The Verdict

by Nick Stone

  Enter Vernon James.

  ‘Ahmad Sihl and I go way back. We were law students together. When Vernon was arrested he called me up for a lawyer recommendation, not representation. I persuaded him to give me the case.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘So if we win, you expand —’

  ‘This case isn’t about winning and losing, Terry. It never was,’ she said. ‘It was a loser from the off. But in the best possible kind of way for us – it’s a high-profile loser. It’s publicity. It’s our name in the papers and on TV and on the internet every day of the trial. It’s our showcase, our launch, our coming out as a major player.’

  Jesus.

  She didn’t give a shit about VJ.

  She never had.

  ‘Yet, here’s the thing,’ she continued. ‘Though we know it’s a loser, we have to look like winners. We have to put up a hell of a fight in court. This can’t be a walkover for the prosecution. We go down swinging and look good doing it. That’ll put us on the map.’

  While VJ gets a life sentence for murder…

  Twenty-five years minimum before he got out.

  He may have been guilty, but this all seemed so wrong.

  ‘Unfortunately, as things stand, we don’t have much to fight back with. Christine, Liam and I have gone over all the statements and the evidence, and none of us know how to attack this thing. All we’ve got is the barman, but his testimony is as good as irrelevant because of Rudy Saks. The club CCTV? So what. There’s plenty of evidence on the suite’s carpet, not to mention the body in the bed.’

  ‘What do you want from me, Janet?’ I said.

  She missed the spiky weariness in my tone.

  ‘The same as Christine, only different. Forget silver bullets. We need roadblocks and roadbumps, diversions, smokescreens, black ice. Anything and everything to throw Carnavale off course. As long as it doesn’t come back on the firm, I don’t care how you get it, or what you do.’

  I couldn’t help myself, I had to say it.

  ‘Without breaking the law, of course?’

  She didn’t reply. I heard traffic in the background and then the sound of a motorbike getting louder. She was now outside her house waiting on the company courier to take her to the office. I hadn’t even got dressed yet.

  ‘Do you know why I became a lawyer, Terry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I grew up in Canning Town. It was very poor, very rough and crime was a way of life. My mum and dad ran the local bakery. All my friends were the sons and daughters of career criminals. Every other week one of their dads or brothers or uncles was getting arrested. Most of the time they were guilty, but sometimes they weren’t. Yet it was always the same story. Their lawyers were rubbish. Their lawyers failed them. Their lawyers were corrupt. I thought this was outrageous, and I swore when I grew up, I’d do something about it. I’d help them. My people. I’d keep them out of prison. I’d fight for their rights. Do you know the closest I get to Canning Town these days? It’s whizzing through it on the Tube, going to and from Belmarsh. The first thing to go in this profession are your principles.’

  But I didn’t have any principles to lose, not really, not the way she meant. The only thing I held sacred was my family. And I’d never sacrifice them for anything – or anyone.

  She’d got me all the way wrong.

  I didn’t want to be a lawyer when I came to KRP. I was a temp:

  … just ‘whizzing through’, filling in, a £10 an hour transient worker…

  And when Janet had offered me the job, I hadn’t thought of it as a stepping stone, or a way back into the future I’d missed out on nineteen years ago. No, I’d just thought of it as a bit more money and a little more security.

  Look at me now:

  Janet had just expanded my responsibilities far beyond the case. She’d tasked me with furthering her career, building her empire.

  ‘What if I can’t come up with anything else? What if I don’t find Fabia?’ I asked. ‘What if there’s nothing I can do?’

  ‘Then I hope your CV’s up to date.’

  46

  VELCRO!

  What was that Torena had said when we were up in Suite 18?

  I don’t know what it is about this place. It always attracts trouble.

  I rang him and asked him to send me a list of people who’d stayed at Suite 18 from January through to the day before VJ had become its last guest to date.

  Thirteen people had stayed in the suite.

  Over half were private individuals, like VJ. The rest were corporate.

  At the office I picked up the phone to make my first call. The question I was going to pop was intrusive, indelicate and embarrassing. If I phrased it wrong, people would hang up on me in a reflex.

  I ran through my spiel a couple of times, once in my head, once sotto voce.

  I checked around the office. Adolf was in work mode – both hands at her keyboard, her shoulder cradling the phone. If I kept my voice down, they wouldn’t hear.

  I called the first number on the list.

  It was answered immediately.

  A nice, airy, posh woman’s voice announced the company name and asked if she could help me.

  ‘I hope so. Can I speak to Joe Finder, please?… It’s David Stratten. Detective Inspector David Stratten, from the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Were there strippers in the room?’

  That was the question. I asked it twelve times. Got ten ‘No’s, one ‘No way!’ and an imperious ‘Certainly not’.

  But it wasn’t quite a dead end. I went back to the first person I’d called – Joe Finder, a junior analyst at a merchant bank. I hadn’t got to speak to him because he was no longer with the company.

  He hadn’t left, they specified. He’d been fired.

  It took a couple of bounced-around internal calls and some polite insistence on my part to track him down.

  I got Finder out of bed and talking like he had back to back hangovers. When he heard I was a cop he sharpened up and started pleading his case before I could get a word in edgeways. He’d used his former company’s Amex card to throw a retirement party for a cleaner who’d been with them thirty years. He didn’t think his company had been generous enough to their longest-standing employee, so he took matters into his own hands.

  He’d booked Suite 18 at the Blenheim-Strand, got the hotel to lay on food and drink for thirty people, as well as paying for the guest of honour to stay on at the hotel an extra night, all expenses paid, no expense spared.

  ‘Were there strippers in the room?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah. One.’

  Her stagename was Breeze.

  I called her agency. I dropped the cop act. I said I was interested in booking her for an appearance, but I’d need to meet her first, talk a few things through.

  Breeze rang my work number and picked the time and place for our meet ’n’ greet.

  The Violet Room was a bar modelled on a stripclub – or at least my idea of one.

  The decor was deep purple on pitch black, with dashes of bright yellow. There was a shiny brass pole in each of the four corners, heavy velvet drapes covering the walls, and strategically hung and angled mirrors that made the room look wider and deeper. A few touches undid the mannered sleaze, like the bar with its underlit display of spirits bottles, stacked in eight columns, reminiscent of a grand church organ. And the tables, all set with small purple tea candles, floating in bowls sprinkled with violet petals. Ideal for marriage proposals and the infidelities that followed.

  The stripclub theme extended to the prices, except here the rip-off was by the glass, not the bottle. The ‘Historical Cocktail’ range started at £120 for a daiquiri made with pre-Castro vintage Cuban Bacardi; £280 would get you a manhattan prepared from pre-Prohibition bourbon; a White Russian concocted out of Tsarist vodka cost £370. I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. A Coke at £10.50.

  The bar was completely empty.

  ‘Are you Terry?’

  Right
on time. Six-thirty, on the dot.

  ‘I’m Breeze,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  She’d come straight from work. Her other job, that is – the one she wrote on her mortgage application form. The dark-grey trouser suit she was wearing was pure high street bank or building society, or maybe a department store: smart, but characterless and unshowy, designed to blend in with an overall aesthetic, to reduce a person to a specific function.

  With less bright lipstick, she’d present well to the jury. She didn’t come over like a stripper. She was normal, ordinary. The men wouldn’t be turned on, the women wouldn’t get turned off. They’d see someone doing an extra job on the side; someone almost like them.

  Good start.

  A waiter came over.

  She ordered a glass of house champagne.

  Sixty-five pounds.

  I’d let the silence drag a little too long while I was trying to think of a casual kick-off topic. So I said the first thing that sprang to mind.

  ‘Do you come here often?’

  Had I just asked her that?

  Yup – a pick-up line. And the naffest of the naff.

  She smiled.

  ‘Never been here before, actually,’ she answered in an accent that was pure Essex outback. ‘You?’

  ‘First time too,’ I said.

  Her eyes moved over me, in stop-start blinks. She was totting me up. My watch, which looked cheaper than it was. My shirt and tie, as cheap as they looked. Suit, ditto.

  The waiter came back with her champagne.

  She sipped it and savoured it a moment.

  ‘That nice?’ I asked. I didn’t know good champagne from bad – or champagne from sparkling wine for that matter.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about this booking,’ she said.

  So much for the prelims. Straight down to business. I was ready for that.

  ‘Before we go into that, can you tell me about your act?’

  ‘My “act”?’

  ‘Your routine. Do you have a set one… A speciality?’

  She grimaced. ‘Like what, ping-pong balls?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  She looked at me like I was stupid.

  Then the penny dropped. She did that?

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Probably wrong for your crowd. You’re lawyers, right?’

  ‘Yeah. They’re a bit conservative,’ I said. ‘Not that they think they are, but —’

  She interrupted me.

  ‘Uniforms. I do uniforms.’

  She was as good as wearing one now, I thought.

  ‘Maid, policewoman, nun, nurse, traffic warden, teacher, schoolgirl…’

  Schoolgirl? Did she have kids?

  I took out my notebook and turned to a blank page.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s so I don’t forget. There are other people involved in the planning. We’re going to have to work out roughly when to, erm… insert you.’

  ‘Insert me?’ She giggled.

  I blushed, which made her giggle harder.

  But she was looking at me suspiciously. I was now sure she worked in a bank. I could picture her refusing loans, repossessing houses, closing down small businesses.

  ‘You were recommended by an acquaintance of mine, who booked you for the Blenheim-Strand,’ I said.

  ‘Where that fella killed that girl?’

  Did anyone not know about VJ?

  ‘Yes… Can you talk me through the routine you did that night?’

  ‘Didn’t your mate – sorry, “acquaintance”, tell you?’

  ‘He was a bit vague,’ I said. ‘But, you obviously made quite an impression.’

  She smiled coyly. Her eyes were cold.

  ‘That night was a bit different,’ she said. ‘I usually use my own clothes, my costumes. But the fella who was organising it got me to dress up in the hotel uniform. I was a waitress. I went up there with a trolley and a bottle of bubbly. The party was for this old geezer.

  ‘When I got to the suite, it was chaos. They’d moved the furniture around. And there was this chest of drawers or big cabinet in the middle of the room. I got on top of it, blew a whistle – which is what I do to get everybody’s attention – and then I did my thing. Do you want me to tell you ’bout that?’

  ‘Do you take off all your clothes?’

  ‘I’m a stripper, ain’t I?’

  ‘I meant all of them?’

  ‘The full monty, you mean? Yeah I do that. I throw my bra and thong out to the chaps. Souvenirs.’

  This was the wrong moment to do this, but there wasn’t going to be a right one.

  I took out the picture of Evelyn Bates’s thong and held it up to her.

  ‘Is this yours?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Please look at the picture then I’ll tell you,’ I said, more firmly.

  She took the picture, studied it, frowning.

  ‘It’s definitely the make I use,’ she said. ‘HKs. Hot Kittys. But I don’t know if it’s mine.’

  Now she was plain hostile. Her voice was snappy.

  I took the picture back.

  ‘This ain’t about a booking at all, is it? Are you even a lawyer?’

  ‘I never said I was. I’m a clerk at the firm. And I do have a booking for you. Not in a hotel, though.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Court. We’d like you to appear as a defence witness.’

  Although she knew I’d completely wasted her time and that she wouldn’t be getting any more out of me other than that glass of champagne, it hadn’t quite sunk in.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before, then?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ I said.

  ‘You’re right about that.’

  ‘You could be really important to us. You might be able to help keep an innocent man out of prison. He —’

  I didn’t get any further. She tossed what was left of her champagne at my face. I’m not sure if she’d meant to get it in my mouth, but that’s where most of it went.

  It was a hell of a way to fall off the wagon.

  ‘Fuckin’ timewaster!’ she shouted.

  I gagged and spat the booze out. It landed on my shirt and tie and trousers.

  She flounced out of the bar, stomping across the floor, flinging open the door.

  Well, I’d blown that.

  Big time.

  No witness. My word against hers. Why hadn’t I thought to record the conversation?

  I looked at the glass. A single drop of champagne was making its way slowly to the bottom.

  Then I had an idea.

  47

  Tuesday, April 26th

  Plea and Case Management Hearing

  The Central Criminal Court – better known as the Old Bailey, after the street on which it stands – is the most famous court in the world.

  It’s housed in a pair of crudely conjoined buildings; a domed neo-baroque structure originally opened in 1907, and its modern extension, an armoured barn built of stone slabs and bulletproof glass called the South Block.

  Yet, despite the building taking up half the road it’s on, a novice could easily walk past it and be none the wiser. It’s almost self-effacing, barely noticeable in the long shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral, half a mile away, and partly swallowed in the quiet grey tones of its surroundings.

  What fixes the Old Bailey in the memory, what makes it instantly recognisable, even to someone who’s never been there, is the statue that stands on top of its cupola. Twelve foot tall, twenty-five tons in weight, and painted gold, the statue of Lady Justice, brandishing a broadsword in her right hand and a pair of scales in the other, dominates the building, reducing it to a functional, if anonymous, plinth.

  There are three ways into the court, depending on what you do and what you’ve done.

  The legals, police, witnesses and bailed defendants go through the main entrance on the South Block.

  The spectators – the general
public, including families and friends of the defendants and victims – are admitted to the viewing galleries via a separate entrance, a few yards away. It’s strictly first come first served; the higher-profile the trial, the longer the queue.

  The third entryway is for the defendants on remand. The prison vans bring them in through a secure gateway off a side road, and then on to the holding cells, located below ground, where they’ll be kept until they’re called to go before the judge.

  It was there that we met VJ.

  He was shown into the meeting room by a squat and scowling female warden.

  He had his file with him, and was dressed in a no-brand dark-blue suit and cheap tie. His face was gaunt and his eyes were bloodshot and puffy.

  The room was the size of a large cupboard and smelled of stale cigarettes and nervous sweat. Dust pocketed densely in the corners and the white walls were cracked and chipped, but graffiti-free. Christine and Redpath sat opposite, on bolted chairs, at a bolted table with a bolted ashtray in the middle.

  ‘How are you?’ Christine asked him.

  ‘I feel like I’m going to meet my maker,’ he said.

  ‘It won’t be that bad today.’

  ‘Great,’ he muttered.

  She ignored his sarcasm. ‘You don’t have to impress anyone. There’ll be no jury here. They don’t get sworn in until the trial starts. The PCMH is really an admin meeting in fancy dress,’ she said.

  She and Redpath were in their court clothes, a uniform unchanged since the eighteenth century – long black robes with billowing sleeves, wing collars and bands, and white horsehair wigs. They weren’t allowed to wear the wigs outside court, so they’d put them on the table like cowboys resting their stetsons on the bar of a rotgut saloon.

  ‘What’ll happen today is this: the charges will be read out and you’ll be asked to enter your plea. As it’s “not guilty”, the prosecution will outline their case and present all the material they intend to use – the witnesses they’ll call, as well as the physical and documentary evidence.’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘Once that’s out of the way, the judge will ask the prosecution to estimate how long the trial will last. I’m thinking two weeks. It really shouldn’t take any longer than that. The judge then sets the trial date, and that’s it.’