‘That’s what we are here to discuss,’ O’Sullivan replied, then fell silent. A glint in his eye unnerved Bruno.
‘Well?’ Emily continued. ‘Do I have to ask you again?’
‘We have made our final settlement offer,’ he replied. Bruno’s stare moved to O’Sullivan’s mouth. It was itching to smirk.
‘Let’s not play games, shall we?’ Emily disputed. ‘You’ve said nothing.’
‘Which is our offer. Our client will not be offering Mr Yorke any financial compensation for his loss.’
Bruno turned to Emily, his muscles tensing. ‘What does he mean?’
She ignored him. ‘Then why have you summoned us here if you’ve yet to make a decision?’
‘You misunderstand, Ms Laghari. On our client’s instruction, we will not be making you an offer, period.’
‘And your reasoning behind this is …?’
‘There is a morality clause in each contract that forbids sexual relations between co-workers.’
‘This is old news, Mr O’Sullivan. It’s why Mr Yorke resigned from his position in the same firm when they began their relationship.’
‘I wasn’t referring to Mr Yorke.’
Bruno looked at the lawyer, perplexed, and then to Emily. She appeared to understand the conversation’s subtext. She turned to Bruno, her sober expression juxtaposing the honeyed tone that followed. ‘Perhaps you might want to step outside for a few minutes,’ she said. A sick feeling erupted in the pit of his stomach.
‘No, I want to hear it.’ Bruno looked at O’Sullivan who was by now barely able to contain himself. ‘Tell me.’
O’Sullivan beckoned one of his colleagues to continue, a man with a slight build, pale skin and slicked-back, raven black hair. ‘Mr Graph, would you please continue.’
‘On the day the Hacking Collective took over so many cars on our country’s roads, Zoe Yorke, your client’s spouse,was travelling inside an autonomous car registered to her employer, Howles Technologies. She was accompanied by a colleague, Mr Mark Bancroft, who wasn’t registered as a Passenger in her vehicle for that journey, but he should have been, as per company policy.’
‘We know this already. Even if this is policy, at a stretch, it would have been punishable with a verbal warning.’
‘The couple participated in a series of sex acts inside the moving vehicle.’
‘Bullshit,’ Bruno blurted out. ‘Zoe wouldn’t do that.’
‘This is the sole basis of your refusal to pay?’ asked Emily. ‘Speculation and post-mortem accusations without evidence?’ She began to stand up and buttoned her jacket. ‘We’ll see you in court.’
‘Perhaps you should remain seated at least until the next part,’ Graph continued. ‘We have video confirmation.’
Emily shook her head. ‘You know very well that under privacy laws, video footage taken from inside an autonomous vehicle has no relevance in a legal or civil insurance claim and therefore cannot be used as evidence either for or against anyone involved in a fatal accident.’
Fatal accident, Bruno repeated to himself. The words came as no surprise but still they skittered across his skin like icy cold drops of rain. When O’Sullivan leaned closer, Bruno was struck by how narrow and dark the man’s eyes were; almost inhumanly so.
‘We didn’t say the footage had been taken frominsidethe vehicle,’ O’Sullivan disputed. ‘It contains actions perpetrated inside the vehicle moments before the accident.’ Finally, O’Sullivan released his conspiratorial smile. ‘You might want to turn your head, Mr Yorke.’
Bruno ignored him as O’Sullivan and Graph’s colleague projected moving images taken from above Zoe’s car.
‘This footage was filmed by a passenger inside a double-decker coach,’ Graph continued. ‘The cameraman was a member of a rugby team travelling to an away match. Asyou can see, the privacy windows in Mrs Yorke’s driverless car have been activated making it impossible for anyone to see inside from road-level. But she failed to darken the glass of her panoramic sunroof, making the view from above quite clear.’
Bruno barely breathed as footage gradually closed in on his wife. She was writhing on the lap of a man he didn’t recognise. She wore a shirt but no skirt and his trousers were just about visible around his ankles.
‘He’s making her do this,’ Bruno protested, but he could barely hear his own voice. ‘He’s forcing her.’
Now the sick feeling rose up into his throat as he desperately hoped an alternative camera angle might show Zoe resisting the actions of her colleague. When he realised that would mean the sex to be non-consensual, he was selfishly unsure of which would be the lesser of two evils. The unrelenting footage panned close in on her face. Cheers rang out from the cameraman’s fellow teammates when Zoe appeared to climax, none the wiser to her audience. Then when her companion finished moments later, she pulled his face to hers and kissed him with a passion Bruno could barely remember her sharing with him.
He tore himself away from the screen and glared at the smug expressions of the defence team. When Emily made no effort to reassure him, he knew both the battle and the war were over.
