Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

  Parnell had difficulty getting out of the car with his hands locked behind him, but managed it without coming into awkward contact with the two officers, who stood too close to the rear door. The manacles were only released inside the building. There they went through the property handover formality, bagging his belongings. In the interview room, all the recording apparatus on, Parnell was formally read his right against self-incrimination before being charged with causing death by dangerous driving, leaving the scene of an accident, failing to report an accident and driving in such a way as to endanger life.

  ‘Those are holding charges,’ finished Bellamy. ‘Just the start.’

  ‘Now you want to tell us what really happened?’ demanded Helen Montgomery.

  ‘I have a right to a lawyer, don’t I?’

  She sighed. Sticking to the necessary, recorded formality, she said: ‘You have such a right.’

  ‘I want to exercise it.’

  ‘It’s being done for you,’ reminded Bellamy. ‘Dwight Newton said he was talking to Dubette’s legal people.’

  ‘Then we’ll wait until they arrive,’ said Parnell. Seeing the immediate expression on Bellamy’s face, Parnell decided he was lucky not to have arrived at the station without being beaten for supposedly resisted arrest. Perhaps – although only just perhaps – there was an advantage in being an English boy after all.

  Both escorted Parnell to the detention cell, a narrow, tiled room equipped with a single bed and a lidless toilet bowl.

  The woman said: ‘I want your trouser belt and shoelaces. Your handkerchief, too. Had a bastard choke himself on his handkerchief once. Don’t want you cheating yourself out of what’s yours.’

  ‘Or cheating a lot of other guys out of their pleasure,’ added Bellamy.

  Without a watch, it was difficult for Parnell to judge time, but there was still daylight through the barred window when the door opened again. The detention officer said: ‘The canteen’s got pot roast. You want pot roast?’

  Parnell winced at the memory. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I thought you’d want that. I didn’t ask about anything else.’

  ‘I don’t want anything else. I’m supposed to be getting a lawyer?’

  ‘You called for one?’

  ‘It was being arranged for me.’

  ‘Don’t know anything about a lawyer.’

  ‘It’s being done.’

  ‘You wanna call again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Parnell nodded. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four thirty. You won’t get another chance to eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, thank you,’ Parnell refused again.

  He estimated it to be another hour before the door opened again to the detention officer, who jerked his head and said: ‘Your lawyers are here.’

  It wasn’t until he was out in the corridor that Parnell properly realized how claustrophobically small the detention cell was. The man said: ‘The pot roast was great. You missed a treat.’

  Peter Baldwin, the head of Dubette’s legal department, was already in the interview room into which Parnell had initially been taken. There were no flickering recording lights on the still-in-place apparatus. With Baldwin was another man, who was fat, balding and corseted in a tight, waistcoated striped suit. Baldwin said: ‘This is Gerry Fletcher, your court attorney. Dwight wants you to know right away that Dubette’s handling everything. Costs, I mean. I explained already to Gerry. He’s in the picture.’

  Fletcher’s handshake, like the hand itself, was soft. The man said: ‘Sorry it’s taken so long, but maybe it’s done us a favour.’

  ‘What favour?’ asked Parnell.

  ‘They took your car, obviously,’ said Fletcher. ‘Part of the evidence – the evidence. And they recovered Rebecca’s car from the canyon. They’ve done a paint match …’

  ‘Thank God …’ tried Parnell, but the attorney raised a podgy, halting hand.

  ‘There is a positive match, Dick. They got forensic proof it was your car – you – that pushed Rebecca over.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Of course, I’ll go for independent forensic tests, but we’ve got to work a mitigating strategy.’

  ‘No!’ refused Parnell again, as loud as before.

  ‘Dick, I can’t defend you unless you’re straight with me!’

  ‘I did not run Rebecca’s car off the road … kill her … that’s being straight with you.’

  ‘Dick!’ said Baldwin. ‘You’re in bad shape. We’re into limitation here.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ said Parnell, quieter, more controlled.

  ‘Dubette are backing you … going out on a limb … don’t make things any more difficult than they already are.’

  Coming forward towards Fletcher across the table, Parnell said: ‘You want me to plead guilty, to whatever the final charges are?’

  ‘You’re a scientist! You understand what I’m saying. They’ve got irrefutable scientific proof that it was your car that hit hers! And she’s dead, at the bottom of a gorge. What other strategy do we have?’

  Parnell turned to the company lawyer. ‘Thank you … thank Dubette … for the offer. But no.’

  Baldwin shook his head, uncertainly. ‘What are you talking about, Dick?’

  ‘Another lawyer. Another strategy. The right strategy.’ Parnell stood. ‘There isn’t anything else for us to talk about.’

  ‘Sit down!’ said Baldwin, and at once Parnell remembered the same snapped instruction from Dwight Newton.

  This time he didn’t do as he was told, walking instead to the door and pressing the summons bell.

  From behind him Baldwin said: ‘You’re insane. Perhaps that’s it! You’re insane.’

  Fletcher said: ‘You’re making one hell of a mistake.’

  ‘One of the officers who arrested me … who’d made her mind up that I was guilty, just like you … told me everyone keeps telling them that.’

  ‘In your case she was right,’ said the fat man.

  ‘You through already?’ demanded the detention officer, from the corridor.

  ‘Yes,’ said Parnell.

  ‘Don’t expect any help from Dubette,’ warned Baldwin, at the door.

  ‘I don’t. And won’t,’ said Parnell.

  It took Parnell a further hour to convince the desk sergeant that Fletcher and Baldwin had not been his choice of attorneys and that therefore he still had the legal right to a representative telephone call, part of his mind reeling with the awareness that he didn’t have – or know – a lawyer to call, apart from the contract attorney. He’d already decided on his only approach, hollowed by the desperation of it, when he was finally shown in to an unsupervised inner office. So anxious, shaking, was he that he misdialled at the first attempt, jabbing at the button to disconnect, actually mentally praying – Please God, let somebody be there! – for a reply.

  ‘Yes?’ said Beverley Jackson’s clipped voice.

  ‘I’m in trouble,’ said Parnell.

  ‘We know.’

  ‘Get me a trial lawyer. Please!’

  Twelve

  Barry Jackson was a heavily built, blond-haired man with a deep, half-moon scar on his left cheek. He wore a sports shirt, jeans and a sports jacket and apologized as he entered the detention cell. ‘I was at home when I got the call.’

  Reading the other man’s watch as the lawyer handed him his card, Parnell saw it was nearly midnight. Frowning down at the introduction, Parnell said: ‘Jackson?’

  ‘Beverley and I are still good friends. Just not good at being married – she never can bring herself to admit I’m always right. She thought you knew I was a lawyer – that that was why you called her.’

  ‘No,’ said Parnell. ‘Maybe it’s my first piece of luck.’

  ‘All I’ve got from the night sergeant are the charges. And I won’t be able to make a bail application until the morning. In between times, why don’t you tell me the story?’

  His story
was all that Parnell had thought about for so long it seemed forever, until his mind blocked and he didn’t feel he could think about it from any other direction. ‘You’re not going to believe it.’

  ‘You better hope I do.’

  Parnell told it – hoped he told it – chronologically, from the moment Rebecca had picked him up from Washington Circle. And didn’t leave anything out, not even Rebecca’s admission of her pregnancy termination, his belief that the Metro DC officers had known in advance of the damage to his Toyota or the English-boy mockery on his manacled way to the station house.

  ‘This guy, Fletcher? He told you there’s forensic evidence that it was your car that hit Rebecca’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I can hear you well enough.’

  ‘No,’ repeated Parnell, more softly. He ached with exhaustion.

  ‘I find you’re lying, I relinquish the case, OK?’

  ‘I’m not lying. And OK.’

  ‘You make a formal statement?’

  ‘No.’

  Jackson sighed, relieved. ‘You tell them about Rebecca’s abortion?’

  ‘No.’

  There was another relieved sigh. ‘So, they don’t have an obvious motive.’

  ‘Who’s side are you on?’

  ‘Mine, Dick. And yours. But I don’t take on losers. That’s what I meant about lying. The two officers threatened you? You threaten them back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘I told you what they were like – what they said.’

  ‘Maybe we can turn it. It’s not the major concern: I’m just worried about Rebecca’s car.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Beverley says I’ve got to do this pro bono.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for that!’

  The lawyer sat looking at him, unspeaking. Realizing, Parnell said: ‘No! There’s nothing between Beverley and me! On my life!’

  ‘Your life’s not worth much at the moment but I’ll believe you about Beverley, for the moment. It takes away another motive, you caught between two women.’

  ‘I fired Fletcher because he’d already decided I was guilty – said that’s how I had to plead and that we had to try for mitigation.’

  ‘I haven’t decided that or talked about guilty pleas or mitigation. But if you want to fire me, go ahead. It’ll cost you three hundred bucks for the consultation. There was a Perry Mason rerun on television tonight. I didn’t want to miss it.’

  ‘I want you to believe I’m innocent!’

  ‘I want to believe it, too. But I’m already way ahead of you, wondering how many cans of how many worms I’m going to have to open up to prove it.’

  ‘Please help me,’ pleaded Parnell. ‘I’ve thought about it every which way. I know how it looks.’

  ‘You good for a personal bail bond?’

  ‘Depends how much it is.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll need a bondsman. You’re a good enough risk, with the Dubette position.’

  ‘If I keep the Dubette position,’ said Parnell.

  ‘They fire you ahead of a formal verdict, I’ll strip their skin off, layer by layer, until they bleed to death.’

  ‘What about Beverley?’

  Jackson smiled, for the first time. ‘You just impressed me! They go for her while I’m going at them, her compensation would match yours.’

  ‘You just impressed me,’ said Parnell.

  ‘You don’t say anything to anyone about anything, OK? Just yes, please and thank you. The two officers are out of it now, until a court hearing. But no more threats against them. Or anyone else, no matter what they do or say.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Anything you want to ask me? Tell me?’

  ‘I don’t want this no win, no fee.’

  ‘Neither do I. So it isn’t.’

  It was more of a collapse into exhaustion than sleep and Parnell was awake long before the same detention officer, yawning away the effect of his own rumpled night, came into the cell with the offer of a bristle-matted electric razor, corned-beef hash and coffee. Parnell refused everything except the coffee, which came in a much stained, unbreakable tin mug that retained so much heat it was uncomfortable to drink. There were four other officers in the shower-equipped washroom to which the warder escorted him, but Peter Bellamy wasn’t among them. They all regarded him contemptuously. Parnell, accustomed to communal sports-room bathing, stripped without embarrassment. One of the watching officers said something to the others when Parnell came out of the shower cubicle and on their way back to the holding cell the detention officer said: ‘They think you’re shit, for what you did.’

  Obedient to the midnight instructions, Parnell said nothing. He estimated it to be another hour before the door opened again to the smirking Peter Bellamy, flanked by Helen Montgomery.

  The woman said: ‘Hear you got yourself a hot-shot lawyer.’

  Parnell didn’t reply.

  ‘Got Judge Wilson out of bed this morning to put the cars under court jurisdiction. Cranky son of a bitch, old Davey Wilson. Won’t like that one bit.’

  Parnell guessed neither of the officers did, either.

  ‘You got nothing to say, English boy?’ said the woman.

  ‘Are we going to court?’ He’d expected Barry Jackson to come back to the police station.

  ‘Bet that sweet ass we are,’ said Bellamy. ‘Gonna have you tucked up nice and safe in a proper jail with a lot of new and loving friends by tonight.’

  Parnell hesitated directly outside the cell door, half moving his hands to be manacled again, but Helen Montgomery said: ‘That smart lawyer of yours got an order against restraint.’

  ‘Which doesn’t prevent us from cuffing you, you do something we don’t like,’ warned Bellamy. ‘You be very, very careful, English boy.’

  It was bravado, Parnell guessed. He didn’t think they were worried yet but there was an uncertainty. The impression remained as he walked between them out into the receiving hall, where three of the officers from the washroom were standing. The expressions were still contemptuous but there were no sniggering remarks. There weren’t on the short drive to the courthouse, either. The car stopped directly in front of the building but it wasn’t until he started to get out, the two deputies already posed, that Parnell saw the cameras, television as well as presumably newspaper photographers. There was a babble of questions, which Parnell ignored. He tried to hurry through the pack but felt Bellamy’s hand upon his arm, slowing him, although at the same time he heard the man demanding that they be let through, which they finally were.

  Jackson was waiting outside their assigned court, in a subdued suit and muted tie. The lawyer said: ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Like shit.’

  ‘That’s just how you look. Those photographs aren’t going to flatter you, either. You already got today’s headlines, in the Washington Post even. Lot of background about your scientific work. Let’s get out of here, somewhere quieter.’ Jackson led the way into an anteroom equipped with a table, chairs and a closed, glass-fronted cabinet of neatly ordered legal books. As he sat where Jackson indicated, Parnell said: ‘Gather you started early?’

  ‘Earlier than you’d believe,’ said Jackson. ‘Did Bellamy or Montgomery question you about the contents of Rebecca’s purse?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What does AF209 mean to you?’

  Parnell stared back uncomprehendingly at the lawyer. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘If I tell you it means nothing it means nothing.’

  ‘It’s a flight number. An Air France flight number.’

  ‘Of course,’ understood Parnell. ‘It just didn’t seem to fit.’ Or did it?

  ‘What were Rebecca’s political views?’

  Parnell’s breath came out in a laugh. ‘We never discussed her political views. I don’t believe she had any, not seriously.’

 
‘What about you?’

  ‘What’s this got to do with Rebecca’s murder?’

  ‘It could have a lot to do with it. Answer the question.’ There was a hardness to the man’s questioning there hadn’t been before.

  ‘If you’re looking for an American near equivalent I guess it’s Democrat. But I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘You ever belonged to a radical political organization? At university, maybe, when everybody does.’

  ‘I wasn’t one of the everybodies.’

  ‘Does that mean you never belonged or subscribed in any way whatsoever to a radical political organization?’

  ‘That’s very precisely what it means,’ said Parnell. ‘You going to make it any easier for either of us, because at the moment I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  Jackson studied him across the table for several moments before saying: ‘I find you lied to me, I’ll throw you in the snake pit myself.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ said Parnell. ‘What’s the difference between a snake pit and the madhouse I’m in already?’

  ‘You might find out in a very short time,’ said Jackson. ‘Something else you should know is that getting the cars under the court’s jurisdiction gets them away from Metro DC police. I’m trying to fix independent forensic tests, as early as this afternoon if possible. Maybe, if you’re telling me the truth, it will be by someone more independent than we could hope for. Prosecution are going for a remand in custody, which I’m going to oppose, obviously. This is scheduled as an initial formality, a bail hearing … All that stuff in the papers about your professional career and integrity could help, as well as the rabbit I might have in my hat. And there might even be another edge.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Parnell.

  The man hesitated. ‘Don’t want to build up false hopes.’ There was another pause. ‘We’ve got the preliminary autopsy report. Rebecca’s neck was broken and there were extensive crush injuries to the chest. And there was no finding of excessive alcohol.’

  Parnell winced, coughing, at the listed injuries. ‘They said, the officers, she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. That can’t be. She always wore a seat belt.’