Chapter 69 Just four seconds

Chapter 69 Just four seconds
Cassano sat down, folded his hands, and looked at Cole.
He did not look at Richard once.
Cole took him through Monaco first. The structure, the accounts, the chain of instruction running from Langley through Richard and into every shell company that had carried money nobody was supposed to trace. Cassano answered without softening anything. He put Richard at the centre of every transaction with the precision of a man who had already decided that accuracy mattered more than his own comfort.
Then Cole asked about the withdrawal.
"I was advised by someone with significant influence over my affairs that continuing to cooperate was not in my interest," Cassano said.
"Was that advice accurate?" Cole said.
Cassano looked at the jury.
"No," he said. "It was advice that protected someone else at my expense. I didn't understand that at the time."
Cole sat down.
Grayson went after Cassano's history. Thirty years of it, laid out methodically, nothing flattering. He was polite about it which made it land harder. The jury took it in without expression.
Cassano waited for him to finish.
"Everything you've described is accurate," he said. "I'm not here to tell you I'm a good man." He looked at the jury directly. "I'm here to tell you what I know about Richard Simpson. I know it from fourteen years of direct experience and every word of it is true."
Grayson shifted to the Monaco money. He suggested Cassano had a personal grievance and was using the trial to settle it.
"Richard cost me money, yes," Cassano said. "But that's not why I'm here." He paused. "I'm here because a man I knew spent years building a case against Richard Simpson and didn't live to see it used." Another pause. "I owed him that much."
The courtroom went very still.
I didn't turn around but I felt Bruno stop moving in the gallery behind me.
Grayson tried two more directions and got nothing from either and sat down.
Cole stood for one question.
"In fourteen years of working with Richard Simpson, did he ever act alone?"
"Richard Simpson has never acted alone in his life," Cassano said. "He builds structures, puts other people inside them, and stands far enough back to stay clean when things fall apart." He looked at the jury. "The difference this time is that the structure held long enough for everyone inside it to see who built it."
Adler excused Cassano.
He walked out through the courtroom and passed Richard's table without looking at him while Richard chard looked at the surface in front of him and kept looking at it and that silence said more than anything either of them could have spoken aloud.
Court adjourned at four.
We ate at the place where you didn't choose what came and the food was good and we didn't talk about any of it and Bruno's foot pressed against mine under the table the whole time.
Afterwards we went to the studio.
He sat in the corner and I painted and the city was quiet outside and two hours went by without either of us noticing.
At eleven I stepped back.
My father at forty. One hand raised mid-gesture. Laughing at something off-camera, completely unaware of being seen.
Bruno came and stood behind me and looked at it.
"That's him," he said quietly.
"Yes," I said.
His arms came around me and I leaned back into him and we stayed like that and the studio was warm and the painting was on the wall and the trial was three days from the jury and I let myself feel all of it. The relief and the exhaustion and the particular tenderness of standing in a warm room with someone who had been there for every single day of the hardest month of my life.
His phone rang on the windowsill.
"Ignore it," I said.
He checked the screen.
"It's Daniel," he said.
He answered and I watched his face and knew within ten seconds that something had broken wrong somewhere.
He ended the call and turned me around by the shoulders and looked at me.
"Langley's lawyer filed an emergency application tonight," he said. "To have the trial suspended. New evidence."
"What evidence?" I said.
"A witness," he said. "Someone who apparently came forward in the last forty-eight hours claiming they have direct evidence that the Monaco transaction was authorised by Bruno's father before he died."
"His father has been dead for eight years," I said.
"Yes," Bruno said. "Which means someone built this from nothing."
"Who is the witness?" I said.
Bruno held my gaze and his hands were still on my shoulders and the studio was was just beaming with light, I was looking at the paintings on the wall and they were looking at me. 
I went completely still.
Bruno's hands were on my shoulders and I stood there and looked at him and the name he had just said made no sense and made complete sense at the same time in the way that the worst things always do.
The witness was my mother.
I called her immediately.
It rang four times and she picked up and said my name the way she always used when she saw my number and I was standing in the studio with Bruno's hands still on my shoulders and said, "Mum, I need you to tell me what's happening."
it wasn't more than two seconds but my mother never paused before answering me and those two seconds told me everything before she said a word.
"Phoebe," she said.
"Your name is on a witness application that was filed tonight by Langley's lawyer. claiming you have evidence that Bruno's father authorised the Monaco transaction before he died."
Bruno was already picking up his jacket.
We were in the car by eleven forty and on the motorway by midnight and the road was empty and dark and Bruno drove and I sat with my hands in my lap and looked at the road ahead and did not say anything for a long time.
"She wouldn't do this willingly," I said.
"No," Bruno said.
"Langley got to her the same way Richard got to Mara, the same way he got to everyone." I pressed my hands together. "She is seventy years old and she lives alone and she has been learning Portuguese and tending a garden and Langley walked into that and found whatever he needed."
"What could he have on her?" That was the last thing I heard bruno say. 
I thought about it.
"My father's evidence and the case he was building against Cassano. 
If Langley has documents that show my father was connected to Cassano's financial structure, even peripherally, even as an investigator rather than a participant, he could use that to threaten my mother with her husband's reputation."