The Namedropper (34 page)

The lawyer inclined his head in acknowledgement and said, ‘It was annoying, being caught out about the ring, but I don't think that was why Pullinger found against us, either. I think he was thoroughly pissed off by what the other side tried to pull and didn't want to protract everything further with another possible plea on Leanne's behalf. This way he's tied it up in one bundle.'

‘You still estimating any finding against me as high as you did in the beginning?' asked Jordan.

Beckwith shook his head. ‘We're way down the scale now. We've got to be!'

‘I agree,' said Reid.

‘Alyce stood up well, until it was all over,' said Jordan. When she'd been invited to the review conference she had pleaded exhaustion and Dr Harding at once confirmed, after examining her, that medically it would be too much for her to go through any analysis, actually administering some medication in a court ante-room before yet again smuggling her from the building.

‘Now you're going to be centre stage,' Beckwith reminded Reid. ‘You think she's going to be strong enough to stand up to it all? Today wasn't even a taste of what she's going to face from Bartle when we get to the full case.'

‘I'm glad of the adjournment,' admitted Reid. ‘I'm seeing Harding first thing tomorrow. After what's already happened I don't want to throw any more medical stuff at Pullinger but I might ask for some relaxation in her attending if Harding tells me it's necessary.'

‘You intending to have him on hand all the time?' queried Beckwith.

‘Another reason for seeing him tomorrow,' expanded Reid. ‘I'm hoping his function at the Bellamy clinic is more administrative than actually practising. If it is he might be able to spend more time than someone with a patient list.'

‘He looks young to be the administrator of an entire hospital?' suggested Jordan.

‘Local boy made good,' said Reid. ‘Very good indeed.'

‘What do I have to do now?' Jordan asked his lawyer. ‘Do I have to be in court the whole time?' There was a lot more use to which he could put the New York bank accounts.

‘I'll think about that as things take their course,' said Beckwith, cautiously. ‘We're pretty much at the back of the bus in the immediate future. But certainly you should be in court in those early days. I'm sure we're still ahead, as far as our part of the case has gone. But I don't want to upset a spiky old bastard like Pullinger by making a move he'd consider disrespectful. And after his reaction to how you make a living I wouldn't like to argue pressure of business.'

‘I don't think much of Bartle. Or Wolfson,' prompted Jordan. Or Reid, for that matter, he mentally added.

‘We knocked both of them way off course,' said Beckwith. ‘Bartle did the best he could with what he had. Which was why the ring was a nuisance. Without it he really would have been floundering.' He looked at Reid. ‘Don't underestimate him next week. He's got a lot of court ground to recover. Wolfson, too. Alyce is going to be put through a lot of hoops and she already needs a doctor on standby.'

‘That's what I'm going to talk through with Harding tomorrow.'

‘Shouldn't there be a specialist on hand, as we had over the chlamydia business?'

‘I told you, that's what I'm seeing Harding to decide,' insisted Reid. ‘And I think these after-court discussions are useful. I'd welcome the input continuing.'

I bet you would, thought the unimpressed Jordan. He said, ‘You're going to need more than discussions like this if your enquiry people don't move their asses more than they've done so far.'

‘The planning conference with them is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. They're making promising noises. I'll bring Dan up to speed before we start next week.'

And I'll bring myself up to speed on Trojan horseback, thought Jordan.

But not here in Raleigh, he decided, recognizing the opportunity again to get back to New York, which he already knew his lawyer intended to do on the first available flight the following day.

Dinner was Jordan's first reflective opportunity on the outcome of the day and he accepted, without admitting it to his lawyer, that he'd been too optimistic of Pullinger's dismissal. But as objective as he always was, Jordan at once recognized that there was a potentially protective benefit from him being officially detained in America instead of remaining there of his own volition, which he'd already decided to do if they'd won the day. This way there could be no suspicion of him in any way being responsible or involved in the intended retribution against Alfred Appleton, remote though any such suspicion might be, so carefully – and so far undetected – had Jordan evolved his unfolding attack. But he would be restricted in expanding that attack if he had constantly to attend the Raleigh court. This fact created an uncertainty – a hindrance – in the mind of a man who didn't like initiating anything about which there was the slightest doubt or difficulty.

Jordan was glad he wasn't able to get a seat on the same flight as Beckwith, able to travel alone back to New York. So accustomed to working and being always alone, responsible only for and to himself, that, objective again, Jordan acknowledged that the constant presence of Beckwith and Reid – of so many other people – had caused something like claustrophobia in him in Raleigh. It might not have been so bad, he supposed, if things had been different with Alyce: if he'd been able to see her, be with her, sometime during the adjournment. Fragile though she was, she had been magnificent on the witness stand, doing everything that she could to prove he wasn't guilty or responsible for her marriage collapse under ridiculous Dark Ages laws enacted by Puritans who believed in witches and burned them at the stake. He wanted – needed – to thank her: thank her for enduring the humiliation of actually admitting that it was she who had come on to him before he'd hit upon her, which he'd intended to do the night they'd got back from the prison island visit anyway. Was Beckwith right, that what Alyce had gone through the previous day was a soft prelude to what she was going to be subjected to by Bartle the following week? He didn't want to be excused the court when Alyce was on the stand. He'd be there every day, supporting her if he could, letting her know if he could that he was there for her. As he would be. Counting. Counting every humiliation, every shitty trick or device that Bartle and Appleton imposed upon her. And by every notch in that count he'd increase the humiliation and shit he'd already started to dump on Alfred Jerome Appleton. Not just an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth: he'd figuratively dismember the man organ by organ, limb by limb, until all that was left for people to laugh at would be a hump-backed, flush-faced head on a spike.

He'd advised the Carlyle the previous night of his return to Manhattan and his retained suite was predictably immaculate, his intrusion detectors in the suit closet and dressing-room drawers undisturbed. He held back from unstabling his Trojan Horses at once, deciding that there was so much he had to cover that he needed to create a reminder list to avoid him overlooking anything. It took him an hour to compose and he was surprised at its length when he finished.

He assumed that Bartle and Wolfson would have returned as he and Beckwith had – maybe Appleton and Leanne, too – but there would have been little opportunity for the lawyers to have updated their computer case files. Working his way patiently through his reminders, Jordan decided that with the exception of DDK Investigations, Reid's enquiry agency, within whose computers he had so far not embedded a see-all spyhole, he'd probably be premature accessing any of his already burgled sites until the following day.

Jordan was on the point of quitting the hotel for West 72nd Street and whatever mail might be waiting there for him in Appleton's name when his telephone rang.

‘I wondered if you'd be back here,' said Alyce.

‘You're in Manhattan?'

‘I couldn't stand being in Raleigh any longer. And there were television and cameramen all around the estate.'

‘How are you?'

‘It's just the court. Once I'm out of it, not in the same room with him, I'm OK.'

‘What are you doing?'

‘Just here, in the apartment. You?'

‘Just here, in the suite. There's still time for a late lunch.' West 72nd Street could wait.

‘That would be nice. Do you know Enrico's, on 57th and 3rd?'

‘I can find it.'

She was there, looking through her heavy-rimmed glasses at the menu while she waited, when Jordan entered. The black sweater showed off her blondeness and she'd covered the courtroom pallor with more make-up than she normally wore and Jordan thought the lipstick was too bright, almost as bright as Leanne Jefferies' has been in court. She was drinking mineral water. She seemed to sense his presence before he reached the discreet side booth, shadowed even more than the already deeply shadowed restaurant, and looked up, smiling. ‘Hi!'

Jordan lowered himself opposite her and said ‘hi' back. She hadn't completely managed to hide the dark rings beneath her eyes.

‘I know I look a mess,' she said, as if reading his thoughts.

‘You don't look a mess and you know it.'

‘I feel a mess.'

‘You've no reason to feel a mess, either.'

She smiled again, shaking her head. ‘I don't believe you. But thanks anyway. The hotel in Raleigh told me you'd gone away until Sunday, so I guessed you'd come back here.'

Jordan said, ‘I'm glad you got me. I want to thank you for everything you said in court.'

‘It was the truth. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? Tell the truth. Why didn't you?'

‘What!'

‘About having once been married?'

Jordan shook his head. ‘All part of the venture capitalist nonsense, too busy for a normal life.'

‘How did it go wrong for you?

‘Rebecca found another guy she liked better.' She had, but not until he'd tried to drown himself at the bottom of a bottle.

Alyce humped her shoulders, dismissively.

Jordan ordered a gin martini from an enquiring waiter. ‘It still can't have been easy for you, standing there in front of your husband, saying what you did.'

‘I'm sorry about the ring.'

‘Turned out to be a pretty bad joke, didn't it?'

‘It was nice at the time. Everything was nice at the time.'

Jordan hesitated, curious at the remark. ‘I thought so, too. I really didn't notice that you went on wearing it.'

‘I know you didn't.'

‘Why did you?'

‘I wanted to. I wouldn't have done it, though, if I'd known everything we did, everywhere we went, was being watched as it was. Alfred's a bastard; a one-hundred-and-ten-percent bastard.'

‘But we fucked him with the chlamydia lie. Him and Leanne.' Jordan suddenly remembered that Reid hadn't made his promised application to the judge for the medical records, if any still existed, of the dead Sharon Borowski. He supposed that it wasn't so important now.

‘I hope we can catch him out in all the others.'

‘What others?' demanded Jordan, alertly.

‘I wish I could guess. There'll be a lot more, believe me.'

Jordan did and wondered if he'd get any leads from the following day's phishing trips through the computers. ‘We've agreed to have daily, after-court conferences, Dan, Bob and me. There's a lot of us on your side.'

‘I'm glad you are,'Alyce said, smiling at him across the table.

From her study of the menu before he'd arrived Alyce immediately asked for spaghetti with clams when their waiter returned. Jordan, who hadn't bothered with the menu, said he'd have the same, as well as a bottle of Chianti, eager to get rid of the man.

‘What happened to the ring?' he asked.

I took it off on the plane. Left it there when I got off. We'd agreed it was over, remember?'

Jordan hesitated. ‘Didn't you want it to be?'

Alyce shrugged, awkwardly. ‘It was best that it was. Except that it wasn't over, was it?'

‘Isn't,' insisted Jordan, correcting her tense.

Alyce shook her head, positively. ‘Let's not walk this route any further. You're still a defendant, possibly going to lose a lot of money.'

‘After showing up their medical reports as we did, Dan doesn't think it's going to be anything like as bad as it might have been.' He was shortening the man's name, he realized.

‘I don't see the connection, but that isn't what I want to talk to you about. I … I mean the family will pay back whatever's awarded against you. As well as your costs. What's happened to you is my fault … nothing to do with you …'

The offer silenced Jordan for several moments, his reactions colliding between anger and gratitude and settling somewhere in between. ‘I don't want that. Thank you, but no.'

‘It could be a lot of money.'

‘I know. I can afford it.' How much he wished he could tell her that it would be her husband who paid and in a lot more ways than just money.

‘You're offended,' she accused.

‘I told you no. And mean it.'

They were both glad of the arrival of their food. The wine was better than Jordan had expected but Alyce limited herself to half a glass. Seizing the abstinence as a weak excuse to break the embarrassment that had come between them Jordan said, ‘Aren't you supposed to drink with whatever medication the doctor's given you?'

Alyce didn't reply at once. ‘It was just a tranquillizer yesterday. And it's not regular medication.'

‘You're going to be under a lot of stress, a lot of pressure, next week.'

‘I know.'

‘Have you talked to the doctor about it?'

‘He says there are things but I don't want to slow myself down, certainly not when I'm giving evidence. I don't want to give the bastard the slightest advantage.'