Divas

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘That would mean that you can’t be retried, ’ the second chair muttered to Lola.

  Could it really be that easy? Lola’s heart leaped; she couldn’t help turning to look at Suzanne and India, sitting just behind her, whose faces were as filled with excitement as her own.

  But who had killed Scutellaro? It must have been someone paid by Carin, but why would Carin kill him, when it meant an automatic acquittal for Lola? Had she decided to throw in her hand?

  Lola glanced over at Carin, who was staring straight ahead, her lips set in a tight line, her entire body drawn up into a taut, thin black column. She looked as if she were concentrating very hard on something, putting all her will and determination into making it happen.

  She hasn’t thrown in her hand at all, Lola realised in rising panic. Not at all. In fact, she’s playing her most important card.

  ‘Your Honour!’ Joshua Greene, not about to see victory be snatched from him in a case that would make his career if he secured a conviction, sprang to his feet. ‘Your Honour, due to the unusual circumstances of Mr Scutellaro’s death, we request that his Grand Jury testimony be read into the record of this trial!’

  Simon Poluck sneered at him.

  ‘Your Honour, ’ he countered, ‘the Assistant District Attorney is all too aware that grand jury testimony can only be read into the record under very specific circumstances—’

  ‘If you killed the witness, or someone did it on your behalf, ’ whispered the second chair to Lola, ‘then they could read it in. But usually they don’t have a hope in hell of pulling this off.’

  ‘—which clearly do not exist in this case, ’ Simon Poluck was finishing. ‘A tragic murder in a faraway country – I fail to see any connection at all—’

  ‘Your Honour, ’ Joshua Greene interrupted, ‘we have a clear chain of circumstance which may well form a connection between Mr Scutellaro and the defend—’

  ‘In my chambers! Now!’ the judge said angrily. ‘And I hope this is the last time in this trial that I hear you two shouting over each other like kids in a school debating society!’

  ‘Oof, ’ winced the second chair.

  ‘Is that bad?’ Lola said anxiously. ‘Going into her chambers?’

  ‘I was more wincing because of the school debating society crack, ’ said the second chair. ‘That’s harsh. But—’ she shrugged. ‘Odds are in our favour. Sit tight and cross your fingers.’

  But when the two attorneys re-emerged twenty-five minutes later, and the bellow of ‘All rise! Court is now in session!’ caused everyone to stand as the judge resumed her seat high above them, Lola could tell immediately from Simon Poluck’s glum face that the conference hadn’t gone the way he wanted.

  ‘They’re going to read in the testimony, ’ he muttered grimly. ‘With the proviso that if certain facts don’t emerge during the rest of the trial that can connect you to Scutellaro’s death somehow, it’ll be struck from the record.’

  ‘You can’t strike a whole testimony from the record!’ the second chair protested.

  ‘Exactly. We’re looking at a mistrial, hopefully.’ He looked at Lola. ‘That means they can retry you, technically, but with Scutellaro dead they’d never do it. Could be worse. Could be a lot worse.’

  And when Detective Garcia was summoned back to court to read the Italian police’s summary of Scutellaro’s murder – stabbed to death by a group of kids outside the apartment building in which he was staying, as he left to go to the airport – it seemed even less likely that the prosecution would be able to make any connection between Lola and what Simon Poluck, cross-examining, called a ‘senseless, brutal murder’. Scutellaro’s bag and wallet had both been stolen. The police had been able to find no witnesses; the only confirmation that it had been kids who had killed Scutellaro was the prevalence of lower-body wounds on the corpse, and the fact that the area was rife with gangs of shockingly young children armed with knives.

  Lola shivered, thinking of Joe Scutellaro, stabbed to death on that concrete walkway. It might have happened to her, if she had been alone. If Leo and his gun hadn’t been with them when the kids came after her.

  She should have given Scutellaro Leo’s number, she thought with black humour.

  The testimony itself, read aloud, was very plausible, and very damaging to Lola. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that. She could see how the jury were looking at her as they listened.

  As if, for the first time, they believed that she might be guilty of killing her father.

  ‘ADA Greene: When you left the defendant alone, how long were you gone for?

  Scutellaro: About ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.

  ADA Greene: And when you returned, what did you find?

  Scutellaro: The patient – Mr Fitzgerald – was clearly having difficulty breathing. His colour had changed for the worse.

  ADA Greene: Did you suspect foul play immediately?

  Scutellaro: I wondered, yeah. I checked the insulin vials as soon as Ms Fitzgerald left and sure enough, there was one missing.

  ADA Greene: Did you later find an insulin vial in an unusual place?

  Scutellaro: Yeah, I did. In the sharps container in the bathroom. So I knew straight away something was up. I sure as hell hadn’t put it there.’

  Even read out in the leaden tones of one of the court officers, it was damning testimony.

  ‘You’ll be on the stand first thing tomorrow, ’ Simon Poluck said to Lola as they left the court. ‘Get a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Wear the black suit, ’ instructed the jury consultant. ‘With your hair back, but loose behind. Earrings, no necklace. Light on the mascara, and no lipstick. Medium heels.’

  ‘Have a good breakfast, ’ the second chair added. ‘Lots of protein. Not too much coffee, though. You don’t want to be too buzzy.’

  So the next morning, as they walked back up the steps of the courthouse, amidst the constant buzz of television cameras, reporters shouting questions, the generators of transit vans loaded with satellite dishes and aerials, Lola could at least hold onto the security of having done exactly what the very expensive team of lawyers and consultants had told her to do. She was in a very demure Armani skirt suit, her hair brushed smooth and pinned at the back of her head, wearing Jean-Marc’s yellow diamond earrings, her make-up light. She had run through every instruction she had been given, eaten eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, and limited herself to one cappuccino. Her nerves were jumping, but she kept telling herself that she had followed all the instructions, and that her team knew exactly what they were doing.

  They were as early as ever, so Lola was able to follow her usual routine: she slipped off to a women’s toilet she had found, right down the far end of the first-floor corridor, tucked away round a corner and opposite the janitor’s closet; she would never have known it was there if she hadn’t been pacing restlessly and stumbled across it. It was in such an inconvenient location, with no offices or courtrooms anywhere nearby, that Lola had never seen anyone else use it.

  As always, it was empty, and she chose the furthest stall, sitting inside for as long as she could. It calmed her down to have some time alone, away from the worried gazes of her mother and India and David. And after spending the days of her trial with an entire roomful of people staring at her, reading things into every tiny move she made, being alone was the greatest luxury she could imagine.

  She was all too well aware that if she were found guilty, it was a luxury she wouldn’t have for the next twenty-five years.

  When she eventually unlocked the cubicle door and exited, the sight in front of her was so unexpected that she didn’t take it in at first. She was crossing to the row of sinks to wash her hands, and the person leaning against them, smiling at her, was so incongruous that Lola took a couple more steps in her direction before her brain fully clicked into gear, and she realised who it was.

  ‘Well, hello, Lola, ’ said Patricia, in her rough smoker’s voice, smiling a big, toothy smile of a crocodile that�
�s about to swallow its prey. ‘Fancy meeting you here!’

  Lola stared at Patricia in such absolute shock that she felt her lower jaw actually drop.

  ‘Didn’t expect to see me again after our little contretemps, did you?’ Patricia said affably. ‘Thought that now you’ve got Johnny all packed off to his cosy little rehab clinic, you’d shut the door on nasty old Patricia for good?’

  She waggled a long bony finger at Lola.

  ‘Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?’ she said. ‘What a silly girl you are! I warned you, don’t you remember? I told you not to make an enemy of me, and you didn’t listen.’

  And suddenly, Patricia wasn’t smiling any more.

  ‘You stupid little bitch, ’ she hissed. ‘You should never have fucked with me. But you’ll get your comeuppance now. And I’ll be there to watch every minute of it. I’ve got the best seat in the house. You haven’t noticed me there yet, have you? Believe me, there have been a lot of times that you haven’t noticed me.’

  Lola stared at Patricia, who was dressed as if she was doing her best to look as conventional as possible, in a dull brown trouser suit with a black sweater underneath. The jacket lapels disguised the size of her breasts, and she was wearing flat shoes so she didn’t tower over everyone. Her poorly dyed hair was drawn back in a stubby ponytail; the collagen-plumped mouth was de-emphasised with a matt lipstick, and she had even managed to alter her over-plucked eyebrows by drawing them on in light feathery strokes so they looked – well, normal.

  Presenting herself as she did now, you would never have passed Patricia in a corridor and thought: transsexual, or transgender. You would think: not an attractive woman. But that was all. Certainly, she didn’t look remotely out of place in the women’s bathroom.

  ‘You’ve overlooked me a lot, you silly girl. Underestimated me and overlooked me. I’ve been watching you for days. I knew exactly where to find you this morning.’ Her eyes glittered.

  Lola had stood there gawping at Patricia long enough. Recovering her dignity, she stalked the last couple of steps to the sinks and started to wash her hands.

  ‘If you’ve got something to say, you’d better get on with it, ’ she said coldly. ‘Or are you just hanging out here to get make-up tips? I’d be more than happy to give you some if you want.’

  Patricia reared back, looking as if Lola had just slapped her across the face once again. As Lola stared into the mirror above the sink, Patricia’s face hove into view next to hers, the black beady eyes glistening.

  ‘Take a good look at me now, ’ Patricia hissed, and Lola recoiled from the stench of her breath. She remembered the smell from before, the hot breath with its heavy, ingrained smell of menthol cigarettes, seeming to reek from Patricia’s pores. And below that, something rotting, sweet and rancid: the odour of decay.

  ‘I can’t believe you haven’t realised yet, ’ Patricia said as Lola instinctively pulled away. ‘Too busy looking at your own pretty face, I suppose. Oh, they’re going to love you in prison. That pretty face’s going to make you a whole lot of fun new friends.’

  She watched Lola in the mirror as the latter crossed the room and dragged on the hand towel, wanting now nothing more than to get away.

  ‘I was with you on your little Italian jaunt, ’ she said happily. ‘On the plane – business class, very nice. You barely glanced at me. Well, why would you? I was just a fat woman in a kaftan, wheezing away. These’ – she cupped her football-sized breasts – ‘aren’t that easy to disguise, you know! I have to pad up the rest of me sometimes, make it look like I’m big all over. Then the boobs just look like they belong to a big old fatso wobbling along.’

  The crocodile smile was back now as Patricia watched Lola digest this information. Lola was unable to conceal her horror.

  ‘I changed on the plane, ’ Patricia continued, gloating. ‘Tarted myself up in denim and big gold earrings. I knew you’d think I was just some Italian slut in high heels. And I shot through Customs because of my British passport. Easy-peasy. I was out there in plenty of time to see who you were meeting, and follow you.’ She grinned wider. ‘You know my favourite disguise? Oh, go on, guess!’

  Lola had finished drying her hands, but she couldn’t leave now. She stood there, frozen to the spot, as the cigarette-ravaged vocal cords croaked on triumphantly:

  ‘The tranny hooker waiting outside the building for you!’ Patricia crowed. ‘Oh, that was fun! I did my best to get you mugged. Called out that your Vuitton was the real thing, and sent all the kids running after you. Nearly got your pretty face cut up.’ She pouted grotesquely. ‘Well, you can’t have everything you want, can you? I jumped on my Vespa and followed you up to Como – not on the Vespa, of course—’

  ‘You were the tourist at the station, getting off the train with me. You boarded the ferry, too. Wearing the straw hat and the awful flowered dress, ’ Lola said slowly. She was having flashes of memory as Patricia spoke, seeing every incarnation, every disguise that Patricia had worn.

  ‘Exactly!’ Patricia crowed. ‘You’re catching on! Fun game, isn’t it? I saw you head into Mr Moneybags’s luxury villa and I reported back. He played some trick with the passports, didn’t he? He’s smart, isn’t he, Johnny’s older brother? Very smart! I had people at Teterboro airport looking out for little Miss Evie’s passport, but she never showed up. Well, I didn’t have people, of course. My employer did.’ Patricia looked at her watch. ‘Ooh! Almost time to go back inside and see the next thrilling instalment!’

  Lola had to ask the question, even though she already knew the answer.

  ‘Your employer?’ she said.

  ‘Your darling stepmother, of course!’ Patricia said. ‘Now, that’s a woman I respect. I went to have a little talk with her, a couple of days after you and I had our fight. You’d made me very cross, Lola. Very cross. I took some time to think it over and it finally occurred to me: who else doesn’t like you? Doesn’t like you at all? I thought I was tough, but Carin – well, let’s just say that she takes no prisoners. And she’s very generous when she wants to be. Plus, she’s very careful. Carin saw her trainer sneak into her study and go through her things. Worked out that he’d found Joe’s address for you. Naughty boy. There are cameras everywhere in that house, didn’t you know? Obviously not. It’s lucky for him he never went back to train her. She had a nasty surprise all waiting for him.’

  ‘Lola! Have you finished in there?’ India pushed open the door. ‘The court officers are calling you—’

  India saw Patricia leaning against the sinks, and did a double take as she grabbed Lola’s arm and hustled her out of the bathroom.

  ‘Who is that woman?’ she asked Lola as they hurried back down the hall. ‘She’s really odd-looking, but sort of familiar . . .’

  ‘She’s Jean-Marc’s drug dealer, ’ Lola said. ‘Look—’

  ‘Oh my God!’ India gasped. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  The court officer was waiting outside the doors for Lola, looking furious.

  ‘I’m so sorry, ’ Lola gasped, ‘bathroom emergency . . . Look, ’ she hissed to India, ‘grab one of Simon’s team, OK? Pull them out and tell them that there are cameras in Dad’s house and they saw Lawrence find Joe’s address—’

  India’s soft brown eyes went wide as saucers.

  ‘Shit, ’ she breathed.

  A second later, Lola was dashing into court and sliding into her seat at the table, as India, following, tapped on the arm of the lawyer who was Simon’s second chair, gesturing to her to come outside.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Simon Poluck was saying urgently to Lola.

  ‘Carin knows I went to Italy and saw Joe!’ she hissed back.

  ‘Fuck, ’ Simon Poluck muttered. ‘Can they prove it?’

  ‘They’ve got photographs. And a witness.’

  ‘Who’s the witness?’

  Lola smiled bitterly.

  ‘Jean-Marc’s old drug dealer. She followed me the whole time.’

  ‘Well, that’s n
ot exactly the most reliable testimony—’ Simon Poluck’s eyebrows had shot up. Swiftly, his brain churned through all the options available to them. ‘But fuck, that’s the least of it. You were on a plane, you stayed at a hotel – they can find plenty of people who saw you, people who aren’t drug dealers—’ He took a deep breath. ‘We can’t deny this. We’re going to have to get this out on the table now, so they can’t slam you with it in cross.’

  He looked at her straight on.

  ‘This is going to be tough, Lola. We’ll fight as hard as we can, but this is going to be tough. I’ll come out with this right at the start. Then we’ll go to your testimony, like you rehearsed, OK? Simply: you went to Italy, you skipped bail. None of us knew anything about that, you’ve just told me this moment. You want to be completely honest, so we’re telling the whole story.’

  He grimaced.

  ‘It might just work.’

  But his tone of voice didn’t sound particularly optimistic.

  Chapter 39

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, ’ Simon Poluck began. ‘This is a terrible case. A terrible tragedy. And the person who has suffered most of all has been, without question, my client. Miss Fitzgerald.’ He pointed at Lola, small and delicate, sitting at the defence table. ‘She has seen her life destroyed before her eyes. Her father slipped into a diabetic coma, which not even the most malevolent of prosecutors could argue was in any way her fault. And the very day her father became comatose, her stepmother, instead of calling her stepdaughter to break the sad news and to commiserate with her, assumed control of her trust fund, blocked her credit cards and had her locked out of her own house. Can you imagine what Miss Fitzgerald must have been through? Her father in a coma, her entire life – her finances, her house – all maliciously removed from her at one fell stroke.’