by Nick Stone
When had she died? What had happened?
No one had told me anything, except that I’d killed her.
It didn’t make sense.
I started rationalising. This was all a high-stakes misunderstanding. They’d figure that out soon enough and let me go. It was just a matter of time. All I had to do was be patient.
Outside, through the door, there was plenty of activity. Feet popping back and forth along the floor, multiple voices rising and then fading, the world going by fast. In here time stood still.
Then it hit me: VJ would have felt exactly the same way when he was arrested. The bewilderment, the confusion, the sensation that you’ve crashed through the looking glass into some other world where everything is upside down and coming at you fast, from every angle.
I wondered where Janet was. Had she been arrested too?
And then it was back to Fabia. Had she really been murdered?
I couldn’t believe it. We’d just talked. I could still hear her voice, her French accent and perfect diction.
And I couldn’t believe I was here.
As more time passed and no one came, I started suspecting things weren’t going to turn out in my favour. And that’s when I started getting scared. Scared I’d been fitted up like VJ, scared of being locked up for something I didn’t do, scared of not seeing my family, watching my kids grow up…
A pair of detectives came in. Shopworn middle-aged blokes with pouchy eyes, damp hair and sparkling black leather shoes that made me think of Swayne. They introduced themselves, but I didn’t catch their names. One was in a grey suit, the other in blue.
Grey Suit sat opposite me, Blue Suit took the desk.
‘You’re in a lot of trouble, Terry,’ Grey Suit began, his soft voice belying his appearance of a jowly panther at rest.
‘Where’s Janet Randall?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
‘The woman I was with when you arrested me?’
‘You mean your accomplice?’ Blue Suit said. He was louder and snarlier; theatrically or personally the nastier of the two.
‘She’s my boss,’ I said.
‘She put you up to this?’ Blue Suit asked.
‘Put me up to what?’
‘Murder.’
‘She didn’t put me up to anything,’ I said. ‘She’s a solicitor, and I’m her clerk.’
Blue Suit laughed and winked at his colleague.
‘We got a smart one ’ere, eh, Phil. Phoney lawyer who stays in character. Method actin’, I believe they call it,’ he said, then turned to me. ‘You can drop the act now, son. Show’s over.’
‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ I said to Grey Suit.
‘You impersonated a lawyer to gain access to the victim, Fabia Masson. Is that right?’ Grey Suit asked.
Was that true?
Think. Fast.
‘You haven’t charged me with anything.’
‘Yet,’ Blue Suit said.
‘I’ve not been advised of my rights.’
Blue Suit ground his teeth and glared at me. Then he shot Grey Suit a quizzical look.
‘I apologise for that oversight,’ Grey Suit said. ‘You don’t have to say anything. It may harm your defence if you do not mention in evidence something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence against you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Thank you, Detective,’ I said. ‘When I get the phone call I’m entitled to after this interview’s over, I’d like to speak to DCI Carol Reid of the Metropolitan Police.’
Two hours they kept me in there, asking variations of the same thing. Once or twice I was close to answering when I remembered the golden rule a lawyer always drums into a client. When interviewed alone by the police, say nothing. The generic term for this is ‘No Comment’.
So:
Had I killed Fabia Masson?
‘No Comment.’
Had I poisoned her?
‘Poisoned…? No Comment.’
Had I injected her with poison?
‘Eh…? No Comment.’
Had she ripped me off? Was that why I killed her?
‘No Comment.’
Was I a hitman?
‘WHAT? No Comment.’
When they were done, Grey Suit told me they’d pick this up later.
‘I’d like to call DCI Reid now,’ I said.
And I did – after they’d fingerprinted and photographed me, taken DNA samples, and made me change out of my clothes and into a white paper suit.
Then they took me to the cells.
The next morning they brought me back to the interrogation room.
DCI Reid was sitting at the desk, Blue Suit opposite me.
I was almost pleased to see her.
‘Sit down, Terry,’ she said, without looking at me. She was leafing through a file on the table, steel-rimmed glasses perched midway down her nose.
Blue Suit took the chair opposite mine.
‘This isn’t the first time you’ve called me, is it,’ she said.
It was a statement, not a question. I didn’t know what she was on about.
‘Nor is it the first time you’ve trespassed on a police location.’
She turned over a couple of pages in the file. She still wasn’t looking at me.
‘And neither is it the first time you’ve impersonated someone.’
Ah…
Oh…
Fuck.
She knew I’d been in Suite 18, when she’d come in with Carnavale; knew the call had come from my phone. Easy enough for the police to trace a withheld number.
‘So that’s one count of impersonating a police officer, to go with one of impersonating a solicitor. The penalty for each is at least a year in prison – and you’ll never work in the law again, obviously.’
I suppose now was the time to offer an apology, only I knew she wouldn’t have been interested.
She took off her glasses and looked at me.
‘Why am I here?’ she asked me.
‘I wanted you to hear what I found out from Fabia Masson before she died.’
‘She didn’t “die”, Terry, she was murdered. Big difference,’ she said, levelling an icy gaze at me.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ I said.
She didn’t so much as blink.
I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. The reflux felt like a hand at my throat. I thought of my kids again, Karen.
She tapped the file.
‘Do you know what this is?’
I shook my head.
‘You. Your record, from the Hertfordshire police,’ she said. ‘Makes for interesting reading.’
‘It was a bad time,’ I mumbled.
‘I’d say. So you know Vernon James?’
‘Knew him. A long time ago…’
No reaction. I glanced at Blue Suit. He was making notes in his pad.
If I didn’t keep my wits about me, this situation had the potential to get way worse.
‘There’s no friendship between us, DCI Reid. Hasn’t been for years.’
She closed her file.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I was following a lead,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to track down Fabia Masson from the moment we got this case. She is – was – a key witness for us. And – for the record – I had no intention of going into the interview room or passing myself off as a solicitor. That happened by accident.’
‘Come again?’ she said.
‘The desk sergeant buzzed me in. He didn’t ask for ID, but I showed him my business card anyway. It doesn’t say I’m a lawyer. It doesn’t even have my name on it.’
‘You mean this?’ she said, and held up one of the KRP cards I carried around in my wallet.
‘Yeah.’
‘Why the interest in Fabia Masson?’
‘Vernon James claims it was her he took up to his hotel suite that night, not Evelyn Bates. I wanted to verify that that was so.’
‘Did you?’
<
br /> ‘Yes.’
‘What was her story?’
I told Reid almost everything Fabia had said. I began with VJ’s watch and my search for it and ended back here, in the other interview room. The only thing I left out was the part about VJ assaulting Fabia.
‘And that’s what you wanted me to hear?’ she asked, when I’d finished. She’d listened without interrupting me, showing absolutely no reaction.
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
‘It proves Vernon James is innocent,’ I said.
‘It proves nothing of the sort,’ she said. ‘Maybe she really told you these things, and maybe they’re even true, but she’s dead and you have no record whatsoever of the conversation. All we’ve got to go on is your word. And you’re biased. You work for the firm representing the accused, and you two were childhood friends. See what I mean?’
Yes, I did. All too clearly.
I’d done this for nothing.
Fabia was dead.
And I’d messed up. Massively.
‘You are going to look into what she told me, aren’t you? You’re not going to push this under the carpet, are you?’ I said.
‘Her murder will be thoroughly investigated,’ she said.
Official speak for: That’s all I’m going to tell you for now.
We sat in silence. Both detectives looked through their paperwork. I glanced at the mirror.
‘How was Fabia killed?’ I asked.
‘After you left the station, the desk sergeant went on his break. A woman came in and said she was Fabia’s solicitor. She showed the officer at reception her ID and was directed to the same interview room as you. Fabia was brought back in from the cells.’
‘Wait a minute. You said a woman came in. I thought I was the main suspect.’
‘Detectives reviewed the CCTV from the custody suite reception last night and they’ve eliminated you as a suspect.’
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
‘You wanted to see me,’ she said. ‘We thought it best to hold you until I got here.’
Blue Suit choked a guffaw.
‘To continue,’ she said. ‘As you know, lawyer-client conversations are confidential. The meetings aren’t taped or filmed by us, and there’s never an officer present. There should, however, always be an officer standing outside, but for reasons that aren’t quite clear at the moment, there wasn’t one. I’m guessing they’re short-staffed here.
‘At some point Fabia was injected with a fatal dose of poison. Her killer pricked her at the side of her neck. We don’t know what it was yet. But it was fast-acting. When they found her, she was face down on the table like she was asleep. Didn’t look like she had time to put up much of a fight. Job done, the killer left. She even signed out.’
‘Christ,’ I said, shuddering at the coldness of it.
It was a hit.
An assassination.
And a daring one at that.
Someone had wanted Fabia dead so badly they were prepared to take the greatest risks, go to any length to do it – even if it meant walking into a police station and killing her.
I thought of Swayne and what he’d told me… the White Ghosts, the Wingroves, Silver Service. I’d dismissed it at the time. Did he know what was going on?
‘You said you had CCTV of the killer? Can I see it?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘What did the killer look like at least? You said it was a woman, I might’ve seen her.’
DCI Reid nodded to Blue Suit, who read from his notepad.
‘Caucasian with Oriental features. Five foot six or seven. Medium-length dark hair. Late twenties, early thirties. She was wearing a beige mac and carrying a briefcase.’
‘Did you see anyone fitting that description?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Right then. You’ll give Detective Rose here a statement about your interview with Fabia. Then you’re free to go,’ she said. ‘As to how you got in here… Let’s just say we’ll overlook that in exchange for your full cooperation with our investigation.’
I was let out three hours later. Janet was pacing in the lobby. She had a face like thunder, with a hurricane following right behind. I knew she couldn’t wait to bite my head off.
55
‘What is it we do here, Terry?’ Sid Kopf asked, a few long beats of silence after I’d finished talking to him about Fabia. It was the fifth time I’d gone over what happened.
‘Pardon?’ I asked.
‘What is our business? Our trade? How do we make money?’
Outside it was raining. A steady, unending soak of slanted wetness that pinged off the lattice window and metal balcony, and filled the office with a light background noise akin to a distant stampede.
‘We’re a law firm,’ I said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Where’s this going?’ I asked.
‘Humour me, please.’
‘We provide a full range of legal services to our clients.
‘Legal services. As opposed to il-legal ones, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘What you did was il-legal. Are you aware of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you knew before you did it, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but —’
‘You did it all the same? We talked about this last week, remember – your “methods”?’
No comeback to that, and he wasn’t expecting one. Point made, he leaned in and parked his elbows on his desk.
‘Why didn’t you wait for Janet instead of going in?’ he asked.
She was sat to my left. Neither of us had taken our wet coats off. We’d come straight up here from the train station. I’d stood outside while Janet briefed him with the door closed. Fifteen minutes. Then I finally heard her voice, irate and snappy. I thought of my parents and how they’d always had their domestics where they thought we couldn’t hear them. When a room wasn’t free, they’d stand out in the street and bollock each other.
Janet hadn’t bitten my head off as I’d expected, not when I recounted Fabia’s story. It stunned her. She went pale, looked frightened. Then she took out a digital recorder and got me to repeat what I’d said. I tried to apologise for the trouble I’d caused, but she wafted that away like it was of no consequence.
‘I wasn’t sure Fabia was the right person,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want Janet to come all the way out to Southend for nothing.’
‘In other words, you did this to cover your back and save face?’
‘I suppose so, yeah, but —’
‘You thought it best to put the firm’s reputation on the line instead of your own,’ he said. ‘Do you know the kind of trouble you almost landed us in?’
‘I’m sorry about that, I truly am,’ I said.
‘A firm’s reputation is everything in this business. A firm cannot be seen to violate the very thing it represents. It’s unethical. And this is one of the few sectors where ethics count as much as winning and losing trials. Did any of that even occur to you?’
‘I decided…’
‘Wrong. You had no decisions to make. You know why? You don’t make decisions. You’re not qualified to make decisions. Solicitors and barristers make decisions. Not clerks. You just write them down, type them up and file them away. You follow orders. And, most of all, you know your place.’
Not even a week ago this same man had slipped me a cash bonus.
‘I thought you encouraged initiative,’ I said.
‘What you did was not initiative. It was good old-fashioned stupidity. And that I don’t encourage.’
We stared each other down. After what I’d been through last night and this morning, not to mention the eight hours I’d spent in a cell in-between, this old man with his motionless white hair wasn’t even close to intimidating me.
‘With all due respect, Mr Kopf, I think you’re missing the point,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Have you t
aken into account anything I’ve just told you?’ I said. ‘Fabia Masson – a witness who could well have put a stop to this trial – was murdered in custody. I think it’s fair to assume she was killed to stop her becoming that witness. Our witness. Just like I think it’s an equally fair assumption that she was murdered by the same people who killed Evelyn Bates and framed Vernon James. And you’re sitting there, waffling on at me about ethics I violated, while a person I talked to yesterday in connection with this case is lying dead on a slab – and while our client is in prison for something he didn’t do.’
Kopf didn’t so much as flinch.
‘You’re the one that’s missing the point, Terry. Innocence is nothing without proof of innocence,’ he said.
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But this case is now about more than a man killing a woman in his hotel room.’
‘Not to us. We’re lawyers, remember, not the police.’
‘What would you have done in my position, then?’
‘I wouldn’t even have been in your position.’
‘You haven’t got where you are without taking risks.’
Kopf looked at Janet in disbelief. She found her wet shoes more interesting.
‘You want to talk about risk, do you?’ Kopf said. ‘Stephen Purdom and I started this firm in 1962. We had all of one client then. A man like us, just starting out.
‘That was the biggest risk I’ve ever taken. And we’re still here, forty-nine years later. You know why? Some of it was down to luck, some of it down to hard work, but most of it was simple maths.
‘The risk I took then was calculated. I worked out the pros and cons in advance. I weighed up how much I could afford to lose by how much there was to gain. When gain outweighs loss by a significant amount, take the risk. But never be blinded by the gain. Always remember what you have to lose. You were blinded by the gain, weren’t you?’
‘I didn’t think about it that way,’ I said. ‘It was about doing the best for our client.’
‘Rubbish!’ Kopf thundered. ‘This was about getting ahead here – and don’t pretend otherwise.’
‘Yes, that too,’ I said. ‘But I’m more interested in winning this trial.’
‘Why?’
