Helen jumped up and grabbed his arm.
‘Please, Peter, don’t do anything rash,’ she said, her heart pounding. ‘Remember we’re all in this together, and if we work together, we can get out of it.’
Peter looked down at her hand and gently lifted it from his arm.
‘We all have a way of dealing with our problems,’ he said, walking away. ‘You go and figure out yours.’
66
The atmosphere in Media Incorporated’s boardroom was electric. Amir and Andy stood by a big whiteboard full of red, black and blue scribbles, arrows pointing to circled names and facts boxed off and starred according to their importance.
‘Gentlemen, please,’ said Andy, addressing the room. ‘We all know this is going to be a big story, but we need to be absolutely sure of our facts – particularly what we can and can’t say legally. We’ve got to be tight as a nut on this, especially as we have the enemy in the room.’
There was a ripple of laughter as the journalists all looked over at Anna, Matt and Larry standing to the side. Anna smiled too. She had been watching Andy at work, seeing him running his team, his eyes blazing with passion for the story, yet completely in control, never letting his excitement run away with him.
I’m over him, she smiled to herself. I finally really am.
She respected him, enjoyed his company, but that little spark of whatever it was that drew people together had gone. And she felt glad. It was a weight that had been pulling her down, an unhealed wound that had kept her from moving on and finding someone else. For a moment, she thought of Sam. They hadn’t spoken all week; just a few half-apologetic text messages that had left her with very mixed emotions. Their time together in India had been sensational, of course, and he was so good-looking she could feel a little part of her sigh whenever she thought about him. But another part of her wondered if they were really suited. She looked at Andy, realising that they had been a perfect match on paper, everyone had said so; and yet sometimes things just didn’t pan out. One thing she had come to understand was that you couldn’t deconstruct love and figure out what made two people connect. It just happened. Or didn’t. That was the nature of love; its randomness, its unpredictability, and she supposed it was what made it so intoxicating.
Charles Porter, the newspaper’s editor, looked over at Anna.
‘Andy’s right,’ he said. ‘We need to know what we can print. Are you sure the contents of Amy’s laptop would be admissible in court?’
Anna felt flattered that Charles had addressed the question to her, with her boss and the legendary Larry Donovan standing next to her. She had been getting a lot of respect from the journalists since Andy and Amir had brought the story in. She nodded to Charles.
‘Yes, Matt found the laptop, which had clearly been taken, stolen from Amy’s apartment. But we should be able to argue that ownership still belongs to Amy Hart, and as she is now deceased, it’s passed on to her estate. Of course we’ve got the full cooperation of her family.’
Charles nodded and looked up at Amir.
‘What about this Peter Rees character? Can we name him?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Amir. ‘The emails show he was Amy’s lover. I’ve also been able to nail him through the offshore account he set up to pay the rent on Amy’s apartment.’
‘Okay, so that links Dallincourt to the dead girl,’ said Charles. ‘But what about linking the girl to the oil spill?’
Matt shook his head.
‘Unfortunately the Atlanticana report was essentially stolen by Amy, which compromises its admissibility. And there’s still no way of proving Amy’s death was foul play. Not without a confession, anyway.’
Anna loved the energy in the room as they put the story together. Media law tended to move much faster than the rest of the legal system – no one else but a media lawyer would be knocking on a judge’s door at nine at night – but the speed with which the news was crafted was edge-of-the-seat stuff. The only person who did not look alive with adrenalin was Larry Donovan. At last he stepped forward.
‘Charles. Can I have a word?’ he said, touching the editor on the shoulder. He motioned to Anna to follow them into an adjoining office. The two lawyers and the newspaper editor stood huddled in the small room. Larry spoke first.
‘Listen, I’ll be straight with you, Charles, I’m not happy about Helen Pierce’s name being on that whiteboard.’
Charles Porter gave a thin smile.
‘But it does look like Helen leaked Sam Charles’s private life to overturn his injunction, which is nothing short of a cover-up.’
‘I know you ink boys love conspiracy,’ said Larry tartly. ‘But do you need to trouble the reading public with every last detail?’ He inclined his head towards Anna. ‘And seeing as it was Donovan Pierce who brought you the story . . .’
Charles raised his eyebrows.
‘So we should cut Donovan Pierce some slack?’
‘Something like that,’ said Larry.
Anna couldn’t believe her ears. After all her hard work, after all the risks she had taken, Larry was suggesting they let Helen off?
‘But Helen is complicit in all this,’ said Anna angrily. ‘She’s broken the law and she deserves to suffer the consequences.’
Larry turned on her.
‘Which means the whole of Donovan Pierce suffers, Anna. Good, decent lawyers such as yourself and my son. The firm will be hung out to dry and you’ll all be tarred with the same brush. Is that what you want?’
‘It’s not what I want, Larry,’ she protested. ‘It’s what’s right . . .’
They were interrupted by a knock on the door, and Amir Khan popped his head into the room.
‘Guys, you’d better come back in,’ he said, his eyes shining. ‘We’ve just had a phone call from Peter Rees. He says he’s prepared to tell us everything he knows.’
67
The house was dark when Helen pulled up outside. She pushed her key into the lock, expecting to hear the sound of Graham’s opera records, but there was silence as she walked into the hallway and threw her keys on to the table. She was glad: the grey stillness of the house suited her mood. She wanted to hide, to stay safe in a cloak of darkness where no one could see her or touch her. The bullish ‘let’s conquer this thing together’ resolve she had tried to show Peter earlier in the day had crumbled the moment she had left the Bloomsbury gardens, and she had driven up to Hampstead, walking across the heath, lost in her turbulent thoughts, trying to see a way out of the fog.
She cursed herself for leaving the laptop in the office. It was true that no one other than herself and Larry had access to the vault. But with the pressure of the Balon trial, she had been uncharacteristically careless. She should have known, of course, that Anna Kennedy would not have taken Sam’s overturned injunction lying down. That was why she had hired the girl in the first place: drive, ambition, a nimble mind. But who would have thought she’d have got wind of Amy Hart? Expect the unexpected was the maxim Helen had always drilled into her lawyers, but this time she was the one who had failed to see all the angles.
Walking into the living room, she went straight to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a large brandy, closing her eyes as the liquid slipped down her throat. She almost dropped the glass in fright as a desk lamp flicked on, and she whirled around to see Larry Donovan sitting in her favourite armchair.
‘Jesus, Larry,’ she gasped. ‘You scared me.’
Larry’s face remained impassive, increasing Helen’s unease. She glanced towards the door.
‘Who let you in?’
‘Graham,’ said Larry. ‘He’s gone out. I asked him for a few minutes alone with you.’
‘Oh really? Why?’ she asked, turning back to pour herself another brandy, the decanter rattling against the glass.
She was playing for time, desperately looking for some hole in the net she felt closing in on her, but she knew that Larry knew. Larry always knew. For years he had been her mentor and protector. They ha
d first met when she was a law student scouting around for a job and he was a young, dynamic solicitor about to set up his own practice. In Helen Pierce he had seen something, a kindred spirit. He had recognised her steeliness and taken time to nurture it, encouraging and advising her, favouring her with the best cases, making introductions to all the right people. Unusually for Larry, there had never been any sexual motivation for his help. Not once in their twenty-five-year acquaintance had he tried it on. Instead their relationship was one of mutual respect, and whilst Larry’s profligacy and unreliability had annoyed her in recent years, deep down she had nothing but admiration for him. Fitting, then, that it should be Larry who had come to her at the end.
‘You know why I’m here, Helen,’ he said now. ‘Amy Hart. Anna told me everything.’
Helen snorted.
‘Anna Kennedy has lost the plot,’ she said tartly, throwing the brandy back. ‘She’s been looking for some excuse to shift the blame for her failure in the Sam Charles case. She should not be taken seriously, Larry. In fact, I was going to suggest she take a holiday to sort herself out.’
Larry’s face remained hard.
‘It’s too late for bullshit, Helen. The Chronicle have got hold of the story, and everything Anna has said has checked out.’
‘What has checked out? A load of circumstantial evidence and—’
‘Peter Rees is talking,’ said Larry, stopping her in her tracks. ‘Apparently he’s happy to swear an affidavit about the faulty rig, Amy’s blackmail, his conversation with James Swann to cover it up . . . everything.’
Helen pressed a hand to her chest. Suddenly she couldn’t seem to draw breath.
‘Why, Helen?’ said Larry softly. ‘Why did you get involved? You’re too smart for all this. I taught you better.’
He taught her? she thought, suddenly furious. How dare he? She had held Donovan Pierce together when he was too hung-over to get off his office couch; she had built up its reputation and brought in the biggest accounts while he was off playing golf and chasing secretaries – and now he had the nerve to suggest it was all him?
‘It was just business, Larry,’ she said defiantly. ‘Isn’t that what you taught me? “Business comes first”? Simon Cooper promised us millions of pounds’ worth of work if we’d bury the Amy Hart story. It was a simple transaction.’
She couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t admit to the weakness that had made her say yes to Simon’s proposal. She couldn’t admit she’d done it for love. As if Larry Donovan would understand that.
‘A simple transaction?’ said Larry. ‘A girl was killed, Helen. Is that the kind of bargain you’re prepared to make?’
‘I didn’t know about that,’ she snapped.
‘Of course not,’ he replied.
She looked at him fiercely.
‘Don’t get all pious on me, Larry, for turning a blind eye. Don’t say that you’ve never done it. I know you have. You don’t get to the top without sometimes dealing with the devil.’
‘Maybe, but I never covered for a murderer,’ he growled. Helen thought about pouring herself another drink, but instead banged the glass down on the cabinet. She needed a clear head, needed to think. She could find a way out – why not? She always had before.
‘Are The Chronicle running the story tomorrow?’ she asked. Larry shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But now they have Peter’s testimony, I can’t see why they’d hold back.’
Helen looked at her wristwatch. It was almost eight o’clock. If the paper was going with the story for its first edition, she was sunk. But if they were holding off until their second edition, she could still find a judge to grant a temporary injunction. That would give her breathing space at least.
Larry was reading her mind.
‘You’re not named in this, Helen. I’ve spoken to the editor, asked him to keep you out of it. For now.’
‘I’d say thank you, except I’m not convinced you’re doing this for my benefit.’
‘You’re right. This isn’t about you, Helen. It’s about the firm. I’m not going to let Donovan Pierce suffer because of your idiotic behaviour. Fortunately Media Incorporated want to keep us on side, so far as that’s possible. I’ve also offered them certain other incentives.’
He was a canny bastard, she thought, looking at him with a mixture of loathing and admiration. What had he done to keep the dogs off? It went without saying that he’d have done a deal with Charles Porter. Keep Helen Pierce’s name out of the story and he’d feed them a story about one of his other clients. Just the same as she had done with Sam Charles, but somehow this was worse, more grubby. At least with the Sam Charles case, the media had been an unwitting accomplice. This time Charles Porter was entirely complicit – a deal with the devil indeed.
But Helen wasn’t naive; she knew the bargaining didn’t end there. Larry would want his pound of flesh from her.
‘So what’s the deal, Larry? What do I have to do for this?’
‘I want you to resign from Donovan Pierce,’ said Larry.
‘Resign?’ cried Helen, aghast. ‘I am Donovan Pierce!’
Larry just looked at her.
‘And I want you to sell your equity to me. We may have to do a bit of jiggery-pokery with the partnership agreement to make that happen, but then you’re not against that sort of thing, are you, Helen?’ he added with a knowing smile.
Helen felt faint, but she was still prepared to fight.
‘I know where the bodies are buried too, Larry,’ she said in a more threatening tone. ‘I could ruin your reputation in the blink of an eye, just as you’re trying to destroy me now. Remember that.’
Larry looked unmoved.
‘This offer is more than generous.’ He shrugged. ‘Considering you have broken the law and considering you’re trying to screw my son out of his partnership.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘This is your Get Out of Jail Free card, Helen – literally. You leaked the details of Sam’s case to the media. You did it acting for individuals implicated in the death of a twenty-one-year-old girl. The best-case scenario is that you should be struck off the roll of solicitors permanently. I don’t need to tell you the worst-case scenario, do I? A multi-million-dollar damages claim waiting for you the moment you get out of jail.’
‘You wouldn’t dare do this,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
Larry laughed.
‘Don’t worry, Helen. I already have.’
68
Ruby Hart ran up to the ice-cream van parked outside Richmond’s White Cross riverside pub on the edge of the Thames and bought three enormous Mr Whippy cones.
‘A thank-you to the world’s greatest lawyer.’ She grinned, handing one to Anna and another to her mother, Liz Hart. Anna felt so pleased that the two Hart women had come down to London to catch the first editions of The Chronicle hitting the street. And when Liz Hart had wept tears of relief as she had read the story about her daughter, Anna had felt a sense of justice more potent than anything she had experienced in all her time in the law.
‘World’s greatest lawyer? I don’t know about that,’ she giggled, secretly feeling very proud of the copy of The Chronicle that was poking out of her bag. ‘Party Girl in Suspicious Death’ read the headline on page three. She’d felt a pang of disappointment that Amir’s exposé hadn’t made the front-page splash, but a big royal story had pushed it off. Anna knew more than anybody that newspapers were in the business of selling copies and the better story wasn’t always the biggest story when the editor came to decide what would drive more sales.
But it was enough. Enough to cause a stir. Enough for the other newspapers to pick the story up. It wasn’t enough to bring Amy back to life but it was enough to stop her death being invisible, and in time, with a police investigation to back up the work of the Chronicle news team, maybe it was enough for someone to be finally held responsible for her killing.
‘Is it true that the paper’s going to run a bigger piece at the weekend?’ asked Liz, looking visibly
less tired and grave than the first time they had met.
Anna nodded. ‘The Sunday Chronicle are going to do a more in-depth piece, yes. The Chronicle wanted to break the story, but there’s so much to follow up about the Atlanticana rig, and Dallincourt’s involvement in the explosion, that the bigger weekend editions can really go to town on it. It’s going to be a major international story.’
‘I hope Amy’s not going to be dragged into all that,’ said Liz quietly. ‘This is enough. We only wanted justice for Amy. Not celebrity.’
The three women walked along the bank of the Thames in a contented silence as they licked their ice creams.
‘Do you think it will be possible to say thank you to Sam Charles too?’ asked Ruby hopefully. ‘I know he paid for your investigator.’
Anna knew that Ruby was right. On their date in Mougins, Sam had made his motives for helping them sound so flippant, but without him there was a good chance the story would never have seen the light of day.
‘I’m sure he’d love to meet you,’ she said honestly. ‘I can arrange a meeting with him if you’d like.’
‘Yes, please,’ beamed Ruby. ‘When are you seeing him next?’
It was a good question. All week she’d been avoiding Sam’s calls demanding that she contact him. Of course, with so much else going on, there hadn’t really been time to meet, especially as he was in script-writing lockdown at his Wiltshire country manor. But the real reason, she acknowledged to herself, was that she could not work out how she felt about him; his initial interest in her had been thrilling and the sex had been incredible. But she also knew that dating someone of his celebrity would change her life completely, and she wasn’t sure if she was prepared for such a precarious, if exhilarating, ride.
She had thought a few days’ distance might give her some clarity on the situation. But the longer she left it, the more Sam Charles seemed to fade back into what he always was to her, a magnificent and yet unobtainable face from the movies.
Private Lives Page 51