by Nick Stone
‘Sure,’ I said.
What else could I say? No point in protesting the ethics of what she was suggesting I did, because she’d suggested no such thing. I was assuming she had. Just like I’d assumed Swayne and Adolf had infiltrated live crime scenes. I had a lot to learn.
How many other KRP clerks had done this? And was it just restricted to my firm, or were they all at it? Is this how you got on in the law? Is this what Janet and Christine had done when they started out? I could almost see it. But Redpath… in his nice bespoke suit with the white silk hanky in the pocket?
‘I’m sure I don’t need to point out we never had this conversation,’ she said.
In other words: I was on my own. If I got caught, the ‘I was only following orders’ defence wouldn’t stand, because they’d deny everything and claim I’d acted off my own bat. Their word against mine.
I thought of quitting there and then.
But I couldn’t. I had responsibilities, mouths to feed, lives to protect and nurture.
‘What conversation?’ I said.
‘Excellent!’ Christine beamed. ‘I’ll book a prison visit to see our client. Terry, you’ll be coming with us to that.’
‘Fine,’ I nodded.
Shit, I thought.
The meeting broke up soon after. Christine stayed seated and we all shook her hand and then headed for the door.
Once we got outside, I turned my phone back on to call Swayne.
‘Keep tomorrow free,’ Janet said to me.
‘Why?’
‘We’re seeing Vernon.’
My stomach knotted up. ‘When was that arranged?’ It usually took between a week to ten days to set up the first prison visit.
‘There was a free slot,’ Janet said.
Which meant strings had been pulled, markers called in.
‘Oh…’
‘Is there a problem?’ she asked me, searching my face.
‘Not at all,’ I said.
20
When you’re strapped to the railway tracks with no means of escape and nothing left but the certainty that the end is near, what might your thoughts be?
Tomorrow I was coming face to face with VJ, the in-bound train.
And my fledgling legal career would be over.
Face it. It was always going to happen. Our meeting had been an inevitability from the moment I’d picked up Adolf’s phone. Yet I hadn’t expected it to come so quickly, so unexpectedly. I’d thought I’d have advance notice and a little time to plan for it, to prepare.
‘Are you OK, Terry?’
That was Adolf, looking at me all concerned from across her desk.
‘Yeah. Why?’ I said.
‘You look like you’re having a bad time.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘No, you’re not,’ she sneered and grinned.
Someone behind her laughed.
I didn’t react.
There were a few hours left on the clock, and fretting about tomorrow wasn’t going to do me any good, so I carried on with my work.
I called Channel 4 about footage of VJ’s Ethical Person award speech. I was put through to a woman in their legal department.
‘We’ve already given the tapes to the police,’ she said.
‘You must have copies, though?’
‘We do, but it’s up to the CPS now,’ she said. ‘If they want to put the footage into evidence and use it in their case, they’ll provide you with a copy. If they don’t, there’s no need for you to have the tapes because they won’t be relevant.’
I’d gone to the wrong department. They were by the book and no exceptions. I should have asked the camera crew.
I moved on to the Hoffmann Trust, to get hold of contact details of the award dinner guests.
I hit a wall there too. They didn’t give out members’ addresses, the snotty receptionist told me, mentioning the Data Protection Act before hanging up.
Two minutes later I rang back and asked to speak to her boss. She took that personally and said she wasn’t going to put me through because her boss was very busy and would tell me the same thing anyway. She was about to hang up again when I dropped VJ’s name.
Silence.
Then she put me on hold. I got a helping of music.
Another woman’s voice came on the line, posh and imperious, like God might address a microbe.
‘Pamola Hoffmann. How can I help you?’
Founder, owner and CEO of the eponymous Trust. VJ had sat right next to her at the ceremony.
I told her what I was after. She gave me the Data Protection runaround. But I could tell from her tone there was more to it than that.
I needed her on side. Without her cooperation Operation Find Fabia would be a tough slog.
‘Can I ask you a couple of questions about that night?’ I said.
‘I’m very busy,’ she said.
‘Won’t take long. Did you happen to see a blonde or fair-haired woman sitting close to the stage when Vernon was giving his speech? She was wearing a green dress.’
Pause.
Then:
‘No.’
‘You didn’t see anyone fitting that description?’
‘Mr… Flynt, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I appreciate you’re just doing your job, and that you’re not responsible for who your firm represents. And I also have an absolute respect for and belief in an individual’s right to a fair trial, but Vernon James is someone I dearly wish I’d never met.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He’s made an absolute mockery of our award, and he’s dragged the Trust’s reputation into the mire. The press have had an absolute field day with this. Their sniggers will follow us around for years.’
One of the first jobs I’d had when I first moved to London was telesales. Cold-calling. I’d been pretty good at it. The trick was to keep the potential customer – aka ‘the mark’ – on the phone.
There was a moment in every cold call when you had to show your hand, ask for what you wanted, go for the close. Except, before you got there you had to hook the mark, build rapport and get them interested. I was in a precarious spot here. I’d only succeeded in holding her attention, and that was waning fast.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘I know you do a lot of good around the world, and it’s very unfair about the media, but there are aspects of this case that haven’t been made public. It’s not as cut and dried as it appears. And —’
‘Are you saying he’s innocent?’
‘I can’t really talk about it, I’m afraid. But I know you support political prisoners. People who’ve been unfairly locked up.’
That was a wild guess. I knew nothing about the Hoffmann Trust’s work.
Pause. Then it stretched to silence again. A longer one. I braced myself for a hang-up, or another dose of music.
But she didn’t put me on hold. She didn’t do anything.
I strained to hear through the silence.
Nothing. Not even background noise.
Then she sighed. A slow, pained whoosh; the sound of surrender. I’d got to her. I’d closed. Her fear of appearing a hypocrite outweighed her feelings towards VJ and what he’d done. And she didn’t know which way the trial would go. She wouldn’t want to risk being on the wrong side of the verdict; turning her back on VJ only for him to be acquitted. Think of all that glorious good publicity if they stood by their man – their Ethical Man.
‘Look, Mr… It’s Terry, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Terry, I really can’t give out our members’ contact details. But… I can ask them to get in touch with you, if they want,’ she said.
‘That’d be a great help,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
21
If you’re not a criminal, getting into Belmarsh Prison takes time and perseverance.
The cab dropped us off outside the visitors’ centre, a separate building in the jail’s grounds. The authorities had done their best to make it comfo
rtable and hospitable, even disarming, but it was what it was – the gateway to the end of the line.
We queued to get in. Lawyers and cons’ families and friends, some thirty or forty of us. It was slow-moving, just two people checking paperwork and IDs, and doing the biometrics – fingerprint scans and photographs that were entered into the database.
Once we’d been processed, we went to the waiting area. A shuttle bus would be coming to take us all to the prison. Bags and phones were put into lockers, and then everyone went to sit among their own kind, voluntarily separating into two distinct groups either side of the room.
Lawyers read through files or chatted to colleagues. Kids stared across at them, curiously. Babies wailed. Mothers, wives and girlfriends looked weary, put-upon and baleful.
Janet made smalltalk about her forthcoming holiday. I heard her and nodded along, but I wasn’t listening to a thing she said.
I’d had a sleepless night, working myself up so much about the meeting I’d now attained an almost zen-like state of neurosis.
Karen had told me to call in sick. I’d nixed that. Too cowardly, too temporary. I wanted this over and done with. And, above all, I wanted to see him – here, in prison – and to read the look on his face when it all sank in, when he realised that what had gone around had come around. No one cheats karma.
After that, I was happy to walk away from it all. I’d follow the trial on TV and the internet.
The bus arrived and we all got on.
The drive was short. Smatterings of conversation died out as soon as the first of the prison wings loomed up in the windscreen. Low-lying, with thick brown walls and deep-sunken windows of impregnable glass, it resembled the hand of some monstrous mechanical grabber at rest. Even the babies stopped their mewling.
Moments later, the bus pulled up outside B Wing and we filed out and made for the entrance.
Another stuttering queue and more ID checks. On we went through layer after layer of security.
First, the metal detector. Coats, jackets and absolutely everything metallic – including any loose change in wallets – went into plastic trays that were sent dribbling up a conveyor belt through a scanner.
One by one we walked through the electronic gantry. One by one we were patted and wanded down by a man or woman in latex gloves. They were all smiles and courtesy and in absolutely no hurry to get to the next person.
A pair of sniffer dogs sampled our feet and legs, each one getting their turn. They were sweet-looking brown-and-white spaniels with floppy ears, wet noses and keen, darting eyes. Their handlers probably gave them a treat for every catch.
We picked up our belongings and moved on, chaperoned by two wardens. A heavy metal door rolled back into the wall. We heard it shut behind us with a big, dull, definitive boom after we’d walked through; our first taste of confinement. Now we couldn’t get out until we were let out.
Next came the orifice scan. We each sat on a grey plastic chair for two minutes and got our cavities X-rayed. You felt nothing, just heard the hum of mechanised software searching for secreted drugs and mobiles.
After we’d left the room we were led deeper inside the prison.
The further we walked, the more the place lost its personable edge and bared its teeth. The floors went from carpet squares to hard light-brown lino, and the walls lost their matt grey tones for a glossy putrid pale yellow. It got hotter and smellier, disinfectant barely masking the stench of stale sweat and rotting vegetables. And then there was the noise.
The prison was loud. We’d heard a faint banging as soon as we walked into the foyer, as if construction work was going on somewhere deep within the building. The volume increased incrementally the closer we got to the cellblock. Now it was almost at its peak. A metallic cacophony of gates opening and closing, of feet hitting metal, pounding up and down stairs, pounding on floors. Then the voices, hundreds of them – shouting, screaming, hollering from all directions; every single one trying to make itself heard above the others.
Two more retractable gates later and we were in the visiting area. Again we separated into our different groups, this time deliberately. The civilians stayed downstairs, the legals went up to the next floor.
We were assigned a plain room with a bolted-down metal table and grimy yellow walls, dotted with no smoking signs and printed reminders not to pass anything to inmates.
I sat down next to Janet.
It was 2.10 p.m. Visiting hours started in five minutes.
The door was open, so I could see the cons walking past us to their lawyer meetings.
Then he came in.
Vernon James.
VJ.
You can brace yourself for impact all you want, imagine what the collision will be like, how far you’ll get thrown and how much of you will be left after you land. But when it actually happens, it’s like you never saw it coming.
My body went into lockdown, seized up and stopped its every function.
I’d told myself not to look him in the eye, but I did.
We locked for an instant.
And my throat dropped into my stomach.
His expression didn’t change. Not a flicker or a frown of surprise. No reaction at all. Just a blank, as if he’d never known me.
Then he looked away, scanning the room, seemingly lost.
‘Vernon.’ Janet waved him over.
He approached, a semi-smile on his face. He was wearing green tracksuit bottoms, a white T-shirt and mismatched trainers.
I don’t think I breathed.
‘Hi.’ He greeted Janet with a handshake. He didn’t look at me.
She beckoned him to be seated.
He sat opposite her.
My heart was now pounding so hard it was making my whole body reverberate.
‘This is Terry,’ Janet said. ‘He’ll be liaising between me, the barristers and you.’
VJ turned to look at me.
‘Hi.’ He nodded.
‘Hi,’ I said back. Or at least I think I did. I’m not sure my voice made it out of my tight chest.
No recognition from him whatsoever.
None.
What… so… EVER.
He turned to Janet.
‘What’s going on with my bail?’ he asked.
‘We’re appealing the decision and putting in another application next week, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. We’re going to offer sureties. You’ll have to pay maybe half a million, a million. Can you do that?’
‘Of course,’ he said, like someone had asked him if he could get his hands on a tenner.
‘I’ll warn you now, I can’t promise anything.’
‘Which means it’s unlikely.’
‘Which means we’ll try,’ she said, slowly and firmly.
He tutted and sighed and sat back, crossing his arms.
‘I could surrender my passport, wear a tag,’ he offered.
‘You still have the resources to go to any non-extraditable country you want,’ she said. So far she’d handled him the way she handled all her clients. No deference whatsoever. The firm hand, letting him know who was in charge.
He pursed his lips.
‘I know it’s hard for you.’
‘Hard?’ He snort-laughed.
Then he flicked me a glance, a flash of a stare. Still zero recall. But more than that – I didn’t count here. To him, I was the help. A person of no interest, sway, or importance.
I was deeply confused. In all the years I’d imagined coming face to face with him again, I’d never expected him not to recognise me, not to know me.
He was a little more grizzled than in his pictures – there was frost in his stubble and glints of silver in his coal-black hair – but it was definitely him, my old friend, my ex-friend.
‘How are you doing?’ Janet asked him.
‘I’m in prison, awaiting trial for something I didn’t do,’ VJ said, with a hint of sarcasm.
She didn’t acknowledge it. ‘I talked to Nikki, your PA. We’re
sorting out your clothes and money. How’s your cell?’
‘It’s shared accommodation,’ he said. ‘Compact but bijou.’
‘How many people are you in with?’
‘Three. I don’t know what they’re in for. Haven’t asked. I can’t sleep with one eye open.’
‘They treating you OK?’
‘They’re well informed. They know who I am, why I’m here.’
‘But they’re not threatening you or…’
‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘Let me know if anything happens,’ Janet said. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’ll find that having money – being rich – will make your life easier in here than most.’
He nodded. He understood.
He was cornered and stressed and tired. But he wasn’t scared. I could see he was holding it together. It wasn’t a front. He’d already got the measure of the place, worked out how to survive. That was rare, especially for someone like him, softened to warmed-over butter by his prior lifestyle.
‘What about my family?’ he asked.
‘Your daughters are fine. They haven’t been told yet. I spoke to your wife. She’s in America. She’s back next week.’
‘How much does she know?’ he asked.
‘Almost as much as I do,’ Janet said.
‘Does your firm handle divorces too?’
Janet ignored his attempted joke and pushed a copy of the CPS file over to him. ‘Your barrister, Christine Devereaux, will be visiting you next week to start preparing for your trial. You have to read the file. It’s the prosecution’s case. Some of it. There’ll be more to come.’
He opened the file and started leafing through it. I’d put it together for him this morning.
‘Is she any good?’ he asked.
‘For this kind of trial, she’s the best. She fights dirty before she fights clean. But so does Franco Carnavale, the prosecutor. You’ll have to be absolutely primed for this,’ Janet said.
He nodded.
‘There are gaps in your story we’ll need to plug,’ she said.
‘Gaps?’
‘Things that need explaining.’
‘Like what?’
‘You brought a change of clothes with you to the hotel?’
‘Sure, to wear to the event.’
