Chapter 9 JEMMA
Jemma
Her gaze swung accusingly to her father, who was doing a lousy job of hiding his grin. ‘I thought you said you had a qualified captain, Pierce?’
‘At your service.’ Hamish seized a nearby chair and dragged it closer. ‘Are you going to drop the line about us having to stop meeting like this, Jem, or shall I?’
‘Jemma,’ she corrected. ‘And I don’t think either of us needs to articulate what would obviously be a vastly preferable situation.’ Yet the odd truth was that she felt a flash of excitement at the thought of continuing their verbal sparring.
‘Couldn’t get the handprint off your bum, then?’ Hamish nodded toward the jeans she’d changed into, teaming them with white Converse and a white Country Road sweater.
‘Here, get into this before it goes cold,’ her father interrupted, taking the last plate from the tray and sliding it onto the table. ‘Hamish, pull me up a chair too. I’ll get rid of this tray.’
As she didn’t have time to analyse her reaction to him, Jemma ignored Hamish and kept up a deliberately bright conversation throughout the meal.
Years of pretending an interest in people while covertly assessing them made it easy to feign enthusiasm for the affairs of the small town—and Sam had an endless repertoire of local stories, in which Dad was bizarrely invested.
‘Thanks, that was excellent, as always,’ Hamish said after only a few minutes. ‘Though you’re never going to be off the hook for closing down Ploughs and Pies, Sam.’
Sam waved her fork at him. ‘Nice try, but I see you in Christine’s Diner often enough to know you’re not languishing for my cafe.’
‘Do you always bolt your food?’ Jemma said.
Hamish’s grin came slowly, as though he was giving her time to review her words.
Ridiculous: she was accustomed to a world where words were carefully selected blades, swift and incisive, and her accusation had been perfectly deliberate.
Yet the farmer’s—no, mechanic’s, captain’s, whatever’s—habit of laconically assessing her was more unnerving than facing an adversary across the courtroom.
‘It’s nice of you to care,’ he eventually responded.
‘I meant that it fails to respect the time and effort Sam and Pierce have put in.’ She tapped the remains of the cornetto that followed Sam’s quiche. The handmade Italian pastry, similar to a croissant, had been a pleasant surprise; it was ages since she’d had Dad’s baked goods.
‘I reckon Sam and Pierce probably appreciate me respecting their fuel consumption.’ Hamish pointed to the thick carpeting, beneath which the engine let out a steady throb. He stood, returning his chair to the adjoining table. ‘Upriver or down today, bosses?’
‘I think up,’ Sam said. ‘The cliffs are more scenic that way.’
‘Perhaps, over coffee, you can give me some background on your grandparents’ situation, Sam?
’ Jemma suggested stiffly. ‘Before I provide them with any legal advice.’ Not that she could offer much without signing them on as clients, or Gerard would have a fit about the insurance implications, but Hamish’s easy competence had stung her into needing to prove her worth.
Sam’s forehead wrinkled and she pulled her ponytail over one shoulder, toying with the ends. ‘There’s no rush. You said you were stressed; maybe just chill and enjoy some downtime this weekend, and we’ll catch up with Ma and Pops another time?’
Her father rapped the table. ‘Yeah, I was about to ask before lunch: stress? What’s with that?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’ As though she’d admit otherwise, with Hamish now taking his time exiting the room, despite his supposedly altruistic haste.
Dad’s jaw set in a familiar manner, which she often caught in the mirror. ‘You’re usually hyped up, thriving, when you say you’re stressed. This is different. What’s going on?’
Jemma inclined her head toward Hamish’s departing back, although she was actually buying time.
Dad wasn’t an idiot; she had to make her story credible, give him enough information to validate her stress, but not enough that he’d start being overprotective.
‘I mentioned at the trattoria last week that Gerard’s brought his nephew, Rohan, into the office? ’
Dad nodded.
‘Well, Rohan’s not against using some dirty tactics to win the partnership.’
‘You said he was withholding information from you.’ Dad’s curt tone betrayed his concern, but Sam shrank from him. He immediately reached for her hand.
Jemma couldn’t imagine being so in tune with another person’s feelings that giving reassurance was instant and instinctive.
‘That’s part of it. The client we’re sharing is particularly unsavoury.
Bikie connections, dealing, that kind of stuff.
’ She waved a hand to minimise the extent of Wilkins’s involvement in the seedy criminal underbelly to which most South Australians would be oblivious.
‘You said you were working on a high-profile case, not for some thug,’ Dad said, his anger barely restrained.
‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, far from it.’ Money—and the hunger for it—bred corruption and violence.
‘Jemma, you need to be careful,’ Sam urged. Jemma’s eye twitched with irritation. Sam’s past might have shaped her view of the world, but it had no parallels to Jemma’s professional life.
‘I can handle it.’
‘Damn it, Jemma,’ Dad snarled. ‘I told you not to go into criminal defence.’
‘Told me?’ She cocked an eyebrow.
‘Why would you represent someone who has no morals? Bikies? Are you serious?’
‘You’re not listening. I said bikie connections.’ Which was potentially worse than being a patched member of the subculture, but Dad didn’t need to know that.
‘Whatever. People like that don’t belong in society.’
‘You don’t know anything about him, or about the case,’ she declared. ‘You’re making a pre-emptive judgement about guilt based purely on association. And that is precisely why everyone is entitled to adequate representation.’
‘Come on, you’re not a fool, Jemma. You know that some people are going to be guilty of every charge levelled at them. How can you defend them? Why even try?’
‘Because that is, quite literally, my job.’
‘To defend the indefensible, enable them to continue their corruption and allow them to stay in the community? Clearly there’s common sense and then there’s the law.
’ Dad’s hands placed the two facets into very separate compartments.
‘And it’s that supposed right to representation that’s put you in this situation. ’
‘You didn’t let me finish. My stress isn’t the client’s fault.
It’s Rohan. Last week he arranged for me to go to the client’s house to collect some …
items. I was literally en route when one of the other lawyers, Tien, discovered that what I was collecting could potentially be used as evidence against our client.
’ She ripped a corner off the bread, taking a breath to quell the fury that surged within her at recalling the event.
‘But that is the client’s fault!’ Sam interjected.
‘No, because it was Rohan who organised the collection.’ She focused on keeping her voice level.
‘You didn’t do it, though?’ Dad demanded.
‘Chill, Pierce, we’re not talking unregistered firearms or anything,’ she said.
The packages most likely contained tobacco and vapes; illegal importation was considered a low-risk and high-return activity, with the funds from sales used to finance the importation of hard drugs or firearms. ‘And thanks for that vote of absolutely no confidence in my common sense. I’m not a complete idiot.
The second Tien called to give me a heads-up, I turned tail.
’ She’d driven back to the city so carefully under the speed limit it had almost been a crime in itself.
‘I went back to the office, fronted Rohan and told him to handle his own dirty work.’
‘You’re going to do more than that, though?’ Sam asked. ‘I mean, isn’t it corruption or something?’
‘There’s nothing I can do. I say a word to his uncle and Rohan will insist that it was something completely innocuous that needed collecting and make it look like I’m shopping a grudge against him.’
Dad scowled but Sam leaned forward in her seat. ‘Wouldn’t your boss think it suss that you’d been asked to collect something from a client’s place?’
Jemma startled as a whistle sounded. The engines throbbed louder and the boat pulled away from the wharf.
‘Not really. Gerard courts the high flyers, and he expects us to pander to them.’ When the promise of enough money was flashed in front of Gerard, he’d bend over backward—or, rather, expect Jemma to be a gymnast—to keep the client on board.
She hid a grimace. Lately, the manipulation made her feel underappreciated and almost …
dirty. ‘Fortunately, Tien generally loves doing the errand runs.’
‘Then why didn’t Rohan get Tien to pick up the package?’ Sam asked.
‘I told you: because it wasn’t about the errand. Given that he wasn’t too careful about Tien “overhearing” the details, I think Rohan wanted me to refuse to do the collection, so we’d have a pissed-off client complaining to the managing director about me.’
Despite her dispassionate recount, Jemma was furious with herself.
She’d initially taken Rohan’s actions at face value and assumed she was a disposable piece in his plan to relieve their client of incriminating evidence.
It wasn’t until she’d lain awake mulling it over that she’d recognised the other barrister’s ultimate game.
Rohan was smart enough to play a long game and now she needed to suspect his every move.
Dad pushed away the plate in front of him. ‘Right. What are we going to do about this? About him?’