The Pinocchio Brief

by Silver Abi

  “I was at an antiques fair last week in Glasgow and I just saw it and thought of you,” he said with forced offhandedness.

  Judith hesitated again, intrigued by Greg’s comment (he thought about her when they were apart?), savouring the moment, wondering if he was going to give any more away.

  Martin did not often surprise her any more. Well, that was unfair. He did bring her gifts with some regularity but, whilst always welcome, they had recently taken on a certain predictability. Lingerie from Paris; she had so many camisoles now she could open her own shop. Chocolates from Belgium; after the first three boxes she gave them to the cleaner or took them into work and left them in the clerks’ room, so as to avoid piling on the pounds. Silk scarves from Italy; these were beautiful, she had to admit, each one a work of art but, again, she was spoilt for choice and had given the last two away to Jemima and Francesca, her two former pupils, for Christmas.

  She had justified this, at least in part, given that Martin did not choose them himself. He had admitted that early on, when she had complimented him on how well he knew her taste.

  “Oh no,” he had admonished her, as he kissed the top of her head and ran his hands over the front of her blouse. “I wouldn’t have a clue what women like. I described you to the shop assistant and she assured me you would love this.”

  As time went on, Judith imagined an international network of shop girls, whom she had never met, all of whom knew her height, colouring, shoe size and that she disliked white chocolate. When she travelled herself, which was sporadic, and she caught sight of any shop assistant gazing in her direction, she would have a moment of panic that she had been recognised and the assistant was simply coming over to take the credit for some element of her attire.

  Judith unwrapped the small item by turning it three times over until a tiny silver figure fell out onto the palm of her hand. She held it up to the light. There was no doubting that it was a likeness of Pinocchio, but not the Disney version, with its ruddy cheeks, huge blue eyes and red short trousers. This was Collodi’s original Pinocchio, with a long, thin, flattened body, jointed arms and legs and an elongated carrot-like nose.

  “You can wear him on a bracelet or pendant. I found a matching chain in case you wanted to wear him around your neck. It’s in the box too.”

  Judith scrutinised the workmanship; this miniature Pinocchio was certainly not pretty nor elegant, yet he was exquisitely crafted and held much interest for the eye. And whilst he was rather ungainly, this somehow added to his considerable charm. She foraged deep into the box and located the chain, slipped the figure onto it and, avoiding Greg’s eyes, she tied it around her neck. She reached her right hand up and stroked him lightly as he nestled companionably against her windpipe. Then she glanced at Greg with a squeezed smile and a nod.

  “Thank you, Greg. Thank you very much. I seldom receive gifts from, well, from anyone other than my husband. I think my colleagues are too terrified of me to buy me anything.” She gave a low laugh which Greg returned. “That was very thoughtful and, like you said, highly appropriate.”

  “I’m pleased you like it.”

  “Yes. So thoughtful. In fact, I love it. Perhaps Pinocchio here will make it less tedious for me whilst I wade through this footage.”

  Greg sat down next to her, careful not to let their shoulders touch. But the silence between them was no longer comfortable. And the gap between them was filled with an electricity that fizzed and buzzed and would not be controlled.

  Judith turned her head to look at him and he tilted his face towards hers. And in a flash she saw it all in his eyes: the disappeared wife, the estranged parents, the series of botched businesses, the fear of failure. Was she prepared to take all this on? Martin’s mother’s face, wrinkled and worn, flitted into her mind. She could just imagine their conversation. “You left my son, my son, for what, some travelling salesman without two pennies to rub together, who is going to give the world, what? Universal Truth!” And Judith would stick her nose in the air and reply haughtily, “Well, at least he’s here when I get home in the evening.”

  Judith stood up hesitantly, her legs feeling curiously unsteady.

  “Like I said, however, I was about to go.”

  Greg swallowed and he opened his mouth to speak but Judith silenced him with a characteristic wag of her finger as she took two steps away from him.

  “Make sure you add Mary Glazer’s name to your list, that’s Glazer with a ‘z’; the case I was looking at when you came in.” She paused at the conservatory door, her fingers caressing the door frame, then moving up to the Pinocchio necklace Greg had just given her. “I’ll see you in a few days.” She spoke crisply, back to the Judith he had first encountered, distrustful and non-committal, her claws sharpened, her defences primed. “I’ll call first.”

  But she knew, as she uttered the words, that this was a lie; the moment of parting Judith had first contemplated only two weeks earlier had come hurtling towards her at breakneck speed and she also knew, in that moment, that she was never coming back.

  PART THREE

  THE PRESENT

  20

  “CONNIE?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything for me on Roger Davis yet?”

  “Well. I’ll print you off a copy of what I have, unless you prefer to read it on the screen, that is.”

  Judith and Constance were huddled together in Taylor Moses’ smallest conference room, a space hardly big enough to accommodate two chairs. Judith had a pile of paper on the floor by her side and Constance her trusty laptop charging in the corner, her iPad on her lap, her beloved mobile in her jacket pocket, and two plastic cups of water behind her on a tiny coffee table.

  There were at least two larger rooms available but Constance’s acceptance of Mrs Maynard’s brief and her instruction of the retired Judith Burton, which independently would have caused her senior partner considerable grief, had together driven him to apoplexy. The quid pro quo for his final acquiescence in her scheme was her insistence that the case would not interfere with her other work and that she would not take up valuable office space with any materials relating to the case; hence the allocation of this room. Privately, of course, he admired her courage – something inherently lacking in most of his other associates.

  “Anything interesting in there?”

  “Not really. He’s from Derby, went to Leeds University, maths degree. Taught at one other school before Richmond. Arrived in London in 2013. Single. One brother.”

  Judith bridled as Constance handed her two sheets of paper.

  “Well if that’s all, there is no point me taking a look, is there?”

  Constance smiled gently.

  “That’s just the beginning – the official stuff. I dug around more. He had lots of photos on Facebook and Instagram and the police were helpful too.”

  “The police? Ah, you mean Inspector Dawson?”

  “Yes, in Hackney. I got nowhere with the Richmond police as they have pretty much closed the case. Unless I find “new evidence of significance”, that’s what they said. But Inspector Dawson, he said his father owed you?”

  “That’s true, I suppose. Dawson senior, not unlike his illustrious colleagues this time around, had jumped to some hasty conclusions in an assault and battery case, which was almost murder; the boy pulled through in the end but would never walk again. I showed him the error of his ways before he went public. So, yes, he sings my praises publicly and to his son, although privately I know he dislikes me for showing him up.”

  “Well, that’s only human nature, isn’t it? None of us likes to be proved wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t know. It so seldom happens to me,” Judith replied gravely. Constance examined Judith’s face, trying to determine if she was joking or not, but unable to be certain either way.

  “That was my attempt at humour,” Judith continued, still deadpan, allowing herself to finally break into a smile when Constance giggled.

  “I wasn’t sure,” Cons
tance murmured. “He checked me out first though, Inspector Dawson. I could see that he reviewed my profile, went to all my sites and rang Mr Moses to check on my credentials.”

  “Ah. Well, I would expect nothing less. So, what did you glean from the Inspector?”

  “Well, I’m not sure yet if anything is significant. Davis had a problem at university. There was a fight one night and he was arrested. He broke someone’s jaw with a punch. He got away with a caution; no one could say who started it. He was almost thrown off the course, it was reported locally but, in the end, he was allowed to graduate.”

  “I wonder if the school knew?”

  “They couldn’t have. I know cautions don’t always come up when you run the checks and he obviously didn’t disclose it. A violence conviction and working with kids?”

  “Hm. So, he did have something to hide then? Let’s hold that thought. You said ‘single’, so, sexuality?”

  “Straight as far as I can see or very, very closet gay. No current partner. A couple of photos of him with girls at bars. One girl is in them both. I’ll try to find out who she is.”

  “Friends?”

  “I’m looking into that. He has a few he was in irregular contact with. I didn’t find a best mate. I’m going to give some names to Inspector Dawson. See if we can get any more leads. And I’m asking the Richmond police for the telephone log. All outgoing and incoming calls. We may have more success with the landlines than usually. Mobile reception was not great in Davis’ rooms.”

  Judith nodded twice and returned to the sheet Constance had handed her earlier.

  “There must be something here. There always is. We just need to find it. Timing is important, too. Make sure you draw up a timetable of where all the key people were, and when. Then we can see if anyone we suspect, other than Raymond, had the opportunity to kill Davis.”

  “Sure. That’s easy.”

  “But as well as opportunity we need motive. Who would want to kill him and why? We need to think along the usual lines; partner, ex-partner, love triangle, disgruntled work colleague and then the boys, of course. Who has he punished, picked on, anyone expelled or disciplined by Davis, perhaps humiliated or even a child who didn’t get into the school in the first place, a disappointed sibling or parent?”

  Constance was busy making notes as Judith spoke. She paused when Judith stopped speaking.

  “Have you got all that?” Judith asked.

  Constance nodded weakly. “Listen Judith, there is something which came in late last night – something we need to discuss.”

  Judith leaned forward, allowing her hands to fold over each other on her lap.

  “What is it?” she asked, with considerable suspicion.

  “It may not be a bad thing, in fact, now I’ve thought about it, I can see it may be enormously helpful, if Raymond is innocent of course.”

  “What are you talking about, Constance?”

  “I had a letter yesterday, from the Crown Prosecution service.”

  “Yes?”

  “They have decided that Ray’s case is a suitable case for the trial of some new computer software.”

  “What software?”

  “You might have read about it. I saw something a few months back when they were running a pilot scheme, but they kept it really low-key then.”

  “What software?” Judith repeated the question, keeping her voice level and calm.

  “It’s this new truth verification software. You know, it films the witness and then confirms if he’s telling the truth or not.”

  Judith stared at Constance, suddenly dropping her pen to the floor with a clatter.

  “No,” she muttered.

  “Yes, it does,” Constance replied. “After I read the letter last night I looked it up. It works by watching how your face moves. It’s incredibly complicated and the results are phenomenal.”

  “I meant ‘No’, they can’t use it on Raymond.”

  “I don’t think we have any choice. It’s been decided.” Constance withdrew a letter from her pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Judith, who devoured its contents with a scowl.

  “I don’t understand,” she murmured, more to herself than to Constance. “How can they think this is appropriate?”

  “There’s been a pilot scheme, like I said. And it was really successful. After they had used it for a week, word got out and a number of suspects changed their plea to guilty before their trials.”

  “What does that prove?”

  “I don’t think anyone cares; it saved a huge amount of money. They’ve predicted that, if it comes in, it will help strip millions every year off the justice budget. But, those suspects, they wouldn’t have changed their pleas if they’d been innocent, would they? And it fits with making advances in technology, I mean, we’ve got it, we should use it.”

  Judith stood up and turned her back on Constance. She wanted to pace the room but there was nowhere to go. She had thought of Greg many times since her abrupt departure from the Pinocchio project, but as time had passed she had stopped worrying that Pinocchio would ever make an appearance on the public stage. She sat down again.

  “This is bad, Connie, this is really bad.”

  “I don’t think so. If Ray is telling the truth, he’ll pass. And if not, we shouldn’t be defending him.”

  “It’s bad on so many levels, don’t you see? First of all, this is a machine. Machines make mistakes, especially if they’ve not been tested thoroughly.”

  “People make mistakes. And the government says it’s been tested.”

  “And it’s not just that. It’s bad for us too. I can see where this is all going. If a machine will determine the veracity of Ray’s evidence, then they don’t need you or me. And eventually they won’t need a judge or jury either. We’ll end up with some kangaroo court system where a prosecutor reads out the charge and Pinocchio decides, without any sense check of the evidence, without any consideration of motive or reliability, if someone walks free or spends the rest of their life incarcerated. I can see it all now. I mean they’re lobbying to let cameras in as we speak. This is the next step: ‘Reality Justice’. In a year’s time, we’ll all be ‘pushing the red button’ to decide if someone is guilty or not, ably assisted by a machine.”

  Judith paused. Constance was now regarding her suspiciously.

  “You knew about it.”

  “What?”

  “The software. You called it ‘Pinocchio’. I didn’t mention a name and it’s not in the letter.”

  Judith threw her head back and huffed loudly. Should she tell Constance what she knew?

  “I read about it some years back,” she mumbled. “I didn’t think much of it then and I don’t now.”

  Constance paused. If Judith did know something more, she was not going to share it.

  “I think you are reading too much into this,” Constance said softly.

  “I don’t like it, Connie. I know I am old-fashioned but for good reason; this doesn’t feel right to me. Not for this boy, not for anyone. Haven’t we learned that cutting corners always leads to disaster? We’ll object. I’ll think up some grounds.”

  “OK. If that’s what you want, I will help.”

  “Thank you. Do we have a judge yet?” Judith coughed. Changing the subject would assist her in regaining her composure.

  “No. I should find out by tomorrow at the latest.”

  Constance was watching her closely now; she could sense her curious stare and she forced herself to relax and re-focus. “And experts?” she asked drily.

  “Yes. I’ll print you off the list sent through by the prosecution.”

  “What about Dr Gattley? Has she been to see Raymond yet?”

  “Yes. You can read her report but it’s all rather hypothetical.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Raymond didn’t speak to her either, so there’s just lots of stuff about how he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which might make him unfit to stand trial.
Also, that his high IQ together with his physical awkwardness and poor motor skills would indicate the possibility of an autistic spectrum disorder but there’s no formal diagnosis.”

  “Ah. I feared as much. Although that gives me something to lead with, at least. Why won’t he talk to anyone? We know he can speak if he wants something – not that he would win any voiceover contests.”

  “Perhaps he thinks there isn’t anything he can tell us other than what we know. He just found the body; end of story.”

  “Then why not say that? Honestly, it’s almost as if he wants to make it harder for us. What did Jamie Benson say? Raymond likes challenges.” Judith brought one hand up to her lips and sat back heavily in her chair. “And the things he asked us for, the mirror, the iPhone. Is he using them?”

  “I spoke to the head of his secure unit. She said he spends a lot of time staring in the mirror and listening to music on the iPhone.”

  “Hm. It doesn’t quite add up. I mean, you and I know that Raymond is not overly concerned with his appearance and he didn’t strike me as a great music lover either.”

  Judith read through the notes Constance had printed for her once more and then allowed them to drop on to her ever-growing pile.

  “Connie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to worry you but we do need some more leads. At the moment, we have so little to raise a doubt in people’s minds that this was Raymond.”

  “Yes, I know. But then, well, maybe the truth software is good for us after all?”

  “I thought I made it clear I don’t want us relying on Pinocchio.” Judith’s tone was sharp and Constance flinched and sucked in her cheeks. “I mean, what if Raymond doesn’t speak at all, then what will Pinocchio do? Anyway, you didn’t instruct me so that I could stand silently in a courtroom and allow a machine to determine the innocence or guilt of our client, did you?”