The Namedropper

by Brian Freemantle

  The same warning that Lesley had given him, Jordan remembered. ‘How can we get any thoughts together until we know their case … cases?’

  ‘I said exchanging a few thoughts, not finalizing our side.’ Beckwith reached to his right, turning on a tape recorder. ‘So let’s start doing that right now. Who made the first move down there in sunny France, you or Alyce?’

  ‘You mean who spoke first?’

  ‘You tell it your way.’

  Jordan hesitated for a moment. ‘She spoke first. I’d been reading in the hotel lounge. Remembered a phone call I had to make. She stopped me as I was crossing the room and told me I’d left my book behind. I said I was coming back …’

  ‘Did you make the call?’

  ‘Up in my room.’

  ‘I thought you were in a suite?’

  ‘I was. Up in my suite. Do we really need to be as pedantic as this?’

  ‘Harv, I need to be so pedantic I know the colour of your underwear … maybe Alyce’s, too if I’m going to be able to undermine what might be put against you. I ask the questions, any question, you answer them, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So you made the call?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who to?’

  Shit, thought Jordan, anticipating the follow-up question. ‘A restaurant overlooking Cannes harbour. I wanted to eat there that night.’

  ‘So there’ll be a record of the reservation in your name, the restaurant will be able to confirm the call?’

  ‘No,’ said Jordan, seeing his way out. ‘The line was engaged. I tried twice but then gave up. I walked down that night and managed to get a table without a reservation.’

  ‘With Alyce.’

  ‘No,’ refused Jordan again, the relief moving through him at the unchallengable escape.

  ‘Having given up trying to make a connection you went back downstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I stopped on my way back to where I’d been sitting, thanked her for trying to stop me losing my book. On the way out I think I’d asked her to watch that it stayed safe.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’d been writing, earlier. It looked like a lot of documents, in a large envelope. She’d stopped by the time I got back. The envelope was beside her in a chair, along with a lot of her other stuff. It was the only chair at her table so I invited her across to where I was sitting, for a drink.’

  ‘So she spoke to you first but you hit on her?’

  Jordan sighed, heavily. ‘I didn’t hit on her! She’d tried to do me a favour, I thought I’d buy her a drink to say thank you.’

  ‘I don’t care how long you stand in the box in court or how much you’re exasperated, I don’t want to hear a sigh like that again.’

  Fuck you, thought Jordan. Aloud he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You will be, if you get caught out by another lawyer to make you lose your temper and it shows. I warned you already.’

  ‘I won’t forget again.’

  ‘I’m not going to let you forget. What happened next with you and Alyce?’

  ‘We’d talked about books, the first day we began speaking. I knew The Man in the Iron Mask was based on a true story of a prisoner once being imprisoned on one of the islands off Cannes and invited her on a trip the following day, without telling her what it was or where it would be. I rented a catamaran and took her there. We—’

  ‘Stop!’ demanded the lawyer. ‘Where are we now, first or second day?’

  Jordan had to think. ‘Second. We spent all day together.’

  ‘What about the night?’

  ‘And the night.’

  ‘This has got to be exactly how it happened. So tell me – exactly – how it happened. Let’s go back to the first day you began talking.’

  There’s nothing much to tell about that first day. After lunch I went into town, had dinner, alone, at the harbour restaurant and then went back to the hotel.’

  ‘Was she there?’

  ‘I didn’t see her.’

  ‘Why didn’t you invite her to dinner with you overlooking the harbour?’

  Jordan shrugged ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t.’

  ‘Did you think something might develop between you?’

  ‘Not particularly. I was alone, she was alone. Everything was relaxed and easy.’

  ‘The second day you went on the catamaran trip to the island?’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Jordan.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I don’t …’ stumbled Jordan. ‘In the morning. We had lunch on the boat, after looking at the jail.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Manage it?’ questioned Jordan, confused.

  ‘When did you rent the catamaran?’

  ‘The first afternoon. After lunch I went into the town, found some yacht charterers and booked the catamaran and had it provisioned for the trip.’

  ‘So you set up a pretty big expedition?’

  ‘I chartered a yacht for a one-day cruise. To take Alyce somewhere I thought she’d be interested in seeing.’

  ‘You went out on the catamaran, you saw the jail where the man in the iron mask was held? Then what?’

  ‘We swam.’

  ‘Naked?’ Beckwith asked.

  ‘In costumes. The catamaran had a crew.’

  ‘And a cabin?’

  ‘Of course it had a cabin.’

  ‘Did you change together?’

  ‘Separately.’

  ‘Who changed first?’

  Jordan had to think again. ‘I did.’

  ‘What sort of costume did you wear?’

  ‘What?’ queried Jordan, not understanding.

  ‘Trunks? Boxers? What?’

  ‘Boxer shorts.’

  ‘What about Alyce?’

  ‘A bikini.’

  ‘A brief bikini? Or a two piece?’

  ‘A brief bikini.’

  ‘How brief?’

  ‘Very brief,’ said Jordan, remembering his delay in getting back on to the catamaran.

  ‘So she was coming on to you?’

  ‘I guess you could say that.’

  ‘Harv, we’re not guessing here! We’re trying to keep your ass as far away from the burner as we can. You’re being accused of stealing Al Appleton’s wife literally from under him, causing him physical and mental damage and making his business – and income – suffer from what you did. There have been jury awards well over the $1 million mark on just one such criminal conversation claim and you’re looking at a damned sight more than just one. And the courts – and the judges – have the power to add on punitive damages, too. You understand what I’m telling you? How much it could cost you?’

  ‘I understand.’ Jordan didn’t welcome being treated like an idiot any more than he liked consistently being called Harv. But it certainly seemed that he needed training. And much more help than he’d imagined up to now.

  ‘Go on,’ ordered Beckwith.

  ‘We got back to the harbour around six. I’d taken the hotel car to get there but Alyce said she wanted to walk back: it’s not far. I asked if she wanted dinner but she said she wasn’t hungry after the lunch we’d had on the boat, that she was tired and wanted to go straight to bed.’

  Beckwith came forward across his desk. ‘Go to bed around six in the evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do? Say?’

  ‘I didn’t finish telling you what she said. She said she wanted to go to bed but not alone.’

  Daniel Beckwith began to smile. ‘Tell me the actual words.’

  ‘“I want to go to bed. But not alone”,’ quoted Jordan. Why, he wondered, was he feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed?

  The smile widened. ‘Alyce Appleton spoke to you first, in the hotel lounge? Alyce Appleton wore the very briefest of bikinis, to show you what was on offer? And Alyce Appleton told you that she didn’t want go to bed alone?’

  ‘It didn’t �
��’ started Jordan but stopped. Then he said, ‘Yes. That’s how it was.’

  ‘She chased you,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘You didn’t chase her: seduce her.’

  ‘We both knew what was happening.’

  ‘Harv! For fuck’s sake when are you going to start listening to me! What you’ve just told me, was that how it was? How it happened that you came to be in bed with Alyce Appleton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She made it easy for you? Invited you?’

  ‘If you—’

  ‘Harv!’ halted the lawyer, warningly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re getting there, Harv. At the moment you’re not making it easy for either of us but we’re getting there.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make it difficult, for either of us! Me most of all. I didn’t understand the direction you were coming from.’ Why hadn’t he? Jordan demanded of himself. It surely wasn’t that obscure?

  ‘Trying to stop you getting skinned alive is the direction I’m coming from, Harv.’

  ‘Lesley said she thought I might have been set up, by Alyce and her husband together,’ said Jordan. ‘You think I could have been?’ Jordan felt humiliated even by asking the question.

  ‘It’s a way I might be tempted to go. Depends on the papers when I get to see them. Even as it is, you’ve got the beginnings of a defence if we can get the court to accept what you’re telling me.’

  ‘It was a holiday affair, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘This is a divorce, with more damages accusations than I’ve ever encountered before,’ said Beckwith. ‘Two very different things that so far you haven’t got your head around.’

  Jordan was suddenly swept away by a disorienting tiredness, for the briefest of moments his actual awareness ebbing and flowing. ‘Is there any more coffee in that pot?’

  ‘You OK?’ enquired Beckwith, pouring the dregs.

  ‘I’m fine,’ exaggerated Jordan. ‘We haven’t talked about the actual hearing. Will the court be closed or open?’

  ‘Depends upon a request from the plaintiff or defendant. There needs to be an application for a closed court from one or the other.’

  ‘I’m a defendant, aren’t I? Can’t I make the application?’

  ‘Primary defendant,’ qualified Beckwith. ‘Which you’re not. And I don’t see it coming from Appleton.’

  ‘So we’re dependent upon Alyce for the hearing to be private?’

  ‘If she wants it to be. How serious is your problem with an open court, public hearing?’

  ‘As serious as it damned well can be! I don’t want to be publicly identified as a wife stealer. Because I’m not.’ The coffee was cold and too bitter and Jordan put it aside.

  ‘I may get some indication from pre-trial hearings.’

  ‘What about those pre-trial hearings?’ seized Jordan. ‘Surely we can argue for my dismissal from the proceedings, before it even gets to court?’

  ‘I’m going to file for dismissal, of course. But I’m not going to hold out hopes that I don’t have.’

  ‘This is a fucking travesty,’ exploded Jordan, despite all the warnings against losing his temper.

  ‘Travesty is a word invented for the law,’ said Beckwith. ‘My job is ensuring you’re not a victim of it.’

  More my job that yours, thought Jordan.

  Jordan was glad when almost at once Beckwith closed the meeting by announcing that the first of the exchanges from the other lawyers had been promised by the middle of the week and suggested a second session on the Thursday. Relieved, too. Jordan didn’t believe he’d handled himself well – maybe not even convincingly – during this first encounter with the American: the remaining, disorientating jet lag might have contributed a little to how ineffectual he considered himself to have been, but he couldn’t find a reason or excuse for the rest. He should, Jordan supposed, be encouraged by Beckwith’s argument that Alyce had been the instigator of the affair, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t had to exaggerate or lie answering the lawyer on how it had begun but there was no way of proving it to be the truth, so it came down to his word against hers. He wished he could remember what Alyce had said lying naked on the hotel bed in St Tropez. And that the questions crowding in upon him at this moment had come to mind when he’d been with Beckwith instead of now, when it was too late.

  Finally, objectively, Jordan confronted a hovering feeling he could identify. He hadn’t regained control of or over his life today and he was scared. Shit-scared.

  Eleven

  The lawyer skimmed the photographs across the desk and said, ‘Here’s the guy who hates your guts and wants all your money.’

  If Appleton ever found out what more was going to happen to him – which he never would – he was going to hate his guts a whole lot more, thought Jordan, picking up the prints. Alfred Jerome Appleton was a fleshy, heavy-featured, prominent-nosed man who combed his receding hair straight back, giving himself a high forehead, just above the left temple of which was a deep red strawberry mark. They were portraits but showed enough of the man’s shoulders to indicate a build to match his features. Jordan was sure, even before meeting him in the flesh, that Appleton would tower over him, although only ever physically.

  ‘And here’s his reason,’ said Beckwith, following with the photographs of Alyce. They reminded Jordan of the sort of pictures police released of someone after they had been arrested, charged with a crime and pictured for a criminal record file. Alyce was staring expressionlessly at the camera, her hair brushed – although not very well – straight down. Jordan didn’t think she’d bothered with any make-up, either, apart maybe for a lip liner, and she had worn her dark-rimmed spectacles, which she hadn’t when they had been together except when she’d needed to read. Her eyes were partially closed behind them. She was wearing black – Jordan couldn’t decide whether it was a dress or a sweater – without any visible jewellery. He was caught by the impression that, while not as determinedly as he’d tried, Alyce had posed to make herself as different as possible from how she normally looked.

  ‘That is Alyce, right?’ asked Beckwith, formally.

  ‘Doing her bag lady act on a bad day,’ confirmed Jordan. ‘Appleton looks years older.’

  The lawyer went to the papers before him. ‘Eleven years older, to be precise. Appleton’s forty-one to Alyce’s thirty-one: there’s a couple of months between the birthdays that makes it eleven months at the moment.’

  ‘You got all the papers now?’ demanded Jordan.

  ‘The first of the formal exchanges, yes.’ It was a tossed aside blazer in a heap today, the shirt less strident than before, although the bison belt was the same. ‘Alyce’s lawyer is a guy named Bob Reid: don’t remember him from when I practised down there.’

  ‘How’s it look, as far as I am concerned?’

  ‘On first reading I think there’s enough for me to apply for a pre-hearing dismissal of some if not all of the damages claims,’ said Beckwith. ‘The dates are in your favour. Alyce is citing two gals by name – a Sharon Borowski and a Leanne Jefferies – and others unnamed, all the adultery before you and Alyce met in France. And she’s claiming the same sort of criminal conversation damages against one of them, Leanne Jefferies.’

  ‘Why not Sharon Borowski?’ broke in Jordan.

  I don’t know at this stage.’

  ‘Tit for tat,’ declared Jordan, suddenly. ‘I’ve been trying to remember something Alyce said, when we were together. I asked outright about her marriage, used a silly expression like “what’s the status of your marriage?”. She said there wasn’t one, that it was over. I suggested she was playing tit for tat, she said “something like that” and asked if I was offended, at being used by her. I told her I wasn’t.’

  Beckwith concentrated on one of the document bundles on his desk, before leaning eagerly forward over it as he had at their first meeting. ‘Her exchange doesn’t say anything like that! But then I wouldn’t expect it to. It’s certainly something I can put to her if we ever get
into a full divorce court hearing.’

  ‘Would it help?’

  ‘Like hell it would help,’ insisted Beckwith. ‘It fits with what you already told me of her coming on to you … the woman scorned syndrome.’

  ‘What does she say, about her and me? About what happened in France?’

  ‘She doesn’t contradict your account at all, that it was a holiday thing with some revenge on her part. That her marriage was over and that what happened between you was a no-strings situation, certainly – most importantly – that nothing was prearranged. The covering letter from her attorney wants a meeting, ASAP.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Undefined,’ said Beckwith with a shrug. ‘I’m guessing a co-operating defence.’

  ‘I’d like to think that, too,’ said Jordan, meaning it. ‘My more immediate thought, though, is that it doesn’t look as if this is a conspiracy between her and her husband.’

  ‘Mine too,’ agreed Beckwith. ‘But let’s not get to feel too comfortable too soon.’

  I also don’t think Appleton’s case makes sense. If there’s chapter and verse in Alyce’s divorce application, with proof of Appleton screwing two named women as well as various others before Alyce and I even met, where the hell’s his case against me? It’s ridiculous.’

  I told you already that I know David Bartle and his firm, by reputation. And that they play hardball. At the moment I don’t think it makes any more sense than you. But Bartle wouldn’t be going this route if the judge might repeat your word – ridiculous – when he comes to make his judgement on the claims.’

  ‘Lesley told me in London the point of exchanging intended evidence is to prevent surprises in court?’ questioned Jordan.

  ‘It is,’ agreed Beckwith. ‘They’re making me work from the first gun.’

  ‘So you think they might be holding something back?’

  ‘They’ll be doing so at their peril. Dramatic, last presentation of evidence is OK for movie or television. You try it in reality and you’re likely to get it struck from the record. Which loses – defeats, in fact – the whole nonsense of trying it in the first place.’