The Pinocchio Brief

by Silver Abi

“What did you say to him?”

  “I just sat there and said ‘Hello Partram’.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said I was a tosser and not to come back.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I won’t.”

  “No. And how are your mother and sister?”

  “Yeah. OK. Mum cries whenever she sees me but in a good way. And even my sister, she, well, she and her friends go all quiet now when I see them. I suppose I was a murderer for a short time. We talk about lots of things now.”

  “I see. I am pleased you talk. It’s not good to have secrets.”

  “Miss Burton.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know a secret about you.” Raymond’s direct, forthright, unblinking stare reminded Judith of his reputed lack of social skills, a condition he had remarkably managed to almost completely obliterate when giving evidence at trial.

  “Really?” Judith found herself taken aback but curious nevertheless. She cast a quick glance to see if Constance was heading their way yet, but she was still strumming her fingers on the bar top, waiting to attract the attention of the bar man.

  “Yes. I heard Dr Winter talking about it outside court, just before they called him as a witness. They were bringing me up from the cells and he was there talking to Mr Arkwright QC.”

  Judith stiffened.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Raymond’s tone had changed, from his original light, chatty pitch to a deeper, more sinister timbre. “Raymond, I don’t doubt you but what did you overhear, can you tell me quickly, please?” Judith asked.

  “Yes, no problem. His barrister, Mr Arkwright QC, was saying to Dr Winter that he had to tell it to the court anyway.”

  “Tell the court what?” Judith found her pulse quickening and her breath almost forcing itself out in short gasps.

  “I had to pretend I was tying my shoelace just so I could hear more. Dr Winter said ‘no’, said it wasn’t relevant and said he should never have let it slip, just that he had been taken by surprise when he heard Miss Burton, you, were the opposing barrister.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Mr Arkwright said it was ‘dynamite’ that you had helped Dr Winter do the research on Pinocchio and that it would blow your arguments out of the water. He said it would completely destroy your credibility and maybe even your career, although you didn’t really have one any more.”

  “What did Dr Winter say?”

  “He said ‘why on earth should he wish to do that to such an eminent and respected barrister?’ And ‘forget I said it and if you suggest it I will deny it, say you made it up and refuse to give evidence’.”

  Judith’s mouth was suddenly dry and she swallowed and moistened her lips. Raymond continued, unashamed and bold.

  “But don’t worry, Miss Burton. I won’t tell anyone. I mean it would look a bit strange you helping with Pinocchio, especially now we’ve shown it to be so flawed.”

  Judith eyed him suspiciously, his voice having recovered its more featherlike quality. “Yes, I suppose it would. Thank you for sharing that with me, Raymond.”

  “You’re welcome. But now I can see that you’re not as clever as I thought. I mean, I thought you had worked out all that stuff, about me moving my face, you know, by yourself. But that wasn’t true. You already knew about it.”

  “Success is not always about being clever.” Judith spoke through a barely open mouth. “It’s more often about using things you learn along the way, that’s all. That’s why people with experience are so invaluable, a fact people forget in our throwaway society.”

  Constance joined them with the drinks and Raymond drank most of his juice in one go, ignoring the straw and gulping it down. Judith sat very still, staring wistfully off into the distance.

  “Now that you’re here, Miss Lamb, there is something else I wanted to tell you both,” he continued as he placed his glass carefully on a coaster on the table, positioning it dead centre. Constance nodded once with feigned interest but Judith’s head snapped to attention. She was fearful of some further revelation regarding her Pinocchio days, and this time Constance was here to hear it.

  “It’s about Mrs Taylor,” Ray went on. “Mrs Taylor did hear something on the day of Mr Davis’ murder.”

  “Raymond. Whatever it is, don’t tell us. It’s all over now. We don’t need to know,” Judith cautioned, concerned that some kind of confession was going to follow and if she heard it, she would have to act. But Constance was thrusting forward, her eyes giving away her curiosity. She wanted the missing link, the fact which would help her make sense of the man’s murder. That was partly why she had invited Raymond.

  “Oh, it’s OK. I didn’t kill him,” he answered matter-of-factly. Judith exhaled loudly and threw a warning glance at Constance that they should swiftly bring the conversation to an end.

  “No, of course. We know you didn’t.” Constance was still smiling at Raymond, and either deliberately or innocently ignoring Judith. She really wanted to hear more.

  “I just thought you should know what really happened.” Raymond squeezed a childlike smile but Judith was not taken in; she remembered the act he had put on only two weeks earlier in court. She rose to leave the table but Raymond rose too and placed a droopy hand on her arm.

  “Miss Burton, I want you to hear this too, please. You just said I shouldn’t be ashamed of talking about things.”

  Judith fought to quell the nausea swirling in her throat and sat down again, hearing his words through a veil of queasiness.

  “I knew what had happened between Mr Davis and Partram, about the rugby match, and I was pleased. Because you heard from Jamie what Partram was like. Oh, there were others, too, but he was the worst. In another life he would have been Stalin or maybe even Hitler. The others were his henchmen. They just did it to impress him. I wanted to stop him.”

  “How did you know about Davis and Partram?” Constance asked.

  “Oh, there isn’t much which goes on in the school that I don’t know about. I can hack into anything; texts, emails, the school intranet. I didn’t often find much of interest but of course this stuff about Partram was very interesting.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, first of all I called off the Saracens scouts. I just told them Partram had signed for someone else.”

  “But why should they listen to you?”

  “Well, I wasn’t me when I told them. I was Mr Davis. I hacked his account in, I think it was, 47 seconds.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, that house master’s report you made Partram read out in court, his end of year report. That wasn’t what Mr Davis wrote. I mean, he told Partram he had to do better, but not like that. I mean, it was pretty extreme. Did you really think his house master would have written that? And his parents would have just accepted it?”

  Judith gasped.

  “And I did dislocate my shoulder in rugby but it was an accident that time, and I never broke my nose, not even nearly.”

  “You changed the medical log, but it was all in date order?”

  “Oh, Miss Burton. In the end you got there, you found the murderer, or rather Miss Lamb did, so it was all irrelevant, but I was trying to help you help me, like you asked when we first met. I know I said you two were the experts but I had skills too, so I just used them, like you asked.”

  “What else? You said it concerned Mrs Taylor.”

  “Yes. During the rugby match I was in my room. I registered and then I sneaked off when the other boys walked over to the pitch. I was coming down the stairs near Mrs Taylor’s room an hour later at 2.52, like I said, when I met Partram. He almost ran into me. I asked him what he was doing. He said he had just found out at half time that the scouts weren’t coming to watch him. Simpson had told him that Mr Davis had cancelled them. Oh, I neglected to mention that I had copied Simpson into Davis’ – well in reality, my – email to Saracens.”

  “And wha
t did you say to Partram?”

  “Nothing much. He said he was going to see Mr Davis to ask him why he’d done it; ruined his chances. I said that was a shame but he would never change Davis’ mind, that I’d just been with Davis and that he’d told me that Partram would never amount to anything and he was about to write to his parents. It might surprise you but Partram’s parents are quite strict. I remember them from visiting. His dad’s some kind of professor. They would hate anything getting in the way of his academic achievements.”

  “You lied to him.”

  “Yes. I did.” Raymond grinned broadly. “It wasn’t a big lie. I mean, now we know what Mr Bailey heard, it could’ve been true, if I had really had that conversation with Mr Davis, that is.”

  “And, let me guess, this made Partram fairly cross.”

  “Well, it seems like it now, doesn’t it? He shouted a bit. That’s what Mrs Taylor heard, you see. But I could never have imagined how cross it made him. It must have been a bit like the Incredible Hulk. I wish I’d seen it; when he confronted Mr Davis. That’s what steroid abuse does to you, so I’ve read.” He took a modest sip of orange juice this time, as he was nearing the bottom of the glass. “Ooh, delicious juice, thank you Miss Lamb.”

  Judith and Constance exchanged glances. “Steroid abuse?” Constance found her voice first.

  “Hm. I tried to tell you that bit, first of all, when you came. I drew you a picture. It was a clue.”

  “What, the circle? Oh God, Judith. I missed it. I’m sorry. Perfect Circle. It wasn’t art or being mad, it’s a brand. They make products, food additives, including anabolic steroids. I should’ve picked it up. I see them all the time at the gym.” Constance started tapping away on her phone and quickly found the screen shot she was seeking, waving an image of one the offending bottles before Judith’s nose.

  “But aren’t they illegal?”

  “Here, yes, in America, the Far East, no. But you can pretty much get them anywhere if you want, and have them delivered. Who got steroids for Andrew Partram, Raymond?” Constance asked, her face agitated and flushed.

  “I think you can probably guess that one yourself, can’t you?”

  “Mr Simpson?”

  “No. Uh-uh! Wrong again.” He laughed hysterically. “Who was even more desperate to top the sports league tables than anyone else?”

  “Not Mr Glover?” Constance was horrified.

  “Well done, Miss Lamb. I saw them in his cupboard. Months ago. And Partram used to go to his room sometimes in the evenings to get his dose. He thought nobody saw or heard. He had put on a few extra kilograms last term but he said he’d been working out.”

  “But when Judith asked you if you knew who killed Mr Davis, you said no,” Constance enquired, for the first time regretting her trespass into this difficult terrain but still unable to turn back.

  “That’s right. I didn’t know who killed him. I may have had my suspicions, but I couldn’t be sure. I never even saw him in Davis’ room.”

  “Ah!” Judith’s snort of indignation was so loud that half the inhabitants of the pub turned to stare at her. She steadied herself with great difficulty.

  “Did you think this was some kind of game, Raymond?” she retorted. “One man dead, a young man in jail, you almost in jail, your mother on sedation, Dr Winter’s years of work discredited, your headmaster sacked. All this because, what, Partram bullied you?”

  Raymond became very still again.

  “Do you know what it’s like to be bullied?” he asked intently. “Ah, I forgot. You don’t like the questions when I ask them, do you? Well, it’s not very nice. And it doesn’t end even when you sleep or try to sleep; it gets everywhere in your head till you can’t be yourself anywhere, anytime.”

  Although Raymond’s words were emotional, he spoke almost in a monotone and with a cool stillness about him.

  “But didn’t you realise the impact your behaviour might have on other innocent people, like Mr Davis?” Judith asked quietly.

  Raymond chewed his lip. “I’m surprised, knowing what you do now, that you think that any of those people you’ve mentioned are truly innocent,” he replied gravely.

  “But don’t you feel responsible at least in part for what has happened?” Judith went on, her tone more questioning.

  “No. It’s one of my character traits, isn’t it, Miss Burton. That’s what you told the judge; autistic spectrum, you said. If you look it up, online, as I did, ‘lack of remorse’, that’s one of the symptoms; you know that. It was all in that report Dr Gattley wrote.”

  “How do you know what was in her report?”

  “I told you. I can hack anything. I read it from beginning to end. I contemplated changing it, but I thought she might notice and then the game would be up. Once you, Miss Lamb, gave me an iPhone, I could do anything. The whole virtual world was at my feet.”

  Judith stared at Constance who shook her head slowly from side to side.

  “You knew what I was planning to ask the witnesses in court, didn’t you?” she asked Raymond, her nausea increasing all the time. “I wondered how you seemed to anticipate my questions.”

  “Yep. It was hard, as you do most of your work the old-fashioned way, on paper. But, of course, Miss Lamb kept asking you things by email. She was dying to know. So after a few of her emails you sent her a list entitled ‘areas of questioning’, do you remember? That was all I needed really. I extrapolated the rest.”

  “What else did you tamper with? Was everything we found on a computer doctored by you? Was any of our ‘evidence’ real?” Judith asked the question hypothetically but Raymond was happy to respond.

  “Oh, I don’t think there was anything else I changed. I didn’t need to. Only those few things I’ve mentioned. Like I said, if I’d changed too many things I would have got caught out.”

  “But you also used the iPhone to find out how to beat Pinocchio,” Constance muttered.

  “Yes. Although I was also ahead on that one. I had spent almost a month, 29 days in fact, researching new lie detection methods in my spare time. Incredibly lucky that was. I was already an expert on voice stress analysis when they locked me up. So I made sure when I confronted Partram that I kept my voice even. It was very successful. But I had read the stuff about facial cues as well. I knew where to go and what to do when Miss Lamb told me my testimony would be judged by Pinocchio.”

  Judith shot an angry glance at Constance, who stuck her chin out defiantly. There was no reason why she should have withheld that information from Raymond. In fact, it was good practice to tell your client what to expect in court.

  “And you really can’t complain about that,” Ray continued earnestly. “I could’ve simply hacked it too – the programme – and put something weird in there; you know like the Joker’s face from Batman. That would have embarrassed them all, including Dr Winter. It would have been easy for me but I thought beating it, during its trial, with the operator swearing it was working properly, that would be much more effective. I might even talk about it in my Cambridge interview. Not many Year 11s have managed to demolish an unbeatable piece of government-backed software.”

  Judith exhaled loudly. She wanted to retake control of the situation but she felt completely jaded. She reminded herself that Raymond was not the killer. The real killer was behind bars, because of what she and Constance had discovered.

  “I see. Where is it going to end, then, Raymond?” Judith asked softly.

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s finished. I’m not looking at your stuff now, or yours,” he added, turning his head towards Constance. “There’s no need. And the bullying has pretty much stopped, not surprising really, so I’m not spending much effort on school-related espionage either. It’s always a useful skill to have though, don’t you think? Perhaps after Cambridge, MI5 will want me?”

  Constance closed her eyes and sat back in her chair. Judith leaned the palms of her hands heavily on her knees.

  “I thought you would both be pleased,�
� Ray continued, smiling gently. “I really did. And grateful. I saw you got promoted, Miss Lamb. I was a bit worried near the end that you wouldn’t quite connect things up but you’re the experts, like I said, and you proved it.”

  “I think you should go now,” Judith whispered to Raymond.

  He stood up smartly and drained the last dregs of his juice with his straw.

  “Yes. Outstayed my welcome. I do that sometimes. Because I lack social skills. Goodbye Miss Burton, goodbye Miss Lamb. Thanks again for everything.

  44

  JUDITH’S HOME telephone had been ringing incessantly for days. Either someone had let slip that that was the best way to reach her, or the mass of unanswered electronic mail since the trial had led her pursuer to conclude that he needed another means of communication. She was still not ready to speak to anyone or respond. She knew that the case had provided her with the opportunity to reinvent herself, but she needed time to decide what form this reincarnation was to take.

  To the public, she was basking in the glory of her triumph and everyone wanted a piece of her. They proclaimed her mastery of cross-examination. They lauded her attention to detail and powers of conjecture. And, of course, more than that, her influence now extended across every case in the land. Because of Judith Burton, Pinocchio had been immediately withdrawn from all cases, then, after certain machinations behind the scenes, no doubt directly proportional to the sums of money the government had invested in it, reinstated, this time as a “tool” to assist judges and prosecutors in their work, rather than as a final arbiter of innocence or guilt.

  Judith had been asked to comment but refused. Greg Winter had provided lots of comments to the effect that the product was on its way back, bigger and better. The publicity led to the Chinese government placing a huge order and he was also in discussions with Mexico. He naturally ensured that at the same time he dropped in his plug for the new Trixter app.

  Privately, of course, Judith was tortured by the post mortem carried out in typical clinical fashion by the accused himself. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter; the boy, Partram, was a killer. You couldn’t have someone running around in society who would hurt or maim or murder at the slightest provocation. But she knew that, of the two boys, it was Raymond whom she found more terrifying and dangerous. He had manufactured the chain of events which had almost certainly led to Mr Davis’ death.