The Verdict

by Nick Stone

  ‘Piccadilly.’

  The opposite direction to me.

  I led him back around the sculpture, so we were out of sight.

  ‘Give me your coat,’ I said, unzipping my waterproof.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to see if you’re telling the truth.’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Terry. I’m being very serious.’

  ‘We’ll see. Coat.’

  ‘This really isn’t a good idea – for either of us.’

  ‘Because you’re lying?’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ he said. ‘You don’t know —’

  ‘Coat!’

  Swayne emptied his pockets – phone, wallet, keys, his spectacle case and a pack of tissues – and handed me his raincoat.

  ‘Go back the way you came,’ I said, trying to button up his mac. It was tight around my shoulders and wouldn’t do up without looking ridiculous.

  Swayne started heading for the exit.

  ‘Terry…’

  ‘Go back the way you came,’ I said. ‘I’ll be watching.’

  He left.

  I went back and looked at the woman at the memorial. She hadn’t moved.

  I started cursing Swayne and his too small raincoat and his bullshit and riddles. He was probably pissing himself laughing now.

  A couple walked past the woman.

  I turned to Constitution Hill.

  I glanced back at the memorial.

  The woman was gone.

  I searched the park. No sign of her.

  Then I spotted her, on the path, right before she disappeared under the arch.

  I turned my head. There was Swayne, moving away, his hood up, walking at a steady pace.

  The woman reappeared on the other side of the arch, keeping her distance from Swayne, but keeping him in sight.

  And that’s when I got seriously scared.

  And I ran.

  63

  I jumped on the first bus that came along. I didn’t know where it was going, and it didn’t matter.

  All I could think about was my family.

  I took out my phone and called home.

  ‘Karen, it’s me.’

  ‘Where’ve you got to?’

  ‘Please listen very carefully and promise to do exactly as I say. I don’t want to discuss it or anything. You just have to do it, OK?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m being followed, possibly by the same people who got Fabia.’

  Silence. I hoped she’d heard me. I was speaking as quietly as I could, my hand over my mouth.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Jesus… Christ!’ she shouted. ‘You’re going to the police, right?’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘But first, it’s best you all leave town. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Call me when you get there, OK?’

  ‘But, Terry, I… I…’

  ‘Please, Karen. You have to do this. It’s not safe. Trust me. You know what they can do.’

  64

  Five hours later I was sitting in my kids’ empty bedroom.

  I’d talked to Karen. She didn’t tell me but I knew she was in Manchester, at her parents’ house. I heard them talking in the background. The kids were asleep, she said. They wanted to know when I’d be joining them.

  I lay down on Amy’s bunk, put my hands under my head and closed my eyes.

  My head was churning.

  The easiest thing, and the safest thing, was to do nothing. Keep my head down, see out the trial and quit when the verdict was rendered. There was still an outside chance VJ would be acquitted. We could get lucky. I wasn’t counting Christine out. I’d seen her in court and, irrespective of how Swayne had it, she was still a force to be reckoned with.

  But it felt wrong, sitting by while an innocent man went to prison. It didn’t matter that it was VJ. He was innocent. If I wanted to be any kind of lawyer in the future, this was where I had to take a stand. If I didn’t, if I took the easiest option and did nothing or looked the other way, I wouldn’t be able to face myself, let alone my kids, for the rest of my life.

  Yet what could I actually do without putting my family in harm’s way – not to mention myself?

  Nothing.

  I couldn’t do anything.

  I couldn’t go to the police, because I had no proof.

  I couldn’t look for the evidence because I didn’t know what to look for. And besides, I was being watched.

  But, there had to be something I could do.

  I closed my eyes and thought about the case.

  I went over it again, bit by bit.

  Sid Kopf.

  What did he want out of this? What was his goal – his motive?

  I considered the case from his perspective – as the prosecution, not the defence.

  I saw Evelyn Bates first, strangled to death, left naked on a bed, her cold rigid flesh almost the same colour as the sheets. Most murders are committed by people known to the victim. She hadn’t even had that dubious distinction.

  Poor, poor Evelyn.

  Murdered by a hitman.

  Why her?

  Fabia had split.

  They’d needed a victim.

  They’d needed a body in the bed – anybody would do.

  Because they already had everything else in place…

  The elements of a crime:

  Mens rea

  Actus reus

  And Rudy Saks – the bogus witness.

  They’d just needed a dead woman’s body.

  Anybody.

  Any… body.

  Evelyn’s fleeting encounter with VJ?

  Evelyn being a blonde in a green dress?

  Luck.

  The objective of the set-up hadn’t only been to frame VJ for murder. He had to be convicted of it too. The crime had been designed with a trial in mind – the goal a guilty verdict.

  Swayne knew. Swayne had known all along.

  So why the hell hadn’t he told me?

  I opened my eyes. Feelings of futility and uselessness turned to rage.

  I lashed out, threw a punch up in the air. Except I’d forgotten I was lying on a child’s bunkbed. My knuckles smacked into the slats of Ray’s berth above. The mattress bounced up and the whole frame shook.

  I’d knocked a plank out of joint.

  I sat up and pulled it back. And as I did, something small and dark and hard fell and hit me in the face.

  A flashdrive with a blob of Blu-tack stuck to it.

  What was it doing under Ray’s bed?

  I turned his laptop on and plugged in the drive.

  There was a single folder.

  I froze when I saw what it was called.

  VJ

  It held miscellaneous TV news clips about VJ’s case. BBC TV, Channel 4, Sky. His arrest, his appearance at Westminster Magistrates’, the PCMH.

  Seeing all this here, in my kids’ bedroom, gave me the chills; the same as when Ray had said VJ’s name when we were watching the TV after he’d appeared at Westminster Magistrates’.

  I checked his internet history. Naturally he’d wiped all trace of his searches, but left his school homework enquiries intact.

  First his secret Facebook account, now this.

  Ray wasn’t just sneaky. He was turning into a liar.

  Where had that come from?

  The blob of Blu-tack on the flashdrive told me everything I needed to know.

  He’d learned by example, the way kids learn all things, good and especially bad.

  I went to the spare room.

  The box of Melissa’s letters, and my Cambridge college picture.

  The shrinkwrap around the box was intact. But the jiffy bag had been opened. Ray had looked at the photograph. He’d worked the Sellotape off the brown paper wrapping and done his best to fold it back the way it was, but he’d got it wrong. He still had a little more to learn about deceit.

  What had I gone and done to my family?

  I was shocked but I wasn’t angry at Ray.
I had no right to be. It was my fault – directly or indirectly. I’d led by example.

  I wanted this whole thing to stop now. VJ, the case, the firm, the job.

  I wanted out.

  I was looking at the college photograph, for the first time in sixteen years.

  It hadn’t changed.

  There we were. VJ and me, side by side, still teenagers in our first ever suits and the black gowns we’d rented for the day. On the row behind us, and standing directly between us, was Melissa. All three of us were smiling. VJ was beaming because he was genuinely glad to be there; Melissa, because that was what you were supposed to do in pictures; and me, I was grinning like an idiot because I’d fallen in love with her five minutes before.

  And then, suddenly, from nowhere, it came to me.

  I knew what to do.

  There was a way out of this. And an easy one.

  VJ could fire KRP. The trial would be postponed while he got new representation. It wouldn’t get him off the hook, but he’d definitely get a fair shake that way. His new team would know about Fabia and use that as a starting point.

  As for me – I’d be free and clear, no longer a target because I wouldn’t be working on the case any more.

  I was seeing VJ next Thursday at Belmarsh. I’d tell him then.

  65

  ‘You look bloody awful,’ Christine said to me, as she dabbed at the sweat above her lip. Her eyes were fixed and glassy like a teddy bear’s, and her perfume was fading into the sour metallic odour it was masking.

  It was Thursday morning in Belmarsh and we were waiting on VJ.

  I was supposed to tell him to fire us today, but I’d been so busy being paranoid I hadn’t worked out how I was going to do it. I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t even remembered to make sure I sat next to him. Redpath was where I was meant to be.

  So how was I going to broach it? I couldn’t just blurt it out. He wouldn’t take me seriously. Plus I didn’t want to do that to Christine. She deserved better.

  I had to find another way. Something discreet.

  In walked VJ with his case notes, an air of confident purpose and a new haircut.

  Christine waited for him to settle in his chair.

  ‘Today we deal with your police statements,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you lie to the detectives who came to your office?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I thought they were coming about —’

  ‘SQUID rules, Vernon. You did lie to the police. You’ve admitted it. Why?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me what it was about. I assumed it had to do with the damage to the room. I didn’t want to admit I’d been there with another woman, in case my wife found out,’ he said.

  ‘So you made up an elaborate story about throwing an impromptu party in the suite instead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hypothetically: let’s say the police had only come about the damage – what did you hope would happen?’

  ‘I’d offer to pay all costs and that would be it,’ he said.

  ‘In other words, you’d write a cheque and the problem would go away?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You do know wrecking a hotel room is a crime, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you’ve just sunk us.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘No one likes the rich, Vernon. You’re the easiest people to hate. Carnavale’s going to play on that. He’s going to remind the jury they’re not your peers. He’s going to rub it in – the ends they can’t make meet, the mortgages they’ll never pay off, the things they’ll never have. Because once they think that way, they’re going to see you as completely different from them; as ‘other’, as alien. What goes for them, does not go for you.

  ‘If you say you thought all that was going to happen when the police came to your office was you’d pay for the damages and they’d go away, the prosecution will say you think your wealth puts you above the law. In other words, in your mind, you can trash a hotel room and walk out, certain that you’ll buy the problem off. Therefore, by extension you think you can kill someone and walk away, because you believe ordinary rules don’t apply to you.’

  ‘That’s a ludicrous theory,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not for you to decide – but it is for you to disprove,’ she said. ‘You have to convince the jury that although you are not like them now, you were once. Remember your award speech? Four to a room in a cold basement in Stevenage? We need that Vernon James on the stand.’

  VJ caught my eye and smiled. He was remarkably chipper for someone going to trial next week, the odds still stacked against him.

  ‘So, again, why did you lie to the police?’ Christine asked him again.

  ‘I was… disorientated.’

  ‘And? How did you feel that morning? What had happened to you the night before?’

  ‘I’d been attacked – and drugged.’

  ‘Scratch “drugged”. You didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘Remember: stick to your story at all times. Every answer you give must relate back to your story. You were in shock. You’d been brutally attacked by a woman who wasn’t Evelyn Bates. You were also still pissed from the night before. You didn’t know what you were saying. You get it now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Christine said. ‘So, once again, why did you lie to the police?’

  I’d been writing everything down, questions and responses, the strategy. It was good. Christine was sharp and on the ball today. Who wouldn’t want her in their corner? Then again, this was only a rehearsal, and it didn’t count.

  In-between taking notes, I’d written a message on a separate page in my pad.

  VERY VERY IMPORTANT!

  Please call me this afternoon on 07663 700900.

  Terry

  I’d pass it to VJ on the way out.

  When he called, I’d tell him everything.

  I quietly detached the sheet of paper, folded it into a small square and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

  Christine asked VJ the same questions a third time. His answers were perfect now.

  She started wrapping up the session. She talked about what we’d cover next week. She went through the strategy she’d worked out – getting the prosecution to defend rather than attack; put them on the back foot from the start and keep them there.

  She sounded confident, almost excited, like she couldn’t wait to get to the courtroom. I felt a pang of guilt at what I was going to do. But I had no choice. I’d made a decision to help VJ as best I could, and I was sticking to it.

  A knock on the door interrupted us. Our time was up.

  We started packing our things away.

  I slipped the note out of my pocket and moved it to the middle of my palm, holding it in place with my thumb. I’d shake VJ’s hand on the way out and pass him the paper.

  The door opened. The sounds of the prison rushed in – the banging, the yelling, the buzzers.

  In walked Sid Kopf.

  What was he doing here?

  ‘You made it. Better late than never,’ Christine said.

  Kopf strode across the room towards VJ, a warm smile on his face.

  ‘Hello, Vernon. My name is Sid Kopf. I’m CEO of Kopf-Randall-Purdom, your solicitors.’

  VJ stood and shook his hand.

  ‘I just wanted to meet you in person. You’re that rarest of things in this profession – a truly innocent man.’

  ‘Thanks,’ VJ said, a little confused, but smiling.

  ‘I also wanted to personally reassure you that the entire firm is fully behind you. We are absolutely committed to you. We will fight for you the whole way. We won’t let you down.’

  You platinum-coated piece of shit, I thought.

  ‘That’s very reassuring. I appreciate it,’ VJ said.

  He lapped it up. And why not? He didn’t know any better. Kopf oozed avuncular warmth and cold-headed authority.

  Christine and Re
dpath had already left.

  But not me. I stood there dumbfounded, watching Kopf smooth-talking VJ, promising his ‘every possible assistance’ and saying that he was at his ‘complete disposal’.

  I stepped around the table. VJ and Kopf were by the wall.

  I got slightly in-between them and held out my hand to VJ, the note secreted under my thumb.

  ‘See you next week,’ I mumbled.

  VJ gave me an annoyed look, like he was irritated at me for interrupting his pep talk.

  He took my hand and gave me a perfunctory shake, barely gripping my hand. The note slipped between our palms and landed on the floor, right at Kopf’s feet.

  Kopf and VJ both looked down at the square of pale-yellow paper.

  I picked it up before either of them had time to say anything and left the room, cursing under my breath.

  66

  ‘Thanks for doing that,’ Christine said, on the train back to Charing Cross.

  ‘Your suspicions are unfounded,’ Kopf said, sitting next to her, their shoulders gently bumping to the train’s vibrations. ‘He’s not going to dump us.’

  Eh?

  ‘I needed an outside opinion,’ she said.

  ‘That’s unlike you,’ Kopf smiled, still full-on oleaginous.

  ‘I’m unlike me these days, Sid.’

  ‘That’s not what I saw at the Bailey.’

  ‘You’re very generous,’ she said.

  ‘You know me better than that, Christine.’

  They exchanged a conspiratorial smile.

  ‘I was your idea, wasn’t I?’ she said.

  ‘My first and only idea.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to him.

  ‘No, Christine. Thank you.’

  She got tearful.

  I couldn’t believe it. Yet who was I to deny a dying woman a last few moments of joy – no matter how illusory?

  I glanced over at Redpath but he was engrossed in his session notes; an ostrich in a pinstripe suit.

  ‘So… Terry. What do you think about our client?’ Kopf asked. ‘Was he having second thoughts about retaining us?’

  For one deep-fried scary instant I thought my paranoia had taken a flying leap into the paranormal; that Kopf hadn’t only worked out that I’d been trying to pass VJ a note, but what its purpose was. As in he’d read my mind.