‘Oh no, Meg. You and I – we both know how badly this trial is going for the defendant, don’t we? You are going to have to do more than just your best. Much more. You don’t get any prize for coming second, unless of course you consider Laura being unloaded from a plane in a coffin to be a prize.’

68

Friday 17 May

Shit. Meg sat in the jury box on top of an almost sleepless night of worrying about everything, on top of a large hangover. She’d swallowed paracetamols and drunk copious quantities of water during the night and again just now in the jury room. Her mind was all over the place, thinking back to the phone call last night, the threats, the knowledge that she really was being watched and listened to 24/7.

You do have a friend on the jury.

Who? This morning, as before in the jury room, opinions had been expressed. Hugo Pink, despite all they had heard yesterday, was adamant that Terence Gready was an innocent man, fitted up by the police because he was a solicitor who had made a career out of defending criminals. The former Detective Superintendent, Mike Roberts, seemed to be supporting him on that point.

One of them? She drifted fleetingly at the thought. Then she winced again as her headache cut like a cheese wire through her brain. Somehow, she was going to have to hold it together today, suffer in silence and keep focused, clocking anything she might see as a weakness in the prosecution’s unfolding evidence. But she felt utterly exhausted from lack of sleep. Yesterday she had found herself nodding off many times – she was going to have to try even harder today to stay alert.

Alison’s words came back. Courage is knowing what not to fear. She liked those words. But. A massive but. How could she know what not to fear? Was her mystery caller exaggerating about Laura? He knew where her daughter was, the photographs showed that. Then there was the zip-wire accident. He had definitely been involved in that. And what he had told her last night, relaying back to her parts of her conversation with Alison. Or Ali as he had correctly identified. Just what lengths would they go to to protect Gready? Where would this end? What price for their lives?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the prosecuting barrister standing. ‘I would now like to call my next witness, Emily Denyer, from the Sussex Police Financial Investigation Unit.’

A woman in her early thirties, with sharply styled dark hair, dressed in a smart black-and-white herringbone-patterned suit and white blouse, holding a laptop and folder of documents, took the stand, gave her name and was sworn in. Meg watched her closely. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about her worried Meg. Was it her confidence?