The Pinocchio Brief Read online

  “Intelligently conceived and cleverly constructed. Its themes are topical and relevant and its characters are very engaging. Abi Silver’s legal background has, I am sure, been of value to her in writing this novel.”

  Ted Childs, creator of Kavanagh QC, executive producer of Inspector Morse

  “An evocative and gripping thriller, where present day meets the technology of the near future. Abi Silver raises startling questions about the dependence and interdependence of technology in our lives in this pacy courtroom drama.”

  Maha Khan Phillips, author of The Curse of Mohenjodaro

  A 15-year-old schoolboy is accused of the brutal murder of one of his teachers. His lawyers, the guarded veteran, Judith, and the energetic youngster, Constance, begin a desperate pursuit of the truth, revealing uncomfortable secrets about the teacher and the school. But Judith has her own secrets which risk being exposed when a new lie-detecting device, nicknamed Pinocchio, comes on the scene. And is the accused, a troubled boy who loves challenges, trying to help them or not?

  A gripping courtroom thriller which confronts our assumptions about truth and our increasing reliance on technology.

  Yorkshire-bred, Abi Silver is a lawyer by profession. She lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and three sons. The Pinocchio Brief is her first novel. Read more about Abi and her work at www.abisilver.co.uk.

  Published in 2017

  by Lightning Books Ltd

  Imprint of EyeStorm Media

  312 Uxbridge Road

  Rickmansworth

  Hertfordshire

  WD3 8YL

  www.lightning-books.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78563-044-6

  Copyright © Abi Silver 2017

  Cover by Shona Andrew/www.spikyshooz.com

  Typesetting and design by Clio Mitchell

  The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  For my father

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  Six years earlier

  PART THREE

  The present

  PART FOUR

  Acknowledgements

  About Lightning Books

  PART ONE

  1

  “GOD, RAYMOND. You take everything so literally. Can’t you tell when someone is lying to you?”

  Jamie said that to me after Physics this morning. Jamie is my friend, my best friend, my only friend, I think. We share a room. He touched my arm as he spoke, just a tap, a little above the elbow. I don’t like being touched. I’ve told him that before but I didn’t remind him this time. “Sometimes you have to accept things you don’t like because that’s how the world works.” That’s what mum said the day I came here.

  So I am trying, to accept things, that is, and I know he didn’t mean anything by it; just a bit of friendly emphasis. Touching my arm when he said it. And that’s just how the world works. In fact, I’m grateful now that he did because it made me remember what he said and I was looking for something new to pique my interest. And now I have it, the perfect topic to research: lying.

  To Lie. Alternative words I could use: to tell untruths, to perjure oneself, to have somebody on, to fib, to tell stories, to be economical with the truth.

  Dictionary definition? “To say something that is not true in a conscious effort to deceive somebody.”

  Connected words: dishonesty, deceit, fraud, untruthfulness, corruption, treachery, duplicity, cheating and trickery.

  I take to Google and enter the word “lie” and it prompts me on to various options. I choose “lie detection”. I immediately discover that some people claim they have a “sixth sense” which allows them to know when other people are lying. The Chief Constable of Wandsworth, Chief Constable Sidley, said that on the 10 o’clock news only yesterday.

  “I always know when they’re lying. It’s my sixth sense,” he said and nodded solemnly at the camera. I don’t believe him. If it were an animal (not a human – I know humans are animals) then I might understand it. The way that those Medical Detection Dogs can sniff out cancer cells or that Cricetomys gambianus, the African giant pouched rat, can find land mines in Tanzania. If someone told me a pig knew when a person was lying then I might believe that, but not Chief Constable Sidley.

  That stuff doesn’t really interest me, though; hunch, premonition, gut feeling. I want to find out how you know when someone is lying, really know, not just guess or suspect. Not surprisingly, there is lots of literature on the subject.

  My last time-filler was Jupiter, anything and everything to know about Jupiter. My favourite fact about Jupiter is that its dust clouds are made up of ammonia and sulphur. The smell must be awful. Except that humans can’t just go there and smell it. It’s -145°C on the way in and then rises steadily as you get closer to the surface, so we would probably be dead before we smelt anything at all, of course.

  My second favourite fact about Jupiter is that the Great Red Spot, a storm covering an area three times larger than the Earth, has been raging for 350 years. Imagine that, a fire burning for generations with no one to put it out.

  Yes, Jupiter occupied me for around two months before I pretty much knew everything anyone had written. I sincerely hope that this will keep me busy for longer.

  Perhaps I should introduce myself to you before I just delve in: Raymond Maynard, aged 15 years and 9 months, 3 days, 6 hours and 22 minutes. That felt a little strange because I don’t do it very often; tell people who I am, that is. I prefer to exist quietly, to take things in rather than spew them out. In fact, you are probably my first audience.

  What do I look like? I am one metre 81 without my shoes. I think that’s tall although, of course, “tall” is a relative concept. “Gosh, he’s tall for his age”; that’s my first memory of anyone commenting on my height, from the lady behind the desk of the doctor’s surgery when I went to have my tonsils looked at. The doctor said that I would have to have them removed. And I have brown hair. That’s it, really.

  And what do I like? What I like are facts, lots of them, especially if they have numbers attached to them. And I can remember them, all of them; the birthdays of all the boys in my class, the registration numbers of their parents’ cars from visiting days, the numbers in the bar code of a packet of Jaffa cakes.

  So, in California, in the USA (did you know that more turkeys are raised in California than in any other US state?), they have developed a product which measures the magnetic activity in your brain. A scientist there says that when you lie, there is increased activity in the superior prefrontal, anterior cingulate gyri and the parietal cortex areas of the brain. He says this is because we are all naturally honest and so the brain has to work harder to suppress the truth. He claims 91.3% success. And to find out, all you have to do is set up an electromagnetic force around the skull of some willing participant, ask a few questions and watch what happens.

  Again I’m not convinced; the research is based on the premise that humans are inherently honest. Is this really right? All humans? When Marnie said she hadn’t visited last week because she had a cold I knew that was a lie because I saw from her Facebook page that she was out at a party and she looked pretty fine in all the photos. I wouldn’t have minded if she�
��d just said. But that proves my point. If my sister lies so easily, then I’m sure other people do it all the time without it causing “extra brain activity”.

  Voice Stress Analysis. That sounds more promising. Eighteen years of research have led to the conclusion that people’s voices sound different when they lie, and this time the researcher claims 93.4% success rates. Admirable. But this seems obvious to me and I am sure I could have worked it out in far less time.

  What else is there? “A connection between lying and increased pupil size”, a “Facial Action Coding System” and also “how long it takes the subject to begin answering questions”. Liars take longer to begin speaking, apparently. The list of detection techniques is lengthy. This is going to keep me occupied for quite some time.

  2

  JUDITH BURTON was exhausted. She allowed her front door to swing shut without her customary consideration for the other residents of the block; this was unlike her, but the day had cratered from a run-of-the-mill start and she was home at least an hour later than expected. And although she would never have admitted it, she wanted to hear that reassuring “clang” resound through the entire apartment block, so all within earshot would know that her tedious day had finally come to an end.

  She sighed deeply and deposited her keys on the hall table, noticing, with a sniff, that the light was already beginning to fail. She swept into the kitchen and opened the fridge wide, casting a pale-yellow arc across the floor tiles. After a rapid sweep of its contents and a gentle tut, she removed a half-full bottle of white wine and poured herself a generous glass. Swirling the liquid around in the last vestiges of the day’s watery sunlight, she smiled wistfully. Then, after one sip, she headed for the living room where she seated herself in the only armchair, her head finding its familiar groove.

  She had three telephone messages. Judith found this annoying in itself, as it was out of the ordinary. The only people who called her these days were her sister, who had an aversion to texting, email or any form of messaging or social media, and her mother who, despite hours of patient explanation and carefully written out, long-hand “how to” notes over the past 15 years, simply could not master any electronic device. And, as she frequently told Judith, “I just like to hear your voice. Then I know you’re alive. If it’s a machine, how do I know it’s you?” But even then, it was unusual for them all to call simultaneously.

  The first message was, as she had anticipated, from her mother and she cut it off after only two words. She knew the rest, a vituperative monologue concerning the neighbours, a grumble about the weather, usually followed by the announcement in stricken tones of a birth, death or marriage of a distant relative.

  The second caller rang off before leaving a message. Judith paused with her wine glass halfway to her lips and listened intently. The caller had hesitated and certainly contemplated speaking, before Judith heard a breathy gasp and then silence. So, by the third message, Judith was alert and she was not disappointed.

  “Miss Burton. You don’t know me. My name is Constance Lamb. I…” There was a brief intermission whilst the caller selected her words. “I am a solicitor at Taylor Moses. Our office is in Hackney. You don’t know me but I know, well, I know of your work. I, mm… can you call me please? Any time. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  Judith drank again from her glass, her fingers working lightly against its stem. She was fairly sure that the earlier silent message had come from the same person as the later, so the caller, Constance Lamb, had really wanted to talk and had only settled for voicemail second time around. She played the message through a number of times.

  The young woman, for it was definitely someone fairly young, sounded sad and downbeat and her “mm” midway through the recording had been inserted to give her some thinking time. She had been going to say more, something to build up rapport perhaps, but she had thought better of it. The “thank you” at the end was an attempt to be businesslike, when at least some of the time Miss Lamb had evidently been both disappointed and anxious.

  Judith rose stiffly, crossed the room to the window and gazed down into the street below. She half expected to see someone camped outside with binoculars trained upwards, awaiting her return, but the view was the same as ever. The precocious square of parkland opposite was empty of sentient life, apart from a squirrel tearing around the undergrowth, its tail flailing wildly, stopping in freeze-frame from time to time, before drilling down to disturb the foundations of the splayed and fading tulips.

  Mr Fox, her taciturn neighbour, a retired accountant who had informed her, when she tried small talk in the lift last week, that he “still dabbled in business consultancy”, had left his bicycle in its usual spot, its heavy chain wound around many times like some devilish royal-blue python squeezing the life from the newly-painted railings. And the “doctor” parking space directly below remained free, pending Dr Joseph, the divorced cardiologist who lived upstairs, returning home from the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where he ran a late clinic on Wednesdays.

  She returned to her chair and listened one more time to the message, all the time wondering what was behind the young woman’s call. She collected her tablet, entering the name into Google: Constance Lamb, solicitor, London. And there it was, the face of the caller staring out, her expression both serene and radiant. Constance appeared no more than 25 years old, her hair scraped back dramatically from her face, her skin brown and flawless, her cheekbones high, her lips glossy and full.

  Judith read Constance’s entry on her firm’s website. It confirmed that Constance was an associate at Taylor Moses and cited a couple of high-profile cases and some lesser ones, which Judith noted with a nod, but none of them particularly suggested any link with her. The firm was clearly bona fide but small and unambitious and none of the dozen or so other lawyers were familiar to Judith.

  She returned to Constance’s page and read through her résumé a second time, this time aloud, her lips moving unhurriedly over the words. When she reached the end, she stared for some minutes at the young woman’s photo again.

  Then she exited the website with a brisk tap, pushed the tablet away and downed the rest of her wine. She allowed her eyes to travel the perimeter of the room from left to right. Everything was in order as she had left it this morning, everything in its place, clean and tidy and organised. However hard she tried to be critical, she had to admit that nothing required cleaning or polishing or washing or brushing. She sighed deeply once more. There was only one option. She would have to call this girl.

  3

  CONSTANCE WAS late for her meeting. That made her apprehensive. She prided herself on being punctual, but she had covered for a colleague to take some instructions on a new case and the man had refused to stop talking. Even when she had told him she had another meeting to attend, he had hardly drawn breath. She had called ahead to say she was running late but this was not how she liked to operate.

  Of course, everything about this meeting was out of the ordinary. The new client, a Mrs Maynard, had refused to come to the office, insisting instead that she come and meet at a residential address in Richmond, and had refused to give her any details over the phone. She had only said that if Constance did not want to take the case after they met, she would reimburse her for her time and ticket. Then Constance had narrowly missed a westbound train, compounding her lateness. Arriving at Richmond station things became worse as the rain, predicted for later in the afternoon, arrived prematurely. By the time she arrived at 22 Daws Close she was cold and wet and had twisted her left ankle on a wobbly paving stone. She rang the bell and huddled as close to the front door as possible without leaning on it, craving shelter under its shallow overhang.

  A dowdy, pale-faced woman opened the door on the chain. At first, she peered at Constance with some suspicion, which Constance put down, yet again, to the colour of her skin.

  As usual, she shrugged it off. If she allowed herself to be affronted by every look askance she would have been a miserable human being an
d would have missed out on some fascinating cases. Perhaps the woman just found her more youthful than her years, or maybe her reason for consulting Constance in the first place had made her wary.

  “Hello. Mrs Maynard? I’m Constance Lamb. We spoke earlier,” Constance began brightly, stepping back despite the driving rain, to allow the woman to view her properly.

  “Oh, Miss Lamb? Of course.”

  “Constance, please.”

  Now that the identity of the visitor was confirmed Mrs Maynard allowed the door to swing open and invited Constance inside and, if she had been alarmed by Constance’s appearance at first, she was now seeking to make up for it with her effusive welcome.

  “Thank you so much for coming Miss Lamb, Constance. I am sorry for all the secrecy. Oh, gosh, it’s raining. I hadn’t noticed and now you’re soaked through. Come in and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  Constance entered the Victorian semi and removed her coat, shaking it lightly and hanging it on a peg near the front door.

  “Do call me Caroline, and please take a seat in the living room. The sofa’s the comfiest spot. I’ll get your tea.”

  Constance entered a smart and functional lounge, containing two cherry-red leather settees, a low coffee table and a gentle-on-the-eye dappled watercolour sprawled above the long-abandoned fireplace. This room was also spick and span and recently vacuumed; the marks from the cleaner criss-crossed the pale pink carpet at regular intervals. The neat, rectangular bay was hung with greying nets and, other than the painting, the walls were bare, although the shading at various locations hinted strongly that it had once had some companions.

  A faded photograph sat in the centre of the mantelpiece and, as Mrs Maynard busied herself in the kitchen, Constance crossed the room to examine it. Two children in the foreground stared back at her; the first a smiling, gap-toothed blonde-haired young girl, all action, leaping up to grab at the lens, the second a small, sickly-looking brown-haired toddler, seated in a slumped position, shoulders hunched, hands hanging lifelessly at his sides. Behind the children sat a younger and brighter version of Caroline Maynard, although the smile on her lips then was the same fearful, uneasy look she bore today. Next to her, beaming, his eyes turned towards his daughter with delight, was a hearty-looking round-faced man, whom Constance took to be Mr Maynard.