The Pinocchio Brief

by Silver Abi

  “Judith. I was joking, but clearly it wasn’t a good one. I live alone. I’m not married, least not any more. I’m sure I said. So now I’m awake, what did you want to tell me?”

  “Ha.” Judith relaxed and smiled. Silly man with his silly jokes. Although she had to admit it had caught her off guard. And he was right that she had never seen any concrete signs of feminine presence or influence in the house. Now it fitted together a little better; any woman worth her salt would have told Greg to ditch the khaki chinos and insisted he iron his shirts.

  “So, just so you know I have not been slacking, I have spent hours looking at the US material. It is very dull and very low-yield, with one or two exceptions perhaps. However, I have had an exceptionally good idea as to how we can access lots of current data easily and much closer to home.”

  “Go on.”

  “Police interviews.”

  “Police interviews?” Greg still sounded tired and uninterested. Judith ploughed on despite his lack of enthusiasm.

  “Yes. All police interviews with suspects are recorded. But what I didn’t know till I flicked on Panorama this evening is that, nowadays, most of them are also filmed.”

  “Ah. I think I am beginning to follow. But how do we...”

  “I know most of the local police inspectors, one or two of them rather well. I can ask them if I can test their interviews against Pinocchio. I could even map our results against whether the suspect was convicted or not.”

  “Judith. That is brilliant.” Now, finally, Greg was suitably animated and Judith allowed her head to roll back against the long-awaited cushions, her own excitement catching her by surprise. “But, wow, it’s also a lot of work, especially to do the second bit,” Greg continued. “We would have to link the interviews to the trial transcripts. And what’s in it for the police?”

  “Oh. I’ll find an angle. They will hate it if we suggest they have made any mistakes of course, so we will have to tread carefully. But, well, perhaps if I say it ‘elevates the importance of their police work and interview technique’. That might do the trick.”

  “All right. Judith, I don’t care how you persuade them, just go ahead. It’s a great idea and it lets us cover so much more ground. You truly are brilliant. Now I am going back to sleep. Speak tomorrow.”

  As Judith heard the receiver click back into its place, she murmured to herself a few self-congratulatory words. And it was nice that Greg had complimented her, even if she had prompted him, and that he appreciated how much work was involved in what she was proposing. Being valued was always rewarding in itself.

  She picked up the TV control again, her finger hovering above the button, vacillating over whether to switch it off or move onto a late-night movie. Occasionally she watched these, but only if she had had an exceptionally trying day. She glanced over at the coat rack and at the place by the door where Martin always stowed his briefcase. Both stared back at her, glaringly empty.

  She turned the TV off with a sniff and padded upstairs. She paused to stand, arms folded, in the doorway of her bedroom, taking in the ivory Egyptian-cotton bedsheets purchased from Harrods by a former partner of Martin’s as a wedding gift and laundered with care once a week by their Romanian housekeeper, and the silk throw, a gift from her sister from one of her extended trips to India. Silly Clare. She had missed the boat in the career stakes with her wanderlust, but she always had good taste in presents.

  She allowed her eyes to alight upon the mink-coloured velvet curtains and on the blood-red, long-haired chenille rug, which was exquisitely soft underfoot but spread its fibres liberally around the room on a daily basis; each was recommended, located and purchased by the interior designer who had planned their décor, whilst Martin was away and she worked in chambers till late at night.

  Suddenly, the furnishings of her entire bedroom appeared distant to her; beautiful, sophisticated items all chosen by other people. If someone had come into the room and asked her from where any of the items were sourced she would have had no idea. If she had been complimented on her impeccable taste in fixtures and fittings she would have felt a fraud. In fact, apart from those damned scatter cushions – now that she thought about it more she remembered that those had been Martin’s words when he walked through the door with them, his voice gravelly and tired – there were few things in the house which she had selected.

  She crossed the room swiftly, walking around the bed to her side and removing and stowing away her laptop at the bottom of her wardrobe. Martin would grumble if he found it in here, kiss her cheek and tell her she was working too hard. As she switched off the bedside lamp she noticed her hands were trembling; she put it down to the cold. The heating had turned itself off at 10.30, assuming, as it was entitled to do, that she would have been asleep by then. She tucked them beneath the covers, lay down in the chilly bed and tried to fall asleep.

  18

  JUDITH DEVELOPED a routine of setting aside one session a week to work on the Pinocchio data, collected from various sources, including two local police stations. Greg would do a lot of the leg work, as he had so much more time to spare, and sometimes he would pick out his favourites for her to assess. On the occasions when Martin was travelling, she would go over early evening. It was so much nicer than returning to an empty house. Occasionally, she would stay very late and fall asleep at the table, waking with a jerk in the early hours and tiptoeing home to shower and change.

  In any event, a month after they started their collaboration Greg had given her a key; then she could come and go as she pleased. Sometimes he was home, sometimes not. When he was out he would leave her the interviews labelled on his laptop in order of preference. And he had shown her how to access Pinocchio herself if she wanted to run the software.

  She began to see a little of the routine of his life, such as it was; daily runs, albeit always at different times of the day, phone calls of a business nature of varying degrees of importance, some necessitating a closed door between them, digging and weeding in the garden, even on the dingiest days, most likely the cause of the dreadful state of his hands, Sunday night football with ex-colleagues from a now defunct software company he had once operated, Wednesday night TV (sometimes), a stash of medium-price, very drinkable red wine and many uncooked meals taken alone.

  She gave little further thought to the postcard from Greg’s father which she had secretly read, save to contrast the picture it painted with her relationship with her own more needy mother, to whom she spoke most weeks. But she did reflect, more than once, on his confession that he had once been married, imagining a whole host of different scenarios responsible for his current single status.

  And she did not venture upstairs even in Greg’s absence; that would be highly improper, though she spent some time speculating on how his bedroom might look. Sometimes she envisaged a dull, lifeless space, the walls painted cream with a splash of turquoise, a pine-framed bed, the carpet beige with brown flecks. She saw plain, cream, fitted wardrobes containing pair after pair of khaki chinos. On other occasions, usually when Greg had been more attentive towards her, or funny, as he invariably was when they chatted or shared a drink, she visualised a psychedelic boudoir, replete with ceiling mirrors, swirling walls and black satin sheets.

  The research progressed slowly but steadily. By the time summer merged into autumn and autumn into winter, with the odd blast of sleet and plenty of overnight frost, they had processed 400 more interviews and the results were astonishingly consistent. Each time Pinocchio “guessed” correctly, Greg would grin smugly and add the name and reference to an ever-lengthening list.

  There were a few occasions when Pinocchio appeared to get things wrong. Once, a woman who was so nervous she could not remain still caused Pinocchio to freeze. Another time, a young boy who had a habit of brushing his hands across his face led to strange results, and an elderly defendant with a myriad of wrinkles caused considerable problems. Judith insisted that these “problem” cases were meticulously documented alongsi
de the many successes.

  One Friday afternoon, Greg had suggested they break their usual routine and have coffee at a restaurant around the corner; he was having some paving laid in the garden, he said, and wanted to escape the mess and the noise. Judith wasn’t sure how much they could achieve in a public environment but she had a couple of solid candidates to pass on and had kept the time free.

  She hesitated outside the restaurant, really no more than a café, containing only a handful of bar-style metal tables inside and two more outside on the pavement, despite its elaborate billboard, advertising extensive lunch and dinner menus. But it remained reasonably inviting, in an unpretentious kind of way as, through the multi-paned bay window, she spotted a glass counter, running most of the length of its left side, weighed down heavily with a mixture of homemade brioche, croissant and loaf cakes.

  From the doorway she could see Greg, seated at a round table, hunched forward, his feet tucked neatly beneath the plastic chair, his left elbow resting on his right knee, the wrist supporting his chin, engrossed in his phone messages. She hadn’t thought of him as a big man in the setting of his home but here, in this diminutive local café, peopled by young and middle-aged women and children, he appeared large, his body over-spilling the functional chair. She hesitated, not because she was nervous but because this was the first opportunity, since his lecture delivered some months before, to examine him properly for any period of time.

  Certainly, she had noticed superficial things – his clothes, his jewellery, his slip-on shoes – but these had all been taken in during deliberately cursory peeks, before politely averting her eyes. She had learned over the years, in her dealings with all men (except Martin and the few boyfriends she had had previously), to refrain from too much eye contact. It tended to send out the wrong signals. And during the evenings she had spent with Greg, sitting side by side in his conservatory, as the light waned, it had seemed only proper and appropriate to focus on the screen or a Pinocchio print-out or even the surface of the table rather than on his face or physique, and to leave any lingering glances for his retreating back.

  So it was only now, with time on her side, that Judith could observe the idiosyncrasies of his features; the thick curls which curtained his face, the asymmetry of his heavy black eyebrows, the right one loyally following the socket of his eye, the left ending abruptly well before the bridge of his nose and the deep, sickle-shaped creases which ran down from the midpoint of either side of his nose.

  And then she had a funny thought and her hand went up to her mouth to stifle a laugh. His stance, sitting there, all elbows and knees and brawn, the curve of his back, the leaning of his chin on his hand; it had reminded her of Rodin’s The Thinker. The image appeared in her mind for only a moment and then it was gone, unwanted, pushed away with a blush. It had been amusing but only for an instant. Because of course, Rodin’s sculpture was of a naked man and more significantly for Judith, Rodin’s figure was the personification of both poetry and intellect, which were not features she would have attributed to Greg.

  Greg looked up, saw her and rose to his feet. This surprised Judith too. She had not expected this old-fashioned demonstration of respect from him. And his smile, when it came, was genial and sincere and filled the space between them, confusing her even more. She tried to propel herself forward without giving away her spying, shifting her weight forward onto one foot with a light bounce, to make it look as if she had paused only momentarily in the doorway.

  “Hello Judith. I’m pleased you found the place. Can I get you something? I think you’ll find the coffee is up to your high standards.”

  Judith relaxed. If Greg had noticed anything untoward, he wasn’t letting on. And if she sent him off to the counter to buy supplies she would have a few minutes to settle herself and recover her equilibrium. She asked for a coffee and, in an unusually girlish outburst, she found herself declaring: “Oh, and some of that cake too, please. It all looks wonderful. You choose for me.”

  Greg returned with a tray of two coffees and two pieces of cake, one a chocolate wedge, liberally filled with butter icing, the other a lemon drizzle oozing syrup from every pore. He placed them both on the table and nudged the chocolate slice in her direction.

  “I wasn’t sure what you’d like so I got two. I’ll eat the other one.”

  Judith was sorely tempted to suggest they cut each piece in half and share, but she stopped herself with a mental rap over the knuckles. Her emotional response to this meeting was proving puzzling and a downright bore. Somehow, meeting here, in the sunlight, in this public place, seemed more intimate than all the dark evenings in Greg’s home. She took a gulp of coffee and claimed the chocolate cake.

  “Thank you. Chocolate works fine for me,” she replied coolly. “When will they be finished at your house?”

  Greg sat back in his chair, which groaned audibly under his weight.

  “I’m hoping it’s just today. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.”

  She nodded, cutting a mouthful of cake with her fork and stabbing at it mercilessly.

  “Good. I do so hate having work done. All those muddy boots and endless cups of sugary tea. And the radio set to Radio One.”

  Judith paused. Greg was staring at her, his face bursting with laughter.

  “What? What is it?” she asked, worried that she had used some unintended double entendre or spilled her coffee down her front. He suppressed the eruption and, instead, laughed gently.

  “No. It’s nothing,” he mumbled, picking up the lemon cake and biting into it heartily.

  “No. Tell me. You think I’m an awful snob, is that it?”

  Greg set his cake back down on the plate. “I don’t know,” he replied, his mouth full of food. “It’s just that you sometimes say really outrageous things but with a straight face, as if you think they’re completely normal.”

  “Oh. Well that’s not so dreadful, is it? I mean, everyone is entitled to an opinion on the world.”

  “Yes, they are. Judith, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed.”

  “Apology accepted. What are you having done, at home? Something in the garden, you said.” She took another sip of coffee.

  “Yes. I’m putting some stones down, just in the centre. I might put in a sun dial or a bird table. I haven’t decided which yet.”

  “And I thought you loved all that endless digging and edging?”

  Judith was teasing him but for some reason he didn’t take the bait. Instead, Greg opened his mouth and closed it again. How could he tell this resolute, unsentimental woman the reasons for his latest project? That it was part of his healing process, albeit long overdue.

  “My wife, Andrea, left me for the gardener.” There. He had done it. Just like that. Something about Judith had made him say aloud the words he had suppressed for so long.

  “Gosh. I’m sorry,” Judith replied quickly and with genuine regret.

  There was so much more to tell, of course, but if Greg had tried to articulate it he knew he would give more away than he should or than was right to impose on Judith. That he had been too busy to dig or plant or weed and Andrea had reluctantly appointed him – Damon, the gardener – picking his advert out from the window of the local newsagent because he had drawn a flower in the top right corner. That he had been fighting to save his Wigan-based business, with endless calls and train journeys, when, perhaps he should have been at home; the business had failed anyway. That she, Andrea, had wanted children but he had put them off, exhorting her to wait for his success and financial security.

  And then afterwards, when she confessed her infidelity over a tearful glass of wine, her suitcases already lined up in the hallway, he had pleaded with her not to leave. He had visited her at Damon’s, a one-bedroom flat above a chip shop in Dalston. Damon had been pretty decent, had not tried to shake his hand or commiserate, had lowered his eyes, stood back and allowed him entry, shutting himself in the bedroom to allow Greg and his adulterous wife to
talk uninterrupted.

  That when he finally realised she was not returning, he had built a bonfire in the centre of the lawn and thrown on to it many of her possessions; clothes, notebooks, photographs. The rest, mostly cosmetics, he had bagged up in black bags and taken to the dump. But it had given him no comfort to watch her things shrivel and curl, or to prod at them the next morning with a blackened stick.

  He had bumped into Andrea more than a year later and she had been friendly. Well, it hadn’t been a chance meeting. He had hung around outside the school where she taught for a few days waiting for an opportunity to speak to her. He was going to tell her about Pinocchio, that this could be the big one, the one that would make them rich, but when he saw her he couldn’t find the words. He hadn’t noticed her condition at first and had felt hopeful but, as she turned towards him, he had seen straight away. She was heavily pregnant, with twins, it turned out. He had done the right thing and sent her and Damon a card when they arrived.

  “You look thinner,” she had said quietly. “Are you eating?”

  “You don’t,” he had replied and she had laughed and touched his cheek before disappearing through the school gates.

  And then, after all of that, he had started digging and weeding and planting and hoeing, to punish himself for his earlier refusal to engage with the space outside his home, which had cost him his marriage. But naturally, the more effort he put in, the more beautiful the garden became; he discovered that burgundy-toned hellebores, the winter-flowering perennials, thrived in the shady beds on the northern side of the garden and, enthralled, he added in their virgin-white cousins. He marvelled that the baby pink, rambling rose recommended by a skinny 17-year-old with a prominent nose ring, who worked evenings only at the local garden centre, smelled like warm honey, the scent intensifying at the opening of every bud; and that the snowdrops and crocuses he had painstakingly drilled into the frozen soil one by one that first winter spent alone had not only bloomed but had naturalised to fill all the dark spaces of the garden.