give that a try.’
‘Great. With a bit of luck she won’t make any more fuss to Marcus then and I should be in the clear.’ Sarah gave a short nervous laugh, realizing what she’d said sounded uncaring and Laura didn’t look too happy.
‘I feel so sorry for Mrs Hakimi,’ she added quickly, ‘I’ll do all I can to help get the boy back. You know I really didn’t want to write that letter, but Marcus insisted, he said if I didn’t produce it that minute and give it to you before you saw Mrs Hakimi, I was out of the door there and then. He was really scary, you know how he is,’ she tailed off, looking at Laura for approval.
Laura knew exactly how he was. She could imagine him in another life, as the head of the secret police presiding over a reign of total terror without ever raising his voice.
She nodded and felt a stab from the headache. She pressed her palm to her forehead and held it there, trying to push the pain further back inside. Sarah thought she was safe now she had done what Morrison wanted. He, on the other hand, would be expecting Laura to sack Sarah at the first opportunity. Well, she wasn’t going to do it. Not yet anyway, not until she had tried to get the boy back.
‘Do you think we can get away with it?’ Sarah asked in a conspiratorial voice. It had occurred to her that Laura was up to her neck in it too, now that she’d handed over the forged letter to Mrs Hakimi.
Laura swallowed the urge to snap back that she wasn’t trying to get away with anything. She was losing patience with Sarah, who was so clearly concerned with saving her own skin. Her eyes smarted from lack of sleep and a wave of tiredness hit her.
‘I need to make some calls,’ she said, standing up to leave.
When he woke it was with the memory of fear, though he couldn’t immediately recall what had caused it. He was in the Royal Sussex County Hospital in a room on his own, off the main ward. He saw Ronnie sitting in a chair beside his bed, reading a newspaper, and then he remembered. So, it was not a bad dream after all.
‘That was one way to stop the interview,’ Ronnie said when he saw Harry was awake, but neither of them laughed.
‘What happened?’
‘You collapsed. At the police station. You were being questioned.’
‘I remember.’
‘How are you feeling?’ Ronnie said drily.
‘How do you think?’ Harry said, glancing at him. In the second before Ronnie looked away, he saw something in the man’s eyes, something very like revulsion, and it sent a chill through him.
‘I did not download that muck, Ronnie. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘We will have to wait and see what they find on the computer.’
‘They won’t find anything because there’s nothing to find. This is all complete rubbish.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘For God’s sake, man, how long have you known me? Twenty, twenty-five years? Do you really think I would do this?’ Harry demanded.
There was no immediate reply.
He doesn’t believe me. He thinks it’s true. Harry wondered what else Barnes had said to Ronnie.
‘The police will want to finish questioning you when they think you’re fit enough,’ Ronnie said eventually, his eyes shifting away again.
‘Then they’ll release me, right? I mean they’re not going to keep me in, are they?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. No reason why you shouldn’t get bail. There may be conditions though.’
‘What sort of conditions?’
‘They could restrict your contact with Martha,’ Ronnie said coldly. ‘And there’s likely to be a condition that you don’t contact your wife in any way. I should tell you the police believe you’ve been sending her death threats and want to question you about those as well.’
‘That’s bollocks. Of course I haven’t.’
‘They say Anna has recently received emails threatening her life.’
‘If she has, it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Anna’s solicitor is claiming they are deliberate harassment calculated to scare your wife into backing off in the divorce,’ Ronnie continued as if Harry had not spoken.
‘This is bullshit. Laura Maxwell bullshit. It’s just the sort of thing she would invent as part of her campaign to destroy me,’ Harry said furiously.
‘Do you know a man called Paul Giles?’ Ronnie asked.
Harry hesitated. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Should it?’
‘It should do, yes. Supposedly he’s an old friend of yours. He sent the death threats to your wife.’
Harry stayed silent.
‘Don’t lie to me, Harry. I don’t like it.’ Ronnie looked disgusted.
‘All right, I was going to tell you before but you didn’t want to know, did you? It’s what those allegations in the divorce submission are all about. Paul Giles is an account set up by me.’
Ronnie grimaced. ‘You set up an email account, in a fake name, with the specific purpose of threatening your wife. Is that correct?’
‘No, it damn well isn’t. All I did was send her a couple of harmless messages.’
‘If they were so harmless why did you pretend they were from somebody else?’
‘Because I knew if she saw they were from me she’d just delete them, straight away, without reading a word. I just told her to stop … ’ he sucked air through his teeth, ‘being so fucking unreasonable.’
‘And when that didn’t have the desired effect you became more and more aggressive and then, still masquerading as Paul Giles, you explicitly threatened to kill her.’
‘No, I did not! It’s all being twisted, turned into something it isn’t.’ Harry’s hand touched the other man’s arm. ‘Come on, Ronnie, it’s what Laura Maxwell does.’ He said the name as if it was an obscenity.
Ronnie shook off the hand and finally looked Harry in the eye. ‘Let me give you some advice. If you have done what they say you’ve done, any of it or all of it, then it would be better to admit it now. The sentence will be lighter that way.’
‘I’ve told you everything there is to tell,’ Harry said stiffly. Fear rose inside him. So far as he could recall, in all their long acquaintance, the lawyer had never before suggested admitting anything.
‘I see.’ Ronnie’s disbelief was obvious. ‘I should let them know you’re awake,’ he said abruptly, getting up from his chair and saying a curt goodbye.
Harry assumed he was talking about the nurses until, as Ronnie opened the door to go, he caught sight of two of the policemen who had searched his home. They were standing outside his room and Ronnie stopped to talk to them.
He realized then that he had a police guard.
Laura swallowed two more paracetamol, took off her glasses and tentatively touched the wound on her eyebrow. It had bled a lot at the time but the cut wasn’t deep and it hadn’t needed stitches. She had been lucky. A shiver went over her; she was not looking forward to the drive home tonight.
She