Trick of the Dark

by Val McDermid

  She could hear keys being clattered at the other end. 'No problem.'

  'OK. It was Miss Pilger from Pennant Taylor who gave us the Sanderson brief.'

  'Perfect.' Charlie held it together long enough to thank him and put the phone down. Then she jumped to her feet and did a little dance round the room, swivelling hips and yipping with delight. Finally, something had broken her way. Pauline Pilger was one of the first solicitors who had hired Charlie as an expert witness and over the years, the women had worked together a dozen times or more. There were a handful of lawyers Charlie knew she could count on right now and Pauline was pretty close to the top of the list. More than that, she was a passionate fighter for her clients, refusing to give up even in the teeth of absurdly overwhelming odds.

  She pulled up Pauline's direct line and called it. She answered almost immediately. 'Charlie?' Pauline sounded surprised, but in a good way.

  'That's right. How are things?'

  'Good. I'm not going to ask you the same, I don't expect you're having a ball right now.'

  'I've been worse. Listen, is this a good time to talk?'

  'Let me call you back in ten minutes. I need to get this bit of dictation finished, then I can concentrate properly. OK?'

  Ten minutes had never gone so slowly. When the phone finally rang, Charlie was drumming her fingers on the desk like a freeform jazz pianist. 'Pauline? Thanks for getting back to me.'

  'Charlie, it's always a pleasure. I hate the way they're trying to make you a tabloid scapegoat. You did your job, you did the right thing.'

  Charlie sighed. 'I know, Pauline. But those dead women weigh on my heart, you know?'

  A long pause. Charlie knew Pauline carried her own weights. Impossible not to as a criminal defence lawyer. 'I know,' Pauline said at last. 'I take it this isn't just a social call?'

  'I'm afraid not. I'm warning you now that this is going to sound bizarre. But bear with me, please.'

  'Fire away. I could use a little bizarre. Right now things are very bland round here. I tell you, Charlie, the Human Rights Act is a two-edged sword. We've made it work for us, but every bloody client I see these days starts off with a rant about how their human rights have been violated. I'm getting tired of explaining that the police's refusal to let you smoke in the back of a police car does not come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment. So hit me with bizarrerie.'

  'It's about your client, Joanna Sanderson.'

  'Currently banged up in Holloway awaiting sentence for murder. I'm guessing life with a recommended tariff of ten. What about her?'

  'Magda Newsam's mother is my former tutor. And strange though it may seem, she's convinced your client is not guilty. Neither Joanna nor Paul Barker. She thinks they've been fitted up.'

  'Wait . . . let me get this straight. The widow's mother thinks my client's innocent?'

  'Of murder, anyway. She knows nothing about the insider trading. But she believes the wrong people ended up in court and she's asked me to take a look at the case to see if there's any way of unpicking what's happened.'

  'You think I didn't do my job?' Pauline said. 'Hell, I agree with the Newsam mother, I think my client is innocent of murder. But the circumstantial was against her, especially since she and the boyfriend had the kind of motive that juries who watch bloody Midsomer Murders understand.'

  'I don't think for a minute you dropped the ball.' Charlie was conciliatory, but she was also convinced. 'I just want to talk to Joanna so I can go back to Corinna Newsam and say, Sorry, there's no loose threads to pull at here.'

  'Jo won't tell you anything you don't already know,' Pauline insisted. 'But I may as well tell you there was one line of defence we didn't run because we thought it would alienate the jury. As it turns out, we might as well have gone all out.'

  Charlie liked the sound of that. In her experience, when lawyers tried to act like psychologists, mistakes got made. It wouldn't be the first time that game-playing in court ended up as the first brick in the wall of an appeal. 'What was that?' she said.

  'How much do you know about the case?'

  'I've read all the media coverage.'

  'OK. So you know all this started when a back-up hard drive turned up with copies of letters that didn't appear anywhere else on any of Philip Carling's computers?'

  'Yes. Magda found it in her parents' house, where they'd been staying the night before the wedding.'

  'Well, my client and her partner are adamant that Philip Carling would never have written those letters shopping them for the very good reason that he was the one who instigated the whole insider trading scam.'

  'You're kidding. The bridegroom, Mr Pure-as-the-driven-snow? He was at it?' This was the most surprising thing Charlie had heard so far. It turned the evidence of the letters on their head.

  'So my client claims. He'd been doing it for a while when Joanna noticed he seemed to be spending a lot more money than he was earning. Her first thought was that he was ripping them off. Taking more out of the company than he was entitled to. So her and Paul fronted him up. He realised the only way out of a very difficult situation was to come clean about what he was really up to. And he showed them how to set up systems to get away with it.'

  'Jesus,' Charlie said. 'That blows the motive out of the water, doesn't it?'

  'Just a bit.'

  'I don't get why you didn't want to run with it.'

  'Juries don't like it when you blame the dead without any evidence. There were two major problems. Philip Carling was good. There's no trace of dodgy money in his accounts. There's the odd irregularity - selling a painting for thirty thousand that he allegedly picked up for a hundred quid in a junk shop, that sort of thing. And he claimed to be a high-stakes poker player. He must have been a helluva good one to rake in the kind of winnings he was declaring and banking. But nothing you could point to and say, That's his insider trading profits.'

  'That does make it harder. But still . . .' Charlie tailed off, trying not to sound too reproachful.

  'Then there was the nail in the coffin. Who supposedly discovered the letters? The grieving widow. Have you seen her? Drop-dead gorgeous, Charlie. Every man in the court was drooling, believe me. Plus she's a doctor who treats kids with cancer. Robbed of her husband on her wedding night. It's hard to imagine someone with more appeal to a jury than Magdalene Newsam. So if we try to suggest the letters were planted to frame our client, it follows that we're suggesting the Virgin Magda has a finger in the pie. And that was a nobrainer. '

  'I can see your problem. Not to mention that your clients weren't covering their tracks as well as Carling had been. I mean, there's no suggestion that they were fitted up over the insider trading, is there?'

  'No, even I can't get that one to fly. But I don't think they killed Philip Carling. Barker might have, with his back up against the wall. But they alibi each other. Unshakeable. I did point out to Joanna that she wasn't doing herself any favours if she was lying about being with Barker while he was off killing Carling, but she was adamant. They were together, and they didn't kill Carling. Of course, the other problem is there are no other obvious suspects. He didn't live the sort of life where you make enemies who kill you on your wedding day. So if my girl and her bloke didn't do it, who did? The other wedding guests are all covered - overlapping alibis, nobody walking around in wet clothes. Does your old tutor have any bright ideas about who really killed him?'

  'She has an idea,' Charlie said. 'I wouldn't call it bright and there's nothing you'd call evidence to back it up. But it's suggestive. '

  'You want to share it with me?'

  Charlie laughed. 'You'd send round the men with the nice white coat that buttons up the back. No, I don't want to share it at this stage. It's too off the wall, even for you.'

  'That's so unfair. I showed you mine and you won't show me yours.'

  'I promise you, as soon as I have anything concrete, I will share. But for now, it's best if I keep it to myself. So, can I see your client? I could do you
a nice psychiatric report for the appeal.'

  'That's something I will bear in mind. But I'm going to have to knock you back, Charlie. Joanna's not doing well. Not well enough to expose her to a fishing expedition. She'd say anything right now if she thought there was even the faintest chance of it getting her out of there. She'd pick the Pope out of a line-up.'

  'Probably with some justification.' Charlie tried not to show her disappointment. She was torn between the desire to interview a genuine witness and her understanding of the state that Pauline was describing. She knew she would only cause Joanna more grief if she appeared to offer any kind of hope. And while there were times when she didn't mind lying in a good cause, damaging someone who was already vulnerable wasn't one of them. 'It's OK, Pauline. What you've given me already, it's probably all she's got. I still can't get over the idea that Carling was the one who set the whole racket up. That's wild.'

  'Maybe he double-crossed somebody. You get into those murky waters, who knows what sort of pond life you'll stir up. Listen, you keep me posted on this, you hear? My girl shouldn't be behind bars.'

  'I hear you,' Charlie said. They spent a few more minutes catching up on their personal lives, but Charlie's heart wasn't in it and she was glad to end the call. 'That changes everything, ' she said. She couldn't quite see what the new picture was, but the kaleidoscope had definitely turned.

  20

  The Marconi business lounge at Bologna Airport was pretty basic as executive lounges went. Beer, soft drinks or coffee and a limited range of prepackaged snacks; it was an insult to the palate after the glorious food and drink Jay had enjoyed on her two-day visit to the city. But she wasn't here to eat or drink. She was stuck here because her flight had a three-hour delay. That was the downside of her insistence on still doing some of the frontline work that was mostly done by stringers and reliable local informants, but it was a small price to pay for keeping in touch with the reality of travel as it was for most people. Well, the reality gilded with little luxuries like executive lounges. Because there was always some work to be getting on with. Jay had never believed in wasting the serendipitous parcels of time that professional travel regularly dropped into her lap.

  She'd used the first hour to make notes of the high points of her trip - restaurants, bars, shops, museums, galleries, but also the oddities and unusual possibilities that made 24/7's offering unique. Jay read through her summary and checked against her calendar to make sure she'd missed nothing. Then she took advantage of the business lounge's Wi-Fi to upload her top five prosciutto recommendations to the 24/7 website. Most of the site visitors would never have the chance to taste them, never mind buy them, but now they could sit around dinner tables and hold forth as if they were experts. This was the side of 24/7 that Jay didn't feel proud of. The information and experiences she'd made available had been responsible for a measurable increase in pretentiousness round a certain class of dinner table. She hoped she could get through life without being punished for it. God help her if her just desserts ever came to call.

  With work out of the way, she still had the best part of two hours before they would be boarding her flight. She hoped Magda checked the live arrivals website before she left for the airport. She'd told her not to bother coming out to Gatwick to meet her, but Magda had been particularly insistent. It would wear off, Jay knew, but for now this devotion warmed her.

  To take her mind off home, she decided to knock out some more of the book. Jasper had called her on Monday to tell her he'd squeezed another twenty grand out of her publisher on condition she could offer an early delivery date. The money was no big deal, but the eagerness it represented was a positive indication of how much they wanted her book. For that vote of confidence, she didn't mind dragging herself back into the past and reshaping it into the sort of narrative that would fly off the supermarket shelves.

  She'd have to write about the time she'd spent travelling after she'd sold doitnow.com. Throw in a generous dollop of grief and regret over Kathy, but make it read like forward movement towards the idea that became 24/7. But not tonight. It was too dispiriting to write about travel in an airport. Airports were, in Jay's view, the antithesis of travelling. They were the necessary evil of transit.

  The trouble with travel is that, no matter how far you go, you wake up with yourself.The time I spent moving around, getting as far from the beaten track as I could, was the incubation period for my next business, but it was also a futile attempt to escape from the pain of losing Kathy. Only when I realised I was going to have to confront that and then move past it was I able to escape my restlessness and start thinking positively about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

  Everyone dreams of getting rich. Coming from my background, I never thought it would be more than a dream. We all think that if we had enough money, we could give up work and have a wonderful life of swimming pools and beautiful meals washed down with vintage wines on terraces overlooking spectacular views. I can remember once when I was a student thinking that being truly rich meant not having to finish the bottle of wine. Because there would always be more.

  Maybe some people manage contentment like that. I'm not sure, though. I've read enough stories about people who have won the lottery and ended up with messed-up, miserable lives to think I'm right when I say we all need purpose in our lives beyond the empty pursuit of pleasure. Some rich people find that purpose in philanthropy - setting up charitable foundations and working with them to make other people's lives better. And that has its place. I've given away enough of my money to know there's genuine fulfilment in that.

  But for me, the true fulfilment comes from work. From creating something where nothing existed. From generating jobs, contributing to the economy and helping other people to make their own lives better. I suppose it's not surprising, when you consider my childhood. I saw at first hand and close range the results of fecklessness and idleness. The waste of talent and spirit, when the most stimulating thought is where the next spliff or fix is coming from. I'd nearly been sucked into that world myself. I could have squandered my abilities in the hazy New Age dreaminess I saw all around me.

  It's true that I might have reacted against it in my own time and become the diametric opposite. But I was catapulted into that diametric opposite whether I liked it or not. The new set of lessons I learned were duty before pleasure, sacrifice before love, self-righteousness before compassion. All of these drastically different values were thrust upon me.

  So I made a double rejection. I went for a pick-and-mix philosophy that let me choose the best elements of both sets of values. Work that created possibilities. Duty that embraced delight. And, at the heart of all I did, love.

  I'd never been happier than when we'd been getting doitnow.com off the ground, making a success story out of my crazy late-night idea. The buzz of making the business work, figuring out the finances and talking people into seeing the world my way - all of that had inspired me. Once we were successful, I still took a lot of pleasure from the business. I enjoyed basking in the glory, I won't deny it. But I wasn't sorry when the time came to sell. I was ready for a fresh challenge. I had the bare bones of an idea I thought we could make into something people would like as much as doitnow.com.

  Kathy's death changed all that. My idea had been something we were going to do together, the way we had with doitnow.com. Without her, my heart wasn't in it. In all the miles I travelled, among all the people I talked, ate, drank, slept and played with, I didn't meet a single person who inspired me to share my next project. I slowly came to realise that, this time, my challenge was to do it alone.

  One of the things I had realised during my travels is that most travel guides are 'one size fits all'. Your only real choice is deciding whether you're a Lonely Planet type of person, or a Rough Guide, or a Frommer's. It's a cookie-cutter way of arranging travel, and it's one that's hopelessly out of date now we have the ability to deliver what people need directly to their email in-box. It's also no way to
cater to a market where the needs of travellers are so varied. I wanted to create something that helped people make the most of their trips, whether they were experienced, seasoned travellers or newbies making their first tentative forays out into the wider world.Their needs are different, but I thought one company could serve them all.

  And so 24/7 was conceived.

  Just like babies, businesses take a while from conception to birth. And just like babies, a lot of them miscarry on the way. And some are stillborn.The internet age has opened up amazing new horizons for many people. But it's also given false hope to a lot of people. Ideas are ten a penny. Good ideas are more rare than that. But finding someone who can turn a good idea into a profitable reality is more like a one-in-a-million shot.

  I'd done it once, so I was confident I could do it again. I returned to London and settled into the house I'd bought two years before and hardly lived in. I enlisted Vinny Fitzgerald, who had worked on the IT end of doitnow.com alongside Kathy, and Anne Perkins, my devoted former PA, to help me put 24/7 together.

  While Vinny began work on constructing the software package that would allow us to tailor the guides as individually as I wanted, I started researching how we would actually assemble the body of knowledge that would make our guides so special and how we would generate subscribers. I soon became aware that I wasn't the only person with a similar idea. When the word went out that I was looking at travel guides, those people flocked to me because I had a proven track record in online business.

  Mostly they came with half-baked, half-formed notions with nothing solid to back them up. It always amazes me that so many people think it's enough just to have an idea, without doing any work to underpin it. I was appalled and astonished at the number of people who turned up with nothing more concrete than a sense of entitlement. Just because they'd had an idea. It's the difference between being a good pub raconteur and a bestselling novelist.That difference is hard work.