Where the Truth Lies

by Julie Corbin

  ‘Has Daddy gone on the plane now?’

  ‘Yes. He arrived yesterday. One sleep has passed and then another sleep will pass and then he’ll be home.’

  The thumb of her left hand goes in her mouth, while her right hand reaches up, seeking the ends of my hair. She moves the strands through her fingertips and then sucks harder on her thumb. We stay like this for a couple of minutes, me enjoying the feeling of having her close, while Bea grows ever more relaxed, her body leaning heavily into mine.

  I look down at her blonde head. ‘Are you hungry?’

  She takes her thumb out of her mouth. ‘Grandma Wendy gave me food.’ She pats her tummy. ‘We had eggs and strawberries.’

  ‘That’s a funny combination!’ I tickle her cheeks and she grins up at me. ‘Well, let me know if you get hungry.’ I kiss her forehead. ‘I’m going downstairs.’

  Before I have the chance to slide her off my knee, she sits up straight and looks at me wide-eyed because she’s just thought of something. ‘Is Daddy going to see the man?’

  ‘What man is that?’

  ‘The man what sends the emails.’

  ‘What emails are those, sweetheart?’

  ‘On Daddy’s ’puter.’ She looks at me and shakes her head so that her hair falls into her eyes. ‘I didn’t go on Daddy’s ’puter. It was Daddy.’ She frowns and shakes her head again. ‘Daddy doesn’t like the email man.’

  ‘I see,’ I say, not really seeing at all. I think of Miss Percival’s comment this morning about the things children pick up on. Bea is in the habit of squirrelling herself under tables or in the corner of rooms and she often does this in Julian’s study. Sometimes he forgets that she’s there and it’s not unusual for her to report back to me snippets of what she’s heard. I think, in this case, that she must be talking about Georgiev. But Georgiev is in prison, having been denied bail. It seems unlikely that he would be sending Julian emails. And if he was, then surely Julian would have mentioned it to me.

  ‘Megan doesn’t like the man,’ Bea continues. ‘She said to Daddy he has to be careful.’

  The anxiety-lump in my stomach shifts, releasing a tremor that ripples through my body, raising the hairs on my arms. Megan is one of the instructing solicitors with the CPS. She and Julian have spent hundreds of hours working on the Georgiev case. If she is urging Julian to be careful, then it’s because there’s something wrong.

  ‘I’m sure Daddy will sort it all out,’ I say lightly, easing Bea off my knee. ‘I’m just going downstairs for a bit. Why don’t you make a bed for Douglas?’

  ‘I can put him in beside Bertie.’ She pushes her hair out of her eyes, then runs to the corner of the room where Bertie has a real dog bed, small in size but complete with a cosy sheepskin and an extra blanket. ‘Bertie will look after him.’ She hops from one happy foot to the other. ‘Bertie knows about puppies.’

  I leave her to it and go downstairs. The inside of my skull feels as if it’s expanding. I stand in the living room and look through the window. Mary Percival is walking the real, live Douglas in the park opposite our house. The sky is beginning to darken above their heads as clouds gather for a burst of summer rain, but Douglas isn’t in a hurry. Every bush and tree trunk is given a comprehensive sniff before he’s willing to move on. Mary looks up at the window, sees me and gives an acknowledging wave. I wave back. My eyes are looking at her, but my thoughts are elsewhere.

  I go through to the kitchen and have one last search of the pinboard. I’m not imagining it. The details aren’t there. OK. There are other ways for me to find out where he’s staying. I scroll through the numbers on my mobile phone and stop when I get to Megan Jennings. She hasn’t gone with Julian on this trip, but she’ll know the name of the hotel. And judging by what Bea might have heard, she’ll know quite a bit more than that. I call her number. She answers almost immediately.

  ‘It’s Claire Miller,’ I say.

  ‘Claire, hi! Everything OK?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. I’m wondering whether you have the number for Julian’s hotel . . .’

  ‘Did he get away OK?’

  ‘Yes. It’s just’ – I take a breath – ‘he left the number for me but I can’t find it and I thought you might be able to help me out.’

  ‘Of course. I have the details on my computer. I’m not in the office at the moment, but I’ll be back there in a few hours and will call you then.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I say quickly. ‘Why don’t you stop by here on your way home?’ Like Julian, Megan commutes from London to Brighton. She lives in a small flat round the corner from us, the proximity a mixed blessing, as work often stretches into the weekend. ‘I can even rustle up some supper for you. It will save you cooking when you get in.’

  ‘Sure.’ A slight pause. I can almost hear the gear change in her brain. ‘I’ll be with you just after eight thirty. Is that OK?’

  ‘Perfect.’ Time to put Bea to bed. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  Megan has eaten with us before but always when she’s been working with Julian in his study and has happened to be here over a mealtime. I know she’ll be wondering why I’m asking her to come round when she can easily give me the details over the phone. She is every inch the professional and won’t want to breach confidentiality, but as whatever is going on seems to have seeped into family life, I don’t intend to let her leave without her shedding some light on Julian’s mood. I want to know whether she can make sense of what Bea’s just told me and whether it’s linked to the way Julian reacted yesterday afternoon.

  And then it occurs to me – why wait for Megan when I can check for emails myself? Julian isn’t here, but his laptop is. I can log on and see whether there are any suspicious emails in his inbox.

  I go down to his study and switch on his laptop. The system begins to load and then I click the icon to log on to his server at work. Almost at once a box appears asking me to type in the password. I’m confident I know this. Less than two months ago, Julian was in Durham when he called and asked me to log on to the server at his chambers. His password alternated between numbers and letters – J1A9C9K4 – Jack and the year he was born.

  I type it in. In less than a second ‘Incorrect password’ comes up on the screen.

  Damn. He must have changed it.

  I try the same pattern with Bea and Charlie and their birth years. It doesn’t work. I try with Julian’s and mine. Nothing.

  I stand up and take a couple of deep breaths. Slow down. Think. Be logical. When Julian changes his password, he keeps it personal. Not as obvious as a single name – hence the alternate numbers and letters – but obvious enough to him and surely, therefore, to me. I pace up and down a few times, running names and numbers through my head, then sit back down and try other obvious combinations: our wedding anniversary, the date he took silk, the date we moved to Brighton.

  The door to Julian’s study opens. I look up. It’s Amy. She starts back in surprise. ‘I didn’t realise you were in here.’

  ‘Well, I am.’ I try for a smile. ‘Did you want something?’

  ‘I came down to make Charlie and me some tea.’

  I point to the ceiling. ‘The kitchen’s upstairs.’

  ‘Yes, but I heard a noise down here and thought that maybe Jack was home and I could offer him a drink or something.’

  ‘Jack won’t be home until late next week.’

  ‘Well, can I get you anything?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I give her a distracted smile, then look back at the screen.

  ‘Are you on Julian’s laptop?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something wrong with yours?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Her hair is long and wavy and is a luxurious copper colour. Normally she makes nothing of it, preferring to tie it up under a thick multicoloured hairband, but today it falls over her right shoulder and she is holding the end of it, swinging it from side to side. ‘It’s just that I’m pretty good at diagnosing problems.’

  A
s she reaches my side of the desk, I minimise the window. She’s looking at the screen but the only thing she can see is Julian’s desktop photograph of Bea and the boys taken at Easter.

  ‘Oh! You’re not doing anything much, then?’

  I turn my head to look up at her. ‘What I’m doing is private.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She gives a stifled giggle, like an embarrassed schoolgirl, something I’m sure she never was. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She is wearing patchouli, a strong, heavy scent that I remember from my own student days and didn’t much like the smell of then. It lingers in the room after she’s gone. She heard a noise? She heard me typing from the top of the stairs? Not possible. So what’s she playing at? Was she snooping? I don’t know what to make of it, so I decide that I’ll think about it later.

  I stare back at the screen. The interruption has allowed time for guilt to creep from the back of my mind to the front. I don’t feel comfortable going behind Julian’s back. This is his work email. I shouldn’t be doing this. I should wait until I have the chance to speak to him. I trust him. When there’s something I need to know, he tells me.

  I take my hands away from the keyboard and rest them on my lap. I have to approach this one step at a time. Megan will be here soon. I’ll tell her about what happened yesterday afternoon, see what she says. And Julian will be back at his hotel in a couple of hours. I’ll be able to talk to him. There’s no need for me to resort to hacking into his email.

  And then, just as my mind’s made up to go back to the kitchen, it comes to me – Lisa – the sixth member of our family. I decide to check, just to see whether I’m right. My fingers move over the keys and I don’t stop them. L1I9S6A3. At once the system fires up. I’m torn between looking and not looking, realise that I am literally sweating and wipe my forehead with a tissue. As soon as the desktop is loaded, I let curiosity get the better of me and click on the icon that opens Julian’s email. There are already half a dozen unopened messages in his inbox, but all the senders are either solicitors at the CPS or other barristers in chambers. I scroll down through his inbox but can’t see anything suspicious. He is methodical at record-keeping and has lists of folders down to one side, most of them case names. I click on ‘Georgiev’. There are over two hundred emails, but once again all the addresses are from other solicitors. I don’t see how there can be anything to worry about there.

  I start clicking on the folders titled with numbers and letters. The first three folders contain admin and account emails. The fourth has eight emails in it, all from the same address. What’s unusual is that none of them have been replied to. I open the first one.

  ‘Mum!’ The study door opens again. It’s Charlie this time. His hair is dishevelled and he’s grinning. I hear Amy laughing behind him. ‘Do we have any Worcester sauce?’

  ‘Look in the pantry.’

  The first email is on the screen. I glance at it and see the phrase ‘extreme lengths’.

  ‘Everything OK, Mum?’ Charlie’s watching me from the door.

  ‘Fine.’ I smile. ‘I’ll be upstairs soon. Megan’s popping round.’

  ‘OK.’

  He closes the door and I hear them both jostle and tease each other back up the stairs. I read the first email and know at once that I’ve found what I’m looking for:

  I’ll be blunt. You have information I want and I’m willing to go to extreme lengths to get it. The witness in the Georgiev trial – I want his name and his whereabouts.

  I sit back in my seat. Apart from the low hum coming from the laptop, the room is completely quiet. A lone blackbird sits on a branch of buddleia, just visible in the garden, beyond Julian’s window. Its orange beak points skywards as it sings a summer song. I’m no longer sweating. My body is relaxed and I feel strangely clear-headed. Julian’s over-reaction and Bea’s comment about emails – could both events be linked? There are seven more emails in the folder. I don’t take time to read them. I don’t take time to think about how frightening this could become. I decide the best thing is to print them out and take them upstairs where I’m less likely to be disturbed. The cursor whirls as the printer receives the information and churns out eight sheets. I shut down Julian’s laptop, collect the sheets from the printer tray and fold them in half. I climb the stairs and tiptoe past Bea’s bedroom. She has always been good at occupying herself and is quietly talking to her soft toys. I opt for guaranteed privacy, walk through my bedroom and shut myself in the en suite bathroom. I lay the pages out on the floor.

  Then I read them.

  4

  I kneel on the bathroom tiles and line up the emails in the order they were sent. The first one is dated Monday, 24 May, nine days ago. I read it for the second time.

  I’ll be blunt. You have information I want and I’m willing to go to extreme lengths to get it. The witness in the Georgiev trial – I want his name and his whereabouts.

  There isn’t a name at the end of the message, but it’s clear that whoever’s written it, Georgiev is behind it. He wants to silence the main witness. He’s done this in the past and that’s exactly why the judge granted Julian an anonymity order in the first place.

  I move on to the second email. It arrived a day later and, like the first, it gets straight to the point:

  There are two ways for me to come by this information. At the pre-trial hearing, you support the defence counsel’s request to lift the anonymity order. Or you tell me who and where the witness is.

  Simple.

  Julian has already mentioned to me that the pre-trial hearing is scheduled for this Monday, 7 June, five days from now. It’s unimaginable that, as prosecuting counsel, he would ever agree to lifting the anonymity order. His case has been built around this man’s evidence and without it a conviction is unlikely.

  The third email arrived at midday exactly a week ago:

  Leaking the name and the whereabouts of the witness will be easy – by letter, email, phone call or text. You choose. We can arrange it.

  I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.

  For Bea.

  My blood slows and cools. I sit back on my heels. I think about Julian’s reaction yesterday afternoon and know at once what the emailer is building up to. I feel as if my heart has stopped beating. My body is completely still, spellbound. Only my eyes are moving, flicking silently around the everyday mess in the bathroom. We have double sinks set back into the alcove. Julian’s shaving stuff is in a disorderly heap next to his sink; assorted creams and oils are crammed into the space next to mine. The laundry basket is in the corner. Several of Julian’s socks haven’t made it that far and lie on the floor next to it. Bea likes to bathe in here because we have a corner bath. She has a family of yellow ducks that squirt water out of their mouths and a selection of boats, all of which sit in and around the tub. The towels aren’t straight on the rails, and the rubber seal is beginning to come away from the lower edge of the shower door so that water leaks on to the mat on the floor. It’s all completely normal, familiar and grounding.

  I look back at the emails. The fourth is dated 27 May, last Thursday:

  I watched Bea and Claire this afternoon as they walked back from nursery. Bea was wearing a pink dress with a white flower pattern on the hem and pale green sandals with two buckles across each foot. She was carrying her stuffed dog, Bertie. They stopped at the Italian delicatessen on Western Road. Claire bought mozzarella cheese, Parma ham and a chocolate treat for Bea. She told Bea they were going to make pizza for dinner.

  I think back. I see Bea and me walking along the road. She was skipping, telling me about one of the girls at nursery who has three dogs and a cat. She was asking me why we didn’t have any pets and then we turned into the deli and she was distracted by the chocolate lollipops on the counter. We chose cheese and meat from the chilled cabinet and Bea was allowed a lollipop for later.

  The email is accurate, down to the colour of Bea’s dress and the food we bou
ght.

  We were being followed.

  I think this without a trace of emotion. I wait for my heart to respond, my blood to race, the rush of adrenaline to spike in my bloodstream. Nothing. Someone was watching us, listening to us. The walk back home is almost a mile and not once did I suspect we had a stalker. No hairs rose on the back of my neck, no gut feeling that something was amiss.

  My eyes shift to the fifth email:

  This morning Bea played in the sandpit. She was told she had to wear her sunhat. She doesn’t like the elastic under her chin, so she wore a boy’s cap instead.

  I could have taken her then. I could take her still. And you’d never see her again.

  I imagine a stranger’s hand reach out to catch hold of my daughter’s shoulder and I wonder why I’m not screaming. The blackmailer is creeping forward, low in the grass, like a lion after a zebra, and I’m fixed in an emotional limbo, my heart struck almost dumb by the enormity of this.

  The sixth email came on Monday, just two days ago:

  How will Claire react, I wonder, when she finds out you’re sacrificing your own daughter in order to protect the witness, a criminal out to save his own skin?

  This isn’t a straightforward case of good versus evil. But then again, Julian, is it ever?

  Julian. For the past nine days, he has been reading these, and Bea has already told me that Megan knew about them. He told her, but he didn’t tell me. Bea is my daughter and yet he has kept me in the dark about this. I feel the merest swell of anger rise up through my ribcage. I don’t grab hold of it. Not yet. I let the feeling trickle away and then I read the seventh email:

  You doubt me?

  Have I mentioned that I’ve killed before? Mostly I favour the knife – a five-inch blade with a serrated edge. Last time, I pushed it in just below the fifth rib. It sliced through the muscle in her heart.