The Verdict (25 page)

Home, well in time for dinner.

I should’ve been happy, here with my family, but I was too knackered to appreciate it. The traipsing around had worn me out, and all I had to show for my efforts were more unanswered questions, a fresh barrel of doubts, and a blockbuster headache.

The kids were doing all the talking. Usually Karen and I took it in turns to referee the conversation, keep the volume down and the babble manageable and civil, but today they had free rein. They were going to be on their Easter holidays next week and they were excited.

Karen was as tired as I was. She’d had a hard day, getting the company accounts together for the annual tax audit. After the run-up to Christmas, it was her most frantic, stressful time at work, because books had to be balanced and bank accounts reconciled. I thought of Stratten being ripped off by those phoney tax inspectors and nearly told her about it – the ingenuousness of it – but I didn’t want to cut into what she was saying.

Dinner was one of the microwavable ready meals we kept handy in the freezer for when neither of us were up to cooking. This evening’s pre-cooked delight was shepherd’s pie with mixed veg, and a sachet of thaw-’n’ pour gravy.

Amy was holding court at table. She was at that stage in life when everything she said was a question. She wanted to know why things were the way they were in the world; how they worked, why we needed them, how we lived before they existed.

Our answers always had to be on point. She wouldn’t accept fob-offs or shortcuts, and woe betide you if your reply was patronising. I suspected she’d be a lawyer one day, or failing that a cop.

‘Daddy?
Daaad?
’

Amy was talking to me.

What had I just missed? I looked at Karen, who was looking at me. Amy had obviously asked her for something and Karen had deflected the request to me, as she always did when she didn’t want to be the one saying no.

‘Can I have an iPhone?’ Amy asked.

‘What d’you want one of those for?’

‘To talk to my friends.’

‘Don’t you talk to them at school?’

‘I’m not in school
now
.’

‘We’ve got a phone here. Call them after dinner,’ I said.

‘How can I do that when I don’t have their numbers?’

‘Don’t you have them written down?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve got nowhere to keep them. If I had an iPhone, I’d have somewhere to keep them.’

Karen and I exchanged a grin at our daughter’s logic.

‘Why does it have to be an iPhone?’ Karen asked.

‘Sophie’s got one.’

That figured. Sophie Colvin was Amy’s best friend. Her parents spoiled her rotten.

‘We’ll get you a phone, Amy,’ I said. ‘But not now. You don’t need one.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

‘No, you don’t. And you
definitely
don’t need an iPhone,’ I said. ‘I don’t have an iPhone, and neither does your mum.’

‘But you’re not on Facebook, are you?’ she said.

‘
Facebook?
What’s that got to do with an iPhone?’

‘If I had an iPhone, I could be on Facebook.’

‘You can’t be on Facebook until you’re thirteen.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘How?’

‘I can pretend.’

Karen suppressed a giggle. I didn’t find it funny.

‘Now, Amy, you mustn’t lie. You know that. It’s bad.’

‘But
Ray’s
on Facebook!’

Karen and I looked at Ray. He was the perfect picture of red-handed surprise.

‘Is that
true
?’ Karen asked him.

He couldn’t look at her or me. He lowered his head and scrunched up his brow, thinking.

‘How long have you been on Facebook?’ I asked him.

Ray stared at his plate and said nothing.

‘Answer your dad, Ray,’ Karen said.

‘About a year,’ he said, sheepishly.

In other words, for about the same time he’d had his computer.

When had he started becoming sneaky? And why hadn’t he asked us if he could go on Facebook?

I was angry at him, but not as much as I was surprised and hurt. I thought we were liberal, tolerant parents – the kind he could come to, talk to, be honest with.

‘All my Facebook friends are real. From school,’ Ray said. ‘I know all about the danger of paedophiles pretending to be teenagers, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

There goes our every notion of protective parenting, I thought.

Karen was dumbstruck.

Thankfully that part of the conversation was lost on Amy. Not that she wasn’t listening and trying to understand.

‘We’ll talk about this later, Ray,’ I said. ‘Finish your dinner and go to your room.’

Ray gave Amy an angry look and went back to his shepherd’s pie.

We ate on in silence for a moment.

‘So can I have an iPhone?’ Amy said.

Karen let out a short laugh.

‘The only reason you want one is because Sophie’s got one, right?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘Well, that’s the
worst
reason to want something, Amy – because someone else has got it,’ I said. ‘Besides, Sophie’s not going to be your friend for ever. In fact, the friends you have now you won’t have in a couple of years. None of them. You know why? Because friendships never last. OK?’

Amy didn’t answer. She stared at me across the table, looked into me without blinking.

Her eyes slowly silvered and her face reddened from the cheeks out. Then her face crumpled and creased and she closed her eyes and let out a long, braying sob. Moments later she was bawling loudly and uncontrollably.

Karen got up and led her out of the room, turning back to glower at me as she left.

Ray quickly finished his dinner and went to his room without a word.

I sat at the table with the dirty plates. Amy was still crying.

I hadn’t meant to hurt her. I felt terrible.

But I’d meant every word of it, just the same.

The next morning I met Andy Swayne in the lobby of the Blenheim-Strand. He was sitting at a table close to the reception desk, halfway through a family-sized coffee pot.

Though we were here officially and legally this time, he hadn’t got the memo. He was dressed in yet another of his off-the-peg combos – three different shades of man-made blue, his tie a striped medley of the same.

He flashed a supercilious grin when he saw me.

First things first.

‘So you know about Cambridge?’ I said.

‘And a very good morning to you too,’ he said.

I’d considered avoiding the subject altogether, but I knew Swayne had an agenda and I wanted to know what it was.

‘Are you going to make this a problem?’ I asked him.

‘No more than you already have.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Give someone your National Insurance number, you hand them your life on a plate.’

‘So they know at KRP?’

‘You think a company like that doesn’t do background checks?’ he said. ‘Usually happens between first and second interview.’

I’d never had a second interview, let alone a
first
–
at least not a formal one. I’d come in as a temp. I’d met Janet, talked over the basics of the job and that was it. No tough questions. A handshake and I was straight in, started the same morning.

Swayne had been fishing. No more than that.

‘Did Sid Kopf get you to investigate me?’ I asked him.

‘No. But be sure he has.’

‘Why am I still here, then?’

‘Must be your charming personality,’ Swayne said and flashed me a punch-magnet of a smirk.

We were here to interview staff who’d given witness statements, and to tour all the places VJ had been, starting with Suite 18 and finishing at the Circle bar on the eleventh floor. This was standard practice for defence and prosecution, getting a feel for the crime scene, visualising their respective cases.

Our guide would be the hotel’s head of security. He’d been the third person to see the body, after the maids. And he’d called the police.

He arrived on time, greeting Swayne first.

‘
Hola
,
Andy
. ¿
Cómo estás
?’

‘
Muy bien, Albert
,’ Swayne smiled, standing up to shake his hand.

Swayne then introduced us. His name was Albert Torena.

‘Thank you very much for your help, Mr Torena,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I know you’re very busy, so we’ll try and get this done as quickly as possible.’

‘No problem. Call me Albert. Please,’ Torena said. He was a trim, swarthy man with a shaved head, rimless glasses and a goatee so immaculate and dark it looked photoshopped. His accent was Spanish shade.

‘I didn’t know you and Andy knew each other,’ I said.

‘We go back a few years,’ he said, smiling at Swayne. ‘Shall we make a start?’

He led us through the split-level lobby, walking slightly ahead, with his chest out, his chin up and his feet splayed, like a particularly self-satisfied duck. He nodded to every staff member he spotted – cleaners, waiters and waitresses, bellboys and receptionists. They all responded in kind.

The lobby was a spacious sweep of gleaming cream and red-veined marble, whose centrepiece was a huge chandelier suspended over a sunken floor like a stalactite of tiered glass and trapped light. One of the walls consisted entirely of a water feature, a slab of rough granite washed over by a stream that fed into an aquarium filled with koi carp. Another was a solid plasma screen showing Sky News.

We reached a vast carpeted atrium, eight floors high. It was practically the same layout as the cruise ship Karen and I had taken our honeymoon on, with wraparound interior balconies, and three giant silos for lifts.

Torena motioned us to the VIP lift, on the right. It was matt black and there were no call buttons, just a card slot. He proudly explained how the system worked, showing us the two different keycards issued to guests – black for rich, white for everyone else. His was blue.

It occurred to me that if Swayne was so tight with Torena, why had we bothered to break in? Surely he could have asked him to let us into the suite after forensics had left.

Except he’d already been testing me then, seeing what I was made of, how far I’d go. And how gullible I was.

It made perfect sense.

The lift came and we got in.

Suite 18 still reeked like a bar-room brawl, but the smell didn’t smart as much. Its sting was broken, its pungency dissipated.

The only police presence today were the poles and blue-and-white tape sectioning off part of the lounge and the area near the stairs where Evelyn had met her end. The minibar had been left in place, its doors open, the scene’s skewed nucleus. Much of the broken glass was still on the carpet. The coffee table was missing its flowers and champagne; the couch had had rectangular patches of leather cut out of its seat and armrest, exposing the white padding.

We moved to the bedroom. It was unchanged from our last visit, except for greyish dust that had settled on all the surfaces in a dirty frost.

Torena explained where the body had been lying on the bed, and talked me through what had happened when the police and medics turned up. I half-listened and took a few notes.

‘I don’t know what it is about this place. It always attracts trouble,’ Torena said, when we left the bedroom.

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, you know – parties that get out of hand. Musicians and bankers and footballers stay here a lot. The bankers are the worst, when it comes to bad behaviour. They’re like spoilt brats on steroids,’ he said.

‘How long have you worked here?’

‘Since the place opened. Three years.’

‘Any deaths in your time?’ I asked.

‘A couple of near misses. Death hit the post.’ He smiled at his wit. ‘This whole suite is going to have to be remodelled,’ he said. ‘We’ve been getting a few enquiries from people wanting to stay here. Sick, no?’

In the lift back down I noticed the round security camera in the ceiling.

‘What about those problems with your CCTV the night of the murder?’ I asked.

‘The fuses tripped out and killed the cameras around 7 p.m. Our maintenance guys said it was a power surge.’

That used to happen in our flat whenever Karen dried her hair. She’d plug the dryer into a multi-socket extension and the power would automatically cut out in the living room.

‘Couldn’t you have flipped the circuit breakers back on?’ I said. That’s what we always did.

Torena chuckled. ‘You didn’t hear this from me, OK?’

‘Fine.’

‘The power in all the cameras went – except for the ones in the Casbah club and the casino. Those still worked. The surveillance guys, watching the screens upstairs, called maintenance – the contractors who installed the CCTV. They said, “We’ll come out and fix the problem, but we’ll have to charge you extra because this isn’t covered in the contract.” To save money, hotel management didn’t take out a twenty-four-hour repair contract, only one for office hours.

‘Surveillance called the hotel manager. When he heard the casino cameras were still working, he said to wait until the next day. He only really cares about the casino. That’s where the hotel makes most of its money. The maintenance contract has been upgraded now, of course.’

‘What was the problem with the cameras?’

‘Just what you said. Circuit breakers. All they did was flip them back on and everything was back to normal. Nothing we couldn’t have done ourselves.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Rules. We’re not allowed to handle the fuseboxes. That’s why we pay electricians.’

‘Can I see these fuseboxes?’

They were in a room in the basement. Plain grey door, keypad entry. His fingers punched in the code:

1-2-3-4
.

Inside, more grey – walls, floor, ceiling. The fuseboxes were in mounted metal cabinets, all stencilled with alpha-numeric codes and also keypad-locked. A very faint drone emitted from them, making me think of beehives at the height of summer.

1-2-3-4
.

He opened one of the cabinets and showed me two rows of circuit breakers fitted with dark-blue plastic levers. The general power switch was at the end.

‘So, the casino and nightclub cameras were working, but all the others went down?’ I asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘Odd,’ I said. ‘The cameras run off the same circuit. Surely they should have all gone out?’

Torena shrugged.

‘What did the maintenance people say happened?’ I asked.

‘System overload.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about the police? What did they say?’

‘They talked to maintenance, were told the same thing, I guess.’

‘So they just accepted that almost all the CCTV was down the night someone got murdered?’

Another shrug.

‘Who knows the entry codes?’

‘Security and the management.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have the codes been changed recently?’

‘No.’

I typed the code into the keypad on the cabinet door. It clicked open.

Torena looked at me with surprise and suspicion.

‘1-2-3-4 is a common factory preset,’ I said. ‘Anyone could come in here and switch off the power.’

The ballroom was being prepped for a gala dinner of some kind. A cleaner was going over the tiles near the entrance with a floor polisher, while waiters and waitresses were dressing the round tables in brilliant white cloths.

On the stage at the end, technicians were wiring microphones to a lectern and fitting filters to the spotlights.

All these goings-on were being supervised by a slim brunette in a dark-blue suit, standing in the middle of the room, a clipboard in hand, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

Torena introduced her as the banqueting manager.

We shook hands and exchanged pleased-to-meet-yous. Then, without prompting, she ran through her job description. She was in charge of running the hotel’s corporate events from planning through to execution.

‘Did you work on the Ethical Person of the Year awards?’ I asked her.

‘Yes. I put that one together.’

‘Were you at the event?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember seeing a woman in a green dress that night?’

‘No.’

‘About my height, blonde – long hair?’

‘There were a lot of people there, but I don’t remember anyone in green.’

‘What about Vernon James? You know who I mean?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you remember seeing him?’

‘Yes. He gave the speech.’

I looked at the seating plan for the Ethical Person award dinner. Twenty-one tables, the highest numbers at the back, the lowest at the front; eight to ten guests on each.

‘Mind if I check something from the stage?’ I asked.

‘Go ahead,’ she said.

I stood at the lectern, and looked out across the ballroom. As to be expected, it was impressive, even in the bare broad daylight. The ceiling was finished in black satin and supported half a dozen boat-shaped chandeliers.

In his statements to Janet and Christine, VJ had described first seeing Fabia to his right, out of the corner of his eye. I tried focusing my gaze ahead of me, while scanning my peripheral vision.

I couldn’t see the tables to my right very clearly. They were set too far back from the stage, a good three metres away at least.

It would have been much darker when VJ was stood here, and the stage lights would have been in his eyes – eyes that were already impaired, whose short-sightedness he corrected with contacts.

How could he have seen Fabia?

He couldn’t, unless she’d been directly in his line of sight – so sitting or standing
between
the tables and the stage.

Nightclubs and daylight don’t mix. The Casbah was no exception to the rule. It may have scored five stars out of five in all the London hotspot listings, but here and now it was dismal going on depressing; like an out of season summer resort in the middle of a cold snap.

Swayne and I sat in the same VIP booth VJ had. Down on the dancefloor, a young woman was on her knees, chipping and prising away gobs of pancaked chewing gum with the blunt edge of a knife.

I looked out the window, at Sea Containers House and the Oxo Tower across the river. And then I came back here and noted the chips and nicks on the table, the grime on the red velvet ropes around the booths, the stains on all the seats; and how the place couldn’t shift the rank, bittersweet whiff of booze, stale perfume and staler sweat.

Swayne was handling the interviews, which were almost entirely pointless, because the CCTV footage had rubbished all but one of them. Yet we still had to go through the motions, so there was no comeback from VJ – and, I suppose, to add to his bill.

The only person we really wanted to talk to was the final name on the list – Rudy Saks, the waiter who’d delivered the champagne to Suite 18 at 1 a.m.; the last person to see Evelyn alive.

The witnesses came in individually and in order, and went through their statements.

Four waitresses. Swedish, Czech, Polish and Turkish.

We got the story in random fragments, according to the teller.

The Czech saw VJ and Evelyn talking together when she passed them on her way to drop off empties at the bar. She didn’t hear what they said, simply noticed the tall black man talking to the blonde. She said they didn’t get a lot of black people at the club, or the hotel. She looked embarrassed when she said that.

Swayne told her not to worry. He showed her the pictures. VJ’s mugshot first, then two of Evelyn – the post-mortem headshot, and the self-taken picture of her in the green dress she’d posted on Facebook.

The waitress positively ID’d them as the couple she’d seen.

We thanked her for her time.

The next two witnesses assumed more than they’d actually seen, but we didn’t let on.

The Turkish waitress had narrowly missed tripping over Evelyn and VJ on the floor. She thought they were both pissed and rolling around on the ground like they were ‘lovers in a field’, she said.