Joshua Greene threw up his hands.
‘What, more grandstanding from Mr Poluck?’
‘Enough!’ said the judge sharply. ‘Both of you, approach the bench immediately!’
Simon Poluck and Joshua Greene bustled up to the bench, Poluck whispering away so urgently that everyone in the courtroom was agog.
‘My chambers, now, ’ the judge said grimly, rising to her feet.
As Poluck and Greene duly followed her, Lola was escorted back to the defendant’s table. Swivelling around, she exchanged stares of incomprehension with her mother and India. David’s blue eyes were saucer-wide.
Then, beyond them, Lola noticed the man standing just inside the courtroom doors. Chunky and square-built, he had a head shaped like a big bullet on his short muscular neck. Though he had to be in his sixties, he looked strong and energetic, his wide arms folded over his chest, his big upper torso encased in a dark blue suit that was so well-cut that it must have cost several thousand dollars. She would have assumed that he was a policeman, because the way he was standing, completely comfortable waiting there, was very reminiscent of the cops she’d been forced into contact with over the past few weeks. But the quality of his suit contradicted that. She was wondering who he was, and why the court officers were letting him stand there, when the door at the back of the courtroom opened, the bailiff calling for everyone to stand as the judge bustled back in, followed by the four attorneys.
Joshua Greene looked livid, Lola noticed as she turned to face the courtroom, rising to her feet. Serena Mackesy was biting her lips in fury as he whispered to her what had happened. And Simon Poluck was taking his place beside Lola, his eyes bright, his entire body seeming to be surrounded with an aura of triumphant golden light.
‘What—’ Lola hissed to Simon Poluck, but he shushed her, grinning, as they resumed their seats and the judge began:
‘This trial has, without question, been full of surprises. Having heard what Mr Poluck has had to tell me about a defence witness who has just come forward, I must agree that the nature of the testimony is such that it does indeed justify his taking the extreme step of breaking into Mr Greene’s cross-examination of the defendant. Normally, I wouldn’t allow the testimony to be given at this time. But because of the very unusual nature of the decisions I have already had to make during the course of these proceedings, I am going to allow the defence witness to testify – with the proviso that it may be necessary to declare a mistrial if events do not proceed exactly as Mr Poluck has assured me they will. And—’ she stared severely at Simon Poluck – ‘if the witness’s credentials do not prove to be absolutely as impeccable as I have been assured that they are.’
‘Duly noted, Your Honour, ’ Simon Poluck said as demurely as a lawyer with the glint of victory in his eyes can ever manage.
‘The defence calls Marco Ranieri to the stand!’ called the court officer, and Lola saw the Latino man in the very well-cut navy suit walk past her down the aisle. As he passed Lola, he turned his big bald head in her direction, looking at her directly, and there was something in those black, flat eyes that Lola would have given a great deal to be able to read.
Marco Ranieri settled his heavy body into the witness stand, shot his cuffs, and swore the oath with the blasé air of a man who had gone through this kind of proceeding many, many times before. Lola stared at Simon Poluck, her eyes wide, pleading to have her curiosity satisfied: but he shook his head again.
And then he winked at her.
Simon Poluck, a man whose tie always co-ordinated with his silk pocket square, whose shoes were perfectly shined and whose shirts cost more than most people’s entire outfits, winked at his client.
Lola felt a terrible hope swelling inside her – terrifying, because how could she dare to hope, when things had been going so badly for her? But as Simon Poluck, taking his time, rose slowly to his feet, with the air of a matador about to strike a killer blow, she could hardly suppress the excitement she was feeling.
‘Mr Ranieri, will you please tell us your profession?’ Simon Poluck began.
‘I’m a PI. A private investigator, ’ Ranieri clarified in a gravelly voice, turning to nod at the jury.
A buzz of interest ran round the courtroom at this information. The jury, already highly stimulated by Simon Poluck’s dramatic interruption of Lola’s cross-examination, sat up even straighter in their seats.
‘And before you were a private investigator—’ Simon Poluck prompted.
‘I was on the job for twenty years. A cop with the NYPD, ’ Ranieri explained.
So she had been right about him, Lola realised. And that explained his ease in the witness box: he must have had to give testimony countless times during the course of his career.
‘Ended up as a detective on the Major Case Squad, ’ Ranieri was saying.
‘And during the twenty years you served the city of New York, you received several commendations, and a medal, I believe—’
‘Racked up three commendations, plus the Medal of Honour, ’ Ranieri agreed casually.
‘Which is awarded for—’
‘Your Honour, ’ Joshua Greene said between his teeth, ‘the prosecution will stipulate that ex-Detective Ranieri had an exemplary career with the NYPD, and that he has since collaborated with my office on a couple of occasions.’
‘Leading to successful prosecutions, ’ Ranieri added nonchalantly.
‘Thank you, Mr Greene, ’ the judge said. ‘Mr Poluck, I think we can move forward with the understanding that this witness’s character and credentials have been thoroughly established.’
Simon Poluck dipped a little bow in her direction.
‘Mr Ranieri, the story you have to tell is a very dramatic one, ’ he began, ‘and in order to lay it out fully we need to go back to January of this year, when you were contacted by a new client. Will you please tell us the name of this client?’
‘It was Ben Fitzgerald, ’ Marco Ranieri said. ‘The dead guy.’
The jury leaned forward almost as one, sensing that some really good dirt was about to be dug up.
‘And what did Mr Fitzgerald ask you to do?’ Simon Poluck inquired, with the nonchalance of a poker player who knows that he’s holding a Royal Flush.
‘He wanted me to upgrade his house’s security system.’ Ranieri grinned, and it was like watching a shark swim up behind an unsuspecting shoal of fish and open its mouth. ‘Well, that was the official version. You know, what we said we were doing when I sent my guys in there.’
‘And the unofficial version?’
‘He wanted a master feed of all his house’s security cameras.’
‘Can you explain that for the jury, Mr Ranieri?’
Ranieri swivelled in his seat, his grin deepening, as he crossed one leg over the other.
‘OK, this is how it works, ’ he started leisurely. ‘You have security cameras already installed in your house, say, like Mr Fitzgerald did, God rest his soul. You know, you got them there so you can check your staff aren’t going through your personal shit they got no reason to be in, ’ he added over his shoulder. ‘You and your wife are the only people who get to watch the footage, obviously. But then, like Mr Fitzgerald, maybe you start to . . . have concerns.’
He paused, enjoying the cliffhanger moment.
‘What kind of concerns?’ Simon Poluck prompted.
‘Well, about his wife, of course!’ Marco Ranieri said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes gleaming. ‘I mean, who else? She’s the only one who sees the footage, apart from him! She’s the only one who could wipe stuff off so he doesn’t see it! So when a guy asks you for a master feed’ – he looked at the jury – ‘that means all the footage, everything, goes to this kinda online website that only he can access. Raw, unedited. When a guy asks a PI for that, it means he don’t trust his wife. No other explanation possible.’
Joshua Greene was on his feet.
‘Your Honour—’
‘Yes, yes, Mr Greene, ’ the judge said. �
�Mr Poluck, this had better not be speculation on the part of the witness—’
‘Mr Ranieri, ’ Simon Poluck asked, ‘did Mr Fitzgerald inform you of these suspicions, or are you merely making assumptions?’
‘Oh, I’ve been round the block a few times, ’ Ranieri said cheerfully. ‘Believe me, I know how a courtroom works. I got emails from Mr Fitzgerald, printed out right there.’ He nodded to the defence table.
Simon Poluck picked up a clear plastic folder containing several sheets of paper.
‘Defence exhibit number sixty-seven, Your Honour, ’ he said, putting it back on the table. ‘Email correspondence between Mr Fitzgerald and Mr Ranieri . . . So, did Mr Fitzgerald engage you to acquire evidence he would use in divorce proceedings?’
Ranieri’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
‘Well, sure, ’ he said. ‘There was a big prenup. Mr Fitzgerald showed me. If the wife cheated, she got nothing. Nada. Zippo. Bye bye, babycakes, and don’t slam the door on your way out.’
For the past few minutes, the stares of practically everyone in the courtroom had been darting back and forth between Marco Ranieri and Carin Fitzgerald. The two of them could not have presented more of a contrast.
Ranieri was relaxed, charismatic, enjoying to the full the drama of his testimony.
And Carin Fitzgerald, who, since Ranieri had mentioned the words ‘master feed’, had been as still as if she were carved from bone. The white mink collar of her black silk-and-cashmere sweater didn’t even tremble with the rise and fall of her breast, nor did her sapphire earings; she might not even be breathing, so motionless was her body. Any colour had faded completely from her face, which was as pale as the marble tombstone at the head of her husband’s grave; apart from her Siberian-husky blue eyes, whose pupils were dilated to large black dots. The fuchsia lipstick she wore made the rest of her face look blanched.
Lola sneaked a glance over at the jury. They were all riveted on Carin now, greedily observing every detail of her appearance.
‘So you proceeded to set up this master feed?’ Simon Poluck was asking Ranieri.
‘Sure. It wasn’t a tough job. We set up the website with streaming feeds, Mr Fitzgerald plugs in a password and bingo! Simple enough.’
‘Now, let me make this clear, ’ Simon Poluck said. ‘When you say that Mr Fitzgerald plugged in a password—’
‘It’s his own. That’s how he wanted it, ’ Ranieri explained. ‘He’s the only one that can access that website. We set it up but then we got out of the way. We don’t watch it, we don’t have any way to see that footage. Just Mr Fitzgerald.’ He looked at the jury, his expression serious now. ‘Which is why I haven’t come forward before. My company, we don’t fool around with this stuff. Mr Fitzgerald wanted top-level secrecy, and he paid a ton of money for it. When he died, and his daughter was arrested, I mean, obviously I knew straight away that I could be sitting on crucial evidence. But we got a client confidentiality agreement that’s rock solid. If I go to the DA with this, I could be sued seven ways to Sunday by Mr Fitzgerald’s estate. And, you know, would clients trust me again? My reputation – well, it speaks for itself. I was back and forth on this for a long time, believe me, trying to figure out how to handle it. Plus – and here’s the kicker – the password-protection on that site is shit hot. I’ve got the best guys in the business working for me. You enter the wrong password more than twice, it wipes everything. All the footage. Fragments it so you’d never be able to get it back in any recognisable form.’
‘And you didn’t have the password?’
Ranieri shook his head.
‘Like I said, no way. That was the whole point.’
Simon Poluck strode across the room so that he was directly in front of the witness stand.
‘But, Mr Ranieri, ’ he said softly, ‘you have brought us today crucial footage of events at Mr Fitzgerald’s house the day that he died which utterly contradict the prosecution’s case! How did you manage to access this completely private master feed that you set up for Mr Fitzgerald, if you didn’t know the password?’
Ranieri’s shark eyes were inscrutable as he answered:
‘I got an anonymous tip.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Believe me, I got an anonymous tip. Last night. Some guy rang me from a payphone on First Avenue. Eight letters, which was the length of Mr Fitzgerald’s password. I figured, I got three goes, I’ll try this and see if it works.’
‘And it did?’
Ranieri’s laugh was short and dry.
‘Oh yeah. It worked all right.’ He coughed. ‘We burned off a couple DVDs of the really crucial stuff. One for the day Mr Fitzgerald went into his coma. One the day the poor guy died.’
‘Your Honour’ – Simon Poluck was back at the defence table now – ‘these are the DVDs in question, if the court officer has set up the monitor for us to play them on—’
‘Go ahead, Mr Poluck, ’ the judge said, waving her hand. ‘And yes, Mr Greene, I’ll pre-empt you. Your objection is noted for the record, OK?’
As Simon Poluck slid the DVD into the player, as the lights in the courtroom were dimmed slightly, as Poluck fast-forwarded through footage of Ben Fitzgerald in bed, asleep, Lola thought her heart would beat right out of her chest.
And then Simon Poluck hit ‘Play’, and Joe Scutellaro walked onscreen.
Despite the grainy black-and-white video, he was instantly recognisable. It was the first time Lola had ever seen someone she knew, someone who was dead and buried, come back to life in this bizarre way, walking so easily, so unaware that a mere few weeks later he would be hiding out in a sleazy apartment in a crumbling tower block in one of Rome’s most dangerous slums, and shortly after that would be stabbed to death by a group of kids paid a handful of euros to kill him and leave him to bleed out on a concrete slab.
Her father, sleeping, and Joe in his white nurse’s uniform, moving to the foot of the bed, standing there, watching him. Her father was snoring, despite being propped up on a mound of pillows to facilitate his breathing: you could hear it in the video, a low rumble, unhealthy, less like a purr than an ancient motor trying, and failing, to catch into life.
Lola’s arms were wrapped around each other, the fingers sinking deeply into the flesh of the opposite forearms, hurting her. Good. She dug into her skin even harder, needing the pain to keep her from screaming with the tension.
Joe was rolling up the sleeve of her father’s pyjama top now, baring the flesh to above the elbow.
And then Carin Fitzgerald, her hair cut so short that you could almost see her scalp, wearing a white velvet robe belted tightly around her long slim body, walked into the bedroom from the adjoining bathroom.
‘He’s still asleep, ’ Joe said, his voice thin.
‘Good, ’ Carin replied. ‘Just as we planned. Is it ready?’
Gasps from the spectators in the courtroom were hushed by the court officers, and, spellbound, everyone watched Joe reaching down to the small metal trolley that stood next to the bed, coming up with a syringe, his hand shaking.
‘I’ll do it, ’ Carin said, taking the syringe from Joe.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. My hand’s much steadier than yours.’
There were more gasps as Carin leaned forward to inject her husband, then handed the needle back to Joe.
‘Good, ’ she said, smiling at him. ‘That was easy.’
‘Your Honour, ’ Joshua Greene cut in, ‘all this proves is that Mrs Fitzgerald administered to her husband his regular insulin shot—’
But his voice tailed off, his mouth dropped open, as Carin’s clear, lightly accented tones, were heard saying:
‘Now. Take your clothes off, and fuck me.’
‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed a viewer on the back benches, as Carin took off her robe, as Joe fumbled with his trousers, and as Carin added:
‘And make it quick. I’ve got a long list of things to take care of today.’
Simon Pol
uck reached for the ‘Pause’ button, but fumbled it deliberately, long enough so that the image that was frozen was Joe and Carin, by now naked and joined in what was very obviously sexual congress.
‘Again, Your Honour—’ Joshua Greene attempted feebly, but Simon Poluck cut through him with:
‘Goes to motive, Your Honour. With the condition in the prenup that Mr Ranieri mentioned, and which we can easily establish—’
‘The DVD is in, ’ the judge said immediately.
‘I’ll just play the other one . . .’ Simon Poluck said, and as he took out the first one and inserted the second Lola looked up at the judge, and saw that even she, as much as she was trying to hide it, was agog to see what the other DVD contained.
It was Lola herself. She realised this was the footage after the fatal injection, after Joe and Carin had set her up, when she had been left alone with her father. And she watched herself kneel down beside the bed, take her father’s hand gently, watched her shoulders move as she cried; saw herself climb onto the bed beside him and cuddle up next to him, and realised that tears were pouring down her face as she remembered what it had been like to be so close to him, to hold his hand, to embrace him, and know that he would never open his eyes and see her again.
She didn’t know how long the clip played for. But when Simon Poluck eventually paused it, she knew that the atmosphere in the courtroom had completely changed. She could hear people crying, moved by the sight of her with her dying father; someone a few rows back whispered: ‘Oh my God, that poor girl, ’ to murmurs of approval. Though the light was dim, she looked over at the jury, wiping the tears off her face, and saw that they were all staring at her now, their expressions soft with sympathy. One woman in the front row was wiping her own eyes; another was rustling in her handbag for tissues: and Lola’s little clone had pressed her palms to her cheeks, her mouth an open ‘O’ of disbelief and excitement.
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