The French Girl(41)

She leans back in her chair and adjusts her reading glasses. This will be the pronouncement, I think; this is where I find out exactly how much of a mess I’m in. “You’re a lawyer, yes?” she says abruptly.

“Yes. Well, no, not anymore. I run a legal recruitment company.”

She waves a hand. “But you have the training. You know, for example, that we have an adversarial system here in Britain: the police and prosecution gather evidence likely to convict, and the defense gathers evidence likely to acquit, and then it’s all hashed out in open court. Given your training, you likely know an awful lot more detail than that. In practice, in high-profile criminal cases, what tends to happen is that the police very quickly establish a theory and work to find evidence to support that. Anything they turn up that doesn’t quite fit the working theory is not exactly overlooked, but it certainly gets less attention.” She grimaces, her mouth a slash of uneasy pink. “It’s imperfect. All systems are imperfect. But we have habeas corpus, and presumed innocence until proof of guilt, and the court framework in which the trial takes place is very open.” She fixes her dark, bright eyes upon me, and I realize I’m expected to respond in some way.

“Um. Yes.”

She nods briskly. “The French system is very different. It’s based on civil law, rather than common law, which as you know means there is no concept of precedent . . . but I digress. The important point vis-à-vis your situation is that it is not an adversarial system. All criminal cases—at least, all criminal cases of a serious nature such as this—are investigated by a, well, the technical term is juge d’instruction, which translates roughly as examining magistrate, I suppose. This magistrate is independent of the government and the prosecution service, but nonetheless works closely with the police. It’s their job to analyze all the evidence and opine in a report as to whether the case should go to trial.” She pauses and looks at me closely again. This time I’m quick to nod. “The important point here is that, generally speaking, weak cases don’t even get to trial; they’re thrown out by the investigating magistrate before that. The corollary is that the conviction rate is very high, and whilst there’s the concept of innocent until proven guilty, in practice . . .” She shrugs her shoulders and executes that queasy pink grimace again. “There’s a high presumption of guilt if the case gets as far as trial.”

My mind is racing ahead. “But what of the checks and balances on the magistrate?”

She shakes her head almost apologetically. “Next to none. It’s one of the major complaints against the system; effectively a huge number of cases are tried in secret by a single person rather than in open court subject to a jury of peers. On the whole the magistrates are very good, but as a principle . . . I should probably add there’s no concept of habeas corpus, either, though in most circumstances a juge d’instruction would need another magistrate to sign off before a person can be held. Oh, and while trials are generally very quick, the preceding investigations can be very long.”

“How long?”

“Two years is not unusual.”

It may be the hangover, but I don’t think so: suddenly I feel sick again. The idea of this hanging over us all for years doesn’t bear thinking about: Modan appearing at intervals with his oh-so-elegant suits and his sly questions, inducing Lara to a permanent state of self-absorbed giddiness, Caro needling and prodding and pecking away at any exposed quarter, Tom—no, not Tom, I can’t think about Tom—and Severine . . . It occurs to me that I’ve been relying on Severine disappearing once this has all gone away. I wonder if she sees it quite the same way.

“Are you all right?”

I realize I’m rubbing my forehead with notable force. I drop my hand and attempt to look at her, but another wave of nausea hits me and I have to look down and grit my teeth. The office floor is carpeted with faded blue tiles, which provide nothing to focus on; I try the edge of her desk instead. There’s a scratch in the dark varnished wood that shows the cheap sawdust-like MDF underneath.

“Perhaps a cup of tea?” She doesn’t wait for my answer; she leans forward and presses a button on her telephone to issue the tea-making instruction to a disembodied voice. Disembodied: a voice without a body. But Severine is the other way round: a body without a voice. Dear God, two more years of Severine . . .

“Are you all right?” she asks again.

“Sorry. It’s just a little hot in here,” I say unconvincingly. The nausea is passing.

“Of course,” she says smoothly. “Ah, here’s the tea.”

I take my cup gratefully, and also a couple of biscuits, which I nibble at cautiously at first, but then devour rapidly as I realize I’m starving. She takes her own cup, adds milk and stirs in economical movements, then sits back with the cup resting on her leg, the saucer abandoned on the desk. I focus on my own life-giving tea.

“What do you think happened?” she asks, in a musing tone.

I look up inquiringly, my mouth full of another biscuit.

“You’ve told me the bare facts of what happened,” she explains. “All of which I could have got from the French papers, to be frank—of course I’ve been following it; it’s exactly my area and quite a high-profile case over there. But what do you think happened?”

I take a sip of tea to wash down the biscuit before answering her. “I don’t know. It was so long ago . . . Now I’m not even sure I can trust my memories.” Or my interpretation of those memories.