The Verdict (56 page)

Pepe Regan’s trial had started the day before. There was a picture of him on the front page of the
Daily Chronicle
, walking next to Adolf. They made an odd couple. Regan, every inch the gormless multi-millionaire thug with lucky feet, his conservative suit and tie emphasising rather than masking his failings, making him look like he was playing a banker in a rap video. Adolf, on the other hand – despite barely reaching his shoulder – was the picture of ascetic professionalism; black suit, white blouse and that all-important documents trolley. She looked good, I had to give her that.

The jury spent all day deliberating, and I spent all day in the canteen, drinking cups of so-so black coffee and observing the comings and goings. Cops briefing reporters. Reporters filing stories. Defendants and their legal teams keeping to themselves. Freelance clerks eating packed lunches. Court administrators on their tea breaks.

At the end of the day, the judge sent the jury home.

No verdict yet.

Christine was in Barts Hospital. She’d had a stroke. She’d been put in a medically induced coma to reduce the swelling in her brain.

I went to see her.

I met Carnavale coming down the corridor. He recognised me and slowed down to talk.

‘How is she?’ I asked.

He shook his head and walked away.

More of exactly the same, right down to the faces.

No verdict yet.

The judge sent the jury home for the weekend.

My family returned in the early afternoon.

I was elated – but mostly relieved.

Karen was relaxed and chatty, full of things she couldn’t wait to tell me.

Both the kids seemed to have grown a little taller.

We came together in the middle of the living room and gave each other a big impromptu hug. I swore I’d never be apart from them again, never let anything get between us, and – most of all – never
ever
put them in harm’s way.

Later I took Ray to Battersea Park. It’s the most beautiful public garden in London. It even looks good in bad weather.

The sun was starting to lose its brightness, but the air was balmy and scented with cut grass and flowers and a hint of drying Thames mud. I bought us ice-cream cones and we sat on the only free bench, close to the pagoda and looking out across the river.

‘I found your flashdrive,’ I said.

‘Are you angry?’

‘No, just worried.’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘You mustn’t lie to us, Ray.’

‘I didn’t lie, Dad. You never
asked
if I had a secret flashdrive.’

I wanted to laugh at his innocent logic, and the serious frown on his face. I smiled instead.

‘There’s more to lying than just saying things,’ I said. ‘Why were you looking at videos about Vernon James?’

‘I’m interested in what you do,’ he said. ‘And you and Mum were always talking about it at night.’

I’d thought we’d been so quiet then – and that the kids were asleep.

‘Did I really do something wrong?’ he asked.

‘No. You just didn’t do it the right way.’

I realised we were facing roughly where Melissa lived on Cheyne Walk. I couldn’t see the house because of the thick trees. I wondered if she was home, and what she was thinking. Was she hopeful about how the trial would turn out? Was she still going to get a divorce?

‘Does Mum know you go to the spare room at night?’ Ray asked, licking melted ice cream off his finger.

‘No.’

‘That makes you a liar too, then,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t mean you can be one.’

‘Then you’re a hypocrite.’

I did a double take. The boy was
eight.
I don’t think I could even pronounce that word when I was his age, let alone know what it meant.

‘I heard it in religious studies last term,’ he said, reading my surprise. ‘Our teacher told us what it meant.’

‘You should really think of being a lawyer, Ray.’

‘I already am,’ he said, crunching his cone. ‘Why don’t you hang your old college picture up?’

‘Nowhere to put it,’ I said.

‘There’s plenty of space.’

‘Don’t want to mess up the walls.’

‘We’ll have it,’ he said.

I didn’t reply.

One day soon I’d have to tell my children the cautionary tale of how I’d screwed up my life before I’d been old enough to realise what I was doing…

Although…

No. How could I really say I’d screwed up my life? Not when I was sitting next to a little miracle, and going home to two more. My life had actually turned out all right. It was just the getting here that had been hell.

‘I’ll say this to you now, Ray. We both know I’m not your father, but I am your dad. And you’ll always be my son. All right? I want you to think of me as someone you can always come to with anything, someone you can count on. I may not always have the right answers, and I may not always be able to help you, but I’ll always try my hardest for you anyway. OK?’

He gave me his best cauliflower frown, and then he smiled and nodded.

‘Just no more sneakiness, all right?’

‘As long as you promise the same,’ he said.

‘Deal.’ We shook hands like
hombres
.

In the kitchen, after dinner, I told Karen almost everything that had happened since they’d been away, including the trial.

True to form, I omitted a few things: the attempted kidnapping, Melissa (
obviously
), my drinking (
especially
that) and my theory about Kopf – even if that theory was almost as good as fact. She really didn’t need to know just yet. I would tell her, though, when enough time had passed and I’d put the right amount of distance behind it – or if justice was done, and the truth came out anyway. Whichever came first.

Her only response was:

‘Thank God this is almost over. Let’s talk some more tomorrow.’

I couldn’t sleep at all that night, so I went to the living room and turned on the TV. The screen was orange, yellow, red and black. It wasn’t Tripoli, Baghdad, Beirut or Gaza. It was north London; Tottenham. Buildings and cars had been set on fire, shops had been looted, and the police were being pelted with bricks and bottles. It all had something to do with a police shooting in the area two days before. A peaceful protest had turned into a full-scale riot.

3.15 p.m.

I was in the canteen eavesdropping on two detectives talking about the rioting going on in east London. It had started mid-morning. Hackney was a warzone. Crowds were attacking the police, looting shops, setting fire to cars and buses. It was barricades, bricks and bottles.

Trouble was spreading to other parts of the city too. Lots of it, kicking off simultaneously. They were saying it was all being plotted and coordinated via Blackberry messenger and Twitter. The riots as flashmobs. The police were overstretched and losing control. They were talking about getting the army in.

I rang Karen.

‘There’s going to be trouble in Clapham Junction,’ she said.

‘How d’you know?’

‘It’s usually noisy around here, what with all the kids being on holiday. But it’s quieter than Christmas today. That’s ’cause they’re all out in the town. I’m keeping Ray and Amy indoors. You be careful getting home.’

‘I will.’

Just then Janet came into the canteen.

‘We’re wanted in court,’ she said. ‘The verdict’s in.’

The courtroom wasn’t full. The press bench was half empty. They were out covering the riots. The public gallery was threadbare, more wooden space than people. Melissa had come. She was in her corner seat. We locked eyes. She broke the stare first.

Kopf was sitting next to her, looking at me too.

VJ was brought in and led to the dock.

We turned to face him. Me, Janet and Redpath. He flashed us the briefest of smiles. He was nervous. A strange sight. All through the trial he’d been a study in trance-like calm.

Judge Blumenfeld addressed the jury.

‘Have you reached a verdict upon which at least ten of you agree?’

The foreman stood up. He’d had a haircut and was wearing a freshly pressed suit – which meant they’d pretty much made their decision on Friday, but run out of court time.

‘We have, My Lord,’ he said in a high-pitched voice, which may or may not have been the weight of the moment pressing on his nerves.

I knew exactly how he felt.

I was nervous too.

I took a quiet and very deep breath. My heart was pounding away like heavy feet on a treadmill.

The court clerk stood up.

‘Will the defendant please rise.’

VJ stood. And so did we – Redpath and I, Janet on the row behind.

I wished Christine was here.

The judge looked at the foreman.

‘How do you find the defendant, guilty or not guilty, on the charge of murder?’

His eyes on the judge, his hands clasped in front of him, the foreman said:

‘Guilty.’

Downstairs, in the cells, VJ was in shock. He sat very still at the table, palms on the surface, looking through Janet, who was talking to him.

The judge had deferred sentencing until next month. She explained that he’d probably get the standard tariff for a first-time murder – life with a fifteen-year minimum term. He’d be eligible for release when he was fifty-three.

She’d start working on his appeal immediately, she promised.

VJ didn’t reply.

I was still numb as I crossed the Great Hall and made for the stairs.

‘Were you surprised?’ a man’s voice said behind me. I thought it was a reporter.

But it was Redpath.

‘Shocked, more like,’ I said.

‘I wasn’t,’ he said. ‘Jurors are simple people who understand simple things. The prosecution had the body in the bed, eyewitnesses, DNA, a prime suspect who left the scene, lied to the police –
and
who also liked strangling women for kicks. Ergo he did it. What did we have? Accusations of dodgy police work. That was it.’

And there I was, thinking Redpath had been useless, when really he’d been underused.

I’d really thought we’d win. Christine hadn’t sunk the prosecution’s case, but she’d definitely flooded the basement. Or had that just been the way I’d seen things?

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Christine hates me. She didn’t want me on the case. When she wasn’t talking down to me, she was talking over me – and that’s when she was talking to me at all.’

‘What would you have done differently, then?’ I asked.

‘Persuaded the defendant to plead guilty to manslaughter. He’d be looking at half the time now,’ Redpath said.

‘But he
didn’t
do it.’

‘We couldn’t prove that,’ he said. ‘And when you can’t prove something, you cut a deal.’

Liam Redpath was a bright and cynical young man, forged by bitterness and disappointment. I knew this, because I recognised in him the same things I saw in the mirror every day.

I didn’t reply. I was suddenly tired. Utterly drained.

It was over.

VJ was going to jail.

Nagle had got his building.

Sid Kopf had won.

‘Fancy a quick drink?’ Redpath asked.

‘I’ve got to get back to the office,’ I said. To get fired, I thought.

‘Some other time, then?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

DCI Reid was reading a statement to the assembled press when I came out of the Old Bailey; TV cameras, microphones, tape recorders all crowded around her like big blunted spikes.

I didn’t hang around to listen. I’d catch the highlights on TV.

I went up the road to get the Tube. It was a beautiful day again. The wrong kind of weather. I wouldn’t have minded rain now. Lots of it. Lashings of it. And thunder. And lightning.

I wanted to feel something raw and sharp – anger, outrage, turmoil – but I was numb. I had too many questions in my head about why and how the jury could have reached that verdict.

‘
Guilty!
’

That had come from an old man, standing on the pavement, right in front of me. Where had he popped up from? Who was he? Some nutty beggar?

‘Finally!
Guilty!
They got that fucker! They got him!’

Now I recognised him…

The thick grey tweed jacket, the lank grey-white hair, the flushed greasy face, and
that
stare… I’d seen him in the Bailey canteen, looking at me as he was now with his piercing little eyes.
A cop look
.

And then I realised who he was.

‘
Quinlan?
’ I said.

‘That’s
Detective
Quinlan to you, Terry Flynt.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What d’you think?’ he snapped. ‘I come to see James get his deserts. What did I tell you back then? Told you he’d do it again, didn’t I? Told you he’d kill someone else, just like he did his dad.’

‘I haven’t got time for this,’ I said and tried to walk around him, but he got in my face, bobbing up and down like a buoy in a stormy sea. He stank of old sweat and dirty clothes.

‘And you’re
still
defendin’ him, inn’t ya? Still lyin’ for him! You’re a snivellin’ little bitch, you know that, Flynt? A snivellin’ little bitch. I reached out to you, ’cause I thought you was different to the rest of your dirty little family. You weren’t. You’re all the same.’

Two people were standing watching us from the opposite pavement. Two men. One of them was very tall, and had a huge grin on his face. The other was pointing a camera at us and snapping away.

I tried to walk round Quinlan, but he was quick on his feet and kept on blocking me.

The tall man came over, still smiling.

It was Kev Dorset. Mr Adolf.

Oh…
shit.

‘Hi Terry,’ he said. ‘I’m doing a big piece on Vernon James for Sunday’s
Chronicle
. Centre-page spread. It’s all about the unsolved murder of his dad and how he was the main suspect. Do you care to comment on the alibi you gave him back then?’

So my face, my name and my past were about to be splashed all over the country’s biggest-selling Sunday newspaper.

‘Detective Quinlan’s told me all about it.’

Quinlan cackled.

I barged past him and started walking away.

Kev followed me on his big long legs. The photographer shadowed us on the opposite pavement.

‘Come on, Terry. Give us a quote. Better still, give me your side of the story. I know you lied for him,’ he said behind me, that big dumb voice of his booming so loud I swore Lady Justice herself could hear him.

I stopped and turned.

He was only a couple of feet away from me, still grinning, tape recorder in his outthrust hand.

‘Sure, I’ll give you a quote, Kev. It’s this: Go fuck yourself.’