Page 23 of Dissection of a Murder
He’ll kill me.
10
Leila
102 days before trial
My conversation withChester last week in the bar left me stewing for more reasons than I’d like.
After brushing off the hand-on-knee situation, I was filled with guilt and disappointment at myself. How am I supposed to set an example if I can’t uphold basic feminism?
But that was the least of my worries when I left the bar that afternoon.
The gut feeling I’d had about Demi had only intensified. I’ve always been an intuitive person. Hypervigilant. It’s what makes me a good lawyer. It always starts with a gut feeling that something isn’t quite right. You know how, sometimes, when you walk into a room, you can sense something has changed? Even if it’s a small detail, like a picture has been taken down off the wall? Nobody else has noticed, but you do.
It’s like that.
That’s how I feel about Demi.
I have a conference with Davina in chambers this morning. We fill the enormous table in Conference Room 3 with files and papers that have been sent to us by the prosecution.
By my husband.
It is against this evidence that I will advise Jack what his defense should be, if he has one, and whether he should plead guilty or not guilty.
Jim arranged for a tray of coffee and pastries to be sent in for Davina. Solicitors usually only get biscuits, but none of us will forget the (only) time she was subjected to this and proceeded to march down to the clerks’ room to complain. There was a veiled threat of refusing to send further work to chambers if “our firm is worth no more than a standard Marks and Spencer biscuit selection.”
Davina is a force of nature. I was terrified of her when I first started. Always immaculate, she wears her platinum hair in the same high, slick bun every day, and even wears a hairnet to keep it secure. I mean, this woman has her life together. A heavy, blunt fringe sits just above her brows. She is known for her bold look—orange lipstick, smoky black eyeliner—and is an influential person within legal circles, so I’m keen to impress her in this trial. Do a good job for someone like Davina and you’ll never be out of work.
“So, what do you think his defense is going to be?” she asks, draining the caramel latte she brought in from Starbucks. Within seconds, she’s pouring another coffee from the French press Jim supplied. “Because it sounds to me like he’s intending to plead very not guilty.”
“What are you thinking? Self-defense?”
“It’s the only defense he can advance, surely?”
“What’s Anton’s motive for attacking Jack, though?” I ask her. “You wouldn’t place them both together. It’s just so…peculiar.”
“Yes. What was Anton doing there in the first place? That’s what will make people think there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
“I agree,” I confirm, nodding my head. “And going by what Jack said, there already is.”
“Perhaps that’s the one thing we have going for us. No motive.”
“Well, if I know anything about my husband, he’ll find one,” I say with a hint of anxiety in my voice. “The jury will speculate all kinds of reasons why Anton was visiting a doorman on a Friday night. Drugs? Was he gay? The prosecution will paint Anton as a friend of the people, but you and I know he was often controversial. He carried outdated views and routinely upset people. And he liked women.”
“Yes, I noticed nothing was said aboutthatat his memorial,” Davina interrupts.
Typical of Davina to point this out.
“What’s your relationship with Jack?” I ask Davina. “Have you dealt with him before?”
“Nope. But I’m aware of him. You know me, Leila, everyone’s on my radar, but I was surprised he wanted us for this.”
“Surprised? Why?”
“You know we have a very particular way of doing things at Jessops. It’s not for everyone and it’s not for the weak. It’s strategic. We go in hard and make the prosecution prove everything. No-comment interview. ‘It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. If I was there, prove I did it.’ We don’t make it easy for them. It comes with risks. Sometimes it pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t. We don’t pussyfoot around clients—we tell it like it is. They are loyal to us, and we are loyal to them.”
As summaries go, she’s putting it lightly. Davina and her (equally dodgy) solicitor husband blur the line that separates lawyers and criminals. When people go to them, they don’t just get a criminal lawyer, they get acriminallawyer.
