Up in the gallery, John Merrivale whispered to his wife.
“This isn’t a 1…legal argument. It’s a witch hunt.”
The District Attorney went on.
“Grace Brookstein was a partner in Quorum. An equal, equity partner. She was not only legally responsible for the fund’s actions. She was morally responsible for them. Make no mistake. Grace Brookstein knew what her husband was doing. And she supported and encouraged him every step of the way.
Don’t let the complexity of this case fool you, Ladies and Gentlemen. Underneath all the jargon and paperwork, all the off shore bank accounts and derivative transactions, what happened here is really very simple. Grace Brookstein stole. She stole because she was greedy. She stole because she thought she could get away with it.”
He looked at Grace one last time.
“She still thinks she can get away with it. It’s up to you to prove her wrong.”
Grace Brookstein watched District Attorney Angelo Michele sit down. He’d given a bravura performance, far more eloquent than Frank Hammond’s. The jury looked as if they wanted to burst into spontaneous applause.
If he weren’t trying to destroy me, I’d feel sorry for him. Poor man, he’s tried so hard. And such passion! Perhaps, if we’d met in other circumstances, we’d have been friends?
The general consensus in the media was that the jury would take at least a day to deliberate. The mountain of evidence in the case was so enormous, it was hard to see how they could review it any quicker. In fact, they came back to Court 14 in less than an hour. Just like Frank Hammond said they would.
The judge spoke solemnly. “Have you reached your verdict?”
The foreman, a black man in his fifties, nodded. “We have, Your Honor.”
“And how do you find the defendant? Guilty, or not guilty?”
The foreman looked directly at Grace Brookstein.
And smiled.
An Excerpt from
Sidney Sheldon’s The Tides of Memory
By Tilly Bagshawe
On Sale April 9, 2013
Prologue
“Was there anything else, Home Secretary?”
Alexia De Vere smiled. Home Secretary. Surely the most beautiful two words in the English language. Except for Prime Minister, of course. The Tory party’s newest superstar laughed at herself. One step at a time, Alexia.
“No thank you Edward. I’ll call if I need you.”
Sir Edward Manning nodded briefly and left the room. A senior civil servant in his early sixties and bastion of the Westminster political establishment, Sir Edward Manning was as tall and grey and rigid as a matchstick. In the coming months, Sir Edward would be Alexia De Vere’s constant companion: advising, cautioning, expertly guiding her through the maze of Home Office politics. But right now, in these first few hours in the job, Alexia De Vere wanted to be alone. She wanted to savor the sweet taste of victory without an audience. To sit back and revel in the profound thrill of power.
After all, she’d earned it.
Getting up from her desk, she paced around her new office, a vast eyrie of a room perched high in one of the baroque towers of the Palace of Westminster. The interior design was more functional than fabulous. A matching pair of ugly brown sofas at one end (those must go), a simple desk and chair at the other, and a bookcase stuffed with dusty, un-read tomes of political history. But none of that mattered once you saw the view. Spectacular didn’t begin to cover it. Floor to ceiling windows provided a panoramic vista of London, from the towers of Canary Wharf in the east to the mansions of Chelsea in the west. It was a view that said one thing and one thing only.
Power.
And it was all hers.
I am the Home Secretary of Great Britain. The second most important member of Her Majesty’s Government.
How had it happened? How had a junior prisons minister, and a deeply unpopular one at that, leapfrogged so many other senior candidates to land the big job? Poor Kevin Lomax over at Trade & Industry must be spitting yellow, coffee-stained teeth. The thought made Alexia De Vere feel warm inside. Patronizing old fossil. He wrote me off years ago, but who’s laughing now?