The Namedropper (26 page)

‘I think we've got them running scared,' said Beckwith. ‘I can't remember a lot of times when I could have dropped everything to confront an unspecified, out-of-town court challenge like the other side's lawyers have done here. Neither can Bob.'

‘You're talking lawyers appearing,' said Jordan. ‘What about Appleton and Leanne being here personally?'

‘We won't know that until tomorrow, when the court convenes. If either were my clients I'd keep them away.'

‘Could you call them, as witnesses, if they do turn up?'

‘I haven't officially listed them. If they do show I could apply for Pullinger's discretion. Which I might well do, even on a minor point. There'd obviously and very definitely be a legal argument which I'm sure I could use to move Pullinger into our favour.'

‘What are our chances of a complete dismissal?' demanded Jordan, bluntly.

‘I've been through this with Bob,' said Beckwith.

‘I want you to go through it with me!'

‘Slightly less than fifty percent. Which, as a gambler, you've got to accept as pretty good odds.'

For the briefest of seconds Jordan was disorientated by the reminder of how he was supposed to make his living. ‘I try for better.'

‘I can't offer you anything better.'

It was a desultory dinner between two people brought together beneath the same roof who had already talked out all there was to discuss, each striving for conversation until the very end, when Beckwith suddenly said, ‘To use an expression that you're more familiar with than me, we could be on the home straight here. I don't want any surprises, OK?'

‘What's that mean?' demanded Jordan, genuinely bewildered.

‘You haven't had any contact with Alyce, not since that night in New York?'

‘You know I haven't.'

‘I don't know you haven't. That's why I'm asking you.'

‘I haven't.'

‘Not even by telephone.'

‘No.'

‘You'll be on a witness stand tomorrow, on oath. I don't want any outbursts.'

‘If there was going to be an outburst – if I didn't have the anger locked away – I'd have already shouted you down for what you've just asked me about Alyce.'

‘Bob thinks you're carrying a torch for her.'

‘After the mess she's got me into! You've got to be joking! Bob Reid's talking through his ass.'

‘There's too much in what you've just said for me to handle all at one time,' ended Beckwith, getting up from the table. ‘Breakfast tomorrow at eight, OK?'

Twenty-One

H
aving steadfastly and successfully avoided any criminal proceedings so far in his life, Harvey Jordan had prepared himself for an understandable uncertainty at actually entering a court for the first time and was pleased – as well as relieved – that none came. On their way from the hotel Beckwith had talked expansively of courts being theatres in which people – lawyers particularly – performed but that wasn't Jordan's most positive impression, although he conceded that there could be some comparisons. There was certainly a formidable cast being assembled, their fixed expressions befitting impending drama.

As the appellants on that initial day, Jordan and his lawyer had the first table to the left of the court, just inside the separating rail. Directly behind that rail, in the public section, was George Abrahams, with whom Beckwith was at that moment hunched in head-bent, muttered conversation. The width of the entry gate through the rail separated Jordan from the position of Alfred Appleton and his lawyer, David Bartle. Beyond them, at another table, were Leanne Jefferies and Peter Wolfson. Behind the rail, on the right of the court, were a group of motionless, silent people among whom Jordan presumed to be the Boston venerealogists. Half turned in their direction as he was Jordan was instantly aware of the entry into the court of Alyce, Reid attentively at her arm. Alyce wore a neutral coloured, tailored suit and very little make-up and came through the court and the final gate looking directly ahead, to take her place at the separate table beside Jordan's, on the far left of the court. As she finally sat Alyce looked at Jordan. But not as far as the opposite side of the court to her husband and his lover. Jordan smiled. Alyce didn't, turning away.

Reid leaned towards Jordan and said, ‘You get in OK, avoiding the photographers?'

‘I think so. You?'

‘I'm sure we did.'

‘Alyce OK?'

‘It's the first time she's been near Appleton since it all began. She's a mess.'

‘Tell her it's OK.' What on earth did that mean? Jordan wondered, as he said it. Alyce looked very pale.

‘I have already. She thought she'd be all right. She's not.'

Beckwith returned through the gate and asked Jordan, ‘What was that about?'

‘Alyce is nervous.'

‘So am I,' said Beckwith, jerking his head back towards the public area. ‘We've got a hell of a point to make. Choosing the moment to make it is the problem.'

‘What the …? started Jordan, to be overridden by the loudly demanded, ‘All rise!'

If this were theatre then Judge Hubert Pullinger was already wearing his costume for the role, thought Jordan, as the man upon whom so much depended entered the court. Pullinger's raven-black gown hung shapelessly around a stick-thin, desiccated frame, an appearance denied by the scurrying quickness of his movements. The head came forward, though, when he sat, reminding Jordan of a carnivorous hunting bird, complete with the disease-whitened face Jordan remembered from a television documentary on vultures, ripped off flesh hanging from its beak. Halfway through the court clerk's official litany identifying the hearing there was an impatient, head twitch towards Beckwith, an appropriately bird-like pecking gesture.

Beckwith hesitated until the clerk's recitation ended before rising, with matching, head-nodding deference, to name himself, his client, and his purpose in making his application under the provisions of statute Section 1-52(5) of the North Carolina civil code.

‘Which I do, your honour, with some difficulty and trepidation,' Beckwith added.

The pause was perfectly timed to allow Pullinger's interception. ‘Both of which problems I can understand from having read the advanced case papers,' said the man. The voice was not bird-like, but surprisingly strong from such a dried-out body.

‘Papers in which, in my submission, some of the facts are incomplete and because of which I am seeking the leniency of the court properly to provide,' picked up Beckwith, no satisfaction at his timing in his voice.

‘This is a procedural hearing, on behalf of your client, for dismissal as I understand it of both the claims for alienation of affections and for criminal conversations,' interrupted the judge, yet again. ‘Should I not hear and consider your applications before being asked to show leniency?'

Jordan's concentration was more towards the right of the court than to the judge, at once alert to the half smiled, head-together exchange between Appleton and his lawyer to the judge's persistent intercessions. Jordan acknowledged that despite the impression he'd earlier formed from photographs of the man, he had totally misjudged Appleton's size and appearance. Appleton seemed much taller than the stated six foot three inches, the fleshy stature heightened by his overall, clothes-stretching heaviness. There was no longer anything of the sportsman Appleton had once been. The weight, oddly, appeared to bunch at his shoulders and neck, pushing his head forward, actually bison-like, over a belly bulged beneath a double breasted jacket opened to release its constraint and enable the man to sit, legs splayed, again for comfort. His face was red, mottled by what Jordan guessed to be blood pressure, the fading hair receded far more than it had seemed in the photographs. The marked difference in their appearance dictated that he restrict to the absolute minimum his personal visits to the banks in which he had opened accounts in Appleton's name, Jordan reminded himself.

The smiling, head-nodding David Bartle was a large man, too, although physically overwhelmed by his client. Bartle had the sun weathered face indicating that he, too, might have been a yachtsman, the colour emphasized by an unruly mop of prematurely white, unrestrained hair. It was not as long as Beckwith's but it appeared to be because Beckwith had his held at the nape of his neck by a securing band. Apart from the restrained hair there was nothing of the Wild West imagery, either. Beckwith wore a conservatively striped suit, shoes and a striped club tie beneath the collar of a crisp white shirt.

There was a similar, although more subdued, reaction to the judge's pressure from the furthermost table to the right of the court, at which Leanne Jefferies and her lawyer sat heads also tightly together. As close as she now was to him Jordan decided that the apparent similarity between Leanne and Alyce was misleading to the point of there being no resemblance at all, limited to the blondness of their hair colouring and the style in which both wore it. Leanne was much sharper featured and could not have risked the minimal make-up with which Alyce succeeded. Leanne wore a powdered base and darkly shadowed eye mascara and the redness of the lipstick was close to being too harsh: the woman looked every day of her five years seniority over Alyce, the age Jordan knew the woman to be from his sessions with Reid.

‘I fear I am inadequately expressing myself, your honour, for which I apologize most profusely,' said Beckwith, without the slightest indication of apology in his voice. ‘The leniency I seek is not out of the expected sequence that would normally govern a dismissal submission?'

‘Why should I be expected to agree to any such course!' Pullinger broke in once more and Jordan decided that his mental analogy of a constantly pecking, flesh ripping vulture was an apposite one.

‘To prevent yourself and this court, even at this early stage, progressing further with such preliminary evidence which is, in my contention, inadequate, and risks being misleading unless now addressed and which, if not addressed, seriously endangers the arguments I intend making on behalf of my client …' Beckwith's pause was clearly timed as an invitation for another interruption, which this time didn't come, creating the silence that hung in the court like the belated rebuke that Jordan was sure Beckwith intended. There were no longer any satisfied expressions from the tables on the other side of the court, either.

‘Mr Beckwith?' prompted Pullinger, finally.

‘Your honour, I seek your guidance,' said Beckwith, refusing to expand, and Jordan felt a frisson of alarm that his lawyer was pushing his false humility too far, a concern that was almost immediately confirmed by Pullinger's further silence.

Breaking it, as he had to do, Pullinger said, ‘Are you moving towards inviting this court to find impropriety, Mr Beckwith?'

‘I am asking this court to allow me to proceed in a way different from a normal submission of its type,' avoided Beckwith, adeptly.

Pullinger went to the opposite side of his court. ‘Mr Bartle? Can you help me with this set of circumstances?'

The now serious-faced Bartle was on his feet before Pullinger finished the question. ‘Your honour, I am at as much a loss as I fear you are. I have not the slightest idea to what counsel is referring or alluding. Because of which I formally ask for the court's protection.'

‘Mr Wolfson?' switched the judge.

‘I am equally at as much of a loss as my colleague, your honour, and ask as anxiously as he for the protection of the court,' responded Wolfson. He was a small man compared to those immediately adjacent to him, with a moustache and Van Dyke beard so immaculately trimmed that both looked artificially stuck to his lip and chin, furthering Beckwith's earlier theatrical comparison.

Looking between the two lawyers, the judge said, ‘I give both of you the guarantee of such protection –' coming around to Beckwith as he spoke – ‘and warn you, Mr Beckwith, of the irritation of this same court if the allowance you request emerges in any way whatsoever to be a frivolous manoeuvre.'

‘I am grateful for such an allowance, your honour,' responded Beckwith, who had remained standing throughout the exchanges.

‘Remain extremely careful, Mr Beckwith,' repeated the emaciated man. ‘Extremely careful indeed.'

‘Which is precisely what I hope you will find I am being at the end of this consideration,' said Beckwith.

Jordan thought, Shut the fuck up! Don't gloat at having got what you wanted.

Dr Abrahams was at the rail gate before Beckwith completed the summons, not needing the prompt from the usher to complete the oath. The man was equally well prepared listing his qualifications, but Beckwith stopped him halfway through the recital, taking him back to identify in full every acronym, particularly Abrahams' qualification as a veneralogist. That established, Beckwith went with the man's impatience to record the length of his experience and the extent of his microbiological specialization.

‘Qualified as you are as a microbiologist also means that you are equally qualified and practised as a serologist?'

‘It does,' replied Abrahams, in his clipped, formal manner.

‘For the benefit of the laymen among us in the court, what is serology?'

There was the vaguest sigh from the man. ‘Technically the study of serum. In practise the study of the blood to identify bacteria and viruses, in effect, identifying antibodies and antigens prevalent in communicable diseases and infections.'

‘Continuing in laymen's terms, infections caused by bacteria?'

‘Not always, but predominantly.'

‘Virally created infections?'

‘Yes.'

‘What are antibodies? And antigens?'

‘Bodies that form in the blood to resist a toxin.'

‘Formed how? By what?'

‘I am sure the court is fascinated by this expedition into the mysteries of microbiology and serology,' broke in Bartle, noisily grating back his chair as he stood. ‘But is there to be a practical point to emerge from this dissertation?'