The Pinocchio Brief

by Silver Abi

  “So, how do we do it – detect all those lies? I’m going to tell you.”

  He grinned broadly and opened both arms wide in a welcoming gesture.

  “About 10 years ago, a product was patented called Pinocchio; a computer programme of sorts – great name, eh?” He chuckled and paused, being rewarded by a low sympathetic murmur. “It was developed up the road in Manchester, but nothing much happened for a while. Now, I promise you, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of Pinocchio. And once it’s out there you’ll be able to say you heard about it first, here, today, eh? Straight from the horse’s mouth. What is it all about? I’m going to tell you. Let’s start with a traditional lie detection machine: the polygraph.”

  Striding quickly to stand behind his laptop, Dr Winter flicked an image up onto the large screen behind his head. It was a well-thumbed black and white photograph of a man with wires connected to his chest and fingertips and with a tight band secured around his left upper arm. The fact that this was an early prototype of the machine and much less sophisticated than those regularly in use now did not bother him.

  “What do we know about these?” he asked rhetorically. “I’ll tell you. The stats say 60% accurate. That means ‘not very’.” He shook his head slowly from side to side, again smiling at the audience. “Remember that, when it’s held up as proof of the truth on daytime TV shows, it’s almost certainly wrong four times out of 10.” He waited again and nodded solemnly to reinforce the impact of his language.

  “And that’s not all: someone has to set it up, put those wires on your chest, read the results and we absolutely know that people can be trained to beat it. So, it was a great idea, monitoring stress levels during lying, seeing if you sweat a little, if your heart rate goes up, but it’s pretty much no good if your life depends on it.”

  Dr Winter sipped some water from a plastic cup he had filled before the session began, formulating in his mind the precise words he was going to use next to introduce them to his marvellous product. Once he had decided, he took a few further moments to replenish his cup and to allow his eyes to roam the hall, before proclaiming loudly: “Pinocchio takes lie detection to another level.”

  He tapped his laptop mouse, exaggeratedly, and a second image filled the screen. The word “Pinocchio” appeared at the top in bold red letters and beneath it was the Disney version of Pinocchio’s face, replete with extended nose, sprouting leaves and a bird’s nest at the very end with two feathered inhabitants. Underneath it read “the LIE is as plain as the nose on your face”. The audience giggled politely.

  “Now, in the story, when Pinocchio told lies his nose grew. That isn’t quite what happens here. This Pinocchio, my Pinocchio software, watches how people move, not what they say but how they say it and it works out all by itself whether someone is telling the truth or not. No wires, no time wasting, no training. Just sit those criminals in front of the screen and let Pinocchio ‘read’ their faces. The report is ready straight away, every word assessed for truthfulness, every lie exposed.”

  He halted again, apparently overcome by zeal, although it may have been because he was moving into the video stage of his presentation, which was his least favourite part. Although he acknowledged that the audience needed to see Pinocchio in action, if they were to have any confidence in it or to have anything of substance to tell their friends, he disliked details and analysis and that was what the video showcased.

  The logo disappeared and was replaced by the face of a young man, blown up to five or six times its real size. At the flick of one of Dr Winter’s fingers, the lights in the auditorium dimmed.

  “Watch this,” he directed them smugly, his natural voice ceasing as it morphed into the digitally recorded one.

  “Peter, here, has been provided with a list of 20 questions,” Gregory Winter, the narrator, began. “He was given the questions in advance and he wrote his answers down on a piece of paper and sealed them in an envelope. That envelope has been in his pocket ever since.

  “Now I am going to repeat the questions and ask Peter to answer. But Peter has been told he is allowed to lie if he wants, whenever he wants, but not to tell me when. So here goes.

  “Peter. Is your full name Peter Andrew Moss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. Tell me a bit about yourself. How old you are, where you were born, where you grew up – those sorts of things.”

  The film continued in the same vein for about 10 minutes, with a mixture of questions, answers and narrative, the camera focussing in closely on Peter’s face. At the end of the extract, Dr Winter confirmed that Pinocchio had detected a series of lies in the responses, which corresponded precisely to the lies Peter had told. Then 15 minutes or so were dedicated to an even larger magnification of Peter’s face, to illustrate how each of his facial muscles was behaving at the point of telling those lies.

  The session was reaching its end and the usual shuffling began from the upper reaches and outskirts of the hall, cascading downwards and inwards row by row. Dr Winter pressed the stop button on his film and allowed another 10 seconds of silence to elapse before he spoke again.

  “So, I hope I have given you some interesting thoughts to take away from today’s session. Remember the name ‘Pinocchio’ and remember you heard it here first, from me. Any questions can be directed to me, Greg Winter, via the UCL portal. Thank you.”

  A woman approached him as the bulk of the students filed out. Her blonde hair was cut in a neat, side-parted, shoulder-length bob, she was smartly dressed in a black trouser suit and a high-necked, crisp white shirt and she carried a briefcase under her arm. She wore just a touch of red lipstick and her eyes were heavily lined in black, making her gaze appear intense and penetrating.

  Dr Winter turned at her step and smiled indulgently. He had enjoyed giving the lecture, particularly as this audience had been responsive right till the end. And he liked to finish on a point which would make the students reflect on what he had said, even if some of the livelier elements forgot it all once they had downed a few pints in the local student bar. The scepticism of the heckler had been disconcerting at first, but she had not persevered and she had, after all, provided the correct answer, which had led him smoothly onto his pitch. And he was a staunch believer in the old adage that controversy led to publicity and any publicity for Pinocchio at this stage was a good thing.

  But this woman sashaying towards him was different from most of the 19- or 20-year-olds who approached him at the end of his talks, sometimes just wanting to show off their own knowledge, occasionally obviously attracted to him. He had once accepted a mobile phone number from one of these young women but had never called. It wasn’t so much that he did not desire her. He had lain alone in bed for a full two nights imagining his mouth clamped over her right breast; more that he remembered vividly the disdain he had felt for his own father, a serial adulterer and chaser of women a fraction of his age.

  “Dr Winter, I very much enjoyed your talk.” Her voice was low and husky and he imagined her drawing hard on a cigarette with a bottle of red wine hanging loosely from her free hand. “I wondered if you had a moment for me to ask a question. I’m afraid I don’t have access to the UCL portal, you see.”

  Dr Winter paused and stopped packing away his notes. Despite their bass tones, her words had slid out like a champion skier on a black run; fluent, agile and timed to perfection.

  “Sure,” he replied, curious to know the identity of his slick inquisitor. “But I only have a few minutes before another engagement,” he lied, hoping that she had not yet memorised the facial cues he had identified in his lecture. He was not a good liar; Pinocchio had triumphed over him every time he had pitted himself against it so far.

  “Yes of course,” the woman replied. “I should hate to detain you. But I did want to apologise also, for my, well, ‘intervention’ during your excellent lecture. I certainly didn’t intend to make a joke at your expense; far from it.”

  Ah. So this was the body att
ached to the haughty, detached voice of earlier. Although, now that he was faced with the full package, he thought the two exquisitely matched. This woman oozed sophistication and self-possession and her gaze was resolute and serious. He nodded once, intended to be an acceptance of her apology and an invitation for her to offer more. She placed her briefcase down lightly on the table between them and leant her bodyweight forward onto it, bowing in close so that he detected a hint of her scent, vanilla mixed with something shadowy and aromatic.

  “Well, I am a barrister, a criminal barrister, and I came today to hear you because I cross-examine people, question them, that is, as part of my job. I heard you trying to move your audience away from that kind of use into something more mundane, more mass-market, but, for me, well naturally I am more interested in techniques which can assist in determining a person’s innocence or guilt.”

  “Um, OK?”

  The woman paused. She sensed from his cool demeanour that Dr Winter had not quite forgiven her for earlier .

  “I have read a few research papers, both on Pinocchio and on other procedures like brain mapping,” she continued cordially, “but I had no idea that anyone saw them as having any serious place in the criminal justice system. I understood the results had simply not been sufficiently reliable. But as for the other uses you touched upon, well, I am not sure people will really wish to embrace them, even in our ‘Kiss and Tell’ culture of the moment.”

  Dr Winter sat down heavily and allowed his eyes to scan the auditorium. Apart from a few dawdlers at the very top, who were well out of earshot, he and the fascinating, irritating woman were alone. His eyes returned to her face.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” he said, his voice verging on tetchy, but passable as merely stiff as he responded to the unspoken challenge.

  “I’m so sorry.” She was smiling now, although only with her mouth, the rest of her face remaining neutral and flat. “How rude of me. It’s Judith, Judith Burton.” She stretched out her hand and he took it for a moment longer than was necessary.

  “And, Judith. Was that your question?”

  Now she laughed, low and dusty.

  “I just wondered how you are planning to do it, that’s all. Take some technology, which people mistrust, albeit with a fabulous name, but with no scientific basis and, well, and move it into the mainstream?”

  “Well, would you like the short answer or the long answer?” Greg replied gravely, weighing up, as he spoke, whether he should take a risk with this woman, in order to reel her in. “I can give you the short answer now but the long answer will require you to give up some more of your time.” There: he had said it now, the trap was set.

  He held fire again, watching for Judith’s response. She had stopped laughing and was contemplating him seriously again.

  “I’m refining Pinocchio,” he continued. “I’ll be carrying out intensive research for the next 12 months and in three years’ time Pinocchio will be in all our homes and on all our screens. If you say people don’t want it, then I think you’re seriously out of touch.” Dr Winter found his words coming faster and faster and the volume increasing. “What do people hate the most in this digital age?” he queried. “Uncertainty! Remove that uncertainty and you remove the anxiety from their lives. They will welcome it with open arms.”

  “But people won’t find it acceptable to be routinely interrogated by their partners over every daily ritual.” Judith was standing over him and he wondered if he should rise to meet her gaze, but sitting behind the table gave him a feeling of security.

  “You’re wrong,” he replied forcefully. “It’s already happening. Why do people go on those talk shows? ‘My daughter is sleeping with my new husband’ or ‘my grandmother is really my mother’?”

  “Well – and I don’t watch them so this is only a stab in the dark,” Judith replied, her head thrown back so that her chin jutted out stubbornly (God forbid this man should think she wasted her time on daytime TV). “I imagine those people you describe are there for a tiny moment of fame. I am not sure any of them cares about the truth any more than the producer does.”

  Dr Winter snorted once with exaggerated disgust but then checked himself. Having a row would not achieve his objective. He stifled it by reaching for his handkerchief and blowing his nose expansively.

  “Well, we’ll just have to disagree. I need to get to my next appointment,” he muttered. “Like I said, if you have more time another day, I can show you my research. It’s not here of course; it’s at my office.”

  Judith frowned at his words. Although she had originally reached the conclusion that these predictions were wide of the mark and had remained behind in order to give Dr Winter the benefit of her opinion, now she had reflected on them she found them more persuasive; the modern British public was not only suspicious but also incredibly voyeuristic. Giving them some easy test of fidelity, which they could carry out independently, might just be irresistible.

  “And between you and me, this morning I got the ‘green light’ to complete work on Pinocchio, which will catapult it into the public eye,” he continued. “I have a £50,000 grant now, so we may be done in two years rather than three.”

  “I see.” Judith’s forehead had crumpled into an even deeper frown. Dr Winter had risen now and, sensing Judith’s mental gymnastics, was finally using his height to press home his advantage. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card which he handed over with a genial smile.

  “Here. Like I said, if you want the full story and a tour around my establishment, you can find me at this address most days. Leave a message if I’m out.”

  Judith received the card graciously, ensuring she paid it the requisite amount of attention to be courteous, before dropping it into the side pocket of her briefcase and extending her hand to say goodbye. She remained at the foot of the auditorium as Dr Winter marched out, retrieving the card only once she was certain he had gone and raising it to her face for long enough to commit the details to memory. Then she tutted loudly once and sat down on the edge of the stage to think.

  15

  JUDITH HAD taken care over her appearance in advance of her visit to Dr Winter’s office, more so than before attending his lecture. This was no mean feat given that she had been up at 5am reading papers for her first instruction of the morning. She had called him and told him she would be a few minutes late; the ensuing hearing had overrun but she had achieved the right result for her client and now she could afford to take the afternoon off. Even so, she knew it would be difficult not to think ahead to tomorrow’s work and she had promised Martin, her husband, that she would be home in time to join him for dinner.

  Judith’s heels tapped their way along the residential street. Somewhere along the way buildings had clearly been added, leading to the inclusion of a myriad of extra numbers and letters. But she could not see anything at all, even in the distance, which resembled an office block. She finally reached No. 24, a well-appointed, red brick, Edwardian semi, with an enormous bay window at ground and first floor levels. She opened the gate, marched along the dappled path, smoothed down her skirt and tousled her hair before knocking briskly on the door. She waited a full minute before knocking again. Finally, as she was on the point of a third attempt, she heard a shuffle and some approaching footsteps. The door opened wide and Gregory Winter stood before her.

  He was dressed in khaki chinos, the kind Martin despised as being neither one thing nor the other, not smart but also not truly casual; they offended his sense of propriety and formality. She smiled to herself at the thought that this man was so obviously unlike her husband. His navy polo shirt was unbuttoned (Martin would never have dreamed of wearing anything other than a tailored shirt) and he wore a silver open-link chain around his neck. His hair had been sculpted into place with the help of some stay-firm gel. He was, however, clean-shaven (had he been sporting stubble she might have left there and then) and smelled distinctly and pleasantly of limes.

  “Ah, Jud
ith. Hello. Come in. I am so pleased you managed to fit me into your busy schedule.”

  Perhaps she had overdone her message regarding her reasons for being late, Judith thought, but as he turned his head to step back and allow her entry, she thought she detected a slight upturn of his mouth. Perhaps he was teasing then, she couldn’t be certain.

  “Well, as promised, I will show you what Pinocchio and I have been up to together in our spare time,” Greg said glibly. “That sounds like a scandal, doesn’t it? And then we can speak again once I’ve convinced you.”

  He ushered Judith straight through the hallway towards the back of the house. They quickly traversed a modern and stark kitchen to enter a more-recently added conservatory overlooking a charming garden, replete with a neatly manicured circular lawn, a tiny, lean-to-style greenhouse and an abundance of flowers overflowing the beds and drooping from the various climbers expertly trained along its high walls.

  He gestured towards a table in the centre of the room and Judith sat down, removed her jacket and, finding no place to hang it, reached over and deposited it on the window seat which ran around the perimeter of the conservatory.

  “This is your office then, Dr Winter?” she asked blandly.

  He nodded once. “It’s Greg, please. Yes, nice, isn’t it? Light and airy and uncluttered. Like every office should be.”

  Judith didn’t reply. His flippant conversation unnerved her and despite the alluring beauty of the garden, she had expected more formality and at least one or two pieces of paper. Hoping to restore some ceremony to her visit, she opened her briefcase and took out a notepad and pen. Greg waited till she was staring at him expectantly, and then extracted a laptop from underneath a cushion, opened it up and placed it in front of her.

  “Here,” he began. “First, I want you to watch the film again. It’s the same one I showed at the lecture. At the end let’s talk.” He pressed the play button, which had appeared in the centre of the screen and began to exit the room. “Coffee?” he called casually over his shoulder.