Divas (51 page)

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 not 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.

‘L
adies 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.’

He shook is head, pantomiming disbelief at how badly Lola had been treated.

‘Miss Fitzgerald and her father had always had an extremely close, loving relationship. Many people might well envy their bond. Like any caring father, Ben Fitzgerald wanted his daughter
to have every benefit that he could afford to give her. Perhaps he spoilt her. That is his fault, not hers, if you can really consider it a fault for a loving father to lavish care and attention on
his beloved only child, to make sure that she would never want for anything. He made clear, with every action towards her, that her well-being was one of the most important focuses of her
existence.’

Lola swallowed hard in an effort not to cry.

‘Miss Fitzgerald begged and borrowed funds to get her to New York, to see her father. She had to go through her lawyers to be allowed to visit him! Incredible, isn’t it? But
it’s true, sad to say. Miss Fitzgerald had to use the weight of the legal system to force her stepmother to allow her to visit her comatose father. And when, eventually, a visit was arranged,
Miss Fitzgerald found herself at the centre of an appalling plot. Not content with having cut off her stepdaughter’s access to the trust funds her father had established for her, Mrs
Fitzgerald—’

He gestured to Carin, who returned his stare of loathing with a small, contemptuous smile—

‘Mrs Fitzgerald and the nurse she had engaged to look after her ailing husband plotted to frame Miss Fitzgerald for the murder of her father. Because, ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution
had one fact right. It is undeniable, from the levels of insulin in Mr Fitzgerald’s body, that he was indeed murdered from an overdose. But it was not my client who killed him. It was his
wife.’

Lola heard a gasp from someone in the jury box, but she was looking at Carin as the allegation was made, not at the jury members. Carin barely changed expression; her eyes narrowed fractionally,
but that was all.

She should have shaken her head,
Lola thought.
That’s what an innocent person would do when they were accused of killing their own husband.

‘With the co-operation of the unfortunate Mr Scutellaro, murdered overseas in a freak incident that can have no possible bearing on this case whatsoever, ’ Simon Poluck continued,
‘Mrs Fitzgerald planned and executed the murder of her husband. My client will testify that she only handled the hypodermic needle in question, of which we have heard so much, because the
nurse Scutellaro handed it to her.
That
is why her prints are on it, and
that
is why those prints are not the ones of a person holding the hypodermic in the way they would if they
were injecting someone, but simply as if they were holding it for a moment, as you would a pen.’

He smiled triumphantly, with the air of a man who had made a crucial point.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, ’ he concluded, ‘there is really no case for Miss Fitzgerald to answer. She had no motive to kill her father: we are prepared to bring an eminent witness
who will testify that she knew she would win her case against her stepmother and regain control of the trust funds that were rightfully hers.’

Lola knew he meant George Goldman, who couldn’t be present as a spectator because he was on the defence witness list.

‘Miss Fitzgerald adored her father, and he adored her. Losing him has been one of the most painful experiences she will ever undergo. Please, don’t compound her suffering by taking
this charge remotely seriously. She is not guilty. The idea that anyone could ever have thought she was guilty is so ludicrous that it is only understandable by the fact that she was framed by the
unreliable testimony of a dead witness in the pay of her stepmother, who has demonstrated all too clearly her dislike of her stepdaughter. After you have heard the testimony for the defence, I am
more confident than I have ever been in my entire career that you will have no hesitation whatsoever in finding her’ – he paused, momentarily, for full effect – ‘
not
guilty
.’