Authors: Catherine Hunt
‘Me? You must be joking.’
‘Unfortunately not. The allegations they’re making about the emails, we need to take them seriously.’
Ronnie was on home ground now – the emails had the whiff of crime about them and he was an astute criminal lawyer. He had wanted chapter and verse on everything in the divorce submission. Everything except the email allegations. He didn’t want to hear about them. If Harry had broken the law, and Ronnie knew about it, he wouldn’t be able to act for him in criminal proceedings if Harry chose to deny it later. Better, then, that he didn’t know.
‘Are you intending to say I’m mad?’ Harry snarled. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’
Ronnie was annoyed. He was doing his best for the man. He’d said at the beginning he didn’t want to take on the divorce. He’d made it clear he was not a specialist but Harry had insisted. Ronnie understood why, but still thought his friend should hire an expert. He had assured Harry that financial disclosure to another lawyer could be ‘finessed’. But Harry would not budge. In the end, Ronnie had reluctantly agreed. He wasn’t going to take any flak, though, now the going had got tough.
‘I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with the way I’m handling things,’ Ronnie’s tone implied that Harry would be most welcome to go elsewhere.
‘I don’t want to see a shrink.’
‘It’s the only safe way. We need a mental health defence in place in case the allegations cause problems. Prepare the ground for saying that whatever you did, you did it when your mind was unbalanced by the stress and trauma of your marriage breakdown.’
‘If you say I’m crazy I’ll never get to see my daughter,’ Harry said, furious.
Ronnie looked at him impatiently.
‘You’ve got to be realistic, Harry. You’ll just have to take your chances over Martha. There’s a lot of very nasty stuff alleged about what sort of husband and father you are. The priority now has to be to look after yourself and your assets.’
‘That fucking lawyer has twisted everything. It’s lies, all of it. She needs to be taught a lesson, needs to learn she won’t get away with it,’ Harry spat out the words.
Lying sleepless in his bed, the desire for retribution was strong, like acid eating into his soul. He was not going to let some smart lawyer destroy him, a lawyer who had turned his wife into a vindictive, ungrateful bitch of the first order.
Harry had met Anna eleven years ago when she was twenty-two and had applied for a post as his PA at his main office in Hove. By mid-way through the interview he was craving her. Not surprisingly, she got the job. A year later they were married. He was thirty-four, his property development business had taken off, and he wanted a wife and children. He had thought her so sweet, so loyal, and so terribly in need of him. But he had been wrong, totally wrong. She had thrown his love right back in his face.
Now her solicitor was demanding a ludicrously large settlement. If she got it, she would close on wipe him out, though Ronnie kept telling him that some of his assets, salted away over the years in various overseas accounts, could be kept safe and undisclosed. But Ronnie’s assurances were proving less than reliable.
‘This Laura Maxwell your wife’s using,’ Ronnie said soon after the divorce began, ‘the judge isn’t going to like her tactics.’
What garbage that had turned out to be, Harry thought savagely. The judges barely seemed to grasp the issues involved let alone the strategies of his wife’s malicious lawyer. Despite the five court hearings he had so far attended and the growing pile of paperwork associated with his case, he’d never seen the same judge twice.
Harry knew the financial damage would be bad. Most of his assets were visible, and however hard he tried, he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a wealthy man. Equality was the yardstick in divorce settlements these days and didn’t Laura Maxwell just know it. Equality – what a joke that was. Harry lay on his back, his body rigid with fury, sweat on his forehead though the night was cold.
He had made what he considered to be a generous offer to his wife, a very generous offer indeed, and a lot more than the greedy cow deserved, but Laura Maxwell had dismissed it out of hand. All she wanted was to confront him and crush him.
Gone 5 a.m. and still no sign of sleep. He thrashed around in the bed. Harry Pelham was good at fighting. He’d needed to be to survive in the cut-throat world of the property developer. He was forceful and physically intimidating. Six-foot-two, brawny, with a thick black moustache, above it, dark, deep-set eyes that looked you over as if he couldn’t care less about you, but at the same time, he was sizing you up, calculating your strengths and weaknesses. At forty-five, he had learned to be as hard-nosed as they come.
Harry wasn’t used to losing and he wasn’t going to get used to it now. He’d made other plans. With that comforting thought, he finally fell asleep.
The first time they knocked they didn’t wake him. The second time they would have woken the dead.
Damn postman, he thought.
He dragged himself out of bed, downstairs and opened his front door. Four men stood before him. They didn’t look much like postmen.
‘May we come in?’ said one of them barging past into the hallway.
Harry Pelham was under arrest.
Laura made tea while Sarah Cole sat miserably in her office clutching the Hakimi file to her chest and picking nervously at a corner of it. Sarah’s dark hair was greasy and her eyes were tired and puffy. She put the file down on her lap, took a HobNob from the packet in front of her and nibbled at it.
‘Oh my God, it’s such a mess!’ she said.
Laura set two mugs of tea down on the desk and pulled round a chair so she could sit next to Sarah.
‘Don’t worry; I’m sure it can be sorted out.’
Sarah shook her head, ‘There’s no way. Have a look; you’ll see what I mean.’ She handed the file to Laura and took one of the mugs. Her lower lip trembled and she put it back on the desk.
‘The thing is, it’s not my fault. She should have told me,’ Sarah said defiantly, screwing her mouth into a scowl.
Laura opened the file and began to read and Sarah hoped that with all her experience and all the successful cases she had under her belt, Laura just might be able to come up with a solution. She picked up the mug again, dunked the biscuit, and watched as a lump of it broke off and disappeared under the surface of the tea. That was just typical, she thought, of her luck and her life these days.
Her eyes went to the photo on Laura’s desk. A summer’s day somewhere on the South Downs with Laura standing beside a horse, her husband Joe next to her, his arm around her waist. Joe looked outrageously gorgeous with his bright blue eyes and the cleft in his chin. It was a picture that made her wince and hate the world for being so unfair. Sarah’s long-term partner, Andrew, had left her eighteen months ago and moved in with one of her best friends.
Laura remembered the Hakimi case because Sarah had asked her about it at the beginning. It was a situation she had dealt with several times before and she’d been happy to advise how to handle it. That advice had been fine; the mistake had come later, with an awful result.
‘The boy is in Tunisia!’ she exclaimed in dismay before she could stop herself.
‘I know. It’s hopeless, isn’t it? We’ll never get him back from there.’
‘It makes it a bit tricky but not impossible,’ Laura replied with a supportive smile, and carried on reading. Sarah took another HobNob from the packet. She had put on two stone since Andrew left.
It was a wretched story. When Mary Hakimi, née Walters, had left her Tunisian husband she knew very well there was a chance he might abduct their ten- year-old son, Ahmed, and take him to Tunis. She had done all she could to prevent it, even waiting patiently in her car outside her husband’s house while Ahmed was visiting his father. More than a year ago, she’d come to Morrison Kemp solicitors for help, and Sarah had got a court order stopping Mr Hakimi obtaining a passport for the boy.
Last Friday, Ahmed had met his father after school and disappeared. Mary Hakimi had been frantic and had called the police but, she thought, at least they can’t have left the country. She rang Sarah who assured her that was the case and that the boy would be traced.
And then yesterday, Mrs Hakimi found out Ahmed was in Tunisia. She had rung the Passport Agency and discovered that a passport for him had been issued to her husband the previous month.
‘No,’ she had sobbed down the phone, ‘no, no, please, that can’t be right. You’re not allowed to do that. You must have made a mistake.’
There had been a mistake but it wasn’t the Passport Agency’s, it was Sarah Cole’s. When the twelve-month court order expired, Sarah had forgotten to ask for it to be renewed. The only protection Mrs Hakimi had in place against her husband’s threat of abduction had disappeared.
It was the worst possible situation, Laura knew. Tunisia had not signed the Hague Convention on Child Abduction and that made getting Ahmed back extremely difficult. If he’d been taken to a country which had signed, there was a fairly straightforward process to follow because those countries were required to order his return to the place where he usually lived, in this case England, and an English court would then decide the matter.
But those rules didn’t apply in Tunisia. Mary Hakimi’s only option would be to start custody proceedings in the Tunisian courts under Tunisian law. It would have different priorities and traditions, she would not be on the scene, she would have to communicate with her lawyers from a distance, probably the proceedings would be lengthy and expensive with every chance of failure.
Sarah brushed biscuit crumbs from her black skirt, got up from her chair and walked over to the window. Laura’s office was on the first floor and Sarah looked down on to Black Lion Street, a busy road in the heart of Brighton’s Lanes – the old town full of narrow passages housing shops, restaurants, and bars. A strong wind was blowing off the sea, buffeting shoppers and office workers taking an early lunch hour. Sarah watched them, twisting her hands in agitation.
‘She’s coming in soon. Will you see her for me?’
‘Who’s coming in?’ Laura glanced up from the file with a sinking heart. Sarah turned back from the window with a pleading, hunted look in her eyes.
‘Mary Hakimi. I can’t face her. Not today.’
Laura sighed heavily. Her head was throbbing and she felt exhausted. She hadn’t slept much last night. She’d told the police what little she could about the lunatic who’d tried to kill her. They’d written it down, asked a lot of questions which she couldn’t answer and then got out a breathalyser. She’d been outraged, though heaven knows why – she was a solicitor after all and knew the form. Joe had made a big fuss, stomped around, but she’d still had to take the test. She was under the limit, luckily, despite the two glasses of wine she’d drunk earlier with Sarah. When they got home, Joe made her some food, cleaned her wound, cheered her up, but all night long that terrifying chase had played in her head.
‘When will she be here?’
‘One o’clock. I’d be soooo grateful.’
It flitted through Laura’s mind to make an excuse and say she had a lunch appointment. The last thing she felt like today was getting caught up in this. But then she thought of Mrs Hakimi desperate to get her son back and Sarah unable to help and determined not to be blamed.
‘All right, I’ll see her,’ Laura said. She closed the file, put it on the desk and wondered what on earth she could say to Mrs Hakimi. ‘Sorry, we made a mistake, sorry we ruined your life,’ was all that came into her mind.
Sarah blew out her cheeks in relief and flopped down again in the chair. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, maybe she would get away without too much damage. If she didn’t have to see Mary Hakimi face to face, there was no danger she would admit anything or dig herself a bigger hole. She reached for a biscuit, then frowned at the packet and took her hand away. If she did get away with it, she would pull herself together. There would be no more errors and no more HobNobs.
She slipped into default mode and started talking about Andrew. He wouldn’t be able to stand living with Mollie for much longer and then he’d come running back to her but she’d tell him to eff off, to start with anyway. Sarah was like a broken record on the subject and Laura knew better than to point out that eighteen months had gone by with no sign of the great man’s return and maybe she should move on.
‘When you first got the court order, did you tell Mary Hakimi she needed to remind you when it was running out?’ Laura asked without much hope.
‘No.’ Sarah looked at the floor then said quietly, ‘no-one told me I had to.’
Laura ignored the implication that someone, Laura presumably, should have told her. She was a little hurt that Sarah should try to spread the blame but then Sarah was upset.
‘What about a note on the diary to say when the court order ran out?’ she asked.
It was all basic stuff drummed into trainees from Day One. If you got a court order you had to tell the client, in writing, that they were responsible for letting you know if and when it needed renewing. You needed to put everything in the diary so there was a clear reminder of what needed doing and when. It was routine procedure and part of that most sacred of legal traditions called ‘covering your back.’
Sarah crossed her arms defensively and said nothing.
Laura was not surprised Sarah had forgotten. It was soon after Andrew had left her and she had been close to a total breakdown. In another job, with a more sympathetic boss, she could have taken time off sick. As it was, she had battled on, but only just.
There had been other mistakes which Laura had sorted out. She wanted to help with this one, not just because she felt sorry for Sarah, but because she liked her. They had the same sense of humour and were allies in the vicious swirl of office politics. The problem was that this mistake was much more serious than any of the others had been, and much more difficult to put right.
‘What about Marcus? Does he know yet?’