Martin shifts in his seat, trepidation growing, understanding emerging.
O’Toole smiles grimly and continues. ‘Max Fuller and Elizabeth started working up a sensational piece exposing the Mess, but concentrating very much on the activities of Harry Sweetwater. As I understand it, her idea was to present the Mess as largely benign, an innocent dining club infiltrated by a career criminal. By this time, you understand, some other members were also having second thoughts about our Mr Fix-it, as they got wind of the suppression order and worked out what had happened. As you can imagine, I was enjoying the moment. My diagnosis was in, so I started filling them in, sticking it to the little shit.’ The judge takes a deep breath. ‘So when the time was right, Elizabeth sent Sweetwater an anonymous email with a lengthy excerpt of the piece attached. The email was untraceable, the excerpt redacted to protect informants, but Sweetwater would know that Elizabeth was the author and that Max Fuller had the influence to have it published. Sweetwater’s position was already being undermined by my suppression order and the story behind it. Elizabeth’s message was clear: back off or this goes to press. And she wanted Sweetwater to resign from the Mess, or we would sit as his jury. We were confident he’d overreached his position and we were going to put him back in his box.’
‘She was threatening Sweetwater with exposure?’
‘Yes. The nuclear option. Mutually assured destruction.’
‘So he was under real pressure?’
‘I would say so. Then, a few days later, she and Max Fuller were murdered. Dressed in lingerie, a clear message to me and anyone else in the Mess: keep our mouths shut or end up like them.’
Martin can’t believe it. ‘But that’s not the nuclear option, that’s the doomsday option. Surely the other members aren’t going to cave to that sort of pressure. Who knows where it might end?’
The judge harrumphs. ‘One would hope they won’t, and eventually they might push back. But let me ask you this: how is the investigation into the murders of Lizzie and Max Fuller proceeding? Are the police getting stuck in, or are they still pretending it was suicide, the same way they pretended Clarity accidentally killed herself?’
Martin accepts the point; the judge knows what he’s talking about. In the ensuing silence, he wonders how much D’Arcy knows. But for now, he stays with O’Toole’s narrative. ‘Let me take you back a step: you’re saying that Elizabeth Torbett had no intention of publishing the piece, that it was meant purely as a threat to get Sweetwater off her back?’
‘That’s right. As I say, going through with the threat and publishing was the nuclear option: it would destroy Sweetwater but most likely it would also destroy Elizabeth and take the Mess and a fair few of its members down with it. No, it was a threat that was never meant to be used. I’m sorry about that, Mr Scarsden, but this was a high-stakes game and Elizabeth needed Fuller’s name on the article to demonstrate it wasn’t an empty threat.’
‘But that’s her motive. Why would Max agree to hold the story?’
‘A Supreme Court injunction. A suppression order. Pre-emptive defamation writs. Board members worried about financial implications. Mess members applying pressure and friendly advice. It could have been done.’
‘I think she might have underestimated Max.’ And Martin thinks of his mentor, spending so much time with O’Toole. Why do that when he had access to Elizabeth and her knowledge? Double-checking his facts? Never rely on one source when you can use two. Did he not entirely trust Elizabeth, did he suspect she didn’t really want to publish?
‘That’s very loyal of you,’ says the judge, bringing Martin back to the present. ‘And yet he’s dead and the story remains unpublished.’ Again, O’Toole changes the tone of his voice, growing sympathetic. ‘Whatever Elizabeth thought of him, I liked him. He had a commitment to the truth. Lawyers don’t, as a rule: we just seek and reward the better argument.’
‘You said he was here on Saturday. What did you talk about?’
‘He came to tell me that they’d found Molloy’s body. He was quite excited. Said the police couldn’t ignore the murder. He said it might even shed some light on Clarity’s death.’
‘He was interested in Clarity?’
‘No, but I was. It was part of our deal: I’d tell him all about the Mess if he could try to find out what happened to her.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he’d heard a rumour that Molloy’s accomplice, a woman called Zelda Forshaw, was with Clarity when she died.’
‘He wanted to find Zelda?’
‘No. But I did. Max was more interested in Harry Sweetwater.’
Martin thinks this through. ‘You suspect Sweetwater of murdering Max and Elizabeth Torbett?’
‘He certainly had a motive. But possibly so did others.’
‘Shouldn’t you be telling this to the police rather than me?’
‘The police? You disappoint me, Mr Scarsden. The police know a good deal about it. Indeed, too much for their own liking. I’ve made sure they do. The link between my photograph and the murder scene is obvious, but they don’t dare interview me. The police are going nowhere with this. I understand the only reason any progress at all is being made is because Fuller’s widow, Elizabeth’s widower and old Sir Talbot have been applying pressure. But against the influence of the Mess, I can’t say I like their chances. Harry Sweetwater may yet escape justice.’
‘Is that why you’re telling me all this?’
‘Yes. I want you to get Sweetwater. Not appease, not threaten, not coerce. Not some private accommodation, not allowing him to crawl back under whatever rock he came from. Elizabeth tried that.’ Now, at last, the measured tones of justice have been replaced by something more visceral. ‘I want you to destroy him—to hang,
