A Thousand Cuts

by Thomas Mogford

  ‘You are mistaken, sir,’ Eloise replied, eyes flashing.

  ‘You’re an educated woman, Dr Capurro,’ Spike continued. ‘A professional. So you must know that it’s an extremely serious offence to perjure yourself in court.’

  Drew was still on his feet. ‘My learned friend is harassing the witness, Your Worship.’

  But Cassar waved Spike on, so he reached down and picked up a sheaf of photocopied documents. He set one bundle on Drew’s table, another on the bench, then turned and walked to the witness box. ‘Could you tell me what this is, please, Dr Capurro?’ he asked, placing the document in front of her.

  Eloise put on her spectacles, then looked up in disbelief. ‘But this means nothing,’ she said, seeking affirmation from Drew, but he had his head down, speed-reading the new evidence.

  ‘Answer the question, please, Dr Capurro,’ Spike urged. ‘Describe to the court what this is.’

  ‘It’s an excerpt from medical notes.’

  ‘And who is the patient?’

  ‘Christopher Massetti.’

  The court let out a murmur, the sweetest of melodies to Spike’s ears. Good old Danny Garcia – he must have told a paralegal to drop off the notes as soon as they’d arrived. Spike pointed to a particular paragraph he’d highlighted in fluorescent yellow. ‘Could you read this extract for the court, please, Dr Capurro?’

  ‘November first,’ Eloise read in an icy, staccato voice. ‘Mr Massetti presented with a two-day history of epigastric pain. No change in bowel habit or vomiting associated. Suspected gastritis. Referred for blood tests and given a prescription for antacids.’ She glanced up.

  ‘Who wrote these words, Dr Capurro?’

  To her credit, she didn’t flinch. ‘I did.’

  Another gratifying murmur.

  ‘So you had met Mr Massetti before the ninth of May, hadn’t you, Dr Capurro?’

  ‘It would appear so, but . . .’

  ‘In fact,’ Spike cut her off, ‘you had treated Mr Massetti on no fewer than three occasions over the last three years, hadn’t you?’

  ‘If that’s what the notes say, I suppose I must have done.’

  ‘So why did you lie to the court, Dr Capurro?’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’ She practically spat out the word. ‘I simply didn’t remember. I see up to twenty patients per session. That’s thousands of patients a year. No GP could possibly remember everyone they treat.’

  ‘Have you told any other lies on the stand today?’ Spike asked, counting down the seconds before Drew would make his presence felt. But the interjection was almost instantaneous:

  ‘Your Worship, Dr Capurro has already provided an explanation for . . .’

  ‘Perjuring herself,’ Spike completed.

  Cassar threw Spike a warning glance, and he bowed his head. ‘I’ll rephrase, Your Worship.’ He turned back to Eloise. ‘Your testimony is that you “simply” forgot the fact that you treated Mr Massetti on several occasions over the last three years, is it not, Dr Capurro?’

  She gave a stiff nod, and Spike leant forward and cupped one hand behind his ear. ‘Speak up, please.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old are you, Dr Capurro?’

  ‘Sixty-six.’

  ‘Do you often have trouble with your memory?’

  Pre-empting Drew’s objection, Spike addressed Cassar. ‘If Dr Capurro’s defence for lying to the court is that she “simply didn’t remember”, then the line of questioning is entirely appropriate.’

  Cassar nodded, but he was knocking on sixty himself, and the set of his mouth suggested it was not a tactic of which he much approved.

  ‘I’ll repeat the question, Dr Capurro,’ Spike went on, throwing her a sympathetic smile. ‘Just in case you’ve already forgotten it.’

  Eloise clenched her jaw, trying to hold her temper.

  ‘Do you often have trouble with your memory?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you did on this occasion?’

  ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘So it’s possible that if you have trouble remembering treating Mr Massetti on the days of the first of November and the seventh of June of last year, and on the eighteenth of August of the previous one, then you might also have trouble accurately recalling the events that took place on the ninth of May of this year?’

  ‘No.’ Eloise removed her spectacles, hands shaking. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Nothing further, Your Worship,’ Spike said, feeling the eyes of the court upon him as he strolled back to his table.

  Cassar peered down at Eloise, trying to ascertain her condition. ‘We’d better leave it for today. My chambers,’ he repeated to counsel as he stood up. The courtroom followed him to their feet, and Spike watched as Massetti shuffled out of the dock. Then he turned to the witness box, where Eloise sat motionless, eyes downcast. Drew was busy making notes, so Spike stepped forward to help her up, unsure of his reception. But a small bird-like figure beat him to it. The elderly woman threw Spike a scathing look as she passed, and he was surprised to recognise Marcela Peralta, resplendent in a red silk Chinese coat buttoned to the neck. ‘Can I help?’ Spike asked.

  The restaurateur turned her head just a fraction. ‘I think you’ve done quite enough for one day, Spike Sanguinetti.’ Then she took Eloise by the arm and led her out of the courtroom. Spike stared after them, trying to shake the sting of shame. Rough-handling a witness was an integral part of the job, but it wasn’t one in which he took any pleasure. His duty may have been to defend his client by whatever means possible, but when that involved undermining the credibility of an aged widow, it didn’t fill him with much enthusiasm.

  Drew got to his feet. ‘What larks!’ he hissed into his Spike’s ear. Then he modulated his voice into a slow Texan drawl, ‘After you, Counsellor.’

  9

  The New Law Courts had been opened by the Minister of Justice some years ago, and to Spike’s unpractised eye, the building shared unfortunate aesthetic similarities with Gibraltar’s modern prison. Too much Government money allocated to the project, not enough taste. Just around the corner on Main Street stood the original Georgian courthouse, with its cool stone portico and its beds of orange orchids. It was still in use for larger trials, where counsel would seek shade beneath the same gracious date palms as their forebears had during the Mary Celeste ‘ghost ship’ trial of 1872. By contrast, the occupiers of the modern court complex had to content themselves with standard-issue yucca plants and cheap wall-mounted plasma screens, and Cassar’s temporary chambers occupied a styrofoam-ceilinged office on the second floor.

  ‘Oh, sit down, would you?’ Cassar barked as Spike and Drew walked in. He’d already loosened his tie, and a dark ruff of curly chest hair sprung forth behind his undone top button. He looked hungry and irritable, traditionally a volatile combination, Spike knew.

  ‘So.’ Cassar knitted his knuckles and looked Drew up and down with his fierce eyes. ‘Your father. Sir Anthony Stanford.’

  ‘I had no idea he was a party to the evidence,’ Drew replied.

  ‘But you must have known he was a friend of the Capurros.’

  ‘Of course. It’s the only reason I agreed to take the case.’

  That caught Cassar by surprise, and he gave a frown of disapproval. But if he expected Drew to cower for mercy, he was to be disappointed. Drew just stared back at him, as though daring him to question the judgment of a QC who’d agreed to represent a family friend.

  It was a common enough problem on the Rock, Spike knew. In a population of 30,000, issues of conflict of interest arose daily. The most pressing was finding a jury without any connection to the accused. As a result, judges in Gibraltar enjoyed a far greater discretion to try cases without juries than their UK counterparts.

  Spike watched Cassar chew the inside of his cheek, as he often did when weighing up how best to proceed. Drew must have seen it too, as he decided to help him along. ‘This is Gibraltar,’ he coaxed in his honeyed tones. ‘Where everybody k
nows . . .’

  ‘Everybody,’ Cassar murmured.

  Spike couldn’t help himself. ‘Especially when it comes to Sir Anthony Stanford.’

  ‘In that case,’ Cassar snapped, ‘I imagine even Counsel for the Defence has an acquaintance with the man in question?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t describe it as an acquaintance, Your Worship,’ Drew threw in. ‘Mr Sanguinetti is a close friend of the family.’

  Cassar looked from one lawyer to the other, as though trying to decide which of them was lower in his estimation.

  ‘Your Worship,’ Drew resumed, his tone suggesting that he was tiring of the topic. ‘Of course I’ll withdraw if you insist. But if I do, perhaps Mr Sanguinetti should do the same. No doubt a delay in proceedings will ensue, at an inevitable cost to the Attorney General’s Office, but . . .’ Drew held his arms out wide, his face a picture of reason and regret.

  Cassar mopped his brow with his handkerchief and darted a look of raw hatred at the rattling air-conditioning unit. ‘Are you planning to call your father as a witness?’

  ‘Not at present,’ Drew said. ‘But I will need to take a statement. I can have a junior do it, if you like.’

  ‘Sir Anthony is available, I presume?’

  ‘He’s in London today. On business.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Cassar muttered, failing to hide the note of bitterness in his voice. Despite his age, Sir Anthony Stanford had accrued a portfolio of juicy non-executive directorships in Gibraltar and abroad that was the envy of men thirty years his junior. ‘We’ll resume tomorrow at ten a.m.,’ Cassar concluded. ‘Speak to your father, Mr Stanford-Trench. I want to have his testimony before we begin.’

  ‘Very well, Your Worship.’

  As Cassar pulled a Tupperware sandwich box from his desk drawer, Spike saw Drew suppress a smirk, and not for the first time felt a little ashamed of him. Out in the hallway, they passed another group of lawyers. ‘Nice work on the EasyBet opinion,’ one well-fed QC called over to Drew, and the two men fell into step, leaving Spike to watch his old friend choose just the right expression as he passed through the revolving doors.

  Not sorry to be deserted, Spike slowed his stride to let them pull away. He felt a sudden, powerful desire to see Jessica. But then another of his business partner’s irritating maxims came to mind – ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ – so he turned onto Town Range, preparing himself for another long afternoon of tax-advisory work.

  10

  Balancing a cardboard tray of coffees in one hand and his briefcase in the other, Spike shouldered open the door into the black-and-white tiled reception of Galliano & Sanguinetti.

  Ana Lopes glanced up from her computer screen with one of her more unsettling smiles, her bare feet curled beneath her in the ergonomic swivel chair she’d demanded. As usual when employing someone new, Spike knew more about her than was decent – she was thirty-two, recently divorced and entirely overqualified for the role of receptionist-cum-personal assistant at a two-man law firm. Over the course of the job interview, she’d seemed impervious to Spike’s gentle probing as to why a First-Class English and Philosophy graduate from Bristol University would want the position, but in the end Peter had persuaded him that it would be churlish to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  ‘You seem preoccupied,’ Ana observed as she sugared her double espresso, almond eyes glinting up at Spike from behind her spectacles.

  ‘Do I?’ Spike looked at her with suspicion. He was never quite sure if she was being serious. But Ana already seemed to have lost interest. Her headset was back on and he could see her face contorting as she struggled to decipher another of Peter Galliano’s interminable dictated notes. Spike made a half-hearted check of his in tray. ‘Any calls?’

  Ana paused the tape. ‘Some woman from Bonanza Gaming. Congratulating you on the work you did on the SPV.’

  As if on cue, Spike heard a lusty baritone rise from the office opposite and caught a snippet of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘When I Was a Lad’.

  Ana raised a well-tended eyebrow. ‘I may have mentioned it to Peter.’

  ‘So I can hear.’

  The song had reached its murderous peak by the time Spike pushed open his business partner’s door. ‘Young Sanguinetti!’ Peter stood up from his leather-topped desk, and Spike saw a manila file dancing in his hands. Emblazoned on the front in Peter’s beautiful slanting penmanship, he read the words, ‘Bonanza Gaming, Quarter 1’.

  ‘Don’t you just love that name? Such . . .’ Peter paused to light a Silk Cut Ultra and wave away the smoke. ‘Possibility.’

  ‘Ana said they were pleased.’

  Peter widened his long-lashed eyes and sat back down. ‘The CFO had no idea how much money they could save by registering the company in Gib. And circumventing the point of consumption tax? Now that was a stroke of genius.’

  Spike flinched: if there was genius in him, it was distressing to think it might lie in the field of corporate tax law. When he looked back, Peter was eyeing him through a smoke ring, a smile hovering at the edge of his red lips. ‘You don’t look as happy as you might, Spike.’

  ‘It’s been a long day.’

  Peter leant forward, soft belly spilling over his desk. ‘This is exactly the sort of client we should be targeting. The kind where we can get in on the ground floor and help them grow. When Bonanza enters the Russian market, we should do very nicely, thank you – particularly if they can be persuaded to give us part of our fee in equity.’ Peter rapped a hairy knuckle on the file. ‘We need to think about the future, Spike. Especially now you’re a family man.’

  ‘I’d better get on.’

  ‘Still tied up with that harassment trial?’ Peter kept his expression neutral, but Spike could sense his disapproval from the way he stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette, mashing it into one of the tiny square Cartier ashtrays he liked to nestle in the palm of his hand as he perambulated around his office, bellowing into his speakerphone. ‘Finishing any time soon?’ he asked innocently, fingertips caressing the cover of the ‘Bonanza’ file.

  Spike thought of the diminished figure of Eloise Capurro in the witness box, and turned away. ‘Tomorrow, I expect.’

  ‘The sooner the better, maestro.’

  Spike felt Ana Lopes’s inquisitive eyes follow him as he crossed the hallway to his office. Hearing Peter’s triumphant humming restart behind him, he closed the door in relief. Then he tugged on the tropical ceiling fan – installed by a visiting Sea Lord in the Second World War and still working well – and took out his list of questions for Christopher Massetti.

  11

  Having successfully dodged Peter’s entreaties to join him for a swift half at the Rock Hotel ‘to discuss firm strategy’, Spike decided to knock off early. GBC weather had predicted 65 per cent humidity, and by the time Spike got home to Chicardo’s Passage, his shirt was plastered to his back.

  As soon as Charlie heard the click of the bead curtain, he scrambled to his feet and threw his arms around Spike’s legs. When the little boy finally released him, Spike saw that his mouth was wreathed with chocolate. Rufus had been feeding him Nutella again, in flagrant disregard of one of Jessica’s strictest diktats. Spike couldn’t muster the energy to start an argument, so he just dampened a square of kitchen roll under the tap and rubbed off the evidence.

  ‘Shame,’ Rufus called over from the table. ‘I thought he looked rather splendid. Like a conquistador.’

  ‘I am cookin’,’ Charlie announced, kneeling in front of a rust-fringed colander filled with spoons. He scanned the cork-tile floor, assessing all options, then selected a pepper grinder to add to his pile. ‘Spoon soup,’ he said, holding out the colander for his grandfather’s approval. Spike could see the muscles in his arms quiver beneath the weight of the steel. But he held fast: he was growing stronger, taller every week.

  ‘You mean soup spoon,’ Spike corrected.

  ‘No, no, spoon soup,’ Rufus said, as he tipped up the colander to his mouth. ‘Delicious.’

/>   Spike found a pint of milk in the fridge and took a long gulp. Knowing this was also verboten under the new house rules, Charlie glanced up at his father with respect, and Spike smiled. ‘How was nursery?’ he asked, watching Charlie pad back to his station beneath the kitchen table.

  ‘Oh, fine,’ Rufus said. ‘He pushed a teacher, apparently. They made me sign a book.’

  The boy’s guilt-ridden eyes flicked from Spike to Rufus. ‘It was accident,’ he murmured.

  ‘We’ve talked about it, haven’t we?’ Rufus said.

  Charlie gave a fast nod, mouth turned down at the corners.

  ‘If you’re going to push someone, you make sure they don’t get up again,’ Rufus added, and Spike closed his eyes in irritation. When he opened them, he saw his father watching him, mouth twitching. ‘Just a joke, son. Where’s your sense of humour these days?’ Rufus gave Charlie a wink, then turned back to Spike. ‘Jessica’s upstairs. Looking a little peaky, I thought.’

  Spike walked over to Charlie and kissed the dark curls on the top of his head, drawing in the wild-flower fragrance that was an uncomfortable reminder of the boy’s late mother. He hoped Jessica didn’t feel the same. Charlie made no reaction, just drew a baking tray of folded tea towels from under the table.

  ‘Cloth cake!’ Rufus said. ‘My favourite.’

  12

  Jessica’s decision to prepare a family supper of couscous and roasted vegetables had always seemed to Spike a risky one, and, after watching Rufus and Charlie push the food around their plates for half an hour, even she conceded defeat and let Spike order an eighteen-inch Americano from Rocky’s Pizza. Once he’d finished the washing-up, Spike forced himself back to the kitchen table, leaden-eyed with carbohydrate, leaving the three of them slumped on the mustard-coloured sofa, watching Peter Pan for what surely must have been the twentieth time.

  Spike hadn’t made much progress with his examination-in-chief, and was still undecided as to whether to let Massetti take the stand. Though he’d succeeded in making his client talk, Massetti was still proving frustratingly reticent about many aspects of the case. It wasn’t easy to put together a persuasive defence for a client who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – explain what exactly it was he’d wanted from the Capurros.