An Eye For Justice Page 10

  As Hannah sat down on the settee, Christoff pushed his way in through the cabin door carrying a tray. ‘Dinner is served, Madame,’ he said laying the tray on the table with a flourish. ‘Its a bit early I know, but its the best time to get the good stuff from the galley.’

  On the tray were a couple of plates containing sausages in onion sauce, mashed potatoes and carrots. There was also a small bottle of vodka, two glasses containing crushed ice and a cardboard container of orange juice.

  Hannah clapped her hands together with delight. She moved to the table looking at the food and smelling the aroma. ‘You know,’ she said with wonder, ‘I’m famished.’

  ‘Good. Lets eat,’ Christoff said, holding out her chair

  Later they sat on the couch making small inroads into the vodka, the movement of the giant freighter virtually undetectable, only the distant rumble of the engines reminding them of where they were. Hannah’s upbeat mood seemed to have passed, and now she seemed sombre, as if she were wrestling with some internal conflict. ‘Wisliceny?’ she finally said. ‘Your surname. It has a history.’

  Christoff grimaced. ‘Indeed it does. Alas, we cannot escape our past.’

  ‘Dieter Wisliceny,’ Hannah said, as if trying the name out and finding it distasteful. ‘He was a Captain in the SS and an associate of Eichmann’s. Heavily involved in the deportation of Jews from Greece, Hungary and Slovakia. Hanged by the Czechs for war crimes in 1948.’ Hannah glanced at him quickly. ‘Don’t tell me you’re related?’

  ‘Distantly. Father was a cousin, maybe once removed. I wish permanently removed.’

  Hannah smiled. ‘That’s a trap you mustn’t fall into, Christoff. Guilt by association. I only know what I know about such things because John insisted I read some Holocaust history. He thought it might jog my memory, help with the pendant claim and what happened. It didn’t. It just horrified and depressed me.’

  Christoff watched her, examining her face as if for clues. ‘Just how much do you remember, Hannah, really?’

  She looked down into her glass, then took a small sip of vodka, eyes smoky and distant. ‘Fragments,’ she said. ‘And even then I sometimes think its memory or dreams mingled and playing tricks on me.’

  Christoff finished his drink and leaned his head onto the back of the settee. For a while, neither spoke. Then Christoff said, ‘years ago, as part of our training in the security services, I was involved in testing some interrogation techniques, and one of those techniques was hypnotherapy.’ He laughed nervously. ‘It was canned long ago as being dangerous, and worse, possibly unreliable, so they dropped it. But I’ve never forgotten the techniques, and from time to time, in the past when I was out in the field, I did have cause to improvise if you like, and revisit those techniques. Never officially of course.’

  Hannah turned to him, fascination and fear in her eyes. ‘D’you suppose…….. It might…..’ She said, her words tailing off.

  ‘It is or can be dangerous, unlocking parts of your mind that your subconscious has closed off to protect your sanity. And it can take you to places you may not wish to go,’ Christoff said slowly, his words also tailing off as he thought about it. ‘And’ he said, continuing almost as if he were talking to himself, trying to convince himself, ‘lawyers hate it. Any hint that you’ve even thought about hypnotherapy to help with your memory, you’ll get destroyed and laughed out of court, but……’

  ‘But, it might get me back my memory, so we actually know what happened,’ Hannah said, voice firming up with conviction. ‘I mean, to be honest, I don’t care about the pendant. What I mean is, if it wasn’t stolen and was purchased legitimately, then they can keep it. But I do want to know what happened to my family.’

  Half an hour later, after Hannah had insisted she had only had one sip of Vodka, and there was no way it would affect her mind, she lay stretched out on the couch. Christoff sat in a chair pulled up to her side. For a while he spoke to Hannah in a slow and soothing voice, talking with her calmly about early and happy childhood experiences. Later he asked her to visualize walking slowly down a country lane, then as his voice got slower he began to count down from 10 to 1. When he reached 3, Hannah was deeply under, eyes closed, breathing regular and slow.

  As Christoff continued to speak to her, softly and calmly, he looked down at the trial notes, and Hannah’s last statement. ‘Hannah, you are fourteen years old. It is April 1943 and you are standing in the square in Amsterdam with your parents, baby sister Helena and your grandfather. You each, apart from Helena, are carrying a small bag or valise,’ Christoff said, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice so that it remained calm and peaceful.

  For a moment Hannah remained calm, body limp, then Christoff could see rapid movements under her eyelids. Hannah began to moan quietly, and her body began to shiver, tremors passing through her like an electric current. Then she screamed abruptly in a child’s voice so loud that Christoff drew back in his chair, ‘Mama, no.’

  Frightened by her reaction, Christoff quickly, desperately, drew her back, counting up from 1 to 10. Then she was waking, seemingly from a gentle sleep.

  Christoff watched her, concern deepening the lines on his face. She smiled uncertainly, her eyes haunted. She said, ‘what happened?’

  He said, eyes bleak, ‘we need to talk.’

  * * * *

  As I walked away from breakfast Sunday morning, still hurriedly chewing on the granular crud they called cereal, they told me my bail was coming through. I thought they were kidding, trying to raise a cheap laugh, but it was solid, and a couple of hours later I signed the paperwork and I was out.

  Morganna came to meet me in her little blue Subaru car. As we crossed the bridge there were tremors in my hands and I felt shaky, like I was coming out of a long drunk. Getting out of Rikers was great, of course it was, but tomorrow morning at 10 a m I would be going on trial for my life, and if we didn’t have anything to counter the prosecution evidence, we might as well turn the car around and go straight back.

  I tried to relax, tried to enjoy the sunshine and the people, but as I listened to Morganna chatter away about nothing it was beginning to dawn on me that it had been a very bad idea to insist on a quick trial. I wondered if we could row back from it now. I turned and looked at Morganna, basking in the glow of getting me out and getting the trial listed so quick, and decided I didn’t want to break her mood. She said she was taking me to Brad’s loft apartment in Manhattan where she was staying whilst he was in London. She said she would be making dinner that evening and Pascal was coming. I leaned my head back on the rest and closed my eyes. It felt good to be out, but I was filled with trepidation for the future. Did I even have a future. I wondered about praying.

  Chapter 10

  People v Calver - Manhattan Supreme Court

  Day 1

  The 13th floor courtroom had a kind of faded majesty about it. Faux oak panels, flags, embossed seals and tired looking court officials who I’m sure had seen it all before. I was sat at the defense table alone because I didn’t want anyone else there with me on that first day - I don’t know why. Perhaps I was ashamed of being in the dock on trial for murder. Who knows.

  Most of life is a gamble and I’d taken a calculated risk on insisting on a quick trial and now it looked like I’d blown it. I had assumed that with Pascal onboard we’d easily be able to discredit the hotels CCTV camera footage that stood at the heart of the prosecution case, but we hadn’t even got close. If things stayed as they were, I was going back to jail.

  I watched Stahl as he rose to make his opening speech. He looked serious. Gone was the glib Hollywood smile and the rather stagey hand movements. Today he looked sombre, dark suit with a crisp white shirt, simple and effective. He turned to the jury. ‘Jonas Calver was a washed up UK attorney with a drink problem and a dirty little secret, and that secret was that he got off on strangling women,’ he told them.

  And there we had it. Their whole case encapsulated into a pithy little statement that the
jury were unlikely to forget. And then Stahl was moving on, fast and efficient, laying out the witnesses he would be calling and what they would say. ‘You will hear from witnesses and see on the hotels CCTV that during the time that the murder took place, only one other person besides the victim was ever in that hotel room, and that person was Jonas Calver, this defendant,’ he said, stretching his arm out in my direction. I kept my face expressionless and my head stationary. Defendants who shake their head and scowl every time something negative is said pretty soon end up alienating a jury.

  Stahl talked about the sexual assault, then cause and time of death and lastly about my green silk tie, giving a masterly overview of what was to come. Then he hit his peroration: ‘This case couldn’t be simpler,’ he said. ‘It’s not a “whodunnit” style murder with multiple suspects. There is only one person who could have committed this crime, and that person is Jonas Calver.’

  As Stahl retook his seat I glanced over at the jury. They looked determined and resolute; a group of ordinary New Yorkers doing their civic duty, but they’d only heard one side of the story, and now it was my turn. I had a choice; I could make a speech now putting my side - essentially that I didn’t do it - or I could reserve my statement and make it just before I called my own witnesses. The former option was almost always right but in this case I was going for the latter.

  I looked over at the Judge, Millicent “Milli” Gonzalez. She’d walked both sides of the aisle, prosecuting and defending, so she knew the score. She was small and bird like, with large owlish eyes behind faintly ostentatious bright blue rimmed eyeglasses. Her hair was tawny brown and cut short, and her voice was strong and authoritative. She looked over at me now. ‘Mr. Calver?’ she said.

  I half rose from my seat, saying, ‘your honour I will reserve my statement.’

  She nodded and turned to the prosecutor. ‘Call your first witness, Mr. Stahl.’

  * * * *

  Southern District Court

  Day 4

  Across Manhattan, in the Southern District Court, Morganna stood and watched, along with the jury, as Hannah Palmer made her way slowly across the courtroom to the witness box. Hannah was smartly dressed in a simple blue skirt and matching top with white blouse underneath, and her grey-streaked hair was pulled up into an old fashioned bun on the back of her head. Her face looked healthily weather-beaten and brown from the sun and wind that had come off the north Atlantic on the crossing. She looked refreshed, calm and resolute, if a little tired.

  The giant freighter had docked the night before and she and Christoff had gone straight to the loft apartment, eaten and gone to bed. There had been no time to talk, and Morganna and Calver had been closeted away, focused entirely on Calver’s murder trial.

  As Hannah settled herself into the witness box Morganna looked around the sparsely populated courtroom. Civil trials were generally dry and staid affairs. They didn’t tend to pull in the crowds of popcorn chewing courtroom junkies like criminal trials did, and that suited Morganna fine. She glanced at Browder sitting at the defense table on his own. Today he wore a coal black three-piece suit, his spiky grey hair acting as a counterpoint, giving him the look of lawyer as cliché, the embodiment of slick, empty superficiality. Hey, easy on the cynicism, she told herself

  She flicked her eyes over judge Friedman; he was hunched over reading some last minute notes, scribbling some annotations in the margin, then he maneuvered his bottom around in his seat, trying to get comfortable, preparing to call everyone to order and get the ball rolling. Lastly Morganna checked the jury. They looked refreshed after the weekend, ready to go. Now they had the main character in their drama, in front of them, ready to tell her story, there was an expectancy in their eyes. They wanted to hear her, hear what she had to say.

  Friedman nodded at Morganna, ‘Miss Fedler,’ he prompted her.

  ‘Thank you your honour,’ Morganna said, rising to her feet. She turned to Hannah, nodded with brief smile and then she began, her voice calm and steady. ‘Please tell the court your full name?’

  ‘My name is Hannah Palmer, which is my married name, but I was born Hannah Cohen,’ she said. Her voice had a low musical quality and still carried a faint European lilt.

  ‘And when and where were you born?’

  ‘I was born on 12th February 1929 in Amsterdam, Holland,’ she said. Morganna paused a moment as she sensed some surprised smiles passing between jurors. They were finding it hard to believe the witness was 87 years old.

  ‘Whereabouts in Amsterdam were you born?’

  ‘I was born in the Jewish quarter, known as Jodenhoek.’

  ‘Earlier the jury were shown this newspaper,’ Morganna said, passing her a copy of Der Telegraaf. ‘In the story it tells us of a little girl called Hannah Cohen saving a boy from drowning in the canal.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ’Was that you?’

  ‘Yes it was.’

  ‘Tell the jury what happened?’ Morganna said.

  Hannah seemed surprised by the question. Maybe she had never been asked it before. She looked at Morganna, perhaps not sure what her lawyer wanted from her. Then her eyes seemed to turn inwards, her mind running back, delving across time.

  ‘We were just kids,’ Hannah said. ‘Three of us. Tommy Van Der Valk, Greta and me, walking home from school by the canal. We were horsing around with a ball like kids do, but then Tommy tripped when reaching for a catch and he went over. But he hit his head on the wall going into the water.

  ‘All I did was jump in and get him out. A man gave him mouth to mouth and he was okay in the end,’ Hannah said.

  Morganna was learning that witnesses didn’t always say what you wanted them to. She tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. ‘Well the newspaper story suggests it was a little more than that. They talk of your heroism, that the boy was knocked unconscious and couldn’t swim, and that a child had already drowned in that stretch of the canal a year earlier. And the boys mother clearly believed you saved his life?’

  Hannah nodded, perhaps realizing what Morganna wanted from her. ‘Yes I suppose I did save him, and he would have drowned if I hadn’t jumped in and swam back with him to the bank,’ she said, almost grudgingly.

  ‘Tell us about the pendant and how you acquired it?’ Morganna asked.

  ‘Well a few days later, Mrs. Van Der Valk came around to our house to thank me for saving Tommy. I remember she was very emotional and said more than once that Tommy was the light of her life as he was their only child. She called me an Angel. Then she took out of her bag a large black rectangular wooden box which she put on the table. Inside was the gold pendant, and beside it in the box, the matching brooch. We were not rich and we had never seen anything so valuable or so beautiful. Mama tried to refuse but Mrs. Van Der Valk wouldn’t hear of it, so we accepted the gift and thanked her.

  ‘Then a few days later a reporter turned up with a photographer and the story appeared in the next days edition of Der Telegraaf. That’s the extract you now have here, all those years later.

  ‘In fact at the time my father was so proud, he had the story framed and hung on our dining room wall,’ Hannah said, smiling gently as she remembered.

  Morganna breathed a sigh of relief that she’d got that first piece in, but there was a long way to go. She looked up at the clock then moved on to her next question.

  * * * *

  People v Calver – Manhattan Supreme Court

  Stahl’s first witness was the dispatcher who had taken O’Leary’s call at 9.45 am just after he had discovered Helena’s body in her room. I wasn’t sure why Stahl called this witness since I didn’t dispute her evidence. He then went back in time and called the bellhop who had served us in my room prior to the murder. His name was Ramon, and I remembered him for his easy smile and natural charm. Stahl stuck to eliciting the basic facts that Ramon had been called to my room twice that evening, firstly at around 8.30 pm when he had brought up our dinner of steaks and a bottle of red wine, and secondly, la
ter at around 9.50 pm, when he’d brought up two more bottles of wine. Then Stahl turned him over to me for cross examination.

  ‘Just a couple of questions, Ramon?’ I said. ‘When you brought up the steaks and bottle of wine at eight thirty, how did I seem?’

  ‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘You looked like you was having a good time. I didn’t see the lady then, as I guess she was in the bathroom.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And what about the second time, later, when you came up with the two bottles of wine?’

  ‘Same thing. Lady was there as well that time, and you was both smiling and kiddin’ around that maybe I should join you.’

  ‘Did I look like someone who a couple of hours later was going to rape and murder her?’ I asked, letting the jury see the faint curl of my lip. I expected an objection from Stahl, but it never came.

  ‘No way, man. You was chillin’ and fine.’

  I sat down, strangely pleased with myself, a small victory, but then Stahl was up on his feet for re-direct.

  ‘I guess Mr. Calver tipped you each time, right? How much, can you remember?’

  ‘I don’t forget that. It was a five spot, each way, man,’ he said, smiling at the memory.

  ‘That’s pretty generous, Ramon. I guess it might make you want to help Mr. Calver out if he was in a tight spot, right?’

  ‘I guess,’ he said, before he picked up on the inference in the question, his expression turning indignant. ‘I’s tellin’ what I saw,’ he added.

  ‘No further questions,’ Stahl said.

  He’d just neutralized my cross - even steven’s again. Then Judge Gonzalez called a halt; it was time for lunch.

  * * * *

  It was Pascal’s last day at the hotel and she wanted one last crack at finding something that might help Calver. Dolores the maid had told her that the hotel manager, O’Leary had, as well as his room, a small office in the back area where the CCTV surveillance monitors were kept. She said O’Leary had feeds running off them direct to his laptop and smartphone, so essentially he had eyes everywhere, running 24/7, and when he wasn’t viewing this he was out prowling the floors. But there were some blind spots: the service elevators and fire escape and, apparently most of the back area.