Brian Freemantle - Betrayals

Janet was conscious of more attention upon herself and knew her face was blazing with indignation at what was being said. The court couldn’t accept it! she thought. They just couldn’t!

“… It is surely an indication of their innocence… their unawareness of what they were being asked to do… that they quite openly entered a branch of a local bank in Larnaca and offered the document not realizing it had to be endorsed by the person in whose name it was issued before any monies could be handed over!” said the man. “Surely, sirs, this is the innocent action of ordinary men, not the conniving behavior of villains intent to defraud!”

Ahead of Janet there was another muffled consultation going on between Zarpas and the prosecutor and more head nodding.

The lawyer concluded: “This, sirs, is the basis of the defense I shall be calling-a defense I am confident will result in their immediate acquittal without any reference to a higher court-and in the circumstances I confidently apply to you today for them to be permitted bail, to enable them to continue about their lawful duties.”

The prosecutor was on his feet before the other lawyer was fully seated. The bail objection was very forcefully put. It was pointed out that the two had access to a boat, and Zarpas was formally sworn to give evidence that the police had serious doubts of either appearing at another hearing if they were allowed out of custody. The magistrates did not need to retire to reject the bail application.

When the Fettals were taken down from the dock and the magistrates retired, Janet remained where she had been seated, unsure what to do. In the brief moments of hesitation Zarpas reached her and said: “Let’s go back to that office and talk again.”

The policeman shielded her against the crush of question-shouting reporters in the outside corridor. Once inside the office Janet wheeled upon the man and said: “That was preposterous! Absolutely preposterous!”

“Of course it was preposterous,” Zarpas agreed, mildly. “With the man dead they’re able to change their story: say they knew nothing about your being taken to the Lebanon as a whore.”

“It makes nonsense of everything that really took place!” said Janet, still outraged.

“That’s what the defense tries to do in the majority of cases,” Zarpas said. Deciding she was sufficiently recovered, he said: “But it tells us one thing. You’re going to be in for some pretty tough cross-examination. You’ll have to be ready for it.”

“But there’s proof!” insisted Janet, trying for some reality against the exasperation that burned through her. “The Arab engineer, Haseeb, at Larnaca marina! And the cafe owners on the Dhekelia road.” She groped for the recollection and said, excitedly: “We were served by a young boy: obviously the son of the owner.”

Zarpas moved his head sadly from side to side. “You told us all that in your statement. We haven’t been able to find anyone named Haseeb working around Larnaca marina… or anyone who knows him by that name. No one at the Dhekelia road cafe remembers anything.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Janet, aghast.

“There’s no one reason,” shrugged Zarpas, resigned. “There’s family loyalties… race loyalties. There’s people with things themselves to hide who don’t want to get involved… just not wanting to get involved is enough, more often than not.”

“I really am going to be made to look the complete fool, aren’t I?” Janet said, crushed by the recollection of why she had been entrapped into the situation in the first place.

“No,” Zarpas said. “You did silly things… unthinking, ill-considered silly things. But everyone can understand and feel sympathy with why you did them: what you hoped to achieve. Complete fools behave without any logic or reason. So you’re not a complete fool. Just a determined lady who made mistakes.”

Janet smiled at the policeman against whom she had felt antagonistic but didn’t any more. She said: “I appreciate that, very much. That makes it seem right…” She stopped and at once blurted: “No! I didn’t mean that! Not that killing. That could never be right, not completely, whatever the circumstance. But everything else.”

“The legal process has begun now,” Zarpas said.

“I know,” Janet said, curious at the reminder.

“There’s a mob of pressmen outside,” warned Zarpas. “You mustn’t give interviews or say anything that is likely to affect the outcome of any hearing. I don’t want to give the Fettals any more loopholes through which to crawl back into the sewer.”

“I won’t,” Janet promised.

“Would you like me to lay on a car?”

“I came with someone. I’ll be all right.”

There was a mob. Two uniformed constables had to run interference to get her to the exit. Throughout Janet shook her head against the cacophony of demands and repeated: “Nothing to say,” and guessed that the photographs and the television footage would be as awful as they had been in Beirut, except that here she’d look as if she were trying to get away from the attention instead of cooperating with it. Every step of the way she searched against the glare for Baxeter’s face in the crowd but couldn’t see it. By the time she reached the steps the panic was beginning to well up, the fear that for some inexplicable reason he wasn’t there to help her and that eventually she would be abandoned to be tugged and gnawed at by the pack around her.

And then she saw the car with its rusty dent and felt a surge of relief. He was waiting directly at the bottom of the steps, carelessly in a prohibited parking zone and with the engine running, and when he saw her emerge he leaned across to open the door for her to enter.

There was a grabbing struggle as she tried to enter the car and Baxeter pushed the throng back with the door edge. Someone yelled “Bastard!” and another voice said “Son of a bitch!” and as he took the car away from the curb, scattering them, Baxeter shouted back: “Fuck you!”

He made two very tight turns, an obvious attempt to lose any pursuit, and said: “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Swearing like that.”

“I didn’t notice,” Janet said. Wanting at once to get it out of the way between them she said: “He’s dead.”

“I heard.”

“I can’t accept I killed somebody!” she said, edging back to the disbelief of the first few moments with Zarpas. “I can’t conceive the crap that the defense lawyer served up, either.”

Baxeter kept twisting and turning the tiny car around the central part of the city, using the ancient, difficult-to-negotiate streets. He said: “Some tried to follow. I think I’ve lost them.”

“What the hell did they hope to achieve!” she demanded, wanting to be angry at something positive.

“That you’d break down: say something that could be expanded into a bigger story,” said Baxeter. “And I’ve never encountered a photographer yet who’s satisfied with the last picture he took.”

“They’ll be at the hotel,” Janet realized.

“I’m afraid so: that’s the obvious place to wait for you.”

“I don’t think I could face it,” Janet said. She actually did feel physically-or was it mentally?-strange, her awareness of everything around one moment definite, the next receding almost foggily, then becoming definite again.

“Do you want to go to a restaurant? Or a bar?”

“Good God, no!” Janet said at once.

Baxeter turned away from the walled part of the town but Janet was unaware and uncaring, slumped in the Volkswagen with her head forward against her chest, playing Zarpas’s reassurances over and over in her mind, like a child with a favored pop tune, but still unable to avoid the burden of guilt. Against every reassuring phrase or argument the policeman had provided, Janet put the contradicting litany of her own, I’ve killed, I’ve killed, I’ve killed.