Authors: Catherine Hunt
‘That’s crap,’ Harry snapped, ‘I’ve never been near that kind of website. The whole idea is sick. Totally sick.’
‘So, what credit cards do you have?’ Barnes repeated.
‘A few of them. Some business, some personal, but I don’t use any of them to buy that muck, all right?’
‘Can I see them, please.’
Ronnie shook his head. ‘I am sure, Detective Inspector, that my client has no objection to showing you the cards,’ he said for the benefit of the tape, ‘but before he does can you please tell us the number of the card you’re talking about.’
The solicitor was anxious to avoid a fishing expedition. He wanted to make sure the police had a particular number that they could reasonably believe was registered to Harry.
Barnes tore a piece of paper from his notebook, flicked through the rest of it with large, rather elegant fingers, then wrote out a 16 digit number on the paper. He handed it to Harry.
‘It’s a Visa card number, sir. Is it yours?’
There was a slight nod from Ronnie, and reluctantly, Harry reached into his jacket for his wallet and took out his Visa card. The numbers matched. The small room seemed to shrink. He started to sweat badly.
‘It’s nothing to do with me. I am not a paedophile,’ he said.
Ronnie sat forward, stroking his chin, ‘As everybody knows, you don’t need to actually have the card in your hand to be able to use it on the Internet. Someone else could easily have got hold of the number and used it. Credit card fraud is very widespread.’
Barnes turned dark, confident eyes on him, ‘That’s why we’re checking Mr Pelham’s computers. To see what’s on the hard drives.’ He managed to make it sound both polite and threatening.
‘There’s nothing on the fucking hard drives. How many times do I have to tell you that?’ Harry leaned towards Barnes and banged down his fist hard on the table.
Barnes looked at him, ‘Are you a violent man, Mr Pelham?’
‘Can we keep to the point, Detective Inspector,’ Ronnie intervened before Harry could react.
The policeman had brought with him a large brown envelope and now he took out of it a set of photographs, spreading them on the table in front of Harry. They were pictures of children. Hard core child pornography.
‘Have you seen these before, Mr Pelham?’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Does that mean you have seen them before or you haven’t seen them before, sir?’
‘No, no, no. Of course I haven’t seen them before.’
Harry felt nauseous and his legs were shaking. He opened his mouth to drag in air. Really, there was no oxygen left in this room, he could hardly breathe at all now. He saw Barnes watching him, and for a moment, just before he fell to the floor, was suddenly aware of his own open mouth, the nervous licking of his lips, the sweat marks left by his hands on the table. His body language was shouting out a message, a message that the detective had surely heard loud and clear, that Harry Pelham was indeed a thoroughly guilty man.
‘It’s like the end of everything for me because Ahmed’s my whole world. I’m just devastated. I think I always knew it would happen but that doesn’t help, you know, when it does.’
Mary Hakimi, tears rolling slowly down her face, went on to explain to Laura what it felt like to have her son snatched away. She wasn’t ranting; she was just terribly sad which made it all so much worse. She was thirty four, the same age as Laura, but her face was strained and careworn with lines of worry already carved between her eyes.
‘It’s been the worst two weeks of my life. I can’t even face going into his bedroom. When the news came – that he was in Tunisia – I suppose I should have been relieved that he was alive, but for me it was my worst fear come true; the fact that he was there and then knowing that I won’t be able to get him back.’
Laura glanced at her brother. Clive Walters listened, scowling, simmering, occasionally grunting or puffing air into his cheeks.
‘I was always worried about it,’ Mary Hakimi repeated, ‘That’s why I came to you. And I thought once I had the order from the court that a passport couldn’t be issued, then Ahmed was safe. That’s what I thought. It was all I had.’ She sounded dazed at how stupid she’d been to rely on such fragile protection. As if she’d had a choice.
Laura nodded, tried to say some words of comfort but they sounded wholly inadequate.
‘And to find out that you just forgot to renew it, well, it’s beyond belief and I don’t know how you can make that kind of mistake because it’s people’s lives you’re ruining. My son should have been protected by the law and now he’s been taken away.’
An angry rumble of agreement came from Clive Walters. His fleshy face, with its heavy jowls, looked increasingly belligerent.
‘And don’t try telling us it’s not your fault,’ he said, ‘You won’t get away with that one. I’ve been on to your boss and he says there’s no doubt that Mary would have been sent a letter about renewing the order. That’s crap and you know it. She never got sent any letter.’
Mary Hakimi seemed not to have heard what her brother had said; she was still in that dazed world of her own.
‘You have to understand, it’s my family that’s gone. Have you got children?’ she asked.
Laura shook her head.
‘Then maybe you won’t understand how this has torn my life apart.’
Laura picked up a piece of paper from the file in front of her. Sarah had thrust it into her hand as she was on her way to the conference room on the ground floor where Mrs Hakimi and her brother were waiting for her. It was a copy of a letter – the letter that had supposedly been sent to Mary Hakimi. Sarah had just written it.
It did the job. Most likely it would get Morrison Kemp off the hook. She could see no easy way it could be challenged. All she had to do was hand it to them. Clive Walters would be furious, would deny his sister ever received it, but he would have the devil’s own job proving it.
She put the letter firmly back in the file and took a deep breath.
‘Mrs Hakimi, I do understand and I want you to know that I will do absolutely everything I can to get your son back.’
There was a spark of hope in the woman’s eyes but her brother was having none of it.
‘Hang on a minute. Empty promises are no good to us. It’s your fault he’s been taken. You were negligent and we want compensation. How much is what we should be talking about.’
Laura kept focused on his sister, ‘Mrs Hakimi, as you know, it’s only possible to get a court order for the return of your son if he’s been taken to a country that has signed the Hague Convention. Unfortunately Tunisia hasn’t and so you have to rely on the courts in Tunis and start custody proceedings there.’
‘You are joking I take it,’ Clive Walters interrupted, ‘She’s got sod all chance of winning there as I’m sure you’re well aware.’
‘I’ll get in touch with a lawyer in Tunis who deals with this sort of case,’ Laura continued, ‘I assure you we’ll do everything we can to bring Ahmed home to you. Every possible avenue will be explored.’
It sounded better than it was, she was painfully aware there were no grounds for optimism.
‘And you think we’re going to be satisfied with that? No way. There’s been a major cock-up and I want to know how much you propose to pay in damages.’
‘Mr Walters, I’m afraid I must make it clear that Morrison Kemp in no way accepts any liability for what has happened, although, of course, we very much want to help in any way we can.’
‘I know what’s going through your mind,’ he growled, ‘you’re thinking that I can’t prove it. Can’t prove there was no letter reminding Mary about the court order. Well let me tell you that whatever you say, I will make the most tremendous fuss. I’ll go to the press, to the Law Society, whatever it takes to get justice. Your name will be mud.’
‘Please, Clive,’ said his sister, ‘This isn’t helping. All I want is to get Ahmed back.’
Tears flooded her eyes. ‘Anything you can do, I’d be so grateful,’ she choked out.
‘You can trust us to do all we can.’
‘Trust you,’ burst out the brother, ‘why should she trust you now when you couldn’t be trusted to do the job properly in the first place?’
Good point, thought Laura. Excellent point.
‘I know it won’t be easy,’ Mary Hakimi swallowed hard, ‘but I’ll try anything, anything you can think of. Please let me know.’
Clive Walters looked at her with disgust. He’d seen the chance of a big fat pay-out and he wasn’t going to let it slip away. But for now he was stuck. He had no claim, he wasn’t the injured party. It was up to his sister and his sister was off in cloud cuckoo land. Reluctantly he got to his feet, refused to shake Laura’s hand and instead put his arm around his sister’s shoulders and guided her out of the room.
The second they had gone, Sarah came through the door.
‘What happened? Did you show them the letter? Did it work?’ she said, slumping down in the chair just vacated by Mary Hakimi.
‘I don’t think that letter was … ’ Laura stopped. Sarah was likely to lose her job over this; that was bad enough, there was no point in rubbing her nose in how badly she’d screwed up.
‘I told them I’d talk to a lawyer in Tunis and see if he can help. Mrs Hakimi was keen to give that a try.’
‘Great. With a bit of luck she won’t make any more fuss to Marcus then and I should be in the clear.’ Sarah gave a short nervous laugh, realizing what she’d said sounded uncaring and Laura didn’t look too happy.
‘I feel so sorry for Mrs Hakimi,’ she added quickly, ‘I’ll do all I can to help get the boy back. You know I really didn’t want to write that letter, but Marcus insisted, he said if I didn’t produce it that minute and give it to you before you saw Mrs Hakimi, I was out of the door there and then. He was really scary, you know how he is,’ she tailed off, looking at Laura for approval.
Laura knew exactly how he was. She could imagine him in another life, as the head of the secret police presiding over a reign of total terror without ever raising his voice.
She nodded and felt a stab from the headache. She pressed her palm to her forehead and held it there, trying to push the pain further back inside. Sarah thought she was safe now she had done what Morrison wanted. He, on the other hand, would be expecting her to sack Sarah at the first opportunity. Well she wasn’t going to do it. Not yet anyway, not until she had tried to get the boy back.
‘Do you think we can get away with it?’ Sarah asked in a conspiratorial voice. It had occurred to her that Laura was up to her neck in it too, now that she’d handed over the forged letter to Mrs Hakimi.
Laura swallowed the urge to snap back that she wasn’t trying to get away with anything. She was losing patience with Sarah who was so clearly concerned with saving her own skin. Her eyes smarted from lack of sleep and a wave of tiredness hit her.
‘I need to make some calls,’ she said, standing up to leave.
When he woke it was with the memory of fear though he couldn’t immediately recall what had caused it. He was in the Royal Sussex County Hospital in a room on his own, off the main ward. He saw Ronnie sitting in a chair beside his bed, reading a newspaper, and then he remembered. So, it was not a bad dream after all.
‘That was one way to stop the interview,’ Ronnie said when he saw Harry was awake but neither of them laughed.
‘What happened?’
‘You collapsed. At the police station. You were being questioned.’
‘I remember.’
‘How are you feeling?’ Ronnie said drily.
‘How do you think?’ Harry said, glancing at him. In the second before Ronnie looked away, he saw something in the man’s eyes, something very like revulsion, and it sent a chill through him.
‘I did not download that muck, Ronnie. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘We will have to wait and see what they find on the computer.’
‘They won’t find anything because there’s nothing to find. This is all complete rubbish.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘For God’s sake, man, how long have you known me? Twenty, twenty five years. Do you really think I would do this?’ Harry demanded.
There was no immediate reply.
He doesn’t believe me. He thinks it’s true. Harry wondered what else Barnes had said to Ronnie.
‘The police will want to finish questioning you when they think you’re fit enough,’ Ronnie said eventually, his eyes shifting away again,
‘Then they’ll release me, right? I mean they’re not going to keep me in, are they?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. No reason why you shouldn’t get bail. There may be conditions though.’
‘What sort of conditions?’
‘They could restrict your contact with Martha,’ Ronnie said coldly, ‘And there’s likely to be a condition that you don’t contact your wife in any way. I should tell you the police believe you’ve been sending her death threats and want to question you about those as well.’
‘That’s bollocks. Of course I haven’t.’
‘They say Anna has recently received emails threatening her life.’
‘If she has, it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Anna’s solicitor is claiming they are deliberate harassment calculated to scare your wife into backing off in the divorce,’ Ronnie continued as if Harry had not spoken.
‘This is bullshit. Laura Maxwell bullshit. It’s just the sort of thing she would invent as part of her campaign to destroy me,’ Harry said furiously,
‘Do you know a man called Paul Giles?’ Ronnie asked.
Harry hesitated, ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Should it?’
‘It should do, yes. Supposedly he’s an old friend of yours. He sent the death threats to your wife.’
Harry stayed silent.
‘Don’t lie to me, Harry. I don’t like it.’ Ronnie looked disgusted.
‘All right, I was going to tell you before but you didn’t want to know, did you? It’s what those allegations in the divorce submission are all about. Paul Giles is an account set up by me.’
Ronnie grimaced. ‘You set up an email account, in a fake name, with the specific purpose of threatening your wife. Is that correct?’
‘No it damn well isn’t. All I did was send her a couple of harmless messages.’