Don't Say a Word

by A. L. Bird

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’ Where does she stand?

  ‘What’s going on, Mum?’ Josh mouths at me.

  ‘It’s Louise, the child minder. She bought you the present.’

  Josh’s face lights up and he snatches the phone from me.

  ‘Hey, Louise. Thanks for the present. Mum was totally freaked out. She thought it was from a madman!’

  I take the phone back from him.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Louise. But we’re just a little jumpy. So maybe next time, maybe send a message with the present? Or just bring it round yourself?’

  ‘So, if there’s a next time, does that mean I still have a job? How come you’re not in at work today?’

  ‘I called in sick.’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  I do a little cough down the phone. There’s silence on the other end.

  ‘Not really,’ I admit.

  ‘Is my silly present the reason why you phoned in?’

  ‘A bit,’ I say, now feeling as silly as the present.

  ‘Oh, God, I’m really sorry, Jen. Look, let me come over and look after Josh, you get to work, and don’t lose any more sleep over it.’

  If I went to work, I could look up Rhea’s file. And if I stayed a bit late, maybe I could get into Tim’s computer? There’s no reason not to now, is there, as there’s an innocent explanation for the parcel?

  ‘Just a moment,’ I say. ‘Josh, are you OK to spend the day with Louise here?’

  His eyes light up. ‘Definitely.’ Great, he’d rather spend time with the child minder than me. Thanks, kiddo.

  ‘That would be great, Louise. Thank you.’

  ‘OK, see you in about half an hour.’

  ***

  So I get up and dressed (and, despite Josh’s protests, make him get up and dressed). I give Dan a quick call to tell him what’s going on, but I don’t get through so I drop him a text. True to her word, Louise is ringing the bell in thirty minutes.

  ‘Take my key,’ I tell her, hoping Dan won’t mind. But I don’t want her and Josh imprisoned all day, if there’s an emergency.

  ‘Be careful, won’t you,’ I say. ‘No answering the door to strangers!’

  I laugh like it’s a joke. No one else laughs.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Louise tells me. ‘We won’t answer the door.’

  I shiver slightly. I don’t like her tone. Should I take my coat off again? Abandon the whole thing?

  But Josh looks so happy to see her, and is busy trying to show her round the flat. It will be fine.

  ‘Just one thing,’ I ask her, before I go. ‘How come the head wasn’t on the little Lego character?’

  ‘Oh, wasn’t it?’ she asks. ‘Silly me.’

  But she says it firmly, like she doesn’t feel silly at all.

  I blush, feeling stupid for asking such a question. ‘Well, I suppose they’re so small, aren’t they, these little Lego things?’

  ‘Small and fragile,’ replies Louise, ruffling Josh’s hair.

  I move to the front door, but I feel like my heart is pulling me back, as though I’ve stuck some gum to Josh. Don’t go out the door! It’s not safe! I hesitate at the doorframe. Should I stay, send Louise away for the day?

  ‘I texted Tim to say you were coming in,’ Louise says.

  ‘Right,’ I say. Who does that?

  ‘Bye, Mum, see you later!’ Josh says.

  And they move back into the flat, leaving me at the door alone.

  I can’t just stand there all day. I suppose. So I leave. After all, I know where they are. And I know who Louise is. I have to be brave. I have to trust someone, or I can’t function. Dan, Louise, Tim, Bill – the Jen support team.

  So. Into the office. In search of help for Rhea. Because I have responsibility there too. For me and for Chloe.

  When I arrive, I have to be a little apologetic. I go straight to see Bill.

  ‘Hi, Bill,’ I say, knocking on his door.

  ‘Oh, Jen – you’re in! Hi!’

  ‘I felt better, so thought I’d come in. Don’t want to tarnish my record and all that!’

  ‘Oh dear, feeling ill in the morning – anything we should know about, hey?’ And he winks at me.

  No, I want to say, you politically incorrect dinosaur, I’m not pregnant. News of me and Dan is obviously travelling fast, releasing people from usual office norms.

  ‘I had a sore throat, I was all croaky, but a bit of Lemsip worked wonders.’

  ‘Ah well, good to have you in. I think Tim wanted to see you.’

  Yes, of course he does. So much for keeping under the radar.

  As I walk through the office to my desk, I’m aware of sly looks from the men, disapproving looks from the women. What, is there a picture of me fucking Dan on their screensavers? We’ve had sex once, I want to scream. It’s about more than that. It’s about a grown-up taking you in when you’re at your lowest and looking after you. It’s rarer than you’d fucking think.

  But there’s too much backstory for them to get their heads round, so I dump my bag at my desk and go in to see Tim.

  ‘Shut the door, Jen,’ he says. ‘I’ve an update.’

  I close the door and sit down.

  ‘I spoke to Rhea this morning,’ he says.

  ‘Oh right,’ I answer. But my brain is whirring. Has Dan spoken to Tim? What did Dan tell him? I try to feign nonchalance. ‘How’s that work – do you make an appointment, or do the prison go and find her, or what?’

  ‘Don’t worry yourself about the detail,’ he says. ‘The fact is, she’s getting desperate. She needs someone to help her help herself. I wondered if you had any ideas?’

  ‘What, from a legal point of view?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he says. ‘What else would there be?’

  There’s a pause. Is this my opportunity?

  ‘I’ve been racking my brains,’ I tell him. ‘But I haven’t been able to think of anything. I wondered, could I see the whole file? Not just the paper one, the electronic one as well?’

  Tim shrugs. ‘I’ve never been one for electronic files. You’re safer with paper.’

  ‘Well, maybe emails then. Just so I have the whole picture.’

  ‘There aren’t many emails.’

  ‘There must be some – with Dan, with the CPS, day-to-day matters.’

  ‘I delete them when I’m done with them,’ he says.

  That’s pretty odd for a litigator. Odd and frustrating.

  He turns to his computer and starts tapping away.

  ‘OK, I might have a few,’ he acknowledges. ‘I’ll send them through to you. If you turn Sherlock and have any bright ideas let me know, otherwise I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed for that poor girl. And her kid.’

  I go back to my desk. While I’m waiting for my emails to load, I open the physical file, and flick through to the picture of Rhea. I stroke her face. She seems to have got even more beautiful than last time. I wonder what her kid looks like. I can imagine little wiry bunches, a cheeky grin, pretty freckles like her mummy. A happy child then? Don’t be stupid, Jen. Who’s putting her hair into bunches now that Mummy’s locked up? What’s putting a smile on her face?

  Finally my emails have loaded. There are five from Tim. One to Dan with the charge sheet the CPS sent. One to the CPS with the letter Dan drafted about the updated charge sheet. And one from Dan with that letter in draft. Another one attaching notes from a meeting with Rhea. One from Dan saying they need to set something up soon.

  And that’s it. Tim has apparently merrily been deleting everything as he says. I flick to the front of the physical file. He hasn’t been updating that either. Where are his notes of recent meetings with Rhea? Are they still in the filing pile in his room? Does he really not give enough of a shit to be professional?

  OK, so I need to work with what I’ve got. I click into the updated charge sheet that Tim sent to Dan. I’m scrolling throug
h when I get a tap on my shoulder.

  It’s Tim. His face is white.

  ‘Jen, awful news. Rhea’s tried to kill herself. Made a noose out of her shoelaces. She’s in a bad way. I’m going over to the hospital to check they’re treating her OK.’

  Shit. This is my fault. If I only I had the balls to tell. To say fuck Chloe, fuck Mick – fuck my job, fuck living with my son, fuck life as I know it.

  I grab my bag.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I tell Tim.

  He pauses. ‘No, no – you stay there. I don’t want to crowd her.’

  But I’m following him out of the door. I want to see Rhea. I need to see Rhea. If I can get one moment with her, maybe I can make everything all right.

  Tim turns round to face me. ‘Jen, you’re not coming with me. It’s unprofessional, OK? I must say, I really have doubts about your judgement at the moment.’

  His voice is loud. The whole office can hear, even though I’m sure they’ll pretend not to listen. I have to back down.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Tell me when there’s an update.’

  I go back to my desk and try to swallow back the tears. What do they tell her kid? Will they even tell her anything? Of all the things I would never ever do to Josh, it’s that – let him think he’s not a reason to live for. But if I thought he might be taken away from me, for ever? Even then. Because then I’d kill the fucker who thought they were taking him away. Not myself.

  Does the CPS know? They must do. Can I phone them? Make an emotional appeal? Tell them that on a humanitarian basis they should drop the case?

  Oh, don’t be stupid. It will end up in the court papers. I’ll be ridiculed and fired.

  Well, then, maybe I need to start drafting an anonymous confession.

  It won’t have any weight, though. They’ll disregard it as a crank note.

  But if I don’t do something, this Rhea person is going to die. Because if someone’s tried once, they’ll try again, right?

  Until they succeed.

  Then it hits me. How I can do it. I can write a note to the CPS as though it’s from Chloe. And I can make it a condition that she is not contacted, otherwise she’ll deny all knowledge. But it will have to be disclosable in court, and the CPS will send us a copy, and it will be enough for us to bring down the case. Maybe. And if no one tries to contact Chloe, then Chloe can’t come dredging up my past, and she – or the perjury trial I’d surely face – can’t shatter this life of mine.

  But what will it say?

  I guess: Rhea Stevens could not possibly have been there that day, at that meeting. Because there was no meeting with Mick that involved drugs being handed over. Chloe Brown planted the drugs in Mick Hardy’s bag, knowing full well he wasn’t dealing. She made up that he was heading to a meeting. Listened carefully to hear that there was a fresh consignment of wraps being made up in the house, and that Mick was planning an (unrelated) business trip. Mick already had the wraps with him when he left the house (unbeknownst to him); he wasn’t picking them up en route. That’s why they are the same cut as were at the house.

  And that’s what doesn’t make sense about the Rhea Stevens charge sheet! When the police caught him, they had been tipped off it was part of the same drugs haul that they would find at his house. What is Mick playing at, adding this extra layer of complexity? They knew no one was handing the drugs over to him. He already had them. That was the point; that’s how they brought down the gang at the house! Why haven’t the CPS checked up their own files? Could I not just refer them to their own case, not drop Chloe in it at all?

  But maybe they have checked, and they don’t care? Maybe they’re so delighted to have one extra thing on some junkie whore – that would be their words, not mine – that they don’t care if it doesn’t tally with their historical files. After all, there’s a string of alleged offences since that one ten years ago, the detail there to blind us with. Yet it’s worth adding that old one in case the mud sticks. If she gets sentenced on drugs charges, a judge is more likely to care about that than the legally grey prostitution part.

  Boom – trash off the street for a good long time. And a guy who has already served most of his sentence maybe gets a little bit of time cut off on parole by showing ‘remorse’ for something he knows he hasn’t done. That’s Mick’s game, right? He wants the breeze through his hair a little bit sooner. Or maybe he thinks it will somehow help the rest of the people in the house, sentenced along with him?

  So basically, unless Chloe confesses (explains how on 20 November 2006 Mick really came to have twenty wraps of crack in his bag), no one is going to give a shit about Rhea. She’ll be locked up. Chloe framing Mick will have ended up in two ‘innocent’ people being locked away. And Rhea’s little girl … Well, I know what will happen there. So I have to help.

  Even though it potentially gets Mick out a bit earlier. Even though it means permanently ruining Chloe. I don’t know if I’ll forgive myself for that. And there’s going to be a fuck of a fallout. Witness protection won’t know what’s hit them. They can’t withdraw their support, can they? I guess maybe they could. But we’d be more at risk than ever, in some ways, even more deserving of their services. Plus we’ve got another, more effective, support network now. I’ve got Dan.

  Maybe it will be OK. Is maybe enough? Am I playing roulette with Josh’s future, again? But we need to set things straight for Rhea. I can’t ignore that, even in what remains of my conscience. Chloe never intended to hurt anyone like her – someone so much like us. Maybe this is a redemption for her. Not that she’ll see it that way.

  Don’t focus on that. Just do the deed. Set up a Word document. Go to the bottom, straight away. Delete the automatic firm reference that comes up – a giveaway that it’s come from our office.

  Heading – in the case of R. v Rhea Stevens.

  Hold on.

  Hold on.

  Word version. Our coding.

  I flick screens to the CPS charge sheet.

  It’s a Word version. Not a PDF like you’d expect.

  I scroll down to the bottom. It has the little in-built reference number unique to our firm’s documents.

  I type that reference into the system.

  And up comes a document. I can’t open it, because it’s password protected. But it exists.

  The charge sheet was created here. Not by the CPS.

  Chapter 33

  There must be a dozen different explanations.

  But I can only think of three.

  1. That for some reason the CPS sent over a key document like this in Word format, leaving it open to tampering.

  2. That for some reason, Tim got his secretary to copy-type the document – maybe to mark it up with comments.

  3. That for some reason, Tim has invented the charge sheet by himself. Complete with Doncaster detail and references to Mick. And I don’t know why he would do that. But it makes me feel sick.

  I can eliminate the first two pretty easily.

  I go over and speak to Sheila, Tim’s PA.

  ‘How are you?’ she asks me. I ignore the subtext. The Dan subtext. It’s always there. Only this time added to it is the subtext of having my professional judgement called into question in front of the whole office earlier. And there’s her questioning glance over my clothes – yes, still the date outfit. A bit crumpled now. I hug my arms over myself. It feels like when I’d pull myself off a park bench, then try and operate in the real world. The civilized world.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell her. ‘Listen. Could you do me a favour? I need to help Tim with something while he’s out. Could you flick me on an email he would have received from the CPS on around the 2nd? On the Rhea Stevens case?’

  ‘I can look, but he keeps so many emails, and he doesn’t delete or file any of them – it’s a mess.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. Different story from Tim’s. ‘Can you maybe do a word search for “Rhea”?’

  She does, and only the f
ive emails I’ve seen come up.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  ‘Did he by any chance get you to copy-type this document?’

  I show her the charge sheet.

  She crinkles up her nose. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell,’ she says. But she starts clicking away in various search screens. ‘No – not one of mine. Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason,’ I say.

  Then I go back to my desk.

  I’m being faced with explanation three – that Tim has made up the amended charge sheet for some reason of his own.

  I’m going to have to eliminate that one too. And there’s only one way to do that. Phone up the CPS.

  He’s not in, so he can’t hear me. The colleagues who usually sit around me are in the kitchen making tea, having a gossip (probably about me).

  Now’s my chance.

  I find the original charge sheet correspondence on the physical file. I can’t see a phone number so I look online. There’s a local contact number so I dial that.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, to the guy who answers. ‘I’m calling to check the details of a case I’m working on defending. I just need a status update.’

  ‘What do you mean, a status update?’

  Fuck – I don’t know! I thought they might know.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure. I’m new – my boss just told me to do that. Please, I can’t go back to him with nothing.’

  Big sigh from the other end of the line. ‘Fine, let me take a look. Case number?’

  So I give him a case number.

  ‘You need to ask your boss to give you the number again,’ says the man. ‘That case doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Sorry … what?’

  ‘The case doesn’t exist. There’s nothing with that reference.’

  ‘Can I just read it out to you again?’

  So I do. And he says it again. The Rhea Stevens case doesn’t exist.

  Chapter 34

  I sit holding the telephone, long after the CPS man has hung up.

  The Rhea Stevens case doesn’t exist.

  The Rhea Stevens case doesn’t exist?

  I thought maybe Tim had fiddled a charge sheet to mess with my head but – the whole case?