by Nick Stone
Moments later we were called in to Court 2.
Magistrates’ Court means different things to different people. To the defendant – the accused – it’s the opening salvo, the formal declaration of hostilities by the justice system, the taste of what’s to come, the beginning of the end.
To us, the lawyers, it’s the starting pistol that launches the sack race to trial. We get the date and venue of the main event, and then we’re off, slowly, awkwardly, hands and legs bound by the thing we simultaneously step upon yet faithfully uphold – the law.
And to the rest – the press and, by extension, the general public – it’s a little bit of theatre, a curtain-raiser for the main event. The accused is seen for the first time in the flesh, and confronted with his crimes. The justice system squares up to him.
The legal term for what was about to happen is a Plea and Directions Hearing. The defendant pleads guilty or not guilty to the charges the police have brought against them, and the magistrate directs his or her fate, immediate and future. They fix the day the trial will begin and either free the defendant on bail or remand them to prison until then.
What the public don’t know is that practically everything’s been agreed beforehand. We already knew how VJ was going to plead, and it was a given he wouldn’t get bail because of the charge, and because he was a flight risk. As for the trial date, the first thing Janet had told me this morning was that it would be July 4th. Carnavale was free then, and so was Court 1 at the Old Bailey, the grandest legal stage in the country.
The only unknown to us going into court was the prison VJ would be remanded to. That was down to wherever there was space, and was within reasonable commuting distance for the legal team. It wouldn’t be an open prison, but a high-security one. The central London prisons were all full to overflowing, so I guessed VJ would end up in Belmarsh, on the outskirts. Not that it would really matter much to him where he was sent, initially. Prison would scare the living shit out of him.
We took our places in court.
Janet and Carnavale sat at the front table, facing the three magistrates, who were behind a long desk on a raised podium, with a big royal crest as a backdrop. A ruddy-faced, bespectacled man sat in the middle, flanked by two women also wearing glasses. He was the senior magistrate, the one who’d be officiating. A tier below them, in profile, sat the court clerk, a slight woman with a pointed nose, dressed in a white blouse.
I was behind Janet, next to the CPS clerk.
And directly behind me was the dock VJ would soon be standing in; a box of thick blond wood and bulletproof glass, louvred at the front so the defendant could speak and be passed papers if necessary.
Next to that was the public gallery, another wood and glass box, the same as the dock, only half the height and twice as deep, with two tiers of folding seats and speakers indented into the graffiti-marked wood. It was full today, mostly with members of the press, freelance writers who were already prepping their true crime books on VJ, and members of the public – the one-off visitors who were there out of chance and curiosity, for something to do and talk about over dinner.
We waited. DCI Reid came in, bowed to the magistrates and handed Carnavale a few stapled sheets of paper. Janet read through her notes.
It was quiet, except for the shuffling of papers; a very British kind of silence, the silence of people looking at their feet, of the air going out of conversations. Everybody avoided making eye contact with people they didn’t know, and everybody tried to look like they were busy doing something other than waiting for VJ to come into the dock.
Carnavale being here was highly unusual. The CPS usually sent a solicitor not a barrister to Plea and Directions Hearings, but the press were out in force, so they’d rolled out their big gun early. Or maybe Carnavale and his titanic ego had had a meeting and decided he should do this part himself.
The magistrates whispered among themselves. The press mumbled into each other’s ears. I tried to stay calm. I’d positioned myself in such a way that all VJ would see of me was the back of my head. I wasn’t going to look at him, or let him see me. The time wasn’t right for that.
My heart was thumping. I had a knot in my stomach, a dry mouth, and pressure at the nape of my neck.
Then I heard him coming. When their case was called, defendants were marched up several flights of stairs from their cells to the dock. They were cuffed, hand and foot, the chains long enough to allow them to walk, but not run. The court’s walls absorbed the high notes the metal made on the concrete, so the sound that echoed up the hollow stairwell and cut into the officious silence was the heavy swoosh of ankle chains, like a pile of heavy coins being scooped up into a sack.
The door of the dock was unlocked. I heard the press behind me shift in their seats, as they no doubt craned forward to get their first glimpse of the accused. Then I heard the chains clinking as they dragged across the dock.
He was here. Just a few feet behind me. My pulse started racing. I tried breathing through my nose, but my nostrils were constricted to points. I lowered my head and looked down at the blank page of my pad. I uncapped my pen. My fingers slipped on sweat.
The court clerk looked over at the dock.
‘Please state your name, address and date of birth,’ she said.
‘Vernon James,’ the voice came behind me. ‘Clemons Mews, Cheyne Walk, London. June 18th, 1973.’
From his voice alone, I wouldn’t have known him. He didn’t sound remotely like the person I remembered. Not even a trace of his old Stevenage Estuary accent.
‘You have been charged with the murder of Evelyn Bates on or around the night of March the 16th, 2011. How do you plead?’
‘Not… guilty,’ he said. Pausing between words, for emphasis.
Carnavale stood up to outline the charges for the magistrates, and for the record.
‘The defendant has been charged with the murder of Evelyn Bates on the night of March 16th, 2011.
‘The facts are these. Evelyn’s body was found in the bedroom of Suite 18, in the Blenheim-Strand hotel. The defendant was a guest at the hotel, staying in the same suite. The autopsy report confirms that Evelyn was strangled. No object of death has been recovered from the scene – no noose, no cord, or anything of the kind. Circular bruise patterns around her neck indicate that her murderer used his bare hands to asphyxiate her.’
Carnavale went on to outline the prosecution’s case. The lie VJ had told DCI Reid about having a wild party in his suite, how he didn’t initially deny that Evelyn was the woman he’d been with, the fact that he’d fled the scene. Next, he detailed the witness statements – six in all now. Every one of them had seen Evelyn with the defendant, and every one of them had identified her from the post-mortem photograph they were shown.
Hearing it all again, in court, from another party, in a stranger’s voice, made the case seem utterly indefensible. I didn’t have a clue how we were going to play this. And we hadn’t even had the science yet – toxicology, DNA, hair and fibre, fingerprints.
When he’d finished, Carnavale sat down. He’d been very good, I had to give him that. He had no one to impress here, but he’d impressed me.
The magistrates conferred. Their mouths moved, but they made no sound. Janet flipped through her notebook. I kept my head in the same position, completely turned away from the dock. My upper back was starting to ache from the strain of maintaining the same posture.
The senior magistrate cleared his throat.
‘The trial date is set for July 4th, at the Old Bailey,’ he said. ‘Because of the seriousness of the charge, and taking into account the fact that the defendant poses a significant flight risk, I’m going to remand him in custody at Belmarsh until the start of his trial.’
Belmarsh. Inmates past and present referred to it as ‘Hellmarsh’.
I heard the door of the dock being opened and VJ walking out to a heavy jingle of chains. I was sorely tempted to turn around then, but I stayed put. A drop of sweat ran down the
middle of my forehead and fell on my pad with a solid tak. I looked at it soaking into the paper, spreading out. I worried that the notes I’d taken would be ruined, unreadable, but then I realised that the page I was staring at was blank. I’d been so busy listening and worrying and hiding that I hadn’t written a damn thing.
‘The court will rise,’ the magistrate said, standing up, indicating that the proceedings were over.
I hadn’t heard the door close, although I knew VJ had left the dock, otherwise the magistrate wouldn’t have called time.
I turned around slowly. The dock was empty, but I could hear the chains following him down the stairs as he was led back to a cell to get ready to be transferred to the next.
15
I stood on the pavement opposite the court and watched as they drove him away to prison in a white van with blacked-out portholes; one of those long cattle trucks that housed half a dozen prisoners in separate boxes little bigger than gym lockers.
There was a small crowd of photographers by the back exit. The van slowed and then stopped to wait for a break in the traffic that had clogged up the road. TV reporters were already filming their two-minute accounts of the proceedings that would get played on repeat on the news channels later in the day. They’d describe what VJ had worn, what he’d said and whether he’d been bailed or remanded, and then they’d cut to the scene I was watching now.
The photographers rushed the van. They did the window bob and weave, pushing and shoving and jostling each other to get their camera lenses right up against each black pane. Today they had it really easy. The van wasn’t going anywhere because of the traffic blockade. Plenty to go around.
The TV news crews just kept on filming the van as it pulled on to the road and rolled away.
16
I took the Tube from Westminster to Bond Street, and walked down Oxford Street to Marble Arch.
While we’d been in court the day had steadily brightened up, and a preview of summer hit me like a sharp slap. Sharp light, blue sky, warmth. All in one. I stood on the pavement for a moment blinking, disorientated, feeling like time had jumped forward a few months.
The small parks by the arch were full of office workers enjoying the last dozen minutes of their lunch breaks. Shirts undone, sleeves rolled up, shoes off, bovine smiles.
I crossed over on to Edgware Road and headed to meet Andy Swayne.
He’d told me he’d be in a Lebanese place called the Cedars, but almost every restaurant and café down Edgware Road was Lebanese. No surprise. Lebanese refugees had settled in the area in the mid to late 1970s, when they’d fled their country’s bloody and ruinous civil war.
The first third of the road was all scaffolding and shop signs with Arab subtitles. The newsagents sold nothing but Arab dailies displayed in racks; there were Arab food stores, banks, book and record shops, and a video rental place that had more VHS tapes than DVDs. It was like the internet had never happened. And it was all the better for it. There was a low-key vibrancy here, a sense of community, of a home away from home.
No sign of a place called the Cedars of Lebanon. I cursed myself for not thinking to look it up before I’d gone to court. Cursed myself even more for not asking Swayne if he had a mobile.
After the Connaught Street junction, the Middle Eastern influence petered out and Edgware Road became a concrete funnel of interchangeable household names, with pubs, betting shops and fast food places wedged in-between.
And it was somewhere here that I passed the Cedars of Lebanon. It was next to a tired and empty-looking newsagent’s displaying dusty fruit and wilted flowers outside. I might have missed it altogether, if it hadn’t been for the Lebanese flag painted in the middle of the window.
Swayne was already there, a tall, thin man in a light-blue shirt, maroon tie and steel-rimmed glasses, sat deep in a far corner, back to the wall. He was the only customer in the café. We made eye contact and he gave me a slight nod.
The place was sombre and poky, a dead-ending corridor that had been reclaimed, roofed over and reinvented. It reeked like a mound of ripe dishcloths. I couldn’t imagine anyone coming here more than once unless they owned it or had a fetish for one-star eateries.
To the right of the door was a counter, pastries arranged on trays, no more than four or five on each. They looked pale and dry, except for a couple of baklavas that were as good as drowned in congealed brown syrup. A tubby man with glasses and thick stubble stood behind the counter, following me in with a wary look, his mouth caught between a smile and a scowl.
I introduced myself to Swayne and held out my hand.
‘You’re a bit old to be a clerk at KRP, aren’t you?’ he said, looking me up and down.
I’d heard far worse alternatives to ‘Hello’, but I hadn’t expected hostility from him. I kept my surprise in check, pulled out a stool and sat down.
Swayne was in his seventies and looked it. His short grey hair was thinning all over and the scalp below was spattered with liver spots. He had a vulpine face with a skin tone that ranged from cloudy red to semi-translucent, like raw meat wrapped in greaseproof paper.
Even if I hadn’t been told, I’d have known he was an alcoholic. Like the drunks they start out as, alcoholics come in two varieties – sweet or sour. Swayne was meanness personified. He had the look of someone who wakes up every morning and realises that that’s the best he’s going to feel all day, and decides to hate his every conscious minute in return.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘To drink.’
‘I’m fine for now,’ I said.
‘Suit yourself.’
He crossed his arms and sat back. I noticed he was wearing a brand-new shirt that he hadn’t bothered to iron. It had those just-out-of-the-packet vertical and horizontal creases across the chest and arms.
‘How long have you been at KRP?’ he asked. His voice was slightly raspy, like he was recovering from a cold. And I heard the remnants of a Geordie accent in his pronunciation.
‘Four months.’
‘How are you finding it?’
‘OK,’ I said.
He sniggered. Or at least I thought he did. His shoulders spasmed, and he smiled and creased his face into a thousand furrows, yet the sound he made was more like a wet sneeze that had got stuck between his palate and nose and was fighting to get out.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘That wasn’t a laugh,’ he said.
I was getting annoyed. He was the drowning man you risk your life saving, only for him to cuss you out for messing up his suicide bid. If it had been up to me I’d have told him to sod off, but it wasn’t and I couldn’t.
‘Now, this case we talked about yesterday… This is what we have so far,’ I said, pulling out a copy of the disclosure file.
He took what I handed him and quickly flicked past each page with barely a glance. Then he screwed the lot up in his fist, scrunching and compacting the paper until it all disappeared under his fingers. He kneaded and squeezed it tight, his forearm shaking with the effort, before opening his hand out and letting the tight paper ball he’d made of the legal documents roll off his palm and on to the table.
For a blank moment all I could do was watch the ball expand and loosen, popping and crackling as it did, like a huge piece of popcorn.
Then I looked up at him. His face was the same, still channelling vinegar and bile and God knows how many million grudges and resentments.
I was almost grateful for his behaviour. Now I had all the excuse I needed not to use him. As I unravelled and then flattened the paper, I was already thinking of which investigator I’d put on the case.
I slipped the pages back in my bag.
‘Thanks for your time,’ I said.
I stood up and started for the door.
‘You might want to take this with you, boy wonder,’ he said behind me.
I heard something heavy thud on the table. I turned around. A thick A4 manila file was lying th
ere.
I knew what it was, but he told me anyway.
‘That’s what they have so far. The CPS disclosure file for Case No. 3375908. Everything to date on L’Affaire James.’
‘How d’you get it?’
‘The investigators you usually use can’t and won’t go to the places I can. That’s why Sid sprung me from the gulag,’ he said.
Right up until then, I’d thought I had some leeway as to whether or not I worked with Swayne. That was how Kopf had sold it to me – or, rather, to Janet. But that wasn’t the case at all. I was stuck with this odious twat whether I liked it or not.
I went back to the table and opened the file. It was divided into two parts – what the CPS had already given us, and everything they hadn’t. Our material took up under a quarter of the file. The rest comprised a lot more – crime-scene photographs, additional witness statements, complete transcripts of each of VJ’s police interviews, and an inventory of materials taken from the crime scene that ran to ten pages.
‘I can’t take this,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘It’s illegal.’
‘There’s nothing there you won’t be getting all or part of eventually. Think of it as a head start. A levelling of the field.’
‘It’s stolen property,’ I said.
‘It was a gift,’ he said. ‘I asked and I received.’
‘It’s still stolen property.’
He sighed. ‘You obviously don’t know your place in the scheme of things, so let me enlighten you. I fetch, you carry. You’re just a gopher here – at best,’ Swayne said. ‘If you’ve got ethical issues about any of this, you’re in the wrong profession. And definitely with the wrong firm.’