by David Cooper
“And here and now, you’re not making any point of your own about any of the diary entries?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Rather a pointless exercise, then?”
“Not necessarily. I thought it might help Karen.” Dawn was evidently not minded to go into detail, and Collins was content to let it go. Soraya made a note to pick up on one particular item in re-examination.
“Then you say you received a bunch of flowers on the next day. Can we look at the card that you say came with them?”
Dawn turned to the page that showed a copy of the card.
“That’s it.”
“And you don’t know for certain who sent them to you?” Collins deliberately emphasised ‘know’ and left Dawn with no choice in her answer.
“No, I don’t.”
“So it might have been Mr Avery who sent them to you?”
The question startled Dawn. Ever since she had seen the newspaper article and the accompanying photo, she had been convinced that her mystery admirer was Paul Craven, with whom she had associated her own act of kindness in the previous week. But she could not help recalling that when the flowers arrived, her first impression was that Avery had sent them to play some kind of underhand joke on her.
“That’s not part of Mr Avery’s statement, is it?” The question came from Judge Banks.
“No, Your Honour. We did not anticipate a statement from this witness. Mr Avery will deal with this issue in due course. It’s all part of his case that he did not do anything to destabilise Mrs Vallance.”
“I see. In that case, let’s not ask this witness to speculate about something outside her actual knowledge.”
“Very well. Now, Mrs Vallance, you appear to have assumed that this gift might have been for a favour you say you did for someone in the working week before the gift arrived.” Collins deliberately emphasised all of the equivocal terms. “You do not definitely know that this was the case, though?”
“No, I don’t. But the wording on the card made me think there was a connection.”
“And in the diary extracts we’ve just seen, there was nothing there that jogged your memory?”
“No, nothing.”
“So then we have the photo in the Birmingham Post.” Collins did not invite Dawn to locate the page. Karen noticed the judge looking through her own bundle, evidently in search of it, and hoped that she would not raise any query about the line up. She was already beginning to feel uneasy at the thought that Squire would soon be present in court.
“And when you saw the photo, it made you wonder if one of the individuals in it might have been in your office, a fair few weeks earlier.” Collins was careful to stress ‘wonder’ and ‘might’.
“That’s right.”
“You can’t be at all certain about that, can you?”
“No, I can’t be certain.”
“Let me ask you something about your duties. Is it true that you take care of creating new candidate entries on your office computer system?”
“That’s right.”
“And maintaining a central log of Ripple’s candidate interviews, and all the interviews that Ripple arrange with prospective employers?”
“Yes.”
“And yet none of your records refer to Mr Craven?”
“No, none of them. But for all I know, Mr Avery might…”
“The No answer will suffice, Mrs Vallance. There’s no need to speculate.” Collins turned over another page. “I’ve no further questions.”
Judge Banks looked in Soraya’s direction.
“One issue, Your Honour.” Soraya turned to Dawn. “Can you please find the diary entry page for the week before Mr Avery left Ripple, the one with the entry for the Thursday that appears to read ‘PC Bastards’.”
“OK.” Dawn replied. Soraya had spotted a chance to draw the judge’s attention indirectly to a point she intended to take up with Avery later.
“Two days before that entry, there is a crossing out. Can you see that?”
“Yes.”
“Can you read what has been crossed out?”
“No. It’s completely illegible.”
“Does this remind you why you decided to copy the diary entries?”
“Yes, it does. Those text messages gave the impression he was going to jump before he was pushed. So I thought I’d compare them against the intranet diary on the computer system.”
“Did you?”
“Only when I’d got back from my holiday, a few weeks later.”
“Was there anything untoward?”
“Well, I thought there was an entry on that Tuesday on the intranet diary that would have matched up with what’s in my statement. I’m in no doubt that someone came into the office that day soaking wet, and I dried his jacket while he saw Wayne. But I couldn’t find anything on the intranet diary when I looked.”
“Thank you. Just a moment.” Soraya made a show of consulting her notebook, waiting for the judge to finish typing. “That’s all, Your Honour.”
“Thank you, Miss Modaresi. Does that conclude the claimant’s evidence?”
“I need to invite you to read Miss Gabriel’s statement, Your Honour. As I mentioned in my skeleton, she is currently in Australia.”
“Yes, of course. For everyone’s benefit, having not mentioned the point earlier, I will read her statement. As you will all appreciate, I cannot be expected to give it the same weight as that of a witness who has been subjected to cross-examination.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “Let’s adjourn for lunch. Please be back here in an hour.”
Once Judge Banks had left the courtroom, Avery and his team quickly did so in turn. Karen soon found Edward at her side.
“Well done, Karen. From where I was sitting, you didn’t give an inch.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you think so. It really cut me to the bone having to think about that ghastly man Squire again.”
“Good job you didn’t see what I saw.” Dawn spoke up. “When you were being asked about Squire, that scruffy lout sitting behind Wayne was making obscene gestures. Pity he was out of the judge’s sight. I just decided I’d confront it head on when it was my turn.”
“You both did very well.” Soraya joined them all. “And don’t forget that you’re not the ones accused of wrongdoing. Let’s go and find a conference room. Lennie’s gone off to get some sandwiches.”
* * * * *
“Hi Tony, how’s it going?”
“OK so far, Rufus. Grant’s landed a few heavy blows on them. From where I’m sitting, they’re weak on loss and damage, and anything they’ve said about Craven’s fifty-fifty at best. If he keeps on message, that’s one issue that we’ll win hands down. You never know, if Wayne gives a really good account of himself, they might start getting uptight about the last offer we made. Grant tried his best before we started.”
“Good, that’s what I like to hear. I’ll speak to Craven later. Get him down to court to sit through my evidence and hear how it’s supposed to be done!” Squire brayed down the phone. “Pity about this blasted partners’ meeting tomorrow afternoon.”
“Won’t be a problem. We can leave Jake sitting behind Grant as soon as you’re finished. I won’t be needed, and it certainly wouldn’t do to give any impression that there’s a chink in our Chinese wall!” Both men roared with self-satisfied laughter. “Right, better leave it there. Time to make sure Wayne’s properly on his toes for this afternoon.”
“Right you are, Tony.”
* * * * *
“Your Honour, I shall begin by calling the First Defendant, Wayne Avery.”
The jaunty glance that Avery gave Karen on his way from the benches to the witness stand was quite deliberate. Karen kept herself expressionless and remembered Soraya’s advice to rise above everything she heard.
“Easier said than done. I’m expecting to be provoked beyond endurance.” Karen had replied. Lennie had discreetly reminded her that Avery’s evidence might only be a warm up for what
she might have to experience when Squire was on the stand, and Karen gave yet another involuntary shudder.
Avery was soon sworn in, and he confirmed the truth of both of his statements. Collins remained on his feet.
“With your permission, Your Honour, I have one minor issue to clarify by way of additional examination in chief.” Judge Banks nodded. “Could you look at the index, Mr Avery, and find the card that is said to have accompanied a bunch of flowers received by Mrs Vallance.”
Avery soon had the page in front of him.
“Do you have any explanation for this?”
“Yes, I do. I sent them. Or I’m pretty sure I did.”
Karen was astounded at Avery’s answer. She glanced round at where Dawn had been sitting, but realised immediately that she had let her return to the office. Lennie scribbled a note that read ‘in that case, will Craven deny he sent them?’ and passed it to Soraya, who nodded in thanks.
“Can you explain?” Collins continued.
“Yes I can. I went clubbing on the night I left Ripple, and did a few silly things online when I got back home. I think that was one of them.”
“Thank you. My learned friend will have some questions for you.” Collins noticed that Soraya was still cross-checking pages in her own notes as a result of what Avery had just said, and quickly sat down, hoping to catch her off her guard. But Soraya had seen the judge carefully scrolling through pages on her computer screen, and took her time before beginning her cross-examination.
“Mr Avery, you were a director of Ripple, is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Were you aware that a director owes wider duties to a company than a mere employee does?”
Avery hesitated.
“I don’t think it was any more than a courtesy title in my case. Karen was still in command. She controlled everything.”
It was plain to Soraya that Avery had not answered the question, but she chose to let it go.
“Do you accept that you signed your employment contract when it was issued to you?”
“I suppose I must have done. I never really read it, though.”
“And that it included the clause that’s in dispute here and now, where you agreed not to entice candidates and clients away if you left?”
“As I said, I never really read it. Karen never cared about things like that anyway.”
“That is your signature, isn’t it?” Soraya gave Avery the page number. “Next to the clause that stated you’d read, understood and accepted its contents?”
“Well, after all these years, it looks as if it might be, but I can’t be sure.”
Soraya noticed a frown from Judge Banks. Rather than labour the point, she chose to give Avery an incredulous look, and ensured that it had not gone unnoticed before moving on.
“Let’s go to your first redundancy consultation meeting, on Thursday the fourteenth of March. In your first witness statement, the one in which you opposed the application for an injunction, you say that Miss Rutherford started the meeting by telling you that you were going to be dismissed.”
Avery looked for the relevant page.
“That’s right.”
“But by the time you made your second statement, only a few weeks ago, this crucial issue was no longer part of your defence, was it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You were only saying that you thought the consultation was a sham. Look at the bottom of the first page.”
Avery slowly turned to the page in question.
“I see what you mean.”
“So you said, quite boldly, in your first witness statement that you understood you were being dismissed on that Thursday, but you changed your tune in your second statement?”
“I don’t understand. All this terminology’s confusing me.”
“Let me make it easier. When you saw Miss Rutherford first thing on the Monday morning, she hadn’t already dismissed you, had she?”
“I suppose not.”
“And you then chose to resign, and your own email confirming it included the words ‘you’ve clearly not changed your mind today about what you’re likely to decide in a few days’ time’. So you definitely hadn’t been dismissed by then, had you?”
“Again, I suppose not.”
Soraya kept a watchful eye on the judge as she typed away. She was at a loss to understand how her predecessor Gilbert Hopkinson could have failed to make anything of the anomaly at the first hearing, when Avery had managed to defeat the application partly by claiming that he had been wrongfully dismissed.
“Let me step back a few days before the redundancy consultation, Mr Avery. Did you have a meeting with Paul Craven in Ripple’s office early that week?”
Avery made a play of thinking about his answer.
“No. It doesn’t ring any bell.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Positive.”
“Can you turn to the pages that have your desk diary entries on them.” Avery did so. “On the Tuesday of that week, you can see what appears to be an overzealous crossing out. Something has been completely obliterated.”
“Yeah.”
“What were you crossing out?”
Avery paused. Behind Soraya, Lennie showed a note to Karen on which he had written ‘playing for time’.
“I really can’t remember.”
“A pity. Now, the entry on the Thursday at two o’clock. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it says ‘P.C.Bastards’. What does that mean?”
Soraya knew that she was taking a risk in asking a question where she could not anticipate the answer, but she judged it to be worthwhile, sensing that Avery could not possibly duck out of explaining altogether. Avery hesitated for several long moments before replying.
“Politically correct bastards.”
“Really? Why write something like that?” Judge Banks looked up from the document bundles and gave Avery a curious look. Once more, he paused rather than reply immediately.
“I’d just been told I was about to lose my job. I was the only man in a company dominated by women and ruled by Karen with a rod of iron. I might not have been thinking straight when I went back to my desk, but I just wrote it down in a fit of anger. The time on the diary page is neither here nor there.”
Karen passed a note to Soraya which she quickly skimmed. ‘Never used the phrase before. Never complained about Girl Power before.’ Soraya let Avery’s curious explanation sink in before she resumed.
“Over the weekend that fell between your two meetings with Miss Rutherford, do you agree that you sent a number of text messages to Dawn Vallance?”
“That’s right.”
“Let’s find them.” Soraya waited until she was sure that everyone present had read them in full, right down to the emoticon at the end of the last message.
“You’d have known, surely, that they were all unwelcome?”
“Not necessarily.”
“And you’d surely have appreciated that Mrs Vallance would never have even considered quitting her position and joining up with you?”
“Not necessarily.”
“And the way in which you ended that last message was deliberately intended to frighten her into keeping your communication private?”
Collins rose to his feet, and Soraya readily gave way.
“Your Honour, this is going far too far…”
Judge Banks stopped him in his tracks.
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Mr Collins. I’m mindful of what Mrs Vallance said earlier. It’s far from pleasant for a woman to receive something like that in a text message. Shall we move on?”
Collins resumed his seat, scowling in Soraya’s direction as she picked up where she had left off.
“Now, on the Monday morning, one of your very first comments to Miss Rutherford was that you’d hardly slept or eaten that weekend.”
“Was it?”
“Let’s find Miss Rutherford’s notes, shall we?” Soraya turned a few pages. “Here we
are. ‘Hardly able to eat or sleep all weekend.’ Is that agreed?”
“I’m not going to deny I said that.”
“And let’s just highlight a passage in your first statement.” Soraya tracked it down and read out two sentences from it. “You say you came in on the Monday morning after three days of hardly eating or sleeping, following the news that you were losing your job.”
“Yeah.”
“But in your text message to Mrs Vallance, late on the Saturday evening, you said ‘eating again too, pizza and Stella of course’.”
“So I did.”
Soraya decided to take a small risk and to stray off into an issue of no obvious relevance.
“Stella Artois lager, presumably. Your favourite?”
“Yes it is, now that you ask.”
Soraya quickly turned to her questions for the remaining witnesses, and marked a large red tick alongside one of them before regaining the thread.
“So when you told Miss Rutherford on the Monday morning that you’d hardly eaten or slept all weekend, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”
Avery scowled, realising that he had made a mistake.
“Maybe just a figure of speech. She’s no stranger to exaggeration.”
Soraya waited until she was sure that the judge had noted the point.
“More importantly, over that weekend you’d come to the decision to set up on your own, then?”
“That’s right.”
“And very soon after your meeting with Miss Rutherford on the Monday morning, you gave in your notice and left straight away.”
“Yes.”
“In the context of preparing for this trial, when did you remember that you’d ordered the flowers for Mrs Vallance?”
It was plain that Avery had not expected the question. He thought carefully for a few moments.
“Er…probably in the last week or two, when we were going through our final sweeping up.”
“But the card with the message on it was disclosed to your solicitors over a month ago, before you signed your second statement.”
“What about it?”
“You made no mention of the card, or the message, in your second statement. How come?”
A few beads of sweat had broken out on Avery’s brow.
“I told you earlier, I went clubbing. Sometimes I embarrass myself with the things I do when I get home.”
