A Fool for a Client (39 page)

He wondered how long it would be before the jury came back.
He had heard of cases where the jury reached a verdict on the initial vote, and cases where they had deliberated for hours or even days before telling the judge that they were deadlocked.

*     *

Justine sat unmoving in her cell.
There wasn
’
t a trace of fear on her face, just a quiet sense of regret at what might have been if the twists and turns of fate had been different.
Only it wasn
’
t fate, it was man-made destruction.
She was in a white hospital room, looking down at a frail skeleton of a woman whose once full hair was now no more than a few sporadic patches on an otherwise bald head.

As Justine looked down at her what little was left of her mother she remembered those shocking pictures that she had once seen of the concentration camp survivors.
Her mother wasn
’
t a victim of the Nazi holocaust.
But there was in some way a parallel between her mother
’
s fate and the millions of Jews, half a million Gypsies, and tens of thousands of
homosexuals and suspected Communists who had perished in that genocidal atrocity.
Her mother was a victim of the philosophy that made Nazism possible, the philosophy that treats the individual as the property of the group to be used as a human sacrifice, the philosophy that holds that force may be
initiated
against one
’
s neighbours, as opposed to merely used in self-defence or defence of the innocent.

“The ripple bed wasn
’
t ready when we brought her in,” the head nurse explained.
“I
’
ll have it brought up by maintenance as soon as possible.”

The ripple bed was supposed to make the patient more comfortable and reduce the risk of bedsores, by undulating slowly under the control of a motor, thereby changing the patient
’
s position periodically.

“Is it all right if I stay for a few minutes?”

“All right, but try not to wake her.
She needs her rest.”

The nurse left.
Justine knew that there was nothing that her mother needed now, nothing that anyone could give her.
She had been deprived of that a long time ago.
In the past few months Justine
’
s psychological strength had waxed as her mother
’
s physical strength had waned.
But now, in a last-minute return to the way it had once been, it was the girl who had a full life ahead of her who wept profusely while the woman whose life was almost over remained like a dry rock, trying to give her daughter some hope.

“That
’
s not what I want to see,” said Justine
’
s mother in a voice so strong that it seemed to defy the presence of death that hovered over her.

“I can
’
t help it,” said Justine, burying her head in her hands.

“I know I haven
’
t got long.
Let me use what little time I have left to explain a few things that I want you to understand.”

She forced herself to contain her tears.
Her hand slid down from her face and she nodded.

“I
’
m ready,” she said.

“Justine, you once said that medicine for you is a hobby and a profession all rolled into one.
There aren
’
t many people who can say that about their work.
Most people, even people who do jobs that most people think of as interesting, think of it as just a job.
In time you may become like that too.
I
’
ve heard that medicine is a job with a lot of stress of its own, and most doctors would quite happy to go home and put their feet up at the end of the day even they very seldom can.
But as long as you
’
ve got your youthful enthusiasm, make the most of it.
Don
’
t throw it away one something less important.

“I won
’
t give up my career for marriage
–
”

“You know that it
’
s not marriage I
’
m talking about.”
Justine
’
s mother paused, as if challenging Justine to admit or deny the unstated accusation.
Justine remained silent.
“Don
’
t waste your time on regrets Justine.”

“You had a chance to live... and some one took it away from you.”

“That
’
s all in the past.”

“You once told me never to accept injustice as the final word, to challenge it at every turn.
You said that it isn
’
t normal to try to live in a house that
’
s on fire, so why try to live in an unjust society.
The house is still on fire.
Why shouldn
’
t I try to extinguish the fire?”

“There
’
s nothing wrong with trying to
extinguish
the fire.
But don
’
t fight fire with fire.
You fight fire with water.
Use your desire for revenge constructively, as the psychological fuel to propel you forward, not as an incendiary bomb that burns itself into destruction along with its surroundings.
Murphy is a terrorist, a murderer who takes lives.
You
’
re going to be a doctor, some one who
saves
lives.”

“It wasn
’
t just your chance to live that was stolen, it was others, and all the good that
they
could have done.”

“You mean Srini Shankar.”

“How did you know?” asked Justine, tearfully.

“I
was tidying up your room and saw the reprints of his papers from medical journals.
I found the letter you got back from
University
College
in
London
telling you he
’
d been killed.”

“I read up every paper on cancer I could get my hands on and discovered that he was the world
’
s foremost expert on breast cancer.
I wanted you to go to
Britain
to have him as a consultant,” said Justine.

“You must have been shattered when they told you he was dead.”

“It was as if some one cut the last supporting girder beneath me.”

“Then I guess you
’
ll just have to learn to fly,” the voice still firm even through her pain.

“You
’
re not making this any easier for me,” Justine said defensively.

“I never said it would be easy.
But you
’
re going to face life after I
’
m gone, and without self-pity.”

“Shankar was unrivalled in his field,” said Justine.
“I heard one of the doctors say he wished he
could consult him.
And the other one nodded.
Shankar might have saved you if that bastard hadn
’
t blown him away!
Well now he
’
s got to pay!”

“You can
’
t waste time on what might have been.
You must concentrate on what you do best.
Shankar is dead, but think of all the lives
you
’
ll
be able to save!
Don
’
t blow it all on petty revenge.
Otherwise you
’
ll be doing something worse than Murphy.
You
’
ll be destroying
your
ability to help others in the future.”

“But
who
’
s
going to make him pay,” she whined like a small child.
“The authorities have already had their say.
Who
is going to give us justice?”

Justine
’
s mother was shaking her head slowly.

“All right I see I can
’
t dissuade you, but at least let me make one request:
whatever you do, do it well.”

Justine
’
s mother closed her eyes and the equipment beside her gave off a high-pitched tone.

*     *

The door to the cell was opened abruptly, shattering her daydream.

“The jury
’
s back,” said the bailiff.

She wiped the tears from here eyes as she was led down the corridor and into the elevator.
From there it was a short walk down another corridor back to the courtroom.
Outside the courtroom Abrams was approaching the entrance from the opposite direction.
He reached the door first but he paused for a moment at the entrance.
He appeared to be playing the gentleman and waiting for her to enter first.
As she walked passed him their eyes met for a couple of seconds and she thought she saw something there that she hadn
’
t noticed before.
Was it sympathy?
Solidarity?
Regret?
Whatever it had been, it was gone in a moment.

He didn
’
t look at her again when they both took up their places inside.
It was as if he had said too much with his eyes already and didn
’
t want to reveal any more of himself.
It was one thing for a defendant to take the stand and let her own blood before the jury, it was quite another for the prosecutor to bare his soul before the defendant.

The jurors were filing back one by one, taking up their places.
Leading them in was James Lawson, the businessman and self-made millionaire whom Justine had indicated was to be her advocate in the jury room.

Parker wasn
’
t so sure.
Lawson was a man who had made it within the system and seemed to believe in the rules as a common guide-rail to keep people on the right track.
He had set up his computer services company in the seventies, when minicomputers were beginning to get into the smaller departments of businesses and external services no longer seemed like the cash cow they had been a decade earlier.
But he specialized in a lucrative niche market: matching price quotes from suppliers to the needs of companies using dummy applications.
He became so strong in the field that suppliers lowered their quotes when his consultancy applied for them and his clients began paying him commissions to actually make the applications for them.

He was a firm believer in the consistency of iron discipline, whether it be the discipline of computers, or the discipline of the law: a set of rules to be drawn up with careful forethought and then rigidly adhered to thereafter, until the rules were formally changed.
It was easy to see Lawson voting for guilty even while
sympathizing with the accused.

The last time he had served on a jury he had voted guilty and there was nothing in his background to suggest that he would be any more willing to compromise the law on this occasion.
He had made it in his chosen field without breaking the rules and he had no sympathy for those who took short cuts.
Was it possible that he would make an exception now, in Justine
’
s case?

Parker was trying to read their faces.
Conventional wisdom held that in serious cases such as murder, when jurors are going to convict they avoid looking at the defendant, especially if the defendant is looking at them, forcing those who look to make eye-contact.
They were looking at Justine openly.
This was a good sign.
If the conventional wisdom was correct then it boded well for Justine.
But when there was such a wide range of verdicts open to the jury, such as three possible lower categories of homicide, one couldn
’
t really tell.
The jury might have been planning
to convict on a charge of negligent homicide or second degree manslaughter.
In their eyes that would be an act of kindness and a favour, not a reason to look down at the ground as if they were finding the defendant guilty of murder.

In any case the eye-contact rule only applied rigidly in states where they had capital punishment.

Next to Lawson, sat the housewife whom Justine had first antagonized and then befriended in that strange sequence of questions during the voir dire.
She looked at Justine with a look of encouragement that Parker couldn
’
t decipher.
Was it the encouragement one gives to a person who is about to face an ordeal or the encouragement one gives to a person who has already been through one?
It was a small but significant difference.
And the difference could mean a verdict of innocent or guilty.