The Verdict

by Nick Stone

  Yet something didn’t feel right.

  If VJ had stabbed Evelyn Bates, I wouldn’t have had a problem believing in his guilt – because there could have been a precedent. But strangulation? I remembered those delicate quasi-feminine hands of his; long and narrow, all bone and vein, with thin, tentacular fingers. Everyone had always commented on them, how his hands didn’t correspond to his body.

  And there was another thing too:

  I’d never known him to be violent or even aggressive towards women – not at school, not at university. He’d been close to Gwen and his mother. What the hell had gone wrong with him?

  Kopf returned fifteen minutes later, his face like thunder.

  ‘Right then, where were we?’

  ‘Trial mode,’ Janet said.

  ‘We really want to avoid a trial, if possible. The CPS will want to avoid one too.’

  He caught the baffled look on my face.

  ‘Trials cost the state money, Terry. So the state does its best to avoid them where possible. If Vernon James couldn’t afford us and had himself a taxpayer defence lawyer, that lawyer would be doing his utmost to get him to plead guilty. Not for his client’s sake, but his own. The state likes a lawyer who keeps costs down. You’ll find that they’re the ones who tend to get the most work.’

  Now I was shocked.

  ‘Welcome to the legal system.’ He winked and smiled.

  ‘How do I sell it to him?’ Janet asked.

  ‘How old are his kids?’

  Seven, five and three, I thought. Family planning at its finest. Equal gaps between each daughter.

  ‘Preschool and primary school age,’ Janet said.

  ‘Did the victim have any other injuries – cuts, bruises, broken bones?’

  ‘We haven’t had the coroner’s report yet, but the preliminary reports didn’t mention anything.’

  ‘Assuming that remains the same, we could feasibly go for an involuntary manslaughter plea. Say it was a sex game gone tragically wrong. Happens all the time. People get carried away. The client could even have blacked out. If we’re lucky there’ll be drink and maybe drugs in his system too.

  ‘So that’s a ten-year sentence – maximum. A plea – now – would reduce that to eight, maybe seven. He’ll do half that, most of it in a low-security prison. Out in three years. His kids will still be young enough to forget later, he’ll have his money minus our fee, and maybe his business too.’

  What about his marriage? I thought. Would he still have that?

  ‘He’s adamant he’s innocent, Sid.’

  ‘It’s early days,’ Kopf said. ‘And we haven’t had all the evidence yet.’

  ‘I still think we should be in trial mode,’ Janet said.

  ‘Who’s the prosecutor on this?’

  ‘Franco Carnavale.’

  ‘Figures,’ Kopf muttered. ‘High-profile case. Ergo cameras. Do you know what Franco’s first ex-wife told me? In the five years they were married, he spent at least one of them in the bathroom. Apparently that’s why they broke up.’

  Janet cleared her throat impatiently.

  ‘Barristers? Are we staying in-house?’ she asked.

  ‘With Franco on board, this is going to be a street fight. Our people aren’t built for that,’ Kopf said.

  ‘So who do we get?’

  ‘Styles make fights. We need his opposite.’

  They brainstormed. Names got batted around. All male.

  The more they talked and the more people they rejected, I found myself thinking like the jury. What would I be seeing? Two blokes in wigs and gowns getting into a pissing contest. So I spoke up.

  ‘I think the lead barrister should be a woman.’

  Janet and Kopf both looked at me like they’d forgotten I was in the room.

  ‘Why?’ Kopf asked.

  ‘A woman defending a man accused of killing another woman will make the jury think twice about his guilt,’ I said. ‘I also think our barrister should be older than our client – and definitely older than the victim. Maybe old enough to have a daughter the victim’s age. That’ll cloud the jury’s mind even more.’

  ‘Good thinking, Terry,’ Kopf smiled. ‘Who’s out there?’

  ‘There’s Nadine Radford,’ Janet said.

  ‘Oustanding, but currently tied up on two trials, with a third starting before Christmas,’ Kopf said.

  ‘Sonia Lawrence?’

  ‘Very good, but a full calendar this year.’

  ‘Janice Brown?’

  ‘She hates me.’

  ‘Lynne Brown?’

  ‘She hates me too. They’re sisters. And she doesn’t believe in private law firms.’

  ‘Prabjit Khan?’

  ‘Her life’s a circus.’ Kopf shook his head and winced. ‘A barrister on a reality TV show, for God’s sake.’

  ‘It was a gameshow, Sid,’ Janet said.

  ‘Same damn difference. Idiots making bigger idiots of themselves.’

  They fell silent as they racked their brains. I looked down at the table. There were patterns in the wood, Munch-like faces staring up at me through hollow eyes.

  ‘How about Christine Devereaux?’ Kopf suddenly suggested.

  ‘I thought she’d retired?’ Janet said.

  ‘She stepped down due to illness. She’s since reconsidered and is back at work.’

  ‘But she’s still ill?’

  ‘Christine is one of the best barristers ever to step inside a courtroom. She’s ideal for this. An absolute fighter. Lethal in cross-examination, and her summaries are grand opera.’

  ‘Sid, she’s dying.’

  ‘Aren’t we all, Janet?’ he said.

  ‘No, Sid.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s it matter?’ Janet said.

  ‘If she’s back at work, she must be functioning. Besides, that can only play to our advantage,’ I said.

  ‘We’re not using her. Now, who —’

  ‘How can that benefit us, Terry?’ Kopf interrupted.

  ‘Ailing barrister gets off her sickbed to fight for justice,’ I said.

  ‘Are you being serious?’ Janet asked me, angrily.

  I was about to apologise and withdraw, when Kopf spoke up.

  ‘Terry’s got a point,’ he said.

  ‘Are you being serious?’

  ‘I may sometimes laugh at the law, Janet, but I never joke about it,’ Kopf said. ‘Yes, Christine’s ill. And obviously so. But think about it. You’ll have Carnavale doing his usual routine – flashy, sharp, all withering one-liners and knock-out putdowns. Then you get Christine. Every time she gets to her feet to defend our client, the jury will see and hear the effort she’s making, just to even be there. And it’ll be almost too painful to watch, but all their attention will be focused on the grand old dame who’s using her last thousand breaths to defend our client. And that’s before she even speaks. And when she does, she’ll wipe the floor with Franco. She’ll be flashier, sharper, a lot more withering. And the jury’ll love it. And they’ll love her. And – who knows? – they might even acquit our client out of sympathy.’

  It sounded callous, even cruel. But when the last meal was gone and the cavalry wasn’t coming because all the horses had been eaten, people turned to cannibalism.

  ‘You really do want her on this, don’t you?’ Janet said.

  ‘If it goes to trial, then yes, I do,’ Kopf said.

  After another rummage through her notebooks, Janet reluctantly nodded her assent.

  ‘OK. I’ll call her. What about a junior?’ Janet asked.

  ‘In-house for that. We just need a backstopper. Liam Redpath springs to mind. He finished up something last Thursday.’

  ‘Don’t you want another woman?’ Janet asked sarcastically, giving me a cutting look.

  Now I wish I’d stayed out of this. Janet was my boss.

  ‘That’ll look too deliberate,’ Kopf said. ‘Juries are often dumb, but never stupid.’

  ‘Liam
’s a safe pair of hands,’ Janet said. ‘But no more than that. What if Christine falls ill? He hasn’t got the experience to fill her shoes.’

  ‘Then we’ll have another trial. Start again.’

  Liam Redpath wouldn’t have been my first choice either. I’d been in a couple of meetings with him. He was a born yes-man, a middle manager on the make, someone whose entire career seemed to consist of standing with his wet finger in the air, judging which direction the wind was blowing and going with the flow.

  ‘Next. Investigators?’ Janet said. ‘Terry, any suggestions?’

  No, she wasn’t being sarcastic now.

  Some of the bigger private law firms had their in-house investigators, their PIs, their muck-rakers. KRP didn’t. It kept them at arm’s length. Payroll snoops were convenient but also potential PR disasters waiting to happen. Investigators work in a grey area, where legality and illegality get blurred and often entwined for the sake of expedience. It was condoned as long as none of it came to light.

  One of my first jobs had been to hire an investigator to look into the boyfriend of a client’s daughter.

  ‘I’ve worked with Colin Bromfield twice,’ I said. ‘Very good, very discreet. He’d be my first choice. If he’s booked up, there’s Stan Dommett, then Mike Egan. Not much between them in terms of quality.’

  ‘Call Bromfield,’ Janet said.

  ‘No, don’t,’ Kopf said.

  Janet sighed loudly.

  ‘You know the problem with today’s investigators?’ Kopf continued. ‘Like most of the under-forties in this country, they don’t get out enough. They do everything by computer. And they’re too literal. You tell them what you want and that’s all you’re going to get. They’ll overlook all extras, no matter how important. Why? Because you didn’t ask. You have to do their thinking for them.’

  He looked at Janet. ‘You’re not going to like this one bit, but I want the old-school touch on this…’

  Her face dropped.

  ‘Sid, no…’

  ‘I want to roll the dice.’

  ‘Tell me you’re not thinking of —’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘Not Andy… Swayne?’ Janet as good as shouted.

  I’d never met him, but Andy Swayne was a byword for fuck-up in the company.

  ‘Sid, you fired him,’ Janet said, once she’d calmed herself down.

  Kopf nodded and shrugged.

  ‘He’s a fucking alcoholic.’

  ‘A recovering alcoholic,’ Kopf reminded her.

  ‘Crawling between wagons,’ Janet said.

  ‘Mr Kopf…’ I said. ‘This case is far too delicate, and too high-profile to take a chance on someone like him.’

  ‘Andy Swayne was – even on a bad day – head and shoulders above any of these ex-military, disgruntled coppers, chronic voyeur types who do a correspondence course in surveillance and pass themselves off as investigators these days,’ Kopf said. ‘You said your people are very good, Terry? Well, Andy was brilliant. He saved our hide more than once.’

  Kopf looked at Janet when he said that.

  ‘Past tense,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said he was brilliant. That’s not good enough for this,’ I said. ‘I haven’t read the files, but from what Janet’s been saying they could convict our client right now on what they’ve got so far. If there’s any chance we have of proving his innocence, we need solid people on this. Besides, I thought I was your only wild card.’

  ‘Andy isn’t a wild card,’ Kopf said. ‘He’s a straight arrow who flew into a hurricane. I’ve heard he’s back to his best now.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Trust me on this. This trial – should it happen – is going to generate a lot of publicity. We need someone who won’t be fazed by that. Someone who won’t blink in the glare,’ he said.

  ‘Have you forgotten that burglary?’ she said.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Kopf said, keeping his absolute cool. ‘I haven’t forgotten anything about Andy.’

  I didn’t want to get in the middle of them. There was ancient history I didn’t know about, nor really want to know.

  They stared at each other, Janet glowering, Kopf calm and steely, yet faintly amused too. I could sense the telepathy, Janet cursing Kopf, Kopf taking the barrage, but standing his ground and enjoying himself.

  After a moment, Janet broke the stare-off with another long loud sigh and nodded, but with great effort, like her neck was in plaster. Kopf turned to me.

  ‘Terry, you’ll be managing him.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘Some dream team we’ve got here, Sid. A dying barrister and an alkie investigator,’ Janet said. ‘I really hope this doesn’t go to trial.’

  ‘They’re brilliant, that’s their problem,’ Kopf said. ‘Brilliant people tend to pay a steep price. Andy drank because of the things he saw and did. Christine was too busy turning around impossible cases to take care of her health. Sometimes I think it’s better to be merely good at what you do, instead of brilliant. Mediocrity always outlasts genius.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Janet said.

  ‘I just did,’ Kopf smiled. He had the best smile money could buy.

  Janet shook her head. She was pissed off. I couldn’t understand the dynamic here. It was her case and she was senior partner, head of the criminal division, yet she was letting Kopf pick the key players. And not only was he not a practising lawyer any more, he’d never been a criminal one.

  ‘You said it yourself, Janet, this one’s a loser. And it is. One way or another Vernon James is going to prison. But we’re still going to defend him. And I believe these are the best people to do it. You know why? Talent aside, they’re both hungry. Andy wants to redeem himself and, as this’ll probably be Christine’s last trial, she’s going to make it count.’

  Janet stared at him for a long moment. I could see her trying to think of a way round it, and for a moment I thought she’d found it. But then the tension left her face and she conceded with a blink of the eyes.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ she said.

  For the next hour we discussed other experts we’d use in rebuttal. I had a shortlist of contacts to call when we were done. We tried to anticipate as much as we could, but we were stabbing in the dark. VJ had yet to be charged and we didn’t know what other evidence the prosecution would come up with.

  I got so involved in what I was doing, that for a sweet moment, I forgot it was VJ we were defending, and I forgot all about the deep water I was in.

  12

  After the meeting I went back to my office to start making calls. It was a full house. Everyone was in: Iain, Michaela and, of course, Adolf.

  They’d been talking about me an instant before, as they often did when they thought I wasn’t around. I heard my name followed by laughter as I came down the stairs. When I walked through the door all conversation died instantly. Michaela’s stunned embarrassment made her grin wilt into a crinkled oval, Iain looked down at once, and Adolf went into multitask mode, picking up the phone with one hand, tapping at her keyboard with the other, while simultaneously avoiding my gaze and pulling her best pissed-off pout.

  My situation wasn’t anything new. Nor was it exclusive to my profession. You’ll find someone like me in every office in every country everywhere in the world: the one no one likes.

  It was entirely Adolf’s doing. She was a dab hand at backstabbing in numbers. She’d turned the office against me, and they were too scared for their jobs – and of her – to resist.

  In some ways, I didn’t blame her. From the outside looking in, I even empathised. Adolf had worked her way up from office assistant to senior clerk. She was good at her job, and, by rights, should have been in pole position for promotion. Instead I’d been dropped right in front of her like a boulder in a thin gorge. I was an obstacle she had to either blast through or bypass.

  It hadn’t always been bad between us. We got on fine in
my first week, when I was temping. She didn’t think I’d be there long, so she went out of her way to be helpful, showing me the office systems and giving me tips about note-taking in court. But when Janet offered me the job on the Friday and we’d all gone out for a welcome-to-the-company drink, her attitude shifted from hospitable to hostile, and my new colleagues got in line.

  Adolf now knew I’d caught the Big Case. It was up on the office whiteboard. The clerks’ names were grouped in seniority, and then arranged alphabetically, with our respective cases written up alongside them. Red for new, green for ongoing. I was top of the board, over Adolf. The salt had been rubbed in and it was burning like hell. She’d also got a brand-new case, by the looks of things. Someone called Regan – but that wasn’t going to make any difference. I’d bagged the Big One, which meant I was an even greater threat to her career ambitions now than ever. In other words: we were at war.

  I turned on my computer. As it powered up and the hard drive started humming and whirring, my stomach threw in a little accompaniment of its own: deep growls followed by high-pitched mewlings. Adolf looked at me in disgust.

  ‘Afternoon, Bella,’ I nodded and smiled. That was the way I handled her, with passive-aggression, wind-ups and a unique ingredient of my very own. Confronting her or trying to sort out our differences amicably would have been a complete waste of time. The only thing that would make her happy was if I resigned, got fired, or – preferably – was hit by a bus.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked, tapping away, looking at her screen.

  ‘Client visit,’ I said, even though it was actually none of her business.

  I could tell she wanted to know more about VJ but was too proud to ask. She had a fascination with the rich. Always buying Hello! magazine, Harpers & Queen, The Lady and Tatler to see how the other half lived, those ennobled debutants with their triple-barrelled names and in-bred connections to the Royal Family. I once overheard her tearfully telling Michaela how she and her fiancé had been invited to a rich friend’s wedding, and she’d got so depressed at the ostentation she burst out crying, realising that they’d never ever be as rich as that.

  ‘Who’s your client?’ I asked.