The Reckless Engineer (13 page)

CHAPTER 16

Tuesday, October 19 — Four Days Later

Jack pulled the bedding off his head and blinked at the sunlight from the window for a moment before turning over and diving back into safety under the covers. He was still running a high temperature, Caitlin had informed them.

A selection of breakfast delicacies lay on a silver tray on the bedside table next to the medicines Dr. Alexander had issued the night before, the food untouched but for the cracked shell of a soft-boiled egg in its holder and a piece of toast absent from the matching silver toast rack. A bottle of Evian water lay on Caitlin’s pillow next to him. Jeremy had half-woken Jack by opening the door a crack and peering in, but Jack had not seen him and was now asleep again.

Jeremy closed the door softly and headed back down. It was 10:48 a.m. on Tuesday.

Downstairs Harry was preparing everybody for the media onslaught to come as if he were running a military operation. Harry had defended a few celebrities and some high profile clients in the past, Jeremy knew. The media already loved the glamorous face of the sexy female victim they could splash across their TV screens and front pages, and now they were going to be handed a scandal involving a prominent family and a handsome millionaire suspect charged with the murders. Already the news of a suspect having been charged had been leaked to the press by some unknown source. It wasn’t going to be pretty, Harry had warned them.

Caitlin had tended to Jack all night and in the early hours of the morning, and was now locked in the boardroom with Douglas McAllen and her three top BlackGold engineers she had had driven up to the house from the offices. It had not been very difficult convincing Caitlin not to accompany Jack to the court hearing. Both Harry and Douglas McAllen had insisted that she remain away from the media glare for as long as possible. The picture of the stunning heiress wife would only feed the scandal and the media frenzy already stirred up by the images of a glamorous murder victim, and now a handsome and rich philanderer for a defendant.

A determined Peter was proving more difficult to dissuade. He was demanding to be by his father’s side for support.

‘None of you are family,’ he shouted at Harry standing up tall and facing the lawyer in the Reception room. ‘I don’t care if the media skins me alive. Dad is not in a good way right now. Just look at him. He can barely sit up and he’s running a high fever at 103 degrees. He needs his family around him.’

Blood was thicker than the gold and diamonds on Caitlin’s wedding band, Jeremy thought.

Caitlin had announced that Jack had refused any more food since she had fed him a piece of toast dipped in a half-boiled egg for breakfast. He had later thrown that up as well. Jack was indeed in a bad way.

In the end Harry gave in.

‘Very well, you may drive your father to the courthouse, but you have to agree to stay in the car behind tinted windows at all times. You must not have any contact with or speak a word to the reporters. That will cause no end of trouble for your father. Do you understand, Peter?’ Harry insisted.

‘Yes of course. I just want to be there for Dad because he needs me right now. I hate the media. I shan’t speak a word to them,’ he promised.

‘Peter, this is a life and death matter and you have to follow my instruction. The slightest misstep from someone in this household could turn things very bad for your father. Do you understand?’ Harry’s look and voice had the gravity of a High Court Judge.

‘Yes, I understand. I will only drive my father to and from the courthouse,’ Peter promised earnestly.

‘Very well. Now, could you help us by hiring two limousines with tinted glasses for the drive to the courthouse this afternoon? We do not want the press to be able to take photographs of Jack during the drive to and from the Magistrates’ Court. Caitlin suggested that you would know the best limousine companies around here.’

‘Yes, I can go out and pick them myself, Mr. Stavers. The limousine firm will drive them back with me and deliver the cars here. They will provide a driver if we need one.’

‘Hire cars like Audis or BMWs but nothing too ostentatious like a Jaguar,’ Harry advised him. ‘The public is going to sympathise even less with an ostentatiously rich defendant.’

Peter set out to perform the task assigned him forthwith.

Jeremy walked out the front door with him for some fresh air. He did not relish the part he had to play in Harry’s operation within the hour, calling Alan at Marine and preparing him for the news of Jack’s arraignment for the murders of Michelle and her unborn child sure to hit the headlines that evening.

Outside two workmen and Félipé were busy putting up eight-foot high metal sheets against the front gates and securing the perimeter wall, fences, and hedges to protect the privacy of the house. Jeremy watched them for a while.

Finally he came back in and walked over to the library. The black leather chair behind the massive mahogany desk sighed audibly at Jack’s predicament as it took his weight. Even the treasure trove of volumes stacked floor to ceiling on three and a half walls of bookshelves around the room could not offer him advice on the best approach he should take with the difficult conversation he had to handle. Jeremy stared at the phone for a quarter of an hour before finally picking up the receiver and dialling Alan’s number at Marine.

The Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court building was a forbidding three-story grey cement structure from the outside. On the two flights of wide cement steps that led up to its entrance Jeremy could see, from a distance, reporters and television crew awaiting their arrival. They would have found out the name of the defendant by now from the public court records of the scheduled hearings, Harry reckoned. Two cars had already been waiting for them parked outside the gates as they had emerged from the McAllen-Connor mansion earlier in the afternoon, and was now following them to the courthouse, unaware that only the driver, Harry, and Jeremy were behind the tinted glasses in the first car. Harry had arranged Peter to drive Jack and Magnus Laird in the second car out the side gates about 20 minutes behind them. They would remain parked on a side street close to the courthouse, awaiting Harry’s call for them to come in when the hearing was about to start.

The reporters on the courthouse steps looked expectantly at them as Harry and Jeremy got out of the car, unsure whether to approach them or not. Two reporters and a cameraman jumped out of the two cars tailing them and ran to their side, prompting the rest of the crew to hurry towards them. Suddenly they were mobbed by a crowd of reporters and camera crew.

‘Mr. Harry Stavers,’ one of them shouted. ‘Are you defending Jack Connor in this case? Can you give us a statement?’

Others thrust microphones at Jeremy, believing him to be Jack. They reminded him of a massive shoal of fish fighting for food thrown into the water.

‘Were you having an affair with Michelle Williams, Mr. Connor? Was the child yours? How is your family taking this?’

He was glad that Jack was not here; Jack was not in a state to handle this.

Harry held out a hand to quieten the mob and spoke into the microphones.

‘Yes, Barratt, Stavers & Associates are acting in Jack Connor’s defence. My client is innocent and we shall establish that. That is all I can say at this point in time.’

Harry muttered under his breath for Jeremy to follow him, and then walked confidently up the stairs through the crowd of reporters who made a narrow path through for them. The throbbing shoal of newsmen followed them indoors and through the security point shouting questions that Jack and his family would have found traumatising. The courtroom was a public place. There was no way to exclude them from the building.

Inside, the courthouse was a miserable place. Several youngsters stood or sat around in groups of two or three, some with their feet on the wooden benches along the walls, liberally covered in tattoos and sporting piercings in surprising parts of their bodies. They looked like seasoned and frequent visitors to the establishment. A few smartly dressed solicitors and a barrister in a cloak stood speaking to them and one single nervous defendant dressed in an oversized suit.

All eyes had turned to them as Harry and Jeremy entered through the large wooden doors followed by a procession of reporters. Harry signed on as Jack Connor’s defence attorney at the security reception. They then hurried past the tattooed and pierced fellow defendants and solicitors into the private consultation room away from the media that Harry had reserved for them.

Jeremy barely had time to catch his breath when there was a knock on the door. A man about an inch shorter than him, with a slightly slimmer build, and with brown hair somewhat greying at the temples opened the door and stepped in before anybody could answer the knock.

‘Mr. Harry Stavers? Carl Davis, from the Crown Prosecution Service. We spoke on the phone.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr. Davis. This is my associate, Jeremy Stone,’ Harry shook his hand.

‘How do you do, Mr. Davis.’ Jeremy followed suit.

‘This is the initial bundle of evidence from the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr. Stavers.’

Davis handed Harry a slab of papers about three inches thick bound together by a green string binder with thick rubber bands around them.

‘The judge will consider the adjournment of the case to the Crown Court for pre-trial matters and jury selection today, say two or three weeks from now?’

Harry nodded in agreement.

‘As you know there will be a bail hearing today. The CPS will not oppose bail, but we will require that Mr. Connor wear an electronic tag that will stop him from being away from his residence for longer than 24 hours.’

‘I wasn’t aware of this before now, Mr. Davis.’

‘You can present your arguments against it in court, Mr. Stavers. You are due in an hour and twenty minutes in district judge Caroline Petersen’s court. I expect you will have had the time to browse through the Crown’s primary evidence by then.’

Davis raised his eyebrows and nodded at the bundle ominously.

Jeremy looked at his watch. It was a minute past 1 p.m.

‘I shall see Mr. Connor and you in court soon, Mr. Stavers.’ Davis stepped back out the door and closed it behind him as suddenly as he had appeared.

‘Expect the unexpected with Carl Davis,’ Harry muttered as he took a seat at the head of the roughly used desk and dove into the bundle. ‘It has been said that surprise and sudden moves are his signature style.’

‘Sudden moves
and
sudden movements,’ Jeremy observed.

‘Quite.’ Harry laughed.

Jeremy walked over and looked out the window, then took a seat at the other end of the table.

Half an hour later, however, Harry’s mood was getting more and more sullen as the pages turned. His expression worried Jeremy.

‘This is looking bad for Jack right now,’ Harry eventually looked up from the papers. ‘They have Marine Electronics access logs and the building and car park CCTV footage of Jack leaving work with Michelle on Wednesday at 5:07 p.m. And again they have witness statements and store CCTV footage of Jack and Michelle shopping at her local Morrisons supermarket. That’s the last time Michelle has been seen alive by anyone other than Jack.’

Harry slid the CCTV stills across the table to him.

‘Except Peter,’ Jeremy reminded him. ‘Peter was on their tail. It seems like the police don’t know that yet.’

‘Indeed. And as you so skilfully deduced, Jeremy, Michelle and her unborn child did, in fact, die from cyanide poisoning, the time of death between 5:30 and 11:30 a.m. on Thursday the 14
th
of October. She was found dead on her living room sofa with the front door locked. They claim the poison had been administered by being injected into the centres of expensive chocolates from one of those London chocolatiers that Caitlin orders from . . . Cavalier chocolates, again as you deduced. They have found the still uneaten chocolates in the box, their centres filled with pure cyanide. Also the torn gift-wrap and a card typed simply with a message from Jack saying: “Congratulations on our little baby boy! Love, Jack.”’

Again Harry slid the photographs and the report across the table to Jeremy.

‘The card’s not signed,’ he mumbled.

‘What?’ Harry had not heard him clearly.

‘Jack has typed his name and his message on the card, instead of writing or signing it. And no fingerprints other than Michelle’s on the gift-wrap material or the card. Isn’t that unusual?’ Jeremy slid the photocopy back to Harry. ‘Besides, why would Jack damn himself with a card with his name on it if he gave her the poisoned chocolates?’

‘Hmm . . . curious. Anybody could have done this. And this could indicate a deliberate attempt to frame Jack. We may have a lead for a defence here yet.’ Harry’s mood seemed a little brighter.

‘The vial we saw does indeed have remnants of cyanide in it. And it was found amongst the low-grown bushes in Jack’s front garden.’

Harry slid over the papers and photographs pertaining to the discovery of the vial and read on quietly. They showed Jeremy a spot in the low-cropped bushes in Caitlin’s garden near the bend of the right arm (when viewed out the window of the Reception room) of the U-shaped driveway, marked with an arrow.

‘No fingerprints on the vial either,’ Jeremy muttered again.

‘What?’ Harry looked up from his reading.

‘No fingerprints on the vial. Whoever threw this vial in the bushes first took care to wipe off his or her fingerprints.’ Jeremy met his gaze.

Harry took back the pages of the report from Jeremy and went through them again carefully. Jeremy watched Harry in his pinstripe suit for a few minutes, dark brown hair parted sideways and conditioned to a shine leaving a slight wave at the top of his forehead. Then Jeremy quietly took the photographs of the murder scene and shuffled through. Jesus! This was Michelle in her dressing gown on her sofa, her head lolled to her right, phlegm streaming out her nose, saliva frothed at the side of her mouth. He slapped the photographs face down, feeling sick to his stomach. He got up, took two steps to the window behind him, and took in a deep breath of fresh air.