by Nick Stone
She stopped abruptly and took a few steps back.
‘What’s wrong now?’ he asked, with a frustrated sigh.
She looked him up and down and smiled – a strange, dislocated grimace, her lips twisted into a sneering parody of happiness. He noticed she was trembling.
‘Are you OK?’
She glanced towards the door, then back at him.
‘I thought I could do this,’ she said, under her breath.
‘What?’
‘I can’t do this,’ she said, louder, taking another step away.
His irritation ran to anger.
‘What’s going on? Is this some kind of game?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She backed off, holding up her hands, palms out. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Why did you, then?’ he snarled.
She wasn’t moving. She certainly wasn’t leaving. She was standing there, almost naked in that ultra-tight dress, the material moulding her concave stomach so perfectly he could see the diamond hollow of her navel and the impression of the ring it was pierced with. And her breasts were bulging and subsiding with every deep anxious breath she was taking.
And she wasn’t moving.
She wasn’t…
going
… anywhere.
Which meant:
She wanted him…
Like this…
NOW.
He went for her.
She recoiled and fell back on to the drinks cabinet, sending all the immaculately stacked glassware on top – crystal tumblers, wine glasses, champagne flutes and decanters – crashing to the floor.
She got herself upright, gripping the edge of the cabinet for support.
Vernon came at her again, but his undone trousers had slipped down past his knees and puddled around his ankles, stopping him in his stride. And his dick was poking out through his boxers like the gnomon of a sundial.
As he went to pull up his trousers, Fabia kicked him hard in the stomach. He caught the full wallop of the blow, compacted into the tip of her pointed shoe, right in the solar plexus. He cried out. Vodka and bile shot up to his gullet. He sank to his knees, gagging and gasping.
He tried to get up, but the pain was too much, and he was too pissed, the alcohol all over him like a lead net.
He sat down, briefly, trying to breathe through a tightening chest, the room tilting this way and that.
He tried to get up. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t even sit any more.
He had to lie down.
…
just
…
HAD to.
And he did, gently lowering himself on his side to alleviate the churning pain in his stomach.
Then he rolled on his back.
Fabia hadn’t moved. She was glowering down at him, breathing through her mouth. Her eyes were wild.
He was completely at her mercy.
‘Please…’ he whispered.
She snorted. Her eyes searched the room, quickly. She stared hard at the spume of broken glass on the floor, sifted through it with her foot.
Then she turned to the cabinet. She pushed her fingers through the gap between the wall and its edge and started pulling at it.
It was on wheels, but it was a big heavy thing, hard to shift.
She put her back into it. She grunted and cursed as she pushed and shoved the cabinet across the carpet. The contents rolled and bumped and bashed around inside with every violent twist and lurch. Bottles broke and liquid leaked through the gaps, running trickles at first, and then a steady babble of mixed booze. The stench of alcohol filled the room.
Vernon knew what she was going to do and he tried to move, but he couldn’t. The pain was so intense it had virtually paralysed him. He could barely feel his legs, let alone get them to move. And he felt pissed too – really really unbelievably pissed. More pissed than he’d ever been. He wanted to pass out. He wanted to be sick. But he fought it – fought it – fought it.
Finally, Fabia had manoeuvred the bar in range.
She stepped behind it and pushed it towards Vernon with her foot.
The cabinet toppled forward, and the minibar fridge inside slid down with a deep glissando. It smacked into the double doors and threw them open. Then the fridge’s doors were flung open and its contents vomited out in a bright wet splash of booze, soft drink and shattered glass, drenching Vernon from the waist down.
But neither fridge nor cabinet fell over. They were stopped at a forward tilt, their full collapse arrested by the parted doors, wedged open on the carpet, and the flex and plug, which hadn’t popped out of the socket.
Fabia looked around confused.
Not what she’d expected to happen either.
Then she saw the flex and swore in French at the top of her voice.
‘Putain de merde!’
Vernon lay there, fearing what she’d do next as he gripped at the carpet and tried to drag himself away, knowing it was futile.
Fabia stepped over the flex and glanced back down at him. He could tell she still really wanted to hurt him, but she was exhausted and out of breath.
She looked him up and down, sneering at his shrivelled-up dick, at his very vulnerability.
Then she flounced out of the room, cursing the whole way to the door.
Vernon lay on the floor a while. There was broken glass everywhere. His award was smashed in two. The upturned drinks cabinet was sitting in a pungent lake of blended booze.
He eventually managed to get up.
He was dizzy and unbelievably tired, his internal systems crashing all over. He looked towards the bedroom, but knew he wouldn’t make it that far.
He stared at the wall in front of him, which the cabinet had covered.
He thought of the bill he’d get. Thousands and thousands.
He thought of phoning for help… security… a doctor…
But he couldn’t even see a phone.
And then he noticed something lying there, on the floor, right under the fridge’s taut electrical flex. Something black and small and soft. For an instant he thought it was a mouse, but this thing was the wrong colour, and shape, and it wasn’t moving, and… the hotel was too new and expensive and…
He picked it up.
It was a tiny black thong, with a bright pink bow in the front, a rhombus-shaped hole in the back, and a snap button on the waistband, which was undone.
He slumped down on the couch and held it up. He closed the waistband and twirled it around his finger.
He guessed it was Fabia’s. He’d seen her smoothing her dress down about the hips; maybe she’d slipped off her underwear when he was in the bathroom.
He thought about her and all her potential, and what they would have been doing about now if things hadn’t turned out so badly.
Then – unbelievably, to him – he was hard again.
What was that thing she’d done to him?
That thing he’d liked so much?
Oh yeah…
He licked his fingers and closed his eyes and saw her…
He jerked off and came quickly in the thong.
When he’d finished, he tossed it at the wastepaper basket.
Bull’s-eye.
He chuckled.
Crazy bitch, he thought. At least he’d got something out of her.
Then he stretched out on the couch, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
And that is exactly how he told me it happened.
Part One
Hating Someone’s Guts
1
When the news broke that Vernon James had been arrested for murder, I had mixed feelings. Even though we’d once been best friends, I hoped he’d be found guilty and go to jail for life.
But that wasn’t the cause of conflict.
Let me explain.
I was working late as usual when the call came.
‘Terry? Terry?’ It was Janet Randall, my boss and partner of the legal firm I was employed by, Kopf-Randall-Pur
dom. KRP, for short.
I knew Janet was in one of her last-minute/need-it-yesterday/the-end-is-nigh panics, because I could hear her smoking on the other end of the line, taking a deep drag, holding it in. Which meant this was a serious panic. She’d quit five or six years ago, but she was one of those ex-smokers who always reached for cigarettes in times of stress. They made her, if anything, even more agitated.
‘What’s up?’
‘Thank God!’ she said. I’d taken my time answering the phone, hoping it’d stop ringing so I could finish what I was doing and go home. ‘Ahmad Sihl just called me.’
‘Who?’ I asked, fighting back a yawn.
‘Only one of the top five corporate lawyers in the country. In fact, make that top three.’
‘Probably why I haven’t heard of him,’ I quipped.
There was a double-edged joke in the office about corporate lawyers not being ‘real’ lawyers because they only saw what a courtroom looked like on TV dramas. And KRP didn’t just handle criminal law. The firm also had corporate, tax and marital divisions. Those were the biggest and most lucrative sections of the business, the money-spitting hubs, and boy did they like reminding ‘the criminals’ – as they called us – who we owed our livelihoods to.
The name Ahmad Sihl did ring a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it. I was tired and thinking of home; my wife and two kids, my dinner, the kids’ homework.
‘He represents Vernon James,’ Janet said.
That name I knew, and knew well.
But, initially, I thought I’d misheard.
‘Who?’
‘Who? Who? Are you an owl? Vernon James.’
I swallowed. Something in me went cold. My hand tightened to a fist around the phone.
And my legs turned to jelly.
‘Hello… Are you there?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying to stop the tremor from getting at my throat. ‘Go on.’
‘Do you know who Vernon James is?’
‘Sure.’ And I reeled off his CV: founder and owner of VJ Capital Management, a hugely successful hedge fund. The Sunday Times Rich List estimated his fortune at £145 million. Age: thirty-eight. Homes in New York, Paris, London and Grantchester, a village outside Cambridge. Married, three daughters…
‘I stand corrected! How come you know so much about him?’
‘I read the business pages,’ I replied, hurriedly. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s been arrested for murder.’
‘Murder? Who? When?’ I couldn’t contain my – well, excitement; because that’s what it was. It went through me in a warm intoxicating surge. I got light-headed, dizzy. I was standing and had to sit down.
Then I realised something was off.
‘What’s this got to do with us?’ I asked.
‘Just about everything,’ Janet said. ‘Vernon doesn’t have a criminal lawyer. Ahmad’s asked me to represent him.’
‘Oh…’ was all I could say to that. The ground had just given way under my feet, and I was fast-treading thin air.
‘Terry, do you know how big this is going to be?’ Janet said, puffing away. I could almost see her smiling through the smoke. ‘We are talking the biggest trial in the country. This is exactly what we need. You know how I’ve been trying to get Sid Kopf to expand our division? This is just the kind of case I can use.’
‘Sure…’ I said. But I was only half-listening.
‘You know what this means for you?’ Janet said.
Of course I knew. The Call and Response Rule, aka: the Ownership Rule. It called, you answered, it’s yours.
Although the call had come through to my colleague, Bella, who sat opposite me, I’d picked up the phone, therefore I was working the case.
‘Yeah…?’
‘What’s the matter?’ Janet asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is the biggest break you’ll ever get, Terry. Or do you want to stay a clerk all your life?’
‘Long day,’ I said.
‘Better get used to it,’ she said. ‘You know if this goes well, it could mean you get the nod for the degree?’
And the hits just kept on coming…
Every two years KRP rewarded its best clerk with a fully funded law degree. No one from the criminal division had ever won it. Our branch was too small, our cases too trifling, too under the radar. The degree invariably went to someone from corporate or tax. The prize was due to be given out this year. Sid Kopf, our CEO, had hinted that he was looking to break with tradition. Now everyone had perked up and started plotting, especially Bella, who’d already been trying to do me over from my first day on the job, three months ago. My catching the most high-profile case our division had ever had was going to mean outright war between us.
‘I need you to do something for me right now,’ Janet said. ‘I have to go and see Vernon at Charing Cross nick in the next hour. I don’t have my pen with me. I left it in my office.’
She always used the same fountain pen when she was working a case. She thought it brought her luck. She told me where to find it and asked me to bring it round to her house.
I said sure and hung up.
Then I sat on the floor and put my head in my hands.
Vernon James – arrested for murder.
Of all the payback scenarios I’d conjured up in my head, I’d never once imagined it would be in a judicial setting – and least of all, with me defending him.
2
Never bring a bad day home. That was what my wife and I had promised each other after the kids were born. They were entitled to their childhood.
My way of sticking to the tacit pact with my family was to put a buffer between my crises and our front door. I did that by taking long walks whenever I caught a bad situation. We lived five miles from the office, south of the river in Latchmere. The walks would loosen me up a little and give me clarity, even shift my perspective on things.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t walk that evening, because I had to bring Janet her talismanic pen. So I took the train. To cap it all, today was St Patrick’s Day, which meant exactly this: happy hour every hour till last orders, Guinness and Jameson half price, plenty of shamrocks on display and those stupid oversized bright-green top hats everywhere. Small crowds were spilling out of Victoria Station’s four pubs, getting trolleyed before the stumble off home.
St Patrick’s Day always makes me think of my parents. They’re Irish. Dad’s from Cork, mum’s a Dubliner. They’re both drinkers too, Dad especially. That’s where I got it from, my old problem.
I was last to get on the train. The carriage was crammed, every seat taken, people standing in the aisles, holding on to the luggage rack, more commuters stuffed in the doorway, scowls abounding, condensation turning to rivulets on the windows.
As I stood in the cramped compartment, I clearly remembered the day I first saw Vernon James.
October 1978, a midweek afternoon. Me and my brothers were playing football in Wexford Grove in Stevenage, where I grew up. A cab stopped a few feet away from us. Vernon and his sister Gwen got out with their mother. The three of them stood on the pavement, shivering. It was cold and windy, and there were drops of rain in the air. Vernon’s teeth were chattering. His dad was arguing with the driver. Vernon spotted us all looking at them. He scrutinised us, one by one. We were staring at him because we weren’t used to seeing too many black people – and certainly not in our neighbourhood. Then he singled me out, the smallest, the one most like him, and he smiled and waved. Not at all shy, already confident. I didn’t do anything. I just carried on staring. Then he helped his parents carry a suitcase that was almost as big as him into the basement flat two doors down from our house.
The last time I saw him was also in Stevenage, on the High Street in September 1993. That was a year and a bit after we’d fallen out. I had a lot of unanswered questions about all that, like why, and was he sure I’d done what he’d accused me of.
I’d literally turned the corner and bumped into
him. We were both surprised, both immediately uncomfortable. I told him we needed to talk and he said yeah sure. So we arranged to meet in the King’s Arms the next day. That had been our hangout as teenagers, because it was the only pub in town where the owner didn’t care too much about serving underage drinkers, as long as they didn’t look it. Vernon and I were already tall enough at fifteen to pass for legal.
He didn’t show. I don’t know if he deliberately stood me up, or if he was just too scared to confront me. Whatever the reason, I never saw him again.
I took Janet’s pen out of my bag. A brushed stainless-steel Parker, shaped a little like a cigar tube. Her initials were engraved on the side in scrolled capitals. ‘J.H.H.’ She’d been using it since her O levels, for every exam and every test, literal and metaphorical. We all had our baubles, our lucky heather, to ward off the fear of failure. Mine were the shamrock cufflinks my kids had bought me for my birthday a couple of years ago. I always wore them when I thought something bad was going to happen. I didn’t have them on tonight.
The train came to the first stop. People got out and the congestion eased.
I opened up the Evening Standard I’d picked up at the station. An unidentified Premier League footballer had been arrested for a ‘savage attack’ on a nightclub bouncer. I flicked through the pages. Riots in Athens, the looming Royal Wedding, the Chicago River dyed green. And then, squashed in the corner of Page Seven, a small heading:
‘Body Found at Luxury Hotel’.
The report was short and scant. Maids had found a body in a room at the Blenheim-Strand, and police were currently questioning a man in connection with their enquiries. No mention of Vernon.
His name would be all over the papers tomorrow. The press had their contacts inside every major hotel in London. If that didn’t produce results, they had plenty of loose-lipped, underpaid coppers on speed dial.
Of course it was a shock to me. But wasn’t it always a shock to anyone who found out a close friend or good neighbour or amiable work colleague was really a serial killer or rapist or some other kind of monster? All we know of other people is what we see reflected of ourselves. Beyond that they’re strangers.