A Murder of Magpies by Judith Flanders Read Free Book Online Page B

always do. Instead, I changed the subject. “Mother, if I needed to have a really good libel read done, would Selden’s be enough?”
    â€œEnough for what? Enough to prevent nuisance suits, of course. Enough to stop people who file thinking you’re a big corporation and you’ll give them a few thousand just to make them go away. But enough to stop a serious action? That depends on how they think they’ve been damaged. What’s the book?”
    I began to explain about Kit and Alemán. She cut in after only two sentences. “Your solicitors are a good City firm. Very prestigious. Lots of clout. Their reputation won’t stop this kind of problem for twenty seconds.”
    â€œGreat. I really need to hear this.”
    â€œYou do need to hear it, Sam. This is precisely what you need to hear.”
    â€œMother, we just can’t find the money in the budget. It’s the standard publishing story—there’s never any money. We’ve budgeted £1,000, which is what we usually pay Selden’s because we give them all our work, but I assume £1,000 is not what you’re talking about.”
    â€œIt most certainly is not. Being cheap now will only cost you in the end—you know what a libel action, even a small one, can cost. You’re going to have to get the manuscript read by one of the heavy hitters, a firm with a powerful criminal law department as well. There’s no point messing around with companies like mine. We’re great for corporate work, where we are scary, but no one’s going to be worried about us in a question of criminal libel.”
    â€œCriminal? Libel is a civil action. It’s not criminal, for God’s sake.”
    â€œIt’s civil here, but you’ve got to check the rest of Europe. Your murder victim is Spanish, the incident took place in France, and if the companies involved are Italian—”
    â€œOne is. One is French. The rest are East European.”
    â€œWell, I’m quite sure that libel is a criminal offense in Italy. And you can libel the dead there, too, so there’s no loophole. I don’t know about Spain and France, much less Eastern Europe, and neither will Selden’s. That’s my point.”
    â€œWhat does ‘criminal’ mean in this context?”
    â€œCriminal, dear, means criminal. You understand English. It means you go to jail.”
    â€œMe?” I was saying this a lot at the moment, and always in an involuntary falsetto.
    â€œWell, maybe not you. Maybe just Kit. Or your CEO. Or yes, maybe you as the editor. Depends how the prosecution is worded. Depends how many fish they want to catch. Depends how much trouble they want to cause. Is this something you particularly want to find out?”
    â€œThis is something I never want to find out.”
    â€œThen hire some heavy hitters. The cost is less than the cost of a jail sentence. And just because my advice is free doesn’t mean it’s not good. It’s legal advice as well as maternal. I’d hate to have to find time to visit you in an Italian jail. I’d hate even more than that dealing with the amount of paperwork it would take to get you moved to an English jail.”
    She’d get me moved, I had no doubt about that. But I’d have to live with an unspoken “I told you so” for the rest of my life. That was more expensive emotionally than finding the money for a second libel read.

 
    4
    I woke up on Thursday morning with a feeling of low-level dread. It was early—the alarm hadn’t gone off, and it wasn’t yet light, although the dawn chorus outside my window indicated that it soon would be.
    When I’d first moved to this flat the birds woke me every morning. I’d lived beside a main road at university, and cars had roared past for twenty-two and a half hours a day. If I woke in the night and there were only a few cars going past, then I knew without