The Verdict (35 page)

‘What time was this, do you know?’

‘It was around 12.20 a.m.’

‘That specific?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was still wearing his fucking fake watch.’

Rudy Saks had told the police – and me – that he’d found the suite undamaged when he’d been up there at 1 a.m. – to deliver champagne.

Rudy Saks had lied.

This changed absolutely
everything
.

‘Did anyone see you leave the hotel?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did you do after you left?’ I asked.

‘I went home. Changed my clothes, packed a bag. Then I left town,’ she said. ‘Southend is a good place to lie low. I knew I could get a passport made here, and sell the watch too.’

‘And you were going to leave the country?’

She nodded.

It was time to bring Janet in.

‘Don’t say anything about this to anyone. If the police interview you again, say no comment,’ I said. ‘You’ll go back to your cell. I’ll get you a lawyer. She’s coming from London, so it’ll take a couple of hours. Please sit tight, OK?’

I got my stuff back at reception and signed out. The sergeant nodded to me as I left.

Once outside I called Janet.

‘Terry, where the hell are you?’ she asked.

‘Southend nick,’ I said. ‘I’ve found Fabia. You’ve got to get over here –
now
.’

I went down the road, looking for a café. Nothing doing. It had gone six, so they were all shut. I found a pub instead. Not ideal, but the rain was coming down harder, and I needed somewhere to sit and think for a while.

I ordered coffee and went to a corner table.

I eyed the beers. Then the bottles of spirits all lined up at the back, inverted, ready to pour. Spotted the Jameson…

Just
one
…?

And a Guinness.

No!

I was shaking – not for want of booze, fighting all that temptation – but because of what Fabia had told me, what it meant.

VJ was innocent.

He
had
been set up.

He
hadn’t
killed Evelyn Bates.

So who had?

My theory: the people who’d hired Fabia had intended to murder her in the room, while VJ was passed out. They’d known about his sexual proclivities, and the type of women he went for. And they’d set him up for the fall.

Things had gone wrong: the Rohypnol hadn’t kicked in fast enough. Then Fabia had fled and messed up their plans, so they’d grabbed Evelyn instead.

How
that
had happened, I didn’t know.

But she’d been drugged, taken up to Suite 18 and murdered.

Fabia had last seen her talking to someone from hotel security:

A bodybuilder type with a shaved head.

David Stratten had mentioned ‘a big bald bugger’.

So, where to now?

The trial would definitely still go ahead. But with Fabia as our main defence witness, it would be very difficult for Carnavale to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. Pretty much impossible.

VJ would either be acquitted, or the trial discontinued.

And it would all be because of what I’d done today.

My work. My win.

Me.
 

I’d handed Christine her silver bullet and the gun to fire it with.

Hell, I’d handed her the silver bombshell…

My chest swelled and I grinned, and I really wanted to punch the air.

But not quite…

Look at who this was all for, who I was defending.

VJ may have been innocent of murder and the victim of a frame-up, but he’d as good as attempted to rape Fabia, and he got his kicks hurting women. The thought of setting him free, putting him back in circulation, made me suddenly very uneasy. This may have been the law, but it wasn’t
any
kind of justice.

Was he ever going to pay for
anything
?

Janet pulled up outside Southend nick on the back of a dispatch rider’s motorbike at 7.45 p.m. The rain was bucketing down.

She’d come in her raincoat with waterproofs underneath. She handed the rider her helmet and we headed inside.

As we crossed the parking lot, a squad car pulled up and two uniformed cops got out in a hurry. They keyed open the door. We followed them in, quickly.

An alarm was sounding. A long loud pulsing drone, with a couple of seconds’ silence in-between. The counter was unmanned. There was no one around at all.

Janet and I looked at each other.

What was going on?

Phones were ringing. All of them at once, it seemed.

We stepped up to the desk and waited.

The sergeant who’d signed me in came through the door leading to the cells and interview rooms.

He looked at us, at me specifically.

‘That’s him, that’s the fucker, right there,’ he shouted, pointing at me.

Next thing I knew, my arms were grabbed from behind and I was pushed face down on the desk.

‘What’s this? What’s going on?’ I yelled.

The sergeant was now back behind the desk, looking down at me.

‘You’re under arrest for the murder of Fabia Masson.’

They put me in an interrogation room and left me alone to stew for a couple of hours.

It was a narrow space of perforated walls and thin grey carpet, much of it filled by a big metal desk, shaped like a sawed-off grand piano, with only a cramped sluice to manoeuvre in. I sat with my back to the wall, flanking what I guessed was a two-way mirror. The chair was too small, the room too hot and too bright, but there was exactly nothing I could do about it. The basics were now officially out of reach, beyond my control. This was the sharp end of the law. Next stop: prison.

I was in a daze. I knew it wasn’t a nightmare, but reality had slipped its moorings all the same. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, except that I’d been arrested for Fabia Masson’s murder.

When had she died? What had happened?

No one had told me anything, except that I’d killed her.

It didn’t make sense.

I started rationalising. This was all a high-stakes misunderstanding. They’d figure that out soon enough and let me go. It was just a matter of time. All I had to do was be patient.

Outside, through the door, there was plenty of activity. Feet popping back and forth along the floor, multiple voices rising and then fading, the world going by fast. In here time stood still.

Then it hit me: VJ would have felt exactly the same way when he was arrested. The bewilderment, the confusion, the sensation that you’ve crashed through the looking glass into some other world where everything is upside down and coming at you fast, from every angle.

I wondered where Janet was. Had she been arrested too?

And then it was back to Fabia. Had she
really
been murdered?

I couldn’t believe it. We’d just talked. I could still hear her voice, her French accent and perfect diction.

And I couldn’t believe I was here.

As more time passed and no one came, I started suspecting things weren’t going to turn out in my favour. And that’s when I started getting scared. Scared I’d been fitted up like VJ, scared of being locked up for something I didn’t do, scared of not seeing my family, watching my kids grow up…

A pair of detectives came in. Shopworn middle-aged blokes with pouchy eyes, damp hair and sparkling black leather shoes that made me think of Swayne. They introduced themselves, but I didn’t catch their names. One was in a grey suit, the other in blue.

Grey Suit sat opposite me, Blue Suit took the desk.

‘You’re in a lot of trouble, Terry,’ Grey Suit began, his soft voice belying his appearance of a jowly panther at rest.

‘Where’s Janet Randall?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘The woman I was with when you arrested me?’

‘You mean your accomplice?’ Blue Suit said. He was louder and snarlier; theatrically or personally the nastier of the two.

‘She’s my boss,’ I said.

‘She put you up to this?’ Blue Suit asked.

‘Put me up to what?’

‘Murder.’

‘She didn’t put me up to anything,’ I said. ‘She’s a solicitor, and I’m her clerk.’

Blue Suit laughed and winked at his colleague.

‘We got a smart one ’ere, eh, Phil. Phoney lawyer who stays in character. Method actin’, I believe they call it,’ he said, then turned to me. ‘You can drop the act now, son. Show’s over.’

‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ I said to Grey Suit.

‘You impersonated a lawyer to gain access to the victim, Fabia Masson. Is that right?’ Grey Suit asked.

Was that true?

Think. Fast.

‘You haven’t charged me with anything.’

‘
Yet
,’ Blue Suit said.

‘I’ve not been advised of my rights.’

Blue Suit ground his teeth and glared at me. Then he shot Grey Suit a quizzical look.

‘I apologise for that oversight,’ Grey Suit said. ‘You don’t have to say anything. It may harm your defence if you do not mention in evidence something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence against you. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Detective,’ I said. ‘When I get the phone call I’m entitled to after this interview’s over, I’d like to speak to DCI Carol Reid of the Metropolitan Police.’

Two hours they kept me in there, asking variations of the same thing. Once or twice I was close to answering when I remembered the golden rule a lawyer always drums into a client. When interviewed alone by the police, say nothing. The generic term for this is ‘No Comment’.

So:

Had I killed Fabia Masson?

‘No Comment.’

Had I poisoned her?

‘
Poisoned
…
?
No Comment.’

Had I injected her with poison?

‘Eh…? No Comment.’

Had she ripped me off? Was that why I killed her?

‘No Comment.’

Was I a hitman?

‘
WHAT?
No Comment.’

When they were done, Grey Suit told me they’d pick this up later.

‘I’d like to call DCI Reid now,’ I said.

And I did – after they’d fingerprinted and photographed me, taken DNA samples, and made me change out of my clothes and into a white paper suit.

Then they took me to the cells.

The next morning they brought me back to the interrogation room.

DCI Reid was sitting at the desk, Blue Suit opposite me.

I was almost pleased to see her.

‘Sit down, Terry,’ she said, without looking at me. She was leafing through a file on the table, steel-rimmed glasses perched midway down her nose.

Blue Suit took the chair opposite mine.

‘This isn’t the first time you’ve called me, is it,’ she said.

It was a statement, not a question. I didn’t know what she was on about.

‘Nor is it the first time you’ve trespassed on a police location.’

She turned over a couple of pages in the file. She still wasn’t looking at me.

‘And neither is it the first time you’ve impersonated someone.’

Ah…

Oh…

Fuck
.

She knew I’d been in Suite 18, when she’d come in with Carnavale; knew the call had come from my phone. Easy enough for the police to trace a withheld number.

‘So that’s one count of impersonating a police officer, to go with one of impersonating a solicitor. The penalty for each is at least a year in prison – and you’ll never work in the law again, obviously.’

I suppose now was the time to offer an apology, only I knew she wouldn’t have been interested.

She took off her glasses and looked at me.

‘Why am I here?’ she asked me.

‘I wanted you to hear what I found out from Fabia Masson before she died.’

‘She didn’t “die”, Terry, she was murdered. Big difference,’ she said, levelling an icy gaze at me.

‘I didn’t kill her,’ I said.

She didn’t so much as blink.

I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. The reflux felt like a hand at my throat. I thought of my kids again, Karen.

She tapped the file.

‘Do you know what this is?’

I shook my head.

‘You. Your record, from the Hertfordshire police,’ she said. ‘Makes for interesting reading.’

‘It was a bad time,’ I mumbled.

‘I’d say. So you know Vernon James?’

‘
Knew
him. A long time ago…’

No reaction. I glanced at Blue Suit. He was making notes in his pad.

If I didn’t keep my wits about me, this situation had the potential to get way worse.

‘There’s no friendship between us, DCI Reid. Hasn’t been for years.’

She closed her file.

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I was following a lead,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to track down Fabia Masson from the moment we got this case. She is –
was
– a key witness for us. And – for the record – I had no intention of going into the interview room or passing myself off as a solicitor. That happened by accident.’

‘Come again?’ she said.

‘The desk sergeant buzzed me in. He didn’t ask for ID, but I showed him my business card anyway. It doesn’t say I’m a lawyer. It doesn’t even have my name on it.’

‘You mean this?’ she said, and held up one of the KRP cards I carried around in my wallet.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why the interest in Fabia Masson?’

‘Vernon James claims it was her he took up to his hotel suite that night, not Evelyn Bates. I wanted to verify that that was so.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was her story?’

I told Reid almost everything Fabia had said. I began with VJ’s watch and my search for it and ended back here, in the other interview room. The only thing I left out was the part about VJ assaulting Fabia.

‘And that’s what you wanted me to hear?’ she asked, when I’d finished. She’d listened without interrupting me, showing absolutely no reaction.

‘That’s right.’

‘Why?’

‘It proves Vernon James is innocent,’ I said.

‘It proves nothing of the sort,’ she said. ‘Maybe she really told you these things, and maybe they’re even true, but she’s dead and you have no record whatsoever of the conversation. All we’ve got to go on is your word. And you’re biased. You work for the firm representing the accused, and you two were childhood friends. See what I mean?’

Yes, I did. All too clearly.

I’d done this for nothing.

Fabia was dead.

And I’d messed up.
Massively.

‘You are going to look into what she told me, aren’t you? You’re not going to push this under the carpet, are you?’ I said.

‘Her murder will be thoroughly investigated,’ she said.

Official speak for:
That’s all I’m going to tell you for now.

We sat in silence. Both detectives looked through their paperwork. I glanced at the mirror.

‘How was Fabia killed?’ I asked.

‘After you left the station, the desk sergeant went on his break. A woman came in and said she was Fabia’s solicitor. She showed the officer at reception her ID and was directed to the same interview room as you. Fabia was brought back in from the cells.’

‘Wait a minute. You said
a woman
came in. I thought I was the main suspect.’

‘Detectives reviewed the CCTV from the custody suite reception last night and they’ve eliminated you as a suspect.’

‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

‘You wanted to see me,’ she said. ‘We thought it best to hold you until I got here.’

Blue Suit choked a guffaw.

‘To continue,’ she said. ‘As you know, lawyer-client conversations are confidential. The meetings aren’t taped or filmed by us, and there’s never an officer present. There should, however, always be an officer standing outside, but for reasons that aren’t quite clear at the moment, there wasn’t one. I’m guessing they’re short-staffed here.

‘At some point Fabia was injected with a fatal dose of poison. Her killer pricked her at the side of her neck. We don’t know what it was yet. But it was fast-acting. When they found her, she was face down on the table like she was asleep. Didn’t look like she had time to put up much of a fight. Job done, the killer left. She even signed out.’

‘
Christ
,’ I said, shuddering at the coldness of it.

It was a hit.

An assassination.

And a
daring
one at that.

Someone had wanted Fabia dead so badly
they were prepared to take the greatest risks, go to any length to do it – even if it meant walking into a police station and killing her.

I thought of Swayne and what he’d told me… the White Ghosts, the Wingroves, Silver Service. I’d dismissed it at the time. Did he
know
what was going on?

‘You said you had CCTV of the killer? Can I see it?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘What did the killer look like at least? You said it was a woman, I might’ve seen her.’

DCI Reid nodded to Blue Suit, who read from his notepad.

‘Caucasian with Oriental features. Five foot six or seven. Medium-length dark hair. Late twenties, early thirties. She was wearing a beige mac and carrying a briefcase.’

‘Did you see anyone fitting that description?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Right then. You’ll give Detective Rose here a statement about your interview with Fabia. Then you’re free to go,’ she said. ‘As to how you got in here… Let’s just say we’ll overlook that in exchange for your full cooperation with our investigation.’

I was let out three hours later. Janet was pacing in the lobby. She had a face like thunder, with a hurricane following right behind. I knew she couldn’t wait to bite my head off.