An Eye For Justice Read online

  A faint shadow seemed to drop across Dolores’s face, a slight tightening of her features. She finished the coffee and placed the cup back on the table.

  ‘You see,’ Pascal continued, ‘he’s been so helpful settling me in here - problems with lost luggage and other things - that I just wanted to give him a small present, a token of my gratitude. Any ideas? What’s he like?’

  Dolores picked up her duster, and said, ‘he is not a man for presents, I think. Save your money, or give to the church, it will be better used there.’

  ‘Is he not a family man, Dolores? Maybe I just get him a bunch of flowers for his wife?’ Pascal persisted, trying to shake something loose, anything.

  ‘I believe he does have a wife and a daughter, but he also keeps a room here - on the top floor - and seems to spend many hours there, sometimes not alone, ‘ she said, eyes veiled, unreadable.

  A small nugget of intel that could lead anywhere. Not the time to press too hard now; retreat gracefully with scope to develop the connection later if she needed to. ‘You have children, Dolores?’

  Her smile was as wide as the Sierras as she reached for her pocket. ‘And grandchildren too,’ she said, holding out a small cheap phone with the face of a smiling child on the screen.

  Pascal spent a few moments admiring the images of the children and then went to her wallet and took out twenty dollars. Dolores started to shake her head in the negative. Pascal took Dolores’s hand and rolled her fingers around the note squeezing them closed, murmuring, ‘for the children. I insist.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘No problem. Dolores, say I wanted to go up and see O’Leary, give him the flowers,’ Pascal persisted.

  Dolores smiled. ‘Room 495, but he sure don’t like unexpected visitors. I’d stay away from there if I were you.’

  There wasn’t much chance of that, but Pascal’d make damn sure he wasn’t around when she went up there.

  * * * *

  Southern District Court

  Day 2

  Morganna sat at the Plaintiff’s table, girding herself for the opening speech she was going to have to make in a little while. She watched Friedman as he went through the swearing in process for the jurors and the lengthy pep talk that went along with it. All the do’s and don’ts and what they should expect from jury service.

  She still didn’t know what she was going to say in her opening. Her old tutor Joel had been no help; seems he’d got himself a new squeeze from the latest intake of idealistic and naive young students, and he hadn’t had any words of wisdom for her. Apart from the brief advice Calver had given her she was on her own, but maybe that was a good thing. Sink or swim, that’s what her father and Brad were always telling her. She began to idly rough out some bullet points on her yellow legal pad; she knew Friedman was likely to be some time.

  Chapter 7

  The Supreme Court at

  100 Centre Street, Manhattan was instantly recognizable. It must have been in just about every US cop and lawyer show I’d ever seen. As you approached from the front it looked like a modern cathedral, but I came in through the back way, hustled in quick like a convicted felon, then down into holding. The journey over had been a blur, me trussed up like a chicken, but tripping out on freedom, snatching glimpses of the city through the dirty windows of the beat up old corrections bus. They shoved me in a hard chair in the holding cage and my jailer unbuckled my handcuffs and chains. I rubbed my wrists to get the circulation going, then sighed as he put the cuffs back on, but he left the leg irons off. He stepped back and nodded. ‘I’ll be watching you, Calver,’ he said, not unkindly. They knew I was an unlikely candidate for a jail break.

  ‘Hey, Hector, how ‘bout some coffee, man?’ I said. ‘I gotta consult with my attorneys and I can barely speak my throat’s so parched.’

  ‘Don’t push it, Calver,’ he said, shoveling my court papers and well thumbed copy of Criminal Procedure Law of the State of New York, onto the desk in front of me. I started to sort the papers but then a corrections officer was telling me it was time to see the judge, so I bundled the stuff up, two handed and followed him out. The courtroom was busy but there was no judge yet; looked like I was first up. Then Pascal was there at the court doorway talking animatedly to an usher and a security guy, then she was being lead over and seated next to me.

  ‘How d’you manage that?’ I asked, emotion threatening to wash me away, and me trying to stay cool.

  ‘It’s how you tell ‘em,’ she said with a wink.

  As we waited for the judge I studied her. I hadn’t seen her for ages, and she never seemed to change. She had to be over thirty now but still looked like a geeky student. Her hair was still orange, but now it was tightly curled on her scalp, and she still had that incredibly direct look in her eyes suggesting she knew all your secrets. I knew she ate like a horse whilst somehow still managing to remain preternaturally thin, but at least today, for court, she had made an effort with her dress. I didn’t know if she had any Scottish blood but today she was wearing a short green and black tartan kilt that looked surprisingly smart, although the punk leather jacket she wore on top did a good job of spoiling the effect.

  ‘How you bin, Calver, if it’s not a stupid question?’ she asked.

  ‘How d’ya think?’ I replied, smiling, stupidly. I knew she hated shows of affection, so I kept on trying to keep a lid on it.

  I had first met her years before when I’d defended her against a murder charge. She’d been accused of killing her step-father. At the time she had been working for British Intelligence and they’d dropped her like a stone. In the end she’d done time, but when she came out she had started doing investigative work for me, and our kind of strange, spiky relationship had grown up from there.

  ‘Morganna Fedler asked me to give you these,’ she said, sliding a couple of sheets of paper across the desk. ‘She sounds way too young, Calver, and not too clued up either. Asked if I wanted to come stay with her in her brothers loft apartment, here in Manhattan. What is she, a millionaire?’

  ‘She’s all right. Take her up on her offer. Better if we’re all together while we try and fight this.’

  ‘Maybe I will. I’m still at your old hotel, digging.’

  Our eyes met. I didn’t ask. Let her get on with it. She’d tell me when she had something.

  ‘Hannah can stand you bail you know, Calver. She has money and wants to help. But,’ she added before I got carried away. ‘It’s not in place yet. She’s given instructions to sell some assets, shares I think, so you’ll just have to sit tight for the moment,’ she said, dashing my hopes for an early release.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, mentally shaking myself. ‘First order of business, protect Hannah. I don’t want to know how you’re doing it, but we need to keep her under wraps and then produce her when her testimonies due in the district court, so you’ll have to liaise with Morganna on that.’

  ‘Check,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, Pascal— ’ I started to say, but then the usher was announcing, ‘all rise,’ and the judge swept in and took a seat.

  * * * *

  In the end the hearing was a bit of an anticlimax, but the judge did order the removal of my handcuffs, which was something. I was given the murder one indictment, and I pled not guilty. Stahl, in an even more expensive suit, handed over some discovery, and the judge talked motions and timescales. I only had a couple of points I wanted to make. As I stood up to speak, I briefly scanned the two motions Pascal had handed me.

  Under the constitution I was entitled to a speedy trial, but I knew most murder trials took six months to a year to come on. I could not afford to stay in the States for any length of time, as if I couldn’t get back to the UK soon, my practice would go down the pan and I would lose everything. On the other hand, insisting on going to trial straightaway, without ammunition - hard evidence showing I did not rape and kill Helena Palmer - could be the dumbest move I’d ever make.

  Then the judge was looking at me.
‘Mr. Calver?’ he prompted me.

  I stood and regarded him for the first time. He was a small Asian American guy, almost bald, but with bushy eyebrows and a bustling quick style. I dug in my pocket and pulled out a nickel I had picked up off the floor earlier. I’d always been a gambler. I rubbed it as I pondered on the vicissitudes of fate, then I tossed it and slapped it down on the table. Heads!

  ‘Your honour, under the constitution I’m entitled to a speedy trial, so lets have one. I am ready, subject to a couple of minor pre-trial motions,’ I said, handing them over to the clerk for copying and distribution.

  ‘Your honour, we want access to the original CCTV digital file or tape, the prosecution say shows only me entering and leaving the victims room during the night of the murder. And we also want access to the green tie, allegedly used by me to murder my client,’ I said.

  I glanced at Stahl, and he was no longer smiling. Then there was some furious whispering going on between him and the team behind him, which included detective Daly. I guessed I was about to find out what the problem was.

  ‘Your honour, we welcome a speedy trial,’ Stahl said, voice clipped and tight. He continued, ‘on the motions we have no objection, but we do have a temporary problem in that we cannot currently locate the original CCTV digital file showing this defendant entering and leaving the victims room. I am assured we will locate it shortly and in the meantime we have copies available for Mr. Calver, and if necessary we shall rely on these at trial and the testimony of those investigators who viewed the original tape.’

  I was already on my feet. ‘Your honour, that’s a crock, and the DA knows it. I know I didn’t kill Helena Palmer, so I’m guessing someone else did. Someone else entered her room and raped and killed her, and that is no doubt why this vital original evidence has conveniently gone missing. If the assistant district Attorney fails to provide the tape I will be making a motion to suppress it.’

  The judge quelled Stahl with a hand as he rose to speak. ‘Ignoring for the moment Mr. Calver’s inference about your integrity and honesty, Mr. Stahl,’ the judge said looking at him but then turning his gaze on me, ‘Mr. Calver does have a point. I will expect the original film to be produced for the defendant and or his experts within 48 hours or I will entertain a motion to suppress it.’

  So I’d got something out of it, but if we didn’t get the tape and discredit it, or we failed in our motion to suppress, I would still be toast.

  We were asked to return in 48 hours to resolve the tape issue and try to agree trial dates, and then I was being led out to holding.

  * * * *

  Southern District Court

  Morganna sat at the Plaintiff’s table still doodling on her yellow legal pad, nervously waiting to make her speech. Although she hadn’t got anything out of her old law tutor, she had managed to speak to the expert who had been lined up by Hannah’s original US attorneys, before they resigned. Professor Efraim Borkowski had managed to fill in a few of the gaping holes in Hannah’s backstory, and Morganna had used some of this new information to help craft some points for her opening speech that she would shortly have to make. As she turned these thoughts over in her mind, Judge Friedman arrived, and then she was back on her feet.

  ‘May it please the court. My name is Morganna Fedler and I represent the plaintiff,’ she said. And all the time she was trying to keep in mind the mass of mostly conflicting advice she had received from other attorneys about trial advocacy. “Be natural, move around, it will relax you. Don’t read your speech, use it as an outline only, and make eye contact. You have to make the jury like you.” Blah, blah, blah. Easier said then done, she thought. She looked down at her handwritten bullet points on the desk in front of her, hoping it would give her some inspiration. Nothing doing.

  Friedman coughed, reminding her they were all still waiting for her to get on with it, and if she didn’t start soon, the jury would think she was weird. Time to fly, if she could. She stepped away from the plaintiffs table and moved into the well of the court to stand directly in front of the jury.

  ‘In early 1943, when Hannah Cohen arrived, aged just fourteen years old, in eastern Poland at the Nazi cam—’

  ‘Objection, your honour,’ Browder barked as he rose to his feet. ‘Appreciate plaintiff counsel is inexperienced but this is ridiculous. To hint at a connection between my clients and those events is both false and highly prejudicial, but more than that, the circumstances alluded to, even if true, are completely irrelevant to the issue being tried before the court, and therefore inadmissible.’

  ‘Miss Fedler?’ judge Friedman nodded at Morganna.

  Morganna winging it, trying to remember the rules of evidence, said, ‘Your honour, surely Mr. Browder’s objection is premature.’

  ‘How so?’ Friedman asked, amused expression.

  ‘Because you can’t be asked to rule on such matters until trial and the evidence itself is to be introduced.’

  ‘That’s right, you know, Mr. Browder,’ he said, nodding at him. ‘But, Miss Fedler, I think you should still stick to the relevant facts in your opening. This is after all a case about the alleged loss and possible restitution of a family heirloom, nothing more. Objection overruled. Please proceed, Miss Fedler.’

  Morganna swallowed, relieved. She’d got it in, even though it was highly speculative and based purely on the brief discussions she had had with the expert, Borkowski, the night before. She swallowed again and looked down at her notes. So far so good.

  * * * *

  Pascal, back from seeing Calver at court, sat in the little cubby-hole MI6 had found for her down near the basement at the UK Consulate. It was almost as if they didn’t know what to do with her. She looked around. The room was only just big enough for two desks, hers and Rob’s. He was out now, running an errand, so she was alone, which was fine with her.

  Looking around the threadbare room it was like the inside of a second world war Quonset hut. Drab green walls, uncarpeted hard crimson coloured flooring, old style grey filing cabinets and wall units, and light brown coloured, varnished desks like something out of a 1970’s class room. Opposite Rob’s desk was the notice board, festooned with office rules and regulations and fire escape procedures that looked to be at least thirty years old.

  She tapped on to the old fashioned desk top they had said was hers. First problem, it asked for a password that she didn’t have. Great. She looked over at Rob’s desk which was much bigger than hers. It was stacked with papers and reports which he’d said she was welcome to look through. He seemed to spend much of his time trawling through paper reports and online trying to pick up snippets of information that might be of interest to Her Majesties Government. Other than that he didn’t seem to be required to do anything else, certainly no field work.

  She looked back at her computer screen debating whether to try and hack her way in, but then there was a knock on the half open door, and a mans face appeared around the edge. ‘Hi. Rob around?’ he asked in an American accent, as he edged into the room. Pascal looked him over. He was short, plump and balding with a mass of curly black hair on each side of his head, and seemed to be sweating a great deal; he wore no jacket and there were huge damp patches spreading under his arms.

  ‘He’s not here right now. Can I help?’ she asked, hoping he’d go away so she could get on with hacking the computer.

  ‘Say, you must be Courtney Pascal, right?’ he said, big smile splitting across his face. ‘Heard a lot about you, Courtney. By the way, I’m Bob Jeffreys, Homeland Security,’ he said holding his hand out.

  Ten minutes later, after a short walk in the Manhattan sunshine, they sat in a Starbucks, on stools at the front window drinking coffee and watching the crowds. Jeffreys seemed to want to talk a lot and Pascal was happy to let him do it. ‘So there’s lots of informal contacts between us every day, you being our closest ally and all,’ he said.

  ‘Apart from Israel, of course,’ she said, just to say something. Before he could respond she said, ‘
what d’you know about the Kurrilick Corporation?’

  ‘K Corp?’ he said, puzzled. ‘What about them? They’re a major blue chip US company, close to the government in some areas, and a major contributor to the GOP. What’s your governments interest?’

  ‘Oh no, this isn’t work. I’m just helping a friend out on something.’

  ‘Against K Corp? Your friend must have big cojones, or he’s stupid.’

  ‘So they’re protected?’

  ‘No they’re not protected. It don’t work like that over here,’ he said, impatient with a subject he clearly didn’t want to talk about. ‘So, what’s the Brit government got you on? Reading the funny pages, looking for tips? We thought that kind of intelligence gathering went out with invisible ink. Anyway, we thought you were one of their star gurus. De-radicalization expert on Islamists, and just about a rock star after that Buckingham Palace gig where you saved the Queen. What happened to all that?’

  He was very good, Jeffreys. Subtle and slick, they way he dug a bit, and flattered, and then did it again. His appearance helped; he looked a bit liked Danny De Vito which made you think he was like a cuddly, friendly clown, but Pascal could sense a keen intelligence at work underneath the facade. She’d have to watch the guy.

  ‘So, Bob. I’m guessing nothing ever changes in this game. You dig, I dig, but in the end, we’re only ever going to talk to each other if there’s something to trade - it was ever thus, right?’

  ‘So cynical already, Courtney, and you’ve only just arrived. Look, I’m a good contact for you here. You’ve got a rep for finding stuff, and I’ve got a nose that tells me you can be valuable, that’s all. Keep in contact with me. If you want to talk, here’s my card,’ he said, cod sincerity glistening in his eyes.

  ‘Cool,’ she said, just to be irritating. ‘So, what’s your field, Bob?’

  ‘You need to ask? We’re all in the same boat now, honey. Islamic terrorism. Camel Jockey towel heads, baby. Name of the game.’

  * * * *

  Southern District Court