by Neil Rowland
“Why did Noreen leave me? What got into her head? Did she give any reasons?”
There was a rueful expression on the lawyer’s face. He didn’t relish the topic.
“Was it because I got fired?” Pitt asked.
“Losing your job is the least of your problems,” Doug mused, rubbing his chin.
“How did you work that out?”
“I can see that you don’t remember a scrap of this,” Doug said.
“Not a bit. I could die from ignorance.”
“Noreen left you before Christmas, after she discovered you were having an affair.”
“Me? Having an affair?” He slumped down into the distressed hunter’s seat.
“You’d already left Noreen, effectively, to live with another woman.”
“Who was I seeing?” Clive pressed. He felt the silky texture of the robe floating over his goose-bumps of astonishment.
“It was one of the girls in your office,” Doug explained. “Noreen told me she was completely disillusioned. She was terribly distraught, when she came here, to give me the news. Her response was to relocate to the States. Make a new life for herself over there. Not to look back over her shoulder. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. You have my condolences,” he added, watching Pitt’s anguished expressions.
Both men dropped into a short, shocked silence - one retrospective, one recent.
“Noreen didn’t waste much time, did she,” Clive observed.
“No,” Doug regretfully agreed. “She was very decisive and didn’t hesitate. She had known the other chap for quite a while. She knew what she had to do apparently.”
“Noreen and I were sweethearts. We had a child together. Josh is such a great boy... the little bugger looks the spit of me, you know. Am I ever going to see him again?” he despaired. “This is just dreadful.”
Doug couldn’t find an answer. He expelled a helpless breath.
“How could Noreen do that? This is totally shocking. If she had an affair I might be able to forgive her. Where does this leave me?”
“I can try to find the relevant legal documents,” Doug offered. “That’s far from my own specialism, but I can ask a family solicitor on your behalf.”
“That I had a relationship with a woman at work... that’s equally astonishing to me.”
“I can see that.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Unfortunately you didn’t talk about your office affairs with me. I never met this other girl friend of yours. You didn’t have much to do with me. I’d ceased to exist for you,” Doug said.
“What am I going to do? What would you advise?” Clive pressed.
“Your only approach is to think on the women at work, considering who the most likely candidate is...for you to have had an affair with.”
“Are you serious? I’m trying to think. Is there a girl at the company, with whom I was particularly close?” Clive considered, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.
“Try to cast your mind back, because she may be able to help you.”
“Unless this is just an innuendo,” Clive considered. He thought hard, like someone twitching their fingers into the corners of a dark recess. “So I didn’t tell you the name of this woman?”
“You began returning home late from the office. Later than normal, that is. Then, Noreen told me, you began staying away all night, and she suspected you. You slipped up and you didn’t show any remorse. You’d lost your moral compass, so to speak.”
“This is hard to recognise. What can I say?”
“You refused to talk to me about your affair. While you visited you sat morosely in that armchair. That’s right, where you are now. You didn’t tell me the name of your girlfriend. You never listened to a word I said. Then you drove off again.”
“Does that sound like the Clive Pitt you know?”
“You fouled up your career in a big way. You grew too bold, too conceited, and too arrogant. However you want to describe that syndrome. You were a shambles.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Clive admitted. “Obviously I wasn’t very happy. Now let me think, who was I having an affair with?”
“You truly don’t remember which girl?” Breadham marvelled.
“Not Miss Porter with the horsey grin and unaligned eyes. Not Janice, not Dorothy. Listen to this appalling sexist bilge,” he remarked. “I’ll be calling them the ‘ditzy chicks’ or ‘secretaries’ before too long, like a few of those other troglodytes on Winchurch Brothers’ trading floor,” Pitt complained.
“What are you talking about?” Doug wondered.
“When I first joined the company, as an intern, I would join in with that banter. Then I began to think for myself. I began to protest against that macho culture. The only woman I really liked, you know, in that way... would be Pixie Wright,” Pitt considered, “she’s not only beautiful, but she’s a brilliant woman, dealing with risk.”
“There you are Clive; you have a candidate,” Doug said.
“I felt weirdly connected to her yesterday,” he recalled. “She was shocked to see me, and afraid at first... but when she calmed down a bit she wanted to warn me. She told me it was dangerous to be there... she claimed that the company was trying to eliminate me.” Clive considered. “How do I get my head around that?”
“Is that what she said? It was probably an exaggeration,” Doug argued.
“Yet there was something between us,” Clive recalled, stretching out his long muscular legs.
“So was your girlfriend?” replied the lawyer. “This was the girl.”
“Pixie certainly takes a good likeness, I can’t deny,” Clive said, thinking with a smile.
“You’re starting to brag about her already,” Doug noted.
“That was only in the office. I took my worries to her sometimes, as far as I remember. She was concerned, she listened to me. She understood what I was talking about,” Clive recalled.
“Can you remember what you were concerned about?” Breadham asked.
“Not the precise details...but they are coming back to me. Pixie understood my logic.”
“In what ways did she understand your logic?” Doug pressed.
“The ways of doing business were not healthy. That’s really vague. But did our relationship go further? I guess it’s possible...it has to be possible... but the idea of cheating on my wife, throwing away our family life, still sounds ridiculous. After all I was happy with Noreen. But according to you I completely lost it... I had a relationship with a girl, and the wife couldn’t tolerate that...so she packed her bags and flew off to the States,” he agonised.
“Of course it’s easy to have your head turned by a pretty girl. Pixie Wright is the likely candidate. You need to find out for sure.”
“Maybe I can patch things up with Noreen,” Clive agreed.
“You are guilty of other transgressions,” Doug said.
“How’s that? ‘Transgressions’?”
“For heaven’s sake,” Doug declared. “I’m a man of the world, aren’t I... and I’m not upset because you had an affair. What you have to face up to is far more serious, let me tell you,” Doug argued. The lawyer’s sharp eyes shifted across a cool legalistic mask.
“Well for me it is quite serious to betray my wife, after six years of marriage, I can tell you, mate,” Clive insisted.
Doug’s glance floundered, as if a chink of ice had attacked his back teeth.
To disguise this rare confusion, he strode back towards his drinks cabinet. He began to fuss with a collection of bottles as colourfully cosmopolitan as his clients and cars.
Clive followed the man’s movements uneasily, as if he was mysteriously detached. He could only allow himself to wait, to sink back further into buttoned sections of the cracked o
ld chair.
Doug returned, pensive, reluctant, washing alcohol around perfect teeth, avoiding immediate eye contact. He swished his straight, greying blonde fringe, as if to bedazzle a judge. He took another substantial glug of liquor before twinkly eyes found their way back to Clive’s questioning glance.
“What I am trying to say,” Doug said, in a strange voice, constricted and lower than usual, “is... that... you are known to have committed a rape.”
Instantly a dam of blood fell away from Clive’s mind. It was a sensation like turning to liquid and draining away into the ground. He was slipping away from consciousness again, while taking a back exit from the human race. “Rape? Me, a rapist? You have to be pulling off a sick joke.” But the lawyer didn’t look as if he was swapping jokes, sick or otherwise. “That’s impossible, Doug. Isn’t it? How can anyone believe I am capable of such an act?” The tension in his voice broke. The eerie disturbing sound didn’t seem to belong to him.
“I don’t like to think of you that way either,” Doug said
“Who could the victim have been? Did Pixie accuse me of this?”
“No, it wasn’t Pixie, or whatever girl you were sleeping with. You are quite wrong in that assumption. The girl you in fact attacked was Emily Winchurch. Yes, that’s right, your boss’ daughter. ‘Fraid so... that’s how you brought your house down,” he explained, wincing.
“Noreen knew about the accusation?” Clive asked, entirely shaken.
“You couldn’t accuse her of making an error, could you?” Doug retorted. Although criminal law was not an area of expertise.
“Where did this rape take place? When did it happen?” Clive returned. His features were contorted as if he was forced to chew poison.
“At the beginning of summer, it must have been. I suppose it was back in May.”
“Are you part of this prank?” Clive asked, shuffling his mind under the turbulence.
“Do you imagine that I am joking about such an allegation?” Doug returned. He was presenting his poker-face-to-the client look.
“The daughter couldn’t mean anything to me,” Clive argued, horrified.
“Did she have to ‘mean’ something to you?” Doug pondered.
“What do I know or care about that girl? I probably only met her a couple of times in my life! She looked a bit of a rebel to me that was all. Winchurch had problems with her, didn’t he? He was embarrassed by her antics and didn’t know what to do with her.”
“That wouldn’t justify a sexual attack. Just because she was a tart and rebelled against her background,” Breadham argued.
“Definitely, definitely not,” Pitt agreed, afraid of being incriminated. “That’s why I am telling you this, because I don’t know her. What she is like. I don’t believe that I’ve ever talked to her before. The idea that I attacked her is just plain bonkers. I’m really not that type of guy anyhow. Do you think of me like that?” He put a forefinger to his temple.
Doug was pacing out a different pattern. “Who knows what we are capable of, shall we say?”
“What are you trying to suggest, Doug? But why did they want to discredit me? What exactly was I working on at the time?”
“She is said to have resisted her attacker. Maybe she gave you a bash on the head, which would account for memory loss,” Doug suggested.
“To hell with a bash on the head mate, I don’t know the girl, even if she did accuse me of this... this awful deed!” he added in disgust.
“You took her into some woods, not far from the Winchurch house, near to a village in Buckinghamshire, from what I understand.”
“You don’t honestly think I was responsible, do you?”
“The girl was in a mess, severely traumatised. Her father had to send her off to recover at a specialised psychiatric clinic. As far as I know she’s still being treated there and... she’s under further observation... having treatment,” Doug explained.
“Unthinkable. Never. They’ve got the wrong guy.” Clive shook his head, eyes downcast, wringing his hands; sensing that his identity was in equal danger to the traduced girl’s.
“It looked a very convincing crime at the time,” the lawyer remarked.
“If they’ve got proof, I will have to accept blame. But at the present moment I totally doubt the story,” Clive argued.
Gradually he got the outline of the accusation against him.
“Is it really as unthinkable as you claim, Pitt? Excuse me for being frank,” Douglas insisted. “We can both agree, I would say, that you have a sharp eye for the ladies...or you certainly had that reputation, judging by the company gossip.”
“Before I fell in love...with a particular girl...and tied the knot,” Clive reminded him. “Are you a mate of mine or are you not?”
“That is the way it has struck me, in the past, if I can be so bold.”
“Are you crazy? I’m shocked to hear that Doug.”
“Don’t be offended Clive, but I know that you have lustful looks for beautiful women,” Doug said.
“Even if that’s true, what about it?”
“Do you imagine that other chaps don’t notice your propensity?”
Pitt made a dismissive noise and chuckled sardonically. “Come on Doug, I am no more likely to rape a girl than you are. How would you feel if such an accusation was thrown at you?”
“Sorry to disappoint your self-image, Pitt, but that’s the way your attitude has struck me,” Breadham said.
“That’s a caricature that can be levelled against any man,” Clive answered. “Even against you.”
“That’s how you are going to defend yourself, is it?” Breadham wondered.
The lawyer was relieved that he never dealt with men labelled as common criminals, particularly sexual criminals, in his section of the law.
“Of course we desire women, if we’re straight, but we don’t take them by force. Things can get a bit out of control for City boys, after hours, as I have observed. I always backed off those dodgy situations. I know the limits,” Clive insisted. “I totally reject any accusation,” he added, trying not to despair.
“Emily Winchurch was raped among trees near her home, and she accuses you of that act. What’s more you were present on the evening of the crime. You were on intimate terms with her before this attack took place.”
“How did you work all that out, mate? How d’you remember, when I’ve forgotten?” Clive asked. He was numb with shock. “Do you have inside information or something?”
“There were numerous witnesses... at Winchurch’s house in the country. Politicians, businessmen and diplomats, were present.”
“I was present at Septimus Winchurch’s country estate?”
“At Close Copse House in Buckinghamshire. A handy part of the country to hold some real estate. It was a rare honour for Winchurch Brothers staff to be invited to Septimus’ home... to help him to celebrate.”
“What was he celebrating, God help us?” Clive wanted to know. “We were at the point of bankruptcy at one stage.”
“His role in the successful conclusion of another City merger, with a Swiss based hedge fund. Well, if you can’t remember your role... it’s all done and dusted now... I don’t imagine that’s significant any more. After this big merger the company made a profit, compared to huge losses since the last crash.”
“Yes, there was a big merger... that must have been a significant bit of business. Only a year of my life is in the dark!” Clive retorted.
“You hadn’t better torture your mind,” Breadham suggested, knocking back the rest of his glass.
“I didn’t like the look of the deal. Isn’t that it? There were aspects of the transaction that looked dodgy to me... actual details are extremely hazy. What was the background of that? What was the data? I was investigating the initial share price, mak
ing a presentation at a public meeting to the employees.”
“Well, you turned up at Winchurch’s garden party...and got hitched up with his daughter,” Doug added, as if preferring the topic.
“I know that the boss has an estate in Buckinghamshire. So he invited me there to attend a garden party? I’ve no conscious memory of that either. How can I tell if any of this is true? Seems as if my brain is scrambled.”
“Your memory loss plea sounds convincing,” Doug admitted. “Not sure if anybody else will believe you. There’s a lot of evidence against you... but we have encountered unlikely turnabouts of the truth before. Sometimes the most incriminating evidence is finally shown to be deceptive or illusory.”
“Thanks Doug, I knew you would not condemn me so easily,” he told the lawyer firmly. Yet he had the sense of clinging to a free sleeve in a storm.
“Well, I always try to keep an open mind. However, you are looking very out of sorts. Why don’t you get some fresh air, before the temperature rises? All this must have come as a shock. You have the look of a trauma victim.”
“You know that I have strong ethics. I think my worst behaviour was a bit of rough sex, with a girl I met in a club in Shanghai. That was before I tied the knot. Well, she took me back to her apartment afterwards...it was in a shady district of the city. Her grandmother was in the next room. Can you believe that? I wasn’t proud of myself. But it was entirely consensual, for the record.”
“As far as you can remember,” Doug commented.
“Yes, right Doug, I can remember. I have recollection of that experience. There’s a table-dancing club, a full on place...some dive off the Farringdon Road. Some of the guys would go. I joined them...once or twice... but that was just a night out with the lads...a birthday celebration. We got there in the small hours and I didn’t know what we were doing, to be honest with you.”
“Come on, stop beating your brains, Pitt. You need to get out and stretch your legs.”
“Apparently the boss wants to stretch my neck now,” Pitt argued.
