on Bartle.

‘Which were?’ persisted Beckwith.

Chapman had both hands gripping the side of the witness stand, as if he physically needed its support and his face was markedly flushed compared to his complexion when he’d first entered it. Formally, his voice fluctuating, he recited, ‘To examine Alfred Appleton and carry out various recognized tests to establish whether Alfred Appleton was suffering a venereal infection, specifically chlamydia. At the time of my examination, he was not. That is what I said in my report.’

‘Your original report,’ qualified Beckwith.

‘My original report,’ agreed the venerealogist.

‘At the time of that original report – during your investigative examination – you found antichlamydia IgG in Alfred Appleton’s blood, did you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which proved that he had suffered such an infection and been treated for it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you chose not to include that finding?’

‘I was following the remit that I had been given. At the time of my examination, Alfred Appleton did not have a venereal infection.’ The man continued staring fixedly at the table at which Appleton and his lawyer sat.

‘Your honour!’ broke in Bartle, groping to his feet. ‘Can I help by confirming what Dr Chapman is telling the court? The remit to which Dr Chapman is referring was mine.’

‘Knowing of its relevance in the case before us, you did not ask Dr Chapman to provide evidence of your client having an infection in the past, only if he suffered it at the time of examination?’ demanded the judge, making no effort to keep the incredulity from his voice.

‘That is so, your honour,’ confirmed Bartle. ‘The fault, the oversight, is mine, not that of Dr Chapman. And I humbly apologize.’

‘I think, Mr Bartle, that this is something about which I have to reflect further.’ Turning to the other side of the court Pullinger said, I think you have established your point, Mr Beckwith.’

‘With respect, your honour, I have a few more questions.’

A frown flickered across the judge’s face. ‘Let’s move along, Mr Beckwith.’

‘Dr Chapman,’ resumed the lawyer. ‘Studying as I have your professional qualifications, I noticed also that you attended Harvard, as did Alfred Appleton? You were contemporaries, in fact?’

‘Yes.’ There was a fresh tightening to Chapman’s face.

‘Did you know Mr Appleton at Harvard?’

‘We were acquainted.’

‘How were you acquainted?’

‘We shared a mutual interest.’

‘In sailing?’ queried Beckwith.

‘Which I’m sure you already knew,’ flared the other man, giving way at last to anger.

‘I did indeed, Dr Chapman. But the court didn’t until now. Have you continued to sail with Mr Appleton?’

‘Yes.’

‘So how would you describe yourself? As an acquaintance or as a friend?’

There was yet another pause before the man said, ‘As a friend, I suppose.’ The voice was quieter, controlled again.

‘Did you attend your friend’s marriage, to Alyce Bellamy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How would you describe Alyce Appleton, nee Bellamy, as an acquaintance or as a friend?’

‘Your honour!’ protested Bartle.

‘I agree,’ said Pullinger. ‘I think you have extended this examination sufficiently, Mr Beckwith. Is it your intention to call Dr Lewell?’

‘It most definitely is, your honour.’

‘I shall permit it, on the grounds of fairness, but not with the same latitude as I have with this witness. Is that clear?’

‘Very clear,’ said Beckwith.

‘Then I don’t expect the need to remind you.’

Dr Jane Lewell’s qualifications were not as extensive as those of either George Abrahams or Mark Chapman, but did include those of microbiology and gynaecology. She was a tall, thin woman, her face dominated by heavy, thick-rimmed spectacles. There appeared little attempt at make-up, nor to colour the greyness in her hair which she wore very short, cropped to the nape of her neck. Jordan’s immediate impression, when she began responding to his lawyer’s questions in a flat although confident voice, was that she was setting out to be as monosyllabic as the specialist doctor who had preceded her. It was quickly confirmed in a series of staccato, yes or no answers, despite Beckwith adjusting his questions to achieve fuller responses. Pullinger’s mounting impatience came to its head after she agreed that Leanne Jefferies had suffered a chlamydia infection with Peter Wolfson’s interrupting admission that her first, inadequate report had been a strictly accurate diagnosis according to his limited remit.

‘So there we have it!’ insisted Pullinger. ‘Both expert witnesses adhered to the very strictest letter of their legally permissible instructions – instructions that remain very much in the forefront of my mind – that had their evidence been presented in its original form could have seriously misled myself and a subsequent jury, but for the intervention of Mr Beckwith. It is now established for the benefit of subsequent proceedings that both Alfred Appleton and Leanne Jefferies suffered a venereal infection. Is this matter now concluded to your satisfaction, Mr Beckwith? It most certainty is to mine.’

‘With respect, your honour, I have questions to this witness that will occupy no more than five further minutes.’

‘Which I will time to the precise second,’ said the judge.

‘The domicile of Ms Leanne Jefferies is 3200, East 106th Street, apartment 38b, Manhattan, is it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you Ms Leanne Jefferies’ gynaecologist?’

‘No.’

‘Had she been a patient of yours prior to her coming to you for the examination we are discussing today?’

‘No.’

‘According to what has been indicated here today, it was Peter Wolfson, her attorney, who made the appointment, with its very specific remit, for Leanne Jefferies to be examined by you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Until this occasion, has Peter Wolfson had clients examined by you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you not think it strange that a woman domiciled in Manhattan should be asked to travel all the way to Boston for an examination for which there are …’ Reverting to theatrics, Beckwith consulted papers on the table in front of him. ‘There are to my rough calculation twenty consultants with qualifications matching yours within thirty minutes, even allowing for the worst traffic?’

For the first time the woman lapsed into the previously familiar hesitations. Finally she said, ‘Yes.’

‘Did you ask her?’

‘Your time is rapidly running out, Mr Beckwith,’ warned the judge.

‘Dr Lewell?’ hurried Beckwith.

‘No, I did not ask her.’

‘How friendly, professionally or otherwise, are you with Dr Chapman?’

‘You will answer that question and that will be the end of your examination,’ ordered Pullinger.

‘We are friends, professionally and socially,’ said the woman.

Twenty-Three

The chambers of Judge Hubert Pullinger were as frigidly austere as the man himself, wallpapered practically from floor to ceiling with legal books, each precisely in its regulated, indexed place, scribbled notes in the centre of an otherwise unmarked blotter, pens in a regimented holder beside a telephone console. The chesterfield, with matching chairs, was in red oxhide and unoccupied because Pullinger kept the four lawyers standing before him, his attention totally concentrated upon David Bartle and Peter Wolfson. The only physical indication of Pullinger’s fury was the involuntary tap of an index finger, as if he were keeping occasional time with the sticky tick of the mahogany-cased grandfather clock creating the sole sound in the room, apart from the asthmatic rasp of Reid’s breathing.

The judge still wore his robes and when he finally spoke, eyes now lowered over his prepared notes, the tightly controlled voice was so quiet that at first, until they adjusted, both Bartle and Reid strained forward to hear properly.

‘Throughout the course of this outrageous day I have almost lost count of the offences that you, Mr Bartle, and you, Mr Wolfson, have caused and inflicted upon my court. The most obvious is contempt, the worst to which I believe I have ever been subjected in twenty-five years upon this bench. There is no mitigation or explanation that I will accept from either of you. I have been minded to abandon the full case before it officially opens – which is why I have interrupted the current application before its completion – to report you both to your respective state regulatory and licensing authorities, with the recommendation that you both be subject to official enquiry into your total lack of professionalism. That is still a course open to me and one I might choose to pursue. In deciding to postpone that decision I am mindful of the inconvenience and costs that would be caused your clients, as well as those of Mr Beckwith and Mr Reid. I find no reason why any of them should suffer because of your conduct. When the court resumes, however, I intend advising both doctors who appeared as your expert witnesses that I shall complain to their licensing authorities, dissatisfied as I am with the explanations both have offered. It is I who decide the interpretation and application of the law, not either of you with the sleight of hand of snake-oil salesmen …’

Pullinger paused, clearing his throat after such an uninterrupted diatribe. ‘As both of you would appear to need guidance in law, I will remind you that the course I have chosen today, to address you as I am now doing, is highly unusual and might even be construed as undue and premature bias, although I give you my absolute assurance that this is not nor ever will be the case. It does, however, open the way for both or either of you to object to my continuing to hear any more of this current application or the divorce itself and apply for a new judge. That would, of course, require me to justify this meeting, which I am fully prepared to do. I will continue this recess to enable you both to consider your course of action and discuss it with whomever you choose – and to advise Drs Chapman and Lewell of what I have told you – but warn you that if you decide to continue I will not tolerate any more of the behaviour to which I and my court have been subjected. This meeting is concluded.’

‘Your honour—’ tried Wolfson, immediately to be faced by Pullinger’s halting hand.

‘I have already told you, Mr Wolfson, that I will not accept any mitigation or explanation attempts,’ rejected Pullinger. ‘Leave my chambers and comply with every request I have made of you. Yours are now the decisions to be made.’

Once more neither Alyce, her lawyer nor her accompanying doctor were in the court cafeteria, but it was mid-afternoon, not a recognized break time and Beckwith, without pause, had swept Jordan up on his way from the chambers confrontation, ahead of everyone else who endured it.

With difficulty Jordan held himself back until they’d collected their unwanted coffee and chosen a table beyond the hearing of any surrounding table. And then he demanded, ‘Is it all over: am I out of it?’

‘That wasn’t why we were summoned to chambers,’ calmed Beckwith. ‘I haven’t even made my dismissal submission yet; you know I haven’t.’

‘Then what was it for?’

Jordan sat without movement or question throughout his lawyer’s recounting of the in-chambers meeting. At its end Jordan declared, ‘We’re there, surely!’

‘We’re nowhere,’ dashed the lawyer. ‘If they go for a new judge, we’ve lost everything we thought we’d achieved. No new judge could be told how we’d exposed the shit they tried to dump on us!’

‘You can’t be serious!’

‘Pullinger’s hog-tied them, whichever way they try to run. Which I guess he had to do, being the judge he is. Better than any other judge would have worked out how to do it, in the circumstances.’

‘What would you do, in their position?’

‘Suicide is the first thing that comes to mind.’

‘I’m being serious, for fuck’s sake!’

‘I was, to an extent. Seriously I think I’d go for a rehearing.’

‘What sort of delay would that involve?’

‘Fuck knows! Months, I guess. Appleton and Leanne would have to start over again, from scratch. I don’t know of any case – any set of circumstances – like this on record.’

‘So it would attract more attention than it already has?’ queried Jordan, posing the most prominent of his several concerns.

‘Inevitably.’

A lot of his carefully stabled Trojan Horses would be useless too, Jordan accepted. He’d virtually have to start over to put himself as far ahead as he had this first time. ‘Can Pullinger stop like this, right in the middle of your application? Couldn’t he carry on and decide on my dismissal?’

‘I just told you, I don’t know of any other legal situation like this that’s ever arisen in North Carolina or anywhere else in North America with the criminal conversation statute still in existence. We might have a way out. If today collapses, I’m going to have a lot of time to go through the records, to see if there is a precedent we can use.’

‘What about the cost of the sort of delay you’re talking about?’

‘I’ll certainly apply for costs of everything so far. I don’t see how Pullinger could refuse or Appleton’s side resist …’ Beckwith broke off at the sight of the court usher entering the cafeteria and rose in anticipation, saying, ‘Decision time,’ as he did so.

They were the last to return to court, although Reid was settling Alyce in her seat ahead of them. She sat docilely and Jordan’s impression as he followed to the adjoining table was that Alyce appeared practically catatonic. It was very different on the other side of the court. Everyone was flushed, the two doctors shifting constantly in their seats: Appleton was gesturing with Bartle but Leanne was pulled away from her lawyer, as if she wanted physical separation. Beckwith didn’t sit but continued on to Reid’s table for a huddled discussion until the shouted announcement of Pullinger’s re-entry. The judge didn’t hurry this time, pointedly re-arranging his robes around him. Having done so, he said, ‘Counsel will approach the bench.’

The four lawyers arranged themselves in front of the judge in the order in which they sat. Pullinger said, ‘Well?’

‘My client wishes the hearing – and the case in full – to continue before your honour,’ said Bartle. ‘But my expert witness, Dr Chapman, wishes to address the court.’

‘My client also wishes to continue before your honour,’ echoed Wolfson. ‘Dr Lewell also seeks to address you, your honour.’

Pullinger nodded in dismissal and as he retook his seat Beckwith hissed, ‘We’re going on! Christ knows why, but we are.’ Looking towards his lawyer as he was, Jordan saw Reid hunched towards Alyce, who showed no response – no awareness even – of what she was being told.

‘Dr Chapman and Dr Lewell will stand,’ ordered Pullinger. When both did the judge continued, ‘For the record I will repeat what I know, upon my instructions, has already been communicated to you by your respective lawyers, for whose clients you appeared before me, as well as providing written medical opinion. It is that I intend reporting to your governing, licensing body my displeasure at the manner and lack of professionalism of both your evidence and your written opinions. I am, in turn, advised that you both wish to make representations before me. I am refusing to hear those representations: this is not the court to hear or adjudicate upon your professional conduct. For me to hear whatever it is you wish to say could prejudice any future enquiries in which you might be involved. You will both be provided with a full transcript of all the proceedings in which you have featured thus far, as well as a copy of what I write to your licensing authority.’

‘That isn’t fair!’ protested Chapman.

‘This will not be argued and neither of you will make outbursts in my court, which I order you to leave, immediately. Usher, escort the two doctors from the premises!’ Switching his attention to the other side of the court, Pullinger said, ‘Let’s get on, shall we, Mr Beckwith?’

Jordan was aware of a flicker of interest from Alyce as his lawyer stood, reminder notes in his hand. He was aware, too, of Beckwith’s pause: the actor preparing himself for his opening speech.

Beckwith said, ‘As your honour has already had cause to remind us, this is a court of law. It is not, despite the evidence that might be brought before it, a court of morals. It is the law, its interpretation and its administration, upon which I seek to address this court …’ Alyce had definitely emerged from her private world, Jordan decided. He was encouraged, too, by what he inferred to be several nods of approval from the judge.

‘I submit for your honour’s ruling that the North Carolina statute Section 1-52(5) is an inextricably connected hybrid of two parts,’ continued Beckwith, using his reminder notes more as a gesturing prop than a memory prompt. ‘From the first comes the accusation, if proven to your honour’s satisfaction, of alienation of affection, which surely requires the intercession between spouses of a third, destructive party, with the result that the marriage irretrievably breaks down. The second support to Section 1-52(5) is the offence of criminal conversation, which I further invite your honour to interpret as the intentional, alienating seduction by a destructive third party. I seek to prove, to your honour’s satisfaction and agreement, that my client, Harvey Jordan, is not liable to the accusation of criminal conversation because at the moment and time of the admitted affair with Mrs Alyce Appleton there no longer existed in Mrs Appleton any affection whatsoever to be alienated. Therefore there can be no case for criminal conversation. In the submitted papers before you Alfred Jerome Appleton admits adultery with at least two different women. At no time during their marriage, in which considerable difficulties arose, did Mrs Appleton betray her marriage vows. Indeed, there will be evidence produced before you that Mrs Appleton did everything in her power to save her marriage from irretrievable collapse, even attempting a reconciliation and resuming conjugal relations with her husband. It was during this attempted reconciliation that Mrs Appleton contracted chlamydia that has become the subject of so much discussion already and upon which I will not dwell further at this point, although there are points I intend to raise in my closing arguments. Any lingering affection – the remotest possibility of a lasting reconciliation – vanished when Mrs Appleton discovered she had contracted a venereal infection from her husband, who could have been the only source or cause of that infection. She initiated divorce proceedings, the intention of which was communicated to her husband before her departure for a lengthy vacation in the South of France. At the time of that departure Mrs Appleton considered herself married to her husband in name only, a name she sought to divest herself of as quickly as possible. In France she was a lonely woman, a betrayed and humiliated woman only recently cleansed of a sexual disease uncaringly passed on to her by her promiscuous husband …’

Alyce was listening intently now to every word, Jordan saw, actually with a pen in her hand although she did not appear to be taking notes. Both opposing lawyers were, as well as Pullinger. Appleton and Leanne Jefferies were gazing directly ahead, as if oblivious of each other.

‘And in France this lonely, betrayed and humiliated woman met my client, Harvey Jordan—’

‘A gambler!’ broke in Pullinger. The inference was of accusation.

Beckwith managed to pick up practically without pause. ‘That is indeed how Mr Jordan makes his living, which some might regard as an unusual career: certainly out of the ordinary to those of us who follow a more mundane profession. But I would suggest that at this very moment those working on the trading floors of Wall Street – Mr Appleton himself, as a commodity trader – could be described as gamblers. The very men who made America the world leader it is today, the Astors and the Vanderbilts and the J.P. Morgans, were chance-taking entrepreneurs, which is an interchangeable word for a gambler …’

‘Quite so,’ nodded Pullinger.

‘Harvey Jordan was an entirely innocent party in a long ago divorce, the papers of which are before you,’ resumed Beckwith. ‘He was on vacation in the South of France, a region he knows well and in which he vacations most years. He always stays, when he is in Cannes, at the Carlton Hotel. Where, by total and absolute coincidence, Alyce Appleton was also staying. Their meeting was not pre-arranged. It was a chance encounter, like so much is in life. Harvey Jordan took Alyce Appleton on the shortest of excursions along the coast. They had an affair, the briefest of episodes which ended with her return to her country, his return to his country. They did not exchange addresses or telephone numbers. Neither considered it as anything more than what it was: a holiday liaison. Harvey Jordan was not engaged in criminal conversations, intent upon alienating the affection of Alyce Appleton from a husband in name only, for whom her only attitude of mind was contempt for what he had inflicted upon her. To be judged guilty – liable – for an offence, your honour, there surely needs to be evidence produced that a law has been contravened. Here I respectfully submit that there is nothing in law that supports the accusation against my client.’

For several minutes after Beckwith sat – which seemed to catch the opposing tables by surprise – there was the necessary silence for everyone to digest what Beckwith had said. Pullinger broke it. He said, ‘That was an address too eloquent to have been kept from a jury, which must, I suppose, forever remain their loss. What you have told me is, of course, based upon the pre-hearing statements of Mr Jordan and Mrs Appleton. Do you not intend calling them, to support what you just said?’

Jordan’s impression was that for the first time Beckwith was disconcerted, although he concealed it well. Quickly rising again the lawyer said, ‘My address was upon the admitted and uncontested facts, your honour. They require, of course, to be subjected to the examination of the other side.’

For someone who had always until now existed as Mr Invisible, never to be seen and even more importantly never to be recognized, Harvey Jordan’s feeling at being the sole object of everyone’s unrelenting attention lurched into the surreal. He was confident that he had his hand upon the Bible and was correctly reciting the oath, but his mind suddenly blanked of everything he had so carefully memorized to word-rehearsed perfection. The bewildering out-of-body experience remained throughout the early, officially required formalities and only began – and then very slowly – to ease when, straining for concentration, Jordan forced himself to respond to Beckwith’s gentle, yes or no confirmation, of his already provided statement.

Beckwith’s abrupt departure from that statement: ‘Did you consciously, predatorily, set out to seduce Alyce Appleton?’ – finally brought Jordan back to the reality of his surroundings.

Every answer had to be thought through, although without any obvious hesitation, Jordan warned himself: he couldn’t risk once being caught out in a lie. ‘No, I did not.’

‘How, then, did you look upon Alyce Appleton?’

Jordan gave an uncertain gesture, to give himself time. ‘As a fellow guest at the hotel, someone with whom I got into casual, passing conversation.’

‘Yet you lunched together the first day of your meeting?’

Jordan gave another delaying shoulder movement. ‘She’d prevented me losing the book I was reading. It was a snack rather than lunch. It was entirely inconsequential.’

‘What gave it consequence?’

‘Nothing happened specifically to give it any consequence. We talked about books and writers. I knew from my knowledge of the area that Alexander Dumas’ novel, The Man in the Iron Mask, was based on fact and that the victim was at one time imprisoned on an island just off the coast of Cannes. I invited her on a surprise trip to see it.’ Beckwith was building up to how he and Alyce went to bed that first time, Jordan accepted. It hadn’t been ugly, as it would sound here now, in a cold court. It would make Alyce appear a whore, which she wasn’t. Abruptly Jordan remembered Beckwith’s ballpark estimate of the potential damages if Pullinger found against him and Beckwith’s angry insistence that Alyce’s words made her out to be the pursuer, not the pursued.

‘You chartered a yacht, sailed to the Ile St Marguerite and saw the prison in which the man in the iron mask was incarcerated?’

‘Yes.’ He’d limit his answers as much and as best he could, Jordan decided.

‘Then what did you do?’

‘We had lunch.’

‘On the yacht?’

Beckwith was looking very directly at him, Jordan saw, with what he gauged the beginning of a warning frown. ‘It was a catamaran. And yes, that’s where we lunched.’

‘What happened after that?’

‘We swam.’

‘To do which you had to change. Did you change together, in the same cabin? Or separately?’

‘Separately.’

‘You didn’t suggest that you should undress together?’

‘No.’

‘Did it not enter your mind that you might suggest it, Mr Jordan?’

‘No.’

‘Did you not find Mrs Appleton attractive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sexually attractive?’

Jordan hesitated, looking at the woman, who looked directly and expressionlessly back at him. ‘Yes.’

‘Yet it did not occur to you, in the circumstances in which you found yourself, to suggest you undress together: make a sexual approach to her?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It did not seem … I don’t know … I didn’t.’

‘Did you fear that she would rebuff you?’

‘I didn’t think about whether she would rebuff me or not.’

‘And in the early evening you sailed back to Cannes, arriving around dinner time?’

‘Did you suggest dinner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she accept?’

Jordan felt hot, hotter than he had when he’d first stepped, his mind blank, on to the witness stand. ‘No.’

‘What were her precise words?’

‘As best as I remember, she said she was not hungry after the lunch.’

‘What else do you remember her saying, Mr Jordan?’

‘That she was tired.’

‘And?’ demanded Beckwith, the frown deepening.

‘That she wanted to go to bed.’

‘And …?’

Jordan did not immediately reply. Alyce was still looking at him without any expression whatsoever.

‘Mr Jordan?’ demanded Beckwith.

‘But not by herself,’ Jordan blurted.

‘Mrs Appleton told you she wanted to go to bed but not by herself?’ insisted the lawyer.

‘Yes.’

Twenty-Four

‘You stalked her, didn’t you!’ demanded David Bartle, loudly. ‘You sought out Alyce Appleton in the South of France and pursued her until you got her into your bed!’

Totally unaware of any of the detailed evidence that Appleton’s enquiry team might have assembled to incriminate him, Jordan recognized that under cross-examination he had to test every word and innuendo, to avoid stumbling into traps. And never lose his temper. No danger from this first, exaggerated opening. ‘No, I did not.’

‘You knew Alyce Appleton was a married woman?’

Too easy to be caught, Jordan thought. ‘She wore a wedding ring.’

‘And a particularly obvious engagement ring, given to her by her husband.’

‘I did not know from whom she obtained the engagement ring,’ qualified Jordan, believing he saw a safe avoidance. ‘I believe widows – divorcees even – still sometimes continue to wear their rings.’

‘She told you she was married?’

‘Yes.’ He needed to repeat that he and Alyce had parted without any intention to meet again, one of the several points with which Beckwith had concluded his examination, minutes earlier.

‘But not until after you’d seduced her!’

‘Not until after we’d slept together,’ said Jordan, qualifying again.

‘At your persistent urging!’

‘I have already told this court the circumstances in which the affair began.’ Very slightly, although not easing any of his self-imposed safeguards, Jordan began to relax. He didn’t think Bartle was a particularly good interrogator but very positively refused to lapse into any false security.

‘You’re telling the court that Alyce Appleton was prostituting herself up and down the French Riviera?’

Jordan felt the burn of anger but quickly subdued it. ‘I am telling you nothing of the sort and you – and the court – know it!’ He should have stopped after the initial denial! Shit!

‘Before this examination is over I shall know a great deal about everything,’ threatened the lawyer. ‘Did you find Alyce Appleton attractive?’

Jordan hesitated, trying to anticipate the subsequent question. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you fall in love with her?’

Jordan managed to avoid the hesitation. ‘No.’

‘Did you think she might fall in love with you?’

Too obvious, thought Jordan. ‘No.’

‘What would you have done if she had indicated that she was falling in love with you?’

‘It wasn’t that sort of situation.’

‘Answer the question,’ Pullinger ordered, sharply.

‘I would have made it clear that the feeling was not reciprocated.’

‘But gone on sleeping with her?’

‘No,’ insisted Jordan.

‘What would you have done?’ persisted Bartle.

‘Terminated the situation.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘You are no longer married?’

‘I am divorced.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Four years. I have provided the court with all the legal documents and evidence.’

‘Were there children from the marriage?’

‘No.’

‘Are you the father of any children out of wedlock?’

It was a re-run of his first meeting with Daniel Beckwith, Jordan remembered. Wrong to regard that as a useful rehearsal. Alyce hadn’t known he had been married, he remembered. ‘No.’

‘It is customary for you to vacation every year in the South of France?’

‘Yes.’

‘Always at the Carlton at Cannes?’

‘I move along the coast.’

‘Until you find a woman to pursue?’

Fuck you, thought Jordan, not responding.

‘I asked you a question, Mr Jordan,’ pressed Bartle.

‘I inferred it as a totally fallacious and misleading statement, which, being both untrue and ridiculous, did not require an answer.’ Jordan thought he detected the slightest of facial expressions, a wince maybe, from Beckwith.

‘Indulge me with a comment, Mr Jordan.’

He shouldn’t have opened himself to the mockery, Jordan acknowledged. And the question could be the feared mantrap if they’d discovered previous holiday affairs. ‘I do not tour the Cote d’Azur seeking women to seduce.’

‘How many years have you vacationed in the South of France?’

Jordan genuinely had to pause, to calculate the period. ‘It’s not a figure I’ve ever bothered to record. I would estimate about ten … twelve, possibly.’

‘How many holiday romances have you had during the course of those possible twelve years?’

The trap was gaping open in front of him, feared Jordan. At once came a contradiction: why was it so much of a trap? He could even cover himself if they had discovered some of the other woman, before Alyce. ‘Three, I think.’ He hadn’t spent a single holiday alone.

‘Were any of them married?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did any of them wear wedding rings or engagement rings?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Does it matter to you if the women you pursue are married?’

Surely the lawyer would have pounced by now if he’d found a previous conquest! And so what if he had, Jordan asked himself again. ‘Every liaison in which I have been involved has been consensual. I do not, to use the word you persist wrongly upon using, pursue women.’

‘You didn’t know if it would or would not endanger Alyce Appleton’s marriage when you first went to bed with her, although you knew she was married!’

Jordan seized the ineptly presented opportunity. ‘Neither Alyce Appleton nor I regarded our time together in France as anything other than what it was, an adventure that would end with no attachments on either side. We parted, as the court has already heard at the end of my earlier evidence, without any intention of ever meeting again. I did not alienate Alyce Appleton’s affection from her husband. She no longer had the slightest affection for him.’

‘She told you that?’

‘She told me that papers upon which she had been working – signing – the day we met were divorce papers.’

‘Why did she extend her holiday in France for a further week?’ persisted Bartle.

Jordan shrugged and immediately regretted doing so. ‘We didn’t discuss it at any length. I was not returning to England for another week. She had no pressing reason to come back here to America.’

‘Wasn’t it that she was falling in love with you?’

‘Absolutely not. As I’ve told—’

‘But that you told her you didn’t love her?’

‘I repeat, absolutely not,’ denied Jordan.

‘You gave her a ring, did you not?’

‘A what?’ frowned Jordan, incredulous, conscious of Beckwith’s sudden jerk of attention.

‘During your stay in St Tropez didn’t you buy her a ring and put it on the finger upon which Alyce Appleton by then no longer wore her wedding or engagement rings?’ demanded Bartle. ‘And celebrate, as people do upon engagements, by drinking champagne?’

‘What?’ exclaimed Jordan, blocked on the same word in his astonishment.

Bartle beckoned the usher, handing the man a sheaf of photographs and itemizing their recipients. To Pullinger the lawyer said, ‘These were taken in St Tropez, your honour. The date clearly shown upon the prints coincides with that during which Alyce Appleton shared a room with Harvey Jordan at the Residence de la Pinade’

Momentarily Jordan stared bewildered at the two photographs he had been handed. One showed him and Alyce walking arm in arm by what he recognized to be the Place des Lices and the other at a table at the Mouscardins restaurant at the edge of the port. He was clearly holding her left hand, putting a ring on her wedding finger. There were half filled champagne glasses on their table, the bottle in its cooler alongside. And then he erupted into laughter. Alyce, at whose courtroom table another set of prints had been delivered, sniggered, leaning sideways to her lawyer. Reid didn’t laugh.

‘Perhaps your client would share the joke with the court, Mr Beckwith?’ said Pullinger, who wasn’t smiling either.

‘There’s an open air market on the Place des Lices in St Tropez on two days of the week, Tuesdays and Saturdays,’ explained Jordan, patiently. ‘It caters for tourists as well as local residents, selling all sorts of things: cheap clothing and a lot of local produce, cheeses and meats. And there are bric-a-brac stalls. From one of them, at a Tuesday market, I bought a plastic ring, in imitation marble. It was a joke between us. Play-acting, the way people do.’

‘Play-acting the way people do when they feel they are falling in love?’ said Bartle.

‘No!’ refused Jordan. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Like what, Mr Jordan?’

‘A serious declaration of love: a declaration of anything of the sort you are trying to make it into.’

‘Why didn’t you mention it, in your written statement?’

Hold your temper, Jordan told himself. ‘Because it was so inconsequential: so meaningless. I had totally forgotten the incident: didn’t even remember it when I first saw the photographs.’

‘You claim it was a joke?’

‘It was a joke: a silly, harmless joke.’

‘People laugh at jokes,’ said Bartle. ‘You and Alyce Appleton look very serious at your restaurant table, with your celebratory champagne.’

‘This is a ridiculous attempt to create a situation where no situation existed,’ insisted Jordan.

‘Did Alyce Appleton continue to wear your meaningless plastic joke ring after that day in St Tropez?’

There’d be more photographs, Jordan guessed. ‘She might have done. I don’t remember her doing so. As I have tried to make clear, it was totally inconsequential, something over in a moment and forgotten.’

‘Alyce Appleton doesn’t appear to have forgotten it,’ said Bartle, summoning the usher to distribute another selection of photographs.

The second batch was thicker than the first and Jordan was surprised that his initial reaction at flicking through them was not apprehension at the questioning they were going to prompt but the briefest moment of nostalgia.

‘Do you recognize – remember – these photographs?’

‘Of course I do!’ replied Jordan, unthinkingly.

‘Of course you do,’ again mocked Bartle, as he looked up to the bench. ‘I would particularly invite your honour to look at the ring upon Alyce Appleton’s finger as I go through the numbered sequence. Here – dated as they all are – is Mrs Appleton boarding a yacht to another sailing excursion, this time to the lies de Porquerolles. And print five shows Mrs Appleton and Mr Jordan at Cagnes. Print six has them at the Hermitage Hotel in Monte Carlo and this,’ declared Bartle with the enthusiasm of a conjuror groping into his top hat for the rabbit, ‘is the photograph of Alyce Appleton passing through Nice airport for her return to America …’ Bartle paused, to create his moment. ‘Each of the photographs before you, your honour, very clearly show Alyce Appleton wearing the joke, inconsequential plastic ring so seriously slipped upon her finger by the defendant, the gesture celebrated with champagne.’

And he hadn’t once been aware of it being on Alyce’s finger after that one fun lunch at the Mouscardins restaurant, thought Jordan.

Alyce walked unaided but with her lawyer attentively close at hand to the witness stand, her doctor tensed forward from his chair behind, took the oath in a controlled voice and settled herself demurely in her seat, knees discreetly covered by her mid-calf skirt, hands crossed in her lap. Despite the lack of make-up, there was a tinge of natural colour to her cheeks. In a steady, controlled voice she went through the identifying formalities before looking expectantly to Daniel Beckwith. On her trip to France, she agreed, she had had an affair – the first in which she had engaged after her marriage to Alfred Appleton – with Harvey Jordan. She could not recall a time in her life when she had felt so lost, so abandoned. Having initiated the divorce proceedings after discovering she had a sexual disease and undergone successful treatment, she had tried to distance herself as far away as she could from a husband she despised and for whom she no longer had any feeling other than contempt. When she’d got to France she’d realized it was not the good idea she had imagined it would be. She was lonely, her confidence gone: there’d been days – specifically two, she admitted, under Beckwith’s questioning – when she hadn’t bothered to bathe or even get out of her hotel bed. Harvey Jordan had been kind. At no time had his attitude towards her been that of a predatory seducer. She’d been intrigued by his invitation to what emerged to be the prison in which the man in the iron mask had been held, never for a moment considering the possibility of his making a sexual advance. Which he didn’t. Feeling as she did because of her personal circumstances – the circumstances of being betrayed and abandoned – she had been deeply moved at seeing the cell in which someone had been shut off from the world, as she at that moment felt herself to have been.

‘What happened after you disembarked from the catamaran back in Cannes, to return to the hotel at which you were both staying?’ asked Beckwith.

Looking directly at the man, her voice even and clear, Alyce said, ‘Harvey asked if I wanted to have dinner. I told him no, that I was tired after being at sea all day and that I wanted to go to bed. But not alone.’

‘Had Harvey Jordan made any sort of sexual approach, any sexual advances, prior to your telling him that?’

‘No, none whatsoever.’

‘So the approach came from you, without any encouragement or pressure from him?’

‘Yes. Although when I said it I didn’t think of it – imagine it – as a sexual approach. I’d been too long alone, like the poor man who’d spent his life in jail for an offence that has never been positively known. I just didn’t want to be alone that night.’

‘But that night you and Harvey Jordan made love?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you a willing partner to the lovemaking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Harvey Jordan force himself upon you?’

‘Absolutely not! I had only ever known one man, sexually, before Harvey, who was the most gentle, considerate man I could ever have imagined. Sex with my husband had been close to rape. Sex with Harvey was what I’d always imagined love to be, but never known.’

The reactions stirred through the court. From the Appleton table there was anger from the man himself, but a smile of satisfaction from Bartle. Beckwith irritably tapped his finger against his leg.

Quickly Beckwith said, ‘Did you imagine yourself – believe yourself – falling in love with Harvey Jordan?’

‘Of course not! Neither of us, from that night until I left to return here, to this divorce, had any illusions or fantasies about what was happening. We were having an affair, for my part a wonderful affair. But it ended with my flight taking off from Nice.’

‘You did not intend – plan – ever to see him again?’

‘Never.’

‘What was your reaction at learning that Harvey Jordan had been cited as a co- respondent in this divorce? And that a damages claim for criminal conversations had been filed against him?’

‘Great distress. I do not deny the affair in France. But according to my understanding of the damages accusation Harvey Jordan is not in any way responsible for me divorcing my husband. By the time I met Harvey Jordan there was not the slightest affection remaining to alienate me from my husband. There hadn’t been, for a very long time.’

As he sat, Beckwith leaned close to Jordan and said, ‘Better than I’d hoped.’

Apart from the actual moment of admitting that she had made the first sexual move, Alyce had avoided looking at Jordan. He thought she might have returned to him when her examination switched from Beckwith to Bartle, ready to give a smile of both thanks and encouragement, but she didn’t. She did shift on the witness stand, sitting more positively upright, as if preparing herself for the attack that was to come. But it was with an attitude of defiance – forced defiance maybe – not the lassitude under which she had appeared crushed throughout most of the hearing.

‘You went to France still considering another reconciliation with your husband, didn’t you? That’s why you took the final irrevocable documentation with you instead of signing it here, in America.’

‘I had no intention whatsoever of entering another attempted reconciliation with a husband who had given me venereal disease. The final documents were not signed here in America because they weren’t ready when I went to France. They were sent to me, for signature, while I was there.’

‘In France you fell in love with Harvey Jordan …’ Bartle paused, searching for the quote from his notes. ‘“The most gentle, considerate man I could ever have imagined”.’

‘No.’ Her face was more flushed now, with what Jordan inferred to be anger.

‘You were so much in love with him that you couldn’t wait to get into bed with him, could you? So eager, in fact, that you actually invited him to sleep with you?’

‘After enduring the life to which I was subjected by my whoring husband I welcomed gentility and kindness.’

‘Is that why you were happy to settle with a plastic token of love!’

‘I would …’ started Alyce, but stopped. Instead she said, ‘It wasn’t a love token. As Harvey has already told you, it was a joke, a silly joke that meant nothing.’

‘A silly joke that meant nothing but which you continued to wear throughout your time together in France, even on the plane coming back here for your divorce action that you didn’t finally initiate until you met Harvey Jordan?’

‘I’ve answered your question,’ said Alyce.

‘Not quite,’ argued Bartle. ‘You began answering but changed your mind about what you were going to say. What was that, Mrs Appleton, that you originally intended to say?’

‘I said what I intended to say,’ insisted the woman.

‘Did you set yourself a time limit, to take a lover in France?’

‘My purpose in going to France was to get as far away as I could from a man of whom my contempt and disgust was absolute, not to take a lover.’

‘She’s holding up well,’ Beckwith leaned sideways to whisper to Jordan. ‘He’s trying to run her down like a truck but she’s not letting him.’ Beside his lawyer Jordan was burning with fury, hands tightly gripped together beneath the court table.

‘You do not like love – sex – do you, Mrs Appleton?’ persisted Bartle. ‘From the very moment of your marriage you were reluctant to share your husband’s bed.’

‘It was not until I met Harvey Jordan in France that I learned the joy of sex. What I did not like was rape, which is how I came to regard my sexual encounters with my husband very early on in my marriage.’

‘You loved your husband, though, didn’t you?’

‘I imagined I did, at the very beginning. It did not take me long to realize that was all it was: imagination. Which is why this action against Harvey is so ridiculous. How can a man alienate affection when no affection exists?’

‘You’ve rehearsed your story well, the two of you, haven’t you? Practically the same phrases, the same denials?’

‘There has been no rehearsal, no preparation, between Harvey and myself to defend this preposterous accusation. There didn’t need to be. All we both needed to do was to tell the truth. Which we both have.’ The flush was going from her face; Alyce even appeared to have resettled, more relaxed, in her seat.

‘Where’s the ring you wore throughout your time with Harvey Jordan in France?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You’ve no idea of the whereabouts of the love token that was so precious to you?’

‘I have no idea where the joke ring is, no.’

‘Isn’t it somewhere at home, in one of those boxes in which women keep things, trinkets, that they treasure more than diamonds or gold? Things of the greatest sentimental value?’

‘I do not have such a box.’

‘You do remember him buying it and giving it to you in St Tropez, don’t you?’

‘I had forgotten, until I was reminded by your photographs.’

‘But now you do remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say when he took your hand and slipped it upon the finger from which you had so recently discarded your husband’s wedding ring?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Did he say it was a token of his love?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Did he ask you to marry him, when you were divorced and free to do so?’

‘I think I would have remembered, if he had. I don’t remember.’

‘Surely he didn’t say something like: “this is a plastic ring I want to put on your wedding finger as a joke!”?’

‘I really don’t remember,’ repeated Alyce. ‘It is you attaching such great importance to the ring. We didn’t.’

‘Except that you wore it all the time you were together.’

‘Look at your own photographs,’ invited Alyce. ‘You’ll see in most of them that I wore the sun hat and sandals I bought there. It was very hot. That was all I thought them to be, a hat and a pair of sandals.’

There was an isolated snigger from Dr Harding, from behind the rail.

‘I can see that you did, Mrs Appleton,’ agreed Battle, resuming his seat. ‘But as you’ve just told the court, you bought the hat and sandals yourself. Harvey Jordan bought the ring for you and you didn’t wear that most of the time. You wore it all the time.’

Beckwith waited until Alyce got back to her table to sit beside her lawyer before rising, and as he did so the judge said, I trust this will not be a lengthy concluding submission?’

‘I see no reason for it occupying very much more of your honour’s time, because I believe the evidence you have heard speaks for itself,’ responded Beckwith. ‘This was no instant love match, the stuff of fiction and movies. This was a brief, adult affair between two people, one a single, unattached man on vacation, the other a lonely woman about to divorce a husband for whom affection, if it had ever existed, had long ago died. Mr Bartle has attempted, with very obvious desperation, to make much of the giving of a ring as proof of his client’s claim against Harvey Jordan. Both Harvey Jordan and Alyce Appleton have described the ring episode as a silly joke, which was all it was. I submit to you, your honour, that Mr Bartle’s efforts to make it appear otherwise is an even sillier joke and an indication of his desperation, although far less sinister than the efforts to which the other side appeared prepared to go with the medical evidence of chlamydia. About which I will say nothing further, knowing as I do that your honour has reserved judgement upon it. What I do invite you to find upon the evidence is that under Section 1-52(5) of the North Carolina statute is that Harvey William Jordan is not guilty of alienation of affections, nor of criminal conversations, and dismiss him from the proceedings.’

Judge Hubert Pullinger had listened to the submission slumped back in his chair, not appearing to make any notes. He remained that way for several moments before coming forward over his notation ledger, his throat rumbling, as it had earlier, to clear it before making a pronouncement. ‘You have, Mr Beckwith, forcibly made a submission of some substance – some passion even – which I would be ill treating with a snap ruling, without the benefit of proper reflection: a snap decision which might, even, provide you with ground for an appeal. I choose to remind you of the legal application open to me on charges of alienation of affection and criminal conversation, between which there is an important division. The date of separation of the parties is important to prove alienation of affections and I have yet to hear sworn evidence to prove the depositions that have already been provided to the court. Essential to that is the malicious conduct of your client, Harvey Jordan, in contributing or causing such loss. The parties to the marriage must still be together in order to prove this claim. I have yet to hear further about that, although there is every indication that by the time Mrs Appleton met and engaged in admitted adultery with Harvey Jordan the contesting parties were not together.

‘The action of criminal conversation, however, is more complex. It is a lawsuit sounding in tort – an injustice to the person – based upon sexual intercourse between the defendant, your client, and the plaintiff’s spouse, Mrs Appleton. Further to define the law, a criminal conversation is a strict liability tort, because the only thing the plaintiff, Alfred Appleton, has to establish is an act of sexual intercourse, the existence of a valid marriage between the plaintiff and the adulterous spouse, and the bringing of a lawsuit within the applicable statute of limitations. It is not a defence that the defendant did not know his sexual partner was married, which indeed, Mr Beckwith, you did not advance. Nor is it a defence that the adulterous partner consented to the sex, which again you have not advanced. Nor is it open to you to plead that a separation already existed, that the marriage was unhappy or that the defendant’s sex with the spouse did not otherwise affect the plaintiff’s marriage. Most important among other caveats, which I will not at this stage explore further, is that the plaintiff had also been unfaithful …’

There was the familiar pause, for further throat clearing. Beckwith, expressionless, was sitting tensed forward, leaving the judgement to be recorded by the court stenographer. Bartle was doing the same but there was already a satisfied smile settling on his face. On that of Alfred Appleton, too.

‘None of which diminishes the submission that you have made before me today. It is my function to interpret and administer the law, as it has been proscribed. Even before the full and proper beginning of this action, matters arose which greatly disturb me and upon which I have yet to adjudicate. I do not believe that I would be properly administering the law, which is my duty, if I found for your submission and dismissed your client from this matter. As I have, in the matter of the medical evidence, I intend to reserve my judgement, pending the full hearing.’

‘Fuck it!’ Jordan heard his lawyer say. It was what Jordan thought, too.

Twenty-Five

After granting David Bartle’s instantly sought, and unopposed, application on behalf of Appleton for the divorce hearing to be in closed session, Pullinger adjourned until the following week, citing his need to use the intervening days to ‘tidy the loose ends of this wholly unfortunate beginning’, and once more Jordan and the two lawyers gathered in Reid’s Raleigh office to review the judge’s rejection.

‘We should have known about that goddamned ring,’ complained Reid at once, openly accusing.

‘If I’d remembered it I would have told you,’ said Jordan, no longer deferring to either lawyer, although glad now that he and Beckwith hadn’t split after their earlier disputes. ‘It was exactly as Alyce and I told the court: a stupid joke thing that was totally unimportant. And I can’t – and won’t – believe Pullinger refused the dismissal because of it. That would be ridiculous.’ He looked at Beckwith. ‘I thought you made a convincing submission. Thank you.’

The lawyer inclined his head in acknowledgement and said, ‘It was annoying, being caught out about the ring, but I don’t think that was why Pullinger found against us, either. I think he was thoroughly pissed off by what the other side tried to pull and didn’t want to protract everything further with another possible plea on Leanne’s behalf. This way he’s tied it up in one bundle.’

‘You still estimating any finding against me as high as you did in the beginning?’ asked Jordan.

Beckwith shook his head. ‘We’re way down the scale now. We’ve got to be!’

‘I agree,’ said Reid.

‘Alyce stood up well, until it was all over,’ said Jordan. When she’d been invited to the review conference she had pleaded exhaustion and Dr Harding at once confirmed, after examining her, that medically it would be too much for her to go through any analysis, actually administering some medication in a court ante-room before yet again smuggling her from the building.

‘Now you’re going to be centre stage,’ Beckwith reminded Reid. ‘You think she’s going to be strong enough to stand up to it all? Today wasn’t even a taste of what she’s going to face from Bartle when we get to the full case.’

‘I’m glad of the adjournment,’ admitted Reid. ‘I’m seeing Harding first thing tomorrow. After what’s already happened I don’t want to throw any more medical stuff at Pullinger but I might ask for some relaxation in her attending if Harding tells me it’s necessary.’

‘You intending to have him on hand all the time?’ queried Beckwith.

‘Another reason for seeing him tomorrow,’ expanded Reid. ‘I’m hoping his function at the Bellamy clinic is more administrative than actually practising. If it is he might be able to spend more time than someone with a patient list.’

‘He looks young to be the administrator of an entire hospital?’ suggested Jordan.

‘Local boy made good,’ said Reid. ‘Very good indeed.’

‘What do I have to do now?’ Jordan asked his lawyer. ‘Do I have to be in court the whole time?’ There was a lot more use to which he could put the New York bank accounts.

‘I’ll think about that as things take their course,’ said Beckwith, cautiously. ‘We’re pretty much at the back of the bus in the immediate future. But certainly you should be in court in those early days. I’m sure we’re still ahead, as far as our part of the case has gone. But I don’t want to upset a spiky old bastard like Pullinger by making a move he’d consider disrespectful. And after his reaction to how you make a living I wouldn’t like to argue pressure of business.’

‘I don’t think much of Bartle. Or Wolfson,’ prompted Jordan. Or Reid, for that matter, he mentally added.

‘We knocked both of them way off course,’ said Beckwith. ‘Bartle did the best he could with what he had. Which was why the ring was a nuisance. Without it he really would have been floundering.’ He looked at Reid. ‘Don’t underestimate him next week. He’s got a lot of court ground to recover. Wolfson, too. Alyce is going to be put through a lot of hoops and she already needs a doctor on standby.’

‘That’s what I’m going to talk through with Harding tomorrow.’

‘Shouldn’t there be a specialist on hand, as we had over the chlamydia business?’

‘I told you, that’s what I’m seeing Harding to decide,’ insisted Reid. ‘And I think these after-court discussions are useful. I’d welcome the input continuing.’

I bet you would, thought the unimpressed Jordan. He said, ‘You’re going to need more than discussions like this if your enquiry people don’t move their asses more than they’ve done so far.’

‘The planning conference with them is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. They’re making promising noises. I’ll bring Dan up to speed before we start next week.’

And I’ll bring myself up to speed on Trojan horseback, thought Jordan.

But not here in Raleigh, he decided, recognizing the opportunity again to get back to New York, which he already knew his lawyer intended to do on the first available flight the following day.

Dinner was Jordan’s first reflective opportunity on the outcome of the day and he accepted, without admitting it to his lawyer, that he’d been too optimistic of Pullinger’s dismissal. But as objective as he always was, Jordan at once recognized that there was a potentially protective benefit from him being officially detained in America instead of remaining there of his own volition, which he’d already decided to do if they’d won the day. This way there could be no suspicion of him in any way being responsible or involved in the intended retribution against Alfred Appleton, remote though any such suspicion might be, so carefully – and so far undetected – had Jordan evolved his unfolding attack. But he would be restricted in expanding that attack if he had constantly to attend the Raleigh court. This fact created an uncertainty – a hindrance – in the mind of a man who didn’t like initiating anything about which there was the slightest doubt or difficulty.

Jordan was glad he wasn’t able to get a seat on the same flight as Beckwith, able to travel alone back to New York. So accustomed to working and being always alone, responsible only for and to himself, that, objective again, Jordan acknowledged that the constant presence of Beckwith and Reid – of so many other people – had caused something like claustrophobia in him in Raleigh. It might not have been so bad, he supposed, if things had been different with Alyce: if he’d been able to see her, be with her, sometime during the adjournment. Fragile though she was, she had been magnificent on the witness stand, doing everything that she could to prove he wasn’t guilty or responsible for her marriage collapse under ridiculous Dark Ages laws enacted by Puritans who believed in witches and burned them at the stake. He wanted – needed – to thank her: thank her for enduring the humiliation of actually admitting that it was she who had come on to him before he’d hit upon her, which he’d intended to do the night they’d got back from the prison island visit anyway. Was Beckwith right, that what Alyce had gone through the previous day was a soft prelude to what she was going to be subjected to by Bartle the following week? He didn’t want to be excused the court when Alyce was on the stand. He’d be there every day, supporting her if he could, letting her know if he could that he was there for her. As he would be. Counting. Counting every humiliation, every shitty trick or device that Bartle and Appleton imposed upon her. And by every notch in that count he’d increase the humiliation and shit he’d already started to dump on Alfred Jerome Appleton. Not just an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth: he’d figuratively dismember the man organ by organ, limb by limb, until all that was left for people to laugh at would be a hump-backed, flush-faced head on a spike.

He’d advised the Carlyle the previous night of his return to Manhattan and his retained suite was predictably immaculate, his intrusion detectors in the suit closet and dressing-room drawers undisturbed. He held back from unstabling his Trojan Horses at once, deciding that there was so much he had to cover that he needed to create a reminder list to avoid him overlooking anything. It took him an hour to compose and he was surprised at its length when he finished.

He assumed that Bartle and Wolfson would have returned as he and Beckwith had – maybe Appleton and Leanne, too – but there would have been little opportunity for the lawyers to have updated their computer case files. Working his way patiently through his reminders, Jordan decided that with the exception of DDK Investigations, Reid’s enquiry agency, within whose computers he had so far not embedded a see-all spyhole, he’d probably be premature accessing any of his already burgled sites until the following day.

Jordan was on the point of quitting the hotel for West 72nd Street and whatever mail might be waiting there for him in Appleton’s name when his telephone rang.

‘I wondered if you’d be back here,’ said Alyce.

‘You’re in Manhattan?’

‘I couldn’t stand being in Raleigh any longer. And there were television and cameramen all around the estate.’

‘How are you?’

‘It’s just the court. Once I’m out of it, not in the same room with him, I’m OK.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just here, in the apartment. You?’

‘Just here, in the suite. There’s still time for a late lunch.’ West 72nd Street could wait.

‘That would be nice. Do you know Enrico’s, on 57th and 3rd?’

‘I can find it.’

She was there, looking through her heavy-rimmed glasses at the menu while she waited, when Jordan entered. The black sweater showed off her blondeness and she’d covered the courtroom pallor with more make-up than she normally wore and Jordan thought the lipstick was too bright, almost as bright as Leanne Jefferies’ has been in court. She was drinking mineral water. She seemed to sense his presence before he reached the discreet side booth, shadowed even more than the already deeply shadowed restaurant, and looked up, smiling. ‘Hi!’

Jordan lowered himself opposite her and said ‘hi’ back. She hadn’t completely managed to hide the dark rings beneath her eyes.

‘I know I look a mess,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts.

‘You don’t look a mess and you know it.’

‘I feel a mess.’

‘You’ve no reason to feel a mess, either.’

She smiled again, shaking her head. ‘I don’t believe you. But thanks anyway. The hotel in Raleigh told me you’d gone away until Sunday, so I guessed you’d come back here.’

Jordan said, ‘I’m glad you got me. I want to thank you for everything you said in court.’

‘It was the truth. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Tell the truth. Why didn’t you?’

‘What!’

‘About having once been married?’

Jordan shook his head. ‘All part of the venture capitalist nonsense, too busy for a normal life.’

‘How did it go wrong for you?

‘Rebecca found another guy she liked better.’ She had, but not until he’d tried to drown himself at the bottom of a bottle.

Alyce humped her shoulders, dismissively.

Jordan ordered a gin martini from an enquiring waiter. ‘It still can’t have been easy for you, standing there in front of your husband, saying what you did.’

‘I’m sorry about the ring.’

‘Turned out to be a pretty bad joke, didn’t it?’

‘It was nice at the time. Everything was nice at the time.’

Jordan hesitated, curious at the remark. ‘I thought so, too. I really didn’t notice that you went on wearing it.’

‘I know you didn’t.’

‘Why did you?’

‘I wanted to. I wouldn’t have done it, though, if I’d known everything we did, everywhere we went, was being watched as it was. Alfred’s a bastard; a one-hundred-and-ten-percent bastard.’

‘But we fucked him with the chlamydia lie. Him and Leanne.’ Jordan suddenly remembered that Reid hadn’t made his promised application to the judge for the medical records, if any still existed, of the dead Sharon Borowski. He supposed that it wasn’t so important now.

‘I hope we can catch him out in all the others.’

‘What others?’ demanded Jordan, alertly.

‘I wish I could guess. There’ll be a lot more, believe me.’

Jordan did and wondered if he’d get any leads from the following day’s phishing trips through the computers. ‘We’ve agreed to have daily, after-court conferences, Dan, Bob and me. There’s a lot of us on your side.’

‘I’m glad you are,’Alyce said, smiling at him across the table.

From her study of the menu before he’d arrived Alyce immediately asked for spaghetti with clams when their waiter returned. Jordan, who hadn’t bothered with the menu, said he’d have the same, as well as a bottle of Chianti, eager to get rid of the man.

‘What happened to the ring?’ he asked.

I took it off on the plane. Left it there when I got off. We’d agreed it was over, remember?’

Jordan hesitated. ‘Didn’t you want it to be?’

Alyce shrugged, awkwardly. ‘It was best that it was. Except that it wasn’t over, was it?’

‘Isn’t,’ insisted Jordan, correcting her tense.

Alyce shook her head, positively. ‘Let’s not walk this route any further. You’re still a defendant, possibly going to lose a lot of money.’

‘After showing up their medical reports as we did, Dan doesn’t think it’s going to be anything like as bad as it might have been.’ He was shortening the man’s name, he realized.

‘I don’t see the connection, but that isn’t what I want to talk to you about. I … I mean the family will pay back whatever’s awarded against you. As well as your costs. What’s happened to you is my fault … nothing to do with you …’

The offer silenced Jordan for several moments, his reactions colliding between anger and gratitude and settling somewhere in between. ‘I don’t want that. Thank you, but no.’

‘It could be a lot of money.’

‘I know. I can afford it.’ How much he wished he could tell her that it would be her husband who paid and in a lot more ways than just money.

‘You’re offended,’ she accused.

‘I told you no. And mean it.’

They were both glad of the arrival of their food. The wine was better than Jordan had expected but Alyce limited herself to half a glass. Seizing the abstinence as a weak excuse to break the embarrassment that had come between them Jordan said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to drink with whatever medication the doctor’s given you?’

Alyce didn’t reply at once. ‘It was just a tranquillizer yesterday. And it’s not regular medication.’

‘You’re going to be under a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, next week.’

‘I know.’

‘Have you talked to the doctor about it?’

‘He says there are things but I don’t want to slow myself down, certainly not when I’m giving evidence. I don’t want to give the bastard the slightest advantage.’

‘Surely …’ started Jordan, his mind on the previous day’s after-court discussion. ‘I’ve forgotten his name …?’

‘Walter,’ she provided. ‘Walter Harding.’

‘Is there a guarantee that Walter will be able to be in court every day?’ persisted Jordan, not trusting Reid to be as thorough as he should be.

‘Bob says he’s going to try to get me excused some of the time.’

Jordan decided against referring to the conversation with the two lawyers. Instead he said, ‘What if Pullinger refuses?’

‘Maybe then I’ll have to take something.’

‘Dan seems to want me there most of the time.’

Alyce gave a half smile. That’ll be something, having you there.’

‘When are you going back down to Raleigh?’

‘Sunday, I guess. It’s not something I particularly want to think about.’

‘We could spend some time together here at the weekend.’

‘Maybe,’ Alyce said, doubtfully.

‘Why don’t I call? We could drive up into the Catskills.’

‘I don’t want to pick up where we left off in France, Harvey. Not …’ She stopped. ‘I just don’t, OK?’

‘I’ll call,’ insisted Jordan.

Jordan went several times through virtually every word of their conversation, eagerly analyzing every inference and meaning, sure of his final conclusion. The most important of which was that Alyce hadn’t wanted their affair to end in France, which he’d been too stupid then not to realize. But now he did realize it. And decided it wasn’t too late for him to recover. She’d clearly reconciled herself to it being over, her only consideration now the impending turmoil of the coming weeks. But that’s all it would be, just weeks: days and weeks when he’d be with her, doing everything he could to help and support and protect her. And when it was all over … What about when it was all over? he demanded, halting the fantasy. All it could ever be, a fantasy. How could it be anything else, doing what he did, existing every day of his life as he did? Darling, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’m not a professional gambler, any more than I was an investment financier. I’m a crook. I steal people’s identities, rob them – never stripping them clean; just as much as I think they can afford to lose, apart from your ex-husband, who, by the way, is paying for everything it’s going to cost me – I’ve already got close to $140,000 of his money – but we can have a wonderful life together if you can overlook where the money comes from. Impossible, Jordan told himself. He lied to everyone else but never to himself, which was what he was doing – trying to do – now. It was time he woke up from the daydream: remembered who he was and what he did and accept France for what it had been, a nostalgically recalled but passing, thank-you-and-goodbye affair. Except that he didn’t want it to pass, not now. For the first time since Rebecca – unthinkingly, unintentionally – he had developed a feeling, an emotion, he’d never imagined himself capable of again. Still impossible. But not totally dismissable, not quite yet. There were still the next few weeks, a period during which he had no alternative but to stay where he was, with Alyce as much and as closely as possible. Looking after her.

The outstanding loan invitation was waiting for him at West 72nd Street, along with acceptances, with the money already deposited in his account, for each of his four earlier applications. There was still time for Jordan to complete it and personally deliver it before moving along Wall Street to draw upon those already agreed, swopping the amounts between the various safe-deposit boxes to keep the value in each below the legal reporting levels.

Back at the hotel he picked his way meticulously through the trading accounts and internal email stations of Appleton and Drake, the first task always to pick up the slightest indication of suspicion or discovery, before making further transfers to the banks he had so recently visited. Again he travelled further than the already plundered currency trades, moving that late afternoon through the company’s metal division, drawing predominantly from already agreed copper and aluminium futures.

Jordan was at his laptop, showered and with room-serviced coffee beside him, before eight the following day, trawling through his illegal computer emplacements roughly in his order of establishing them. He saw that Beckwith had written himself an aide memoir to bring to the attention of the jury, before whom the full divorce would now be heard, what he labelled ‘a determinedly attempted deception over the initially incomplete chlamydia findings’. On the systems of both Boston venerealogists, in email exchanges and in an already partially written defence to the Massachusetts medical licensing authority, Jordan found written confirmation that the inadequate reports had been prepared under pressure from Appleton as well as David Bartle. There was also a series of email’s between Appleton and Bartle in which the lawyer complained of having to defend Mark Chapman free of charge before any disciplinary body and of the difficulty he might have getting Chapman back into court for the full divorce hearing. One note contained the phrase: ‘your stupid interference that could get the whole lot of us in serious shit, which puts a lot of strain upon our friendship’. Jordan discovered, and saw them as a potential gold mine, some incomplete but hostile emails between Bartle and Wolfson from which the most obvious conjecture was of a falling out between Appleton and Leanne Jefferies. In one message Wolfson wrote of the chlamydia dispute: ‘seriously endangering the agreement our two clients have reached and led me to question my own professional position, as perhaps you should question yours’. That had caused Bartle to write back that: ‘I think any further consideration of this particular aspect should be very strictly restricted to one-to-one, unrecorded discussions between the two of us.’

It was mid-morning before Jordan returned to the communications between his own lawyer and Reid, which were intriguing but again frustratingly incomplete. Reid wrote of his enquiry agents’ investigation being ‘much better late than never’ and of it being couriered to Beckwith, who’d replied, obviously after reading whatever had been uncovered, that Reid might encounter difficulty introducing it into the forthcoming hearing on grounds of ‘applicable admissibility unless you can manage it during cross-examination’. Encouraged by the notes between the two lawyers Jordan broke off from accessing his already established sites to get into his newly established Trojan Horses in the computer system of Reid’s investigators. He was frustrated once more by what had passed between the two of them. There were apologies for delays and appreciation of Reid’s patience but it was obvious that the findings had been provided on hard, paper copy, not transmitted over an Internet link. Knowing that the master copy had to be somewhere on a hard disk, Jordan spent almost two hours – as he had earlier trying to locate the other obviously couriered documents saved on other hard disks – but failed to find it without the necessary in-house, dedicated file name.

Jordan failed, too, to find a possible link when he went back a third time into Reid’s system, but did locate further interchanges within the previous hour with his own lawyer about Alyce. The planned morning meeting with Walter Harding had been delayed, reported Reid. The hospital administrator diagnosed Alyce’s problem to be psychological stress, compounded by having contracted the venereal infection from the man she was now divorcing; although the condition had been completely cured her gynaecologist had found considerable fallopian tube scarring, which made it unlikely that she would ever be able to carry a child full term. Harding had undertaken to attend the court for the majority of the hearing, certainly during the times that Alyce was on the witness stand, both when she gave evidence or faced cross-examination. Alyce’s gynaecologist was prepared to appear to give evidence about the fallopian scarring, and Harding to support any application for her to be excused court attendance. He could also recommend a psychiatrist if the court demanded corroborative evidence about stress, although he knew Alyce to be reluctant to call such an expert witness – ‘because she doesn’t want to sound mentally unbalanced, which she isn’t’ – as she was reluctant to be prescribed tranquillizers throughout the duration of the case. Beckwith had responded recommending that Reid do the best he could to get women on the jury during its selection process and to ‘do everything you can to bring out the fact that because of what Appleton did to her Alyce can’t ever have kids’.

Jordan worked through lunch, not finishing his final computer invasion until gone five. A useful phishing trip, he decided, particularly discovering the disarray among the opposition. But there was far too much at the moment that was incomplete and needed expanding. He’d done well, ingratiating himself with both Beckwith and Reid. It was essential he kept it up – made the sort of practical suggestions that his hacking had already produced – to ensure he was always included in the after-court conferences. There should be enough, from what he’d come up with today.

There was no reply when he telephoned Alyce’s apartment and he held back from leaving a message that would identify his voice if anyone other than Alyce accessed the machine. There was still no answer when he called again an hour later, nor at eight the following morning. On that call he said, ‘It’s me. Call me back,’ and waited in his suite until noon. It was just after when his phone rang, his smiled expectation seeping away when Beckwith said, ‘You all set for tomorrow’s flight?’

‘All set,’ confirmed Jordan.

‘How’s your weekend been?’

‘Not as good as I’d hoped it would be.’