The Verdict (10 page)

Back home.

After everyone was sound asleep, I crept into the spare room.

I sat on the trunk and read the newspapers I’d bought this morning.

The broadsheet pieces read like obituaries, the first fistfuls of dirt landing on his reputation. VJ’s arrest was being presented as a definitive full stop to a life already behind him. Guilt is always assumed by the media, hoped for, pushed. It makes a good story, a perfect narrative; the rise and fall, who goes up must come down – or be brought down. Success can only defy the laws of gravity so long.

I should at least have been satisfied with what was happening to him. But I wasn’t. No matter the evidence, I didn’t believe he’d killed on purpose. It had been an accident. Surely.

Then again…

This was the same person who’d accused me of stealing his diary, out of the blue. Like that. No proof. No motive. No basis in past behaviour. His word against mine. His absolute certainty of my guilt over my claims of innocence.

I can’t think of anyone else who’d take it.
 

Where had that come from? Totally out of character, totally unexpected, yet said with utter conviction. Maybe the diary had been the start of something going bad in him, just as it had been for me – but for different reasons.

Was that really it? Or was he always on this path?

Rodney’s murder…

Maybe Quinlan had been right, maybe VJ
had
killed him.

As I put the scrapbook away, my fingers brushed against the jiffy bag that held the matriculation photo. Suddenly I had the urge to look at it again, a need riding the back of a powerful impulse.

I took out the envelope and ran my fingernail along the edge of the seal. It was loose, but not quite open. The glue had dried and came away in flakes on my fingers. Still, there was no way I could get at the contents without ripping up the packaging.

I hadn’t seen the photo in a long time, more than a decade. Couldn’t face it. Too many bad associations, triggers and tripwires.

But I couldn’t do much about my memory of it. Four rows of fresh-faced undergraduates and postgraduates, assembled on tiered benches and chairs in Sidney Sussex courtyard. Everyone in gowns, some in first or second formal suits; most smiling. I was in the bottom right of the first row. VJ was next to me, smiling, confident, chin up. My eyes were closed. I’d blinked at the very moment the shutter clicked. I was smiling, though. Happily, sincerely.

Mum said I look pissed in the picture, but I wasn’t. I was happy because something had happened right before the photo was taken. As we were taking our places…

My mobile was ringing outside the door, loud enough to wake everyone up. It was in my coat, hanging in the hallway. I could tell from the designated ringtone – the theme from
Tales of the Unexpected
–
it was Janet.

‘Hello?’

‘They’ve charged him with murder,’ Janet said, quelling a yawn. She’d gone back to Charing Cross after our meeting with Kopf. It was almost midnight now.

‘What about the manslaughter plea?’

‘No go. He insists he’s innocent,’ she said. ‘Not that it would’ve made any difference anyway. The police have got a very strong case for murder, Terry. There’ve been new developments.’

‘Like what?’

‘More witnesses have come forward. A waiter called Rudy Saks says he took a bottle of champagne up to the suite after midnight. He saw Evelyn Bates in the room with Vernon.’

That sounded like an open and shut case to me.

‘And he’s still saying he didn’t do it?’ I asked.

‘I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t taken this sodding thing.’

‘We haven’t even started working on it yet,’ I said.

‘Come on…’ she said.

‘Which magistrates’ is he going to?’

‘Westminster,’ she said. ‘Meet me there on Monday at 8 a.m.’

We said our goodbyes and I ended the call.

On Monday VJ would have his first moment in court, where he’d state his name and officially enter his plea to the charges.

And on Monday I’d surely come face to face with him.

70 Horseferry Road, the building that used to house Westminster Magistrates’ Court, was dreary going-on drab. Skirted by a broad pavement and nudged a little further back from the road than its neighbours, it was half a dozen floors of functional redbrick rectangle with no discernible entrance and small, dark, dirty windows too high up to see through. Only the large royal crest moulded into the front wall hinted at the building’s higher purpose; but the design was buried under so many layers of white paint it had as good as disappeared, suggesting that the pale wall was either all that remained of a grander structure that had once stood in its place, or that the building itself had been started from loftier blueprints, only to be downgraded a quarter of the way in, to the car park manqué it was now.

Yet Westminster Magistrates’ was – arguably – the most famous court of its kind in the land. Its eight courtrooms played host to virtually every high-profile, media-intensive case spat the way of the judicial system, from ruptured terrorist cells to transgressing celebrities of every alphabetical grade.

Janet and I sat together in the waiting area on the third floor, killing time until our case was called. We were due in Court 2 and we were running late. This was the nature of the game, a big part of the process – the hanging around, waiting for things you had no control or influence over to happen, to take their course.

The hallway was a cheerless, striplit, utilitarian stretch of dull black marble floor and mint-green perforated metal benches set out like rolls of particularly obnoxious carpet.

Today the press were out in force, all here for VJ. TV, papers, radio, internet, sitting around and waiting, like us.

Lawyers milled about, making phone calls, conferring with colleagues, cops and court staff; or else they chatted to witnesses or to the family and friends of defendants. All conversations were whispered or muttered. No voices were raised. Like church without God or religion.

Meanwhile VJ was sat downstairs, in one of the basement cells. He hadn’t seen daylight or felt the sun on his face or breathed fresh air in at least forty-eight hours. He’d simply exchanged one subterranean hole for another. I knew what was going through his mind. Same as everyone else in his position – fear, disbelief, incomprehension.

I kept myself busy reading the copy of the disclosure file Janet had handed me when we’d met outside the courtroom earlier this morning. This was a big deal. Clerks didn’t usually get to see any of it, unless absolutely necessary, to clarify a point or crosscheck a reference. I’d been fully integrated into the case at ground level.

The file was slender. Five witness statements, police interview notes, an autopsy report and photographs.

I started with the photographs. Not the victim’s, but VJ’s. Police mugshots, his face against a plain pale-yellow background, bathed in harsh light. His expression was neutral to downcast, his eyes both wired and dazed. It was the face I remembered; that of the friend I’d grown up with. Seeing it set off a mix of conflicting emotions, a warmth of recognition coupled with an immediate, corrective anger. I wanted to help him, but mostly hang him.

His lower lip was split in the middle and swollen, as if he’d been punched. Scratchmarks on his cheek were visible in the front-view photo, and clearer still on the profile shot. In the next image they had enlarged the injuries: a trio of abrasions that started as deep gouges on his upper cheekbone and ran down, thinning and breaking into dotted lines before stopping just above his lower jaw.

Next were front, side and back photographs of his upper body. He had a large dark bruise on his belly, consistent with a punch or a hard blow from a blunt object. There were pinprick wounds and small gashes on his back and shoulders. His left palm and fingers had small nicks and cuts on them, some fine and straight, others curved and deep. If I didn’t know differently, I would have said he’d been the victim of a low-key assault or in a semi-serious car crash.

Then I turned to the crime-scene photos.

The hotel suite’s lounge area. The minibar – the biggest I’d ever seen – in the centre of the photograph
,
leaked contents soaked into the carpet, blossoming up and out and across like a dark mushroom cloud. The bar was suspended, half off the ground, in mid-tilt, held in place by its flex, plug and socket. Its double doors were flung open, and its contents were piled up in front of it, smashed. There was a lot more broken glass on the floor – including VJ’s Ethical Person of the Year award, broken in half, the capital ‘E’ on its side and inverted, so it looked like an ‘F’ with a fang-shaped stem. White on black numbered plastic evidence markers had been placed everywhere.

I looked for a list corresponding to the markers, but I didn’t find one in the file. Typical brinkmanship. Although it wasn’t allowed, it was common practice for the police and prosecution to withhold key evidence from the defence until very close to the trial start date, so the defence would have very little time to prepare a rebuttal.

There were no photographs of the bedroom, only one of the victim.

She stared through the picture with open eyes, which were as good as painted on. Their whites bore the tell-tale signs of the manner of her murder – petechial haemorrhages, small red spots where the capillaries had burst as the asphyxiated blood stagnated in her facial area because it couldn’t flow back to her heart. There was no hint of pain in her expression, even though she must have been in agony as his hands closed around her neck, and she’d realised she was about to die. Her face had the waxen quality of corpses in the first eight to twelve hours of death, and with the curly blonde hair framing her face, she looked like a plump doll – albeit a doll with lipstick smeared past her parted lips and dark marks across her cheeks, where the mascara had run with the last tears she’d cried.

On the back was her name, written in blue biro.

Evelyn Bates.
 

I turned to the autopsy report. It confirmed that she’d died by strangulation, and that the killer used his hands, because the sides and back of her neck, as well as her throat, bore ‘finger-shaped’ bruises. And her killer had been strong, because there were petechiae in her mouth too.

I went back to the photograph of VJ’s torso. The autopsy report listed Evelyn’s weight at 152 pounds, and her height as five foot four. VJ was six foot two and weighed 187 pounds.

We’d been typical front-desk swots at school, strong of mind, puny in body. We’d been useless at sports. We’d played football twice a week with our class in a local playing field, where we’d be put in goal or defence because of our size. So we’d spent the next hour or so shivering and talking. VJ had since made up for his lack of athleticism. He looked after himself. His body was lean and muscular. He’d become strong enough to kill Evelyn.

I closed the file and looked up and saw Franco Carnavale. He was sat opposite us, staring at Janet, his small, clear blue eyes the colour of ice cubes floating in a chilly swimming pool. I don’t know how long he’d been there. He wore a low-watt smile dipped end to end in smugness. He had a surprisingly youthful face for a man close to fifty, his skin scored with only the lightest of lines. He looked like he’d never been in a fight and whatever dangers he’d faced, he’d evaded or bullshat his way out of.

Then I noticed a flashing in the corner of my left eye. I turned slightly and saw that it was the light catching Carnavale’s pinkie ring. He was tapping his little finger on the empty seat next to him – except the seat wasn’t quite empty. He’d put a file there – a manila file, just like the one I had in my hands. Except his was twice as thick as mine.

I knew why he was smirking. He had a big head start on us. He knew things about the case we didn’t. The police had handed him everything they had so far. He’d shared as little of it as possible with us – just the stuff he intended to base his argument on today. He was under no obligation to do any more than that, and he wouldn’t. That’s the way things are. The trials may be fair, but the system isn’t. It’s geared towards putting people away. Better to be a prosecutor than a defender.

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.