The Verdict

by Nick Stone

  ‘It’s like having a terminal illness that refuses to kill you. It gets into everything you do. It gets in front of you. It walks behind you, and either side of you. It stops you moving on. It’s what you do best. It’s all you do, and all you can do. Because it defines you.

  ‘What hurt most about what Vernon did wasn’t that he fucked me over, that he dragged my name through the mud. It wasn’t even quite that he took up with my ex. It was that he got away with it. That he wasn’t punished in kind. That nothing happened to him. Every time I’d open the paper, there he’d be, doing a lot better for himself than the last time. Doing as well as I was doing badly. He’d cheated karma.

  ‘But, you know what? I want this to stop. I really do. I want to feel nothing for him. I want to let go. I want to be able to say it’s all water under the bridge – and mean it.’

  Swayne surprised me with his lack of reaction. He stared mostly into his cup, as if trying to read the future in the stains. Was I making him feel awkward, embarrassed? It seemed that way.

  And what was I doing telling him all this? He was the wrong confessor. He wasn’t on my side. But I really didn’t care. He started this. He triggered it, set me off with his questions, and his taunts. It was too late to stop. And I wasn’t finished.

  ‘I don’t want my kids to turn out like me,’ I continued. ‘I’m going to prepare them for life’s disappointments – the biggest of which always involve other people. So I’m going to tell them about all this one day. About the best friend who turned into my worst enemy.

  ‘But I hope to tell them how I had a chance to take my revenge, to get even. But I didn’t take it. On the contrary, I did everything I could to help him. Because I wasn’t going to do to him what he’d done to me. Because that was wrong. I’ll tell them never to hate a person, no matter what they’ve done. No matter how downright evil they are. I’ll tell them it all passes, in time, even the worst things. But only if they let it. Because to hate is to hold on, never to move on. And if you don’t move on, you stay put. And if you stay put, you sink and rot.

  ‘So if the verdict comes back “guilty”, I’ll honestly be able to say – to myself, but mostly to them – that Vernon James was punished for the things he did, but not for the things I didn’t do. Do you understand?’

  Swayne nodded, and sighed, quietly.

  Then he finished his coffee in two gulps and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again.

  ‘So you want closure?’ he said.

  ‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘This ends when the verdict comes. Whichever way it goes.’

  ‘Closure’s a myth invented by Americans,’ Swayne said. ‘Even if he gets found guilty and put away for twenty years, you’ll still hate him, you know that? Sure, it’ll get turned down a few notches, but it won’t go away. Ever.’

  ‘I can live with that,’ I said.

  ‘Can you?’

  44

  Back at the office: no calls.

  I called Rudy Saks. It went to voicemail. I left a message, said it was very important.

  Then…

  Nothing.

  I figured that was all I was going to get by asking politely, following correct procedure. At this stage we couldn’t compel anyone to give evidence or make statements on VJ’s behalf. We’d have to wait until we got to court. And then we’d need good grounds, not hunches and theories. What else could I do now but write up a (non) progress report, make five copies, file one and cross my fingers.

  I called VJ’s optometrist. VJ had been issued with a new prescription for contact lenses six months ago. His vision was fine the night of the murder. Bang went our explanation for how he’d mistaken Evelyn for Fabia.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon closing out the Rolex dealer list. Sorry, no watch of that sort had turned up. Was I sure about the serial number? Yes, of course they’d let me know if they came across it. Thank you. You’re welcome.

  At around six Adolf and Iain came trotting back from court together. Adolf had had herself a good little day, judging from her chirpy tone and how she accidentally smiled at me a few seconds before she realised what she was doing. Iain was all buzzed about being inside a courtroom for the first time. To commemorate the grand occasion he’d bought a documents trolley – a four-wheeler with a telescopic handle, exactly like Adolf’s. I was sure she’d helped him pick it out. She was making him in her image.

  Jesus.

  Time to go.

  I started packing up, putting papers back into my case file.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Hello, is that Terry Flynt?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘This is Rudy Saks. I got your message.’

  I reached out to grab a pen and sent my case file flying off the desk. It spilled crime-scene pictures as it crash-landed on the carpet, not too far from Adolf’s zone.

  I left it.

  ‘Thanks for getting back to me, Rudy.’

  ‘No problem. What can I do for you?’

  He sounded like he had a cold; otherwise, he spoke with the same Americanised foreign accent as Jonas, his housemate.

  ‘I work for the law firm that represents the man accused of murdering Evelyn Bates at the Blenheim-Strand.’

  ‘You’re defending him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Silence

  …

  ‘Are you recording this?’ he asked.

  Tread carefully.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Silence

  …

  ‘Am I allowed to talk to you?’

  He’s clued up. Play it straight.

  ‘It’s perfectly legal – as long as it’s voluntary,’ I said. ‘If you don’t want to speak to me, you can hang up. I’d rather you didn’t, but that’s your right.’

  Silence

  …

  I heard my heart thudding, the scratching in my throat as I tried to swallow, the tremor in my breath.

  ‘OK. Let’s see how things go,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Rudy. By the way, I really appreciate you calling,’ I said, remembering a key tenet from my telesales training: Empower the listener – make the mark feel like they’re in control.

  ‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the statement you gave to the police. There’s a few things we’re not quite clear about.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘First question. How come you went to the suite?’

  That was a Swayne tactic. Softballs to start – obvious answers, get the guard down.

  ‘I was working the night shift for room service. There were three of us on duty. We took it in turns to answer the calls.’

  ‘Were you busy that night?’

  ‘No. We don’t get a lot of business weekdays. Maybe one or two calls an hour, mostly for drink.’

  ‘So you answered the phone call from Suite 18?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you know who the caller was?’

  ‘We have caller-ID. The rooms are displayed by number, the suites by numbers prefixed with “S” – for “Suite”, of course. S18 came up.’

  His English was very good. I wasn’t going to risk alienating him with a compliment he might deem patronising.

  ‘What did he order?’

  ‘A bottle of Cristal champagne, on ice. Two glasses,’ he said.

  ‘Is that a popular choice?’

  ‘Yes and no. Footballers always order Cristal. All the rappers sing about it.’

  I laughed.

  He did too.

  We had rapport.

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘A quarter to one, in the morning.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I entered the order on the computer, so it would get billed to the room. The time was on the computer.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘I took the bottle and two glasses up. I used the VIP elevator.’

  ‘Did you see anyone in the corridor?’ I asked.

 
‘No.’

  ‘Was anyone else in the lift with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What happened after you knocked on the door?’

  ‘He – the guest – opened it.’

  ‘How do you know it was him?’

  ‘Who else would it be?’ he said.

  ‘What were your initial impressions of him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What did he look like? How did he appear?’

  ‘Tall black guy. Thirtysomething. Seemed fine. Normal.’

  ‘How was he dressed?’

  ‘White shirt, dark-blue trousers.’

  ‘Was he drunk?’

  ‘He didn’t look drunk.’

  ‘Please carry on,’ I said.

  He’d said nothing about the scratches on VJ’s face. Maybe he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I carried the tray into the room and that’s when I saw the woman – the one who… who died.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘On the couch in the middle of the room. She was sitting up, with her legs stretched out. She wasn’t wearing any shoes.’

  ‘Can you describe her for me?’

  ‘Yeah. A young blonde, in her twenties. She was wearing a green dress.’

  Now my heart started pumping.

  Please tell me it was Fabia.

  Please tell me it was Fabia.

  ‘What she was like physically – height, weight, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Urm… short. I’m around five ten. She was shorter. Five four, five five…’

  Oh no.

  ‘… She was – not fat – not fat at all. But not really in shape, if you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Plump, then?’ I said.

  ‘That’s the word. “Plump”,’ he said.

  Evelyn Bates.

  ‘Can you describe the dress a little more for me?’

  ‘Yeah, it was kind of a bright green, like fake grass. It stopped above her knees.’

  ‘What else did you notice about it? Was is long-sleeved or short-sleeved?’

  ‘Long sleeves. And it had straps on the shoulder.’

  Definitely Evelyn Bates.

  I wanted to hang up now.

  ‘You said she was blonde,’ I continued. ‘What was her hairstyle like?’

  ‘Her hair was curly, wavy. Medium length.’

  ‘How did she appear to you? Was she happy, sad, scared?’

  ‘She wasn’t scared. Not at all. She was definitely drunk – maybe stoned, I don’t know. But she was happy drunk, if you know what I mean? Like she was having a good time. She was giggling.

  ‘The guest told me to put the champagne down on the big table near the couch. As I was doing that the woman said hello to me. I said hello back. She asked me what my name was. I told her. Then I asked the guest if he wanted me to open the bottle, and he said leave it. And then the woman said, “You can open my bottle any time!” And she started laughing again. The guest thanked me and gave me a tip. Forty pounds. I wished them goodnight and I left. Took the lift back downstairs.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘I don’t know. A little after 1 a.m. Say, ten past. No later.’

  Saks was a perfect witness. He hadn’t just stuck to his statement, but he’d added minor details to it as well, which reinforced what he’d told the police.

  ‘Thanks for your call, Rudy,’ I said.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, then… Oh, there is one other thing I remember – about Mr James. You asked me about his appearance, when he opened the door?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He had scratches on his cheek.’

  ‘Thanks, Rudy.’

  Thanks for sinking us.

  I sent Janet, Christine and Redpath an email about the call.

  So what had happened between VJ leaving the club and turning up at the Circle bar with Fabia? And what had happened after they’d left? There was at least an hour unaccounted for, between them leaving the bar and VJ ringing room service for champagne. Had he tried to get Fabia up to his room, but she’d turned him down, and then he’d gone back downstairs and run into Evelyn again?

  One thing I’d forgotten to ask Saks was whether VJ had been angry or annoyed at Evelyn Bates for flirting with him. I felt like calling him back, but what difference would it make?

  When he’d interviewed me about Rodney James’s murder, Detective Quinlan had laid out pictures of the body on the table in front of me. They were taken in the morgue. Twenty-two stab wounds. Half of them had been to his face. The killer had stabbed him in the eyes and mouth – especially the mouth. Rodney was missing most of his lips, and seemed to be grinning at me in a way I’d never seen him do. Quinlan said the facial wounds had either happened post-mortem, or very near mortem, because Rodney was already on the floor. He reckoned the killer had hacked at the mouth because it was likely Rodney had abused him or her verbally, and they were focusing on the part of him they hated the most. Rodney had never hit VJ. But he’d constantly put him down.

  ‘I’ve seen this kind of death before,’ Quinlan had said. ‘It’s what people who bottle things up do to people who pop their corks. A moment of madness after a lifetime of self-control. Your friend Vernon’s started young. If this isn’t dealt with, he’ll do it again. Do you want that on your conscience?’

  Is that what had happened with Evelyn? She’d pissed VJ off, because she was drunk and giggly; because the Rohypnol he’d slipped her hadn’t taken effect fast enough; because she hadn’t wanted to screw him?

  So he’d strangled her. And…

  Was Evelyn’s death my fault, for lying for VJ?

  No.

  Don’t go there.

  That was enough for one day.

  I turned off my computer and picked up the case file and crime-scene photos from the carpet.

  I packed everything into my bag and headed for the door.

  ‘Terry,’ Adolf called behind me.

  I turned round.

  ‘Don’t forget your knickers.’

  ‘Eh?’

  She frisbeed something at me. A photo. It fluttered and flapped and turned crudely a short distance before landing at my feet, face-up.

  Evelyn Bates’s black thong, photographed against a plain white background.

  As I bent down to pick it up I started blushing.

  And then I flashed back to that Croydon pub, and the stripper’s thong hitting me in the face.

  VELCRO!

  This was the same kind of thong.

  45

  The next morning, as I was brushing my teeth, my mobile started playing the theme from Tales of the Unexpected.

  ‘Got your email about Rudy Saks,’ Janet said. ‘Good work.’

  ‘Thanks. Shame about the result.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ she asked. Like me she was still at home. ‘I never expected us to win this trial. That’s not the reason I took this case.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘Sometimes you don’t pick a case, it picks you. I had to prove to Sid that we can handle the big numbers.’

  ‘Because you’re looking to expand the division? And this is a test. If you pass, Sid gives you the go-ahead,’ I said, remembering what she’d told me that day on the Tube.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Remember Scott Nagle?’

  ‘Your biggest client.’

  ‘Our biggest client,’ she corrected me. ‘Fifteen years ago – before I started – he got himself into some serious trouble – or rather, got himself into serious trouble again.

  ‘One of his properties – a townhouse on Rittenberg Grove – got occupied by squatters. Thanks to our crap tenancy laws, it can take years to get rid of squatters. And even when you do, they’ve done so much damage to your property its value’s dropped through the floor.

  ‘Scott Nagle allegedly took matters into his own hands. All fifteen of the squatters were sent bullets with their names engraved on them. Then two disap
peared one day, never to be seen or heard from again. Police arrested Nagle when they matched fingerprints on the bullets to one of his employees. The man claimed Nagle had paid him and another employee to kidnap the squatters and drop them off in the New Forest. He was offered a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against his boss.

  ‘At the time, KRP – or Kopf-Purdom as we were then – didn’t have a criminal division. Sid said there was no money in criminal law, so what was the point? He outsourced the case to my old firm.’

  ‘And you defended Nagle?’

  ‘With Christine Devereaux as the lead barrister,’ she said. ‘She destroyed the witness on the stand. And she systematically destroyed the case against Nagle, exposing a web of police corruption in the process. Nagle was acquitted.’

  ‘And Sid offered you a job?’

  ‘More than that,’ she said. ‘He offered me automatic senior partner and my own division within the firm.’

  Your own division after a fashion, I thought. Sid’s still calling the shots.

  ‘Fast forward to 2006,’ she continued. ‘Remember the two squatters who disappeared? Their bodies were discovered buried in the New Forest. They’d been shot in the head, execution-style. The Rittenberg Grove case was reopened and Scott Nagle was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

  ‘We didn’t defend him that time either. I had to outsource the case to another firm. You know why? We simply weren’t big enough to handle our biggest client. Which is a shame, because the case against him was so flimsy it never even went to court. The charges were dropped because of insufficient evidence.

  ‘The trouble is, that wasn’t the first or last time I’ve had to turn down major cases because we didn’t have the time or resources. I got sick and tired of seeing serious business go across the road to our competition, because for Sid it’s all about profit and loss. So last year I gave Sid an ultimatum gift-wrapped as a proposal – expand our division, so we can not only provide our clients with a vertically integrated firm along American lines, but we can also do non-client work – practise real criminal law. Or else I’d quit.’

  ‘Were you serious?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Sid had turned me down twice before, but this time he gave me the go-ahead – on one condition. We had to prove we could take on and deal with a non-client “marquee case”.’