Midnight's Door

by Robert F Barker

  Wayne was twenty-four. Unusually in one so young, his work-life balance was everything he wanted it to be. The reason was simple. Wayne had but two interests, attractive young women and trains. The first came from nature, the second from a time-served British Rail Signalman-grandfather who went out of his way to make sure his only grandson shared his life-long passion for railways. In this regard, Crewe Station’s Signal box Number Three had substituted well for pre-school. Through luck or judgement, by the time Wayne was twenty and working as a Station Booking clerk, he had hit on a strategy through which he could indulge both interests at once. And while many would have regarded it at the very least, distasteful, it involved nothing more than doing what like-minded people do day-in, day-out at railway venues up and down the country. Taking photographs.

  Wayne had learned long ago that provided he remembered to focus first on those quirks of railway architecture, rolling stock and platform furniture that are only visible to the enthusiast, no one ever noticed when he shifted his attention - and camera - to his other interest.

  Work-shifts allowing, Wayne had been ‘seeing’ Sarah for almost three months now. In that time he had taken hundreds of pictures of her. For that reason, he noticed immediately when the face that was so attractive he sometimes ached, suddenly began to crumble, as if she had just received the most awful, shocking news.

  Lowering the Fuji, he swung his gaze around the platform, checking to see what has happening that would explain her distress. But there was nothing. Everyone was just stood around waiting, quiet as usual, reading, sipping from cardboard cups, staring into space.

  He lifted the camera again and zoomed in, checking he wasn’t mistaken. But now she’d turned away and for seconds all he could see was the back of her head – a beautiful curtain of shimmering gold. As he waited, he wondered what she was looking at, if she was speaking to someone, though he couldn’t see who. The nearest was an older man bundled up in a dark coat and hat pulled low, but he was engrossed in his paper. Eventually she started to turn. The camera’s mode was set to ‘continuous’ as he pressed and held the ‘shoot’ button. What he saw as her face came into view sent Wayne’s stomach into free-fall.

  Tears streamed her cheeks. The look on her face was one of utter hopelessness. Yet less than a minute before she had seemed at ease, happy even, if maybe a little distracted.

  What the hell’s happened, he thought? He wondered if perhaps she had received some tragic news on her mobile. But he’d witnessed the moment the change began and was sure she wasn’t using it. He zoomed in on the face he knew so well, but at that moment she turned again to look over her shoulder. But not all the way this time. He could still see her, three quarters-profile.

  Her lips moved.

  She was talking to someone.

  Using the viewfinder he checked those around. But the only person close was the man in the hat, and he was still reading his paper, paying no attention. Wayne wondered how he could be so near, yet not notice her distress.

  About to move back onto Sarah, he stopped, suddenly. Though the hat shielded most of the man’s face, the camera was focused in close. And as Wayne started to swing away the man’s lips moved, as if he was talking, but without looking up or shifting his gaze from the paper.

  What the Hell?

  Returning to Sarah, Wayne saw the vacant look was even more pronounced than before.

  ‘What’s wrong, Sarah?’ The words sprang unbidden from his lips, driven by the illusion she was right before him. A few feet to Wayne’s right, a woman in a green Macintosh and with a stash of plastic shopping bags at her feet turned to look at him. Nudging the bags with her foot, she shuffled further away, but still keeping him in her field of vision.

  As Sarah turned suddenly to loom large in the lens, Wayne rocked back, tricked into thinking she was about to bump into him. Panning out a couple of stops he saw she was swaying slightly from side to side as if she was dazed, or even drunk. She lowered her head and he followed her gaze, tracking down until he came to the mobile in her hand. She stared at it for some while, before going through the rapid finger-thumb thing young women are so expert at. Finished, the hand dropped, loosely, back to her side.

  About her, people stirred, beginning to pick up cases, shifting their positions. Wayne swung the camera onto the monitor above where Sarah was stood. It still gave the ETA of the Stafford train as three minutes, but showed the next train through Platform 3, the Inter-City Glasgow to Euston Express, as due in one. Something crawled in Wayne’s gut. He returned to Sarah. She wasn’t there.

  Lowering the camera, he swept his gaze over the platform. He picked her up thirty yards away, walking stiffly, arms at her side, staring straight ahead. He brought the camera to bear just as something bright and shiny fell from her hand. Her mobile. She didn’t stop to pick it up.

  Where’s she going? He followed her progress away from the main body of commuters.

  The public address system blared. An man’s voice, echoey, ethnic, heavily accented, warned of the imminent approach of the Glasgow to Euston Express. Passengers on Platform 3 should stay well behind the yellow line. Sarah carried on several yards then stopped, close to the North end of the platform. She stood there, not moving. Away to his right, through the station and beyond, Wayne could see the express approaching, its bright light piercing through the evening dark. At the same time a rushing noise began to fill the station, growing louder.

  ‘Sarah-’ Wayne tried, but stopped. There was no way she could hear him. He watched her turn ninety degrees right to face the tracks. Even without the camera, he could see her cheeks streaked by tears.

  The approaching light grew stronger.

  This time he shouted, ‘SARAH’. Those nearest cast wary glances in his direction. He started jogging down the platform just as she took three zombie-like paces forward, taking her over the yellow line. She stopped at the platform’s edge. Wayne quickened his pace.

  ‘SARAH!’

  The bright white light from the approaching express cast her shadow behind her. She turned towards it, as if gauging the right moment. Wayne broke into a sprint.

  ‘SARAHHHHH!’

  The noise grew to a crescendo as the Glasgow to Euston Intercity Express rushed into the station.

  At the same time, Sarah Brooke stepped out into space.

  Chapter Three

  From the middle of the three oak benches to the left of the witness box, Carver tried not to think about the time-bomb that had just landed in his lap. It wasn’t easy. His mind kept flipping back to the challenging look in Jess’s face as they parted and the question it inevitably raised. How much did she know about Helen Flatterly? Then again, how much could she know? No more than him, surely? Thrusting it aside, he tried to focus on the here and now.

  To his left, the five men and seven women were filing back into their two rows of leather-backed seats. Though the last time they would be together, the order of seating was as it had been throughout. Beside him, in his Crown-Court-best blue-pin-stripe, Detective Superintendent Andy Gray, the man who had led Operation Golan from start to finish, leaned in to mutter a redundant, ‘Here we go.’

  Mind not yet where it should be, Carver managed only a nod.

  Their position next to the witness box was where Case Officers usually gather at the conclusion of proceedings before the City of Chester’s imposing Crown Court Number One. Carver had been there more times than he could remember, though few had felt so personal. From here he had an unobstructed view of the key players, Judge, both sets of Counsel, Jury and, most of all, The Accused. Directly facing across the other side of the court, the dock was some thirty metres away. Nevertheless, as Carver’s gaze settled on the burly figure waiting quietly, head down, he still caught the feint whiff of aniseed. Once thought to mark either an unfortunate choice of cologne or an over-fondness for some culinary staple of his homeland, it was now known to be simply a by-product of Kisic’s embarrassing but otherwise harmless hormonal condition.


  As he waited for things to settle, Carver let his gaze roam, drinking in the sights and sounds he looked forward to later recalling. Apart from anything, they marked the end to a difficult and sometimes dangerous operation.

  All things considered Carver thought, the trial had gone as well as they could have hoped, better even. Considering the case’s complexities, the credentials of some of the witnesses and the reputation of the man now waiting to hear how and where he may spend the rest of his life, there had been no shortage of predictions that it would never get this far. To Carver’s relief, they’d all been proved wrong. Even the evidence they had worried most about not getting in, such as the accused’s penchant for violence, had been laid before the men and women now settling into their seats for the final time. Carver’s experience told him, never take anything for granted. Deep down he thought things looked pretty good.

  That this was the case was in no-small-part due to the be-wigged figure in the purple robe now waiting for the Jury Foreman to signal they were ready so he could get on with wrapping things up. Gaunt to the point of cadaverousness, it was his Honour Judge Henry Willard who’d allowed Alike Mikolas’s damning evidence. A former Nigerian beauty queen and one of Jadranko Kisic’s many ex-lovers, she’d been present during the lead-up to Bernie Grucott’s brutal slaying. Her account threatened to leave in tatters the carefully worked-up alibi the defence had spent the best part of the past three weeks drip-feeding the Jury. The Judges’ decision triggered uproar in the Kisic camp.

  Like a row of jack-in-the-boxes, his legal team had jumped to their feet, appealing, loudly, for a recess so they could take, ‘Instructions.’ By then as fed up with the defence’s convoluted shenanigans as everyone, the Judge refused.

  On witnessing the disarray that followed, Carver couldn’t help indulge a moment of weakness. Usually scrupulous about staying professional in sight of the jury, he let the smile that crept into his face linger enough so Kisic would see, though it wasn’t really necessary. By then the Croatian knew it was Carver who had traced Alike Mikolas back to Lagos where Kisic had assumed, wrongly, she would be beyond the reach of Golan’s investigators. And as soon as Kisic saw the smile, Carver wiped it. In the event things weren’t as cut and dried as everyone thought, he didn’t want the Jury to think he was cock-sure. Rock-solid trials had been lost for less.

  And on top of Alike’s evidence of course, there’d been His Honour’s summing-up.

  The law demands that the Judge’s closing statement be impartial, confined to matters already put before the jury. But it is the Judge’s prerogative which parts of the evidence to take his time over, as well as when and where to introduce a meaning-laden, ‘Hmmph.’ Long critical of the jury system, Carver was nevertheless glad that the tradition of the Judge’s Summing-Up had resisted calls for its abandonment. Had any of the jurors been harbouring doubts, it was clear enough which side of the fence Henry Willard thought they should lean.

  Now, as the Judge and the retired-banker-type Foreman exchanged bows – the signal for everyone to sit – Carver hid another smile. He’d seen the look that passed between the young man behind the foreman’s left shoulder and the somewhat older woman to his right.

  Lengthy trials impact on Jurors’ private lives in unexpected ways. Most often they take the form of changing attitudes towards, the Law, ‘Crazy’: the Courts, ‘Can’t believe the amount of time and money that’s wasted’ and, occasionally, the Police, ‘Sincere, but woeful’. But sometimes the enforced confinement affects people in other ways. Having witnessed the pair’s body language change over the past few weeks - she was old enough to be his mother - Carver suspected that today would not be the last time they would be together, even if the Judge did discharge them, their civic duty done. It wasn’t even that rare. Carver’s ex-sister-in-law and her husband had met on Jury Service.

  As the Judge leaned forward to check some point of procedure with his clerk, Carver turned his full attention on the man now staring across at him.

  Jadranko Kisic’s beefy arms were folded across his body-builder frame; the face that bore marks of conflicts never reported to the police, impassive as ever. The impression,- as no doubt intended, was of a rough-but-equable sort. Someone whose confidence in the system of justice about to determine how he may spend the rest of his life remained undimmed. A man who, having done nothing wrong, had nothing to fear, certain that the protestations of innocence he had maintained throughout would soon be vindicated.

  It was the image Kisic had made a point of presenting to the court the past five weeks.

  It was also the one Carver wasn’t alone in recognising as a sham. For though the Croatian-born Crime-Master was known to have several sides to his character, none could be described as ‘equable’. In fact any attempt to classify Kisic’s various personality traits would more likely make use of words such as manic, obsessive, and psychotic. Several times during the past weeks, Carver had found himself wondering what cocktail of suppressants his resourceful legal team had managed to get some tame GP to prescribe.

  Whatever it was, it had worked. Kisic’s conduct throughout was in stark contrast to that Carver had witnessed the last time they faced each other across a courtroom. On that occasion as the trial neared its conclusion, the several angry outbursts the court had already witnessed gave rise to concern that, if convicted, Kisic might have a go at any official he could lay his hands on - including the Judge. It led to the courtroom being surrounded by a full Police Support Unit, shields and all. With someone like Kisic, no one was willing to take chances, not even the burly young PCs who long for the sort of hot summer and undercurrents of social unrest that spark riots on Britain’s streets every decade or so. Carver had even overheard the Court Security Manager, an ex-Police Custody Sergeant, ask the PSU Inspector if he could arrange, surreptitiously, an armed presence so that, ‘You can at least take him out before he reaches the Judge.’ As it turned out, quarter-inch-thick steel cuffs and three Dock Security Officers who would have done justice to a rugby-scrum second row were enough. Between them they ensured that, despite the Croatian’s oaths and curses to the effect that everyone from the ushers to the Judge himself could, ‘Rot in Hell’ - and which began as soon as the words, ‘Six years,’ passed the Judge’s lips, the PSU was able to stand down without being called to action - much to their collective disappointment.

  But during this trial so far, Kisic’s behaviour had been exemplary. Presumably for that reason, the only obvious restriction upon his ability to have a go if he felt like it was the pair of flanking security guards. Heavier-built than Kisic and taller by inches, Carver suspected - hoped - they had been specially chosen. Before the case began, he was concerned to hear that the Judge had accepted the defence team’s argument that the sort of Security Contingency the police had recommended – and which the jury could not have failed to notice - would be seriously prejudicial to their client’s interests. Carver hoped that the judge wouldn’t live to regret his decision - no reverse pun intended.

  As the Court Clerk stood to utter the time-honoured phrase, ‘Will the foreman of the Jury please stand,’ Carver sat forward. He didn’t want to miss a word of the exchange about to take place, especially not what would follow. Earlier in the day he had seen the Clerk return to the court where he retrieved several thick texts from the Judge’s table, amongst them the Lord Chief Justice’s Recommendations On Sentencing and the Home Office Guidelines on Tariffs. During the hours the jury had been out, Carver suspected that Henry Willard had been refreshing his memory regarding the copious advice contained within them. Carver was looking forward to one thing in particular. Seeing the change in Kisic that would mark the moment when realisation finally hit. The moment when Kisic would know that his brutal reign was over. That no longer would he be free to engage in the sort of activities that had seen him rise from mere former-Crime Squad, ‘Target’, to one of the National Crime Agency’s ‘Top Twenty’. Only then would Carver, SMIU, and the other agencies who made up Operation
Golan be able to mark their files on Jadranko Kisic, ‘Closed’ - something they had not been able to do even when he was doing time in Belmarsh. Two and three quarter years counting parole wasn’t that long. Rigorous though the regime within The Bell’s Maximum Security Wing is, even it wasn’t enough to loosen Kisic’s grip on those parts of England’s north where his influence reigned supreme; sex-trafficking, drug-dealing, armed robbery and the sort of protection rackets more often associated with larger American cities.

  Now, as the man upon whose words Kisic’s fate rested unfolded the piece of paper containing the Jury’s verdicts, Carver held his breath. Across the court and behind the cadre of three Barristers who made up the Crown’s Prosecuting Team – QC, Lead and Junior - Carver just caught the confident nod and wink that Darius Hook, the CPS Solicitor in the case, threw his way.

  As the Clerk to the Court made ready to read through the list of indictments, he reached back over his shoulder to adjust the black cloak that hung on his bony frame so it looked less like an ill-fitting curtain.

  ‘Count One,’ he began. ‘That on or about the twenty-fifth of April, two-thousand-and-twelve he did murder Bernard Thomas Grucott. Do you find the accused Guilty or Not Guilty?’

  The silence that filled the short gap before the foreman gave his response marked it as The Big One. Next to it the others on the indictment barely mattered. Not that conspiracy to murder and GBH weren’t serious. But this, the charge relating to Bernie’s grisly slaying was the one that counted. It was also the one Carver was most confident about. It wouldn’t bother him a jot if the Judge ruled that the others should, ‘Lie on file.’