When the barrister spoke, time stood still. I wanted to hit him with a hot poker. I found myself silently punctuating his sentences. They were filled with commas and semicolons. A full stop was rare. He just kept going on and on in a slow, steady, mind-numbingly flat tone.
‘I will argue that the defendants, known as Jenkins Storage World, one, owed a duty of care to the deceased, two, breached that duty and, three, that the said breach caused or contributed to the deceased’s death . . .’
A full stop now, please.
‘. . . although we must bear in mind that the defendant is mounting a contributory negligence defence which . . .’
Kill me now, I thought to myself. I glanced at Casey. If she was suffering, I couldn’t tell. She always had a harassed expression on her face.
Counsel took a sip of coffee, slurping loudly. Everything about this man irritated me.
‘Okay,’ Casey interrupted, ‘so they have their contributory negligence defence, which is essentially a question of fact, based on Webb’s statement. But the evidence against them is as damning as one could hope for. We have the minutes from the staff meeting which prove that these safety issues were known to the defendant before Maureen’s death. Then there is this purchase order, which proves that a faulty security camera was purchased but that nothing was done to fix it prior to Maureen’s death. The manager’s handwritten note shows that.’
Counsel tapped his surprisingly slender fingers together; his fat elbows were perched on the desk.
‘But you said that you acquired the purchase order from an anonymous source?’
‘Yes. But we should still be able to put it to Rodney Marks when he’s on the stand. I have no reason to doubt its authenticity.’
‘Very well. It seems to me that the prospects of success are considerably high and we may probably be settling at the doors of the court. You will note, I hope, that I say probably as distinct from possibly as there is a palpable difference between the two as discussed in obiter dictum by His Honour Judge Madon in the High Court case of . . .’
OH MY GOD, put me out of my misery. This was torture. It was like they were competing to see who could use more words in a sentence. And was it just me or were they both overlooking the obvious? Why did two of the best pieces of evidence against the defendant both suddenly surface out of the blue? Putting aside the fact that I knew Rodney and Bernie were in on the case together, Casey and Valopolous were ignoring two really important facts. The meeting minutes had suddenly appeared after Webb’s damaging statement came forward, and months after the lawyers were supposed to have swapped all their documents. You didn’t need a law degree to smell the dodginess there. Then the purchase order miraculously appeared and helped us sink Jenkins even further. I didn’t buy it. For it to be genuine would be a bigger miracle than curing lepers.
And here were Valopolous and Casey ignoring the smoke alarm. Worse, they were swinging the broom at the alarm to shut it up.
The hearing would start on Monday. Casey and Valopolous were convinced that the case was a winner and I was no closer to exposing Bernie.
I’d been drawing up an evidence chart, recording all the pieces of information I’d gathered about the case. But I wanted a new notebook for the hearing.
It was Thursday night and the shops were open late. After dinner, I decided to walk to the local plaza. Nadine and Mary insisted on joining me. Nadine was bored and Mary, hearing that I was going to the newsagent, decided that she needed a new notebook too.
‘So what happened with that stingy miser?’ Nadine asked on our way.
‘What stingy miser?’ Mary asked.
‘None of your business,’ Nadine snapped.
‘Good point,’ I said.
Nadine pulled on my sleeve. ‘Come on. Tell me. I’m entitled to know.’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Try me.’
‘You’re too young.’
‘Hello. We were born thirteen months apart!’
I grinned and she gave me a shove. ‘You are such a stuck-up pig.’
‘Takes one to know one.’
‘Oh, how original.’
‘Guys, shut up,’ Mary pleaded. ‘You’re hurting my head.’
‘He’s genetically incapable of shutting up,’ Nadine said.
‘Noah, slow down,’ Mary whined. ‘You’re walking too fast!’
We bickered the whole way there. I’m pretty sure Nadine was enjoying it as much as I was given that this kind of freestyle arguing would have met with legal consequences at home – the kind that involved a meat tenderiser, a disciplinary hearing and another lecture.
Nadine and Mary followed me into the newsagent. Nadine went straight to the magazines and Mary tagged behind me as I headed to the shelves stocking a huge range of notebooks. I chose an A4 notebook and stood waiting for Mary. She was muttering under her breath, flipping through all the notebooks.
She was taking ages and I was getting frustrated. ‘What are you looking for? It’s not a dress. It’s bound paper. How hard can it be to choose?’
She gave me a condescending look, as if to say that I didn’t understand the higher order of notebooks.
‘In case you haven’t noticed, I use the exact same kind of notebook for all our disciplinary hearings.’
‘No, I hadn’t,’ I said drily.
‘It’s tradition, and Dad says tradition is important.’
‘Yeah, well, Dad says a lot of things. Can you just pick one, please?’
‘The one I get isn’t here. Just let me ask them.’
I stopped myself from swearing and went to pay for my notebook.
‘Excuse me,’ Mary said to the girl serving me. ‘I’m after the red and black Collins notebook.’
‘All our notebooks are along the back shelves.’
‘I’ve looked but the brand I want isn’t there.’
‘Then we don’t stock it.’
‘Yes you do. I always buy my notebooks from here.’ Mary opened her bag and pulled out a notebook. ‘This is the one. And I bought it from here.’
The girl at the counter sighed, not bothering to mask her grumpiness. ‘We’ve got a huge range of stock.’
I quickly jumped in. We didn’t want Mary worked up about her notebook-purchasing habits. ‘She needs this one for school. They’re not allowed any other brand.’
‘Oh, okay,’ the girl said. ‘What fascists. Hey, Jay, come over and serve this other customer. We’ve got a crisis here.’
Mary didn’t appreciate her sarcasm so I gave Mary a reassuring smile. The girl dived under the counter and came back up with a large folder. ‘This is all our stock. Pass your notebook to me.’
The girl turned the notebook over and read the numbers on the barcode. Then she flipped through the pages in the folder. After a couple of moments she handed the notebook back to Mary.
‘The manufacturer has stopped making this particular line,’ she said and slammed the folder shut.
‘What do you mean?’ Mary said in an almost strangled whisper, the colour draining from her face. My dad really had a lot to answer for.
The girl sighed impatiently. ‘See, the barcode you have is the old line. The manufacturer has produced a new line now so the barcode is different. So you can go back and tell your teachers. Okay?’
We were clearly being dismissed.
For the next fifteen minutes Nadine and I sat on the bench outside the newsagent scoffing down some buns from the bakery while we waited for Mary, who was still in the newsagent selecting her new notebook.
Amit came over to my place on Saturday evening. We were playing basketball in the courts near my house. We were going over what the woman at the apartment block had told me for the zillionth time.
‘So she saw somebody in a hood and mask drive off around the time of the attack?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘I told you the guy who ran through the shops wasn’t the killer.’ Amit shot the ball through the hoop.
I ran af
ter it and dribbled the ball back and forth in front of me. ‘Could the masked guy have had an accomplice?’
‘It doesn’t make sense. If the guy who ran through the shop was an accomplice he would have been waiting in the car, wouldn’t he? Ready to drive off?’
I shot the ball, missing. It rebounded off the backboard and Amit ran after it.
‘Yeah, you’re right.’
‘Anyway, man, we’re not here to solve the murder. The cops haven’t even been able to do that. No witnesses, no weapon, no forensics. The cops have nothing. Maureen’s murder is just a distraction. You’ve got to stay focused. You need to make sure Bernie doesn’t win his case. This is about fraud.’
‘I guess you’re right.’ I launched at him and tried to get the ball off him.
We spent the rest of the game talking about what we’d do in Terrigal, even though I had no idea if I’d be going.
My sisters and I spent Sunday at Mum’s. It was the twins’ sixth birthday. The backyard was filled with fifteen first-graders who, between them, had already managed three soft-tissue injuries, more than fifteen reports of bullying (one of them involving a snotty tissue stuffed into a pair of Dora Crocs), a bloodied nose (which actually turned out to be tomato sauce) and several impromptu Hi-5 concerts.
Nadine and Mary were the designated face painters. I knew this to be a bad idea given Nadine was argumentative, even with little people. Just as I predicted, I walked past her at one stage and she was arguing with a teary girl who wanted her face painted like a pink cat.
‘But cats aren’t pink,’ Nadine said.
‘But I want it pink,’ the girl wailed.
‘But don’t you want it to look realistic?’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s no such thing as a pink cat.’
‘But my Disney book has a pink cat.’
‘Disney is fantasy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You really need to extend your vocabulary. Oh for God’s sake, fine, I’ll draw you an unrealistic, fantastical pink cat.’
The girl burst into tears and Mum marched over to Nadine. Mary ended up taking over, happy to draw as many pink cats as demanded.
During the uproar, George approached me. I was on the back porch, watching Mum and Nadine still arguing.
‘I ran that description through the system,’ he said, taking a sip from a Wiggles juice box.
I turned to him, trying to look casual. ‘Thanks for that. So what did you come up with?’
‘Nothing,’ he said and shrugged. ‘No dark Fords reported stolen or found dumped.’
‘Oh.’ I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment.
He took another swig from the juice box. ‘But all that means is that nobody reported it stolen, or that we haven’t found it. It could very well have been stolen but the theft was never reported.’
‘I’m still at a dead end.’
He leaned over the porch railing beside me. ‘Do you want to talk me through it? I might be able to help.’
I was tempted. But how could I explain that most of what I knew was because I’d invaded people’s privacy, gone snooping, even spied on a guy at his house? I wouldn’t expect my own dad to let me get away with that let alone my mum’s husband.
‘Nah, it’s okay.’
I was at a dead end. And the hearing was tomorrow.
Monday morning. I was wheeling a heavy suitcase to court while Casey walked beside me, juggling a couple of folders, a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
Amit had wanted to come to court to watch the trial but given the mobile phone switch incident there was no way he could risk Bernie seeing him again. Jacinta was caught up helping Ameena back in the office.
I was furious with myself. Bernie would be the first person to give evidence and I had nothing I could produce in court to bring him down.
I almost laughed aloud. I couldn’t imagine what Casey or Aunt Nirvine would say if they knew I wanted to bring down their own client. It wouldn’t exactly be the best way to earn them future business. But I couldn’t let myself think about that. I had to stay focused on the fact that Bernie White was a calculating liar, a fraud and a bully.
We went through security at the Supreme Court and headed up to a courtroom on level nine. We were half an hour early. The courtroom was open so we entered. We were alone. The defendant’s legal team hadn’t arrived yet. Casey ordered me to arrange the folders in a logical order and place them side by side against the wall, to the right of the bar table. I was doing this when Bernie arrived.
He was wearing a suit and his salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back with gel, his mullet hanging down the back. I was hoping that when he was scrubbed and polished he’d look more like a sleazy car salesman and get under the judge’s skin, but in fact he looked okay, sympathetic even. I tried very hard to keep my cool. I couldn’t let him see I was not on his side. As if to rub it in, Bernie walked up to me and gave me a friendly slap on the back.
‘Hello, mate! D-day at last, hey?’
‘Yep!’ I stood up straight and, using as much of my drama skills as I could manage, said, ‘All the best with it. I’m sure you’re going to be great on the witness stand.’
‘Thanks, mate.’ He leaned close to me. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m pretty frigging nervous.’
‘Just keep the image of Maureen in your head and you’ll do fine.’
He smiled at me. ‘Oh, mate, I’m touched, you know? That’s exactly what I plan to do.’
I wondered if you could knock somebody out by smashing a folder over their head.
Paul in-need-of-urgent-speech-therapy Valopolous walked in. I almost howled with laughter. If he looked like he belonged in a Charles Dickens novel while sitting behind his desk (Mr Vranken’s English lessons hadn’t completely passed me by), he looked even more ridiculous in his black robes and big grey wig.
He marched up to Casey and they stood talking in hushed tones. Valopolous then dumped his folders on the bar table and turned to Bernie, who was now sitting in the first row of chairs behind the bar table nervously tapping his right foot on the floor.
‘Hello again, Bernie,’ Valopolous said in his plummy voice. ‘You are foot-tapping, a common trait displayed in witnesses prior to their taking the stand.’ He took a step closer to Bernie, who was appropriately awed in the presence of the barrister about to represent him. ‘Do not be nervous. We’ve practised your testimony and counsel for the defendant hasn’t got a leg to stand on.’ He then chuckled, his colossal stomach heaving up and down. ‘I mean that quite literally. I was playing golf with Fred Wallace on Saturday and he injured his ankle. He’ll be limping into court and I predict that once our witnesses are finished he’ll be limping back to his office and advising his client to pay up before the judge rules.’ He roared with laughter and Bernie let out a nervous chuckle, clearly unsure what to make of him.
Fred Wallace, the limping, golf-playing barrister briefed to appear for Jenkins Storage World, entered the courtroom, flanked by Rodney Marks and his solicitor, Jeff Humphries. Valopolous and Wallace were joking around while Humphries and Casey, both looking stressed, were setting up the bench, arranging papers and law books.
I sat two seats from Bernie, close to the folders, so that I had quick access to the documents whenever Valopolous needed them. I noticed that Bernie and Rodney didn’t once exchange a look. The sleazebags were playing their parts perfectly.
Two loud knocks sounded and we all stood up ready for the judge to enter.
Judge Sophie Monahan was presiding. Casey had been delighted with our pick of the draw. Judge Monahan had been a plaintiff personal injury lawyer and she had a reputation for not being able to disguise her bias.
I took out my notebook and pen, ready to take notes. I thought Bernie would be called to the stand. But the barristers weren’t interested in witnesses yet. Wallace was keen on tearing apart Professor Banks’ expert report, challenging almost every line.
Judge Monahan listened patiently
to Wallace and Valopolous fight over whether the sentence ‘a lack of clarity about one’s responsibilities – rather than fear or selfishness – is the prime reason for inaction when confronted with crime’ was based on fact or opinion. Bernie was yawning. I was ready to fall asleep too.
They continued arguing over the expert report until the eleven o’clock recess. Even Judge Monahan seemed relieved to take a break. Wallace, Rodney Marks and Humphries left the courtroom.
‘How long is that going to go on for?’ Bernie asked.
Casey stretched her arms high. ‘I’m not sure. Counsel?’
Valopolous didn’t respond immediately. He kept writing. Eventually he stopped, turned around and said: ‘Fifteen minutes. Then I’ll call you to the stand, Bernie.’
Bernie left for a quick cigarette break. When court started ten minutes later, Valopolous and Wallace continued arguing over the expert report. I thought I might die of boredom.
I glanced at Rodney. He was hunched over, elbows propped up on his thighs, staring at Bernie. I noticed Humphries nod to Rodney and then Rodney got up and left the courtroom. He couldn’t listen to Bernie give evidence because he was going on the stand too. It probably burned him being kept in the dark like that.
It seemed like an eternity had passed when Valopolous finally called Bernie to the stand.
Bernie looked nervous as he walked to the witness box. He stepped up and stood in front of the chair. The court clerk handed him a bible, and asked him to repeat the oath.
After taking the oath Bernie sat down and Valopolous stood in front of the lectern, leaning one arm against it, standing at an angle to Bernie. He asked Bernie to state his name and address, which he did.
‘And your occupation?’
‘I’m unemployed. I’ve been living off workers’ comp benefits since 1999.’
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