‘And maybe you need to do what I’ve just told you and get the hell out of my office and my building!’ said Reid. ‘We’re through, all three of us!’
That night the local television station finally broke the story of the divorce between the thirty-one-year-old member of one of North Carolina’s earliest settler dynasties and that of the scion of one of the founding New England families. As well as still photographs of both Alyce and Appleton – two from their wedding – there was archival TV footage of Appleton competing in yacht races off Long Island and at the Cowes Week regatta in England’s Isle of Wight. The story was based upon a court submission to be made in the coming week on behalf of a cited co-respondent in Alfred Appleton’s case against his wife, alleging criminal conversations. Harvey Jordan was mentioned by name but there were no photographs.
Jordan waited until after seven in the expectation that Daniel Beckwith might make contact but decided against calling the lawyer’s room in the floor above, wanting an uninterrupted evening. He ordered dinner from room service, glad his photograph hadn’t appeared on television, reminding himself to call John Blake again at the Marylebone apartment block the following day, to check once more about media approaches. Glad, too, that he’d brought with him the laptop and all the copied correspondence to which he was entitled, in addition to the names and Boston addresses he’d memorized that afternoon in Reid’s office. He didn’t know, but he guessed he was going to need it all to satisfy whatever it was that was nagging in his mind.
Reid had promised it was the best seafood restaurant in Raleigh, one that he didn’t know from when he’d practised there, but Beckwith had been disappointed. He was uncomfortable, too, that the local lawyer was already on his third gin martini, very dry and straight up, without any diluting ice. Beckwith was still on his first.
‘You should dump the motherfucker now,’ insisted Reid. ‘He’s so fucking smart, what’s he need a qualified lawyer for!’ The man had pushed his lobster aside, scarcely touched.
‘You fully up to speed to argue against Leanne’s dismissal?’
‘I will be by the time it gets before Pullinger.’
‘Jordan’s a pain in the ass and I suppose I should apologize for today as he’s my client, but nothing much – nothing that seriously contradicts or undermines anything Appleton’s filed against Alyce – seems to have been turned up.’
‘Tell me anything better that your guys have found!’ demanded the other man, with drunken truculence.
‘The cases are different,’ Beckwith pointed out. ‘All I’ve got to argue with is North Carolina law… and 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.