Chapter 29 Leila
Leila
Looking in the chambers online diary, I choose a time when Julian is listed to be in court to go and find it. The last thing I want is him asking what I’m doing.
Packed tightly together on the shelf in date order, the notebooks snooze quietly, side by side.
My professional life’s work, all right there.
The defeats, but mostly successes. The closing speeches I’ve stayed up late to write, the plea in mitigations that meant the difference between someone getting a second chance or going to prison.
The hard work, the determination, the sacrifice; all of it lies within these pages.
This is the one.
The trial lasted only two days. The whole thing was a disaster. I could tell as soon as the jury were sworn in that we’d have a fight on our hands.
I’ve become skilled at reading jurors over the years; you become attuned to watching their body language and facial expressions, what and who they like.
The jury is a rich, diverse tapestry of our social demographic, thrown together to judge one person accused of committing a crime.
All from different backgrounds, with separate values, professions, and experience to bring a unique, nuanced angle of understanding to the case.
But you can always spot “the ones.” The ones who hate your client from the start.
The ones who stare at them. These jurors have likely never, ever come close to breaking the law.
They do not question authority in any way and abhor those that do.
They turn up for jury service in smart clothes and take their civic duty seriously, unlike the ones who shuffle in wearing joggers, yawning because 10:30 a.m. is far too early in the day to be up, and this entire trial is an inconvenience for them.
The jury in Jack’s assault trial had far too many of the former type of juror for my liking.
You get trials like this occasionally, where everything that can go wrong does. When the main prosecution witness is a high-profile character, it’s never going to be a fair run.
In the end, they painted Jack out to be not only a liar, but a snitch. His reputation was trashed. Grassing up someone like Tony Flanagan was suicide. And he was convicted anyway.
Marching back to the conference room where Davina sits waiting for me, I close the door, the blue book in my hand.
She looks regal, sitting at the head of the huge oak table.
She is surrounded by bookshelves; I briefly catch her gazing out of the window.
Her eyes are immediately drawn to the book the second I enter the room.
Sitting next to her, I open the notebook and begin flicking through as she watches in silence.
“Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?” Davina asks, as I turn the pages.
“It would be something Jack knew I had written down. That would only be something he said in a conference I had with him.”
My eyes are drawn to the top of each page, looking for any headed “Conf.” We had quite a few throughout the course of the trial and I documented each one, thorough as I am. I record everything in trials—you never know when you’ll need something.
“Anything?” she asks.
I shake my head, before something catches my eye.
At the bottom of one page, I see a sentence with several exclamation marks at the end. I’d never usually write something like that, but it’s definitely my writing. As soon as I read it, I turn the book toward Davina.
“This is it!” I whisper.
Client joked that the next time he commits a crime in Tempt, he’ll do it in the only room with CCTV. Have advised against any further acts in the future!!!!
“Temptation has a room with a camera,” Davina breathes. Her eyes lock with mine. “We need to see that footage.”