The Verdict (17 page)

On the Tube, rattling and clunking back into town…

… thinking:

What was
that
about?

Not what I’d expected.

Not what I’d expected
at all
.

It’s good to see you again.
 

He’d been… friendly. Not suspicious, not hostile, not even questioning.

Friendly
.

As in: we were long-lost mates.

As in: he acted like he didn’t know I hated him.

As in: all the stuff that had happened between us was trivial, a mere ‘tiff’, just water under a bridge – the diary, getting me kicked out of Cambridge, marrying my ex-girlfriend.

Maybe he saw things Karen’s way. He thought I’d moved on with my life, as he had with his. Maybe he even thought I’d
forgiven
him.

He’d have to be naive and stupid to believe that.

Or…

They don’t know about you, do they
– your firm?
 

If VJ was really innocent, surely he wouldn’t have wanted me on his defence team. How could he? I could jeopardise things. If not actively, then passively – by doing something close to nothing, the absolute bare minimum.

My best guess was that he
was
guilty, he’d done it – he’d killed Evelyn Bates – but he was going to use me to try and wriggle his way out of it. He was going to make me do things – unethical things, illegal things – to get him off the hook. Just like I’d done before.

If I refused, he’d tell Janet about my past.

He had me…

Or so he thought.

But he didn’t know I was going to get fired anyway; that I had nothing to lose.

So, really, I had him, right where I wanted him.

At my mercy.

What was I going to do?

I didn’t know. I didn’t have to make a decision right now, but the options were clear. I could quite easily screw him over. Do unto him as he’d done unto me. What if I found that piece of evidence that could exonerate him… and I lost it. Or what if I found Fabia… but never found her.

But could I live with myself, if I did that?

Irrespective, today I’d learned my first real lesson in how to be a defence lawyer:

You don’t have to believe in your client’s innocence. You only have to
make believe
you do.

Back at my desk, I’d taken out my sandwiches and turned on the computer when Janet walked in, with Sid Kopf right behind her. Time busted a spring and everything stopped dead. Everyone looked up and gawped. Kopf had never graced us with his presence.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Janet asked me. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you.’

‘My phone was off, sorry,’ I said.

Adolf was typing, pretending to mind her own business, but I could see her smirking away. Kopf stepped out from behind Janet.

‘Where were you?’ he asked.

‘Client visit,’ I said.

‘You didn’t have a VO.’

‘Didn’t need one.’

‘Eh?’

‘Our client’s bought himself a friend,’ I said.

‘Why didn’t you call in?’

‘No time.’

He glowered at me.

Adolf kept typing.

‘What did he want?’

I told him about the watch. I tried to include Janet in my explanation, but she was hanging back, behind her boss.

Kopf shook his blanched mane and let out a theatrical sigh.

‘So, he gives a valuable family heirloom to some woman he’s just picked up?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Do you really believe someone that clever would do something that stupid?’

‘Everyone can be stupid sometimes,’ I said. ‘He was drunk and horny.’

‘I’m not the jury. And if I was, I still wouldn’t believe it. The watch probably doesn’t even exist.’

‘It does exist,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve seen it.’

Then I realised what I’d just said.

‘What I mean is… I’ve seen… I know the one he means. He was very specific.’

Adolf stifled a laugh.

Kopf looked at me like I was talking crap. Which, of course, I was.

‘Terry,’ he said, putting both his palms flat on my desk and leaning in, pivoting his weight. ‘The only thing that interests us here is
proof
. All right? Maybe you can
prove
this watch exists, but can you
prove
he actually wore it that night?’

The office had fallen silent. Everyone was listening to me getting a dressing down from the Big Boss Man. Even the phones had stopped ringing. I could imagine Iain and Michaela exchanging gleeful grins across their desks, suppressing sniggers. Much like Adolf was. She’d gone red with the effort. She couldn’t even pretend to type now. She didn’t want to miss a beat of this. They probably thought I was about to get fired.

‘Good point,’ I said.

And someone laughed in the far corner.

‘But here’s the thing,’ I continued. ‘I may work for you, but
we
work for our
client
. And
our
client met me today and gave me instructions. And those instructions concerned finding his missing watch. If I find the watch and it leads to Fabia, that won’t just help our defence, it’ll
make
it.

‘Ultimately, it’s your call. If you don’t want me to look for it, say the word. But then that same burden of proof falls back on us. If I can’t
prove
that I made a serious enough attempt to find the watch, our client will be well within his rights to use the incompetence of his defence team as grounds for an appeal.

‘If it comes down to that, and his appeal is upheld, we’ll get investigated. I’ll be legally compelled to say I didn’t look for the watch because you told me not to. And I’ll have four witnesses to back me up, because everyone here’s heard what you’ve just said. That will look like you instructed me to ignore our client’s instructions. And that could have serious consequences for both you and this firm.’

It’s amazing just how big your balls grow when you’ve got nothing to lose.

Kopf pushed himself away from the desk and straightened up. He eyeballed me like he wanted to kill me
at least
. Then he quickly glanced around the office, and back at Janet, before returning to me – cold, furious, but cornered.

And then he left, quickly. Janet followed him out, eyes straight.

A long minute later we heard his office door slam three floors up.

‘Bet you wished you hadn’t picked up my phone,’ Adolf said, smiling.

On March 31st, exactly two weeks after VJ’s arrest, we got the police lab report. A dozen pages of DNA and toxicology analysis, plus a one-page summary in bullet points.

It was devastating. All the prosecution would have to do to get a conviction was stand up and read the report out to the jury. From now on in, any defence we mounted would be irrelevant, strictly for show, an exercise in legal box-ticking at best. Nothing we could say or do would make any difference. The outcome was as good as preordained, the verdict beyond doubt.

VJ was officially fucked.

‘Slim’s left town. Sends his regards.’

That was Janet, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had settled in Christine’s office as soon as we’d taken our now usual places around her.

Christine retorted with the thinnest of smiles and a grudging nod.

Touché
.

She was leaning on her walking stick, hands folded over the top, pressing down on it hard like she wanted to gouge a hole in the carpet. There was a distant look in her eyes, and her face was a study in dourness.

Janet couldn’t hide her dejection either. She’d known the case was a loser going in, but now it had turned into something far worse – an
absolute
loser.

‘Let’s assess the damage, shall we?’ Christine said finally, resting her stick against the chair and opening the case file.

The report had come in first thing this morning. Swayne had called me at 5 a.m. to tell me he’d scored a copy, but there was no point in my getting a preview, because it was already on its way to us.

I knew that meant it could only be bad. The prosecution only show and tell early when they have a solid piece of evidence, something incontestable. It’s gamesmanship disguised as cooperation; helping us prepare our defence while letting us know we’ve as good as lost anyway.

I’d read the report in Janet’s office. At first I thought there’d been a major mix-up at the lab, that someone else’s results had been swapped around or misallocated.

Then I read it again. And again. Confusion ceded to disbelief, and then to disgust.

Who
exactly
were we defending?

‘The prosecution contends that Vernon strangled Evelyn Bates in the lounge. He then moved her body to the bedroom, where it was found,’ Christine said.

She looked at the three of us individually, left to right, her eyes pausing a moment to take our measure, before moving on.

Then she came back to Janet. They stared at each other. And I picked up a little of what was going on. These two seasoned pros, for whom setbacks and defeats were par for the course and nothing to get worked up about, had never been blindsided quite like this. They weren’t just in uncharted waters. The boat was leaking, the sharks were circling and neither of them had the slightest clue what to do.

‘Now, the report…’ Christine said.

We all looked at our stapled, photocopied pages.

‘The first item is a black iPhone. It was in the pocket of the jacket Vernon wore that night. It belonged to the victim. The glass is smashed, but the phone still works.

‘Vernon says Evelyn dropped the phone in the Casbah when she fell into him. He found the phone on the floor and put it in his pocket, intending to hand it in at reception. He failed to do that when he checked out. In fact, he forgot all about the phone.

‘The prosecution will say Vernon took the phone off Evelyn in the suite and smashed it. Maybe she was going to call for help. They found fragments of glass from the phone in his jacket.’

She turned a page.

‘The phone was found when the police searched Vernon’s offices in Canary Wharf. It was in a bin liner containing the clothes he’d worn the night before – a blue two-piece suit and a white shirt. The trousers were alcohol-stained. The jacket was missing buttons and the shirt pocket was torn. There were also small bloody holes in the back of the shirt – probably from when he fell on the broken glass in the lounge. He’d stuck a Post-it note on the bag. “Nikki, please dispose”. “Nikki” is his PA, Nikki Frater.’

‘So, they’ll say he was planning to destroy evidence?’ Janet said.

‘Of course. And they’ll call Ms Frater as a witness. She’s proved to be
most
cooperative with the police’s inquiries so far. It was her who gave them the bag.’

‘Come again?’ Janet said.

‘They missed it when they searched his offices. She’d already put it in with the general trash. She went and got it for them. And she also told them where Vernon kept his personal laptop – not just the one in his office, which they’d taken away.’

‘What laptop? And how do you know this?’ Janet asked.

‘Didn’t you get Franco’s fax?’

She handed Janet a single sheet of paper.

‘It’s an addendum to the report,’ she explained to me. ‘It says that computer forensics are going through Vernon’s laptop, as well as looking at the mobile phone and three SIM cards they found with it.’

No one said anything, but we were all thinking along the same lines. Why did he have a separate laptop, phone and SIM cards? Because he wanted to keep something separate from his professional life. And why did he keep them out of sight? Because whatever they were for was private, therefore secret.

What could it be?

Women, I guessed.

I remembered Nikki Frater from the time I’d gone to VJ’s house. She hadn’t been able to look me in the eye. Never a good sign. Maybe she knew what her boss was really like, thought what had happened to him was inevitable.

Christine returned to the report.

‘Next. Fibre analysis. Evelyn Bates was wearing a dark-green, silk-look dress from H&M. Part of the 2010 Lanvin range. The dress was found on the floor at the side of the bed. It was torn in two places – the left strap, and the side split had been ripped upwards. The material is 85 per cent polyester, 15 per cent elastane.

‘Forensics found matching fibres in three main areas of the suite, identified as A, B and C:

‘A is the area nearest the steps leading up to the bedroom, where they believe Evelyn was murdered. That had the highest concentration of the victim’s fibre, hair, tissue, bodily fluids – predominantly urine – and some faecal matter.’

‘
Faecal matter?
’ Redpath interrupted.

‘Don’t you know what happens to the body during strangulation, Liam? Everything goes. Would you like me to elaborate?’ Christine asked.

He blushed. ‘No, it’s all right. Sorry.’

‘Fibres were also found in Area B – the bedroom – and Area C – the couch,’ Christine continued. ‘Matching fibres were retrieved from Vernon’s jacket and trousers. Hair from the victim’s head was also found on Vernon’s suit, as well as in the aforementioned areas of the lounge.’

She paused there, closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d done that when we met VJ in Belmarsh earlier in the week. She said the medication she was on made her dizzy sometimes, especially when she was concentrating. Clamping her nose and holding her breath for ten seconds stopped the spin cycle. I found myself counting with her.

‘Sorry,’ she said, and found her place on the list. ‘The shirt had red lipstick and a trace of petroleum jelly on the rim on the collar. Both came from Evelyn.’

‘Petroleum jelly?’ Redpath asked.

‘Makes thin lips look plumper,’ Christine said. ‘You should try it. Though not when we’re in court.’

I almost laughed. And when I saw Redpath self-consciously touch his mouth, I almost laughed again. He was the butt of Christine’s barbs, whether he’d done or said anything to deserve them or not. I felt a little sorry for him, and threw in a twinge of empathy, because he was getting a variant of the Adolf treatment. Christine obviously didn’t want him as a junior. I couldn’t tell if it was political or personal, or if she simply thought he wasn’t up to it. So far, I’d failed to see why Kopf had picked him. He hadn’t made a single useful contribution in any of our case meetings.

‘The victim’s hands and feet were bagged by forensics ninety minutes after the discovery of the body,’ Christine said. ‘During autopsy, the fingernails were scraped, and the hands and feet swabbed. A trace of Vernon’s saliva was found on Evelyn’s right middle finger. The scrapings from three fingers of her left hand contained skin tissue and blood matching his DNA profile and blood group.’

Christine cleared her throat and turned another page.

‘Toxicology. Blood tests show that the victim had an alcohol content of 0.11 per cent. That would have made her noticeably “merry”. The test also revealed the presence of flunitrazepam. Anyone know what that’s commonly known as?’

I did.

I’d been prescribed it during my first few days at the Lister, when I was going through alcohol withdrawal.

Medically: a sedative and muscle relaxant.

Criminally: mixed with alcohol it can cause incapacitation, blackouts and amnesia. Its effects last up to twelve hours, depending on the dose.

‘Rohypnol,’ Janet said.

Aka the date-rape drug.

Like I said, VJ was fucked.

But there was a little more to come, the finishing touch, the
coup de grâce
.

We’d almost reached the end of the report. Christine glowered at the pages in her hands, her fingers tensing and then trembling. She looked up again, briefly, at Janet. More telepathy. More lost in the wilderness without a compass looks. Then she continued.

‘The contents of the wastepaper basket in the lounge were removed and analysed. There were several torn-up drafts of the speech Vernon gave at the award ceremony. And, on top of those, was a black thong. The thong had a substantial quantity of semen on it. Tests show the semen is Vernon’s.’

Redpath shifted in his chair. Janet didn’t move. Christine pinched her nose and held her breath. Ten, nine, eight…

She continued:

‘The prosecution will contend that he drugged Evelyn with Rohypnol. He took her up to his suite. For some reason the drug didn’t kick in as quickly as he’d expected. He tried it on with her, but she resisted. They fought. The room got smashed up. He overpowered her on the floor and strangled her. He then carried her to the bedroom, undressed her, and arranged or posed the body in a tableau. Once he had her looking the way he liked, he masturbated into her underwear. He then left the room and dumped the thong in the bin.’

She rested the report on her lap. Silence filled the room like air to a vacuum; the silence of not knowing what to say next, of words evaporating before they’re half-formed.

‘Our client has lied to us,’ Christine said. ‘When I met him this week, I asked him if there was anything else he’d remembered from that night. He said no.’

Redpath and I had been at the meeting in Belmarsh. We’d gone through VJ’s statement with him. He’d been absolutely consistent in the answers he gave Christine – and convincing with it. He made me doubt his guilt a little more, and I thought he might have won Christine over too. But after he’d gone back to his cell, she told me she wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, or a brilliant salesman.

Christine caught my eye and smiled like she’d just read my mind.

‘Janet, if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to break things down in layman’s speak, for Terry’s benefit. He needs to be able to follow the process.’

Janet nodded her consent.

‘In any trial, there are two separate juries. The twelve members of the public, and then the judge. The prosecution has to satisfy both to get a verdict. The jury has to be convinced by the evidence, and the judge has to be sure that the crime is being prosecuted according to the rule of law.

‘Let’s focus on the judge. What is a crime, in legal terms? It’s a compound of two separate elements, like a chemical compound.

‘The elements of a crime are called
mens rea
and
actus reus
. Latin for “guilty mind” and “guilty act”. Thought and deed. It’s not a crime to have a guilty mind alone. You can’t be prosecuted for
thinking
you want to kill someone. And a guilty act can’t exist without a guilty mind behind it.

‘For example. A man is on trial for killing his cheating wife. The prosecution will say that he intended to kill her because of her infidelity. That’s
mens rea.
The guilty thought. Then he acted on those thoughts and killed her.
Actus reus
. Thought plus deed equals crime. OK?’

I nodded. I remembered studying this at Cambridge.

‘Had this lab report been limited to hair and fibre, and the tissue under the nails, the prosecution would have had a big problem proving
mens rea
– that Vernon
intended
to kill Evelyn when he invited her up to his room. As far as we know, he’d never met her before that night. She wasn’t even a guest at the event he was attending. Why would he kill someone he didn’t know? No motive. No premeditation. His intentions towards her were sexual, not murderous. If his mind was guilty, how was it so?

‘Yet he’s being tried for murder, not manslaughter. The prosecution are saying he
intended
to kill her when he invited her up to his room. Now, any judge would know that the legal case is weak for murder, but strong for manslaughter.

‘My original intention – before the report came in – was to tailor my defence, not at the jury, but at the judge. In other words, use legal argument and play the trial for a reduced sentence. If found guilty, our client would get a life tariff, sure, but with a ten-year maximum. In other words, he would be found guilty of murder, but serve time for manslaughter. Unfortunately, that’s no longer possible.’

Christine sighed and shook her head. Then she addressed all of us.

‘Who jerks off over dead bodies?’ she asked.

‘A seriously sick bastard,’ I said.

‘Exactly. A seriously sick bastard. Someone who gets sexual gratification out of killing another person. Famous examples: John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Nilsen, the Son of Sam – all notorious serial killers.

‘Vernon James isn’t a serial killer – that we know of – but he’s like them. Depraved, twisted. A “seriously sick bastard”. He killed Evelyn for kicks, to get a hard-on. And that’s all the motive and intention the prosecution need. That’s their guilty mind. It doesn’t have to make any sense, legal or otherwise,
because it doesn’t make sense
. He’s a sick bastard. That explains everything – without explaining anything. Why did Dennis Nilsen kill and dismember fifteen men? Because he was a seriously sick bastard. Case closed.’