‘You seem to know a lot about her,’ Cressida said.
Brian looked at her. ‘I should do. She’s my daughter.’
‘What?’
Brian nodded. Cressida thought that maybe she shouldn’t sound so appalled. But she didn’t know how she should sound. There wasn’t anything in her internal Hannes Swartling handbook for this. She felt flustered and embarrassed, as if he had just put a bucket of offal in her lap. It would have been less awkward if he’d said the girl in the paper was his teen lover, for God’s sake, or a love-child from his past, who was now a hooker up on drug charges or extortion or, God, anything but terrorism. Then, she would have flicked to ‘understanding’. Compassionate. Non-judgemental.
But this information made her feel instead like she might vomit. She looked across at him, trying to keep the judgement out of her eyes. Immediately she found herself thinking about what the hell had gone wrong with his parenting that his daughter had ended up in this mess. Her second thought was the photo. The girl had gone to Ascham?
Cressida swallowed and turned her gaze to Sandra, just for somewhere to look. The other woman’s pale grey eyes were inscrutable though, and Cressida’s discomfiture slid straight off them. No help there. I guess you’d have to be pretty impassive to defend a war criminal, Cressida found herself thinking. Above such base notions as judgement.
‘But’ – she picked up the paper off the table again, speaking just for something to fill the silence, and scanned it – ‘it says here explosives offences.’ And hang on … Liddell? Wasn’t that one of the power stations owned by the client they’d met with on Saturday? She looked at Brian. Wow. He was seriously in the scato.
‘For now,’ Sandra said, sipping her coffee.
‘The thing is, Cressida,’ Brian continued quietly, regarding her, ‘we both know that when scandal gets out in the legal fraternity, it’s really hard to live it down.’
Cressida felt herself flush to the roots of her hair. She glanced again at Sandra, unsure whether the woman opposite knew about her father, then in the next moment feeling certain she did. As well as The Australian Leo had been front page news in the legal circulars for weeks, and the lead story in The Sydney Morning Herald twice. And Brian was right. People remembered. Cressida gave a low whistle. Sandra’s eyes flicked to hers and she thought she saw humour there, but the woman remained silent.
‘We can’t brief an outside lawyer on this,’ Brian announced. ‘Sandra here of course has the discretion of a Swiss banker, but there is no way I am trusting this to an instructing solicitor outside the firm. You’ve got experience at the highest levels of criminal law practice, Cressida. You know most of what there is to know about the Criminal Code jurisdiction. Sandra can tell you anything you don’t. We need to get her acquitted.’
Cressida was still so stunned at the idea that she was being asked to act on a criminal matter, for an M & A Partner’s daughter she had never met, with Sandra Crane, that it took a moment to take in the last thing Brian had said.
‘Acquitted,’ she said. ‘But …’ She picked up the article again. ‘Didn’t she do it? I mean, it says here that she gave herself in. Confessed.’ She pointed to the word for emphasis.
‘That need not be a problem,’ Sandra said. ‘We don’t know what she’s confessed to. In fact we don’t even know what the charges she’s up on are. There may be several. Or none at all. Newspapers don’t always get these things right. Or it could just be a beat-up by that rag,’ she said, flicking her hand delicately at the curl of paper. ‘Although I will say – with the New South Wales Counter Terrorism unit involved, we have to assume Code charges are likely.’
‘Yes. Of course,’ Cressida said, wishing she either had more time to think or that her brain worked faster. She couldn’t think which would be worse: discovering your daughter could be up on terrorism charges, or finding it out from the paper. Except possibly finding it out via your ex-wife. The immediate problem, though, was that they were all looking at her. Come on, she told herself, say something intelligent. Fortunately, Michael spoke.
‘I couldn’t get anyone on the phone at Muswellbrook copshop,’ said Michael. ‘God knows what they do with criminals in these conditions. Normally they go to Silverwater first, right, Cressida?’
‘What? Oh – yes,’ said Cressida, suffused with relief to know at least something.
‘She may still be there though,’ said Sandra. ‘At Muswellbrook LAC. Last night isn’t much time to get her down to Sydney.’
Brian stared at Sandra, his blue eyes bright. ‘It’s unlikely she’ll be found guilty of terrorism offences though, right? I mean, yes to explosives, probably even sabotage, or whatever – but terrorism?’
Sandra set down her coffee. ‘The terror crime list was written for what these people have been up to, Brian,’ she said, softly. ‘The government is going to be licking its chops. Not to mention ropable about not picking it up beforehand. And there’s also the probability of property damage and sabotage offences under State legislation. Maybe some explosives offences. And something under the Electricity Supply Act?’ she mused. ‘Interference with power supply and so on. Oh and of course conspiracy, acting in company,’ she said, like rounding off a list of cake ingredients. ‘I imagine we can give the double jeopardy prohibition a good swing on some of those. But there’s a very specific intent for the terrorism charges,’ she said, squinting upwards, remembering. ‘Let me get it right. An action done or a threat is made,’ she recited, as if of a well learnt poem, ‘with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, and’ – she paused – ‘with the intention of coercing or influencing the government or the public by intimidation. Section 101 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code,’ she said, almost with a flourish. ‘There are about ten different types of charge of course too. Commit a terrorist act, receive training for terrorism, possession of something in connection with a terrorist act … What else is there, Michael?’ she asked him. Colleague to colleague, thoughtful.
Brian’s eyes widened and he shook his head. Cress reached for her bag and scrambled to find a pen.
‘Let’s see …’ Sandra continued. ‘Direct activities of a terrorist organisation, recruitment for a terrorist organisation … That’s assuming they can prove terrorist organisation, of course. We’d be putting – I imagine?’ – she glanced at Brian – ‘that there wasn’t one, I think? Ragtag band of belligerents, et cetera? Anyway, the other potential charges – the State ones: sabotage and these explosives offences – their mental element is just the standard you’d expect for property damage.’ She shrugged. ‘You know, intent to injure, intent to destroy and so on. Depending on the offence. What do you think?’ she said, turning to Brian. ‘Did she do this with intention to intimidate the government into doing something? Taking action on climate change, for example?’
Brian’s face was slack. ‘I have no idea. Like I said – I haven’t seen her. Not for four years, now. Though she’s always been known as what I think is referred to as a “peacenik”.’ He enunciated the word as if it were a curious term in a foreign language. ‘For as long as I can remember. She has her faults, of course, as we all do, but … well, the Joanne I knew would never have wanted to hurt anybody. Mind you that was before she went to Iraq.’ His jaw clenched and abruptly he dropped his face forwards, pressing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll agree she certainly failed there,’ Sandra said, ‘but that’s another matter.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Cressida, trying to sound less piping. She didn’t care though, she decided; if she was going to represent this woman, she had to understand. ‘Were workers injured at the plant?’
‘I have no idea. I