Divas (50 page)

It was an awful word. Lola flinched and looked away, to the rows of spectators’ benches behind the prosecutors’ table. She saw Evie and Lawrence, who had promised to attend the trial
as much as they could, to support Lola. And then she spotted Carin. Her stepmother, wearing a black hat with a little veil, like something out of a 1940s movie, was sitting there with a tiny smile
on her face as she heard Lola accused of the crime she herself had committed. A black widow spider, at the centre of the web she had woven, enjoying tremendously the process of watching Lola be
slowly eaten alive.

Now Lola realised why she had been warned not to look angry. She ducked her gaze, not caring for a moment if she wasn’t supposed to; it was the lesser of two evils. Because right then, she
had enough rage in her eyes to make the jury, if they saw it, be convinced that she was capable of anything.

Simon Poluck had planned his strategy with the next witness very cleverly, his intention clearly being to wrong-foot the prosecution. After Joshua Greene had declared that he
had finished questioning the fingerprint expert, Simon Poluck stood up, saying: ‘I have just a couple of questions for this witness, Your Honour. We are happy to stipulate that my client did
indeed touch the syringe, the insulin vial and the fridge in which the latter was kept. As we will be demonstrating, my client has a perfectly innocent explanation for the fact that her
fingerprints appear on these three items. My first question is simply this.’

He swivelled to stare directly at the fingerprint expert.

‘Can you confirm for us that the pattern of Ms Fitzgerald’s fingerprints on the syringe do not indicate the position in which one would hold it when one was using it for the purpose
for which it is intended – i.e., you didn’t find the classic thumbprint on the plunger, or the fingers gripping the syringe as if to position it for an injection?’

‘Um, no, they don’t, ’ said the fingerprint expert cautiously. ‘As I said in my testimony, there is considerable blurring, but the only prints of Ms Fitzgerald which I
can identify as twelve-point matches indicate that she was holding it from below.’

‘As you would hold a pen, for instance, if I handed it to you and asked you to hold it for a moment?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Thank you!’ said Simon Poluck triumphantly, looking at the jury. ‘And my second question: you found no fingerprints of Ms Fitzgerald’s
at all
on the sharps
container in which we have been told that the syringe and vial were found?’

‘None whatsoever, ’ said the fingerprint expert.

‘How very significant, ’ Simon Poluck said, never taking his eyes off the jury. ‘How
very
significant.’

Joshua Greene was on his feet, about to object, but Simon Poluck was already raising his hand and walking back to the defence table.

‘I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honour, ’ he was saying.

‘Mr Greene?’ the judge said to the ADA as the fingerprint expert stepped down off the stand. ‘I’m sensing some sort of confusion in your general vicinity. Are you calling
your next witness?’

‘Your Honour—’ Joshua Greene, flustered, was leaning back over the prosecutor’s table now, conferring urgently with Mackesy.‘Your Honour, we were not expecting to
call our next witness until tomorrow at the earliest. We have been experiencing some difficulties in contacting him – he was due to arrive in the country yesterday on a flight from Rome, but
he was not on that flight. The Italian authorities have been contacted and are investigating this with extreme urgency, but he is the last name on our witness list, Your Honour, and his testimony
is very important to this case—’

‘Who is this witness?’ the judge asked, flicking through a sheaf of papers on the desk in front of her.

‘Your Honour, his name is Giuseppe Scutellaro, commonly known as Joe – he is the nurse who was attending Mr Fitzgerald on the day he died – his testimony is, frankly,
crucial
—’

‘Did you know about this?’ Lola leaned over and whispered to Simon Poluck, her heart beating fast. If Joe Scutellaro wasn’t coming, what did that mean? Had he decided to go
back on their deal? Was he trapped between her and Carin now, and thinking that the best plan of action was to stay in Italy and avoid testifying at all?

‘I heard they were having problems, ’ Simon Poluck muttered. ‘Knew Scutellaro wasn’t here as of this morning. So I speeded things up to catch them off guard. It worked
better anyway – made us look very confident. Like this is an open-and-shut case.’

Just then the door at the back of the courtroom swung open and practically every head in the room turned to see if it was the missing witness, Joe Scutellaro, making a dramatic, last-minute
entrance. Lola recognised the man who walked in immediately: it was Detective Garcia, followed by Detective Morgan, who remained standing by the door as Garcia bustled down the centre aisle and
ducked down behind the prosecutor’s table, muttering swiftly to Serena Mackesy.

Her face went white and she gestured to Joshua Greene to listen to what Garcia was telling her. His reaction was as intense as hers: he fired out a couple of questions at Garcia, then shook his
head vehemently, as if trying to deny something he knew to be true. Serena Mackesy just sat there, shaking her own head in an unconscious echo of her boss’s mannerism.

Garcia’s mouth downturned, he headed back down the aisle again.

‘Mr Greene?’ the judge prompted.

Joshua Greene pushed back his chair slowly, reluctantly, and stood up again.

‘Your Honour, ’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry to say that I’ve just been informed that our witness, Giuseppe Scutellaro, was murdered last night in Rome on his way to
the airport.’

‘S
ilence!’ the judge said crossly, pounding her gavel, as gasps of surprise echoed around the courtroom.

The jury was openly gaping, like spectators at a play that had just revealed a huge twist in the plot. Lola saw, with a cynicism she couldn’t help, that their predominant emotion was
enthralled enjoyment. The key witness in the prosecution case had been killed – in a foreign country, no less! How much more dramatic could things get?

The sound of Simon Poluck’s chair shooting back as he jumped to his feet focused all eyes on him.

‘Your Honour, ’ he said with barely repressed triumph in his voice, ‘the prosecution’s entire case rests on the testimony of this unfortunate young man. Since he is no
longer able to share his story with us’ – the delicate contempt in his tone made it quite clear what he thought of the story Joe Scutellaro had been going to tell – ‘it is
clear that there is no case to answer against my client. We ask the court to dismiss all charges against her immediately and without prejudice.’

‘That would mean that you can’t be retried, ’ the second chair muttered to Lola.

Could it really be that easy? Lola’s heart leaped; she couldn’t help turning to look at Suzanne and India, sitting just behind her, whose faces were as filled with excitement as her
own.

But who had killed Scutellaro? It must have been someone paid by Carin, but why would Carin kill him, when it meant an automatic acquittal for Lola? Had she decided to throw in her hand?

Lola glanced over at Carin, who was staring straight ahead, her lips set in a tight line, her entire body drawn up into a taut, thin black column. She looked as if she were concentrating very
hard on something, putting all her will and determination into making it happen.

She hasn’t thrown in her hand at all
, Lola realised in rising panic.
Not at all. In fact, she’s playing her most important card.

‘Your Honour!’ Joshua Greene, not about to see victory be snatched from him in a case that would make his career if he secured a conviction, sprang to his feet. ‘Your Honour,
due to the unusual circumstances of Mr Scutellaro’s death, we request that his Grand Jury testimony be read into the record of this trial!’

Simon Poluck sneered at him.

‘Your Honour, ’ he countered, ‘the Assistant District Attorney is all too aware that grand jury testimony can only be read into the record under very specific
circumstances—’

‘If you killed the witness, or someone did it on your behalf, ’ whispered the second chair to Lola, ‘then they could read it in. But usually they don’t have a hope in
hell of pulling this off.’

‘—which clearly do not exist in this case, ’ Simon Poluck was finishing. ‘A tragic murder in a faraway country – I fail to see any connection at
all—’

‘Your Honour, ’ Joshua Greene interrupted, ‘we have a clear chain of circumstance which may well form a connection between Mr Scutellaro and the defend—’

‘In my chambers! Now!’ the judge said angrily. ‘And I hope this is the last time in this trial that I hear you two shouting over each other like kids in a school debating
society!’

‘Oof, ’ winced the second chair.

‘Is that bad?’ Lola said anxiously. ‘Going into her chambers?’

‘I was more wincing because of the school debating society crack, ’ said the second chair. ‘That’s
harsh
. But—’ she shrugged. ‘Odds are in our
favour. Sit tight and cross your fingers.’

But when the two attorneys re-emerged twenty-five minutes later, and the bellow of ‘All rise! Court is now in session!’ caused everyone to stand as the judge resumed her seat high
above them, Lola could tell immediately from Simon Poluck’s glum face that the conference hadn’t gone the way he wanted.

‘They’re going to read in the testimony, ’ he muttered grimly. ‘With the proviso that if certain facts don’t emerge during the rest of the trial that can connect
you to Scutellaro’s death somehow, it’ll be struck from the record.’

‘You can’t strike a whole testimony from the record!’ the second chair protested.

‘Exactly. We’re looking at a mistrial, hopefully.’ He looked at Lola. ‘That means they can retry you, technically, but with Scutellaro dead they’d never do it.
Could be worse. Could be a lot worse.’

And when Detective Garcia was summoned back to court to read the Italian police’s summary of Scutellaro’s murder – stabbed to death by a group of kids outside the apartment
building in which he was staying, as he left to go to the airport – it seemed even less likely that the prosecution would be able to make any connection between Lola and what Simon Poluck,
cross-examining, called a ‘senseless, brutal murder’. Scutellaro’s bag and wallet had both been stolen. The police had been able to find no witnesses; the only confirmation that
it had been kids who had killed Scutellaro was the prevalence of lower-body wounds on the corpse, and the fact that the area was rife with gangs of shockingly young children armed with knives.

Lola shivered, thinking of Joe Scutellaro, stabbed to death on that concrete walkway. It might have happened to her, if she had been alone. If Leo and his gun hadn’t been with them when
the kids came after her.

She should have given Scutellaro Leo’s number, she thought with black humour.

The testimony itself, read aloud, was very plausible, and very damaging to Lola. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that. She could see how the jury were looking at her as they
listened.

As if, for the first time, they believed that she might be guilty of killing her father.

Even read out in the leaden tones of one of the court officers, it was damning testimony.

‘You’ll be on the stand first thing tomorrow, ’ Simon Poluck said to Lola as they left the court. ‘Get a good night’s sleep.’

‘Wear the black suit, ’ instructed the jury consultant. ‘With your hair back, but loose behind. Earrings, no necklace. Light on the mascara, and no lipstick. Medium
heels.’

‘Have a good breakfast, ’ the second chair added. ‘Lots of protein. Not too much coffee, though. You don’t want to be too buzzy.’

So the next morning, as they walked back up the steps of the courthouse, amidst the constant buzz of television cameras, reporters shouting questions, the generators of transit vans loaded with
satellite dishes and aerials, Lola could at least hold onto the security of having done exactly what the very expensive team of lawyers and consultants had told her to do. She was in a very demure
Armani skirt suit, her hair brushed smooth and pinned at the back of her head, wearing Jean-Marc’s yellow diamond earrings, her make-up light. She had run through every instruction she had
been given, eaten eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, and limited herself to one cappuccino. Her nerves were jumping, but she kept telling herself that she had followed all the instructions, and that
her team knew exactly what they were doing.

They were as early as ever, so Lola was able to follow her usual routine: she slipped off to a women’s toilet she had found, right down the far end of the first-floor corridor, tucked away
round a corner and opposite the janitor’s closet; she would never have known it was there if she hadn’t been pacing restlessly and stumbled across it. It was in such an inconvenient
location, with no offices or courtrooms anywhere nearby, that Lola had never seen anyone else use it.

As always, it was empty, and she chose the furthest stall, sitting inside for as long as she could. It calmed her down to have some time alone, away from the worried gazes of her mother and
India and David. And after spending the days of her trial with an entire roomful of people staring at her, reading things into every tiny move she made, being alone was the greatest luxury she
could imagine.