Mine

by J. L. Butler

  ‘I know you’re a brilliant lawyer, Fran, but you’re Martin Joy’s divorce lawyer and this has got to be his criminal team’s job now.’

  His words were like a personal affront. I couldn’t believe he’d be so pedestrian.

  ‘But we have a head start on them,’ I said, hearing the panic in my voice. ‘I don’t know his solicitor Matthew Clarkson at all, but for all we know they might not be even thinking in terms of doing their own investigation. And even if they are, we started a week ago.’

  I had a notebook in my bag – Martin’s bag – and I put it on the table, opening my ink pen with a satisfying pop.

  I liked to write things down. It helped me work things out and clarify my thoughts.

  ‘When we met the other day, you said that you thought Donna Joy was seeing someone. That there’d been mini-breaks, and several nights when she didn’t come home. You said you thought she was seeing her husband, but what if it was someone else?’

  ‘Someone other than Martin Joy?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ I said, forcing myself to remain emotionally unattached. ‘She was separated. In her eyes, she was young, free and single. She was an attractive woman . . .’ I stopped short of saying beautiful. ‘She would have had admirers. Lots of them.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ said Phil, nodding.

  ‘You should look into it.’

  Phil peered at me over the rim of his glass and frowned. ‘Has the client authorized it? Dave Gilbert didn’t want me to chase down the mini-breaks . . .’

  ‘That was Martin’s divorce. It was just intel-gathering for negotiations on the financial settlement. This is different,’ I said, letting my words hang heavily between us.

  ‘So Martin wants us to look into it,’ he replied slowly.

  ‘I’ll speak to him later, but he wants us to help in any way we can.’

  Phil looked as if he was about to shake his head, but finally he shrugged.

  ‘Just make sure you let his criminal solicitor know what we’re up to. I don’t want to go treading on anyone’s toes, all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied, standing up to go to the loo.

  In the cool, dark bathroom, I felt better already. It was good coming here, I decided. It had been a good idea to meet Phil. Although I couldn’t remember any more details about what I saw the night that Donna and Martin met for dinner, I felt as if I had taken a step away from the edge of the chasm. I felt more empowered and finally able to see a way through the darkness.

  I placed my hands on either side of the cold enamel sink, then turned on the tap to splash some water on my face. As I looked up into the mirror I could see thin trails of mascara drip from the corners of my eyes, dark and soulful like Pierrot’s tears. I wiped it again with the corner of a tissue, reapplied my red lipstick and felt ready to step outside again. I felt back in control, my body surging with emotion and excitement, ideas coming thick and fast about what we could do.

  My stomach rumbled and I realized I was hungry. I didn’t want to stay in the pub any longer, and wondered if Phil would come for dinner with me somewhere on the King’s Road.

  I ascended from the basement bathroom, and as I approached our table I noticed that Phil was reading a newspaper, a copy of today’s Evening Standard.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ said Phil, glancing up. His expression was serious and I was immediately on guard.

  I sat down and he turned the paper so that I could see it.

  ‘Police have released an e-fit of someone they’d like to talk to,’ he said, pointing at the newsprint.

  It took a second to register the significance of the picture, but when I did, I felt a wave of panic so strong it almost knocked me off my seat.

  ‘I suppose it’s good for Martin,’ said Phil, finishing off his beer. ‘At least it means they’re open-minded, considering that the husband might not be the doer – you know, if anything has happened to Donna Joy.’

  I was only half listening, my eyes speed-reading the story that Phil had given me. The news-story that revealed that police would urgently like to speak to a thirty-something woman who was asking about Donna Joy’s whereabouts on the evening of her disappearance. A woman with brown hair, wearing a black coat and a green scarf, who had been at Donna’s studio around seven o’clock. My eyes flickered to the e-fit – the narrow, distrustful eyes, the almost comically rounded nose, and I was almost offended that it was not a very accurate or flattering likeness of me.

  Chapter 24

  ‘What do you mean, it’s you?’ said Phil, and I took a deep breath and told him as casually as I could that I was the person in the e-fit.

  I had to tell him of course. I knew I had to have Phil onside and informed if he was to be able to help me.

  ‘The case was contentious and getting increasingly ugly,’ I said, wishing I had another vodka tonic in front of me. ‘Donna was still complaining that Martin wasn’t disclosing all his assets, and was hinting that she wanted more robust forensic accounting to look into his affairs. I was worried that things weren’t going to be resolved at the FDR hearing, so I wanted to chat to her, off the record. See if I could talk some sense into her.’

  I was literally making it up as I went along and I knew that from Phil’s own personal experience in divorce proceedings he would know it was highly unprofessional of me to try and talk to Donna in this way.

  He stared at the newspaper but when he returned his gaze to me, it was with a look of concern.

  ‘Jesus, Fran. You’ve got to tell the police that,’ he said, closing the Standard.

  For a second I didn’t say anything, although I was tempted to tell Phil everything. About my affair with Martin, about the night I sat at this table and watched the house, turning up at my own home, hours later, drunk, bloodied and cut up at the sight and thought of my lover with his wife.

  But I also knew Martin needed me out here, fighting his corner, not tied up in the police investigation or being implicated myself. So, for now, I decided to keep those facts to myself.

  ‘I know, I agree,’ I said simply, as my heart hammered inside my chest.

  The panic was returning. I thought Phil might at least try to make a joke out of it. Tell me that the e-fit looked like a female Morph. That perhaps I should sue the police artists, but he looked worryingly serious.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he said as I grabbed my bag in readiness to leave.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I smiled, knowing that the only coping strategy I could muster right then was some levity. ‘I’ll pop into the station on the way home. I don’t want the police to think they’ve got a decent lead on something when it’s just some workaholic barrister giving her client a little extra help.’

  I had to ring Tom Briscoe to get Matthew Clarkson’s mobile number. My call went straight to voicemail, but when I contacted his secretary through the firm’s switchboard it took me less than a minute to discover that the officers now dealing with Donna Joy’s disappearance were based in Pimlico.

  The change in location of the team now dealing with her case did not escape me. I spent a few minutes googling the name and number of the officer I had been told to contact and I realized that Donna’s case was no longer being handled by Kensington and Chelsea CID, but MIT, one of the murder investigation teams dotted around London. I knew enough about the unit to know that they specialized in murder, manslaughter offences and high-risk missing persons cases. I had no idea why they were taking Donna’s disappearance so seriously but I was determined to find out.

  DI Doyle, the investigation officer I’d been advised to contact, was based at Belgravia police station on Buckingham Palace Road, and I couldn’t help but think how much Donna would have liked that. No squad based in Ealing or Barking for her. Even her disappearance was being dealt with in the most regal SW1 postcode.

  The building itself was unremarkable, Brutalist brown-brick Seventies architecture.

  I exhaled slowly, wiped my clammy palms on my coat, and announced
myself at reception. The seats were all taken and I tried to distract myself by wondering what everyone was here for. The furious-looking suit had probably had his Porsche stolen; the uptight pensioner was reporting a disturbance and I had no idea why the woman with a facial tattoo, simultaneously rocking a buggy and shouting into her mobile was here, but I was not in reception long enough to think of her back-story.

  Perhaps Clarkson’s office had already phoned ahead, but within a couple of minutes a uniformed policewoman invited me to follow her through a warren of corridors. She said very little, gave no clues about what was to happen next, and I was too busy wondering what to say when I reached my destination to make conversation.

  She opened the door to a meeting room, asked if I wanted a cup of tea and disappeared, returning a couple of minutes later with a plastic cup containing an anaemic-looking brew. I watched her leave, and took a grateful sip, feeling hot and on edge as I waited. I stopped myself from checking my phone – I felt as if I were being watched in this sterile, enclosed space and wanted to remain exact and unimpeachable.

  It was another few minutes before the door opened again and I welcomed the cool gust of fresher air into the room.

  A dark-haired man in a suit, younger than I expected, thirty-something, his bulk straining beneath his jacket, extended a hand.

  ‘Rob Collins,’ he said putting his more superior mug of coffee on the table. ‘I’m one of the Detective Sergeants working with DI King. Thanks for coming in.’

  I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed that I hadn’t got the supervising officer, but a voice told me that I just had to get my excuses off my chest and get out of there.

  ‘You’re a colleague of Matthew Clarkson,’ he said, more of a statement of fact than a question.

  ‘No,’ I replied, shaking my head. ‘But I am Martin Joy’s lawyer. One of them, at least.’

  ‘How many does he need?’ said Collins, giving me the slightest smile, a gesture of solidarity that gave me confidence even though I detected an insult directed at the rich banker they had been questioning.

  ‘So. What’s this in connection with?’ he asked finally, and I knew it was my moment in the spotlight. I’d felt this a thousand times before, the flutter of stage fright, nerves, performance anxiety before I stepped up in court. Every time I stepped up in court, if truth be told. I was not a natural performer; even when I had my knowledge of the law and my conviction in the case on my side, I still felt it, the dread, the doubt, the shiver of naked fear.

  My hand was on my knee and even though I was wearing trousers I could feel the dampness of my palm through the material.

  ‘An e-fit that was released to the Evening Standard this afternoon,’ I said as coolly as I could. ‘The police wanted to speak to a woman who had been spotted at Donna Joy’s studio last week.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rob Collins, looking more animated.

  ‘It was me,’ I replied, trying to strike the right note between casualness and an understanding of the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘You?’

  He took another sip of coffee and flipped open the A4 pad he had brought with him.

  His face looked more relaxed than it had when he first came in. He’d get a slap on the back for this interview; perhaps tomorrow he’d get a juicier job than interviewing the random people who came forward with ‘information’.

  ‘Well, I think it’s me,’ I added. ‘I left work at around six o’clock and went to Mrs Joy’s studio. I would have got there at about six forty-five, and I was wearing a black coat and a green scarf, like it says in your appeal. Personally, I don’t think the e-fit looks much like me, but I did speak to a lady – grey-haired, in her fifties – who told me that Donna had left for the evening.’

  ‘That would have been Joanna Morrison,’ said Collins, writing all this down.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘We took a statement off her. She’s an artist at the studio. She gave a description to our e-fit artist. Obviously, we thought it was of interest that someone was asking after Donna on the night she disappeared.’

  ‘As I said, it was me.’ I drained the remains of my cold tea from the plastic cup.

  ‘What were you there for?’ he ventured.

  ‘I have to be careful here,’ I continued slowly. ‘Client confidentiality. I have an obligation to him to keep certain things private.’

  ‘Tell me what you think you can tell me,’ said Collins, his voice hardening a little.

  I took a breath and repeated the story I had told Phil Robertson. It was easier to lie this time, so easy it felt like the truth already.

  ‘I’ve been in this business a long time and I knew things weren’t going to settle at the Joy vs Joy FDR. Contentious Final Hearings are never helpful, they are stressful, expensive and I didn’t want my client, Mr Joy to go through all that. Mrs Joy’s divorce lawyers were being obstructive. I just wanted to see if I could talk to her. Woman to woman.’

  I paused for dramatic effect. For a moment I’d forgotten that I was in a stuffy police interview room and not in court. I realized that I was putting on a show and I was impressed with my performance, grateful that I’d had a trial run with Phil Robertson and pre-empted the doubts that Collins might have had.

  ‘And that’s why you went to her studio?’ he said, trying to look me directly in the eye.

  ‘It’s not the textbook way of doing things but, in my opinion, the practical one,’ I replied, with the considered, knowledgeable court face I had practised so often in the mirror.

  ‘But you didn’t see Mrs Joy at all?’

  ‘As I said, the older lady told me she’d left for the day.’

  ‘So then what did you do?’

  I took a discreet deep breath before I said, ‘I went home.’

  ‘You went home.’

  ‘Yes,’ I repeated in the clearest, most confident voice I could muster.

  ‘And you never saw or spoke to Donna Joy after that.’

  ‘No,’ I said, knowing that I had just taken a step down a path I could not turn back from.

  Chapter 25

  I rested my head on the cold window of the taxi as I replayed the meeting over and over in my head, wondering if I should have played it differently. I had lied to an officer of the law. A detective sergeant involved in a high-profile missing persons case, a person they most likely thought was dead or certainly in danger. As a lawyer, I knew better than anyone that this constituted perverting the course of justice, a common-law crime, and punishable – in theory – with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

  For a second I pictured myself dressed in a prison jumpsuit, but forced myself to snap out of it. I had not told Sergeant Collins an out-and-out lie, I tried to convince myself. Just a little white one.

  An off-the-record chat with Donna Joy at her studio could have been constructive and I did go home that evening. Eventually.

  No. What I told Rob Collins was a simplified version of the truth that was better for all parties concerned. Better for the investigation. And my information was useful. Collins said so himself – he had thanked me for coming down to the station and for clarifying the matter of Donna’s mystery visitor that night.

  I tried to zone out, my eyes not quite focusing on the London buildings and evening lights – smears of red and white in the rain-speckled glass – that sped past. The coloured patterns were hypnotic; after a while, though, they seemed to conspire with the confusion of thoughts in my head to make me feel sick. I was glad when at last the cab stopped outside my flat, my feet connecting gratefully with the pavement, as if I had just dismounted a particularly unpleasant fairground ride.

  My building looked dark and lonely. The top-floor flat had been vacant for months and although there had been rumours of a lodger moving in, there had been no signs of life there since Christmas. Pete Carroll’s ground-floor apartment was also unlit. When I’d left his flat the week before, he had mentioned he was going away for a few days on a
research trip, not specifying for how long. I was glad he wasn’t around.

  I put my key in the lock and stepped into the hall. I switched on the light but the bulb made a gentle pop and after a brief, bright flash, I was back in the dark. Post was scattered on the doormat. I scooped it up and put it on the hall table next to the two piles of letters, mine and Pete’s, that I had sorted on Friday.

  My weary body was almost unable to propel me forward up the stairs to my flat and when I stepped inside, I went straight to the living room, collapsing on the sofa and bending my arm so that my forearm covered my eyes.

  I desperately wanted to sleep but my mind was so active. I thought about Martin, about what he was doing that very moment, details that Rob Collins, when I had asked, was unable – or unwilling – to tell me. I thought about the forensics team that I had seen in Chelsea and had even given them names – Julia and Tony and Helen. I imagined they had all gone home by now. Taken off their overalls, scrubbed themselves down and returned to their comfortingly ordinary lives, untroubled by victims and criminals. And I thought about Donna. Where was she and what could I do to help find her? The police might believe she was dead, but I didn’t want to contemplate it. We would find her, and everything would get back to normal. My work, my life, my relationship with Martin.

  I allowed my mind to wander. I allowed myself to imagine myself, one hand on my neat, swollen belly, another holding my lover’s fingers. I imagined us walking across a beach, or maybe a meadow as we discussed names for our baby. I imagined us laughing, swimming, drinking, eating, fucking. I just imagined us together. As one.

  And then I told myself to calm down. That the emotions surging through me were beginning to feel like mania. When I was younger, before university, before a name had been given to my mood swings, before things had got bad, I liked feeling this way. It was like a drug, a natural high that gave me super-powers. I remember being able to stay awake for hours on end to revise and without it I’m not even sure I’d have got the A-level grades to study law.