by Peter Murphy
CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR PETER MURPHY
‘Racy legal thrillers lift the lid on sex and racial prejudice at the bar’ – Guardian
‘Murphy paints a trenchant picture of establishment cover-up, and cannily subverts the clichés of the legal genre in his all-too-topical narrative’ – Financial Times
‘Peter Murphy’s novel is an excellent read from start to finish and highly recommended’ – Historical Novel Review
‘An intelligent amalgam of spy story and legal drama’ – Times
‘A gripping, enjoyable and informative read’ – Promoting Crime Fiction
‘The ability of an author to create living characters is always dependent on his knowledge of what they would do and say in any given circumstances – a talent that Peter Murphy possesses in abundance’ – Crime Review UK
‘Murphy’s clever legal thriller revels in the chicanery of the English law courts of the period’ – Independent
‘The forensic process is examined in a light touch, good-humoured style, which will evoke a constant stream of smiles, and chuckles from nonlawyers and lawyers alike’ – Lord Judge, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
‘A gripping page-turner. A compelling and disturbing tale of English law courts, lawyers, and their clients, told with the authenticity that only an insider like Murphy can deliver. The best read I’ve come across in a long time’ – David Ambrose
‘If anyone’s looking for the next big courtroom drama… look no further. Murphy is your man’ – ICLR
In honour of Thelma Weasenforth Lunaas and her attorney, Jo Beth Kloecker of the Texas Bar, who on behalf of the de Haven family took on the might of the United States Department of Justice in an attempt to secure the long-overdue recognition of Jacob de Haven.
This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty.
Alexander Hamilton
‘Eso no,’ respondió el ventero, ‘que no seré yo tan loco que me haga caballero andante: que bien veo que ahora no se usa lo que se usaba en aquel tiempo, cuando se dice que andaban por el mundo estos famosos caballeros.’
‘Certainly not,’ the innkeeper replied. ‘I myself shall never be mad enough to become a knight-errant: because I well understand that nowadays it’s not the thing to do; it’s not as it was in those days, when, so people say, those famous knights went about throughout the world.’
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote
Primera Parte, Capítulo XXXII, Part One, Chapter XXXII
1
Kiah Harmon
‘Kiah,’ Arya asked me once, ‘didn’t your mother ever tell you what your name means in our language?’
I’d been seeing Arya regularly since the Week from Hell. I guess you could call our meetings counselling sessions, though Arya would never have called what she did counselling, and I wouldn’t have cared what you called it, as long as I could sit back in that enormous soft leather armchair in her living room, inhale the ever-present aroma of her Neroli incense, and let her soft, hypnotic voice wash over me until the pain began to recede a little.
I have memories of that voice from as far back as I have memories of anything in my life, because Arya was my parents’ closest friend and we were in and out of each other’s houses all the time from my earliest years, and I had the sense, even as a small child, that my parents thought of Arya as a source of wisdom and hung on her every word. I remember wondering, when I became old enough to formulate such questions, what Arya actually did, whether she ever claimed a specific profession or vocation. She was older than my parents, and lived alone, having been widowed much earlier in her life. But when I asked my parents about it, they never answered directly, almost as if they were afraid that defining her, putting her in a box, giving her a label such as mystic, healer, counsellor, soothsayer, or astrologer, might somehow diminish her. I accepted this, and never felt the need to ask her myself. If she ever made use of any chart or instrument of divination, it was done out of my sight. For me, Arya was the voice, and it was Arya I needed after the Week.
I’d begun to drop in to see her after school and at weekends, without my parents, from the age of eleven or twelve. I don’t remember whether she suggested it, or whether it was my idea, or whether it just happened; but it continued as and when we both had the time, throughout my schooldays, and later when I did my undergraduate degree at Georgetown University, and then went on to the law school. Neither can I remember in detail everything we talked about together. But I do remember that she showed endless patience in listening without interruption to whatever I wanted to say; I remember that never once did she judge me; and I remember that she always seemed to have some word, some idea, for me that brought order to some area of my life that had become chaotic and was about to spiral out of control. I can’t say exactly, in fact I’m not sure I can even estimate how much influence she has had on my life, but she has been a constant wise presence, and I don’t think there is any part of the woman I am that doesn’t owe something to her.
Arya was the first person I told about my ambition to become a lawyer. My family, immigrants to the United States from India, had been doctors as far back as anyone could remember, until I defied the tradition. They had settled in Arlington, Virginia, and adopted the American surname ‘Harmon’ in place of their Indian surname of ‘Hariya’, believing that this would ease their integration into American society. That was two generations before me, and by the time I made my appearance as my parents’ only child, there was nothing, except our obvious Indian physical attributes and a few small images of the Hindu deities in our house, to mark us out as in any way different from any other American family. My decidedly non-religious, non-traditional lifestyle didn’t bother my parents. My departure from the doctor tradition, on the other hand, bothered them a lot. My undergraduate grades would have been good enough to get me into several leading medical schools. But Arya’s comforting and encouraging words, both to me and to my parents, poured oil on the troubled waters. She also supported me after I had graduated from law school and been admitted to the Virginia Bar, when I opted for the freedom of my own office in Arlington, rather than a life of indentured servitude with one of the large national law firms that offered to take me on as an associate.
I’d been in practice for about five years when the Week from Hell hit me. I’d built up a respectable client list in the DC and Virginia Indian communities, and I was just beginning to attract some significant commercial litigation from the wider community. I was thinking about expansion. Then the Week struck.
On the Tuesday, my parents died together in their car on the Custis Memorial Parkway, when the driver of the speeding truck ahead of them misjudged a bend at the junction with Lee Highway at East Falls Church. The truck turned over and burst into flames, giving my father no time to react. On the Thursday, Jordan, my live-in boyfriend of three years, told me that he was leaving me to move in with his secretary, who, in contrast to me, was not the kind of selfish bitch who insisted on putting her career ambitions ahead of settling down to start a family with him. He had chosen that day to break this news to me, he explained, because with my parents dying it was going to be a time of change for me in any case, and so there was no point in delaying matters. Might as well get it all over with at once.
I closed the office for three months while, with Arya’s help, I gradually crawled, inch by inch, out of the seemingly endless dark tunnel I had come to inhabit in my mind; until I clawed and scratched and dug my way through deep layers of primeval mud back to the surface; until I began to see daylight and the trees and the moon again; until I remembered how to breathe freely. It was
at some point during this darkest period of my life that she asked me whether my mother had told me what my name meant in our language. She had, I’m sure, but it had become buried in the deepest recesses of my memory.
‘It means “new beginning”,’ Arya reminded me. ‘It’s your time for a new beginning now.’
I remember shaking my head. When you live in the kind of tunnel I lived in then, you can’t accept that there is any good news, much less a new beginning. Such a thing doesn’t exist, and even if it did, there is no oxygen to sustain it. To believe it then was impossible. So I filed it away for possible future reference. But I knew that Arya attached no importance to whether you believed something she said right away. She never said anything unless she knew it to be true, and if it was true, it would manifest itself at the right time, and then you would know it was true, and she would never say ‘I told you so.’
2
‘Do you handle debt collection cases?’ she asked.
She hadn’t made an appointment. She just walked off the street into my office. If she had come before the Week, when the office had a real bustle about it, she would have had to come back when I had time to see her. But this was about eight months after I reopened, and although I had some work, the bustle was missing. When I closed the office, I’d had to hand over my cases to other lawyers, and many clients had not returned.
She was two or three inches taller than me, a little over six feet, her hair and eyes dark brown. She was smartly, professionally dressed in a light grey suit with a white neck scarf, and grey heels, not too high, her make-up classy and restrained. She was pulling a large, flexible brown leather briefcase on wheels. Today, I would recognise her on sight as a van Eyck. It’s the nose. There’s no mistaking it. The van Eyck nose is high at the top, with a pronounced bony drop to the lower part, which descends slightly off-centre, to the right, as an observer sees it. I have seen that nose countless times since, on the faces of family members, and in their portraits, and in the photographs in their homes and on the faded pages of old newspapers. I would recognise it anywhere. But at the time, it barely registered. I was too busy taking in her clothes, and wishing guiltily that I had paid more attention to mine.
Before the Week I would have been dressed very much as she was, dressed as a lawyer in a dark suit and starched white shirt. Every law professor and mentor I ever had insisted that success as a woman practicing law depended on it – and by the way, did I understand that the harshest critics of my sartorial standards would be, not men, but other women? But since the reopening, none of that seemed to matter to me. I did apply some basic make-up, and my clothes were well cared for, but they were clothes I felt comfortable in – coloured blouses and beige slacks, and there was still enough of India in me to prefer bare feet indoors, as we always had at home and at Arya’s house. The shoes I’d abandoned near the door of my office were casual with almost no heel, not the court shoes I hated but had once felt obliged to wear. As I stood to walk around my desk to greet her, I realised that they were out of reach. If she noticed, she didn’t seem to mind. She smiled.
‘I am Samantha van Eyck, the actress,’ she said. ‘Please call me Sam. Everyone does.’
We shook hands.
‘I’m Kiah Harmon.’
‘Kiah. That’s a pretty name.’
‘Thank you. It’s Indian.’
I waved her into a chair. She sat down and wheeled the briefcase into place beside her chair.
‘So, you’re an actress?’ Arlene had shown Sam in without giving me any clue about what she wanted. Apparently, Arlene had decided not to give me the option of turning Sam away without even knowing why she needed help, or putting her off to another day, which had become my post-Week default setting when faced with a new client.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sure I should recognise your name, but I haven’t been out much lately. I can’t remember when I last went to the theatre.’
It had been about eighteen months before, with Jordan.
She laughed. ‘There’s no reason at all why you should know my name. I’m a repertory actress. I’ve worked in the DC area, and out as far as Georgia and North Carolina, for the last five years since I graduated college, and that’s about it so far. Multiple nominee for best actress in a role nobody notices very much. A steady diet of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and one movie.’
‘Oh? Is it one I would have seen?’
‘I hope not.’
We laughed together.
‘In case you were wondering,’ she said, ‘I got your name from my cousin, Shelley Kinch. You handled a case for her, about two years ago, and she recommended you very highly.’
That was another effect the Week had. I had almost no memory for cases I had done before. Even my clients’ names seemed unfamiliar. Mercifully, this one rang a distant bell.
‘She worked for a private school in Bethesda teaching modern languages,’ Sam added.
It came back to me. Thank god (even though I don’t believe in him, or her, or them).
‘Sure, I remember. They discriminated against her; they wanted to pay her far less than the men doing the same job. They settled out of court.’
‘That’s it. The money you got her helped her start her own school. She’s doing great now, and she says you were so caring; you supported her emotionally as well as being her lawyer. You made a real difference for her.’
Did I? I was glad to hear that. Every boost to my confidence, however small, was welcome then, but the reference to emotional support surprised me. Had I been capable of that once? I wasn’t sure it was still in my repertoire now.
‘So, Sam, what can I do for you?’
Which was when she asked: ‘Do you handle debt collection cases?’
I said I did.
3
‘Assuming, obviously, that the amount involved is large enough to be worth your while, and mine,’ I added immediately.
As a young lawyer with your own office, you soon discover that there are any number of aggrieved people out there whose landlords have screwed them out of $300, by refusing to return part of their deposit or failing to pay for some repair to the common part of the building, and who think that retaining a lawyer and resorting to litigation would be an effective method of seeking redress. You get used to giving them more practical suggestions.
‘There won’t be any problem about that,’ Sam assured me.
‘OK. How much are we talking about?’
She reached down into the briefcase and took out a yellow pad, which, I could see, had some scribbled calculations on the top page. She took a moment or two to stare at it.
‘Before I go into that,’ she said, ‘in fairness I think I should warn you that it’s not your average collection case. It’s going to take a lot of time, and a lot of work. And as far as your fees are concerned…’
‘I assume it will be a contingency fee,’ I said. ‘That means I take a percentage if and when we recover the debt. If we don’t recover, you don’t owe me anything. I have a standard form of agreement. All lawyers do. I’ll take you through it and explain how it works before I ask you to sign up. That’s fine with me, as long as I know how much we’re looking at.’
She nodded, and looked down at the yellow pad again.
‘It’s difficult to say precisely, and even if I could, the information would be out of date five minutes from now, not to mention hopelessly out of date some time in the future when we actually recover the debt. So let me put it like this: taking an apparently random period of 250 years since the debt accrued – which isn’t really random, as I will explain – the debt would be a little more than 672 billion dollars.’
She looked up from the yellow pad.
‘When I say “a little more than”,’ she added, ‘I mean 672 billion plus several hundred thousand.’
Another thing you soon discover as a young lawyer with your own
office is that there are a significant number of crazy people out there who have seriously deranged ideas about how others have wronged them; about the vast sums of money they think they are entitled to by way of damages; and about the availability of punitive measures – such as incarceration or serious violence – they should be allowed to visit on the perpetrators. But you can usually see them coming a mile away, and they almost never get as far as my office. Arlene gets rid of them without any help from me. When she arrived, Sam didn’t strike me as playing in that league at all, and she must have made the same impression on Arlene. I found myself surprised, and a little disturbed, that she had got past both of us without raising any red flags. But seemingly, we had missed a live one, and I now had to figure out what to do about it. I settled on calling Arlene and asking her to have building security on standby, just in case. We had a code for such situations: I would ask her for the file in the Dangerfield case. But before I could make the call, Sam laughed again.
‘Yes, I do know that’s a lot of money,’ she said. ‘May I explain?’
I looked at her again. She didn’t look crazy, and she wasn’t acting crazy. I couldn’t see an axe or a .357 Magnum sticking out of her briefcase. Apart from her saying that she wanted to recover a debt of a little more than $672 billion, there was no overt sign of craziness at all. Perhaps I could let it run a bit longer. I took my hand off the receiver, but kept it close.
‘I think that would be a good idea, Sam,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me who you want to sue?’
‘The United States government,’ she replied.
‘The government?’ I asked. ‘You want to sue the government for 672 billion dollars?’
‘Yes. Is that a problem? You are allowed to sue the government, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘We’re not out to collect every last dime – even if that would be possible, which I’m sure it’s not. It’s not just about the money. We can settle for less.’