The Ash Doll Page 3

  Priest nodded and breathed in hard, a thousand possibilities surging through his head.

  ‘Did you speak to him last night?’

  ‘No,’ said Tomas, anxiety creeping into his voice. ‘I thought he was meeting you before court.’

  ‘We agreed he would be here at nine thirty and we would meet in the foyer. You’ve not seen him?’

  ‘I haven’t. This is disturbing news, Mr Priest. Our case—’

  Priest put his hand on Tomas’s arm to steady him. ‘Slow down, Tomas,’ he urged. ‘They’re watching you.’

  He nodded subtly. Over the executive editor’s shoulder, he saw Alexia Elias nudge Hagworth and gesture in their direction. Fortunately, it took Hagworth the equivalent of three moon cycles to manipulate the sagging muscles in his neck and make his head turn, by which time Tomas had understood the point and had lowered his voice.

  ‘When did you last speak to Simeon?’ Tomas asked.

  ‘A few days ago. Everything was fine, and everything will be fine, I’m sure. We have his statement and he won’t be giving evidence until this afternoon, possibly not even until tomorrow. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.’

  Priest heard the words tumble out of his mouth but even he was unconvinced by them. This was the principal risk that he and Okoro had considered. Throughout, Simeon Ali had demonstrated a deep-rooted desire to ensure that the court, and the world, was presented with the truth, but he had proved to be an aloof character, insisting that almost all communications were carried out by email or Skype. They had met a few times, at a train station outside of the city in the summer, and even then, the meetings had been like a clandestine encounter straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel.

  ‘He seemed so sure of himself,’ offered Gail, leaning further across Tomas. ‘I can’t believe he’s lost his nerve at this moment.’

  ‘He was convinced somebody was watching him,’ said Tomas. ‘We should have done more to ensure his attendance, Mr Priest.’

  ‘Short of bundling him in the back of my car and holding him hostage I’m not sure what,’ Priest remarked, ignoring Tomas’s intonation.

  ‘I take it you’ve rung him?’ asked Gail.

  He glanced over at Georgie who had just lowered her phone. She shook her head.

  ‘Straight to voicemail,’ she explained.

  ‘Let’s not worry just yet.’ Priest smiled and turned back to whisper confidentially into Okoro’s ear. ‘Did you hear all that, old man?’

  Okoro replied in a low growl, ‘As I understand it you want me to win this case without my star witness, relying purely on hearsay evidence from non-independent witnesses. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes and I pay you bloody well for it, too,’ Priest hissed back. ‘But I realise it’s a tall order so why don’t we try an alternative approach under which you buy me time and I go and find our witness?’

  ‘That’s fine because, doing it my way, Dickie’s going to have a bloody field day.’

  Chapter 7

  Priest’s exit from court thirteen was far less grand than his entrance and would have been entirely unnoticed had it not been for Alexia Elias’s grey eyes watching his every step.

  Outside the courtroom, he passed several robing rooms, finding vague amusement with the sign pinned to one of the doors – MEMBERS OF THE BAR ONLY. As a solicitor-advocate, Priest was perfectly entitled to pop in and use one of the wire coat hangers to store his overcoat, but the thought couldn’t have been further from his mind. Firstly, because he did not own an overcoat and, secondly, because Charlie Priest generally hated other lawyers. Those that he didn’t were merely the exceptions that proved the rule.

  As he passed myriad portraits of stony-faced judges he couldn’t name and didn’t care about, he tried to reflect on the present situation. Simeon’s no-show was bad news but it wasn’t his firm’s one hundred per cent win record that troubled him. It was the grey eyes of Alexia Elias that had tracked his quiet withdrawal from court. There had been mounting media pressure backed by a plethora of very high-profile individuals against The Real Byte and, indirectly, its lawyers. The Turkey scandal aside, the Elias Children’s Foundation had benefited tens of thousands of children across the globe. Its brand stood for everything that was good in humanity. This trial meant everything for both sides.

  Litigation disaster management rule number two: if you have to call Mother Teresa a whore, make sure it’s a charge that sticks.

  In the Great Hall, he paused. People were milling around every-where. Mostly worried-looking parties and pompous-looking counsel, mixed in with the occasional tourist photographing the court’s cathedral-like architecture. As he looked down to the entrance a familiar feeling of disconnection began to creep over him. The Great Hall was still there in all its Victorian glory and the people were still bustling around the security checkpoint, but Priest no longer felt that he was a part of the scene, it was as if he had stepped backwards and found himself looking in to the stage rather than out of it.

  For a moment, he wavered between worlds, like Alice staring down the rabbit hole, contemplating the leap. But in his mind, Alice didn’t look like Alice. She looked like Jessica Ellinder.

  ‘Charlie?’

  He felt a tug on his arm. The rabbit hole vanished. The image of Jessica dissipated. A pair of startling green eyes stared at him.

  ‘Charlie? Are you OK?’

  He shook the feeling of drowsiness off. ‘Fine. Everything’s fine. Thank you.’

  ‘Were you having one of your disassociation moments?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘Of course not. I only get those when I’m stressed.’

  Priest waved the notion away before it occurred to him that he had never discussed his dissociative disorder with his assistant solicitor. He hadn’t really discussed it with anyone. Not that he was ashamed of the condition that caused breakdowns in his perception of reality, but he didn’t see the value in talking about it. Besides, he counted himself lucky. There are generally six recognised classifications of dissociative disorder but many sufferers of one of the most common – depersonalisation disorder – have their lives utterly wrecked by the condition, living in a permanently emotionless, unreal world. Priest had experienced that early on, but the symptoms had faded with time. Now he was able to function ninety per cent of the time without giving the slightest hint of his vulnerability, except on occasions where, like now, he felt his grasp slip slightly.

  He shook the feeling off, refocused. It didn’t feel like the onset of an episode. Just a glitch in his own personal matrix.

  ‘How do you know about it, by the way?’ he asked, meaning the disorder. When she didn’t immediately answer, the detail suddenly seemed unimportant. ‘Moreover, why aren’t you in court? I pay you to be in court, not diagnose complex personality illnesses.’

  ‘Vincent said I should go with you,’ Georgie said firmly.

  ‘What about the clients?’

  ‘He said you might need more looking after than them.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. Okoro would never say that.’

  Georgie at least had the decency to look slightly sheepish. ‘That may have been my interpretation of what he said.’

  Priest smiled and she smiled back. She had an infectious smile. He remembered seeing it for the first time when she had walked into the interview room and presented a CV bursting with commendations, awards and an Oxford first. Priest’s policy was to only ever ask one interview question. None of the pro forma questions and aptitude tests candidates were subjected to in the recruitment processes of the supposed elite practices – the so-called Magic Circle firms. Priest found the best measure wasn’t something Freud had conjured up. It was his gut.

  ‘If you were me, how would you conduct this interview?’

  Priest had laid out his only interview question to another fresh-faced candidate and sat back, waiting for the usual diatribe of executive bollocks which might include repeating large sections of the About Us section of the Priest & Co. websit
e or, if he was lucky, a Google-assembled analysis of the reform of conditional fee arrangements in personal injury work.

  To his surprise, Georgie Someday had met his gaze and spoken without a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘I wouldn’t. Asking me questions isn’t going to tell you anything about me you won’t get from your receptionist. That’s why your candidates have to turn up an hour early.’

  Priest had faltered. She had smiled awkwardly and, without being able to stop himself, he had smiled back. Awkwardly.

  Later, as he had poured over the headnote of a Court of Appeal authority, Maureen, his chain-smoking receptionist, had poked her head around the door and directed a series of gruffly constituted words in unambiguous tones at him which had landed Georgie her training contract.

  ‘You better bloody hire that girl, Priest,’ she had said. ‘Your tea’s in the kitchen.’

  ‘You seem distracted,’ Georgie observed as they negotiated through the jumble of lawyers and clients cluttering up the High Court entrance. ‘You know: even more than usual.’

  He dismissed her. ‘No, no. This is just as it is, Someday. Follow me.’

  She took him by the arm and was about to lead him away from the court when a voice stopped them. Priest turned and saw a small man hunched up against the side of the court, a cigarette stuck to his lip. His hair was grey and wiry and his skin had the purple stain left by years of alcohol and fags.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  He immediately regretted having spoken so when it became clear that the man who had addressed them was Dominique Elias. He must have slipped out at some point for a smoke after the cameras had packed up.

  ‘I said, I wonder if you get a kick out of what you do, Mr Priest?’ Elias croaked.

  Priest hesitated and felt Georgie tug on his arm, but something stopped him from doing what he should do and move on.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Elias. I can’t talk to you. Professional rules. You know how it is.’

  Elias ignored him. ‘How do you think it’s going to be after this, Mr Priest? When the judge throws you out of court? Did you ever stop to think about the children we look after? All that charity money wasted on legal fees that could have gone to helping kids who need our help. How many of them do you think have died because of you and that poxy online operation you’re representing?’

  ‘None.’

  Elias made to say something but stumbled into a fit of coughing. When he’d finished, his face was red. One eye was a little bloodshot. ‘You have a lawyer’s conscience, I see.’

  ‘No,’ said Priest, calmly. ‘I just have a better understanding of moral causation than you.’

  ‘Hm. And what do you know about moral causation?’

  ‘Your side brought the claim, Mr Elias.’ Priest was relaxed – in fact professional rules prevented him from talking to Alexia, since she was a party to the proceedings, but Dominique wasn’t, so the conversation wasn’t illicit. There is no property in a witness. ‘Remember: you picked the fight.’

  ‘Didn’t have much choice, did we? Your client published that filth.’

  There was more; Dominque was about to say something else but he stopped. Something had caught his eye, further up the road on the other side of the High Court entrance. He winced, squinted as if he saw someone he vaguely recognised. Then slunk back against the wall. Priest followed his eyeline but it was impossible to tell from the group of people mingling outside who had distracted him.

  Assessing that the exchange was at an end, Priest doffed an imaginary cap. ‘Good luck in court, Mr Elias.’ He turned and led Georgie away, sensing Elias watching them all the way. When they reached the Tube entrance, he noticed Georgie was still holding on to his arm.

  Chapter 8

  The little girl sits in front of the wall, staring at the cracked bricks; her hands resting on her lap. There is a window above her, too high to reach unless she climbs on a tower of boxes and, even then, she can only just peek through the opaque glass and see the top of the church spire. The basement is behind her, she is so close to the wall. The floor is made of stone but there is some carpet spread across the far side: the unwanted ends, a mishmash of colours. It is dusk, neither the sun nor the moon has dominance in the sliver of grey sky she can see through the window.

  A woman paces behind her, muttering. She is angry, rightly so. The girl had managed to nick the corner of her mouth with her nails, drawn a little blood. The girl hadn’t meant to hurt the woman. She had just wanted to feel the woman’s skin, see if it stretched like hers, was warm like hers.

  The woman is ranting, but the girl only hears it in waves of muffled white noise.

  ‘Again . . . I didn’t want any of this, you bring it upon yourself . . . do you know what happened? Do you . . . you aren’t mine, not mine . . . I don’t see why I should put up with you, everything was fine before . . .’

  The girl closes her eyes but she can still see the wall in front of her, and its crevices, like the lines across the woman’s furrowed brow.

  ‘He hates you, you know . . . those things he does with you, don’t think they are acts of love . . . nothing like that . . . I know love when I see it and . . .’

  Suddenly the ranting stops. The girl stirs. It’s cold – it’s never warm in the basement. Even in summer, the sun only shines directly through the little window for a few hours and what little warmth finds its way into the room is soon absorbed into the bare walls. In the winter, the window leaks and the rain trickles down the brickwork, flowing through the grooves, and collecting in a puddle at the foot of the wall. If it rains all day, the pool is so big it spills over into the sunken recess in the floor. The girl is waiting for the day when the water fills so high that the recess is like a lake into which she can dive.

  The white noise has stopped. The girl risks opening one eye. Maybe the woman has gone. Maybe this time she might be left to sleep. She is left alone for long periods of time, her meals thrown down the stairs from the house above like a dog’s. But she doesn’t mind – it’s better than when the woman rants at her, sometimes hits her. And that’s better than when she has to get dressed for him. That’s the worst.

  The girl’s relief is short-lived. The woman is still there, but closer suddenly. In her ear. This time the words form clearer in the girl’s head – not fully formed but almost complete.

  ‘She brought you here, that bitch of a mother of yours, you know. You were a child, ugly and fat. I didn’t want you but he saw something in it for him – a profit, of sorts . . . then she killed herself, your mother. That’s how little she thought of you – delivered you here into his hands then hanged herself on a tree a week later . . . poor wretch, how pathetic . . .’

  The girl remembers nothing, but senses the woman isn’t lying. Why would she lie? Why would they compound her misery with deceit when everything they do is already so wicked?

  The girl doesn’t move. Knows better not to. The woman hovers nearby, her breath on the girl’s neck. The girl listens, smells the woman’s perfume, a sickly, arresting smell. That is the smell of the outside world, thinks the girl. The sickly, arresting smell of freedom.

  The girl shivers.

  Satisfied, the woman withdraws without warning, leaving the girl to calm her beating heart. This time, she leaves the lights off and the girl is left in semi-darkness.

  Chapter 9

  Georgie held on as the Tube rattled along. The carriage was hot and airless – most of the seats had been taken and she was squashed up against the corner, conscious that every time the train lurched around she fell on to Charlie’s shoulder.

  Five stops down the train pulled in to Bethnal Green and Georgie looked up at Charlie. ‘Is it this one?’

  Charlie frowned. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s Mile End next.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Georgie waited. A few people had alighted and an old man had hauled two bags of shopping into the aisle and had stood opposite them. The si
gnal for the doors shutting toned, which is when Charlie leapt up.

  ‘Actually, it is this one.’

  She barely made it as the doors slammed shut behind her.

  ‘Come along, Someday!’ Charlie called back over his shoulder.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Georgie puffed as she took two steps for every one of his to keep up. They weaved in and out of busy commuters but somehow he seemed to just keep marching straight ahead as people parted around him like the Red Sea. Georgie, on the other hand, was constantly ducking and sliding past the crowds – less Moses and more of a fairground dodgem.

  ‘Tomas was never very forthcoming when it came to revealing the original source of the article, was he?’ Charlie called back, ignoring her question directly.

  ‘Simeon is a bit of an enigma,’ Georgie agreed.

  ‘Tomas’s original idea was to run a justification defence based on the documentary evidence he had amassed about the Turkey scandal without Simeon.’

  ‘But nothing directly connects that to Alexia.’

  ‘That’s right. Some of it’s helpful. There are chains of emails that link to Alexia eventually but nothing that nails the point. It’s all circumstantial, Hagworth will say. Anyway, after I told them I wouldn’t take the case Tomas contacted me and said, albeit reluctantly, that the source for the original article was Simeon Ali, who worked for the Foundation at the time of the scandal and was based in Turkey. He’d since moved to London.’

  ‘And you think that Simeon wasn’t involved with the siphoning of funds to the Free People’s Army?’

  They skipped up the last few steps and out into the street at such a pace that Georgie lost track of which station they had just come from.

  Charlie crossed the road and rounded a corner into a residential street lined with tall Victorian terraces set back from the pavement and fronted with black iron railings.