unfortunately the morals of your client, now that we’ve got all the test reports. We’re admitting the adultery. We didn’t have any alternative.’
‘I’m going to speak with the enquiry agents on Monday. Put a burr up their ass. And seeing Alyce tomorrow. How the hell can I prepare any sort of a defence – a case – until she starts being straight with me! She’s the plaintiff who initiated the divorce proceedings, for Christ’s sake!’
Reid gestured with his empty martini glass for a refill. When the waiter responded the man looked enquiringly at Beckwith who ordered Chardonnay, a glass, not a bottle.
Beckwith said, ‘You don’t have enough time, if Wolfson gets his hearing at the end of the coming week. Even if she comes straight tomorrow there’s still whatever might come out under my cross-examination on Wednesday which you’ll have to go through with her all over again. You need to apply for a delay; it was a sharp move for Wolfson to file for dismissal right on the back of my application.’
‘You think you’ll get judgement in your favour?’
Beckwith accepted his wine from the returning waiter, reflectively cupping the glass between both hands to consider the question. ‘Depends what I can bring out from Alyce. Now we’ve got the medical proof that Appleton and Leanne can’t have been the cause of Alyce’s infection, my strategy has got to be that Alyce entrapped Harvey as the fall guy, intending to name him herself to cover up for her unknown lover, whoever the hell he is. Or they are. But didn’t have to, because of the entrapment Appleton already had in place for her. Before the medical clearances, I reckoned my chances of dismissal were less than fifty percent, thirty tops. Now I’m still only giving myself fifty percent, with a son of a bitch like Judge Herbert D Pullinger.’
‘Everything depends on what Alyce says. Or doesn’t say,’ said Reid, more maudlin than reflective.
‘What time are you seeing her?’
‘We fixed ten.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. We could brunch somewhere after you’ve met with her?’
‘I’ll call.’
Harvey Jordan continued to be troubled by the uncertainty that came to him during the acrimonious – and therefore distracting – meeting with the two lawyers, and still hadn’t resolved it by the time he finished the uninteresting room service meal, which he abandoned half-eaten and pushed on its delivery trolley out into the corridor to give himself as much space as possible for what he intended to do, regretting, along with a lot of other things, not having asked Suzie to book a suite. Changing to one was his first priority on an already long list for the following day.
Daniel Beckwith’s courtroom ability remained worringly untested, although Jordan was hopeful. He wasn’t at all hopeful about Robert Reid, whom he suspected to have taken Alyce Appleton’s case more for its inherent benefit to his reputation for representing such a prestigious North Carolina family than trying too hard contesting an incontestable case in an American state governed by archaic divorce statutes. And Jordan’s concern for Alyce wasn’t at all altruistic. It was, as always, to save himself. Which was why he needed – as Harvey Jordan always needed – to know everything with which he might be challenged before any challenge occurred.
Whatever was nagging him from that afternoon’s encounter had to have some connection with something that had preceded it. But what? He had first to examine the official, printed-out and accusing material, Jordan decided. After that, he’d go through all the illegally accrued correspondence from each and every carefully collated source from all his invaded computers. After that Jordan wasn’t sure where else he would look or explore, apart, as always, his burgeoning Appleton bank accounts. And by then he didn’t expect to still be as unsure as he was, because by then he would have found the elusive inconsistency. If he didn’t find it the first time he’d have to go back – and back again – until he did.
Harvey Jordan was a necessarily methodical, analytical man and decided to begin his search in reverse, setting out in sections upon his bed all that he’d memorized from what had been haphazardly strewn over Reid’s desk, and continued moving backwards through all the court papers with which he had been formally supplied, right back to the original stultifying, stomach-wrenching opening letter from David Bartle at Brinkmeyer, Hartley and Bernstein informing him of his being cited as co- respondent in a financial damages-seeking divorce action. There was far more material than he’d anticipated and, aware that repeated reading of already familiar material could result in self-hypnotic oversights, Jordan further sub-divided his already separated divisions. He then settled unhurriedly to read. He did so, totally concentrated and without pause for an hour, at the end of which he’d failed to isolate any incongruity or anomaly.
Irritated, because he was sure the key to what he wanted had to be somewhere in there, Jordan started all over again, creating further sub-divisions until virtually all of the bed space was occupied. And still he found nothing, this time after searching for another full two hours.
Jordan allowed himself a contemplative break, moving from the uncleared bed to his laptop, scrolling through every downloaded exchange from every invaded computer. He was well into the initial correspondence between Daniel Beckwith in Manhattan and Lesley Corbin in London, insisting upon the first venereal examinations by the avaricious Dr James Preston when the long-sought answer began to formulate in Jordan’s mind. He forced his cramped body up from his chair to walk stiffly to the bed display, still not able to be completely sure because all he’d been able to memorize that afternoon were the names and addresses of the Boston examiners, not their specific findings or conclusions.
But they were very definitely set out in the results of his own, second examination in New York by George Abrahams. This convinced Jordan that he was taking the right path. Just as he remembered now – and didn’t have the slightest doubt whatsoever – that despite their detailed discussion about the medical findings, there had been no reference to anything Reid had done – or rather hadn’t done – to get any medical or autopsy result analysis on Sharon Borowski to ascertain if she might have been a chlamydia sufferer.
Jordan only realized the time had gone midnight when he saw it on his own watch as he reached out for the telephone, halting the move to pick it up to ring Beckwith on the floor above. The fact that the following day – or this day, to be precise – was Sunday didn’t preclude his hacking into the computers of the two Boston venerealogists to counteract the still hovering uncertainty. His challenge would be far more effective – unchallengable in return – if he could prove what he could only so far suspect.
Jordan guessed the following day was going to be even more fractious than the one that had just passed. And didn’t give a fuck. Reid probably would, though. And Beckwith. He’d funded his five New York banks from the accounts of Appleton and Drake that morning and didn’t expect there to be anything he hadn’t already read to have been added over the weekend, so he decided the long postponed revisit could wait until the following day.
Nineteen
He was glad he did, because what Harvey Jordan found when he logged on soon after 6 a.m. on the Sunday morning he regarded as another auspcious beginning to the day. In the correspondence attached to his five accounts he found three separate loan offers, the largest – from the Bank of America – up to a maximum of $10,000. In total, the loan offers, each of which he intended accepting, came to $24,000, which, added to what he’d accumulated from his daily withdrawals from Appleton and Drake’s account, came just short of $72,000. Keeping that day’s transfers to each of the five below $4,000 – and sub-dividing those to avoid them appearing even as large as that – Jordan increased the pot to $83,000, realizing that he had to return as soon as possible to New York to withdraw cash for his safe deposits again to avoid him exceeding the money-reporting limit. By the time he did, he expected loan offers from the two outstanding banks.
By 7.30 a.m. Jordan had obtained the computer addresses of the two Boston clinics. The specialist who had attested that Alfred Appleton was free of any venereal infection was Mark Chapman, whose clinic was on Boylston Street. Leanne Jefferies’ consultant, Jane Lewell, practised on Haymarket Square, on the opposite side of the common. Both had personally dedicated laptops. Jordan set out to embed his Trojan Horses again through his undetected Australian cut-out, ensuring any recorded trace of his entry would be wiped out by leaving an erasing virus activated the moment the main frames of both clinics were booted up on the Monday morning. It took Jordan almost three full hours to hack past the protective firewalls – a second immediately confronted him after he picked his way through the first – into Chapman’s personal and dedicated desk top. Jordan presumed the double barrier was to ensure patient confidentiality, which he was determined it wouldn’t, but it still surprised – and mildly
