Gina’s partner’s email arrived late in the afternoon and Martha scanned through it. Gina had been a busy woman. And she saw immediately what Curtis Thatcher had meant.
After her brilliant defence of Mosha Steventon, the floodgates to the criminal world had swung wide open. There were numerous cases of petty crime, burglary, theft, assault, Actual Bodily Harm and Grievous Bodily Harm but some stood out from the rest. Gina’s current case load consisted of a few more interesting cases.
There was a Joel Tansey, appealing against a seven-year sentence for fraud. He’d been importing car parts, avoiding paying the VAT but claiming it back from the government. Gina was appealing against his sentence, citing new evidence, but scanning through the detail, Martha couldn’t see anything that would have convinced her that he was not guilty. The fact was he had not paid the VAT and had claimed it back. He had gone to prison and Gina was handling an appeal. But Tansey was currently banged up in HMP Wakefield and she couldn’t see how he could have got to her. Her visits to the prison would have been watched if not listened to by prison officers. And his access to the outside world would have been limited. According to Curtis Thatcher, the prison governor had stated that there was nothing untoward in their contact. But Tansey was smarter than most of her other clients. The trail of bookwork, claims and counter claims was dizzyingly complicated.
There was a Lenny Khan. Now Khan might have been interesting, particularly with Gina’s connection to Zedanski. Khan was a Pakistani accused of terrorism offences but, according to Thatcher’s comments, Gina had read through some of the police notes and stated that it looked a flimsy case to her – nothing more than an order over the internet for ingredients which weren’t necessarily solely used for making explosives, a few phone contacts who had bad reputations, a holiday in Turkey and some questionable friends. A lawyer like Gina Marconi would have made short work of this. And she had. The case had been thrown out of court, although Martha would have been very surprised if MI6 hadn’t kept a watch over him.
Perhaps the nastiest creature was Pete Lewinski. He was currently accused of a road rage stabbing. Gina had claimed provocation, that the man who had been stabbed had been weaving in and out of traffic and slammed his brakes on, causing Lewinski to hit him, and then the man, a Bill Truman, had punched him. So where, Martha wondered, had the knife come from? She scanned Curtis Thatcher’s notes but couldn’t see that this very important question had been asked. Gina, it appeared, was not above defending the worst of villains. So how, Martha wondered, had she felt about releasing these offenders back on to the streets? Had she lacked a conscience, or had the guilt caught up with her? Goaded her to self-hatred? Had her defence of Steventon caught her in a sticky spider’s web? Was that the reason she had felt unable to marry Zedanski? But Gina had been a criminal lawyer. This would have been the nature of her work. Martha tried to focus back on the case. She was no lawyer but she sensed that Lewinski was one of Alex’s nasty pieces of work and the knife had been conveniently in the glove compartment of his car, ready to be used. Mr Bill Truman, Lewinski’s victim, had survived the assault, but his survival probably owed more to medical skill than Lewinski’s tale of simple self-defence. The knife had pierced his lung and missed his heart by just one centimetre.
Last of all in this list of villains was a guy named Jack Silver who was a fence for stolen goods and had been caught with antique jewellery, the result of a violent crime. Gina’s defence had consisted of the fact that he was a fence, not a violent thief. She had placed him far away from the robbery, which had consisted of threats, violence, torture and the rape of the homeowner’s wife. But Gina’s involvement in the case had been futile. She didn’t always win. The jury had been unconvinced. Silver was currently awaiting a similar sentence to the gang who had committed the crime. Thatcher had added his comment. Silver feels very aggrieved.
But surely even this involvement with the dregs of the human race wouldn’t have driven her to take her own life when so much lay ahead? Martha spent some time staring at the names and the crimes – hoping for what? Inspiration?
She rang Alex Randall and shared with him her information about Gina’s workload. He sounded buoyant. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mixed bag or what? But I don’t see what any of this bunch of beauties can possibly have had over Gina. She was way above all that.’
She felt a twinge. So … Alex had a high opinion of the dead woman?
‘You knew her?’
‘Vaguely,’ he said, and she heard a teasing note in his voice. He’d picked up on her little green-eyed monster.
‘She was, after all, a criminal barrister,’ he reminded her gently. ‘Yes, we were usually on opposite sides of the court, but she was a very charismatic woman.’
He’d used the word deliberately. She felt cheated.
‘And that caused you to change your evidence?’
‘No, Martha, it didn’t.’ His voice was steady and uncompromising. ‘A criminal act is a criminal act. It was up to us to anticipate her questions and try and fend them off so the jury wouldn’t be taken in by her. But she was adept at finding a chink of light. She caused us a few nasty moments and there are people walking the streets who in my opinion shouldn’t be, but in general, yes, I respected her. She was good at her job.’ He paused. ‘Even if sometimes she used her feminine wiles a little too audaciously.’
‘Well, that’s given me a much clearer picture of our dead woman.’
‘It was out of character for her to commit suicide,’ he said, ‘but it isn’t really a police matter.’ She knew he was smiling with his next sentence. ‘More a job for an inquisitive coroner.’
‘Well, thank you for that,’ she said drily.
‘But under the circumstances, Martha – and I’ve visited the site – I can’t see how it can have been anything but a planned and deliberate act.’
‘Then she must have been driven to it.’
He paused before repeating himself with, ‘It isn’t a police matter.’
And she had to leave it at that.