Midnight's Door
Page 35
The eagerly awaited response came. ‘- guilty.’
Yes.
But wait. A commotion about the room. Murmurings, growing louder, of the ‘What did he say?’ variety. There was a collective holding of breath.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Foreman,’ the Clerk spoke up. Again, for the record, if you please.’ He made a half-turn towards the young stenographer sat below the Judge. Her ring-bedecked fingers still hovered over the keys. Confusion showed in the pretty face.
The foreman cleared his throat, loudly. ‘S-sorry,’ he stammered, as if realising that his badly-timed Colonel Blimp impression had just cocked up what should have been his Big Moment.
For Carver, everything seemed suddenly to happen in slow motion. God no! Surely not...
The foreman repeated the words only those nearest had heard clearly and which they had scarcely believed.
‘Our verdict is, Not Guilty.’
Carver barely heard the clamour that erupted, the whoops from Kisic’s entourage in the gallery, the clapping, the gasps of outraged astonishment from everyone except the Jury, Lawyers and Judge - too busy calling, ‘Order.’ Nor did he hear the Clerk’s gallant attempts to continue in his appointed duty despite the chaos. Instead it seemed as if all of Carver’s visual and auditory faculties focused in on one thing - the face of the man in the dock. For several seconds it stayed impassive. Then it turned, slowly, on the thick bull neck. Only when their eyes met did the killer’s rough-hewn features give way to the leering smile Carver had seen many times, though not during this trial. And Carver never knew if he actually heard Kisic’s words above the tumult or merely read his lips and imagined he had, so clear was the message.
‘FUCK. RIGHT. OFF. CARVER.’
As the two men’s gazes remained locked on each other and the Clerk went through the rest of the indictment, the repeated phrase, ‘Not Guilty,’ barely registered in Carver. By then their import was lost and he had but one thought.
What the Hell just happened?
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About The Author
Robert F Barker was born in Liverpool, England. During a thirty-year police career, he worked in and around some of the Northwest’s grittiest towns and cities. As a senior detective, he led investigations into all kinds of major crime including, murder, armed robbery, serious sex crime and people/drug trafficking. Whilst commanding firearms and disorder incidents, he learned what it means to have to make life-and-death decisions in the heat of live operations. His stories are grounded in the reality of police work, but remain exciting, suspenseful, and with the sort of twists and turns crime-fiction readers love.
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