Marked for Death

by Tony Kent

  ‘OK.’

  Richard smiled wide. Levy knew how eagerly he looked forward to spending time with her and she was happy that they still had that closeness. She wished she didn’t have to disappoint him so often.

  ‘I’ll get my satchel packed.’

  He was already leaving the table as he spoke, his excitement palpable. Levy watched him go. She finished her coffee as he ran from the room and, knowing he would not be long, she began to pack his lunchbox.

  She was almost done when she was interrupted by the sound of her mobile’s ringtone, muffled from within her jacket pocket.

  Pulling out the phone, she checked the caller ID: Steven Hale. At 8 a.m. it would not be a personal call.

  ‘Steve. What’s happened?’

  ‘Gang murder, Jo. A bad one.’ Out of the office, Hale dispensed with the formalities of title. When they were at work, he would never for a moment forget she was his superior, but after so many years working together, they’d become close. Their line of work did not lend itself to particularly sociable hours and this had left her with very few friends. Hale was one of them.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Brixton.’

  ‘Why are they calling us in? Surely this one’s for Trident?’

  ‘Trident have been called,’ Hale replied. ‘But Scotland Yard want us to work with them on this one.’

  The answer made Levy sigh.

  Trident. Another bloody problem.

  ‘OK,’ Levy finally said. ‘I’ll be there in an hour or so. I just need to drop Richard off at school first. Text me the address.’

  A crucifixion yesterday, a gangland massacre today, she thought as she disconnected the call. Hell of a week so far.

  Levy glanced down at Richard’s lunchbox. Looking back at her were a group of superheroes from the movies. The Avengers. A fantasy world. Where good always triumphed over evil.

  She pulled on her jacket, picked up the lunchbox and walked to the foot of the staircase.

  ‘Hurry up, Richard,’ she called out. ‘It’s time to go.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Michael was due to meet Jenny Draper at 9 a.m. He had chosen the Starbucks coffeeshop on High Holborn. At the top of Chancery Lane. Draper’s chambers was close by, inside Gray’s Inn. Barely a stone’s throw. It was one of the reasons Michael had chosen the location. When one barrister leads another in a case there is always a clear hierarchy. That can be off-putting on a first meeting; a one-sided match. Michael figured that home ground might tip the balance back towards her.

  He had arrived fifteen minutes early; he liked to settle in before a meeting, to watch people arrive. He took a sip of his large black coffee – or Venti Roast, as he had had to call it when ordering – and glanced at his watch. 8.58 a.m.

  The coffee shop was narrow but deep, stretching to the far end of the building. Dotted along its length were tables of differing sizes, as well as lone chairs and sofas. At the very back was a large square table that was big enough for four. Michael’s choice.

  Once settled he had kept an eye on the panoramic window that looked out from the shop. It ran the length of a pedestrian walkway that led to Gray’s Inn.

  8.59 a.m.

  Michael’s attention was caught by movement in the walkway. It was a busy route, but when he looked up this time one person stood out. A tall woman with long blonde hair pinned neatly against her scalp, late twenties maybe, early thirties at most, walking purposefully in the direction of the entrance.

  Jenny Draper.

  9.00 a.m. exactly.

  Punctual to the minute. According to Michael’s watch, anyway.

  Draper walked through the door and strode towards Michael. Reid had been right. She was an attractive woman. Slim with pale skin and aquiline features, she wore a tailored grey suit that fit perfectly. It was very different to Michael’s choice. For him, no court meant no suit. The jeans and casual T-shirt made him look more like a client than a colleague.

  ‘Michael.’

  Her accent was pure public school. It belonged to someone born to privilege and in no doubt of their place in the world. Her tone was just as confident. Draper was not asking; she was using Michael’s name as a greeting.

  She offered her right hand.

  ‘Jenny.’ Michael responded in kind, taking her hand and shaking it gently. ‘It’s nice to meet you at last.’

  ‘And you. It’s exciting to be working with you.’

  Michael did not know what to say to that, so he just smiled in response and gestured for her to sit.

  ‘What can I get you?’ he asked, still standing.

  ‘Espresso Macchiato, please.’

  ‘Anything to eat?’

  ‘Can I be bad and have a chocolate muffin? I need the sugar hit.’

  ‘Whatever keeps you going,’ Michael joked.

  Michael headed back to the counter and placed the order. When it was ready he carried the tray back to the table.

  Draper had settled in while Michael was at the counter. A single A4 lever-arch file was now on the table ahead of her. Next to it was a thin laptop. Next to that an iPad. And next to the iPad an iPhone. Michael wondered why anyone would need all three devices at once. A subject for another day.

  ‘You’ve come prepared.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to give a bad impression the first time we meet.’ Draper smiled coyly. ‘Plus I thought you’d want to hit the ground running.’

  ‘We need to,’ Michael replied. ‘We don’t have long.’

  ‘We’ll get you up to speed in no time.’

  ‘Here’s hoping.’ Michael sat forward in his seat and clasped his hands between his spread legs. ‘Now, tell me what you think of Simon Kash?’

  For the next hour Michael and Draper discussed various aspects of the case. The allegations. Kash’s character. What had happened up to now and Derek Reid being replaced.

  Draper had agreed that Reid was more than up to the task. But in the next breath she was saying how happy she was that Michael was the replacement. How privileged she was to work alongside such a brilliant young QC.

  Michael ignored the flattery. Perhaps she meant every word, but barristers are adept at massaging each others’ ego face-to-face while saying something very different when out of earshot. And he also remembered Reid’s warning.

  ‘So you don’t think Kash is innocent?’ Michael asked.

  The conversation had come full circle, returning to Draper’s answer to Michael’s original question.

  ‘I didn’t say he wasn’t innocent,’ Draper replied. ‘I’m just not convinced that he is. Not like Derek was convinced. Not like Ross.’

  ‘How old are you, Jenny?’

  ‘Thirty-one. Why?’

  ‘And how long have you been in your chambers?’

  ‘Eight years. Nine if you count pupillage. Again, why?’

  Draper was certainly confident. Perhaps overconfident. It did not concern Michael. Faith in oneself was a big part of what they both did for a living.

  ‘It’s just unusual to hear someone as young as you – as inexperienced, at least relatively – openly disagreeing with the likes of Derek Reid and Andrew Ross.’

  Michael realised as he spoke that his meaning might not be clear. He continued.

  ‘It’s refreshing, I mean. A lot of people in your position would have just agreed with their leader’s assessment. Especially if that leader is Derek.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  Michael could tell that she was pleased at the compliment.

  ‘So you feel the same?’ Draper asked. ‘You think they’ve read Kash wrong too?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ Draper’s reaction to the answer made Michael laugh. She seemed to visibly deflate. ‘I had exactly the same feeling about Kash as Derek did. I don’t think that kid did any of the things he’s accused of. I just don’t buy it. But it’s good that you’re cynical about him. One of us should be. You can keep your eyes open and your wits about you while I’m off on a crusade.’

&
nbsp; Draper did not answer, which did not surprise Michael. It was very unlikely that she in her eight years at the Bar she had encountered a QC who seemed pleased that his junior disputed his assessment. Many barristers in Michael’s position would take such disagreement as an insult. A challenge to their superiority.

  Ego, Michael knew, was usually everything.

  He watched as Draper thought it through. If she had the mind that her reputation suggested then she would see the good sense in having a team made up of half passion and half sceptical logic. It covered all of the bases, even if it was an unusual approach.

  ‘So you want me to stay off-side?’ Draper asked. ‘You want me to keep doubting everything our client says?’

  ‘I think I need you to keep doubting,’ Michael replied. ‘I’ve bought into this boy, Jenny. More and more so as I read the evidence. But belief can cause blind spots. You stay as you are and that will help us avoid them.’

  Draper sat back into her chair as a smile spread across her face. The good sense in Michael’s approach was not lost on her, he could see.

  Maybe the reputation’s deserved after all, Michael thought. So let’s see.

  ‘What do you think of Terry Colliver’s evidence?’ he asked out of nowhere. He had already identified Terry Colliver as their best line of attack. He wanted to know if Draper had done the same.

  ‘I think he’s the prosecution weak spot,’ Draper replied. ‘At least from a jury point of view.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he has motive to lie. He was arrested for the murder. The telephone evidence places him near the scene, if not at the scene. He was facing a trial as the killer and he suddenly gives up O’Driscoll and Kash’s names. In return for a plea for a much less serious offence.’

  ‘Correct.’ Michael nodded, pleased with the answer. She had identified the witness’s primary weakness, but she had missed another.

  ‘And why would the police have taken his word as gospel?’ he asked. ‘Why did they basically swap him for O’Driscoll and Kash?’

  ‘Because their intelligence told them O’Driscoll was involved,’ Draper replied. ‘They just didn’t have enough admissible evidence to support what they already knew. Colliver’s testimony gave them that admissible evidence.’

  ‘But why name Kash too?’ Michael was nudging Draper forward. ‘Why not just give up O’Driscoll?’

  ‘Because Colliver’s telling the truth?’

  Too obvious, Michael thought. A swing and a miss.

  ‘Tell me why that is,’ he said.

  ‘Because it explains why the circumstantial evidence is so compelling against Kash. His name wasn’t even on the radar before Colliver made his statement. There’s no other reason to mention him except that it’s true.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I’m guessing from your tone that I shouldn’t be.’ Draper smiled. ‘What’s your take on it?’

  ‘My take is that O’Driscoll didn’t kill the Galloways alone. No one man can have killed them both. Not the way they died. It was a two-man job. Two-man minimum.’

  ‘Then surely that points more closely to Kash? It’s exactly what Colliver’s saying.’

  ‘It points more closely to someone, Jenny. Anyone. What it says is that there were numbers. Someone with O’Driscoll. Colliver knows that. Especially if Colliver was the second guy.’

  Draper leaned forward. Her mind was swiftly processing Michael’s theory.

  ‘So you think that Colliver had to offer up another name? That he’s telling the truth about O’Driscoll, but that Kash has been pulled in to fill a Colliver-shaped gap in the story?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Michael was impressed at how succinctly Draper had distilled the point. A natural advocate. The way she put it, she almost sounded like she agreed with him.

  ‘Food for thought,’ Draper said, once again sitting back into her chair. It wasn’t quite acceptance of Michael’s new theory. Which in itself was a good sign. She continued. ‘But of course it means that our best defence is that our co-defendant is guilty and lying. And that the primary prosecution witness is also guilty and lying.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was simple.’ Michael could not miss Draper’s amusement. Hell, he shared it. ‘Could be fun though.’

  ‘It’ll be fun to watch, that’s for sure,’ Draper replied. ‘Suddenly I’m glad that it’s you and not me who’ll be speaking in this trial.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence. There is one small problem with all of this, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kash.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that at the moment he won’t say a word against O’Driscoll. And we can’t say or do anything that he tells us not to.’

  ‘So we can’t attack O’Driscoll? Which means we can’t say that Colliver is telling the truth about him but lying about Kash. To cover his own involvement, or for any other reason. Doesn’t that kind of undermine the approach you want us to take?’

  ‘You could say it undermines it. Probably more accurate to say it destroys it, though.’ Michael was still smiling. ‘But of course, that’s only if Kash sticks to his guns.’

  ‘You think he might not?’

  ‘I think there’s every chance of that. Which is where you come in, Jenny. I want you working on him. Every day of the trial. Until he gives us what we need to take out Colliver and O’Driscoll.’

  ‘You want me to manipulate our client?’ Draper sounded shocked. It was another first, Michael was sure. ‘You want me to make him change his instructions?’

  ‘What I want is for him to tell us the truth, Jenny. That boy is his own worst enemy. He’s too young and too naive to protect himself from a life sentence, so it’s our job to protect him from himself. And if you have to nudge him in the right direction to do that, well, that’s fine with me.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Joelle Levy tapped the steering wheel impatiently. The cars moving south along Brixton Road were at walking pace. Perhaps slower. It had been that way for the past fifteen minutes of the journey.

  These people must be wondering what’s causing this, Levy thought as she looked at the cars crawling along ahead of her.

  Maybe they were, but Levy was not.

  The police cordon that was up ahead – not yet within her sight – was doing what they always did: causing people to slow. To take a look. It was a natural human reaction. The traffic was just a by-product.

  Her destination – the very corner of Brixton Road and Electric Avenue – wasn’t far. Maybe a quarter of a mile away. But it still took another ten minutes. Far longer than it should, even by the standards of Brixton’s always-slow traffic.

  Finally Levy turned left onto Electric Avenue, through the police cordon. She did not need to show her Metropolitan Police warrant card for the tape that blocked the road to be lifted; the closest officer had recognised her on sight. Once through she parked next to the kerb, exited the car and surveyed the scene.

  Electric Avenue was both a retail and a market street, named for the fact that it was the first street in London to be lit by electricity. The narrow permanent shops sat on the ground floors of identical, connected three-storey buildings. They ran the length of the long, curved street, on both sides of the road. The lack of any gap between the buildings was unusual; it turned the buildings on each side of Electric Avenue into a single, continuous block.

  On any other day these permanent shops would be complemented by market stalls running from the top of the street to the bottom. None were visible today. Electric Avenue had been closed, its makeshift businesses a further victim of the crime that had brought Levy here.

  ‘They’re in this building over here, ma’am.’

  The voice of a police officer Levy did not recognise interrupted her thoughts. Like the flicking of a switch, it focused Levy’s mind.

  ‘What time did the cordon go up?’ she asked, noting the door number of the building to which the uniformed
officer had indicated. It was not necessary. It was the only one open on the street.

  ‘About two hours ago, ma’am. Shortly after the bodies were found.’

  ‘Which was what? 7 a.m.? 7.30?’

  ‘Around then, ma’am, yes.’

  ‘Then the market stalls must have been out already?’ Levy indicated the now-empty road.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. We had the stall holders put them away so we could secure the scene.’

  ‘What about upstairs? What’s the thoughts on time of death? This morning or last night?’

  ‘Definitely last night, ma’am. No question.’

  Levy considered the answer for a moment, gazing again at the long, empty road as she did so.

  ‘Shorten the cordon,’ she finally said. ‘Bring it back so that it’s twenty metres from the entrance to the building in both directions.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Levy could hear the confusion in the officer’s tone. ‘But the forensics team haven’t been up and down the road yet?’

  ‘And nor will they.’ Levy had no need to explain her decisions, but there was nothing to be lost in educating a potential future detective. ‘This is one of the busiest roads in the area but it was only closed off this morning – once the market had already opened – to secure a crime scene that was already maybe ten hours old. Any forensics on the road itself will be long gone. Trampled away overnight and this morning. All we’re doing by keeping this road closed is hurting the local trade. People we might need to rely on for what they’ve seen or heard.’

  The officer nodded his understanding.

  ‘Twenty metres, ma’am. I’ll get it done.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The officer moved off to follow his instructions. Levy called after him as he went.

  ‘And make sure the shops and stalls outside of the new cordon know they can open for business, please.’

  Levy turned towards the open doorway. The shopfront beside it was of a modern pawn shop. The kind that takes electrical and valuable goods, never really expecting to see the pawner again. Never really believing the goods were anything but stolen.