The Verdict

by Nick Stone

  ‘What brings ye back, son?’ asked Dad.

  Impulse. Fear. I hadn’t really thought about it. As soon as I woke up this morning, hungover and dry-mouthed, I decided to come here.

  ‘Been a while,’ I said.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Ade said.

  ‘Guilt more like,’ laughed Pat.

  Mum didn’t say anything.

  ‘How’s the family?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Karen ain’t kicked you out yet, then?’ Pat said. He’d never met Karen or the kids, just knew them through photos and family gossip.

  ‘No,’ I smiled.

  ‘Give it time,’ Ade chimed in.

  ‘You’d know, right?’

  This was brotherly banter. We’d always taken the piss out of each other. Although it had been well over a decade since we’d all last sat at this table, eating together, it was like yesterday.

  OK, some explaining to do.

  My family are alcoholics. All of them.

  My parents wouldn’t label themselves as such. They both started drinking young and never stopped. They’re disciplined daily drinkers, with strict limits on what they knock back. Dad’s is five pints of Guinness and a whisky to round off. Mum likes her three cans of Mackeson’s stout and a couple of brandies in-between. I’ve never seen either of them drunk, or even tipsy.

  That doesn’t go for the rest of us. Alcohol has blighted our lives.

  Me, you know about.

  Ade had been my hero. I’d looked up to him, wanted to be him. He used to be lithe and wired, all style and dash: the Jam fan who dressed like Paul Weller and tooled around town on a Lambretta. He was the only person I’ve ever known who could pull off the Weller look. Everyone else always got it wrong, Sta Press imitators with crap mullets.

  Ade and Pat had been the local hardnuts. Everyone in town was wary of them. They never met a scrap they didn’t like. I had an easy time growing up because of them and their rep. That extended to VJ too, once we became friends.

  But Ade was fucked now. He couldn’t keep his spoon still. His hair was all grey and thinning, and his face looked like a dirty handkerchief after a nosebleed.

  He used to run a nightclub in Brighton but it was closed down after a girl took Ecstasy and went into convulsions on the dancefloor. Turned out Ade was getting backhanders from a dealer who sold in the toilets. There was a trial. Ade was acquitted through lack of evidence, but he lost a civil lawsuit brought by the girl’s parents. He hit the skids soon after, winding up homeless and sleeping on park benches when his wife kicked him out after one drunken row too many.

  That was why I’d stayed away all these years, and why I’d never brought my kids here. I was scared. Alcoholism may not be genetic or hereditary, but it felt that way to me. I didn’t want Ray or Amy being exposed to it; and yeah… I didn’t want to be reminded of what I’d escaped.

  But you know what?

  Sitting here with them, joking and laughing, I wish I’d been stronger than that. I loved my family, each and every one of them, warts and all – especially the warts.

  ‘D’he do it, then?’ Pat asked me.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘VJ. D’he kill that girl? You’re his brief, right?’

  I hadn’t even spoken to my parents since VJ’s arrest. How did…?

  ‘Lorraine told me,’ Mum said.

  Lorraine was VJ’s mother.

  ‘Didn’t know you two were talking again,’ I said. As far as I knew, Mum hadn’t said a word to Lorraine since she’d insisted I’d stolen her son’s diary. They’d had a full-on row, right in the middle of the town shopping centre. Ireland vs. Trinidad. Two forces of nature, neither yielding.

  ‘You should come ’ome more often then, shouldn’t ya?’ Ade said.

  ‘Let’s talk in the kitchen,’ Mum whispered to me.

  ‘You know he never comes back neither, does Vernon? Hasn’t been back since he moved to London. Not once. He supports Lorraine, but never sets foot here. I see Gwen around, though, now and then. She’s got a family in Norwich.’

  I was helping Mum dry the dishes. The kitchen was new, flagstones instead of lino on the floor, and the appliances all modern, but it still looked and smelled exactly the way I remembered.

  ‘So, did he do it?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Funny how things keep coming around, isn’t it? Him in big trouble, you still defending him,’ Mum said.

  There was some truth in that, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

  ‘Why d’you get us to lie for him?’ I asked.

  When VJ had come to the house, terrified and tearful, after getting grilled by Detective Quinlan, neither me nor my brothers had known what to do. We’d been watching Top of the Pops. We all gawped at him like cows distracted from grazing. It was Mum who took charge. She turned off the telly and got him to repeat what he’d said. Then she told him not to worry, she’d tell the cops he was with us that night. She gave him his alibi, and we backed her up. That’s what really happened.

  ‘Rodney used to beat Lorraine all the time.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

  And I hadn’t. VJ never told me. Not even a hint.

  I didn’t see Mrs James all that often when Rodney was alive. I was never invited into their house. She was little more than an outline in the kitchen window, waving us off to school.

  ‘He used to hit her,’ she said. ‘And Vernon and Gwen used to see him do it. Lorraine told me he tried to strangle her once or twice too – with his belt. We went to the cops about it. Know what they told her? “We don’t interfere in domestic matters.” So Rodney got what was coming to him. All tyrants fall, one way or another.’

  ‘Did VJ kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you this much. If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve never regretted it. Not even when you and him fell out. Men shouldn’t hit women.’

  I stayed a few hours more.

  The trial was starting tomorrow, and I had to get back to prepare, but I didn’t want to go. I kept on putting off leaving by an hour, then another, until the rain that had been falling in London this morning made its way to the house.

  We all sat around the living room. The cans came out. They all toasted my health and put the telly on and we sat there watching a film, barely speaking.

  Dad and Mum sipped their beers. Ade and Pat seemed to be in competition over who could drink four cans the fastest. They both had jobs to go to tomorrow, but you wouldn’t have known it. Ade was working on the railways, Pat on a building site.

  Yeah, I felt the urge to join them for a brew or ten. I’d kicked open those gates yesterday and it would take a while to get them closed again.

  After nine I knew I had to go. The trains would run less frequently, and then they wouldn’t run at all.

  I said my goodbyes and see you soons and headed for the door, Mum right behind me.

  I stood on the doorstep, looking at the wet road and the rain falling orange against the streetlights.

  ‘I don’t think I ever told you this, Mum, but I appreciate what you and Dad did for me back then – when things were really bad,’ I said.

  Mum looked me over.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said.

  She knew I was lying. She always had.

  ‘Come see us when you can, Terry. Bring the family.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Soon as this thing’s over. Promise.’

  ‘Say hello to Vernon for me. Tell him I’m thinking of him.’

  74

  Latchmere, London, 1 a.m.

  Here’s what I now believed:

  Sid Kopf had masterminded the whole set-up.

  Scott Nagle wanted VJ out of the way for whatever reason, but he couldn’t use his old methods, either because suspicion would fall on him, or because VJ was too rich and too h
igh-profile. Some squatter’s murder would be quickly forgotten, blamed on drugs or bad luck, but not a financier handling powerful people’s money. Nagle needed a whole new approach.

  Enter Kopf.

  He got Swayne to research VJ. Swayne discovered VJ’s penchant for escorts and S&M.

  The narrative of the fit-up fell into place. Frame VJ for killing an escort, by strangulation.

  Find him his type of woman (Fabia), get her to be noticed with him (the green dress), drug him and go up to his room. Then kill her. He’d wake up and find her dead. He’d get arrested for murder.

  The case against him would be textbook.

  You’ve got:

  Mens rea – motive/intent. VJ intended to slap and choke Fabia when he took her up to his hotel room. It’s what he liked doing. He’d done it before, to others.

  And you’ve got:

  Actus reus – death by strangulation.

  Hard to argue against a clear behavioural pattern – and the body in the bed.

  But that wasn’t quite enough.

  And here’s what jarred, what separated this from an ordinary fit-up.

  Rudy Saks.

  He was in on it, part of the team. Assassins don’t hang around the scene of the crime. They always disappear.

  VJ had been locked up for murder. Mission accomplished, surely? Why give the police a witness statement two days after his arrest?

  Because their job wasn’t quite finished.

  Saks’s statement was pivotal to the case against VJ. It was clear proof that he’d been in the room with the victim close to the time of her death. It would ensure a conviction.

  So the purpose of the set-up wasn’t simply for VJ to get arrested for the murder of a woman, but for him to be convicted for it too.

  Kopf had designed this as only a lawyer could – with a trial in mind, and a guilty verdict as the objective.

  What about Swayne?

  Why had he broken rank and started dropping hints – Silver Service, Oliver Wingrove, the White Ghosts?

  Why hadn’t he simply come clean, and told me what he knew?

  Swayne was scared of Kopf. Scared enough to keep his mouth shut and do eight years in jail, when he could have given him up and walked. Maybe he was implicated too, or maybe he’d feared for Steff’s life.

  Now he was dead. And that was on me.

  As was Fabia’s death. I led her killers right to her.

  Not strictly my fault, I know, but I was to blame.

  So what were my options?

  Go to the police?

  With what? Attempted kidnapping? Yes, but I had nothing else to give them except unsubstantiated conspiracy. I’d lost the drawing I found in Swayne’s locker when I was grabbed.

  Which left Janet.

  How much did she know?

  She was the senior partner in the firm and had Kopf’s ear. But, ultimately, he called the shots.

  Ahmad Sihl had contacted her out of the blue, not to represent VJ, but to recommend a lawyer. She’d fought to get the case because it was high profile and would put KRP on the map as a criminal law firm.

  She’d been genuinely pissed off about Christine and especially Swayne being brought in on the case.

  So, that meant she didn’t know.

  The phone rang and rang. I hoped I wouldn’t get the answering machine.

  I didn’t.

  I got a snarling yawn.

  ‘Janet? It’s Terry.’

  ‘Terry? It’s one o’clock in the fucking morning.’

  ‘We need to talk. Now. In person.’

  75

  Regina v Vernon James

  Case No. T20119709

  Court 1, Central Criminal Court

  (Old Bailey)

  Day 1

  We met in Christine’s chambers at 7 a.m. sharp.

  One glimpse of her and I feared the worst. She looked about as ill as I’d ever seen anyone look: haggard, skin close to translucent, make-up clinging to it like overnight frost on a windscreen. I was positive she was going to tell us she was stepping down and handing over to Redpath…

  But no. The first words out of her mouth were orders:

  ‘We’re to meet up here every day at the same time. We’ll review the day’s order of business, and then get a cab to court. It’s imperative we’re seen arriving and leaving together – as one, a team, a united front. OK?’

  We nodded. I felt like saluting.

  ‘Terry, do you know how to do the court walk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The media will be out in force today. TV in particular. They always film the lead barristers going in on the first day. They repeat the same clip on every news item about the trial until it’s over. Your entrance must be just right.

  ‘So: walk at a medium pace. Head up, back straight. Do not look at the cameras, and do not smile. That’s very important. We’re arguing over a person’s future, sometimes the rest of their lives. Wear a serious expression, but not a stern one. Be human, but not humane.

  ‘Normally I walk on the outside for the cameras, but I don’t look my best today so I want you to take my place. I’ll be next to you. I’ll be moving a little slower than usual, playing up my frailty. I’ll be holding on to your arm for support. We’ll pretend we’re deep in discussion. I talk, you listen and nod along. All right?’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  Redpath cleared his throat.

  ‘What about me?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re on trolley duty,’ she said. ‘Stay three or four steps behind.’

  The taxi dropped us off at the corner of Newgate Street. I helped Christine out and we set off down the road, arm in arm to the Old Bailey.

  The press were camped on the pavement opposite the South Block entrance, a dense grey clump of photographers and camera crews already training their lenses our way.

  It was warm but overcast, the sky a solid grubby white matt rolled over the city, blocking out every hint of blue and the sun beyond it. The faint breeze smelled of brewing rain.

  Christine walked ultra-slow but talked non-stop. She explained how she’d written two very different opening statements, dry and dramatic. She’d know which one to use once Carnavale kicked things off. She’d worked out her strategy, she said. We were going to win.

  Then she was telling me about opening-day nerves, how she still got them after all these years and well over a hundred trials. Good barristers had to be like boxers; scared going in – scared of failure, scared of ridicule, but most of all scared they’d let their client down. If they didn’t have that fear, they no longer cared and had no business being here.

  Was that really the case? I asked her. Oh yes, she said. All the best silks are nervous wrecks the night before a trial; zombies (insomniacs) or chuckers (pukers). Take Carnavale, for example. The Walking Dead.

  I didn’t tell her I was nervous too, probably as much as her – if not more.

  I kept my head averted as we walked past the press pack. Yesterday, I’d made the front page of every newspaper, fleeing a gunman.

  We waited in the Great Hall for the courtroom doors to open.

  Carnavale stood across from us with his junior barrister and clerk, the three of them inadvertently lined up in descending height-order, the tops of their heads forming a step arrangement. They were juggling individual phone conversations and going over a document that was passing back and forth between them. The clerk handed to the junior who read and scribbled as she babbled into the phone in her other hand. Then Carnavale got the document, looked it over and made an annotation of his own before passing the paper back to the clerk via the junior. The clerk then read the document down the phone.

  There were about a dozen accredited journalists hanging around with their hands in their pockets or thumbing through notebooks. A few came over and said hello to Christine. None of them asked about the trial or VJ, just after her. I sensed the length and depth of the relationships. Christine must have used them as much as they’d used her.

&nbs
p; I played tourist and took in my surroundings.

  The Great Hall lived up to its name. We were in the very heart of the Old Bailey, under the dome and thus directly below the golden statue of Justice. Every inch was decorated or dramatically illuminated with yellow lighting or opened up into vaulted skylights. The floor and walls were black-and-white marble, the ceiling strung with arches that had friezes on every abutment and moulded stucco squares on their undersides. Half-moon frescos fanned out above the entrances to the courts, depicting the building’s four mainstays – God, the Law, the Establishment and London. Court 1’s painting showed Justice on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, with Alfred the Great – the lawmaker king – to her left, and on her right, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. The subtext was clear: if we don’t get you, God will.

  ‘Here he comes,’ Christine whispered to me.

  Carnavale was heading our way, heels snipping at the floor.

  ‘How are you?’ he said to Christine, grinning.

  ‘Well. You?’

  ‘You know…’ he said with a shrug. ‘Are we going to be straight out of the gate?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘You’re not going to contest anything?’

  She shook her head. This was the way things were often done, Christine had explained to me. Deals were struck between defence and prosecution – a kind of bartering where both sides agreed to drop repetitive evidence and inessential witnesses to speed things up. They all had other trials to go on to, other cases to work on. Unlike America, there was also an unspoken agreement not to submit new evidence in the middle of proceedings. It wasn’t unusual for opposing barristers to be good friends, so they tended not to burn each other either. And, even if they weren’t friends, the law was a small world where favours were accumulated along with grudges. But as this was Christine’s last trial, she had no intention of observing niceties.