by Silver Abi
“It was a while ago,” Greg told Judith seriously. “But my therapist told me this would help closure.”
And then for some reason he found he was laughing, because this all seemed so ridiculous. The very idea that obliterating some grass in the garden could in any way remove the pain of his loss and the regret of so many wrong decisions. And Judith laughed with him, but softly and respectfully and he was grateful in that moment for her company.
“Anyway, I’m pleased because it’s given us time away from watching videos,” he continued, once silence was restored, “and I’ve been thinking for a while that we should talk marketing.”
“Marketing?” The word sprang out of Judith’s mouth like a greyhound from its trap.
“Yes, you know, how best to sell Pinocchio. I mean, now we’ve done all this research. We must be getting close to the time when we can formally launch it and I can finally pay you back for all your hard work.”
“Oh gosh. Marketing. That’s not my bag, I’m afraid.” Judith was trying to let him down gently, all the more so because of his recent revelation.
“Well, no. I mean, I know you’re not qualified to advise, but I’m sure you’ll have some good ideas. You do on most things.”
Judith smiled. He was trying to make amends for his earlier indiscretion with this mild ragging and she owed it to him to respond.
“I mean. Let’s forget Pinocchio for a moment,” he went on. “How do you know when someone is lying to you?”
“You mean in court?”
“Sure. Let’s start there.”
Judith wrapped her right hand tightly around her mug of coffee, enjoying the sensation of heat penetrating her palm.
“It’s mostly about how the person responds to the questions I ask,” she replied. “I lead him in a particular direction; sometimes that makes him unravel, sometimes not.”
“You mean you trick him?”
“Into revealing what really happened, yes.”
“But how?”
“It’s a mixture of planning and experience. I plan where I want to end up, then I work backwards thinking of how to get there, from an innocuous start. But as things evolve I have to change tack. Some people are fairly predictable, others less so.”
“You don’t think that sometimes you confuse them so much that they admit things they don’t really mean?”
“No, I don’t. That’s not my style. There are some advocates like that. They hector and bamboozle the witness till they’ll agree to anything. Like I said, that’s not my style.”
“And do you always get to the truth?”
“Always? No. But generally I don’t have to. That’s not my job. I just have to raise sufficient doubt that my client didn’t do it.”
“But it helps if people, the judge or the jury, say, believe someone else did?”
“Yes of course it does, but that’s really the icing on the cake.” She looked down at her plate and stifled a giggle which Greg reflected politely. “More often than not, it’s about making the jury have suspicions or reservations. And if you make your client more presentable, they’re more likely to have those qualms.”
“And their body language?”
“Oh, of course. When people are uncomfortable they squirm, wring their hands, blink a lot, go red in the face, stutter, look away, all of those things and more. Those are all signs for me to read that I’m getting close to something they want to hide; blatant, obvious signs. But they’re not enough on their own and juries don’t always read them the same way. I have to deal the final blow. Why are you asking all these questions now?”
“Like I said, I’m thinking about my pitch,” he continued, “to the reality TV people. That’s where I’ll go first. I’m pretty sure how I’ll play that. I’ll probably get one of them to try it out. But, well, I don’t want to be greedy, but I was also wondering if you were right after all, about using Pinocchio for criminals.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you remember when we first met, when you interrupted my lecture…”
“You asked a question and I answered it...”
“All right, yes. But you were convinced then that Pinocchio could help you in your work and I didn’t want to listen. I hate to admit it but it sounds like you were right all along. I mean, just picture the scene. You standing there in the courtroom, Duane Livingstone or his English equivalent standing in front of you. You do all the stuff you just described, you make him wear a smart suit, you take him through his evidence, he stays calm. Then you cross-examine the eye witnesses to show they’re blind as bats or could be mistaken and he still gets convicted after all your hard work.
“But in the alternative scenario, the Pinocchio scenario, you relax. You ask the questions and Pinocchio watches Duane Livingstone answer. You record it all of course, just as a fall back, but, at the end, you press the button and Pinocchio tells everyone the truth. He didn’t do it. Duane goes home to his family, no miscarriage of justice. The judge is pleased, the jury are relieved they didn’t take the man away from his family. Everyone cheers.”
Judith mumbled inaudibly over her mouthful of cake.
“Of course I would never have got this far without you, without your analysis and your patience with all the suspects, forcing me to check them all out, one by one, giving my research credibility. I could never have done it on my own; you must take the credit for that.”
Judith took another sip of coffee to help wash down her cake.
“But now it’s all gone so well, I can give you something back. You won’t have to worry about all your planning and clever questioning any more. Like I said, you just plug in Pinocchio – great, isn’t it? But we have to sell it first, to lawyers. I’m trying not to get too excited but I think this is probably the best chance I’ll ever have to make it really big.”
Judith was silent now but her brain was whirring madly into gear. This did not sound “great” to her on any level. At first, she had wanted information from Greg, to be up to speed on the latest technology. She had wanted to be in at the beginning, in case the technology worked. And then she had become intrigued by the testing process and her natural desire to be in charge had led to more and more involvement. And the product was good, she was forced to concede, and it may really and truly help discover the truth in certain, controlled and limited circumstances. But she had not bargained on helping Greg sell Pinocchio – not yet and certainly not to other lawyers.
“Well, I’m not sure the product is ready for that,” she replied curtly. “You know we’ve identified some issues. Remember that South African boy? Pinocchio was confused, answered differently when we ran the programme more than once. And the blonde girl, the dancer who couldn’t stop shaking?”
“Yes, but I got it to work in the end. And there haven’t been many like that. I mean, even 90% accuracy would be so much better than what we have now. The statistics say that 15% of people in prison now are innocent.”
“That’s rubbish, Greg. Where did you hear that?”
“I know you don’t like to hear those things, but it’s true. Lawyers aren’t all as good as you. And some people don’t have access to them, not really. So, isn’t it better, on balance, to have one benchmark for everyone, even if one or two people fall through the cracks?”
Greg was running his hand through his hair and fixing her with an earnest stare. Perhaps he had been prepared for some resistance. Judith turned away and stared out of the window.
“All right,” he replied petulantly. “I won’t try to sell it now, OK, but when it’s ready. When we’ve finished the interviews and perfected the software.”
“Greg, you know my misgivings.”
Greg pushed his plate away and crossed his arms in front of him leaning his elbows on the table.
“I can see that you’re worried about giving Pinocchio too much power,” he replied. “I wouldn’t let people do things untested.”
“Once you begin, things often take on a momentum of their own.”
&
nbsp; “It’s my product. I say where it goes and who uses it.”
“For now that’s right. But once it’s out there you may have no choice.”
Greg huffed and unfolded his arms.
“I don’t know why you are being so negative. This is what I planned – what we planned. It’s all coming together.”
“Have we finished ‘marketing’ for now then?” Judith was direct but not as stern as usual. Greg sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
“It looks like it. You saw to that. Do you never do anything you don’t want to do?”
“That’s a lot of negatives, Greg. Even I am confused into whether the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
Greg’s eyes flitted lightly across her face.
“OK. I’ll work on the Big Brother pitch for now,” he said. “We can speak about the rest when the Hackney interviews are finished.”
And Judith bit her lip and turned away, before rising to her feet and announcing that she had a meeting to attend and had to run.
19
IT WAS two weeks after their meeting in the local café before Judith returned to Greg’s home. She had made her decision fairly quickly after he had outlined his vision for the future of the criminal justice system; she had to stop helping him. The more she thought about it, the clearer the way forward became. Perhaps she had allowed her curiosity to get the better of her common sense. She would go around, politely withdraw and return the key: simple. She didn’t have to explain her reticence. She could just say that she had a big trial coming up and needed to prepare.
But the more she turned things over in her mind over the following days and nights, Judith wondered if this was really enough. She had no doubt that Greg would take his “lie detection for the masses” product forward without her, but maybe he would also try to sell Pinocchio to the courts by himself. And that was when her wondering led to the formulation of a plan. She had a key. She could let herself into the house, one day when she knew Greg would be out. She wouldn’t destroy anything. No, that would be too awful and dishonest. But she could take all the data. Not “steal”, that was too strong a word, but “remove”; that was what she would do. Big Brother wouldn’t care about supporting data; if Greg trialled Pinocchio on one of its producers, he would be knocking on an open door. But the Ministry of Justice would have little interest in an untested product.
And so she bided her time until his regular football night came around and then she called him, apologised for her recent absence and mentioned she might come that evening. Greg rewarded her by confirming he would not be returning home till late.
But carrying out her plan was not as easy as Judith had envisaged. First she dropped the key as she tried to open the front door and almost set off the alarm, saving it on her third and last attempt to enter the correct code. Then, her own reflection in the living room mirror as she passed caused her to gasp and jump.
Once she reached the conservatory, she relaxed. Greg had left the laptop open on the table together with one of his “you gotta see this one!” notes. Next to it was half a bottle of red, wine, a glass and a carefully wrapped sandwich. Touched by his thoughtfulness, Judith sat down. Breathing deeply, she rested her head on the table.
Then she stood up and went over to the window, pressing her face close to the pane in an attempt to see down into the darkness of the garden, the garden which had been responsible for taking away Greg’s happiness. Finally, she checked her watch. She probably had a good two hours before his return. It wouldn’t do any harm to take a look at the video he had prepared, and she was pretty hungry too.
The first case Greg had left for her this time was shocking: a mother accused of killing her baby son. And Greg had laid out all the evidence for her, just as she had taught him. First she accessed the contemporaneous newspapers, reporting that the woman had been verging on hysterical through much of her testimony and that the jury verdict had been a resounding guilty. Then she turned to the police interviews in which the woman had been calmer, albeit resolute in her denial of any knowledge of how the child died. Then she watched the trial and fast-forwarded to the part of the evidence which Greg had highlighted. Finally, she reviewed Pinocchio’s assessment of the case.
Pinocchio did not agree with the jury. He found the mother consistently truthful when she answered questions about her whereabouts, the child’s injuries, her approach to motherhood and her family relationships. But Mary Glazer had been convicted and remained incarcerated for four years, her two other children brusquely pressed into foster care, until the expert evidence had been discredited and her appeal allowed.
And before Judith knew it, she was weeping aloud at the unfairness of it all; at the inability of this poor woman to convince honest fair-minded people of her innocence, at the scorn in the medical expert’s voice when he had rejected outright the possibility of SIDS and sealed her fate, at a system she loved which had let Mary Glazer and her family down so badly. And she wept, too, for her own predicament. On this occasion, Pinocchio alone had acquitted Mary Glazer. Behind her sobs and convulsions and terror and pain, Pinocchio had read her face and found the truth. Could Judith guarantee that if she had represented the accused, she would have achieved the same result?
And then, before she had time to collect herself, she heard a key in the lock and Greg’s loud footsteps in the hallway, and he sprang into the room, his recently removed streaked and sweaty T-shirt adorning the top of his head.
He stopped short in surprise and then embarrassment as Judith’s eyes widened at the sight of his glistening torso. She noted his glossy, well-defined chest, permeated by a fine dusting of dark hairs; Martin was always disparaging about men who shaved their body hair, being fairly hirsute himself, and Judith had never considered that his was anything but the ideal male body, but she now found herself transfixed by the beauty of Greg’s smooth flesh.
“Oh excuse me. Judith. I forgot for a second you were here. You did say...” His voice trailed off as he spied her tear-stained face. Never in a million years would he have imagined that Judith, the battle-hardened gladiator, would or even could cry at anything. In all their months of collaboration, including hearing the details of brutal murders, he had seen no signs of emotion from her, no chink in her armour. Oh, sure, she laughed from time to time, more as they became used to each other, but that was most often at her own jokes and she never gave anything away, nothing which suggested that she was vulnerable, or even sentient.
Judith sat up to attention and dabbed at her eyes with the fingers of one hand, at the same time abruptly closing the video clip playing on her screen.
“I thought you were at football,” she managed stiffly.
“Yeah, I was, but then Mike broke his leg. Snapped it in two, 10 minutes into the first half. It was pretty grim. The ambulance came quickly and none of us felt like carrying on after that.”
“Oh, how awful,” Judith stammered, wondering now how to extricate herself with the least embarrassment.
Greg crossed the room to see what could have had this dramatic, and previously impossible to believe, impact on Judith, and was disappointed to find that she refused to share it with him. Frustrated, he removed the T-shirt from his head and wiped it across the front of his chest. Judith deliberately averted her eyes and he felt a long-dormant surge of confidence in his own physical presence.
“Was it the Mary Glazer you were watching?” he asked her gently.
“Yes.” Judith swallowed hard and her fingers tapped inconsequentially at her keyboard. “It was rather upsetting and I allowed myself to identify with the main players: a fundamental mistake for any professional.” She sniffed and closed the laptop, her hands resting on its lid. “I was about to leave anyway,” she ventured.
Greg sat down on the window seat and stretched out one leg then the other, enjoying the discomfiting effect his semi-nakedness was having on Judith. But it was more than that. He suddenly wanted to know what it would feel like for his skin to touch Judith’s, not her h
and or her arm, but her cheek or the curve of her back. He felt his pulse quicken. And then he remembered that he had something for her.
“You can’t leave yet,” he announced abruptly. “Say you’ll stay just a moment. I’ll even put on a clean shirt.”
Greg leapt up, bounded out of the room and thundered up the stairs. Judith heard the floorboards creak sympathetically above her head, and drawers opening and closing. She wiped her eyes a second time to ensure they were well and truly dry. But she remained flustered by the image of Greg’s well-toned upper body, now indelibly printed on her psyche, concerned that she had allowed him to see her with her guard down and furious with herself for not carrying out her well-oiled strategy.
Greg re-entered the room noisily and slightly out of breath. He was now wearing a freshly laundered T-shirt and carrying a small box in his hand, which he held out to Judith.
“I bought you a present. I hope you won’t mind. Just to say thank you for all the hours you’ve put in. And for listening to my wild ideas and for being so honest with me, too. You’ll give lawyers a bad name!”
Judith was now totally bewildered. A gift, however welcome it might be in principle, overstepped the boundaries of their professional relationship. And only minutes earlier she reminded herself that she had been contemplating sabotaging Greg’s work of the last three years, on which all his hopes and financial success were pinned. She could not possibly accept a gift.
Judith stared up at Greg, who was smiling openly at her, his arm still outstretched. There was no sign of him having guessed any of her mental torment and it would clearly offend for her to refuse.
Judith took the box guardedly, lowering her eyes from his, opened it and found some tissue paper wrapped around a small something, which she carefully extracted. Vigilant as she was, a hint of anticipation graced her lips. She allowed herself one jolted glance at Greg, who was watching her with interest.
In fact, had Greg not encountered Judith’s softer side on his unannounced entrance this evening, the present would have been little more than a token of his gratitude, together with an apology for pressing her too hard for her lawyer contacts. But the realisation that Judith could feel, indeed could weep, combined with the powerful desire she had recently aroused in him imbued the gift with much more significance.
