Divas (55 page)

‘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.

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.

There were more gasps as Carin leaned forward to inject her husband, then handed the needle back to Joe.

‘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:

‘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:

Simon Poluck 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.

‘Mr Poluck, this is
not
the clip that you briefly showed us in my chambers, ’ the judge snapped angrily. ‘If you’ve pulled a bait-and-switch here—’

‘No, no, Your Honour, I assure you. Nothing could be farther from my intentions. I played that briefly to establish the bond between my client and her father—’

He clicked on the remote he was holding, and a new scene filled the monitor: Lola standing next to Joe, by her father’s bedside. ‘Here we are. Twenty minutes earlier. Mr
Ranieri’s technicians have actually spliced together footage from two different cameras, to show simultaneous versions of the same time period. You can verify that from the date stamps. One
camera was in the bedroom, and one was in the master bathroom. I think the reason will be self-evident.’

In the total silence before he pressed ‘Play’ again, everyone heard a noise from where Carin Fitzgerald was sitting. It was a sharp hiss of fear, breath drawn in between
fuchsia-painted lips that were so tightly clamped together that only the thinnest sound of terror could be caught in between them.

While, on the screen, Joe was saying to Lola:

‘Perhaps you’d like to help?’

The spectators watched, as Joe handed Lola the syringe to hold. As he asked her to get the vial of insulin from the small fridge built into the bedside table. As he injected her father. As
everything happened exactly as Lola had just recounted to the court.

And then the screen split, to show Carin Fitzgerald in the bathroom, clearly watching the scene in the master bedroom through the crack in the hinge of the half-open door.

The spectators exclaimed now, despite the reprimands of the judge. They muttered frantically to each other as Joe Scutellaro crossed the room, as he went into the bathroom, as he placed the vial
and the syringe carefully down on a marble shelf and as Carin Fitzgerald patted him on the shoulder in approval as he gave her the thumbs up sign before heading back into the bedroom. And their
mutters rose to gasps of disbelief as Carin Fitzgerald sat down on the upholstered chaise longue at the foot of the bath, smiling, reached for a brimming martini glass on a low table beside her,
and raised it in the direction of the master bedroom and her comatose husband, before drinking from it in a silent celebration.

‘
Silence, or I’ll have the court cleared!
’ roared the judge, pounding away with her gavel, the sparkle of utter enjoyment in her eyes completely belying the reproving
tones of her voice.

The lights snapped back on: the courtroom was fully illuminated.

And everyone’s heads were turned in the same direction. To Carin Fitzgerald, who had risen to her feet, gathering her shaved-mink coat around her shoulders, her Gucci bag in her hand,
hoping to flee the courtroom in the semi-darkness. Rico, beside her, was trying to shoulder a way along the row of seats to the side aisle; but, despite his menacing appearance, the other
spectators were blocking him. The woman next to him was shaking her head furiously at Rico.

‘Don’t you push me!’ she was exclaiming. ‘That murdering bitch isn’t going anywhere!’

Applause broke out. Someone yelled: ‘Arrest her now! Why aren’t you arresting her?’ and a woman’s high-pitched voice screamed: ‘Stay strong, Lola! Your dad’s
in heaven now!’

‘
Silence in court!
’ the judge bellowed, as the bailiff strode forward to calm the crowd. ‘Mr Greene?’ she prompted. ‘Are you going to make an application to
the court?’

‘The prosecution withdraws all charges against Miss Lola Fitzgerald, ’ Joshua Greene muttered angrily.

‘That means you’re clear on the bail-jumping too!’ Poluck’s second chair whispered excitedly to Lola.

‘Miss Fitzgerald, since all charges against you have been withdrawn, you leave this court today a free woman, ’ the judge said cheerfully. ‘Let me stress that this means you
have no stain on your character whatsoever. Occasionally, a prosecution will be made in error, but in good faith, and the State of New York can only regret your recent ordeal and wish you a happy
life now that you no longer have this extremely distressing charge hanging over your head. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we thank you for your service and release you from jury duty for the
next ten years. I’m sure the drama of these proceedings has more than compensated for the time we’ve taken up. Court is dismissed! Bailiffs,
please
clear the court!’

Lola had cried out every tear she could possibly cry: she was probably completely dehydrated.

So she fainted instead.

Or rather, she collapsed. Every bone in her body seemed to dissolve simultaneously. Jelly-like, she flopped forward onto the desk, and it was only Simon Poluck’s quick reflex in catching
her shoulders that saved her from hitting her head on its unyielding surface.

Someone was shoving her head between her legs and telling her to breathe. Someone else, across the room, was saying loudly:

‘Carin Fitzgerald, you are under arrest for the murder of your husband, Benjamin Fitzgerald. You have the right to remain silent, as anything you say can and will be used against you in a
court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present—’

‘She’ll make a deal, ’ Simon Poluck was saying to his team. ‘No way she won’t make a deal. That DVD evidence is cast iron. Ranieri knows his stuff backwards,
it’ll stand up to any forensic tests they run it through—’

Lola raised her head, the world spinning around her. Suzanne was crouched by her side, sobbing, holding Lola’s hands for dear life. India and David were hugging tightly, both of them
crying with relief. Beyond them was Carin, whose arms were being handcuffed behind her by a police officer. He was raising his voice to make sure she heard the last words of the Miranda
warning.

‘Do you understand the rights I have just read to you, Mrs Fitzgerald? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?’ he yelled doggedly over the hubbub in the
courtroom.

Suddenly, Suzanne jumped up, striding through the crowd, which parted immediately to let her through. As tall as Carin, and as beautiful in her own very different way, even with her face stained
with mascara, Suzanne was utterly compelling.