Tim Heath Thriller Boxset

by Tim Heath

  “Yes, let’s get back to the investigation, shall we,” Charlie cut in. It wasn’t what she was about to say, which they both knew. It was probably for the best anyway.

  14

  The courtroom was already full. Camera crews worked hard to get the best shot of the scene below them. Reporters crammed into the remaining space in the second-floor viewing gallery. No foreign journalists were allowed in; it was just the Russians, many travelling up from Moscow, though there were some city-based reporters and a few also from the other side of the Ural mountains.

  At half past nine exactly, Bill Hackett was brought into the courtroom, chained like a flight-risk criminal and with a simultaneous interpreter next to him, explaining what was being said to him and later there to speak out his answers. The appearance of the judge had a menacing hold over Bill, making him freeze momentarily before continuing and sitting down at the front where he was shown.

  The judge gave a long speech in Russian, which was translated briefly for Bill. It was the usual stuff and gave the judge a few minutes on national television, a rare luxury. He would turn it into fifteen minutes, as he talked about the great Russian democracy, about legal prosecution, about the jury’s duty to listen and then bring in the right verdict, based on all that was about to be said. He explained his role, his self-importance, which was purely for the cameras. He knew the Kremlin would be watching. He had his retirement to think of just a few years from there, and he was making sure everyone knew who he was and that he was the one who had been selected for this most high-profile case.

  Finally drawing towards a close, he thanked every member of the jury again for being there that day. The fact that they were being paid a little, which for some was still more than they earned on a typical day, didn’t matter. Bill looked over to the members of the jury as the interpreter explained what the judge was saying. There were eight men and four women. Bill had yet to be told whether that was a good thing or not. The youngest juror was twenty-eight, and the oldest was fifty-nine. Trial by jury was still relatively rare in Russia, but because of the death sentence possibility, it had been a right that Bill had been instructed to take. He wondered now, looking into the expressionless Russian faces that sat to his left if it had been the best choice. Still, he fancied his chance to defend himself before twelve ordinary people instead of one, or sometimes three, judges. He had no idea how these Russian jurors would take to him, a foreigner. He was about to find out. When discussing the question whether to have a jury or not, he had been told by his lawyer that six jurors were enough to agree on an acquittal. It was also true that juries in Russia were twenty times more likely to acquit someone than was a judge acting alone. He preferred those odds. Still, sitting there that morning, not understanding anything that was being said around him, he felt vulnerable. He was more alone, more exposed than he had ever been. His doctor had requested that he be allowed to sit beside him throughout, but the judge had rejected this.

  When the judge stopped speaking, there was silence for a moment. Bill glanced over at the jury, glad the speech was finally finished. No one glanced back, and no one was smiling. In fact, they looked bored already.

  “You need to stand,” the interpreter said, helping Bill to his feet. He’d been told that the leg shackles were to stay on throughout, a standard practice in murder trials. The shackles knocked together as he rose, but no reminder was needed to anyone regarding the charge that faced him. The judge started to read from a sheet as the interpreter whispered his translation into Bill’s right ear.

  “You stand accused of the murder of Anthony Fernandes. That on Tuesday 11th November this year, in the city of St Petersburg, Leningradskaya Oblast, you entered the north gate of the Summer Gardens and approaching Mr Fernandes, shot him in the head, killing him instantly, before you ran from the scene. You are then accused of boarding a plane to the United Kingdom, using illegal documents obtained previously, having entered our country on these same documents the day before. Following your extradition from the United Kingdom, your own Home Office finding the evidence compelling enough to grant our request, you were flown directly back to St Petersburg where you have been held until facing trial today. The state has therefore accused you of the highest count of murder for which you stand trial today. They have added that if found guilty, you face the death penalty on the count of treason. Do you understand this charge?”

  The courtroom was silent as the last words were translated for Bill.

  “I understand,” he said, though why it was all happening to him, he was at a loss to know.

  The prosecution wasted no time in getting stuck into the details of the case. Evidence was brought out, several bags of items carefully placed on a central table at the front, opposite the judge and in clear sight of the twelve-person jury and Bill himself. Amongst it all was the gun that had killed the victim. The day proceeded with every piece of evidence talked about, Bill asked each time for his connection to that portion of clothing or documentation. It was slow, mainly through two-way translation, and the jury was growing restless. Lunch was eventually called at one, an hour later than would have suited most. Bill was led out, feeling more afraid than ever as some weak beetroot soup was put before him, three-day-old bread added as a side dish, though it was too hard to eat. He had no appetite anyway. The room was cold, the grey stone slabs on the floor only bounced the sound of his shackles around for all to hear. It was such a depressing place to be, as Bill went through the lunch hour, separated from his interpreter, not saying a single word to anyone.

  News was fed through not long after the start of proceedings to the UK press that the trial had started, as planned. Details of the charges had been translated, and the lunchtime news channels were mulling over some of the facts as they received them. Two channels had reporters in St Petersburg, though both had been frustrated at not being allowed into the actual courthouse. The hot story was the push for the death penalty, that a British man faced execution, if found guilty, in a Russian court, having been handed over by the British in the first place. Jobs had already been lost, and amnesty charities were calling for more action. Anti-death penalty groups had also marched on Whitehall, in an attempt to make their voices heard. At the front of the march were two of Bill’s children, adamant that their father was innocent of all charges and that he’d been caught up in some massive injustice by a wild state. Both daughters were now starting to pick up the lunchtime press attention, their faces back in the news, their message clear.

  Zoe watched from the office as the first images from the courtroom were released shortly after midday, local time. The afternoon session would have already started again by then. Bill looked fragile in the photos but seemed to be holding up regardless. She had expected him to have cracked a long time ago. She’d also met with the daughters in the weeks after the arrest and again since the extradition. There was no doubt in their minds that he was innocent, but then what other option did they have. He was their only surviving parent. They were passionately supporting their father, a thought that came back to Zoe as she remembered the claim by Anthony that these were not his real children. That much, at least, she knew to be untrue. No one would stand by a man as much as they had unless they were related. As the afternoon pressed on, she kept an eye on the television, as more and more information was being relayed to them from the events unfolding in St Petersburg.

  Day two of the trial started at ten. The jury members had put in a complaint about the previous day’s early start. The schedule was shifted to allow for their request. It meant the courtroom was full once again for the commencement of proceedings, and Bill was brought in as he had been the day before. Thankfully for all concerned, the judge had less to say as he opened the second day and handed over to the lawyers. Bill’s representative had yet to say anything, his turn had not yet come. The prosecution were still working through the evidence, piece by piece, taking much longer than was needed. By labouring the point, it only went to emphasise just how much evidence
they had against the accused. By noon, the jury were once again bored by it all. Bill was starting to wonder if it had been an excellent decision to bring them in after all. The look on some of their faces suggested they’d made their mind up already that he was guilty and now they were merely waiting for their chance to confirm that fact. One or two of the women would glance his way occasionally, Bill had noticed. He’d always smile back at them, though only once was it returned. But that one smile gave him some small hope. He would work on her from that moment on. It was all he had to do as he didn’t understand a word being spoken. It was as if he were on another planet, entirely devoid of understanding and just watching for little things on which to hang his hope. A smile here and there would certainly do that for him. If they weren’t deciding whether he’d live or die at the end of it all though, he might have been able to relax and enjoy the ride.

  Lunch was called at two. The same purplish soup was placed in front of him and, by the looks of it, it was exactly the same piece of bread he’d left the day before. Both remained untouched again, his appetite gone. He was allowed to speak with his lawyer, which gave him something else to focus on rather than the food.

  “How long will this stage of things go on?” Bill asked him.

  “The prosecution’s opening address, you mean?” Bill nodded his head. He was happy that he could understand someone directly again. “They’ll go through every piece of physical evidence they have, then move on to the video and photographic footage, which I presume we’ll get to by the end of the day. They’ll want to leave the image of you caught on camera for the jury to sleep on.”

  “Can’t you do something about all this?”

  “Do what, exactly? This is just how it goes. They’ll use every trick in the book.” His lawyer spoke good English for a Russian. He’d been training in London and had worked there for ten years after passing the bar exam before moving to Moscow. This represented his biggest case to date, though he was already well-known on the relatively small Russian judicial circuit. His reputation preceded him, especially in death penalty cases, of which this was his third. He had a fifty-percent success rate, but only because one man had been charged with the murder of twenty-five people in a terrorist plot on the Moscow metro, where the accused had pleaded guilty on all counts. He was an Islamist fundamentalist who claimed that death itself was the final glory. He was still awaiting his execution date. For now, he was lost somewhere in the prison system. Russia had not executed anyone in a long time. Like all things in Russia, it was better to put things off for another decade than deal with them now. The lawyer had therefore been surprised by the speed with which this latest case had come to trial. Wheels had been turning, it seemed, from the second the bullet was fired, so that now, less than two months later, the fugitive had been brought back to Russia, the trial was already underway, and the prosecution had a seemingly water-tight case. If Bill was to find the rest of the day hard, his lawyer had the hardest task of all. How to open his address, after days of evidence, and give the jury reason to believe that there was any more hope for his client, was going to test him to the core. “Look,” he said, wanting to give Bill something to get him through the rest of the day, “the next few hours are going to be hard, probably even harder than it’s been so far. It’s just how it all starts. Once the evidence is presented, it’ll go away. They will refer to it frequently, the judge will even bring it all up again in his, no doubt, long final address, but before that we have time. We’ll get time to present who you are. You’ll get the chance to show your human side. It isn’t going to be easy, and because of the language issue, it will be harder. The interpreter isn’t going to put the emotion into the phrases that you do. Though they’ll see you, they're listening to him, remember. That’s far from ideal. I’ve seen more life in a dead slug.” Bill smiled at the thought, but only briefly. That dead slug was all he had to explain what was being said about him.

  “Do I have any chance?” Bill said.

  “I said when we first met that the odds were stacked against you. When you told me you didn’t do this, I agreed to fight your corner for you. There comes the point when one can always throw in the towel if it gets too much.”

  “Plead guilty, you mean?”

  “I’m just saying. You have stated you were not in that park, but there is all this evidence...” Bill stood up, his shackles clattering across the stone floor as he moved slowly towards the wall.

  “You think I’m guilty, too! Man, it’s only been two days, and their evidence has even convinced my goddam lawyer that I’m guilty! What hope in hell do I have if even you don’t think I’m innocent?” Bill slammed his hands against the wall, his temper flaring for the first time that the lawyer had seen. Bill’s hands stung from the cold hard stone wall. He pushed that from his mind.

  “Look, Bill, I didn’t say I think that you are guilty. My job is to represent you and look after your best interests. If you stick to your story, I will do my best to present the facts. But I have nothing to challenge the evidence. You admit the shirt belongs to you; it was found in your bag, in your home, with Fernandes’ blood on the sleeve, in a bag with forged documents, which place you in St Petersburg on the exact day he was shot dead. You’ve signed your statement where you say all these things.”

  “I had little choice,” he said.

  “But you don’t deny that this is true?”

  “No, but...”

  “It doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that from a legal point of view if you were to confess to the crime if that’s what happened, I think we could negotiate our way out of a death sentence charge into life imprisonment.”

  “What here, in Russia? I might as well be dead. What about my family? Will I ever see them again? Where are my children? Where are my friends, those that would be character witnesses for me? Where are all these people?”

  “They’ve not been allowed to come. We’ve taken statements, which we are hoping to get my law firm to verify. But at the moment they are not admissible as evidence. I’m sorry.”

  “Then what is my defence? Are you going to stand there and just say that I didn’t do this?”

  “Yes, if that’s what you ask me to say.”

  “But I am innocent, damn you! You look at me, talking to me as my friend, but act as if you are just going along with things because that is what you have been paid to do. You don’t care about me. You don’t care what I have or haven’t done. It’s just another job for you, isn't it? Well, I’m telling you, I do care. I don’t know what I’m doing here, or why this is all happening, but I care enough to stand up before these people and tell them it wasn’t me. They’ll see it in my eyes, and they’ll know the look of an innocent man. I don’t have to speak their language for them to understand it couldn’t have been me. I’ll make them believe me. Your job is just to get me to that point. Believe me enough to let me convince them. But I will not confess to something that I have no memory of doing. I will not confess to something that I didn’t do!”

  “All right, Mr Hackett,” he said, standing up, motioning for his client to come over and sit back down. “I will continue to do my best for you. I do believe you. You have to accept that. It’s not going to be easy, that’s all. Eat something now, to keep your strength up.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Bill said.

  “You need to eat, Mr Hackett.”

  “I’m not hungry, I said!” and he threw the table over, the soup flying onto the floor, the metal bowl making a loud noise. Two guards came into the room, batons ready.

  “It’s okay,” the lawyer barked at them in fast Russian. “Leave this with me,” and they turned slowly, eyes on the prisoner, and left the room again.

  “You’ll have to control that temper, sir,” he said to Bill. “One outburst again like that in the courtroom, and the case is over. I’m building the case based on character, remember.” Bill put his arm on the younger man’s shoulder.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I just don’t
want to be here, that’s all. I want to be home with my wife and children. I just want to hold my wife in my arms and never let go.”

  The lawyer didn’t know what to say and remained silent. He picked up the table again, putting it back where it belonged. He replaced the bowl whose contents had been splashed across the floor and the base of the wall next to the door. Twenty minutes later they were led out of the cell and into the courtroom again ready for the afternoon’s session. Neither man had eaten anything during the lunch break.

  15

  As well as coverage of the second day of the trial, news media, especially in Russia, was starting to pick up on the confirmation that RusCom was to be sold during a public flotation later that year. It was hoped that the deal would be finalised before the winter break, which fell in the first ten days of January as Russia celebrated New Year and then Orthodox Christmas on 7th January. What most people found interesting in the short press release given by RusCom representatives, was the reference to the design elements and rights for their much-rumoured device being explicitly connected to the sale of the firm. They were not to be sold off separately; the business came as one joint ticket. Whoever got the firm, acquired the rights to the device. Trading immediately started picking up in RusCom shares, adding a further five percent value on that day alone. Each day it ended at a new record high. It was clear that whoever was intending to bid for the company, was now not going to get it cheap. The ultimate winner would be spending hundreds of millions, potentially. It wasn’t for the rich, just the super-rich. Thankfully, in Russia, these people were not in short supply and because of the coverage and hype that was being generated, interest didn’t end in Russia. Many multinationals were also starting to look into things, funds gathered, the hunt for shares available to buy beginning to heat up, though none were available. The company was currently owned one hundred per cent by the remaining relatives of the deceased, whose estate was going through probate at that moment. They held all the shares, so had the only say on who would become the new owner. It was clear that money would win through. Offers would need to be put in by mid-December for the sale to be ratified by the Russian stock market before it stopped trading on 31st December. There was less than a month to go.