Page 128 of The One Plus One
The child screamed louder. Ed’s head had begun to hurt.
‘We could go.’
‘Go where?’
‘The pub. It would be quieter.’
She stared at him, and then she ran a speculative finger across his chin. ‘Ed, how much did you drink last night?’
He had emerged from the police station spent. They had met his barrister afterwards – Ed had already forgotten his name – with Paul Wilkes and two other solicitors, one of whom specialized in insider-trading cases. They sat around the mahogany table and spoke as if choreographed, laying out the prosecution case baldly, so that Ed was in no doubt about what lay ahead. Against him: the email trail, Deanna Lewis’s testimony, her brother’s phone calls, the FSA’s new determination to stamp down on perpetrators of insider trading. His own cheque, complete with signature.
Deanna had sworn that she had not known what she was doing was wrong. She stated Ed had pressed the money on her. She said that had she known what he was suggesting was illegal she would never have done it. Nor would she have told her brother.
The evidence for him: that he had plainly not gained a cent from the transaction. His legal team said – in his opinion, a little too cheerfully – that they would stress his ignorance, his ineptitude, that he was new to money, the ramifications and responsibilities of directorship. They would claim that Deanna Lewis knew very well what she was doing; that his and Deanna’s short relationship was actually evidence of her and her brother’s entrapment. The investigating team had been all over Ed’s accounts and found them gratifyingly unrewarding. He paid the full whack of tax every year. He had no investments. He had always liked things simple.
And the cheque was not addressed to her. It was inher possession, but her name was in her own writing. They would assert that she had taken a blank cheque from his home at some point during the relationship, they said.
‘But she didn’t,’ he said.
Nobody seemed to hear.
It could go either way with the prison sentence, they told him, but whatever happened Ed was undoubtedly looking at a hefty fine. And obviously the end of his time with Mayfly. He would be banned from holding a directorship, possibly for some considerable time. Ed needed to be prepared for all these things. They began to confer among themselves.
And then he had said it: ‘I want to plead guilty.’
‘What?’
The room fell silent.
‘I did tell her to do it. I didn’t think about it being illegal. I just wanted her to go away so I told her how she could make some money.’
They stared at each other.
‘Ed –’ his sister began.
‘I want to tell the truth.’
One of the solicitors leant forward. ‘We actually have quite a strong defence, Mr Nicholls. I think that given the lack of your handwriting on the cheque – their only substantive piece of evidence – we can successfully claim that Ms Lewis used your account for her own ends.’
‘But I did give her the cheque.’
Paul Wilkes leant forward. ‘Ed, you need to be clearabout this. If you plead guilty, you substantially increase your chance of a custodial sentence.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You will care, when you’re doing twenty-three hours in solitary in Winchester for your own safety.’
He barely heard her. ‘I just want to tell the truth. That’s how it was.’
‘Ed,’ his sister grabbed at his arm, ‘the truth has no place in a courtroom. You’re going to make things worse.’
But he shook his head and sat back in his chair. And then he didn’t say anything more.
He knew they thought he was odd, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t bring himself to look exercised by any of it. He sat there, numb. His sister asked most of the questions. He heard Financial Services and Markets Act 2000blah blah blah. He heard open prison and punitive fines and Criminal Justice Act 1993blah blah blahand he sat there and he honestly couldn’t make himself care less about any of it. So he was going to prison for a bit? So what? He had lost everything anyway, twice over.
‘Ed? Did you hear what I said?’
‘Sorry.’
