'We prefer it when we don't have to trust to the intelligence of a jury,' he said, playing to her sense of superiority. 'Maybe if I could confirm that with Jay herself?'
Anne shook her head. 'She's not in today.'
'Could I call her?'
'That would be tricky. She's got a very full programme.'
Interestingly defensive of the boss, Nick noted. He nodded sympathetically. 'She's obviously a very busy lady. What about if you've got a diary for 2004 that I could look at? Problem solved. And I'm out of here, never to be seen again.'
Anne Perkins raised one eyebrow. '2004? Give me a minute. Lauren, show the nice policeman how the coffee machine works.'
Lauren gave him an anguished smile as they were left alone. 'Would you like a coffee?'
'That would be too much of a commitment. I'm not planning on being here that long.' He perched on the edge of the desk again. 'Have you worked here for long?'
'Five years now,' Lauren said. 'Since 24/7 launched.'
'Must be a good place to work if you've stayed here that long.'
Lauren grinned. 'We get great travel perks. And I love to travel. Plus Jay's a good boss. She demands a lot from her staff, but she gives a lot in return. Have you been a policeman for long?'
Nick pulled a face. 'Too long. We don't get travel perks. So what's she like, Jay? I imagine she must be pretty ruthless, being such a success in business.'
'She knows what she wants and she's very good at getting it.' Lauren stopped abruptly, as if realising she was giving too much away to the nice policeman. 'But if you really want to know what she's like, you should read her memoir, Unrepentant. She had a pretty difficult childhood. Getting over that and making such a success of her life, that's inspiring, you know?'
Before Nick could respond, Anne Perkins returned carrying a slim notebook computer. 'I think this is what you need,' she said, putting the machine on the side table and flipping it open. Her fingers flashed over the keys and an application opened up on the screen. Nick came closer and saw it was a calendar for 2004. 'What were the dates you were interested in?'
'May ninth to May sixteenth,' he said.
She stopped abruptly, fingers poised over the keys. She turned her head to look directly at him. 'I've looked up those dates before,' she said. 'It was a long time ago, but I remember it well. It's not often you get asked about the same dates for two different reasons by two different police forces.'
Startled, Nick managed to maintain his composure. 'We do work closely with our colleagues in Europe,' he said.
'So this is about that Swedish software developer who got killed? What was his name? Ulf something or other?' Anne had moved from defensive to wary now. 'Surely they haven't finally got someone?'
Nick shrugged. 'I can't comment. I just need to be sure whether this man was shadowing Jay that week.'
'Really?' She sounded sceptical. 'I'll tell you what I told the Spaniards. No way was it possible for Jay to have been in northern Spain that week.'
'I never said-'
'Of course you didn't. You're just a foot soldier investigating an unnamed suspect in an unidentified crime.' She turned back to the computer and navigated to the relevant dates. This was obviously the real thing, not something faked up at the last minute to keep him happy. Seconds later he was looking at seven rectangular boxes. At the top was the day and date; down the side, 'JMS', 'AP' and 'VF'. Each day, including the weekends, was filled with details of appointments.
'Who's VF?' Nick asked as he tried to take in Jay's movements.
'Vinny Fitzgerald,' Anne said. 'He's our systems guy. Very talented man. He's in charge of making the site work. Jay discovered him when she was setting up doitnow.com. And he wasn't anywhere near Spain that week either.' She tapped the screen, which revealed VF had been running a training course in Bracknell. Then she pointed to Jay's schedule. 'As you can see, nothing here about a work experience person. And obviously nobody was shadowing Jay that week. Sunday and Monday she was in Brussels, Tuesday and Wednesday in Marseilles, Thursday and Friday in Biarritz. Lots of appointments with potential contributors. And a schedule of things to visit and places to eat and drink. Jay doesn't like company when she's travelling for work. There's no way your suspect was shadowing her that week.'
'I can see that,' Nick said. 'Any chance you could give me a print-out, make it easier for me to convince my boss?'
Anne chewed her lip for a moment. 'I don't see why not. There's nothing commercially sensitive about it. No privacy issues that I can see.' She straightened up, clearly having come to a decision. 'Yes, I can do that. You're sure you can't give me a name for your suspect?'
It was an odd way to phrase it and for a moment Nick wondered if he'd been rumbled. 'Why do you ask?' he said.
'I just wondered why on earth he chose us for his alibi.' She picked up the notebook and tapped in the print commands. 'There must be hundreds of big companies where he could pretend he'd just slipped through the bureaucratic net without a record. It occurred to me that he might have a connection to 24/7 or to Jay.'
Nick gave her an anguished look. 'I'm not supposed to reveal that,' he said. 'People are entitled to their privacy until they're arrested. I'm afraid it'll just have to remain a mystery.'
Anne chuckled. 'Just as well Jay's not here, then. There's nothing she hates more than a mystery.'
Nick smiled. 'Me and her both,' he said. 'Me and her both.' Then he turned his most feral smile on her. 'One interesting thing, though. You've got a lot of time that week that isn't blocked out. I don't suppose you were in Spain?'
She looked as if he'd slapped her. 'I think it's time you left, Sergeant.' She crossed to the printer and handed him the printed page from the diary.
Nick gave her a long, considering look. 'You've been very helpful. Maybe we'll talk again.'
'I doubt that very much.' Her voice was ice, her eyes watchful. 'I can't imagine why there would be any need for that.'
Right then, neither could Nick. But there was some undercurrent in Anne Perkins' reaction to his casual comment that made him wonder.
19
When it came to the psychology of individual difference, Charlie thought the group of A-level students she was teaching were bloody lucky to have her. Instead of a dry academic discussion about gathering empirical evidence on mental and behavioural disturbance and deviance, they were getting despatches from the front line of psychiatry. And, thank heavens, they were smart enough to appreciate it. Her two hours of teaching had turned out to be less of a chore than she'd feared. All the same, she was glad to escape the clamour of teenage girls and recover the peace of her car.
When she turned her phone back on, she picked up the text from Nick, offering her the chance to talk to Magda without Jay eavesdropping. No point in calling now, though. Magda would be at work, her mind on her patients. Charlie made a mental note to remember to contact Magda later.
Meanwhile, she had other work to do. None of the media reports of the trial had mentioned the names of the defence solicitors, only the barristers who had represented Barker and Sanderson in court. The barristers would be on to their next cases, their disappointed clients forgotten; the solicitors were still involved and only they could get her into prison to interview Philip Carling's supposed killers. She drove home, planning her strategy.
Charlie settled down at the computer with the phone and a mug of coffee. She had the names of the barristers but not the chambers where they worked. Google gave her the information she needed in a matter of moments; all she had to decide now was which one to go for. Sanderson was probably the junior partner in whatever had gone on, so she might be more willing to spill the beans. But Barker might respond better to a woman. 'Eeny meeny miny mo,' she said. 'So much for the scientific method.'
A young male voice answered the phone at the first chambers she called. 'Friary Court Chambers,' he said, brisk and businesslike.
Charlie tried to match him on both counts. 'Hi, I wonder if you can help me? I'm t
rying to track down the solicitor for Joanne Sanderson. Your Mr Cordier represented her last week at the Bailey? I'm trying to find out who the instructing solicitor was.'
'Who am I speaking to, please?'
Just what she didn't want to get into. 'This is Dr Flint. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm supposed to set up an interview with Sanderson, but for some reason I don't have the solicitor's name. I don't have to tell you how it goes sometimes.' She sighed.
'Tell me about it,' he said. 'Bear with me a minute.'
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
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