Brian Freemantle - The Namedropper

Jordan was glad he wasn’t able to get a seat on the same flight as Beckwith, able to travel alone back to New York. So accustomed to working and being always alone, responsible only for and to himself, that, objective again, Jordan acknowledged that the constant presence of Beckwith and Reid – of so many other people – had caused something like claustrophobia in him in Raleigh. It might not have been so bad, he supposed, if things had been different with Alyce: if he’d been able to see her, be with her, sometime during the adjournment. Fragile though she was, she had been magnificent on the witness stand, doing everything that she could to prove he wasn’t guilty or responsible for her marriage collapse under ridiculous Dark Ages laws enacted by Puritans who believed in witches and burned them at the stake. He wanted – needed – to thank her: thank her for enduring the humiliation of actually admitting that it was she who had come on to him before he’d hit upon her, which he’d intended to do the night they’d got back from the prison island visit anyway. Was Beckwith right, that what Alyce had gone through the previous day was a soft prelude to what she was going to be subjected to by Bartle the following week? He didn’t want to be excused the court when Alyce was on the stand. He’d be there every day, supporting her if he could, letting her know if he could that he was there for her. As he would be. Counting. Counting every humiliation, every shitty trick or device that Bartle and Appleton imposed upon her. And by every notch in that count he’d increase the humiliation and shit he’d already started to dump on Alfred Jerome Appleton. Not just an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth: he’d figuratively dismember the man organ by organ, limb by limb, until all that was left for people to laugh at would be a hump-backed, flush-faced head on a spike.

He’d advised the Carlyle the previous night of his return to Manhattan and his retained suite was predictably immaculate, his intrusion detectors in the suit closet and dressing-room drawers undisturbed. He held back from unstabling his Trojan Horses at once, deciding that there was so much he had to cover that he needed to create a reminder list to avoid him overlooking anything. It took him an hour to compose and he was surprised at its length when he finished.

He assumed that Bartle and Wolfson would have returned as he and Beckwith had – maybe Appleton and Leanne, too – but there would have been little opportunity for the lawyers to have updated their computer case files. Working his way patiently through his reminders, Jordan decided that with the exception of DDK Investigations, Reid’s enquiry agency, within whose computers he had so far not embedded a see-all spyhole, he’d probably be premature accessing any of his already burgled sites until the following day.

Jordan was on the point of quitting the hotel for West 72nd Street and whatever mail might be waiting there for him in Appleton’s name when his telephone rang.

‘I wondered if you’d be back here,’ said Alyce.

‘You’re in Manhattan?’

‘I couldn’t stand being in Raleigh any longer. And there were television and cameramen all around the estate.’

‘How are you?’

‘It’s just the court. Once I’m out of it, not in the same room with him, I’m OK.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just here, in the apartment. You?’

‘Just here, in the suite. There’s still time for a late lunch.’ West 72nd Street could wait.

‘That would be nice. Do you know Enrico’s, on 57th and 3rd?’

‘I can find it.’

She was there, looking through her heavy-rimmed glasses at the menu while she waited, when Jordan entered. The black sweater showed off her blondeness and she’d covered the courtroom pallor with more make-up than she normally wore and Jordan thought the lipstick was too bright, almost as bright as Leanne Jefferies’ has been in court. She was drinking mineral water. She seemed to sense his presence before he reached the discreet side booth, shadowed even more than the already deeply shadowed restaurant, and looked up, smiling. ‘Hi!’

Jordan lowered himself opposite her and said ‘hi’ back. She hadn’t completely managed to hide the dark rings beneath her eyes.

‘I know I look a mess,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts.

‘You don’t look a mess and you know it.’

‘I feel a mess.’

‘You’ve no reason to feel a mess, either.’

She smiled again, shaking her head. ‘I don’t believe you. But thanks anyway. The hotel in Raleigh told me you’d gone away until Sunday, so I guessed you’d come back here.’

Jordan said, ‘I’m glad you got me. I want to thank you for everything you said in court.’

‘It was the truth. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Tell the truth. Why didn’t you?’

‘What!’

‘About having once been married?’

Jordan shook his head. ‘All part of the venture capitalist nonsense, too busy for a normal life.’

‘How did it go wrong for you?

‘Rebecca found another guy she liked better.’ She had, but not until he’d tried to drown himself at the bottom of a bottle.

Alyce humped her shoulders, dismissively.

Jordan ordered a gin martini from an enquiring waiter. ‘It still can’t have been easy for you, standing there in front of your husband, saying what you did.’

‘I’m sorry about the ring.’

‘Turned out to be a pretty bad joke, didn’t it?’

‘It was nice at the time. Everything was nice at the time.’

Jordan hesitated, curious at the remark. ‘I thought so, too. I really didn’t notice that you went on wearing it.’

‘I know you didn’t.’

‘Why did you?’

‘I wanted to. I wouldn’t have done it, though, if I’d known everything we did, everywhere we went, was being watched as it was. Alfred’s a bastard; a one-hundred-and-ten-percent bastard.’

‘But we fucked him with the chlamydia lie. Him and Leanne.’ Jordan suddenly remembered that Reid hadn’t made his promised application to the judge for the medical records, if any still existed, of the dead Sharon Borowski. He supposed that it wasn’t so important now.

‘I hope we can catch him out in all the others.’

‘What others?’ demanded Jordan, alertly.

‘I wish I could guess. There’ll be a lot more, believe me.’

Jordan did and wondered if he’d get any leads from the following day’s phishing trips through the computers. ‘We’ve agreed to have daily, after-court conferences, Dan, Bob and me. There’s a lot of us on your side.’

‘I’m glad you are,’Alyce said, smiling at him across the table.

From her study of the menu before he’d arrived Alyce immediately asked for spaghetti with clams when their waiter returned. Jordan, who hadn’t bothered with the menu, said he’d have the same, as well as a bottle of Chianti, eager to get rid of the man.

‘What happened to the ring?’ he asked.

I took it off on the plane. Left it there when I got off. We’d agreed it was over, remember?’

Jordan hesitated. ‘Didn’t you want it to be?’

Alyce shrugged, awkwardly. ‘It was best that it was. Except that it wasn’t over, was it?’

‘Isn’t,’ insisted Jordan, correcting her tense.

Alyce shook her head, positively. ‘Let’s not walk this route any further. You’re still a defendant, possibly going to lose a lot of money.’

‘After showing up their medical reports as we did, Dan doesn’t think it’s going to be anything like as bad as it might have been.’ He was shortening the man’s name, he realized.

‘I don’t see the connection, but that isn’t what I want to talk to you about. I… I mean the family will pay back whatever’s awarded against you. As well as your costs. What’s happened to you is my fault