Subpoena Colada

by Mark Dawson

  I force a thin smile and try not to think about how gorgeous Hannah’s looking these days.

  Cohen - engaged on a long telephone call - cups his hand over the mouthpiece and says, ‘The other guy’s eating his meals through a straw, right, champ?’

  I give him the finger but he’s already back into his call.

  Elizabeth takes out her make-up compact and shows me my reflection. A puffy chocolate doughnut around my right eye, the lid half-closed by the swelling, and the whole right side of my face discoloured by a blue brown bruise like an ink stain.

  ‘Doing anything tonight, handsome?’ she says playfully. I manage a painful smile and shoo her away.

  ANY LAST REQUESTS?

  Wilson pays me a visit. She seems ready to deliver a broadside but she shudders as she catches sight of my wounds.

  ‘What happened to your head? Have you been in a fight or something?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I say, thinking quickly. ‘It was a crash. A, um, a car crash. I was waiting for the lights when he hit me. Didn’t even see him coming. Right up my backside. My head bounced off the steering wheel.’ I prod the scab. ‘The car’s a write-off,’ I add for effect.

  ‘You had a car crash,’ she repeats slowly. She’s wondering whether this is true and whether it’s worth calling my bluff. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Last night.’ When she frowns at me, I elaborate, ‘It happened on the way home from the office yesterday.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’ll be after the briefing note?’

  ‘And the recording contract,’ she adds. ‘Where are they? Are they finished?’

  Tentative: ‘The contract’s coming on but I haven’t had time to do the note. I was planning on doing them last night at home but I ended up in casualty for three hours.’

  This appeal for clemency is brushed aside.

  ‘Trish Parkes has called several times this morning. She wants to move things forwards as quickly as possible. And she wants urgent advice at the meeting. We won’t be able to do either if you haven’t finished the work I asked you to finish. The work I asked you to finish last week.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It dawns on me that if my story really was true, a flash of indignation might be appropriate here. So I insert one: ‘It’s not exactly my bloody fault. I didn’t ask the other guy to crash into me.’

  She flinches. ‘I realize that. But we’ve still got a very important meeting this afternoon and at the moment we’re not prepared for it.’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘Are the documents finished enough for me to look at them?’

  I suddenly notice the amended pages on my desk. They’re covered with red ink. I cover them with a folder. ‘Not really. It maybe needs a few hours of extra work.’

  She reddens. ‘All right, I’ll call Trish and tell her the agreement won’t be ready until tomorrow morning. I want you to change priorities now and look into that briefing note. You can worry about the agreement after the meeting. And don’t let me down, Tate. I hate going into meetings when I don’t understand the legal problem I’m going to be asked to answer. I need that note.’

  ‘I understand,’ I say. ‘I’ll get right onto it.’

  She turns to leave and then stops, a thought occurring. ‘Do you need any help?’ she asks. ‘Oliver Dawkins’s done this kind of thing before. I think he even speaks the language.’

  I don’t believe it - he can’t have told her already that I borrowed his precedents?

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘Let’s not bother him.’

  ‘It’s up to you. Just get that briefing note finished and have your secretary bring it over to me as soon as it’s done. I want to review it before the meeting.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ I say.

  ‘And don’t be late.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She turns to leave, pauses, then swings back for a second time. ‘And the Fey case? How are we getting on with that?’

  ‘It’s going, um, as well as might be expected.’

  ‘And yesterday’s hearing?’

  ‘Went really well.’

  Each word is a fresh shovelful excavated from my soon-to-be grave. I can’t hold her gaze. If she asks for elaboration, I’m doomed. Why is it proving so hard to own up? Making a clean breast of the mess Brian is in may be the best chance I’ve got of saving my job. A slim chance, for sure, but when Wilson finds out the truth my feet won’t touch the ground on my way out.

  She nods sternly, temporarily appeased. ‘Briefing note. My desk. As soon as possible.’

  ‘What’ve you done to upset her?’ Cohen asks.

  ‘My inability to perform miracles is being unfairly held against me.’

  ‘You sure I can’t help out?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Provided I get a clear couple of hours I ought to be able to break the back of it.’

  ‘I’m here if you need a hand.’

  Cohen’s a good friend to have in a sticky situation. ‘And what really happened to your face?’ he asks. ‘I took a policy decision not to mention the fact that you don’t own a car.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

  ‘Try me.’

  I tell him.

  He gawps. ‘You got beaten up because he got lippy with another punter?’

  I nod. ‘I said you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘You were right. I don’t.’

  IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED

  From: Tate, Daniel

  To: Delgardo, Rachel

  Subject: Penance

  Following my intolerably bad-mannered behaviour on Monday evening, I was wondering if you could be persuaded to risk another date with me? Maybe dinner? My treat.

  Daniel

  CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY

  I settle down to work on the briefing note. I open a new file and begin to crib from the notes in the Dork’s precedent folder, my eyes flicking from the pages to the screen. I can’t believe how thorough his work is. Everything I need is here.

  I could kiss him on the top of his shiny bald head.

  I finish typing the note at 1.15. I skim read it, marking up the obvious changes in red ink and then hand the pages to Elizabeth to amend. I figure I’ll have one last chance to proof-read it and make any final, minimal changes.

  ‘Busy busy busy,’ Cohen says. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  EMAIL

  From: Delgardo, Rachel

  To: Tate, Daniel

  Subject: Re: Penance

  There’s nothing to apologize for, really!! If I said sorry for every time I was a little drunk I’d be apologizing forever. And dinner sounds good but I can only do tonight this week. Is that going to be OK? If not, then maybe next week?

  I don’t email a reply at once. Best not to appear too keen or, horrors, desperate. Fifteen minutes seems to be the appropriate interval. I email back and tell her that tonight will be fine and that I’ll mail later with some suggested venues.

  THE LATEST FASHION

  I feel guilty. Thinking about another girl feels like cheating. My mind rolls another memory to punish me with:

  Hannah and I were invited to half a dozen weddings last year. We were both at that age when school and university friends begin to get picked off by the specter of matrimony, sucked down into wedded bliss. Our summer weekends became a series of ceremonies and gatherings, raising a glass to the next couple to throw in their lot together. Morning suits, new hats, confetti in the air, bouquets to be caught: it was difficult to remember where one weekend ended and the others began.

  We were standing by the lych-gate of a small village church in Somerset, apple trees in the graveyard and swallows darting in a picture-postcard sky. Hannah’s friend Laura had just been hitched to Joseph, and the two of them were pausing for photos next to an antique Daimler. The car was waiting to take them to the reception in a marquee in the grounds of Dunster Castle.

  Hannah, pink and blue confetti in her hair, leant in close. />
  ‘I can imagine us doing that,’ she breathed.

  ‘One day,’ I said.

  ‘Daniel, I’m serious.’

  Twenty-six years old and not ready for this, I pushed out a smile.

  ‘One day.’

  SOME ADDITIONAL RESEARCH

  Cohen leaves and with Elizabeth still amending my work I decide to risk calling Suzy Pugh, Hannah’s agent, again.

  ‘I’m calling about Hannah Wilde.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m producing a movie - lottery money, romantic comedy, very zeitgeist, big hit written all over it - and we’re auditioning the cast. I’ve seen Ms Wilde’s work and I think she’s just perfect for the female lead. I was, um, wondering if you had an address I could contact her on?’

  ‘Did you call me yesterday?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you did. I recognize your voice. Listen, I don’t know who you are but please stop calling. If you bother us again I’m going to call the police.’

  ‘Come on, please.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  I listen to the dialing tone buzzing in my ear for twenty seconds and then put the receiver back.

  I’ll have to try another avenue.

  THE HEART OF THE MATTER

  Why am I even trying to get hold of Hannah? I don’t know what I’d say to her if I managed to get through. I might ask her about this marriage business, I guess, and then there’s the whole business of why she left me in the first place. That’s never been properly explained, although I can guess: my failure to commit. My refusal to give her what she wanted: a ring on her finger.

  Of course I’ve thought about this. Why couldn’t I give her that? Why, when everything was so perfect, was I unable to offer to make an honest woman out of her? I know now: I wasn’t able to satisfy myself that Hannah was with me because she wanted to be. I was always half expecting some loathsome TV host to appear and announce that I was the victim of an elaborate joke. That the last five years of my life had been for someone else’s entertainment. Did I really expect a gorgeous, talented, successful actress like Hannah Wilde to be interested in an ordinary, mediocre, everyday lawyer like me?

  The longer our relationship lasted, and the more she wanted from me, the less I was ready to commit. Previous relationships had ended messily. I wasn’t ready to invest so heavily again, only to tremulously wait for the inevitable crash.

  Every time I rebuffed her gentle suggestions, the worse she felt. Her history was littered with untrustworthy male figures: her father, who left her and her mother when she was tiny; a boyfriend at university who messed with her head; the wannabe actor she shacked up with when she moved to London - the one who beat her every time he was rejected for parts. My behaviour fed her insecurity. My every refusal made me out as just another example of my duplicitous sex.

  I told her I was happy with her, happier than I had ever been before, so why wouldn’t I prove it? That was all she needed.

  I see it all now. Now I understand. But the knowledge has come months too late.

  MORE DECEPTION

  I skim through the Rolodex until I find the card I’ve dedicated to Hannah’s personal numbers. I realize I haven’t contacted any of her friends yet. Perhaps one of them will be able to tell me where she is. Or provide me with the hint of a clue. I run my finger down the card until it alights on a name I recognize: Karla, an actress she met shooting a commercial for a supermarket chain a year or so ago. An image: the two of them in skimpy dresses pushing trolleys around empty aisles. The memory stirs carnal thoughts.

  The number belongs to a mobile. Karla answers after a short pause.

  I try to sound nonchalant as I ask her whether she has heard from Hannah.

  ‘Not for a while,’ she replies. ‘I only got back from ‘Cannes yesterday. You guys aren’t having problems or anything, are you?’ Her tone is suspicious, concerned that I’m after information not to be divulged. Her trip abroad might explain her apparent ignorance about Hannah and Haines.

  I tell her it’s nothing like that - I’ve lost her mobile number and some urgent family business has come up. Does she have it? I’m cringing as I say this, wondering whether it sounds as lame out loud as it does in my head.

  ‘The only number I ever had was the one for your place, ‘ she says doubtfully, ‘and, anyway, I haven’t spoken to her in months.’

  Another dead end.

  SCOTT DOLAN TRIES AGAIN

  Phone call:

  ‘Hi, Daniel, Scott Dolan from-’

  ‘The Guest List,’ I complete it for him. ‘Extravaganza. Yeah yeah, I know. You don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘Danny, I was wondering…’

  ‘Daniel.’

  ‘…I was wondering, have you had a chance to think about our conversation on Monday? I left a message yesterday?’

  ‘I know you did,’ I say, teeth gritted. ‘I listened to it.’

  ‘And… ?’

  ‘I erased it.’

  ‘But have you thought about what I said?’

  ‘My position hasn’t changed. I haven’t got anything interesting to say to you.’

  ‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? Tell me - what have you got?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I say firmly, striving to keep my patience. ‘Professionally, I can’t say anything to you. I’m not about to break the duty of confidence I owe to my client by blabbing to a reporter.’

  ‘Listen, all my sources are confidential,’ he says. ‘You’ve got my word on that.’

  ‘That’s nice to know.’

  ‘Come on, Danny.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Please stop bothering me.’

  ‘OK, but before I go let me offer you some free information that might surprise you. You know what Brian Fey did yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘I really couldn’t care less what-’

  ‘He beat up a journalist at the NME.’

  I remember the change of tone during Brian’s rant to me yesterday afternoon; the note of resolve, a decision made.

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘He went to the NME’s offices, forced his way inside and found the journalist who’d just given his new album a slating. They argued; he decked the guy. It took two security guards to pull him off. I’ve just got off the phone with the victim myself. He was pretty battered: suspected broken nose. Probably gonna bring charges. It’ll be in the paper tomorrow and I’m just working on the headline now: BRUTAL BRIAN BASHES HACK. What’d you think?’

  ‘No, no-’

  ‘How about SPITEFUL SINGER STRIKES SCRIBE?’

  ‘No - I don’t care about the headline. This hasn’t got anything to do with me.’

  ‘Come on, Danny, don’t play stupid-’

  ‘It’s Daniel.’

  ‘You know that This is got everything to do with you. You know Brian’s got a temper. And you also know that someone who wasn’t exactly on his Christmas card list was found dead on Sunday.’

  ‘That was suicide.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Please. This is ridiculous.’

  ‘Let’s say it wasn’t suicide, just for the sake of argument. Brian’s got motive. And now we know he’s got a violent streak, too. You don’t think he’s capable? You know he is. All I’m doing’s giving you a chance to put his side of the story before the rest of the press get hold of this. It could get ugly. Why not let him get a shot in first?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve still got nothing to say.’

  ‘I might have something else to tell you tomorrow. Something much worse. I’ve got researchers digging up stuff at the moment, and I don’t wanna mention it over the phone. Why don’t you at least think about talking to me? Discuss it with your boss or do whatever it is you’ve gotta do?’

  ‘No, please, don’t call me tomorrow, don’t call me again. How many times do I have to say it - I’m not interested.’

  Before I can put the phone down, he squeezes in, ‘You’ve got my number, Danny.’<
br />
  AN INVITATION TO LUNCH

  This whole briefing note thing is getting bogged down. It’s 90 per cent finished now; just the final small amendments to sort out.

  Elizabeth tells me that Davey MacHale - Brian’s manager - is waiting for me in reception. This comes as a shock. I check my diary, suspicious that I’ve forgotten an appointment with him. I haven’t: this is an unannounced call. I ask Elizabeth to finish off the amendments to the briefing note, and to leave it on my desk when it’s done. I want to check it before I take it along to Wilson.

  THE SENIOR PARTNER

  I share the lift down to reception with Charles Hunter.

  Hunter’s face is as wrinkled as a fossilized flannel.

  He always wears the same suit - navy-blue and chalk pinstripe - and carries a pocket watch in his waistcoat. He’s the epitome of tradition, and no one can imagine the office without him.

  Despite his impeccable bearing, Hunter is driven by one thing: profit. Consider this as anecdotal evidence: a slap-up meal thrown by an infamous society girl after the successful conclusion of a rather notorious case in the sixties. ‘Whatever can I do to repay you?’ the society girl asked. ‘My dear woman,’ answered Hunter, ‘ever since the Phoenicians invented money there’s only been one answer to that question.’

  ‘Afternoon,’ he says as the doors seal us in.

  ‘Mr Hunter.’ I return his pleasantry with a shaky smile. I count the floors sliding gradually down to reception. It takes for ever.

  ‘What’s happened to your face?’

  I repeat the car-crash sob story. He raises an eyebrow and nods sympathetically.

  ‘That sounds unpleasant,’ he offers. ‘I hope it isn’t too painful.’

  ‘It was,’ I say. ‘But it’s not too bad now.’

  ‘Miss Wilson tells me Mr Fey’s case is going rather more smoothly now. We might even have turned the corner?’