Harry demanded. He had learned long ago never to expect Ronnie to give a direct answer containing a specific fact for which he could be held accountable later. That was the way with all lawyers, wasn’t it? You just had to keep on asking the question.
‘Of course, I can’t give you a date,’ Ronnie said, nettled, ‘but take it from me, it will be all right.’
‘If you say so,’ Harry said without conviction.
‘There’s something else. I’d like you to see a psychiatrist,’ the lawyer said, successfully distracting his client from the bank accounts.
‘Me? You must be joking.’
‘Unfortunately not. The allegations they’re making about the emails, we need to take them seriously.’
Ronnie was on home ground now – the emails had the whiff of crime about them and he was an astute criminal lawyer. He had wanted chapter and verse on everything in the divorce submission. Everything except the email allegations. He didn’t want to hear about them. If Harry had broken the law, and Ronnie knew about it, he wouldn’t be able to act for him in criminal proceedings if Harry chose to deny it later. Better, then, that he didn’t know.
‘Are you intending to say I’m mad?’ Harry snarled. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’
Ronnie was annoyed. He was doing his best for the man. He’d said at the beginning he didn’t want to take on the divorce. He’d made it clear he was not a specialist but Harry had insisted. Ronnie understood why, but still thought his friend should hire an expert. He had assured Harry that financial disclosure to another lawyer could be ‘finessed’. But Harry would not budge. In the end, Ronnie had reluctantly agreed. He wasn’t going to take any flak, though, now the going had got tough.
‘I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with the way I’m handling things.’ Ronnie’s tone implied that Harry would be most welcome to go elsewhere.
‘I don’t want to see a shrink.’
‘It’s the only safe way. We need a mental health defence in place in case the allegations cause problems. Prepare the ground for saying that whatever you did, you did it when your mind was unbalanced by the stress and trauma of your marriage breakdown.’
‘If you say I’m crazy I’ll never get to see my daughter,’ Harry said, furious.
Ronnie looked at him impatiently.
‘You’ve got to be realistic, Harry. You’ll just have to take your chances over Martha. There’s a lot of very nasty stuff alleged about what sort of husband and father you are. The priority now has to be to look after yourself and your assets.’
‘That fucking lawyer has twisted everything. It’s lies, all of it. She needs to be taught a lesson, needs to learn she won’t get away with it.’ Harry spat out the words.
Lying sleepless in his bed, the desire for retribution was strong, like acid eating into his soul. He was not going to let some smart lawyer destroy him, a lawyer who had turned his wife into a vindictive, ungrateful bitch of the first order.
Harry had met Anna eleven years ago when she was twenty-two and had applied for a post as his PA at his main office in Hove. By halfway through the interview he was craving her. Not surprisingly, she got the job. A year later they were married. He was thirty-five, his property development business had taken off, and he wanted a wife and children. He had thought her so sweet, so loyal, and so terribly in need of him. But he had been wrong, totally wrong. She had thrown his love right back in his face.
Now her solicitor was demanding a ludicrously large settlement. If she got it, she would close on wipe him out, though Ronnie kept telling him that some of his assets, salted away over the years in various overseas accounts, could be kept safe and undisclosed. But Ronnie’s assurances were proving less than reliable.
‘This Laura Maxwell your wife’s using,’ Ronnie said soon after the divorce began, ‘the judge isn’t going to like her tactics.’
What garbage that had turned out to be, Harry thought savagely. The judges barely seemed to grasp the issues involved let alone the strategies of his wife’s malicious lawyer. Despite the five court hearings he had so far attended and the growing pile of paperwork associated with his case, he’d never seen the same judge twice.
Harry knew the financial damage would be bad. Most of his assets were visible, and however hard he tried, he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a wealthy man. Equality was the yardstick in divorce settlements these days and didn’t Laura Maxwell just know it. Equality – what a joke that was. Harry lay on his back, his body rigid with fury, sweat on his forehead though the night was cold.
He had made what he considered to be a generous offer to his wife, a very generous offer indeed, and a lot more than the greedy cow deserved, but Laura Maxwell had dismissed it out of hand. All she wanted was to confront him and crush him.
Gone 5 a.m. and still no sign of sleep. He thrashed around in the bed. Harry Pelham was good at fighting. He’d needed to be to survive in the cut-throat world of the property developer. He was forceful and physically intimidating. Six foot two, brawny, with a thick black moustache, and dark, deep-set eyes that looked you over as if he couldn’t care less about you, but at the same time, he was sizing you up – calculating your strengths and weaknesses. At forty-five, he had learned to be as hard-nosed as they come.
Harry wasn’t used to losing and he wasn’t going to get used to it now. He’d made other plans. With that comforting thought, he finally fell asleep.
The first time they knocked they didn’t wake him. The second time they would have woken the dead.
Damn postman, he thought.
He dragged himself out of bed, downstairs and opened his front door. Four men stood before him. They didn’t look much like postmen.
‘May we come in?’ said one of them barging past into the hallway.
Harry Pelham was under arrest.
Laura made tea while Sarah Cole sat miserably in her office clutching the Hakimi file to her chest and picking nervously at a corner of it. Sarah’s dark hair was greasy and her eyes were tired and puffy. She put the file down on her lap, took a Hobnob from the packet in front of her and nibbled at it.
‘Oh my God, it’s such a mess!’ she said.
Laura set two mugs of tea down on the desk and pulled round a chair so she could sit next to Sarah.
‘Don’t worry; I’m sure it can be sorted out.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘There’s no way. Have a look; you’ll see what I mean.’ She handed the file to Laura and took one of the mugs. Her lower lip trembled and she put it back on the desk.
‘The thing is, it’s not my fault. She should have told me,’ Sarah said defiantly, screwing her mouth into a scowl.
Laura opened the file and began to read and Sarah hoped that with all her experience and all the successful cases she had under her belt, Laura just might be able to come up with a solution. She picked up the mug again, dunked the biscuit, and watched as a lump of it broke off and disappeared under the surface of the tea. That was just typical, she thought, of her luck and her life these days.
Her eyes went to the photo on Laura’s desk. A summer’s day somewhere on the South Downs with Laura standing beside a horse, her husband Joe next to her, his arm around her waist. Joe looked outrageously gorgeous with his bright blue eyes and the cleft in his chin. It was a picture that made her wince and hate the world for being so unfair. Sarah’s long-term partner, Andrew, had left her eighteen months ago and moved in with one of her best friends.
Laura remembered the Hakimi case because Sarah had asked